Sand-Catcher

I

The Interview

WE ENTERED THE APARTMENT PEACEABLY ENOUGH. We had digital recorders, papers, smart tablets, cameras, and nineteen questions.

The previous night, we had gathered at Turtle Green Café on Rainbow Street in Amman: my friend who was cheating on his wife, my friend who was cheating on her husband, another friend fluent in three languages, and I. We sat for a long time thinking about what sort of questions we should ask the old man. It had taken us weeks to get the family to agree to meet with us, for one reason and another— the old man was sick, say, or they were too busy. He had this hothead of a grandson who yelled at us every time we called, refusing even to hear us out. At one point, Khaa’in (my friend who was cheating on his wife), on the phone with me as he headed for a rendezvous with his girlfriend, suggested we just forget the whole thing. Then we could turn our attention to some other newsworthy topic to report on. But I had concluded that the interview with the old man was important—essential, even. To most of us it was a matter of principle, so it was worth taking some trouble over. Our meeting at the café lasted three hours, and everyone agreed that I should be the one to speak for the group when dealing with the old man. I didn’t quite get why they chose me, but I agreed. Al-qaa’id—the Leader—they called me, laughing. We wrote down ten questions to start with, as well as five alternates (in case the old man had trouble answering some of the original ten), plus—just in case—three more we weren’t sure would fly, and finally one concluding question we thought we might ask, depending on how things go, as Khaa’ina (my friend who was cheating on her husband) put it. We agreed that Mutarjima (my friend who is fluent in three languages) would record the interview, so that we could transcribe and edit it later. I asked Khaa’in and Khaa’ina to turn off their cell phones during the interview, to avoid interruptions. Khaa’in would take some pictures while Khaa’ina took notes on her tablet, and I would be in charge of our documents—our questions in hard copy, that is.

It had all started a month earlier, when Khaa’in called and told me about a birthday party to be held by his girlfriend’s relatives, in honor of a family member who was turning eighty-five.

So is she going to invite you to the party?

"Don’t be ridiculous. Here’s the story. The old man is the last living member of the family who was an eyewitness to the Nakba."

And what’s that got to do with me?

"Think about it, man. The last survivor of the Nakba in this family, the only one with actual memories of the events. It’s an amazing story."

How is he related to your girlfriend?

He’s her grandfather’s brother.

So I put the idea to the editor-in-chief of the newspaper we worked for, and he was quite enthusiastic. For the assignment, he chose me, Khaa’in, Khaa’ina, and Mutarjima, giving us absolute autonomy as to the manner of its completion and the format of the interview. The four of us met and speculated about the reason we’d been assigned to the project. The first thing that occurred to all of us was that we were the only ones of Palestinian descent at the paper—no doubt the boss assumed we all harbored our own stories of the Nakba, stories we’d heard from our grandparents and other family elders. Perhaps, too, it was because the boss knew we were all friends. And maybe because Khaa’in was the one who had pitched the idea in the first place.

For our first meeting after we’d been assigned to the project, when we went out for coffee, Khaa’ina surprised us by saying, Name one specific thing, something distinctive, about your connection to Palestine.

Although I couldn’t decide whether her suggestion was serious or facetious, I spoke up first, and the others followed suit.

Qaa’id: I still mix up the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Khaa’in: All the women I’ve slept with were Palestinian, except for my wife.

Khaa’ina: "Twenty minutes into my wedding I discovered that we’d set the date for the anniversary of the Nakba."

Mutarjima: "The first time in my life that I ever made maqlouba, it burned to a crisp, and I threw it in the trash."

As journalists, we weren’t experts on Palestine, so we had to do our homework and consult a good many sources in various languages, not only Arabic. The point of the interview was to publish a report on the old man based on his account of his life before and after the Nakba. Among the topics our questions covered, we were particularly interested in the moment when he and his family were driven out of Palestine, and when his village fell to the Jews, as well as in the massacres perpetrated by the Zionists. Khaa’ina told me about a novel by a Lebanese writer, Gate of the Sun, which featured many tales of the Nakba. She thought I should read it so I could refer to some of the issues it raised as I directed our questions to the old man.

