This hot, humid air had driven people from their rooms. Everyone was out in the open spaces. There was a dense motion, giving you the sense that people were coming and going, driven by a strange force inside them. The further you advanced into the passageways, the less you felt you were at the sea and more you felt you’d wandered into a maze of optical illusions. The further you went, the more it felt like you were entering into a hell made up of worlds that could no longer be concealed. You wonder whether it’s the sea that enables you to see a strange, inner nakedness or whether these people no longer care to cloak their souls. Sounds reach your ears—fragments of stories, questions, looks, desires, missing people, husbands, women yearning for strangers’ faces. They never tire of asking about someone they have lost—husbands or daughters—still carrying the hope of a sudden return. You feel that each gaze at a newcomer is an attempt to make out the features of that missing person. “Maybe it’s him.” “It is him, but time changed something in him.” “Maybe he grew a beard.” “Maybe he shaved.” “Maybe he lost that much weight.” “Maybe he aged that much.”
The evening was approaching, and with it, the dark night. They went out to observe the last light of a departing day that would be added to the long list of days that have gone by since the missing disappeared. You walk. You turn. These gaps, this motion, this overlapping coming and going crush you. Some people are returning after a day’s work. Some have woken up from a nap, disturbed by nightmares. Different faces. Sometimes you feel you’re in a world enslaved. Why don’t we shoot the film here? Let it be a Saint Simon film in every sense of the word!
I have the feeling that the key to the puzzle is here in this spot, like a knot: as soon as you get hold of one thread, you feel you must keep going until you reach the other end. Other times, while walking, you get the sense that clandestine things are going on everywhere. Some faces were undoubtedly planted here to spy for somebody. You swallow, and the taste of your saliva pierces your throat with the hidden schemes, plans, and plots being made . . .
We stood on the sand at the border between Saint Simon and Saint Michel. My escort called out to a man in the biggest chalet. Then he turned to me and said, “First you have to meet Abu Khalid. He’s an old man, and he talks. He’s also a sheikh, the head of a tribe. He manages people’s business here.”
Abu Khalid Saint Simon
The big hall in the chalet was clean. The bed still had the blue and white sheets that belonged to the former owners. Rugs and pillows were spread on the tile floor, brought at moments of escape or expulsion. In the corner of the hall was a large copper brazier and a coffee pot set on charred pieces of wood on the tiles. The windows were open onto the sea, bringing in a humid breeze that blew forcefully and made you yearn to shed your skin. A colorless light lingered on things, canceling out the remains of a fading intimacy. You could hear the sound of the sea, and from time to time the screeching sound overhead of a commercial jet about to land. Abu Khalid entered, repeating to somebody behind him in a strict, arrogant way, to bring the coffee. Then he came over and welcomed us. His voice was gravelly and moist, but with a Bedouin accent. His sunburned face sagged from the humidity. He wore a brown qumbaz and dark jacket. He sat cross-legged on the rug and said to us, “There are lots of people here in Saint Simon and Saint Michel. It’s a problem. Some people you know and others . . . only God knows! There are lots of strangers, from Maslakh and Karantina, some from al-Zaatar, Nab‘a, Burj Hammud, and the South. People flooded here and mixed together. We, Bedouins of Raml came from Maslakh.” He seemed to resent this integration.
“The Bedouins of Raml are from Raml in Haifa.13 I can take you to visit them and observe. As for others, I can’t go with you and I don’t know what they’re doing here. Only God knows. The Bedouins from Raml lost their land in 1936. The land was first taken by the British army.” The sound of a civilian aircraft roared overhead, making some of his words unintelligible. “I swear to God Almighty, I used to work naked like the day I was born because of my love for the land, and the land was desirable.” Once again, a plane roared above us. “Then we hired a lawyer, by the name of Ahmad al-Shuqeiri. I worked on the land like the day I was born. We cultivated wheat, barely, potatoes, cowpeas, onions, and other things—Arab cultivation. Mr. Ahmad al-Shuqeri is a patriotic guy, a Muslim. He continued to defend our land until a ruling was issued in our favor by the Land Court in Jerusalem. He came to us and said, ‘Good news, Bedouins. We got a ruling for the land.’
“We said to him, ‘Your news is a good omen, God willing.’ We went to him and brought him food—a lamb, some butter, and some milk. But the events of 1948 happened, and we went to Lebanon.” Another commercial jet roared loudly above. “Tribes are not a product of today; they’ve been around a long time, maybe since the time of Adam. We, the Bedouins of Raml, are from Swayt, but there are many Palestinian tribes, such as Sobieh, Hamdun, Hayb, and Fayez.”14
A man suddenly entered the room—he was tall, slender, nervous, and carried a black Samsonite briefcase. He seemed to have a specific and urgent mission. Somehow he gave the impression that he was delivering salaries. He sat on the bed, opened the briefcase, took out what looked like a receipt book, then stopped suddenly and said to me, “Welcome, friend. How are you? Tell us how you’re doing. I hope you are happy.” But Abu Khalid got up and said to us, “Let’s go visit the people so you can take a look around.” We rose and left the room for the sea. At that moment, the sun was a yellow waxen disk approaching the sea’s surface in the far horizon as clouds started to darken the sky.
After some moments, Abu Khalid joined us. We walked together. We crossed through the hole in the wall that separates Saint Simon from Saint Michel. In the yard, a family had taken their food out into the open and started eating. It seemed to be the family of a laborer who had just returned from work. Abu Khalid stopped at the first house and said to me, “This is my daughter’s house. She lives in the first house of Saint Michel, and I live in the last house of Saint Simon. That’s why I made this hole in the wall. She lives with her five kids. We say that her husband is missing, but he died in Maslakh.” Then he called out to her. The kids rushed in through small darkened doorways. He asked them about their mother. They said she went to buy something, so we left intending to come back.
Abu Adnan—the keys
He’s an old man—seventy, pale, and slender. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s dressed in pajamas or street clothes. He seems to be a collection of separate pieces, soul out of body. He babbles, walks, fidgets; he emerges from a dark doorframe and strolls into another. At all times he carries a round keychain with a bunch of small keys in his hands. He talks to us while walking. Sometimes he sits, so we have to sit. He stands up and leads us to another place. This is how we discovered his interest in certain places, such as what was previously the beach bathroom. He has devised a door and fixed it, then placed a small lock on it that reminded me of the kind used for luggage. He opens the door and lets us in. Once inside, we discover that this is no longer a bathroom but now a coffee room. Inside, the coal is still lit and the coffee pitcher sitting in the ashes is still hot. He talks a bit, then gets up, and we follow him. Maybe the place we’re going to is underneath the cement passageway of the beach. We sit on empty broken wooden boxes that used to contain whisky and beer. He talks to us. The only thing he’s confused about is the two exoduses: the first from Acre and the second from Maslakh.
What I recall now is the overall impression, the unlimited cursing of current and former Arab leaders: “Here is the sea, so let them toss us in it.” This sentence resonates in my ears. “They put me somewhere. I looked around and I saw something strange. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe it’s a morgue.’ I said, ‘That’s it.’ Three people came, looked at me, and said, ‘How old are you?’ I said, ‘Seventy.’ One of them said, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ I did. They had hatchets. I came from Palestine to Maslakh. When people started building in Tel al-Zaatar, we built in al-Tel al-Zaatar. In Haifa, a lawyer came and said to us, ‘Go to Acre.’ We left for Acre. We found that the people in Acre were leaving. We left Acre. They bring back married women after