Neither The Remainer nor Jinin knew that the owner of the first radio, Muhammad Abu Muslim, had been a refugee from Jaffa, who had been killed with his four children in the Khan Younis massacre on the morning of 31 October 1956. The man and three-quarters of his family had perished, leaving only his wife, his daughter, the café, and the radio, together with those café regulars who remained alive after the massacre.
The Remainer didn’t know, either, that the second radio had been in the al-Balad Café in the middle of town, or that my father, Ahmad Nimr Dahman, was until the day of his death one of the most important customers in the same café, by virtue of a rumor that had injured his pride; or that the Egyptian military governor of the city of Khan Younis was his constant companion in the café, as a way of emphasizing his humility and expressing his desire to share in the troubles of the city’s residents.
Neither The Remainer nor Jinin knew that a third radio was in the Dirgham Café. They might have been surprised if I had told them that the café was closed and lost its customers because a popular radio station carrying women’s voices had broadcast that the owner’s daughter Ratiba—sixteen years old, with a chubby face, coffee-colored eyes, a chest that rebelled against its supports, and the distinctive Jaffa physique—was pregnant, despite not being married. Or that the man who made her belly swell was actually her father, Salim, and that, according to Hanafi radio—the management and broadcasting of which was supervised by the women of the quarter, and which was in the middle of our quarter—he had secretly performed an abortion on his daughter, with the assistance of his wife. Thus they had removed a grandchild who would have been Salim’s son, but they never escaped the scandal.
As for the fourth and final radio, it was in the Ottomans’ Café, the best known of the cafés and the one most crowded with lazy or out-of-work men, who were brought together by cards, glasses of tea, and narghiles around small square card tables, until sleep caught up with them after it was past midnight, and their wives had gone to bed and stopped sending their sons with warnings repeated from previous nights: “Father, Mother says to come back home—and if you don’t come, then go and fetch her from her father’s house in the morning!”
The Ottomans’ Café radio was the loudest of the radios. When Voice of the Arabs and the commentary on the news by Ahmad Saeed were being broadcast, it was the loudest voice in the camp. It would bid us farewell with a nationalist cry which would give us a sound night of sleep: “To a bright and glorious future! To a united Arab nation!”
But the radio also created a space for evening conversation, especially every Thursday evening, as we hovered outside, too young to go in. We would lean our arms on the edge of the low wall outside the café and prick up our small ears, like satellite dishes these days. Then we would listen to a new sequence from the Noah’s Ark series. Each of us would assemble an amusing collection of jokes, which we would hide in our chests, ready to be taken home as soon as the gathering finished. There, we would rebroadcast the sequence in our own words to anyone still awake, or retell it at the breakfast table in the morning to make everyone else’s whole day happy. The camps went to sleep at night happy and laughing. We continued to sail on the deck of Noah’s Ark for several years, singing the songs left behind by its captains.
Abu Tafish took over the hearts of the refugees like love filling the hearts of virgins, as his chatter emerged from a ship of entertainment, borne on waves of imagination. This wonder ship contained a crew of sailors: Marun Ashqar, who knew by heart the Palestinian heritage of songs and poetry; and Abdullah al-Zu‘bi, Ishaq Dawud, Musa Rizq, Bahgat Maqlasha, and Muris Shimali (Abu Farid).
The Remainer knew all of these, or had at least heard of them, and he well understood how the ignominy of history had compelled them to capture the jesting speech of the people and distribute it to the afflicted so they could reclaim a homeland of laughter and irony:
Radio Israel invites you, dear listener, to a voyage on the deck of Noah’s Ark!
Trin-tin-tin-tin-tin . . . tary rat-tat-tat-ta!
Taaayib ooooh, taaayib oooohiiiy!
“Shaalan, Shaalan.”
“Yes, Dad!”
“Where are you, Qarut? Abu Khalil’s coming with Andrea now. When they come, open the diwan and pretend to be busy! Always say hello, but don’t be too generous, don’t open packets of cigarettes all the time!”
“Ah!”
“Don’t give a cigarette to either of them until he can’t take it any more, and his moustache starts to quiver!”
“Ah!”
“Whenever Beijou stands up, tell him quickly that the coffee’s on the fire. Two or three times, Andrea’s been quick to get angry—he’s left the place quickly, gone home, and not drunk the coffee.”
“Ah, okay, Dad!”
“Only, hey, as I told you, say hello, hello, but don’t say more than that!”
“Ah, okay. But Dad, every time you tell me that Abu Khalil and Andrea are coming, they take no notice of us and they don’t eat here. Why do you think it’ll be different this time?”
“Oh God, are you a son of Abu Tafish? By God, if I adopted a goat, it would be more of a man than you are! This is politics.”
“So, are you going to start dabbling in politics?”
“No, I’m going to
