Khaled Jum'a: Why?

Written in January, this short piece by Khaled Jum'a is an immediate and intense evocation of life under occupation.

Why?

The dense crowds made it seem like the Apocalypse had arrived; one coach, and people still flowed into it like a river without obstruction. Suitcases filled half the coach, and what was left had to be room enough for a hundred bodies. If not… we’d be spending the night here.

The space filled up with office workers dragging their exhausted bodies, yet the soldiers on the other side insisted we keep the first row empty, four whole seats… and you can say whatever you want… but… there’s no sitting in the front seats behind the driver… it’s military orders.

A five-year-old girl, who didn’t care about orders, or borders, or waiting… filled the place up with her laughter and her jostling about that bothered some of the people, but she didn’t care. She might have been wondering: What’s all this sadness on people’s faces?

After three thousand years of waiting, the doors closed. I was still in the same position, glued to my window, watching the little girl, oblivious to everything but her, when the driver took his seat behind the wheel and the engine’s rumbling shook us all. The child jumped over everyone and sat in one of the empty seats at the front of the coach, and again might have been wondering to herself: Why’s everyone squashed together and not sitting in these empty seats?

I looked at her with a smile I’d been hard-pressed to find, and she looked back and smiled without thinking. I said: Habibti, you’re not allowed to sit here. She sprawled out without paying attention to what I’d said, and asked, simply, while turning her head to look for her mother: Why?

Finally, when the soldier boarded the coach, he looked at her sitting there on the front seat, inspected the coach with an air of contempt, and left without a word. And I thought to myself: Why?

Translated by Isis Nusair and Shaun Levin

Najah Awadallah: Sad Song

Another beautiful piece from Najah Awadallah, whose short story appeared on Tuesday.

SAD SONG
(Five days under Attack)


First day-
The violin bow is completely taut, conversing with its strings, while a gigantic bird delivers its first blows, and the residential high-rise trembles…with a shudder the violin’s bow snaps backwards, though quickly I retune it in order to control the fear in my music teacher’s eyes. I lead her to the safest spot in the house.

I smile to ease her tension. They’re working and demolishing upstairs while we play music.

Hysterical thoughts overwhelm me: What if we went outside and played a little over the rubble? Will this bird chirp and flap its wings away from us? She smiles a sad smile, we restart playing a piece from Tchaikovsky’s “Sad Song,” the bow falls in sorrow on the violin, while wrath pours from the sky.

I say goodbye to my teacher before the lesson is over. I fear for her safety. I say goodbye until the next lesson.


Second day-
While the violin is frightened in its box, the metal birds play their music from the score of Gaza’s remains.

In a book I find shelter from a death I see and smell, a book in which I don’t want to be the heroine or the narrator, or even a street corner, just a period or a comma, a question or an exclamation mark at most.

I ask myself: Is it fear for life or escape from it into paper where I alone hold the decision to end the sentence or turn the page?!


Third day-
I look out of my forlorn window at the street that pedestrian feet have abandoned. It is empty of the noisy vendors who had often annoyed me and I had often assailed them with a thousand curses. Now I implore a single sound so I can feel alive and so the city can feel the living are still ringing the bells of life within it.

I spot a herd of goats whose shepherd risked his life in order to feed them what remains of grass untouched by rain. Joy ululates in me like a child when I hear the little goats bleat. I delight in them as I hide behind the curtains.


Fourth day-
The sun wakes me from my sleep and I wash my face with its light. I feel pleasure in the notion that humans are unable to invent a devilish idea and conceal it from those they war with and hate. Exhausted, dark Gaza has had enough night.


Fifth day-
The molten bullets are still pouring over the city. They grant the foreigners the right to leave and exempt them from war. I call my teacher and her husband tells me she has already left. The violin has left the city. Music raises its arms up, in surrender, to the bullets.

I get my violin out of its coffin and play “Sad Song.” My lids are swollen. I am ashamed to tell my husband I’m crying over my teacher’s departure and my violin’s aloneness.

Only now has Gaza become orphaned.

Translated by Fady Joudah.

Najah Awadallah: A Story

Najah Awadallah is an experienced storyteller, having worked in television design, documentary filmmaking and as a writer.

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She woke up in the morning to the usual screaming and commotion of her five children. She wished she could remain in bed, even just for a few minutes, to let herself feel that it was actually a holiday for her. It was not to be, however, as her children’s screaming in the salon adjacent to her bedroom scattered this tiny desire. She feared that the echoes of their quarrel might reach her husband’s bed and deprive him of the satisfaction of sleeping in the morning.