I asked Khaa’in to get us the phone number of a member of the subject’s family; his girlfriend gave him the grandson’s number. We called him from the newspaper offices and told him about our plan. His refusal was startling and absolute; when I asked him for a reason, he hung up on me. We called him back repeatedly, but the young man just yelled at us every time, demanding that we stop bothering him. Khaa’in suggested we talk to his girlfriend and ask for her help with her relatives, but, two days later, he told us that, while she believed in the merits of our project, she didn’t think the family would agree to it. When we asked her why, she told us that the old man was very ill, that the subject might be too sensitive for him, and that it might be best not to reopen old wounds. I asked her to try to convince the family that our goal was to safeguard the collective memory of the Palestinian people, considering how few remained of the generation who’d witnessed the Nakba. At this, my friends looked at me, impressed, murmuring, Gate of the Sun. After at least three weeks’ worth of back-and-forth, the family agreed— their spokesperson was the old man’s eldest son—but with the stipulation that they be allowed to approve the final copy of the report before it went to press.

So we entered the apartment peaceably. The old man was in the center of the room where guests were received, seated on a chair draped in a soft sheepskin, in the midst of a great many family members. For a moment, we felt as if we really were important journalists. The eldest son offered us tea and pastries, and we began by chatting in a general way with the assembled group about our work and our lives. Khaa’in engaged least in the general conversation, and I noticed him staring at one of the young women of the family. After a while the chatter died down; we could tell by the way the family was looking at us that it was time to get on with the business we’d come for. The four of us seated ourselves in front of the old man and introduced ourselves to him, explaining who we were and why we were there. As agreed, I led the discussion.

"My colleagues and I would be so pleased to sit with you and listen to any stories you may be willing to share with us regarding your recollections of the Nakba. So as not to take up too much of your time, we’ve prepared a few questions, which we hope you won’t mind answering."

Mutarjima readied her recording equipment, Khaa’in brought out his camera, and Khaa’ina switched on her tablet.

We have ten questions. We thought we’d divide them into sets, start with the first one, and work our way down the list. This way you can begin by answering whichever question you like from each set.

We looked at the old man, trying to gauge his reaction to this introduction, but his face was expressionless.

"There are three questions in the first set:

1. What is the primary factor that induced you to leave your village in Palestine? Was it the news of the massacres occurring in other villages? Did you hear, for instance, of the massacre at Deir Yassine before or after you left your village?

2. As we understand it, you were fifteen years old at the time of the Nakba. Do you recall what relations with the Jews were like before the Nakba? Did you mingle with them? When you talked about the Jews, what did you say?

3. Describe for us the moment in which you were driven out, insofar as you remember it. What did you take with you? Where did you go?"

At this point I stopped, and studied the old man’s face, as well as those of my colleagues. I believe I acquitted myself well, but I discerned nothing in the old man’s features to suggest that he had taken in a single word I said. Smiling, his eldest son tried to lighten the atmosphere, suggesting that we take the conversation in a different direction, but we kept waiting for any sign from the old man. His combative grandson came over and hissed in my ear that we would have to end the proceedings and drop the whole project if the old man didn’t speak up within the next minute or two. To get him out of my face, I signaled reluctant agreement, but in my mind I was resolutely determined to hear what the old man had to say. Mutarjima then spoke up, proposing that I move on to the second set of questions. I was concerned that I might inadvertently break up the party—the old man and all his relatives—by asking too many questions, but her suggestion seemed to offer the best way out of the embarrassing silence that had settled over the room.

"What do you say we just go ahead with the second set of questions, ‘ammi? There are three questions in this set as well, and you can answer all of them if you wish, or pick and choose as you like. I can also repeat the questions in the first set, if that would be helpful. Here we go:

4. What happened during the expulsion of the residents of your village? Did you encounter the Jews? Did the village suffer any casualties?

