Leave
I
A body on the cobblestones. Just lying there. I shake him gently to see if he is still alive. Nothing. I press my ear to his chest to check for a heartbeat. My eyes dart around on the off chance someone is passing by so late at night. But there is only deathly silence. Just water trickling from the mouth of a stone lion into the fountain at the center of Place Saint-Étienne, facing the church, in Toulouse. My first instinct is to splash his face with this cold water. I cup my hands under the lion’s mouth. The cold water brings him to. A cough struggles its way out of his throat. He is still alive, breathing. I drag him to the edge of the fountain and prop him upright to make it easier to get water into his mouth. He smells rank, of vomit and urine. His breath is laced with alcohol. Every time he moves, I catch a stronger, fresher whiff of him. It’s the same stench of the dead rats Abu Riyala used to hunt in the alleys back home in Gaza.
Vomit dots his coat and fingerless wool gloves. I rinse my hands in the cold fountain water and check my watch. It’s nearly four in the morning. I make sure he’s OK one last time, and my eyes drift back to the lion. Somehow they look eerily alike. Water spills from its mouth almost like vomit. I race off so I don’t miss my appointment. Nathalie is already there. She’s waiting for me outside the Toulouse Prefecture building, leaning against a small car. She hands me a hot coffee; I use it to warm up my freezing fingers, pulling up the hood of my long winter coat to cover my damp hair.
Nathalie is forty something. She’s slight, with cropped black hair. Time has left traces on her face. She’s spent so much time buried in paperwork that she has to wear thick prescription glasses, like al-Bilbeisi, the man who owned the only shop in my neighborhood in Gaza. I’ve never seen her with makeup on, or in a dress or skirt. Not once. I assume this is because she works on matters of life and death—she’s a lawyer, she argues immigration and refugee claims in court.
Judges probably wouldn’t see her the same way if she stood up in court to defend refugees wearing clothes that attract attention. I know from experience that I have to wear neutral tones and downplay my femininity if I want to be taken seriously. If I show up wearing lipstick and a pretty dress, how could I possibly claim to be a penniless refugee fleeing certain death? My thoughts wander off. But Nathalie’s voice brings me right back to where I am—in front of the red automated security gate, its black surveillance cameras monitoring the movement of our bodies in the darkness.
As the crowd slowly swells, we move closer. My cheek is flat against the cold metal of the gate, and I press my hand to it to secure my spot at the front of the long queue. Nathalie disappears into the chaotic throng of bodies that somehow move as one. It’s like a school of fish that swoops first right and then left, all together, feeding on plankton. At 9 am sharp the automatic gate creaks open. We all immediately start climbing over each other in a struggle to reach the front before the ticket window closes.
We make it into the modern-looking building to be greeted by a circular kiosk concealing the receptionist sitting inside. We see only excessively long red fingernails pointing the way to the area for new asylum seekers. We dutifully queue up between two imaginary lines. We focus hard on staying within them. Otherwise we’ll get yelled at by the security guard. She walks up and down, monitoring our every move, waiting to ambush us, just like Miss Zainab used to when we were children at the Dalal al-Mughrabi School for Refugees. We are different races and different colors but have all come here for the same reason. We all have the same basic desire. To stay alive.
Nathalie lets out a loud sigh. Tense and fidgeting nervously, she tells me in English that she is ashamed of the humiliating treatment we have to endure every morning. She’s loud enough for the security guard to hear across the room. She keeps talking and telling me that she and some other pro bono lawyers from Amnesty International have made an official request to the Director of the Prefecture to get chairs for the waiting room—at least enough for pregnant women, children, and the elderly. On and on she keeps talking.
Secretly, I pray that the security guard can’t understand her. I’m afraid she’ll take her revenge out on me, block my request, and send me back to where I came from. I want to assure Nathalie that I don’t feel insulted or disrespected. Waking up at three o’clock every morning, coming here, and waiting for the iron gate to swing open is nowhere nearly as humiliating as what I’ve endured at the border crossings controlled by the Israeli occupation army. It can’t compare to the humiliation and emotional turmoil I experienced at the hands of my father, my family, my whole neighborhood back in Gaza. I wish she’d just be quiet, even just for a bit. I need the morning to go smoothly so I can get the document that will keep me from having to go back to point zero. To inevitable death. Because even if my body doesn’t die, my spirit will. The people in my neighborhood will make sure of it.
