Original subtitles

I remind you that I have neither father

nor mother, that I was raised by the

state, that I knew very young that I

wasn't French, that I didn't belong to a

village. After that,

I could only find myself amongst those

colored and oppressed,

amongst the oppressed, risen up against

the whites. I am

perhaps a black who is colored,

white or pink, but a black.

I

don't know

my

family.

...

If we the distance of look,

you've a Maric.

We

will see.

I've

enemy. I'll

be.

I'll be.

A general Sharon Bombard, Laville, the

two storm, the bomb and a palm a

fragmentation.

Jean, a man who's a to you. I'll have a

para. I

don't

know. I see. I say the resistance

Lebanese

Palestinian, the

combatant

Palestinian on the city.

.

.

.

.

You're more don't be sure. Jamiel, Chef

Dimilis Falangist, a two nouveau

president of the Republic Lebanese.

Laville, it is full of shock. The

long demand Versancor du Mata, revoir

reve le vendor de journo o motto quickly.

This Israeli arrive. This Israeli arrive.

Judy Grangel, Escalier de Limable, a

delantre revoir reveal a shar, a

legend solda Israelia, avecler sacado,

or post a meteor. To see

the montage of it's Jean. It's your exit.

I'll vulet to voir de pray. I'll appeal.

You mail a regard on by two. Les

Israeli Separ P don't Laville, a on

circle a camp Palestinian kiso true de

Laville

set willah. Ozavom Pasil a suaree a

regarde de Lusiel you meaning par de norm

fuse a clearant or should de Laville set

a dear also like on Palestinia a on a

comprehend path.

I had spent four hours at Shatila.

About 40 bodies remained in my memory.

All of them, and I mean all,

had been tortured, probably in the middle

of drunkenness, singing, laughter,

the smell of gunpowder, and corpses

already decomposing.

In the review of Palestinian studies, I

wanted to show what was left of the

Shatila and Sabra camps after the

Felangis had spent three nights there.

The first corpse I saw belonged to a man

of 50 or 60. He would have had a shock

of white hair if a wound, which looked to

me like an axe blow, hadn't split his

skull.

Part of the blackened brain was on the

ground next to the head.

His whole body was lying in a sea of

black, congealed blood.

The dead man's feet and legs were bare

and black, purple and blue.

Perhaps he'd been taken by surprise at

night or at dawn.

Three young men led me down an alley.

Go in, Sir. We'll wait for you outside.

I went into a small house with twofloors.

There was a body blocking my way in. I

saw yet more bodies.

I stepped over the dead as one crosses an

abyss. I tried to

count the first bodies after

12 or 15, surrounded by the

smell, by the sun,

stumbling over the remains. I couldn't

continue. Everything became

confused. A barbaric feast had taken

place here. What can we say to their

families who left with Arafat, trusting

the promises of Reagan, of Midoran, of

Pratini, who had assured them that the

civilian population of the camps would be

safe?How can we say

that we left children, old men and women

to be massacred here, and that their

bodies are being abandoned without

prayers?How can we tell them that we

don't even know where they are buried?

I am French, but I defend the

Palestinians wholly and without judgment.

They're in the right because I love them.

But would I love them if injustice hadn't

turned them into a nomadic people?

For the whole Hamad

Hamad.

There,

amongst

all

the tortured victims,

my mind can't free itself of this

invisible vision.

What was the torturer like?Who

was he?I see him and I

don't see him. He

stares me in the face, though the only

shape he will ever have is that of the

positions, the postures, the

grotesque gestures of the dead fermenting

there in the sun under the clouds of

flies.

A

photograph can't capture the flies,

nor the thick white smell of death,

nor can it show how you have to jump when

you go from one body to another.

Love and death. These

two terms quickly associate it when one

is written.

I had to go to Shatila to understand the

obscenity of love and the

obscenity of death.

Which alley should I take now?

I was drawn by a 50-year-old man, by

a young man of 20, by two

old Arab women. And I

felt as though I was at the center of a

star of wind whose points held

hundreds of dead.

The massacres didn't take place in

silence and darkness, but in the

light of Israeli flares.

Since Thursday evening, the Israelis had

been listening in on Shatila.

What celebration, what feasting went on

there, where death seemed to join in the

pleasures of the soldiers drunk on wine,

drunk on hatred?Drunk no doubt on

the very joy of pleasing the Israeli

army, which was listening, watching,

encouraging.

How did the killers enter the camps?Were

the Israelis at all the exits to Shatila?

In any case, on Thursday they were

already at Akka Hospital, opposite

an entry to the camp Akka Hospital.

Occupied by the Israelis, just across

from an entrance to Shatila, isn't

200 yards from the camp, but 40.