5. Were there any conflicts or disputes among the villagers during the course of the expulsion? Who gave the instructions or orders? Who organized the expulsion?

6. We’ve heard that there were Palestinians who brought some of their animals with them out of their villages. Could you describe this for us?"

There was no change at all, as if nothing had happened. The same deathly silence, the same chill in the atmosphere. The grandson gave me a look that said this was going nowhere. The eldest son asked me if I wanted to continue. It occurred to me to bypass the third set of questions and skip straight to the end: the question we had prepared as a last resort. We had put a considerable amount of time into crafting something that would be simultaneously provocative and sympathetic. Khaa’in signaled me with a wink, as if he had read my mind. I had written the final question on a slip of paper and stowed it in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Now I pulled it out.

"There’s no pressure to answer these questions immediately, ‘ammi. We can arrange another visit if you wish. We simply wanted to give you a sense of the kind of thing we’re looking for. There’s one final question my colleagues and I thought of as a means of wrapping up the interview we hope to publish with your help. I hope you will think carefully about it, ‘ammi. You can’t imagine how valuable your testimony to the events of the Nakba will be. The world has declared war on the collective memory of the Palestinians, ‘ammi, and you’re a soldier on the right side of this war. All of us have a duty to tell the world our stories, so that …"

Get the hell out of here, you motherfuckers!

The Grandson

THIS WAS THE LAST THING MY GRANDFATHER NEEDED at the end of his life. When Abir called and told me about the reporters who wanted to set up an interview, I refused, absolutely. I told her we were in the middle of organizing a birthday party for our grandfather, an occasion not at all suitable for that sort of journalistic enterprise. Abir tried again, but I still said no. She was puzzled by my refusal. She cited the dozens of documentaries—not to mention interviews broadcast on radio, television, and so forth—that had been conducted with Palestinians who’d witnessed the Nakba, all for the purpose of preserving evidence of the crimes perpetrated by Israel. I just shook my head; I didn’t go into the real reason behind my resolve. I told her my grandfather was too easily tired-out to handle a lot of intense discussion. She suggested I let her give my phone number to one of the reporters on the project. I was hesitant at first, but I did want to have my position on record with these people, so I allowed Abir to tell them how to contact me. Two nights later, my phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize.

Hello.

Hello.

We’re the team of journalists Abir told you about.

Right. Now listen here, if you try to call me again, I’ll find you and shove my phone up your asses, one by one.

I hung up. I thought that would be the end of it, considering the insult, but to my surprise the phone rang again. I picked up the call and shouted into my phone that they’d better leave us alone and mind their own business, but their spokesman—I didn’t know his name—took the wind right out of my sails, simply by asking why. What was behind my refusal to allow an interview with my grandfather? I repeated the same arguments I had given Abir, but the reporter was undeterred, and began playing on my refusal as if it was a betrayal of Palestine itself. He reminded me of the importance of this interview, of its moral dimension. I was on the point of taking my refusal to a whole other level, when a thought occurred to me. Why not let them come, after all? Let them just try it. Wouldn’t that be the ideal way of teaching these assholes a lesson? I hung up the phone on them again, certain now that they weren’t going to give up. Two days later, I got together with Abir. Although I blamed her for this fix she’d got us all into, I went ahead and urged her to make her case to my father—maybe he would agree to let the interview happen.

So it was agreed: the journalists would come to our house three days after my grandfather’s birthday party. My father charged me with getting the old man dressed and ready. I woke him up in the morning, made him his breakfast, and we ate. I sat him in front of the television in the living room and turned it on with the volume all the way down, the way he liked it, and he sat before the television for two hours, staring at the images that appeared on the screen. At around one o’clock, I went to him and told him it was time for the midday prayer. I helped him get to the bathroom and perform his ablutions, and then we went back to the living room. My grandfather smoked a cigarette before praying, and another afterward, then sat in his chair. I told him that guests would be arriving in fifteen minutes. I helped him to his feet once