It’s finally my turn. Nathalie speaks to the person in charge about my case for a long time, in French. The only word I understand is Palestine. It sounds almost the same in French and English. He staples my passport picture to a paper, stamps it, and hands it to her. I can still see the ink touch the paper, still hear the stamp seal itself against it. Nathalie then hands it on to me. She explains that the three empty squares must be stamped before the end of each month, by a specific date. I have to do this until a final decision is made to grant me a residence card to legitimize and legalize my stay in France.
Three months come and go. Then another three. I wake up before dawn. I arrive at the gate by four in the morning. I make my way through the crowd to get my square stamped. I do this for two years.
II
I arrived in Madrid in the summer of 2001. José had finally helped me get out of Gaza, out of the prison I was living in. He was a Spanish teacher I’d met through my work at a Spanish news agency. He’d worked on archaeological digs and followed his Jewish girlfriend to Palestine, where she was excavating a site in Jerusalem. He’d decided to live with her so they could work together, digging in occupied Palestine. They were hunting for antiquities in Jerusalem when I couldn’t even go there. When they broke up, José decided to look for work as a Spanish teacher. Al-Azhar University had opened in the nineties, so he stayed in Gaza instead of heading back to Spain.
I realized then that him breaking up with his Jewish girlfriend and coming to Gaza may have been my salvation. The Institut français had refused to support my application for a visa to France. Rather than wallow in disappointment, I decided to get close to José and ask him to help me get a visa to Spain instead. I knew this would annoy a friend of mine at university whom I’d noticed was trying to get close to him too, but it didn’t matter. I thought long and hard about my circumstances and everything happening around me. I could tell that José was getting increasingly attached to me, and this weighed heavily on my conscience. But I ultimately found a way to ease my guilt. I got angry. I had to take revenge on him. Make him pay. I wanted to punish him for digging up things that didn’t belong to him, and for doing it with the help of a Zionist thief. It’s possible that her entire goal may just have been to steal Palestinian artifacts to display in her other house in Europe. She could always take refuge there if the security situation deteriorated or even if she was just bored. Any pity I may have felt for him for being stuck with the likes of me soon turned to rage. He and that girl had plundered things that belonged to me. A sly smile crept across my face as I adjusted my scarf around my head and walked up to the first floor of the university building with my friend.
She always used to tease me about my dream of escaping the giant hell of the open-air prison we lived in. And her giggles transformed into all-out laughter as I shared the outline of my escape plan with her. And she kept laughing even when I confessed the details to her. I explained that José was looking to marry a Muslim girl who would help him learn about his new religion, and he was interested in me. To her, this just sounded like a pipe dream, something I’d invented to escape my grim reality … and my fear of my father. I knew enough to be terrified if I didn’t get home by the time he expected. He was constantly threatening to kill me after I’d gotten a reputation around the neighborhood. He even took time off work and used those hours to discipline me instead. I was shamed for daring to dream.
Standing there with my friend, I wished the earth would just open up and swallow me whole. I begged her not to tell the other girls. I wanted to avoid a scandal and didn’t want their ridicule. Or José’s if it somehow got back to him. She called me crazy. She accused me of being stupid and naïve, of waiting for a knight in shining armor to ride in and save me from my father. But how could I not when he regularly beat me into submission, turning me black and blue as he tried to quell my constant rebellion against him and our whole community?
She made her excuses and went to her French literature class, which was taught by a Belgian professor. I stayed on the balcony alone, looking down over the students crossing through the gate. Watching them, I felt the truth of everything she’d just said: I live in a prison and the only ones with the keys are the soldiers of the occupying army. They alone decide when it opens and closes, who is authorized to enter and exit. Their soldiers and their police dogs closely guard my only ways to escape.
I remember it all. My father kicking my stomach and back. Pulling me out of bed by my hair to make a spectacle of me in front of everyone, as if to reassure them that he had things under control. It was a promise to any girl who chose to follow her gut and rebel that she would be punished publicly, right where she lived. He hit me and spat in my face. Umm Riyala, al-Bilbeisi, and Akram Abu Ras fixed their eyes on my limp body. All this rage because of several phone calls reporting on my bad behavior—refusing to put on the hijab, wearing tight jeans, blatantly disrespecting the neighbors’ feelings, or so they said.
I patted at the puffy bruises of my black eyes and inched closer to the classroom door to listen to the French teacher’s Belgian accent. I don’t understand a word of French. I listened though. The language she was speaking transported me to another, distant world—better than mine—where everyone talks to each other with kindness and compassion. It’s a world whose protagonist is a poor man, an orphan with a hunchback living among the giant bells, talking to gargoyles to amuse himself.
