We walked back up the hill, towards his Palestinian quarter, flags marking its entry point, and it was as if all the laundry hanging from the windows had turned like the flags to green, white and black, each shirt with a red chevron scarf, hanging lazily, defiantly. He was talking, almost idly, about the Great Catastrophe of his grandparents’ generation, how Galilee was cleared – “War of Independence,” he laughed with a snort – and how more of his parents’ generation had poured over the borders in 1967, how his family had left their village hours before the militia arrived to drive them out, leaving everything, even breakfast on the table. He told me how those who stayed were massacred. Israeli families were moved into the homes; they liked the high ceilings and cool rooms of the Arabic houses.
“You’ll go back,” I offered and immediately regretted my Western reassurance. He stopped and looked at me.
“I don’t want to go back. Why should I want to go back there? This is my home now. It’s nasty, but it’s where we belong now.” He started to walk again, back towards his new Eden. “No, I don’t want to go back. But I want them to pay for our land. They should pay.”
When we arrived at the house, the stable door was open and May was on her feet, the first time I’d seen her out of her chair, clutching a blue muslin cloth to her face and rocking on her heels soundlessly, her creased eyes twinkling with tears. Yusef rushed to her and held her shoulders, turning her to face him; there was a rush of colloquial Arabic, but only a few tremulous, broken sentences from the old woman. I stood at the door, watching this tableau like it was a mummers’ play. Yuse sat her down, firmly but gently, returning her to her place as one might tidy a room.
“What’s up?” I asked from the door.
Yusef’s head stayed down and he spoke past his shoulder. “It’s Asi. Someone’s taken him.”
He came to the door, his hands shoved deep into the back pockets of his combat trousers. He looked like someone whose train has been cancelled and he was wondering what to do next. And his lips drew apart as if he had backache.
Asi had gone down to the scrubland that separated the camp from the Lebanese side of town to play football with his friends. Yusef didn’t like him leaving the camp, but Asi usually took advantage of his absence to find some more space, like a grazing cub, as Yusef put it.
Further details were erratic – May was something of an unreliable second witness. But some kind of flatbed truck had pulled up, carrying young men and bigger boys. Six, maybe more. They had started spoiling the game, then roughing up Asi and his friends, shouting and jeering. Yusef had already told me that Lebanese boys called them Canaanites, but these were the kind of resentful, more dangerous Lebanese bully-boys who called them “little outlaws” and had been going “tick-tick-tick” with their fingers in their ears. A scuffle broke out and Asi and another boy were dragged on to the back of the truck and driven away. We had this from the other friends, who had run straight home. One father had found Uncle, who had gone down to the makeshift pitch.
“Do you want to go too?” I asked as I sat on the car seat next to Yusef, who was thinking hard, rubbing the palms of his hands together. It was strangely cool now that the sun had gone. “I can stay and look after May.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to see at the football pitch. They won’t be there.”
I wondered if Asi was dead and then wondered if Yusef was thinking that too. It felt weird, because we were behaving normally, discussing options as if we’d lost a wallet.
Three small girls came and stared at us from across the street, through the gloom. Strange, how children can sense family crisis and want to witness its drama. Behind them, a man painted a blue door with black pitch.
“I could phone the office,” I said. “See if anyone can help.”
Yusef snorted derisively, then worried that he might have seemed rude. “No, really, thanks – there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“They could call the UN – see if there have been any security reports,” I offered.
“No.” I’d clearly pushed the offer too far. “There’s nothing they would know or do. It would only make things worse.”
I just sat then. My silence seemed to affirm the circumstance, the lawlessness, hopelessness, the errant nature of refugee freedom. When it was dark, Yusef said he was going to talk to the other missing boy’s family. “Shall I come with you?” I asked.
“If you like.”
It wasn’t far. Uphill through a maze of alleys, the odd dark dart of a cat or rat in the alleys. They lived on the second floor of a soft concrete block, the steel rebars jutting through where the blocks crumbled. It was like an abandoned civic car park, where chipboard had been used to fill out the wall space. The father, gap-toothed and lanky in a white vest, was holding a small girl who played with his mop of dark hair. Behind him, his wife was putting two more to bed. They ignored me as they talked and I smiled at the woman, who dipped her head in automatic supplication. I guessed it was her eldest boy who was missing.
The other father was throwing his head back in agreement of something and we left, the door shutting sharply behind us against the now cold night air. We headed back by a different route to Yusef’s house.
“Any news?” I asked, almost scampering at Yusef’s heel.
“No. But he says he knows where the
