The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing by Darina Al-Joundi

Author:Darina Al-Joundi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2011-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

15

WITH THE PALESTINIANS GONE, ISRAEL lifted the blockade. We had plenty of water and the stores opened their doors once again. To celebrate this return to normal life, I decided to eat kebabs for the first time in my life, and when they made me very sick my father sat by my bedside trying to make me laugh, “You’ve survived the phosphorus bombs, you’re not going to die because of one kefta.”

The TV in the living room was on all day long. The presidential elections were supposed to take place in the fall but no one believed that the Parliament would be able to come together. My whole family was following the procedures live. The bailiff announced the result of the vote count in a very solemn voice, “Gemayel, Gemayel, Gemayel.”

The deputies stood up to applaud the new president of Lebanon: Bashir Gemayel. We looked at each other, stunned. We knew the crimes he had committed against his own people, against the Palestinians, and we also knew how friendly he was with Israel. He called Menachem Begin “Papa.”

In West Beirut you could hear a pin drop, but in the East there were salvos of joy and champagne was flowing in abundance.

Bashir was sworn in on August 23; on September 14 Israeli troops entered Beirut, violating the cease-fire agreement. The next morning we awoke only to see all the garbage cans and containers full of all kinds of weapons, Kalashnikovs, Uzis, RPGs, pistols, and grenades. People had gotten rid of their weapons during the night because the Israeli soldiers were combing the city. My father put on his suit and tie, expecting them to come for him and arrest him. He wanted to have a last one for the road with me. Things were moving so fast that I didn’t even have time to feel sadness or joy. “To your health,” I said when we heard shouting in the stairwell. Our fifth-floor neighbor was dragging his only son out by the neck and, in front of the Israeli patrol, put a bullet through his head. Rafiq was sixteen. He had betrayed a Palestinian activist for fifty dollars.

A few days later on the radio, my mother’s lighthearted voice announced, “President Bashir Gemayel died this morning in a bomb explosion, set off in the premises of the Phalangists in Achrafieh.”

In the West there were salvos of joy and we drank arrack. Many of our Christian friends were relieved, as the man was a danger to every community.

The day after Gemayel’s death the Red Cross woke us very early. We had to rush to a field in the southern suburbs. Long before I reached Sabra I could smell an unbearable odor, the same one dogs emit when they’ve gorged themselves on corpses. It was very hot, but I still wore a mask. The first image I had of Sabra was that of a Palestinian woman, dragging the body of her husband, whose throat had been cut, and screaming at the journalists, “Stop filming us,

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