I imagined the look on my father’s face when he’d receive a photo of me standing there smiling out at him after succeeding in breaking free. As I was busy daydreaming about the bells of Notre Dame and my father’s angry face, the security guard closed the main university gate. The professor tapped my shoulder, bringing me back to reality with a start. She smiled. She apologized in English for startling me and suggested that it might be better for me to come indoors where it was warm, rather than stand outside trying to listen in. I was flustered by her sudden offer. I walked into the classroom, eyes lowered to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze.
This class was the last spark I needed to fully light the fire inside me to flee the open-air prison I lived in and save myself from inevitable death, before my father discarded me like a rat.
I confided in José how urgently I needed to get out. I felt reassured by him, by the fact that he was a Westerner, a non-Arab Muslim. And he was looking for a Muslim girl. I figured he wouldn’t be as closed-minded as most people around us in Gaza were. He helped me get the visa that would completely alter the course of my life. I followed everything up carefully. And my father left. But only after he felt reassured enough that I’d come to my senses and wouldn’t stray from the path he’d beat into me with his cane. In the summer of 2001, José and I fled to Madrid.
The apartment we lived in was right in the middle of a block of tall, ugly buildings, on a street whose name I cannot remember. That’s because I was born in a neighborhood where refugee homes were built randomly, with no numbers. Our dirt roads and alleys were filled with garbage, stank of urine, and rainy days made the sewage overflow. So I had no idea that streets were supposed to have numbers or that buildings had names and addresses. The first time I’d ever seen an envelope was after I’d moved to Madrid. Where I’m from, messages were passed on by word of mouth, through the children, or communicated directly face- to-face. I was amazed by the order of everything. There were sidewalks for people to walk on. And pedestrians respected signs, obeyed the colors of the traffic lights.
José lived with his parents because life in Madrid was so expensive. This made the small apartment feel even smaller. There were books all over, in every corner, in all the rooms. They were stacked on top of each other, like a climbing plant, branches reaching all the way to the balcony, roots spreading throughout the entire flat. José’s father was a historian, which explained his voracious hunger to buy and read so many books. He worked as a professor at the local university after returning from doing research in Morocco.
José went out with his father early every morning, each off to start his own day. I stayed back with his mother María. She did the shopping at the supermarket downstairs, and I stayed upstairs, alone and lonely, with only three meowing cats to keep me company. When they sensed María’s footsteps approaching the apart- ment, their meowing got louder and more annoying. They scampered toward her as soon as she opened the door, and one of them wound its tail around her sheer brown stockings. María spoke to them in a Spanish I didn’t understand. She emptied some tin cans into plastic bowls. I noticed the cat’s face on the discarded tin and understood that it was cat food. This made me think about the stray cats in the African Quarter back home in Gaza. Boys were always chasing them, pelting them with stones. Umm Riyala poisoned them after they’d run off with the sardines she’d left out and was just about to fry up. And then there was that one cat that al-Bilbeisi sent flying off his roof because she’d peed on his bedsheets. That cat broke a rib and hid in a dark corner, mewling in pain, until she finally died alone.
I sat at the little red kitchen table, where María had put a white bowl filled with colorful plastic fruits. I watched her prepare a breakfast tortilla of egg and potatoes. She thinly sliced Manchego cheese on the side and toasted some bread which she then rubbed with olive oil, garlic, and fresh crushed tomatoes. The warmth of her character shone through in the skill with which she prepared the food. She was in her late fifties, her short hair peppered with gray. Even though we couldn’t speak to each other because of the language barrier, I delighted in watching her deftly tie an apron around her waist. I couldn’t help but smile at the way she sang as she busily prepared our breakfast. From time to time she tried to pronounce my name, and I corrected her.
“Az … ma.”
“No, no. Asmaa. -ss, not -zz.”
“Ah … Asssmaa.”
Beating on her chest and wheezing to act out the meaning of the word, she demonstrated that “asma” in Spanish—as far as I could understand—meant asthma, shortness of breath.
One evening, when José got back, he took me with him to see some of his friends. They were gathered around a table filled with many small plates of food. They called this tapas. Just like what we call mezze. They talked loudly and all at once, creating a pleasantly rowdy atmosphere, and as I couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying, I turned my attention to the wide variety of food. I felt how close their food and culture were to ours. There were many different types of olives, as well as grilled peppers and tomatoes. My favorite were the anchovies: small, salty fish smothered in olive oil. I left them to their raucous conversation and turned to tickle a baby strapped into her stroller. Every now and then, her mother rocked her back and forth to stop her crying, picking up the toy that she kept throwing on the floor. I was just like this baby. Neither of us could understand what was going on around us. But she cried and I simply distracted myself with the food.
