Der Roman, der hier vorgestellt wird, ist von einer US-Bürgerin und Palästinenserin geschrieben worden, die als Flüchtlingskind von Palästinensern als Waise in unterschiedlichen Betreuungssituationen aufwuchs, bis ihr mit 13 Jahren eine Sozialisation als US-Bürgerin ermöglicht wurde, die ihr eine erfolgreiche Karriere als Journalistin und Schriftstellerin ermöglichte. Mit 30 Jahren hat sie Palästina ihre Ursprünge kennen zu lernen versucht und ist darüber zur Aktivistin für eine Gleichberechtigung der Palästinenser geworden. Man erwarte also keine ausgewogene Darstellung des Nahostkonflikts.
Durch das, was gegenwärtig im Gazastreifen geschieht und das, was sich anbahnt, ist er von erschreckender Aktualität geworden.
Doch anders als viele gegenwärtige Publikationen verbreitet die Verfasserin keine Hassbotschaft, sondern versucht, beide Perspektiven: aus palästinensischer und aus israelischer Sicht zu zeigen. Da das gegenwärtig von beiden Seiten kaum noch versucht wird, stelle ich hier ihren Versuch vor. Nicht weil ich ihre Perspektive übernehmen wollte, sondern um auf die Ernsthaftigkeit des Versuchs aufmerksam zu machen. Der Nahostkonflikt, der sich anders als der Nord-Süd-Konflikt nicht in eine multipolare Konstellation wandeln wird, wurde wiederholt - immer wenn sich eine Lösung anbahnte - künstlich wieder belebt, zuletzt durch den Überfall mit Geiselnahme durch die Hamas im Oktober 2023. Am Schicksalhaftesten wohl durch den Mord an Rabin, der das Oslo-Abkommen vorangetrieben hatte, durch einen israelischen Nationalisten.
Angesichts der Vorgeschichte des Konflikts scheint er so gut wie unlösbar. Dass eine denkbare Lösung durch einen Israeli vereitelt wurde, hat Züge einer klassischen Tragödie.
Zu dem ursprünglich geplanten Titel der Buches The Scar of David
die Erläuterung einer KI mit Kommentar von mir.
Mehr zum Nahostkonflikt: in der Wikipedia, in diesem Blog, aus aktueller Perspektive und in Fontanefans Schnipsel
Susan Abulhawa
Prelude (2000)
AMAL WANTED A CLOSER look into the soldier’s eyes, but the muzzle
of his automatic rifle, pressed against her forehead, would not allow it. Still,
she was close enough to see that he wore contacts. She imagined the soldier
leaning into a mirror to insert the lenses in his eyes before getting dressed to
kill. Strange, she thought, the things you think about in the district between
life and death.
She wondered if officials might express regret for the “accidental”
killing of her, an American citizen. [...]
I. El Nakba (the catastrophe)
1 The Harvest (1941)
IN A DISTANT TIME, before history marched over the hills and shattered
present and future, before wind grabbed the land at one corner and shook it
of its name and character, before Amal was born, a small village east of
Haifa lived quietly on figs and olives, open frontiers and sunshine.
It was still dark, only the babies sleeping, when the villagers of Ein Hod
prepared to perform the morning salat, the first of five daily prayers. [...]
Kapitel 4 S. 28ff.
As They Left
1947–1948
[...] Less than a day passed before Israeli soldiers reentered the village. The
same men who had received the offering of food now marched through,
pointing guns at the people who had fed them. Hasan, Darweesh, and other
men were ordered to dig a mass grave for thirty fresh corpses. The village
men were able to identify all but two of them. Hasan somberly wrote the
names of his fallen friends and countrymen on the sleeve of his dishdashe
as he hollowed the earth in such shock that he was unable to grieve. Al
Fatiha. Dust to dust . . .
Stunned—is this a dream?—their nerves cracking, children crying, the
villagers were tractable.
“Gather the valuables. Assemble by the eastern water well. Move! This
is only temporary. Go to the well,” ordered a voice from a loudspeaker like
a hidden god, distributing destinies. The sky still infinite. The sun
unforgiving. Dalia put the gold in the chest pocket of her thobe and
gathered the valuables as told, Ismael on the left hip, Yousef in the right
hand.
“Mama, I want Baba to carry me,” Yousef pleaded.
“Go, habibi. Allah be with us all.” Dalia released his little hand and the
boy jumped on his father. Allah be with us all.
The area around the well teemed with faces, all creased and twisted with
alarm. But for the fright, Yehya thought they could have been gathered to
prepare for the harvest. The harvest, he thought.
“Now what?” Haj Salem wondered.
Darweesh and his pregnant wife were the last to arrive. He approached
stooped, one foot after the other, leading his heartbroken mare, Fatooma.
Ganoosh, Darweesh’s delight and Fatooma’s lifelong companion, the horse
that once had broken Dalia’s ankle, had been killed in the fighting and it
had taken much persuasion to pull Fatooma away from the massive carcass
of her mate.
Now what? [...]
II. El Naksa (the disaster)
Kapitel 8: As Big as the Ocean and All Its Fishes 1960–1963
I SPENT MUCH TIME IN my youth trying to imagine Mama as Dalia, the
Bedouin who once stole a horse, who bred roses and whose steps jingled.
The mother I knew was a stout woman, imposing and severe, who soldiered
all day at cleaning, cooking, baking, and embroidering thobes. Several
times each week, she was called to deliver a baby. As with everything else
she did, she performed midwifery with cool efficiency and detached nerve.
I was eight years old when Mama first let me help her deliver a baby. [...]