She wondered why was it that every time the morning opened its box of tricks and took out light and the sun to illuminate the world, it did not remember to illuminate the hearts of those around her and spread peace and quiet through them. She put this query aside and began to think about what awaited her on this holiday that was not going to finish before it finished her. When she went back over what awaited her, she sighed so deeply from her heart that she frightened the birds taking refuge by her bedroom window. How she wished, in that instant, that she had wings like theirs that could take her to the sea to wash her feet and refresh her soul. To steal from time an hour that would be for herself only.

Ever since she had opened her eyes to the world, she could see the sea but had never enjoyed its water. She saw it as if it were a portrait she was forbidden to touch. Mere footsteps separated her from it, yet she would only go with her family to clean its salty sand and water off her children’s bodies. She would clean them with joy, smelling the odor of the sea ion them. More footsteps separated her from the sea, yet she could not embrace it. And even if she wanted to, she would have to put on all the clothes in her closet to hide anything possibly scandalous. So she cut short the whole matter and muted her desire whenever the sea enticed her with its vigor and blueness. It saddened her to the point of madness that her sea was not like the ones she saw on television screens. She had heard that her sea’s beach was one of the cleanest in the world. Maybe. But she was searching for the happiness that shows all over people’s faces.

The screams of the little ones shook her awake from her daydream. She had a long laugh, as her eyes welled up with tears.

Translated by Suneela Mubayi.

Soumaya Susi: The City

The City
What will this sad, silent, fallen city by the old sea oppressed by time give you? It will give you a lot if you listen to its nightly voice strewn amongst the rustling of the trees and the lapping of the waves. No one tries to listen to that angelic voice emanating from it. Everyone only hears his own voice and strives to search for himself among the city’s heaps.
Often I think if only geography wasn’t so clever, if only it bestowed the city with a few more coastal kilometers and released it from its existing borders; how would your seashore look oh, Gaza? Which ships would reach you? What would be the state of your residents, teeming with feelings of exile, cries, and fear?
Perhaps it is the constant thought of escaping the city’s boundaries weighing on me, or at least the idea that my city is without borders, drowning in isolation. A city where whoever enters is lost, and whoever leaves writes himself a new life story.
Now there is no leaving and no entering. A city of imprisonment that consumes its own inhabitants and which everyone wants to escape. To be more precise, they are not trying to flee the geographic location itself. But rather, they want to find what was lost. They want their freedom that was caught unawares in circumstances that they had never, for even one day, dreamt of. The city was becoming more confined each day, with new chains forced upon it each year. After it was completely open to the outside world, it was seen as too narrow to encompass all its residents’ desires. How is this so and yet the contradiction of aspirations wrecks all attempts to survive. How are love, death, and life all possible on one street? How can you shake hands with your brother’s murderer and reply to his ‘good morning’?
Before Gaza transformed into a city of conflict, I was a participant at a poetry conference in Paris. What surprised me was that everyone I met was stunned when they learnt I hailed from Gaza.
Gaza, this magical word! No sooner had the others heard it than they looked at me with all the world’s amazement and astonishment. They began to ask me all the questions that had crossed their minds, after hearing one day about this city’s existence and about its old and new troubles. I transformed from a poet participating in a conference with more than other thirty poets, to a representative for the common Palestinian people - the dwellers of the dark, unknown city. A city that does not disappear from the daily newscasts of cities the world over.
Their curiosity to know and their attempt to understand what is truly happening was greater than my ability to reply. When I returned here, there was a strange longing to go back to Paris. Maybe I liked it more through their eyes, and maybe I wanted to experience more of this city’s character.
I am taken by surprise upon my return. The city is no longer ours, and all that was in the past is mere rehearsal for what happened afterwards. The changes are visible in such a short time. There is a demand for everyone to erase what took place and live anew, as if nothing had happened.
Oh this paradox! I did not enter a state of shock, I did not change, and I do not understand - what happened? We went back to the daily routine that we know, only to find that the context had changed completely. But it was dialogues, more events, and more testimonies. Everyone knew what they had to say, and everyone was utterly silent.
Too many deaths. Many dreams run through the minds of those who live in this forgotten town and who continually occupy a large part of the media. No one truly tries to know what is being lived here, and no one wants to start changing anything. Perhaps this city’s misfortune is that whoever lives in it takes on a strange quality; it is the strength to endure and wipe away what one cannot live with. They do not grumble, they do not cry out. In silence they accept each new reality as if they were created for it. This capacity to adapt always used to amaze me. It clashes entirely with the personalities of those residing in this city, but they continue in their wordlessness and I in my astonishment. How then is it possible to go on living here, waking up every morning with a smile on your face and hope for a clear, new day?
There is a small secret. If you know it, then it is possible to carry on. In order to live in Gaza you must create your own secret world. This beautiful world which contains you and those like you; those who carry small dreams that come true in the rain on a winter’s day, or staying up late into the night with melodic music and friends. Because this matter becomes forbidden in the laws of the invaded city, you must search and you will find it inevitably. You will hide well your small secret and in that moment enjoy what you can from it; in order to create for yourself days contrasting completely from those of the news reports. Days abound with death, poverty, and foolish fighting that does not change anything. Or filled with nameless rockets releasing a sound resembling some sort of explosion, though unable to even harm a cat. You persist in your beautiful isolation and your ultimate wish to get tobacco at a price cheaper than in the market. You continue thinking about New Year’s night and how you can spend it outside the walls of your room.

