we entered, Umm Bassam had set many dishes for dinner on the floor. Her sons sat around them and she started serving beans and rice.
As soon as she finished filling the plates, a man showed up as if by appointment—he said, “I heard you have beans and rice, so I came for dinner.” He sat by one of the dishes. Everybody was engrossed in the food. There was one full plate that remained untouched. I wondered if Umm Bassam had served it for her husband, missing for years, in the hope that he might suddenly return to find his dinner hot.
“I thought he went to Burj Hammud. The next day, a Tuesday, the Phalangists came to the mill. In the afternoon. . . They came to the mill. Around half past ten at night, I looked up and suddenly found Eissa, my husband, with us. ‘What?’ I said to him, ‘You came back?’ He said, ‘There was fighting. I couldn’t go.’ I asked him to come closer. He did. I gave him a cigarette. I don’t remember whether he finished it or not. The Phalangists summoned him. They took my husband and two other men; I haven’t heard anything of him since. They also took two women and one girl at the time. The women weren’t gone long. One stayed forty-five minutes, the other an hour, the girl an hour-and-a-half.
“The girl returned crying. We gave her a piece of cloth. Instead of putting it underneath her, she put it on her head, over it. She sat there with her face covered for around three hours, crying. When she complained to one of the guys, he said to her, ‘Do you know the man who did this to you?’ She replied, ‘I know him.’ He loaded the gun and said to her, ‘Come with me.’ She went with him, but she never came back.
“I saw him twice in my dreams.
“Once there, at the door to the house. I said, ‘You deserve it, I sent you to Burj Hammud. What brought you back to the Phalangists?’
“In the second dream, he’d been released through mediation. He was totally transformed. He stood in front of our house. I said to him, ‘First, thank God you were released. Second, who was there with you? Tell us so we can get him released.’ He said, ‘I don’t know any of them except Ahmad, son of Yousef the Khalili.’”19
While crossing through the ripped open wall separating the two saints, I watched a girl dance for a group of her female friends to the sound of Arabic music coming from the television.
Ghazi, who was hosting us, commented, “These people are from Beirut’s poverty belt in the suburbs. They live in constant misery. Their Bedouin origins just barely keep them from falling apart. There is a rift between them and the leadership. The leadership didn’t succeed in achieving the fighters’ ambitions. That’s why, as you see, they’ve lost their sense of security and suffer from rising prices. They wonder why they fought.”
I spent the night at Ghazi’s chalet. I lay down on a military bed under gray blankets that had an odor. Ghazi turned out the light, and I plunged into confusion and darkness. I awoke very early. Looking out the window, I was stunned by the sight of children in blue school uniforms. Watching the children under the cloudy morning sky, as they crossed small puddles left by last night’s rain, was like remembering a good dream. I wondered if I should focus on Umm Bassam’s family, structure the film as a cinematic diary of Saint Michel and Saint Simon, telling the story of getting up early, what they do, what they dream, what they eat, the rain, the sun, the missing father as described by his kids, the lost salary or allowance. I was determined to look around and do more research.
When I asked about the beautiful nursery school in the camp, they answered that it’s the same kindergarten they had in Maslakh. When they moved here, it came with them.
Wednesday, April 2
Qasmiyeh
Umm Qasim said, “I remember Khalsa like a dream.
“I’m thirty-seven years old. We’re like despair; we’ve passed through many stages and have achieved nothing.” As soon as we entered Umm Qasim’s house another woman rushed in behind us, frightened, thinking that the only reason for our strange arrival must have been an accident, or news—someone’s death or something else. Then, after making everyone swear oaths as to our real intention, she started talking. “My name is Umm Nemer. We want your film to show and talk about how oppressed we are and how nobody thinks well of us. We don’t like foreigners to see us because they always criticize. God help us!
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