Democratic Palestine : 26 (ص 38)
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- Democratic Palestine : 26 (ص 38)
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mainly against possible Jordanian
Operations, young soldiers would take
care of their weapons, disassemble
them to clean and grease them, then
reassemble them quickly. Some
managed this feat of disassembling and
reassembling their weapons blindfolded
so they could do it at night. Between
each soldier and his weapon a loving,
magical bond had developed. Since the
fedayeen had only recently left
adolescence behind, the rifle, as a
weapon, was the sign of triumphant
virility and gave assurance of being.
Aggressiveness disappeared: teeth
showed behind the smile.
The rest of the time, the fedayeen
drank tea, criticized their leaders and
the rich, Palestinian and others, in-
sulted Israel, and above all they talked
about the revolution, the one they were
involved in and the one they were about
to enter upon.
For me, the word «Palestinians,»
whether in a headline, in the body of an
article, on a handout, immediately calls
to mind fedayeen in a specific spot-
Jordan-and at an easily determined
date: October, November, December
1970, January, February, March, April
1971. It was then and there that I
discovered the Palestinian Revolution.
The extraordinary evidence of what was
happening, the intensity of this joy at
being alive is also called beauty.
Ten years went by, and I heard
nothing about them, except that the
fedayeen were in Lebanon. The Euro-
pean press spoke off-handedly, even
disdainfully, about the Palestinian
people. Then suddenly, West Beirut.
* kK *
A photograph has two dimensions,
so does a television screen; neither can be
walked through. From one wall of the
street to the other, bent or arched, with
their feet pushing against one wall and
their heads pressing against the other,
the black and bloated corpses that I had
to step over were all Palestinian and
Lebanese. For me, as for what remain-
ed of the population, walking through
Shatila and Sabra resembled a game of
hopscotch. Sometimes a dead child
blocked the streets: they were so small,
sO narrow, and the dead so numerous.
The smell is probably familiar to old
people; it didn’t bother me. But there
were so many flies. If I lifted the hand-
38
kerchief or the Arab newspaper placed
over a head, I disturbed them. In-
furiated by my action, they swarmed
onto the back of my hand and tried to
feed there. The first corpse I saw was
that of a man fifty or sixty years old.
He would have had a shock of white
hair if a wound (an axe blow, it seemed
to me) hadn’t split his skull. Part of the
blackened brain was onthe ground, next
to the head. The whole body was lying
in a pool of black and clotted blood.
The belt was unbuckled, a single button
held the pants. The dead man’s feet and
legs were bare and black, purple and
blue; perhaps he had been taken by
surprise at night or at dawn. Was he
running away? He was lying in a little
alley immediately to the right of the
entry to Shatila camp which is across
from the Kuwaiti Embassy. Did the
Shatila massacre take place in hushed
tones or in total silence, if the Israelis,
both soldiers and officers, claim to
have heard nothing, to have suspected
nothing whereas they had been occupy-
ing this building since Wednesday
afternoon?...
Which alley should I take now? I was
drawn by men fifty years old, by young
men of twenty, by two old Arab
women, and I felt as if I were the center
of a compass whose quadrants con-
tained hundreds of dead.
I jot this down now, not knowing
exactly why at this point in my nar-
rative: «The French have a habit of us-
ing the insipid expression ‘dirty work.’
Well, just like the Israeli army ordered
the Kataeb or the Haddadists to do
their ‘dirty work,’ the Labor Party had
its ‘dirty work’ done by the Likud,
Begin, Sharon, Shamir.» I have just
quoted R., a Palestinian journalist who
was still in Beirut on Sunday,
September 19.
In the middle, near them, all these
tortured victims, my mind can’t get rid
of this ‘‘invisible vision’’: what was the
torturer like? Who was he? I see him
and I don’t see him. He’s as large as life
and the only shape he will ever have is
the one formed by the stances, posi-
tions, and grotesque gestures of the
dead fermenting in the sun under
clouds of flies.
If the American Marines, the French
paratroopers, and the Italian ber-
sagliere who made up an intervention
force in Lebanon left so quickly (the
Italians, who arrived by ship two days
late, fled in Hercules airplanes!) one
day or thirty-six hours before their of-
ficial departure date, as if they were
running away, and on the day before
Bashir Gemayel’s assassination, are the
Palestinians really wrong in wondering
if Americans, French and Italians had
not been warned to clear out pronto so
as not to appear mixed up in the bomb-
ing of the Kataeb headquarters?
They left very quickly and very early.
Israel brags and boasts about its com-
bat efficiency,its battle preparedness,its
skill in turning circumstances to its
favor, in creating circumstances. Let’s
see; the PLO leaves Beirut in triumph,
on a Greek ship, with a naval escort.
Bashir, hiding as best he can, visits
Begin in Israel. The intervention of the
three armies (American, French,
Italian) comes to an end on Monday.
On Tuesday, Bashir is assassinated.
Tsahal [Israel Defense Forces] enters
West Beirut on Wednesday morning.
As if they were coming from the port,
Israeli soldiers were advancing on
Beirut the morning of Bashir’s funeral.
With binoculars, from the eighth floor
of my house I saw them coming in
single file: one column. I was surprised
that nothing else happened, because
with a good rifle with a sight they could
have been picked off. Their brutality
preceded them...
The Palestinian woman-for I
couldn’t leave Shatila without going
from one corpse to another and this jeu
de l’oie would inevitably end up at this
miracle: Shatila and Sabra razed to the
ground and real estate battles to rebuild
on this very flat cemetery—the
Palestinian woman was_ probably
elderly because her hair was gray. She
was stretched out on her back, laid or
left there on the rubble, the bricks, the
twisted iron rods, without comfort. At
first I was surprised by a strange braid
made of rope and cloth which went
from one wrist to the other, holding the
two arms apart horizontally, as if
crucified. Her black and swollen face,
turned towards the sky, revealed an
open mouth, black with flies, and teeth
that seemed very white to me, a face
that seemed, without moving a muscle,
either to grin or smile or else to cry out
in a silent and unbroken scream. Her
stockings were black wool, and her
pink and gray flowered dress, slightly
hiked up or too short, I don’t know
which, revealed the tops of swollen
black calves, again with the delicate
mauve tints matched by a similar purple - هو جزء من
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