Kapitel 9: June in the Kitchen Hole1967
Die Erzählerin ist Amal, die Tochter Hanans,
sie hat den Krieg in einem Loch in ihrer Küche im Lager überlebt.
Das
Loch war mit einem Platte zugedeckt und hatte ursprünglich dazu
gedient. Die Waffen, die ihr Vater dort versteckt hatte, unauffindbar
zu machen. Jetzt hat sie zusammen mit Huda und einem Baby, was ihnen
anvertraut worden war, dort gelegen und hat in der Dunkelheit nur die
Geräusche gehört, die von dem Angriff der Israelis für sie zu
hören waren. Gesehen hat sie mal die Beine von israelischen
Soldaten. Als sie etwas aus dem Loch heraus kommen, werden sie von
einer jordanischen Nonne entdeckt, und ihnen wird behelfsmäßig
geholfen. Sie werden nach Bethlehem in die Geburtskirche Isas
gebracht, wo sie in eine Badewanne steigen dürfen.
„The
church where Master Esa was born had been shelled and still
smelled
of fire. Inside, hundreds of children, most of them orphaned by the
war,
sat on the floor. No one spoke much, as if to speak was to affirm
reality.
To remain silent was to accommodate the possibility that it all was
merely
a nightmare. The silence reached up to the cathedral ceiling and
cluttered
there, echoing sadness and unseen mayhem, as if too many souls
were
rising at once. We were existing somewhere between life and death,
with
neither accepting us fully.
Sister
Marianne arrived, carrying an urn of water.
“Follow
me, dears. You’ll need to bathe together to save water,” she
instructed
us as Huda and I walked behind her to the washroom. The good
nun
poured the water and left us. We were so bewildered that we got into
the
metal tub with our filthy garments. The warm water traveled over my
body
like a loving embrace, whispering a promise of safety.
Huda
and I disrobed in the tub and sat across from one another.
Browned
water separated us, but our legs rested together. Face to face, we
stared
at one another’s thoughts, seeing each other’s terror and knowing
that
we
had crossed some unmarked boundary beyond which there could be no
return.
The world we knew was gone. Somehow we knew that. We cried
silently
and moved into each other’s small arms.
We
lay that way, in the quiet of a foreboding for which we knew no
words.
I looked at my toes protruding from the water. Chipped red polish. It
had
been only one week since we had passed around the nail polish, giddy
over
something that had made us feel older. Now, in that bathtub inside
the
church
where Master Esa was born, Huda’s nails and mine still bore the
chipped
red remnants of that day. I calculated one week as the distance
between
girlish vanity and hell.
Slowly,
I let my body slide, pulling my head beneath the water. There, in
that
silent world, like the stillness I had heard after the blast that had
torn
the
kitchen and killed Aisha, I had an odd desire to be a fish.
I
could live inside water’s soothing world, where screams and gunfire
were
not heard and death was not smelled.“ [...]
Kapitel 10 S.74 ff.
Forty Days Later 1967
LOOKING OUT THE BROKEN window in our devastated camp, the sun
was still hidden from view, but the sky was already ablaze with the purples
and oranges that announce its coming. Amazingly, the cocks had survived,
keeping to their regimen of crowing, unaware of the portentous shadow that
hung over us. As always, I was up before dawn. Sunrise belonged to Baba
and me, when he would read to me as the world around us slept. It had been
forty days since the war had ended and Sister Marianne had returned us to
Jenin and I had found Mama with a broken mind. Baba and my brother
Yousef were still missing.
Soon, the melody of the adan came through the air, into our makeshift
homes, to call the faithful to prayer. Decades later, after a life in exile, that
unmistakable cadence of the Arab soul would summon a calm certainty in
my heart that I had made the right decision to return to Jenin.
Although it was still dangerous to venture outside, little Samer, our fiveyear-
old neighbor, was running through the refugee camp yelling
incoherently, his high-pitched voice slashing the stillness of “curfew,”
which was now a fact of our lives.
I guessed that the poor child was reliving the terror of recent events. It
would not have been surprising, for lately most of the young ones wailed in
their sleep.
“They’re naked,” Samer panted, struggling to order his thoughts. “They
need clothes. They told me.”
Little Samer sounded hysterical and people began to stir. Exhausted and
bewildered eyes peered from windows. Old women cracked their
improvised doors for a look.
“What’s going on?” called a voice down the alleyway.
“Are we at war again?” asked another. In these moments of confusion,
despair, and anticipation, the rumor pulsed like a wave of hope through the
living dead.
People began to shout, “Allaho akbar!”
Faces appeared at the windows of every shack and more cries were
heard as excitement surged through the camp. From a window opening
blackened by fire came a euphoric note: “The Arab armies are coming to
liberate us!” But the people remained hesitant, for we could see Israeli
soldiers perched on their lookout posts. Arrogant conquerors, they.
Murderers and thieves. I hated them as much as I hated the sea of white
cloth fluttering over our homes—signs of our humiliating surrender.
But as quickly as the euphoria rose, so it fell when Samer began to make
sense.
“Enough! There is no more war. The boy says our sons are alive,” came
a man’s voice, quieting the war songs. It was Haj Salem. He survived! I
wondered where he had taken refuge.
Haj Salem had seen it all. That’s what he used to tell us youngsters. (S.75)
III. The Scar of David (S.86ff.)
Kapitel 11, S.87 ff.
A Secret, Like a Butterfly 1967
WATCHING DAVID, HIS BROAD shoulders bent over the dinner table,
Jolanta could scarcely comprehend how much time had passed since the
first day Moshe had brought him to her, a frightened, wounded little bundle.