Translated by Sawad Hussain.

Soumaya Susi: Thoughts in the Dark

Soumaya Susi is a local government researcher in Gaza as well as a striking poet. Her work has been translated into many languages, and appeared in English in Nathalie Handal's The Poetry of Arab Women.

PEN Atlas are proud to present a new poem and two new short stories by Susi on the blog, thanks to our translators Christina Phillips, Sawad Hussain, and S. El Omary.

Thoughts in the Dark

The darkness brings fears and ideas you’d never dare to think in the light of day. You’re good at this game. The daily interruption to the electricity forces you to think in a particular way, according to a completely different logic. You give up your usual rituals and adopt new ones in keeping with the imposed darkness. You contemplate the romantic nature of candles and the night-time voices you’ve forgotten. You count the stars like the ancients did, except stars these days are deceptive; you think you see one but when you look for it the next night it’s changed course in order to carry out another task. You return to the old broadcasts which you assigned to a distant, forgotten past but are now forced to listen to learn about the death, roar and destruction going on around you. You relax a little and wait for morning, when you can listen to everything that happened while the lights were out last night on the radio in the taxi on your way to work. You go to work ready for new thoughts, desperate to find yourself amid the heap of routine. Normal work means perseverance and carrying out daily tasks assigned to you or the area you work in. It means collecting your salary at the end of the month to spend on necessities, though it hardly covers them.

Then your salary suddenly vanishes without any explanation for your children, who are dreaming of new summer clothes, new games, or even just some sweets. It vanishes and thoughts about getting along without it, an advance on your salary or recuperating some of what you’ve earned in the past few months grow. You get a bit of cash from here and there and you take out everything you’ve saved during your working life only to find yourself surrounded by columns of debts that crowd your thoughts whenever you try to sleep.

You keep going. Walking, eating, drinking, going to work every morning, meeting up with your friends, or those of them left. Something appears on the horizon and strikes the electricity station. The debates about how to manage your money are replaced with new worries. Do you have enough candles for tonight? Is there enough gas to light the long evenings? What will you do with all your time without electricity, without television or the computer, even without a fan in a summer whose heat took you by surprise, as though it was joining forces with everything else against you.

What will you do?

Nothing!

You sit in your room and tell yourself that you’re better off without fans and air-conditioners. You smoke a cigarette and discover things around you that you hadn’t noticed before. You recall conversations with your children for the thousandth time. You wait for the current to offer you a window onto the world and take you out of your lonely prison in this stony city.
Your endeavour to live by a different logic, one that befits your new lifestyle and the altered social and economic circumstances, is usually successful. But it leaves scars inside you. It leaves a burning in your soul for the life that is escaping you, the days that are slipping away from you while you are silent and ignorant of what’s going on around you. Perhaps everything around you is ignorant of you too. Forgotten in a remote corner of the world, you’re good at isolation and intentionally drift into it. You hear many melodies but don’t find your own. You read a lot of books and novels. The world goes on around you but there’s no place for you in it. Perhaps in an effort to release you from your addiction to communicating with others over the internet electricity has become your ally, for it prevents you communing with the hypothetical life that you created for yourself and lived happily with in all its details. You’re forced to withdraw, unable to refuse or complain, acquiescing to your options in a stony country on a forgotten shore. What do you think about?

Perhaps of nothing!

Of what will happen.

Of the contradictions around you.

You keep smiling, in an effort to remind yourself that something will change.

Translated by Christina Phillips.