Memories for Forgetfulness - an excerpt
by Mahmoud Darwish

On the fourth floor, an open door. "Good morning, Sir!" Thus have I greeted him for the past ten years. Eighty years old. Handsome, calm, like a heart walking on two legs. He moved out of his house on the demarcation line after three of its walls had fallen down and lived in my apartment for six months while I was hiding in Europe. Then he moved to his daughter's apartment.

I visit him daily, helping to lift from him the burden of the war, bringing him a newspaper and a sesame‑covered bun. He had been an innovative poet; perhaps he was the first to use the form of the prose poem. Then he stopped writing poetry altogether, to devote himself full‑time to his literary monthly. He is now editor, manuscript reader, administrator, and distributor. Nothing equals his grumbling about the savagery of the shelling except his complaints about the landlord and the water. He enjoys my company and that of his grandchildren, accepting the tyranny of his domineering wife with a smile that apologizes for a misdeed he didn't commit. When his nerves are on edge, he cries out with a pain brought on by the insistence of the raiding jets: "Enough! What do you want from us? We know you're stronger, and we know you have newer planes and more destructive weapons. So, what do you want from us? Enough!"

But his wife scolds him: "Let them be! They want to shell. What’s it to you?" she says sharply in her Egyptian dialect, not feeling embarrassed by my presence: "They want to shell Palestinians." To interrupt the electric current of anguish, I joke with him: "That's right. Why do you wait to put obstacles in the path of those pilots?" He laughs, but she doesn't. Within her, since she'd been brought up to feel hostile to anything outside her Maronite sect, she applauds the free service offered by the Israelis to the only hero of her dreams: Bashir Gemayel," She believes this war's nothing more than a voluntary service they are rendering to clean Lebanon of aliens and Muslims. And when the service is complete, with Gemayel, the leader of the sect, elevated to the presidency of the republic after the aliens have been driven out, the Israelis will go back where they came from without asking a fee.

One can argue with her about the life of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Epistles of Paul, without her ever getting excited. But as for Bashir, she surrounds his name with an aura of sacrosanct taboo. 0 Lady of Lebanon, protect him for us! For all that, I feel no rancor toward her; rather, pity at how deeply she has gone into mere fantasy and refusal of the Other. I don't hold a grudge against her but bring her what bread and grapes I can find at the vendors. Before a mind so closed, so completely made up, all attempts at argument come to a halt. In vain does her husband, whose past is secular, try to convince her that the Israelis don't love Lebanon and aren't there to defend it, and that just one rocket from their jets can turn all of us sitting in this apartment, Muslim and Maronite alike, into ground meat. As for her, armed with a mind made up with such finality, she loves a sterile argument.

In an attempt to take my side, her husband occasionally asks my opinion, but to avoid provocation and whatever bile she might want to shower me with, I say, "It's not my problem."

She stirs the stagnant water, "What then is your problem?"

I maneuver. "My problem is to know what my problem is. By the way, has the landlord released the water?"

Says she, "Don't run away from the subject. You know there's no problem between Maronites and Jews."

I say, “I don't know that.”

Says she, "You know we're allies."

I say, "I don't know that."

Says she, "What do you know then?"

I say, “I know water has color, flavor, and aroma."

Says she, "Why don't you Palestinians go back to your country? Then the problem will be over."

I say, "Just like that? So easy? We go back to our country, and the problem is gone?"

Says she, "Yes."

I say, "Don't you know they won't let us go back to our country

Says she, "In that case, fight them."

I say, "Here we are, fighting them. Aren't we at war?"

Says she, "You're fighting to stay here. You're not fighting to go back."

I say, "For us to go back there, we must be somewhere; because he who goes back‑if he does go back‑‑doesn't start from nowhere."

Says she, "Why don't you stay in the Arab countries and fight from there?"

I say, "They said to us what you're saying now. They kicked us out. And here we are, fighting along with the Lebanese in defense of Beirut and our very existence."

Says she, "Your war's pointless and will get you nowhere."

I say, "Perhaps it won't get us anywhere, but its aim is self-defense."

Says she, "You must leave."

I say, "We've already agreed to leave. We will leave. And here they are, barring us from leaving. But don't you care where we re going.

Says she, "It doesn't concern me."

Suddenly, Feiruz's voice rises from the radio, I love you, 0 Lebanon. It rises from two warring stations.

I say, "Don't you love this song?"

She says, "I love it, and you?"

I say, "I love it very much, and it hurts me."

She says, "By what right do you love it? Don't you see how far beyond the limit you Palestinians have gone?"

I say, "It's beautiful, and Lebanon is beautiful. That's all there is to it."

She says, "You've got to love Jerusalem."

I say, "I love Jerusalem. The Israelis love Jerusalem and sing for it. You love Jerusalem. Feiruz sings for Jerusalem. And Richard the Lion‑Hearted loved Jerusalem. And”

Says she, "I don't love Jerusalem."