clothes. The recorder captures both his voice and the lively music coming through the window from the numerous speakers scattered throughout the camp. Ah yes, now I recall, I believe it is Land Day. “I made it to Jenin. I took a car from the bridge and said to the driver, ‘I want to go to Acre Province. How much will you charge me?’ We agreed on the fare. This wasn’t right when I arrived in Palestine; it was one of the things that happened while I was there. We were on our way and I asked the driver, ‘Which way would you like to take?’ He said, ‘From here to Nazareth to Haifa, then we reach Acre.’ Our village is between Safad and Acre, around twenty-eight kilometers from Acre. There’s a shorter way than the one the driver suggested, from Jenin to the village. I said to him, ‘There is another way that’s shorter for you. We’ve agreed on the fees.’ He asked, ‘What way is that?’ I told him we’d drive through Afula, then east of this and west of that. He said, ‘I don’t know this route and have never gone that way. Are you sure? Where are you from? Are you a refugee?’ I told him that, yes, I’m a refugee in Lebanon. He asked what year I left and I told him 1948. We drove while I showed him the way, right and left, until we arrived. I asked him, ‘So which is the shorter way—this one or that?’ The young think I’ve forgotten them, that I’m behind the times, old, no longer good for anything.
“We stay up from morning until two or three after midnight. ‘Go now, go to sleep,’ I tell them. They say, ‘No, Uncle, we don’t want to sleep. You’re here with us today; tomorrow you won’t be. We need to get our fill of you.’” I wonder if we could hear the dreams of the thirty-two nights he spent there. “Thirty-two nights and I swear I didn’t sleep, night or day. I swear to God I didn’t sleep.” He cried. “I just sat there, always distracted, distracted.” He cried bitterly. “If I had a dream, I don’t remember it now. After I came back I had many dreams, but these days I’m not alert. I don’t remember.
“I have zaatar, olives, and yogurt for breakfast.
“I teach my son lessons from the past.”
A tiring, anxious meeting. He is constantly distraught, overcome with grief over the land, his eyes bulging and full of tears. I am not sure why, but for me this man is the eyes of the film. I’m considering using the three-meter distance he crosses between the house and the store. I wonder if it’s possible to film the moment he returns from the store at night and lies down on his bed as one shot. What can one do with these two or three meters of space?
Monday, March 31
Burj al-Barajneh
The atmosphere has been tense since morning; perhaps a few clashes have occurred. We’re trying to obtain a written permit to scout in Burj al-Barajneh camp. Jihad and I are waiting downstairs at the entrance to the building; the official hasn’t arrived yet. The employees of the PLO institutions file in gradually, one after the other. It’s a warm day. The sun is shining. There still isn’t much activity but there is an underlying sense of tension in the air that I don’t understand. I hadn’t listened to the radio last night or this morning, hadn’t read the papers. Tired. A little worried. I feel the scouting is being taken over by formalities. I’m not mixing with the people. I’m watching, not scouting. Sometimes I’m engrossed in watching. I don’t have many questions, sometimes none at all, and other times I’m reluctant to ask the questions I have. Time is passing quickly; the results are limited. I don’t know how to find a way to access the present moment of these people. People are afraid of the present. Maybe it’s a feeling of insecurity or maybe it’s the yearning for the past and the shared memory of tragedy, typical of Arabs. I feel that the Palestinian issue is intertwined and entangled with this yearning. Palestinians are cautious, and the idea of the film being about a family is dwindling more and more. I’m becoming more attracted to the idea of people’s dreams and how they narrate them. I’m not at all drawn to how they feel about their dreams, and many of the people I talk to don’t conceal their resentment and surprise when I ask about dreams in this turbulent and tense atmosphere.
We obtained the permit at around ten in the morning, and took a local bus to the Burj. I have never visited this camp. Whenever I’ve passed it, which has happened many times at sporadic intervals in the past few years, I have felt a strong sense of affection for its resonant name and its location in the middle of Beirut. But I always worried about it; to me it looked like a place held tightly by a fist. Today I am happy to have come, because I was here to visit a friend.
In the Armed Struggle Headquarters a young man was assigned to accompany us. He held his weapon and started walking, saying, “Follow me.” We followed him on foot, entering the camp’s alleys. He didn’t ask any questions—I think he thought we wanted to see the camp. I tried to explain the film to him on the way, in case he could introduce us to people. He nodded that he understood. He was a smart and nice young man, and it was clear from his first steps in the camp that the people there knew him and felt warmly toward him. However, honestly, I was quite uneasy scouting while accompanied by a Kalashnikov.
Abu Hatem
Abu Hatem was standing in the alley supervising a construction worker. He had apparently decided to tear out part of the house’s courtyard to convert it into a store. The store was now in the process of being severed from the house.
We greeted him, and he responded with a natural, if confused, warmth then led us to the only remaining room in the house. As soon as our armed escort explained the reason for our visit, Abu Hatem started speaking freely and told us his life story. At first I didn’t manage to place the recorder in front of him, and after he started talking I didn’t want to interrupt his flow. How I regretted that!
“Twenty-five years in the Ghandour factory. They gave me 10,000 Lira in compensation, which I’m using to build a new store.” He is forty-seven now, from Acre Province. He’d moved from Palestine to Anjar, then to Burj-al-Shamali, then to Burj al-Barajneh. “When I came from Palestine, I visited my folks there every single holiday. I used to go alone, secretly. I walked from here, and as soon as the sun set I’d stay hidden in the trees. Then when it got dark, I’d keep walking. One time as I reached our home a man from the village saw me. Later, while I was in the house, the Jews came. They knocked on the door. My father was eighty at that time. They knocked. My father hid me, but they entered and took me. Where did they take me? To Acre Province.” His scorched voice has a special depth. “They interrogated me. The superintendent—known as Abu Khader, an Arab-Jew—interrogated me. He had a Bedouin accent. In those days the Jews used to dump a busload of Arabs at the borders every Saturday. Abu Khader said the government refused to let me stay: ‘We have to deport you, but this time we’ll take you to Abu Tbeekh’s.’ I said, ‘Who is Abu Abu Tbeekh?’ He turned out to be King Abdullah, and I really was deported to Jordan. After he deported me, I went back, fled to my folks for one night and snuck back to Lebanon.” He is married without kids. He reminds me very much of the pessoptimist.
“I once dreamed that I was dead on a bed in a green room. Somebody knocked on the door. I said, ‘Who is it?’ A voice replied, ‘Open the door.’ ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s a guest.’ I said, ‘The guest of God the Merciful is most welcome.’ I got up, opened the door. It turned out to be my father with two mashayikh. My father was dressed in white. His hatta, ‘aqal, and qumbaz were all white, and his jacket was white too. The mashayikh were wearing green turbans. They came and stood next to me by the bed. I said to my father, ‘What’s the matter? No one told me you died.’ He said, ‘I am dead but alive. Come with me.’ I said to him, ‘Whatever you want. I’m at your command. If you want me to go, I’ll go. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.’ He said, ‘No, stay. Not yet. Your time will come later. May God make you happy.’ A dream is a merciful thing.
I never dreamed of my mother, but one of my relatives from our village, who is living here now, came to me once and said he saw my mother in a dream. He said, ‘I saw your mother dressed in white. I thought, that must be a good sign. May God grant her a place