They saw nothing, heard nothing,

understood nothing. That's what Begin

declared to the Knesset. Non-jews killed

non-jews. Why should that concern us?

I had spent four hours at Shatila.

About 40 bodies remained in my memory,

and all of them, and I mean all, have

been tortured, probably in the middle of

drunkenness, singing,

laughter, the smell of gunpowder and

corpses already decomposing.

Without a doubt, I was alone. By this

I mean the only European with some old

Palestinian women still clinging to a

torn white cloth.

But if these five or six human beings had

not been there, I would have gone

crazy. Where was

I?

That city in pieces, flattened, which I

saw or thought I saw, walked

through, stirred up,

borne up by the powerful smell of death.

Had all that happened?

The shock, the massacre, the shatila,

I take. Problem.

Potato. The premier desire,

the

career,

the prevent.

The shatila.

Absolute.

Rabba.

Palestinia.

It's.

So

some

pleasure

declare

necessity

declare. I can

tell force it

preferred,

preferred.

I'll

collision

as a

prep.

Driving in from the airport, people who

don't know Amman find Jordan very

attractive, especially in the evening.

14 years after my first trips, I couldn't

recognize anything but understood right

away that the charm of the hills, of the

more distant, darker mountains, of the

valleys, the gardens, the villas,

all that was just a painted veil hiding

the ferocity of the Palestinian camps.

I cannot date the beginning of this book.

Was it after Shatila?The writing

began around October 1983

and I became a stranger to France

from Amman City of the Kingdom of David,

a Nabatean Roman Arab

city. Lost in the mists of time,

from there rose a foul

and ancient

smell.

In Jordan, there were 10 or 12 camps.

I can list Jebel.

Hussein, Wahadat,

Baka, Gaza camp, Irbid.

These are the ones I knew best. The

Fedayeen came back to the camps to rest.

We were at the Baka camp at the end of

1970.

Pride was nowhere visible in the Baka

camp.

At Baka, each district of the camp tried

to reproduce a village left behind in

Palestine. Nazareth was here,

and a few narrow streets away, Naplus and

Haifa, to the right Hebron, and to

the left the old Elkads,

Jerusalem.

In Palestine, more than anywhere else,

the women seemed to me to possess one

quality more than the men.

20 kilometers from the capital, the Baka

camp was suddenly and completely

surrounded by three rows of tanks. The

discussions between the women from the

camp and the Jordanian officers lasted 2

days and two nights. The

women were on the road that leads to the

Jordan River. There was great confusion

among the officers. How could they fire

on women in strollers?

We are going home. Which home?

Palestine on foot.

We'll cross the Jordan River.

Even before arriving there, I knew my

presence on the banks of the Jordan at

the Palestinian bases could never clearly

be expressed. I had welcomed this

revolt as a musical ear recognizes a

right note. I

often left my tent and slept under the

trees, looking up at the Milky

Way so close behind the branches.

The armed sentries made no sound as

they moved about at night over the

grass and the leaves, wanting their

shadows to merge with the tree trunks.

The Milky Way rose up out of the lights

of Galilee, arching over me

down over the whole Jordan Valley

before breaking up. scattering out

over the desert of Saudi Arabia.

Lying there under my blanket, I shared in

this spectacle. Perhaps more than the

Palestinians themselves, for whom the

sky was a commonplace.

In one of Shakespeare's tragedies, the

archers fire their arrows against the

sky. But could they shoot at

stars rising out of their own cradle?

Palestine?

It was more for fun than conviction that

I had accepted the invitation to spend a

few days with the Palestinians.

I was to stay there nearly two years

and every night half dead,

waiting for the capsule of Nebethal to

send me to sleep. I lay there, my

eyes open, my mind clear,

neither amazed nor afraid,

but certainly amused to be there

in that place where on either side of the

river, men and women had been on the

watch for so long. And why not me?

Just a little way off. Through the

darkness I could hear the water of the

Jordan flowing. I was freezing,

going at night down the precipice of the

Jordan to lay mines and returning in

the morning. Was that climbing up from

hell or coming down from heaven?

Crouched for the break, I drank tea and

ate olives and unleavened bread.

The fedayeen chatted in Arabic and

laughed, unaware that not far from

here John the Baptist had baptized Jesus.

My words say as clearly as I can that the

Palestinian revolt was among my oldest

memories. Their revolt was

eternal, consubstantial with me.

Have I revealed clearly enough the

importance that I give to memories?

Everything. Everyone was quivering under

the trees, laughing,

marveling at a life so new for all

and also for me. Yet in the

quivering there was something strangely

fixed, on guard,

reserved, protected.

Like someone who prays without speaking,

the rest of the time the fedayeen drank

tea, criticized their leaders and the

rich, insulted Israel, but

spoke above all of the revolution,

about the one they were waging and the

one which they were going to undertake.

