#تحقيق

I Did Not Cry 

Nidal Al Ahmadieh
منذ 7 سنوات

My mother was standing under the berry tree branch; she was watching and swelling with rage. She was illiterate; she does not read the newspapers; she understands nothing about politics, but despite that, she did not surrender to the iniquity of those who conceived through adultery and give birth to the great catastrophe…

My father, who was thrilled with the ecstasy of dreams, had drawn a new face for the homeland. His reformation was influenced by the Utopia.

He was unable to consume my mother’s anger, so, at the peak of her anger and his irritation, he muffled her mouth with his blessing big hand, and said,
“For God’s sake; be silent… you understand nothing… war was not our choice.”
She squeezed her tongue out like a snake does, and slid out the words:
“And these weapons?”
He answers with calmness that is wiser than patience, he says,
“Just to defend ourselves, our honor, and our rights…”
She nodded but was unconvinced and unable to rein in what was going on. She carried my younger brother who was forty days old and leaves the house after she had asked for divorce if my father was not willing to head the tribe that was ready to rob the small homeland of its small complexion…
as she believed.

My mother returned home wilder and with greater insistence for a divorce. She turned into a lioness among us…she used to hide each of the seven children in his own corner, wishing we would suffocate before she heard anyone’s voice; otherwise, she would gnash at us in minutes…

Between dead silence and naked cries, or muttering echoing incomprehensibly in the large house of large wealth, I used to sneak to my father in his office.

With a gentle whisper, he used to praise my visit, and a pat on my shoulder. Only then would peace reign in my heart; he would ask:
“Where have you got to in reading Gandhi’s?”
And I answer tensely:
“But Gandhi…”
He would interrupt saying,
“Gandhi is a philosopher of peace, but I will never carry any weapon. I am only doing my duty as a responsible leader who counsels and guides young men.”
“Do you guide them to kill?”
“Rather, to search for freedom through the most moral means. We will not use weapons.”
I quickly inquired,
“What about these machine guns that fill the upper floor of our house?”
”You will grow up and witness to my inability to hunt a bird.”
Then I used to kiss him and ease his worry by assuring that Gandhi and I were fine, and before leaving, I bend my neck, squirt my eyes, and ask,
-“But what about my mother?”
“Don’t blame her; the situation will change, and we will live as peacefully as we used to, but nothing lasts without dignity; relax.”

After few weeks, they razed our house to the ground. We fled through the windows like a bunch of mice, each seeking his own refuge. While I was checking my body, I found that my little brother was in my lap. I do not recall how I had pulled him out his crib among the whizzing bullets. No one was hurt; only the berry tree was filled with holes, but it remained erect to remind us of our present helplessness, and our past glory.

In a few moments, the world flashed with rancor, and we became without the past. My brothers and sisters cried with fear; my mother went silent for the first time…
My father blindfolded his eyes, and so did Gandhi!
We fled barefooted.
In an apartment in Beirut, at the buffer zone, we slept under the naked sky and broken windows at the time of cold, hunger, brutality, and ignorance.

When calamity grins, inquiry dims.
For that reason, my mother stopped asking for a divorce.
Our daily activities were like a saw that never stopped…the sea waves were like bullets slapping our tender faces. We surrendered to punishment. My father shouldn’t have dreamt; he did not give up, but used to tell us,
“Life is a victory in the souls of the mighty. Never be weak. We will return tomorrow, and I will lift you up on my shoulders like carnations and as a promise for a future that guarantees life for noble people…come on, laugh.”
We used to believe, whereas my little brother never stopped crying. The disaster dried my mother’s breasts…the loaf of bread became a legend whose story spread, but it remained beyond the reach of everyone’s fingers.
(We will return tomorrow…life is the victory in the souls of the mighty.)
Opportunist groups started to spread, and the dens of exploiters were like bush trees climbing up our necks…scratching us, performing the practice of a vampire.

One night in March, I heard my father sobbing bitterly. He had placed both his hands on his forehead and was squeezing it as though it were an apple. It was the second time I see him crying. The first was on September 28, a few years ago.
After some days, he left the country as a political refugee, and we stayed in our homeland-refugees, though not labeled as such! Instead of accepting to change his skin temporarily, he took up selling tea, which he poured in cups to passersby in one of the Arab countries.
We used to exchange meals with him…
If he surrendered to the temptation of a loaf of dry bread in the morning, we would celebrate around a gourmet dinner in Beirut-one egg inside a bowl of boiling water, and some crumbs of brown bread.
Being a vagabond along the pavements urged him to return and check us out. He was bored of exile and desperate of estrangement, obsequiousness. He was intolerant of bending his head over the feet of passersby, reaching for the boiling tea whose vapor scorched his face.
He could no more accept being deprived, with his head bent down.
After few months he had spent trying incessantly to extinguish the charcoal under his armpit, he accepted to come back.
Did he come back?
Yes, he did! We welcomed him with tears of joy. My mother sat at the threshold of the house in Beirut, and when he arrived, she was astounded, but war does not wait…the swishing sound of a rocket coming in our direction shook her to her senses, and out of her bewilderment; she frantically pulled him by his hand…
“Come in, quick.”
The rocket landed a few meters away.
We went back to embrace my father, and wipe the joyful tears of our re-gathering.
I realized that his hands had changed; they had become rough and callous at the fingertips. His face became yellow; his eyes had deepened inside an area he used to label as ‘free’.
He looked at me as one arresting my thoughts; he said,
“The world is still fine. They destroyed our house and confiscated our land and wealth, but each of us has his own free zone. This world is ours; they won‘t dare pluck out our eyes…”
I replied as if dressed in the garment of the courageous girl he would like me to be,
“Our homeland is an eye that can’t be plucked, but it could be a zone for the chiefs who would dance to the music of our suffering and pain, but tomorrow they will drown in its moving sand.”
He patted on my back, smiled, and said.
“You have grown up fast!”
I complained
“I don’t like Beirut; why don’t we move to a certain village?”
On the third day after my father’s return, we rented a stone hut. It lay under a fig tree because there were no berry trees in this village.
On the seventh day, (the 28th of September), I returned from work with newspapers that had the articles I had written for my father to read and feel proud of my fulfillment of what he had wished me to be.
While coming down the taxi on the highway, I saw a crowd of people looking at me curiously. I heard loud cries but didn’t ask what was going on. That was a natural daily case of death. There was chanted wailing. I passed through the crowd praying that the deceased would not be a child.

Bewildered, I stood at the top of the stairs leading to our house.
What is this line of people queuing at the side of our hut walls? There were many, just like a line of ants that had left their hole.
I remained standing at the top of the stairs, but my feet had changed into two wooden sticks…
The loud wailing is coming out of our hut!
I went as silent as I had been for a century… and at the moment the fire blazed inside of me, I shot inside the low door.
It was my father!
He was laid on the mattress… his nose was chopped; his chest turned into a sieve, and his feet were smashed!
But his eyes were not plucked! They were still in the free zone…

I did not cry…

Fig tears are not fit for wiping tears…I am still waiting to return to my tree and its leaves…silk seasons were over…my grandmother passed away too… but I will return… to cry my father with reverence.

Nidal Al Ahmadieh

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