“What’s the name of your father, and where does he live?”
I told her that he had been a permanent resident in the old Khan Younis graveyard since I was thirteen, leaving her to calculate how many years had passed since his premature death.
“What’s the name of your mother?”
I gave her her full name, and informed her that she lived in a house in the Khan Younis camp in the Gaza Strip, because I knew she would ask me that next. So as not to give her the chance to put the question that would certainly follow, I quickly added, “But I don’t know the location of my mother’s house.”
“What’s the number of her personal identity card?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother’s full name again?”
I repeated the three parts of my mother’s name, which I’d already provided, pronouncing the letters extra carefully this time so that she wouldn’t have to ask a third time.
She turned the computer screen toward me, and there was my mother, staring out at me, as I surrendered quietly to my situation. I had known her for more than five decades, remembering her as being weak and helpless as a chick, scared of a sparrow standing on the edge of the tiled roof of our house and chirping at her—but here she glared like a hawk.
I imagined her shouting at the officer, “You’ll turn into a monkey, God willing! What is this lack of shame, what is this meanness? My son’s not a foreigner. This is his country, and he’s coming back to stay for a few days. Why do you have to come down and question him like this? Is he a thief or a murderer? God damn you all and the day when you came to the country!”
Wiping away a tear, I imagined that we talked:
You come home, Walid, and you don’t visit your mother?
I was embarrassed for my mother and for my country.
Not this time, mother. Leave it till next time.
I won’t live for ever, Walid. Then she implored me: It’s only a little way, my son. Move your feet and come to Gaza!
Are you inviting me to the blockade, mother?
May evil be far from you, my darling! Stay away, and spare yourself trouble until our Lord brings it to an end.
In my mind, I gave her some words to help her to sleep at night and to greet her in the morning. I told her to keep my words under her pillow. I asked her to carry on with this ritual until we met one day, when Gaza again became the Gaza I had known.
For a brief moment, I joked cheekily with the officer as I thanked her: “Toda, gvirti, thanks for the reunion!”
She made no comment, so I went on: “In the 1950s, you let us meet through a radio program called Peace and Greetings; after the 1967 War, through committees of the International Red Cross; and now by computer.”
“Excuse me?” she asked in English.
“Sorry, I was just . . . talking to my mother.”
“Beseder, okay, Mister Dahman.”
So saying, she handed my passport to her colleague, who went out, dragging her backside, apparently reluctant to take it with her. Accompanied by Julie—who had by now shut her novel and put it in her handbag—I tagged along behind her to the other end of the hall, where she asked us to wait again.
This time, we did not have long to wait. The same officer came back a few minutes later, with a short-term professional smile on her lips.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dahman, have a good trip. Shalom!” she said, struggling to keep her smile until the end of her task.
I took the two passports from her hand, flipped through them, and found inside each one an entry visa on a separate piece of paper. I took Julie’s hand, and we walked together happily to the baggage conveyor belt, where we collected our two cases and left.
Fourth Movement
Two Possibilities
To Haifa
Julie and I went out, each dragging our own suitcase. Our eyes were fixed on the people waiting at Exit Gate number 2. In the distance, which began to shrink as we smiled with happiness, our host, Jamil Hamdan, appeared with his wife Ludmilla, both waving at us. We waved back at them, with smiles that reached them before we did, while the leaves of a palm tree outside waved at us through the glass façade behind them, as if some breeze had told it we’d arrived.
To Jerusalem
Julie and I went out, each dragging our own suitcase. Our eyes were fixed on the people waiting at Exit Gate number 2. In the distance, which began to shrink as we smiled with happiness, our host, Salman Jabir, appeared, waving at us. We waved back at him, with smiles that reached him before we did, while the leaves of a palm tree outside waved at us through the glass façade behind him, as if some breeze had told it we’d arrived.
1
Jerusalem
Salman apologized on behalf of his wife, Aida, who hadn’t come with him to the airport to meet us. He said she was busy with an appointment with her supervisor for the Master’s thesis she was preparing, but she’d promised to stop work at a suitable time and come to the Ramada Renaissance Hotel, where we would be staying, before we arrived. So she would definitely be waiting for us.
Salman’s car started off, with me beside him, and Julie in the back seat. We took a mountain road that passed through pine and green cypress trees, while my eyes scanned the low hills and small forests, searching for villages that had remained in my memory.
We chatted the whole way, sometimes with a sense of wonder, and sometimes with bewilderment, like tourists visiting a country for the first time.
I talked with Salman about our plans for