Youth unconcerned about death from the

land on the banks of the Jordan, the

pleasure of being under the trees. Of

playing with weapons; of being far

from women; of being the

brightest; as they were the keenest

point of the revolution; and perhaps

sensing that this revolutionary feast was

not far from being sacked.

The Fediyin didn't want power; they

had freedom.

It was more for fun. and

conviction that I had accepted the

invitation to spend a few days with the

Palestinians. I was to

stay there nearly two years.

I have to admit that in staying with

them; I was staying; and

I don't know how or what other way to

express it in my own memory.

What are the dreams of a revolutionary

made from who revolts in

the

desert?

This

image of the Fedayi becomes more and more

indelible.

He turns back to the path and I won't see

his face again; only his back and his

shadow. It's then

when I won't be able to speak to him;

nor hear him; that I will need to

speak about him. The

rebellion is flagging away;

fading; and about to turn back to

the path and disappear.

It will be made into songs of heroes.

That's how I viewed the resistance. as

though we would vanish the following day.

After the massacres at Sabra and Shatila

in September 1982; some of the

Palestinians asked me to write down my

memories.

Say exactly what you saw; what you

heard. Try to explain why

you stayed with us for so long.

Why it was you came. You came for eight

days. Why did you stay for two years?

To explain better these memories; 2

images come to mind. The

1st is of white clouds.

Everything I witnessed in Jordan and

Lebanon remains wrapped in thick

clouds that still weigh down on me.

I seem able to Pierce them only when I

grope in the dark after a vision;

but I don't know which. For that

reason; I can write. The clouds are

nourishing.

The trees; how far away

they are 15 years ago.

Today; probably cut down.

These trees come back to me. I

haven't said enough of their fragility.

Everything was trees.

If so many things are there to be

seen; only seen;

no word will ever describe them.

But what if it were true that writing is

a lie; that it gives only the

visible; the acceptable face?

You could say the silent face.

Because it can't show what it doubles.

I want to say; however; that they

are my eyes; my sight;

which saw what I tried to describe;

my ears; which hurt. I was

living a dream which today

I can control by

reconstructing the images you were

reading; by piecing them together.

So many words to say. This is

my Palestinian revolution; told

in my chosen order.

Cut

off from the peasant population on the

banks of the Jordan River since 1971;

the Palestinians lived alone in a hostile

environment.

What are the dreams of a revolutionary

made from who revolts in the

desert?

No one; nothing.

No narrative technique could ever

describe the six months the Ferdin went

through in the mountains of Jerash and

Ajlun; particularly the first few

weeks before the winds came and the cold

set in that night

at Ajlun. I saw the polar star

on my right in its place in Ursula

Minor; and the Milky Way

disseminating into the Arabian desert.

And I couldn't but wonder that I was in a

Muslim country where the woman;

and this I still believed; is far

away.

Heading from the Bakwa camp towards the

Jordan;All traces of the

Palestinians had been burnt;

buried; or simply carried away.

Only the burnt shrubs remained.

The fedayeen had either been killed or

taken prisoner; led into the desert

to be left to the Saudi border after a

stay in the Jordanian jails; a far

greater torture than the desert itself.

In the countryside; the wheat;

the rye; the barley; the beans

had all been destroyed in the battle. I

would have to wait until Beirut in

1976 and

1982; especially around

Shatila; to see nature again so

molested; burnt to the bone.

For then I knew that the bones of Pines

and fir were black

from December 1970. The

Jordanian government banned any further

operations; leaving from bases

against Israel or the occupied

territories. It was in June and

July 1971 that

Hussein's troops surrounded the

Fedayeen; of which officially 3 or

400 were killed.

Thousands were taken prisoner and sent to

various jails across the Kingdom and to

the camp at Zarqa.

My words say as clearly as I can

that the Palestinian revolt was among my

oldest memories. Their revolt was

eternal; consubstantial with me.

Have I revealed clearly enough the

importance that I give to memories?

Each fidei asked me questions as he was

preparing his tea or his coffee

or his argument. It's up

to you to speak to me; to tell

me; for example; what you

understand by revolution and how you

think to carry it out

everyone. Everything under the trees was

quivering with excitement;

laughing; marveling at a life so

new for all; also for me.

It seemed only one thing concerned the

Fedayeen; how this celebration was to

end; for it was a celebration;

this Palestinian revolt on the Oriental

banks of the Jordan River.

Revolution is the happiest time of life.

Every day and every night;

death brushed past them.

The loss of a favorite fedaii

paradoxically made them all the more

alive. For a short

time; that life; that unique

life of a fedaii; now dead;

took on a density it had never hadbefore.