She thought of that beautiful creature, now a man kissing her cheek and
saying, “I love you, too, Ma!” He was so small in her arms then; she would
hold him to suckle at her dry breasts when no one was around.
She had doted and fussed over him. Made him dress in too many clothes
in the winter, something he had tolerated until the age of seven, when he
had realized he could refuse to wear what she picked for him. She had
adored even his defiance and could barely conceal a smile when he would
assert his independence.
She always worried and he always said, “Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll be fine.”
When he had his first sleepover at the age of eight, she worried that he
would feel homesick and she made him promise to call no matter what time
of night. During his first weekend camping trip when he was ten, the list of
her worries had been so long that even she couldn’t remember it now. She
worried that he had not eaten enough breakfast before school, that he would
hurt himself playing football, that a girl would break his heart. She worried
when he went to his first party, where she knew there would be alcohol.
And when everything seemed fine she worried that there was something he
was keeping from her that she should be worrying about.
She worried that someday he would find out that he was not really her
son. Jolanta worried most of all the year David turned eighteen.
She did not want her boy to join the army. But she had no choice, nor
did her son. Israel was a tiny haven for Jews in a world that had built death
camps for them in other places. Every Jew had a national and moral duty to
serve. So in June 1967, when his country went to war, David already had
served in the Israeli army for one year.
The army sent him north to the Golan. He was strong, ready to serve his
country. Ready to fight.
He was part of the battalion that was supposed to provoke the Syrians
into retaliation so Israel could take the Golan Heights. General Moshe
Dayan instructed them to send tractors to plow in an area of little use, in a
demilitarized zone, knowing ahead of time that the Syrians would shoot. If
they didn’t start shooting, David’s unit was told to advance the tractors until
the Syrians were provoked into shooting. They used artillery and later the
air force became involved. But on the last day, when Israel attacked the
USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean Sea, David was sent home because of an
injury to his hand.
He had been wounded by friendly fire that had burned his right palm.
Jolanta’s heart sank when she learned that her son had been injured, and she
could find no peace until David returned home.
She threw her arms around him. “My boy! Let me see your hand.”
“It’s okay, Ma. They fixed it all up.”
She inspected him to be sure, unable to thank God enough for her son’s
safety. “Are you hungry?” Jolanta was delighted to watch David eat the
kreplach she had made.
My heart won’t survive if anything happens to him. Somewhere in the corner
of her love, the secret lay in wait. She had not intended to keep the truth from David.
Since the day he arrived in July 1948, everything she was or had been had converged
to make her simply David’s mother. How he had come to be her son
remained unsaid, a harmless butterfly in a field of love.
Now, seeing his bandaged hand, she could not bear the possibility of
losing her son. Jolanta had no control over his serving in the army, but she
could keep the truth hidden. He’s my son, that’s the only truth he needs, she
decided, caging the butterfly. (S.87/88)
26. Kapitel, S.167 ff.
Amal ist von einer amerikanischen Familie aufgenommen worden, sie hat erstmals in ihrem Leben in einem warmen weichen Bett geschlafen. Es war schwierig, sich in dieser Welt zurechtzufinden, wo alle sie als fremd ansahen, sie für alle ein Außenseiter war.
Aber was war die Gefahr, von unbekannten Jungen verprügelt zu werden, gegen ein israelisches Gewehr, das man im Rücken spürte und wo eben vor ihren Augen vertraute Menschen erschossen worden waren und wo sie wusste, dass sie den Befehlen gehorchen musste, wenn sie überleben wollte.
13 Jahre gibt sie sich große Mühe, sich in dieser Welt zurecht zu finden. Sie will Amerikanerin werden und hält die Verbindung zu ihren Verwandten nicht mehr aufrecht.
Da erhält sie ein Lebenszeichen von ihrem Bruder Yousef , der in die PLO eingetreten ist und jetzt in Libanon lebt. Er hat Fatima, seine große Liebe geheiratet, und sie erwartet ein Kind von ihm. Sie leben in einem der drei großen Flüchtlingslager im Libanon. Da beschließt Amal hinzufliegen.
MAJID 1981
A GUST OF WARM, DRY wind greeted me as I stepped off the plane onto
Lebanon’s soil. Beirut International Airport was an ominous place, made so
by too many rifles strapped to too many uniformed soldiers. But the guttural
silk tones of Arabic rippled through me as I heard the melodic calls and
responses of my language. It’s a dance, really. A man at a desk was offered
tea as I walked through the metal detectors. He said, “Bless your hands” to
the one making the offer, who responded, “And your hands, and may Allah
keep you always in Grace.” Calls and responses that dance in the air.
Emerging from tense immigration lines, I found a tall, haggard man
standing impassively behind a sign that bore my name. His dark eyes were
set deep beneath straggled eyebrows. Sparse hairs sprang haphazardly at his
jawline in a vain struggle to become a beard, and a meticulously
symmetrical mustache could not conceal the fullness of his lips. When our
eyes met, recognition pulled his face into a smile.
“Al hamdulillah ala salama,” he said, extending a hand. “My name is
Majid. Your brother sent me to pick you up.”
“And God keep you in safety, too,” I replied. Calls and responses.
“I knew you right away. You look like Yousef.”
“We take after our mother.”
He smiled, taking my luggage.
Beirut’s traffic moved in jolts amid a bedlam of honking horns. Bicycles
darted between cars [...]
Dispersed in the pandemonium, peddlers sold newspapers, flowers, and
Chiclets while the aroma of freshly baked bread— the streetside displays of
sesame kaak with crushed thyme and cheese—crawled through my senses
into memories of Palestine.
“It’s good to be on Arab soil again,” I thought aloud.
“I hear you’ve been gone quite a while,” Majid said after a brief pause.
