Then she turned to Julie to apologize to her, and said, “I shall have to read the scene relating to the end of the novel in Arabic, so I hope Walid can summarize it for you later in English.” Julie nodded in agreement, and I did the same. So Jinin proceeded to read:
The Remainer went out, carrying the two signs, and headed in the direction of Rabin Square. When he reached it, he stood with the two signs held up in his hands, next to the speakers’ platform. There were more than half a million Israelis in the square, holding a rally to celebrate the victory of an extremist right-wing party in the parliamentary elections. Then, in a clumsy challenge to a group of madmen, he started singing the Internationale.
Suddenly, a shot rang out. The demonstrators pushed each other, shouting in alarm: Aravim, Aravim! Shout was piled on shout as they rushed in all directions. At that moment, The Remainer fell to the ground, his blood covering two shattered wooden signs by his side.
Mahmoud Dahman died, the man who was my father and who played his own part in this novel. The cleverest man I knew in my life, and the stubbornest Palestinian in the book. A man who refused to leave the country in 1948, both in reality and in these pages, despite the fires, destruction, death, fear, and murder, which were as widespread as a reckless autumn storm come to harvest everything. He died under the feet of Israelis stampeding with fear, because of an illusion on which their parties and politicians, left and right alike, had been living. He died proclaiming to them, in sound and image, a humanity free from any blemishes that men themselves might attach to it.
But The Remainer didn’t actually die. I rebelled against my closing scene of the novel you have read, a probable scene of death, in the light of the rise to power of the Israeli right, and the rapid drift of the country toward the extreme right and the hatred of everything Arab. The Remainer arose from his presumed death, picked up his two signs, and left the square, which had ended its celebration of an angry rightist inferno. He walked away from the torn placards that those taking part had left behind—together with their cigarette stubs, empty cartons, and shards of drinks bottles—in the biggest Israeli square in the country, and departed.
The Remainer walked back with his two signs that no one had looked at. He walked on, accompanied by a voice that repeated the Internationale with him and promised him that they would return together:
So, comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face,
The Internationale unites the human race!
“My God, Jinin, what a beautiful, fantastic ending!” I cried, and Julie, who had been watching the emotions cross my face, cheered along with me.
9
The Tenth Day
Walid and Julie completed their travel formalities in Ben Gurion Airport in Lydda. Before sitting down at a table in the spacious circular departure lounge, waiting to be called for boarding via Terminal 3, Gate C-9, Walid ordered two cups of coffee for himself and Julie, and the pair of them sat there sipping them, mulling over the events of the preceding nine days. The tenth and final day of their trip would be complete when they arrived in London in the evening.
Walid Ahmad Dahman
Against the background of the footsteps of the Ethiopian girls who worked in the airport, Walid came to himself, to ask Julie jokingly, “Shall we buy a piece of land in the Dahman quarter that was originally ours?” In his heart, he thought it unlikely that the Amidar Israel National Housing company would sell him land that most Jews considered a gift from a god they’d appointed as director of a company selling land and real estate that belonged to Palestinians in exile. But his heart also acknowledged that Julie’s suggestion both disturbed him and aroused his curiosity, prompting him to pose several perplexing questions. Should he return after this visit as a tourist, to go from time to time to the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, the Misrad Hapnim—like his relative Jinin, who although she had an Israeli passport, had struggled for years on behalf of her husband, Basim, to secure a residence permit in his own country? Would Walid apply for residence permits for himself and his wife in his own country? Where would they live? In Acre, which was no more than some fragments of recollections of old facts that Julie had gathered from her mother’s dreams and of present realities from their visit that they were now bringing to a close? Or in his birthplace of al-Majdal Asqalan, where he had opened his eyes after emerging from his mother’s womb, then perforce had closed them again and not set eyes on the place again for sixty-two years—to find it just the fragments of a city that had five thousand years ago been the flower of the cities of the Canaanites? What about Haifa, the mere mention of whose name was enough to drive every Palestinian mad? Haifa, at whose waters Salman had gazed from the window of the Kalamaris Restaurant, suspended in the air, and had seen it reposing calmly in its bay, the waves of the sea washing the feet of Mount Carmel. Wasn’t it Haifa that had made him madly shout its name, until the eyes of all those present were fixed on him and on us? “Woe, woe for this land,
