There were others too, people who brought bags of clothes—even if they were in the minority. And many of the refugees began to see my father as an authority, someone they could go to with their worries. “We’re people too,” they’d complain, “not animals, and yet we’re locked up in here.” Or, “In Jounieh, I was a lawyer. I had a practice that got destroyed. Where am I meant to go if I they won’t let me stay here? Go back? There is no going back. I have no house, no family …” And Father agreed with them, though never absolutely. He always stressed how important it was to understand the people outside the hall, that they were probably afraid, the way lots of people fear the unknown. The more crowded the hall became, the trickier the situation became. People would suddenly overreact, but it wasn’t only due to stress and uncertainty. Religious differences could also trigger insults and fist-fights. Many of the Lebanese refugees divided their camps up along religious lines. And so our sports hall mirrored the streets of divided Beirut: Muslims on the left, Maronite Christians on the right. Each blamed the other for their misfortune—for having lost everything, for being refugees, for having to live in a sports hall.
My father’s friendship with Hakim was another thing that lent him authority. Hakim and Yasmin, who was barely two at the time, were Muslims. My parents were Christians. They had all fled Beirut together. Hakim and Yasmin were camped right beside my parents—in the Christian sector of the hall, so to speak. But Hakim encouraged his daughter to play with all of the kids, making no distinctions. My father and Hakim would say to the others, “We’re not in Lebanon anymore. We all came here because we want peace, not war. It’s not about Christians and Muslims here. It’s about us. As Lebanese people.”
But sometimes words were in vain. One night, Father was woken by a dull thumping, the sound of something hard rhythmically pounding something soft. Fumbling in the dark and aware of my mother breathing gently beside him, he sat up. All he could hear in the dark hall was that noise. He made his way towards its source, putting one foot carefully in front of the other to avoid stepping on sleeping bodies. In the dim shadows he could make out one figure bent over another. But he was too late. Father could see the battered face even as he leaned in to grab the shoulder of the man who was straddling his victim and punching him like a man possessed. The woman closest to them began to scream. Someone turned the lights on and people sat up suddenly, looking around in shock. More and more people started screaming. There was blood not just on the floor, but all over the hands and clothes of the man who had killed the other. Four men grabbed him and pinned him to the ground until the police arrived.
For a while, the dead man’s place in the hall remained empty, and his death seemed to put an end to the fighting too. But more people were arriving in the sports hall every day, so it wasn’t long before someone spread his blanket in the free space to lie down and sleep. After a few days, it was impossible to say where exactly the empty space had been.
Meanwhile, Father’s German improved by the day. For him, the ability to master this language was inextricably linked with the fate that awaited him and his wife. Because he knew how important it was, he tried to teach Hakim what he learned too. In the evenings, he used to tell stories in the hall. In the beginning, he sat on the floor surrounded by children, their eyes wide, their mouths agape. He told them about a giant spaceship that brought everyone to the bountiful planet Amal. Different coloured lines on the floor of the spaceship led the way to the magnificent bathrooms or the splendid dining hall or the cockpit. In his head, Father had converted the sports hall into this spaceship. The dingy showers in the changing rooms became a hi-tech spa in which little robots scrubbed people’s backs. The side-lines of the basketball court became energy-acceleration tracks, perfect for a kids’ game in which all they had to do was take a running jump onto this line in order to whizz all around the spaceship at great speed. Its captain was a crazy camel who entertained the passengers with comical announcements. Father put on a funny voice for this purpose, making the children crack up. In Arabic, amal means hope. Soon everyone in the sports hall was familiar with the planet called Hope. Sometimes when even the grown-ups could no longer hide tears of despair and exhaustion from their children, the little ones could be seen stroking their cheeks, saying “It’s not far to Amal now.”
It wasn’t long before parents began to join the circle around Father, and a few days later, some of the aid workers were also listening in. Soon this story time became a regular fixture, an evening ritual that brought people together. It was the only time when no one spoke but Father. His reassuring voice floated above the listeners’ heads and filled them with a wealth of imagery.
These days, having learned so much more about him, I often wonder how he managed to keep his secret. And I always come to the same conclusion: his ability to escape reality must have helped him.
Hakim’s asylum application was approved before my parents’.
As a single father, with passable German to boot, he and Yasmin could expect to get a permanent residence permit in the near future. My parents hugged and kissed them goodbye and waved them off when they left the sports hall. Their next stop was a little social housing flat on the edge of town. A few months later, Hakim also got a work permit and found a job in a joinery. He had played the lute all his life and had no trouble convincing the master joiner, who had a soft spot for refugees, that the calluses on his fingers were from years and years of working with tools. He enjoyed the work too. Being a lute-maker’s son, he loved the smell of wood. Hakim had spent many childhood years in his father’s workshop before heading to Beirut to become a successful musician.
My parents had to stay on in the hall for another while. When they eventually got the preliminary approval letter, many tears were shed. Mother cried tears of relief. Some of the grown-ups cried because they couldn’t imagine the sports hall without my father. And the children cried because their storyteller was leaving. It was a Tuesday when the man arrived and started looking around the hall. An aid worker who had been leaning against a door pointed him in the right direction, and he made a bee line for my parents.
“Are you Brahim?”
“Yes,” said Father.
“Brahim el-Hourani?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And you are Rana el-Hourani?” he asked my mother.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“A letter for you.” And when he noticed how Mother shrank back a little, the man smiled and said, “Congratulations!”
And so Brahim the storyteller left the sports hall. Nearly everyone wanted to say goodbye. People came to wish my parents good luck, reassuring each other that they’d soon meet again, in town, as ordinary citizens, at the cinema, shops, or restaurants.
Brahim. That was my father’s name. Brahim el-Hourani. Rana was my mother’s first name. The el-Houranis—those were my parents. I didn’t exist yet.
My parents got a flat in the same housing scheme as Hakim and Yasmin. Fate and a few case workers had been kind to them. They ended up living only a few hundred metres apart. And Father, whose German was pretty good by then, also got a work permit within a few months. Mother once told me how he went off to the Foreigners’ Registration Office with a bag of freshly baked baklava and put it on the baffled official’s desk.
“My wife made that for you,” he said.
“Oh,” said the official, “I can’t accept that.”
“It’s for the stamp,” said Father.
“The stamp.”
“On the work permit.”
“Ah. The stamp,” said the official, looking from Father to the plastic bag on his desk and back to Father again.
“We’re very grateful to you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t accept it,” the man repeated, clearly embarrassed.
“Please. I am a guest in your country. Regard it as a gift for the host.”