“Yes, quite a while.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. I went on a scholarship and couldn’t go back to Jenin.
You know how it is when you’re gone for a while. The Israelis don’t let you
come back . . .” Furthermore, I had nothing, no one, to go back to. And to
be honest, I wanted to be an American. I wanted to pack away my baggage
of past and tragedy and try on Amy for size.
I turned my head to the open window to end the subject and inhale more
of the hot jibneh and zaatar on sesame kaak from the sidewalk carts.
Majid called out the window and a vendor, a slender, kindly old man,
approached with two large kaaks wrapped in newspaper.
“May God give you a long life, haj,” Majid said to thank the old man,
and paid him.
“And may he grant you and your family happiness, son,” the old man
replied.
“I’ll bet you haven’t had one of these in a while.” Majid turned to me
with a jibneh kaak. That smile again.
Thrilled, I thanked him: “Bless your hands. They’re made of kindness
and chivalry.”
“I knew something could make you smile.” [...]
The heavy, turtle-paced creep of gravity prodded Yousef to rise on his
legs. And the frail waft of honey apple tobacco, as he uncovered our
father’s smoking pipe, turned those legs to clay. Yousef ’s shoulders
drooped and I saw my brother cry for the first time in my life.
“How did you get this?” he asked, composing himself and wiping tears.
The constant, background-humming craving for just one more moment
with our father moved to the forefront of our yearnings, crowning the next
hours between brother and sister getting to know one another as adults. He
was sorry for having left me in Jenin. He’d have taken us with him, if he
could have. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when Mama died.” He hadn’t
heard about my being shot until a year after. Life hadn’t been easy. Nor for
me. But we were a family again and now there was a baby, a promise that we could live on.
“I didn’t know what else to do, Amal. But I want to make it up to you. I want to be here for you now.”
“You did the best you could, brother. I know that,” I said.
“There are some things I never told you,” Yousef began. He looked
down at his hands, as if placing the words in his palm first before uttering
them. “Our brother Ismael, the baby we lost in forty-eight, is alive,” Yousef
said, looking intently at my face.
He was surprised when I told him that I already knew, or at least I had
always suspected ever since Huda and I had overheard him talking so many
years earlier about the Yahoodi they call David.
“Does Huda also know?”
“I don’t think your conversation that day left the same impression on her
as it did on me. Anyway, we never spoke of it.”
My brother and I served Fatima in bed when she awoke [...]
27. Kapitel
The Letter 1981
MAJID PERSISTED IN AMAL’S thoughts. He filled her daydreams,
where she replayed their time together, searching for hidden meanings to
his words. She began to grow agitated when a full week had passed without
word from him. And for another two weeks, Amal tossed in the anxiety of
waiting for Majid’s next visit to her brother’s home. [...]
28. Kapitel
“Yes” 1981
WE MET IN SECRET two days later. Majid wanted my answer in private,
away from voices and expectations. So it was, at our favorite spot just
outside the quaint seaside village of Tabarja, that Majid and I held each
other for the first time. The blue Mediterranean lapped at our bare feet and
stretched at its far edges into a cloudless sky. You could not discern where
the ocean ended or the sky began, and somewhere in all that blue the
startling enchantment of love found me.
Majid turned to me, his penetrating eyes black in the blue light.
“I talked to your brother. You know I had to do that first . . . ,” he said,
breaking into the tension. “Will you marry me, Amal?” he asked in sincere,
committed blue, the ocean and the sky his comrades and conspirators in the
question.
I had been waiting to answer. I had practiced in the mirror saying “Yes.”
A surprised, happy “Yes.” A matter-of-fact “Yes, of course, I will.” So
much preparation just to utter that little word.
But all I could do was nod my head in assent, and my body took him in
its arms, absorbed the lovely blue crackling with love.
He brushed his lips against mine, pulled me closer, and I felt as if I had
lived all my life for that kiss.
“I love you,” he said.
The most perfect words.
Whatever you feel, keep it inside. Mama was wrong. “I love you, too,” I
whispered at his ear, willingly falling into my words. [...]
29. Kapitel
Love 1981
THEY MET DAILY DURING their monthlong engagement. Majid came in
the very early morning that had been so magical in Amal’s childhood. She
waited eagerly each time, her heart suspended in the mist of daybreak, until
she heard his steps approaching. He walked briskly, impatient to see passion
expand her bottomless black eyes when they set upon him. Though when
they beheld each other, their desire to hold and feel one another was
tempered by rectitude, by loyalty and respect for Yousef ’s and Fatima’s
good names, and by their approaching wedding.
They talked, less for meaning than to hear the other’s voice. Majid
learned the nuances of an earnest love, the lines it drew from the eyes of the
woman who loved him truly, the fullness of his own breath in her presence,
the way time passed too quickly when they were together and too slowly
when they were apart. [...]
Yousef
bittet Amal, in die USA zurück zu fliegen und
sich
dort um Asyl für Fatima und ihr Kind zu bemühen.
Er
selbst und Amals große Liebe Doktor Majid bleiben
im
Lager zurück. Majid fühlt sich für die Betreuung
seiner
vielen Patienten im Lager verantwortlich.
Wikipedia:1982: Politik und Weltgeschehen: Europa: 31.
Juli: Deutschland Bei
einem Sprengstoffanschlag in einer Vorhalle zur Abfertigung von
Reisenden nach Israel im Flughafen
München-Riem werden
sieben Menschen schwer verletzt.
