The car took us up to al-Isfahani Hill, borne on the shoulders of the Najla falafel restaurant. There, past the restaurant, under that tree in the corner to the left, the poet Ahmad Dahbur was born. Here was the vegetable market, and further up the headquarters of the Communist Party, then Shujeirat Hill. This was the street of the great historian, Emil Toma. Muhammad Mi‘ari, former member of the Knesset and one of the founders of the ‘Progressive List for Peace’ in 1984, had lived near the corner over there. The poet Mahmoud Darwish had also lived here, as well as the lawyer and researcher Sabri Jiryis, originally from Fasuta in Upper Galilee.
To the left was al-Wad Street, where the al-Ittihad newspaper had once had its press. It had become the entrance to a bakery. On the left was Qaysariya Street, formerly the house of Tawfiq Tuba, who spent ninety years, his whole life, in Haifa, and had never lived anywhere else.
From al-Khury Street, we went up toward al-Hadar, Hadar HaCarmel, then al-Mahakim Street, and Hasan Shukri Street.
“Ah, what a cuckold!” sighed Jamil, shaking his head like someone wary of revenge, before going on to explain: “Hasan Shukri, my friend” (he directed his words at me, as if the women would not be interested), “was head of the council for a time. In 1927, the first municipal elections, in the true sense of the word, were held. Various parties took part in them. People say that we disagree with each other these days, but we’ve had our differences since back then. We’ve never been united. The Jews supported the candidate Hasan Shukri, because he cooperated with them and sold them land, as well as acting as a broker here and there. Then he won the elections, and the Arabs started to chant the slogan ‘Hasan Bey, you cuckold, you sold the land for money!’”
We went down a hill, as tragic as the way up had been. Most of the houses here were deserted. Beautiful houses, all built of Arab stone—not an Israeli stone used in their building. The houses were advertised as being for sale, and could be bought from the Israeli Amidar housing company. Why shouldn’t the Arabs buy them and return to them? Yes, indeed, why shouldn’t the Arabs buy them? I almost shouted this to myself, and the others must also have been saying it to themselves. When the car took us down toward Wadi Salib, the way the Israelis had intervened to change the landscape began to be visible. They didn’t hide what they had done. There was a slogan written on the wall of a house to the left, still clinging to the stones despite the fact that it had been written a long time ago. It acknowledged the crimes involved in driving the Arab residents out, and brazenly stated ‘Pesha’ meshtalim’—meaning ‘These crimes befit us’ or ‘represent a gain for us.’
“Now I really have gone mad, Umm Jamil!” I told her. “It’s the madness of Haifa!”
“A person living here in Haifa will stay sane, my boy,” she replied. “It’s the one who leaves his country and runs away that goes mad.”
“Your words are golden!” said Jamil, praising what his mother had said—as indeed her words deserved. Then he leaned over me and said a few words in my ear, meant for me alone: “Thank the Lord, my mother’s hard disk isn’t faulty today.”
Earlier, Jamil had warned me: “Later, you’ll be sitting with Mother on the veranda, and listening to her talking in a normal way about normal things. But if her hard disk stops working, she’ll start telling you about the jinni Marghodosh, who used to be her friend. She’ll say he comes at half-past nine. I tell her, ‘Mother, watch what you’re doing with Marghodosh, you might not be performing all your duties toward him.’ Every day, she gets up in the morning, turns on the tap, and talks to sprites, telling them, ‘My brothers, I won’t harm you, and don’t harm me!’”
We both laughed. I told him that the deterioration of the hard disk containing the memories of old people was very widespread these days. I passed on the story of Zuhdiya, the wife of my late uncle, Muhammad. When I’d met her some years before, her three sons had drawn my attention to the fact that she had a fault in her hard disk. After she’d given me a hug to welcome me back to the country after a long absence, she had conveyed to me peace and greetings from my dead uncle, and I’d realized then that her mind really was affected.
“Where’s my uncle, now, Auntie, what’s his news?” I’d asked her.
“They say he’s in Egypt,” she’d replied, “and he’s married an Egyptian. But I don’t believe it. All his life, Muhammad’s always loved me. But I know he can marry; he’s a man and it’s his right. I basically don’t matter any more.”
She’d paused for a moment, like someone who feels lost, before recovering a brief moment of consciousness and saying, “God have mercy on your uncle, he died a long time ago.”
Then she’d stared at me and said, “You’re not Walid! Walid lives abroad in exile. He hasn’t come to Gaza for ages. What would bring him here?”
“Okay,