Later, we made our way back to the apartment, and José told me he was thinking of becoming an imam. He’d decided this after joining a Sufi order in Morocco that had a good number of new Muslims. I was less surprised by José’s interest in Islam at this stage of his life than I was at how he and that Jewish Zionist girl had gone ransacking my homeland. But I did feel very disappointed when he shared this new plan with me. I was trying to escape what he wanted to become. So I told him that I couldn’t encourage him. I’d experienced my fair share of what hypocritical bearded men could do. Like our Hadith professor at the university who used to terrorize us girls if someone’s hijab slid back and revealed so much as a strand of hair. I wondered if the Islam that foreigners practiced could be kinder than ours. Because of their more liberated mentality—or so I thought. I didn’t discuss this with him any further. I left him to decide for himself what to do. At the end of the day, I couldn’t be the typical Muslim woman with the answer he was looking for. I had come all this way to Spain to be rid of these burdens that had weighed on me since childhood, that I hadn’t chosen for myself.
I decided that I had to learn Spanish, to better adapt to his world and communicate with others. When I received my admission letter to the Institute, I jumped for joy, excited to start the following Monday. I started talking to the cats—in Arabic—while I waited for José to come back so I could share the news with him too.
On the first day of class, I met students who’d come to Madrid from all over the world to learn Spanish during their summer holiday. I was happy to connect with other foreigners like me. As evening fell and I waited for José, I walked the city streets, exploring. The next day, I noticed there was a museum behind the Institute. I was so excited; I’d never been inside a museum before. I waited for classes to end and rushed over, but the painting that greeted me was so shocking it stopped me in my tracks. A slaughtered bird. Blood. Head dangling off the edge of a wooden table. It reminded me of the chickens my grandma used to slaughter and pluck herself. I kept walking, quickly. I wanted to see other paintings. The serious people captured inside the frames, looking out at the painter whose brushstrokes had given them stern, strict, unsmiling faces. They were frightening. I was uncomfortable. The somber palette only added to my unease.
I walked up to the next floor. A massive painting commanded my attention. With its many tiny, detailed images inside larger, equally detailed images, it was totally different from those I’d seen downstairs. There were no faces, no bodies, if memory serves me right, but melted clocks of different sizes all across the canvas. I remember an infestation of black ants in one corner. Time stopped. I was no longer aware of where I was or how dark it was getting outside. The black ants drew me into the painting. I started counting them, one by one. Then fingers brushed against my shoulder. Spooked, I jumped back and turned around to see who it was.
“Excuse me, your pencil,” a voice said in English.
I clumsily tried to pick my pencil up off the floor, surprised and jolted out of my daze by the man standing there. He was tall and thin with a long black beard and a black hat. I couldn’t process what was going on: the last time I’d seen someone who looked like this was at a checkpoint long ago. Had the Mossad sent him here to drag me back to the African Quarter in Gaza? I rubbed my eyes to try and wake myself up—I was sure I had to be seeing things. My intense focus had transformed the ants into this young man. Gesturing toward the painting, he smiled.
“Dalí.”
“Huh?”
In English, he repeated, “Dalí. This is a Dalí painting. He’s crazy!”
My face turned bright red. I made no effort to hide the fact that I didn’t want to be standing there with him. I wished time would stop and save me. I really did have bad luck. My mother always said it had followed me from the moment I was born. Here it was again in this creature clothed in black. Was the neighborhood I left behind not enough for him? I managed to slip away from him and that strange smile that remained plastered on his face even after he saw the fear ripple through my body. I was tongue-tied; I couldn’t say a word. I rushed downstairs to save myself. From him. From the head of the slaughtered bird. From the plucked feathers. The swarm of ants that I hadn’t even been able to finish counting. I headed back to the café in the Institute, constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following me. I breathed a sigh of relief as I tried to finish studying what we’d covered in class. I waited for José to pick me up. We went back to the apartment. I was safe.
The next evening, I waited for José in the café across from the supermarket near our building. When he arrived, the place was packed. We moved to a table in a quiet corner and ordered two cold bottles of Coke. I started telling him about my class and what had happened at the museum, but he interrupted me. He took my hand in his and kissed it. He was in good spirits as he blurted out what he had to tell me, his face brimming with boyish enthusiasm. I was excited to hear what he was about to say, but my heart sank when it turned out he wanted to marry me before the end of the month, before my short-stay Schengen visa expired. This brought me right back to the ugliness of my reality. But I pulled myself back together. I knew that I hadn’t escaped the chokehold of my neighborhood and my father’s authority only to willingly throw myself into another prison. I wasn’t going to let someone else suffocate me. Especially not now that I’d seen up close how far he was taking his devotion to religion. His offer of marriage horrified me. And I felt cornered by the need to begin the legal procedures to get Spanish residency. I knew I could only get out of this by running away—from him, from this apartment. Even if it cost me my life.