Wikipedia:Libanonkrieg1982:
„Der Libanonkrieg
1982 war
eine militärische Auseinandersetzung im Libanon zwischen
der israelischen Armee und verbündeten Milizen auf der einen sowie
im Wesentlichen Kämpfern der PLO und
syrischen Truppen auf der anderen Seite. Es war der erste
größere Arabisch-Israelische
Konflikt,
den Israel begann, ohne dass seine Existenz unmittelbar bedroht war.
Israel nannte die Operation „Frieden für Galiläa“.[1] Die
israelische Offensive wurde jedoch, auch von
vielen Israelis,[2] als Angriffskrieg gewertet.[3]
Der
Libanonkrieg 1982 fand vor dem Hintergrund des Libanesischen
Bürgerkriegs statt;
dieser trug nicht unwesentlich zur Eskalation bei und wurde durch
Israels Eingreifen maßgeblich beeinflusst. […]
11.
und 12. Juni und brüchiger Waffenstillstand
Die
USA, wohl auch unter dem Druck der Sowjetunion, drängten Israel nun
endgültig zu einem Waffenstillstand. Israel bot den Syrern den
Waffenstillstand an, so dass diese, trotz ihrer Niederlage, nicht als
Bittsteller auftreten mussten und ihr Gesicht wahren konnten.[41] Die
Waffenruhe trat am 11. Juni 1982 um 12 Uhr in Kraft, schloss jedoch
die PLO ausdrücklich nicht mit ein.
Syrische
Verstärkungen der 3. Panzerdivision waren aus Richtung Damaskus
kommend zur Verstärkung ihrer 1. Panzerdivision in die Bekaa-Ebene
vorgerückt und gerieten kurz vor Inkrafttreten der Waffenruhe an
eine Riegelstellung israelischer Luftlandetruppen unter General Jossi
Peled,
die mehrere moderne T-72-Panzer der Syrer mit auf Geländewagen
montierten TOW-Raketen zerstörten.[42]
Der
Waffenstillstand wurde am 12. Juni auch auf die PLO ausgeweitet,
hielt aber im Raum Beirut nicht. Schwere Kämpfe ereigneten sich in
Beirut zwischen PLO-Einheiten, christlichen Milizen, israelischem und
syrischem Militär.[42] Schließlich
war Beirut von israelischen Truppen eingeschlossen, die die Stadt
selbst jedoch nicht betraten.
Zunächst
hatte sich der Kommandeur der 211. Brigade, Oberst Eli Geva, dem
direkten Befehl widersetzt, seine Truppen in die Stadt zu führen,
und stattdessen seinen Abschied genommen;[43] in
einer politischen Intervention hatte US-Präsident Reagan dann
schließlich dem israelischen Premierminister das Zugeständnis
abgerungen, die Stadt nicht zu besetzen, nachdem er selbst von
arabischen Staatschefs unter Druck gesetzt worden war, die die
Besetzung einer arabischen Hauptstadt durch Israel für unzumutbar
hielten.[44] Ein
instabiler Waffenstillstand wurde schließlich am 25. Juni erreicht.
Ständige Scharmützel zwischen Milizen und Angriffe israelischer
Truppen aus der Luft führten jedoch zu zahlreichen Opfern unter der
Zivilbevölkerung und starken Zerstörungen in der Stadt.
Am
25. Juni trat US-Außenminister Alexander Haig zurück. Damit nahm
die Politik der USA im Libanon eine andere Richtung, bei der der
zuletzt marginalisierte Sondergesandte Habib größeren Einfluss
erhielt. Zentrales Ziel der US-Regierung war nun, zunächst die PLO
friedlich aus dem Libanon zu entfernen und damit den Grund für die
israelische Militärpräsenz im Nachbarland zu beenden. Danach
sollten die syrischen und israelischen Truppen das Land verlassen.
Zunächst fand sich jedoch kein arabisches Land, das PLO-Kämpfer
aufnehmen wollte. Am 20. Juli erreichte der neue
US-Außenminister George
Shultz direkte
Verhandlungen mit dem syrischen Außenminister Abd
al-Halim Chaddam und
beider saudischen Amtskollegen Saud
ibn Faisal in
Washington. Die Syrer wollten aber nur eine Aufnahme der politischen
PLO-Führung um Jassir
Arafat in
ihrem Land akzeptieren. Sie befürchteten, dass die Anwesenheit
palästinensischer Kämpfer Israel einen Kriegsgrund geben würde.[8]
[...]
Abzug
der PLO, Belagerung und Massaker der Phalange-Miliz
Ende
August richtete die PLO in Tunis ihr
neues Hauptquartier ein.
Am 3. September war der Abzug aus Beirut weitgehend abgeschlossen.
Daraufhin verließen die rund 3.600 syrischen Soldaten die Stadt in
Richtung Bekaa-Ebene und anschließend zogen die multinationalen
Truppen ab.[8] Die
erhoffte Stabilisierung des Libanon trat jedoch nicht ein. Sowohl
Syrer als auch Israelis verweigerten den von den USA verlangten Abzug
aus dem Land. Am 14. September 1982 fiel der erst am 23. August
gewählte Präsident Gemayel einem Bombenanschlag zum Opfer.
Israelische Truppen rückten daraufhin in Beirut ein und schlossen
die palästinensischen Flüchtlingslager in der Stadt ein, betraten
sie jedoch nicht.[48]
Ab
dem 16. September kam es dann zu einem zweitägigen Massaker in den
Flüchtlingslagern Sabra
und Schatila durch
Anhänger der maronitischen Phalange-Miliz Gemayels
unter dem Kommando von Elie
Hobeika (damals
Verbindungsoffizier zwischen Kata'eb und IDF). Schätzungen
über die Zahl der Opfer sind umstritten und reichen von 300[48] bis
3000.[49] Nachdem
die reguläre libanesische Armee es abgelehnt hatte, die Lager zu
besetzen, wies Verteidigungsminister Scharon das israelische Militär
an, die Säuberung der Lager von etwaigem Widerstand den Milizen zu
überlassen.[48] Als
Reaktion auf das Massaker beorderte US-Präsident Reagan die
multinationale Truppe wieder nach Beirut zurück, um die
Kampfhandlungen zu beenden. Dies war der Auftakt zu einer etwa
anderthalbjährigen Präsenz im Land.[8]
Politische
Folgen
Eine
Untersuchungskommission, die in Israel auf Druck der Öffentlichkeit
die Vorgänge um den Libanonkrieg beleuchten sollte, stellte im
Februar 1983 fest, dass es Premierminister Begin versäumt hatte, die
Handlungen seiner Untergebenen ausreichend zu überwachen, und
verurteilte das Verhalten insbesondere von Verteidigungsminister
Ariel Scharon und Stabschef Rafael
Eitan schwer.
Beide mussten ihre Posten danach aufgeben und Premier Begin im
September des Jahres zurücktreten.[48]“
"I wasn’t paying attention to the small screen on the kitchen counter, but
Ammo was, and I noted the change in his face before hearing the news. We
had all been holding our breath for weeks and now what we had feared
moved languidly, like a cloud, across Ammo’s expression, pulling the color
from his face and causing it to droop.
I heard the shrill broadcast as I met his sad eyes.
“A massive invasion.” “Intense aerial bombardment.” “Ninetythousand-
strong invasion force moving up the coast of Lebanon.” The
television headlined “Operation Peace in the Galilee.” Such was history’s
name. [...]
“Israel is striking back against the PLO, a terrorist organization whose
aim is to slaughter Jews like they did the Munich athletes.” Israel’s stated
aim was self-defense. To dislodge the PLO, a six-thousand-member
resistance.
By August, the results were 17,500 civilians killed, 40,000 wounded,
400,000 homeless, and 100,000 without shelter. Prostrate, Lebanon lay
devastated and raped, with no infrastructure for food or water. Israel
claimed it had been forced to invade for peace. “We are here for peace. This
is a peacekeeping mission.” [...]
Ronald Reagan dispatched Philip Habib, who brokered a cease-fire deal
in which the PLO evacuated Lebanon. Yousef had to leave or die. He left
because it was the only way to keep Fatima and the babies safe. So they
said. The PLO withdrew from Lebanon only after an explicit guarantee from
U.S. envoy Philip Habib and Alexander Haig that the United States of
America, with the authority and promise of its president, Ronald Reagan,
would ensure the safety of the women and children left defenseless in the
refugee camps. Philip Habib personally signed the document.
Thus the PLO was exiled to Tunisia carrying the written promise of the
United States. The fate of those I loved lay in the folds of that Ronald
Reagan promise. [...]
Kapitel 32 (S.199 ff.)
A Story of Forever, Forever Untold 1982
ON SEPTEMBER 10, I awoke in a terrible fright, trying to discriminate
night from nightmare. The clock read 3:02 A.M. as the telephone rang in
the corner of my mind.
It was Yousef.
He had arrived at his place of exile with the PLO. Tunis was their
destination at the end of an agonizing departure from Lebanon, whereby
Yousef and his comrades had been forced to leave their wives, children, and
parents behind. These sacrifices were the small parts of Yasser Arafat’s
ragtag deals on behalf of his people.
Now Yousef suffered the surreal and oppressive responsibility of
delivering news he wished he did not have to utter to his only sister.
Majid had kept his promise to me, living in the shelter of his hospital,
which was clearly marked on every side and on its roof with the universal
symbol of medicine, a red cross. But at the urging of his co-workers, he had
returned to our apartment for a respite from the constant blare of sirens. He
had slept deeply and soundly in our bed, the place where we once had found
deliverance in love and where we had conceived our child; and when he had
returned to his duties, he had found an inferno where the hospital had been.
My brother was there, searching for Majid, and together they had helped
rescue as many people as they could.
“Only by the Grace of Allah were you spared, brother,” Yousef had said,
relieved to see Majid alive.[...]
Das Krankenhaus, in dem Majid gearbeitet hat, fällt wenig
später einem israelischen Bombenangriff zum Opfer.
Kapitel 33 (S.202 ff.)
Pity the Nation 1982
THAT WEEK IN SEPTEMBER, starting with Yousef ’s telephone call, is
the mantelpiece of my life. It is my center of gravity. It is the point on
which all of my life’s turning points hinge at once. It is the deafening
crescendo of a two-thousand-year-old lineage. It is the seat of a demonic
God. On September 16, in defiance of the cease-fire, Ariel Sharon’s army
circled the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where Fatima and Falasteen
slept defenselessly without Yousef. Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints,
barring the exit of refugees, and allowed their Lebanese Phalange allies into
the camp. Israeli soldiers, perched on rooftops, watched through their
binoculars during the day and at night lit the sky with flares to guide the
path of the Phalange, who went from shelter to shelter in the refugee camps.
Two days later, the first western journalists entered the camp and bore
witness. Robert Fisk wrote of it in Pity the Nation:
They were everywhere, in the road, the laneways, in the back yards
and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and across the top of
garbage tips. When we had seen a hundred bodies, we stopped
counting. Down every alleyway, there were corpses—women, young
men, babies and grandparents—lying together in lazy and terrible
profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death.