That night was long and sleepless. I kept tossing and turning, staring at the crucifix hanging over my bed. A picture of José as a child hung next to it. I buried my head in the pillow to quiet my racing thoughts. I’d decided to leave. That was that.
Morning came. I heard the lock turn in the front door—I knew he was gone. I took a shower. Then I picked up my backpack and filled it with my books and papers. I said goodbye to María when she left for the supermarket. Then I headed to the nearby metro station and got off at the stop for the Institute. I waited there, outside the station on the subway steps, anxiously checking my watch.
I spotted him. He was walking toward me, a large bouquet of white roses in hand. I smiled and exhaled in relief. I got into his silver Citroën. I didn’t say a word. I focused all my attention on the yellow lines painted on the asphalt and tried to count how many kilometers we’d traveled. Eventually I fell asleep. Nine hours later, we reached the French border. He looked at me and smiled. In English, he said, “We made it to the border! Welcome to France!”
III
Two weeks passed. Jean-Jacques had taken me to Muret in the South of France. He lived in a studio apartment on the top floor of a small four-story building. It was just one room—the kitchen area was inside the main living space. Right in the middle stood a large wooden bookcase. Jean-Jacques had stacked white boxes atop it to separate where he slept from the rest of the apartment. I slept on the sofa bed in the living room.
I met Jean-Jacques when I was working as a war correspondent for the Spanish news agency in Gaza. He was a photojournalist covering the Strip. I helped him out a lot back then. I took him along with me to cover demonstrations and bombings. We’d later stayed in touch by email.
Fairly quickly, though, he told me he was stressed about having me stay in his apartment. He was in the middle of a divorce and his wife would lose it if she found out I was there. He said that she could accuse him of cheating and cause him legal problems.
So I wasn’t allowed to make even the faintest noise. He didn’t want the neighbors to get suspicious. I was trapped inside, in this new place, in a village I hadn’t even been able to see. I spent my days flipping through the huge photo albums he kept stored in those white boxes—anything to kill the time. Sometimes I plugged in my earphones and whispered words in Spanish to echo the recording. I stared out through the skylight at the expanse above. I didn’t dare go out alone. I feared that the door would lock behind me and I’d find myself trapped outside. On top of that, I was terrified I might bump into one of the neighbors.
Jean-Jacques promised to take me to the Sunday market. I was so excited when the day finally came. I put on my black floral print cotton dress, laced up my sandals, and tried to tame my unruly hair. He walked out first. He’d told me to wait and go down after him in case any neighbors were around. I closed the door gently then bounced down the stairs. He grabbed my arm to stop me from being so noisy. He was really starting to annoy me, and for a moment I even felt afraid. I knew I had to be more placid. I didn’t want him to kick me out. Not in this strange, new part of the world, not when I didn’t have a penny to my name.
We walked into the village church together but sat far apart. The priest began reciting hymns that I couldn’t understand, despite my attempt to follow along in the little book that was resting right there in front of me on the wooden pew. I saw reverence on the faces of the elderly people surrounding me. I tried to imitate what everyone else was doing—if they sat, I sat, if they stood, I stood. A young woman sat down beside me. She knelt and joined in the prayer. I waited for Jean-Jacques to finish. When he did, he took me by the arm and introduced me to the village priest.
The two of them spoke to each other in French— the only word I could make out was Palestine. The priest beamed at me and shook my hand. For a moment, I felt like the Virgin Mary, straight from Palestine, just arrived at this little church to sit among the colorful statues of Christ and Mary that were placed in every corner. The two of them were deep in conversation for some time, so I knelt down on the pew and gazed up at the Virgin. I begged her to send me a sign, anything to save me from the series of misfortunes that was my life.
But nothing came.
Jean-Jacques left the next morning as usual and I stayed in bed, staring up at the sky. I felt anxious and tried to think of a way out of my predicament. I went into the bathroom and emptied the white medicine cabinet of all the pills I could find. I mixed them up and called the emergency number in the kitchen. Then I swallowed them all.
I could hear the ambulance siren. I tried to open my eyes, to be sure of where I was—away from the apartment, away from Jean-Jacques. I needed to know I was somewhere safe. Through a haze, I could make out the features of a young nurse. Looking up at him, I placed my hand on my chest, felt my beating heart, and mumbled, “They killed him … they killed Abdullah.”