Each corridor through the rubble produced more bodies. The patients
at the Palestinian hospital had disappeared after gunmen ordered the
doctors to leave. Everywhere, we found signs of hastily dug mass
graves. Even while we were there, amid the evidence of such
savagery, we could see the Israelis watching us. From the top of the
tower block to the west, we could see them staring at us through
field-glasses, scanning back and forth across the streets of corpses,
the lenses of the binoculars sometimes flashing in the sun as their
gaze ranged through the camp. Loren Jenkins [of the Washington
Post] cursed a lot. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli
defense minister would have to bear some responsibility for this
horror. “Sharon!” he shouted. “That fucker [Ariel] Sharon! This is
Deir Yassin all over again.”
What we found inside the Palestinian Shatila camp at ten o’clock
on the morning of 18 September 1982 did not quite beggar
description, although it would have been easier to retell in the cold
prose of a medical examination. There had been massacres before in
Lebanon, but rarely on this scale and never overlooked by a regular,
supposedly disciplined army. In the panic and hatred of battle, tens
of thousands had been killed in this country. But these people,
hundreds of them, had been shot down unarmed. This was a mass
killing, an incident—how easily we used the word “incident” in
Lebanon—that was also an atrocity. It went beyond even what the
Israelis would have in other circumstances called a terrorist atrocity.
It was a war crime.
Jenkins and I were so overwhelmed by what we found in Shatila
that at first we were unable to register our own shock. We might
have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies,
killed in the heat of combat. But there were women lying in houses
with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart,
children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back
after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies—
blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24
hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of
decomposition—tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded U.S.
Army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment, and empty bottles
of whisky.
Did I know those women, or those babies? How many of the children had
been my students? For forty-eight hours, Israeli soldiers, sodas and chips
handy, watched that malignant rush. How does an Israeli soldier, a Jewish
man, watch a refugee camp being transformed into an abattoir? Fatima.
Falasteen.
Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the
entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen
of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around
each other in the agony of death. All had been shot at point-blank
range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to
the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars
down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his
trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn
intestines. The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest
was only 12 or 13 years old.
In the next passage, I found the fate of Fatima and her friends— those
friends who had been at her side the day she gave birth to Falasteen. The
women who had kissed me because Fatima had told them so much about
me. The women who had gossiped about me when I fell in love with Majid,
and who had sung, danced, and cried at my wedding.
On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we
found the bodies of five women and several children. The women
were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble.
One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl
emerging from behind her. The girl had short, dark curly hair, her
eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was
dead. Someone had slit open the woman’s stomach, cutting sideways
and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes
were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror.
An Associated Press photographer pressed his finger and sent the scarlet
darkness of that scene around the world. I saw the photo in the Arab press
and first recognized the woman’s pale blue dress. Fatima’s favorite
dishdashe, worn thin in nearly two decades of use. The curly-haired little
girl behind her was my niece. Falasteen.
Yousef called me, screaming. Screaming.
Even through the telephone wires, there was enough agony in his voice
to break the sky. I can still hear it shatter the wind when I walk.
“How much must we endure and how much must we give?” he wailed
like a child. “Fatima! My darling, Fatima! Did you see what they did?” he
asked, screamed, and he answered himself, “They ripped her belly, Amal!”
I had no words.
“They ripped my Fatima’s belly with a knife! . . . They killed my
babies!” He screamed more. “They killed my babies, Amal. Oh God! Oh
God . . .”
His sobs shook the ground beneath my feet and I thought the force of his
grief would tear the sun to pieces. He hurled objects within his reach and I
stood in Pennsylvania, mesmerized by the sound of breaking glass at the
other end of the world. He cried with no measure of control, gripped in a
seizure of pain. Tetanus. Thunder.
He cursed Israel, the Americans, Ronald Reagan, Arafat, and the world,
sparing no leader and no god or devil. “Damn them to hell. Damn them to
this hell they made for us.”
At the base of his voice I heard the silent howl of wrath burgeoning in
him, the raw substance of despair and rage concentrating into resolve. He
vowed vengeance, swore to cut their throats like pigs. He beat his head
against the wall with no mercy for himself, still holding the telephone to his
ear, still cursing. Still crying—the cries of a soul dying.
That frenzy of pain dismantled him. Yousef was irreparably undone.
They killed my sweet brother in absentia when they murdered Fatima. And
his heart now beat with the force of his rage.
“THEY SLAUGHTERED MY WIFE AND MY CHILDREN LIKE
LAMBS!”
The line went dead. [...] (S.205)
Kapitel 39, S.233 ff.
Amal
The Telephone Call from David 2001
[...] “Hello. Is this Amal?” replied a male voice in accented English.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“I am David Avaram,” said the voice.
She did not recognize the name, but by the surname, Amal suspected
this stranger was Israeli. “Do I know you?” she asked.
“No . . . I mean yes. Well, no, you don’t know me, but . . .”
She was about to hang up the phone, annoyed by the interruption since
Sara was due home any minute now.
“Wait, please don’t hang up,” he said, perhaps sensing Amal’s intention
to end the call. “I guess I wasn’t as prepared for this call as I thought.”
A memory rushed up in Amal’s mind from a buried past. “He’s a
Yahoodi they call David.”
Could it be? Her hands began to shake and she nearly dropped the
phone.
“I think you might know me as Ismael,” he said, but Amal could form
no words for the storm of a past rising in her mind. “I am sorry to call like
this. It’s just that . . . I have been looking for you for a long time. And I . . .
now, I mean, I will . . . ,” he stammered, trying to find the words he had
practiced for days before finally calling her.
Amal could not yet form words.
“This is unfair to you. Maybe it was a mistake to call like this. I’m sorry,
Amal. I will go now,” he said, and Amal panicked.
“No!” she said, louder than she meant to. “Don’t go.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I know this is a shock, but I will be in the United
States in two days and I was wondering . . .”
Amal heard the loud engine of Sara’s 1970 VW Beetle pull into the
driveway and found herself quickly making plans to meet her long-lost
brother, as if making plans to have lunch with a neighbor. They were both
struck by the awkward practicality of those last moments on the phone.
Flight information, date, time, her address, his cell phone number, her cell
phone number.
“Thank you, Amal. Bye for now,” he said.
“Bye,” she answered, unsure what to call him. [...]" (S.233f.)
Kapitel 40 (237 ff.)
David and Me 2001
"[...] When I got home, David was already there. He was early. [...]
We stared at one another before I approached him, both of us uneasy and
unsure. He looked older than I had imagined. He looked like Yousef.
“Hello, Amal.”
“Hello . . . David.” He had not been Ismael for fifty-three years.
In the house now, I moved the vacuum cleaner out of the way,
apologizing for the mess, as I always did with guests, even if I had spent
hours cleaning the house.
He smiled slightly. “It’s okay. I don’t have much time. A car will arrive
in a few hours to take me.”
“I didn’t realize you’d be leaving so early,” I answered, detesting my
casual tone of voice but not sure of how to be or act, or what to say. We
chatted in that awkwardness, empty conversation to patch up what felt like
holes and unraveling expectations. [...] He said he had been to New York
a few times for work but that this was his first trip to Philadelphia. He liked
what he had seen so far. I asked what he did for a living. “An engineer.
Boring stuff.” Where did I work? “Drug company. Boring stuff.” We both had kids.
How about that? “One daughter, Sara.” He had two boys, Uri and Jacob.
Divorced. “Sorry tohear that.” He asked, “What about you?” What about me? [...]
He looked on in silence at the proof of what Israelis already know, that
their history is contrived from the bones and traditions of Palestinians. The
Europeans who came knew neither hummus nor falafel but later proclaimed
them “authentic Jewish cuisine.” They claimed the villas of Qatamon as
“old Jewish homes.” They had no old photographs or ancient drawings of
their ancestry living on the land, loving it, and planting it. They arrived
from foreign nations and uncovered coins in Palestine’s earth from the
Canaanites, the Romans, the Ottomans, then sold them as their own
“ancient Jewish artifacts.” They came to Jaffa and found oranges the size of
watermelons and said, “Behold! The Jews are known for their oranges.” But
those oranges were the culmination of centuries of Palestinian farmers
perfecting the art of citrus growing. [...]
Was it you who tortured him when he was in prison?” Amal asked.
“No,” he answered quickly, as if surprised she would suspect such a
thing.
“Then, it was you who beat him at the Bartaa checkpoint, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Why?”
David lowered his eyes and tried to explain the urge of power to impose
itself for the sake of imposition. The elixir of unopposed force and the
daredevil thrill of impunity.
“There is no reason or logic. I was twenty years old and they gave me
total power over other human beings, Amal. I was angry. Somehow I knew
he was connected to the secret I knew my parents harbored. And
somewhere inside, I feared I might be an Arab. Rage and the impunity I
knew I had throbbed in my arms when I was holding the rifle.” (S.237-41)
Amal hat zwei hat in den USA schickalsschwere Anrufe von ihren Brüdern
Yousef und Ismael bekommen. Den ersten von Yousef aus dem Libanonkrieg
1982 , als er erfahren hat, dass seine Familie ermordet worden ist, eine Erfahrung,
die ihn später zum Terroristen werden lässt und 2001 den von David (das ist der
Name, den Ismael bekommen hat, als er als angeblicher Jude in Israel aufwuchs).
David/Ismael ruft sie an, um mit ihr, seiner Schwester darüber zu sprechen, wie
sie dazu gekommen sind, auf zwei verfeindeten Seiten zu stehen.
Im Gespräch vergleicht Amal in Gedanken das Schicksal der Holocaustüberlebenden
Jolande, die David/Ismael aufgezogen hat und das ihrer und David/Ismaels
wahrer Mutter Dalia:
"She [Jolande] had been a young girl of seventeen, frightened and weak, when Allied
soldiers had liberated her camp. Her entire family had been murdered
during the holocaust of World War Two. The irony, which sank its bitter
fangs into my mind, was that Mama, the mother who gave birth to David,
also survived a slaughter that claimed nearly her entire family. Only the
latter occurred because of the former, underscoring for me the inescapable
truth that Palestinians paid the price for the Jewish holocaust. Jews killed
my mother’s family because Germans had killed Jolanta’s.
“What about your mother? What was she like?” David asked.
[...]
David’s question was a call to arms. It was Dalia and me against Jolanta
and David. Dalia and me against the world. And I laid bare the fundamental
truth of Mama’s heart, which I had found in the endless early-morning
reflections of exile, peeling back the layers, the personal fortress that she
and destiny had conspired to construct.
“She loved beyond measure,” I said.
That declaration rolled from my lips of its own volition, as truth gushes
forth once it is acknowledged, as the air erupts from a drowning man’s
lungs once he is rescued.
“When I was young I thought her cold. But in time I came to understand
that she was too tender for the world she’d been born into,” I said. [...]
Dalia, Um Yousef, the untiring mother who gave far more than she ever
received, was the tranquil, quietly toiling well from which I have drawn
strength all my life. I had to travel to the other end of the earth, improvise
like a dog, and bathe in my own grief and inadequacy to understand how
her persevering spirit had bestowed on me determined will.
“What happened to her?” David asked.
“She sank into dementia not long after the war in sixty-seven.”
But I could not explain to David that her condition had been nothing
short of a merciful kiss from God." (S.247/48)