Everything takes place in darkness

on the point of death. Despite the

lightness of these words; their lack

of substance; however unimportant the

event would be; the condemned man

wants to determine for himself the

meaning of his life; a life spent in

the darkness. He wanted to

intensify; not to light up right.

I am unable to explain the origin of the

resistance. It must be stated;

however; that hundreds of years are

not enough. for the final destruction

of

the people.

One night; a little before dawn;

three different groups of fedayeen were

singing; exchanging their songs from

hillside to hillside; and between

each song I could hear the morning

silence; dense with the sounds of the

day that had not yet risen

in the morning; heedless of

death; which was on the watch. Here I

mean the death of the singers; the

warrior artists whose bodies could well

have found themselves decomposing in the

midday sun. In the

morning; I had heard a great musical

improvisation on the mountain paths in

the face of danger. The

Palestinians composed their songs like

forgotten songs; found lying hidden

within them before they sang them.

And so a new composer lets me hear the

song. That has been forever locked up

silent inside me.

I wrote this in February 1984.

That's to say; 14 years after that

singing; nothing was ever written on

the roads or tracks at the bases or

elsewhere. The event was recorded

because I witnessed it; and because

it marked me so strongly that I shall be

lastingly affected.

Near Ashrafia; I went through a

good-sized orchard.

Father Omar was sitting in an

armchair; smoking.

My feet stank. Dirty

postman's feet. Feet which have walked

for miles.

Cut off from the peasant population on

the banks of the Jordan since July

1971; the

Palestinians lived alone. In a hostile

environment;

now and then; through binoculars;

I could see a woman in a black scarf

throwing grains to her hens or milking a

goat. Then she went back into her house

and closed the door. And this book which

I'm writing; which traces back

through my memories to moments dear to

me; is. But how

would I say this is just a

collection of these moments?Designed to

conceal the incredible fact that there

was nothing to see; nothing to hear.

I will have watched this Palestinian

revolt as though from a window or

from a box in a theater; as though

through Pearl handled opera glasses;

how far I was from them. When I was

writing this book; for example;

out there among the fedayeen; I

stayed on this side of the border. I knew

I was safe. Not thanks to my Celtic

physique or a layer of goose fat;

but rather because of a different

armor; far shinier and more

sure my non belonging to a

nation or to an action I never

merged with. My heart was in it;

my body was in it; my spirit was in

it. All was there at one time or

another; but never my total

belief; never the whole of me.

Here is how I first met Hamza.

Some of the Palestinian leaders, in

particular Khalid Abu Khalid, thought

that I was in danger at the Abu Baker

Hotel. They sent for a young man who

came over towards us, smiling.

Of course he was holding a Kalashnikov,

but that was so common I didn't even see

it. All I saw of him.

And almost all was his pleasant fit of ye

face and his dark hair. Pleasant,

even more bright, lit up by that

certitude that the resistance at Irbid

was his whole life's purpose. He was

20, with dark hair, a

kefiya, a mustache just sprouting.

He was pale, or rather sallow,

despite his tan in the dust. Has your

mother got a room free?Mine.

Tonight I'm fighting. He can sleep in my

bed. Take him there then, and

may God protect him. He's a friend.

My friend. My friend.

Your friend?

Yes.

No.

Abu

Khalid, the Palestinian poet, shook my

hand. I never saw him

again. We could hear, but

at some distance away, the sound of heavy

artillery. It had to be a

gerash.

Hamza wanted to carry my bag. At first

I didn't notice anything about him that I

wouldn't have seen in the other fedayeen.

He had the same smile, the same

cheerfulness, a voice so soft that it was

almost dangerous for me.

The tension you felt near the road faded

as you went further inside the town and

the camp. It was

October 1971,

so we were marching again under the sun.

The Palestinian camp was below us and the

road sloped down.

A lot of people, probably everybody in

the camp, knew Hamza. They

greeted him as we passed with a smile or

a wink. He smiled back.

Today I'm a fighter. Tonight I will kill

one or two Jordanians, or they will kill

me.

When we arrived at a small white painted

wall with a door the same white,

Hamza took out a key and opened it. I

went into a courtyard which was rather

small.

He locked the door behind us.

Outside the room, which I later learned

was her bedroom, stood a Palestinian

woman. She was wearing the sort of dress

she would have worn back in Haifa. She

was smiling and armed.

She must have been around 50. Her gun,

slung on a strap over her shoulder, was

the same model as Hamza's.

He greeted his mother in Arabic.

She continued to smile and hold her gun.

He introduced me in Arabic. He

is a friend. She brushed my

hand with her fingertips. She went into

her room. Hamza led me into his.

After escaping from the bombing of Haifa

and repeatedly fleeing, this family had

finally found a refuge in Irbid. Hamza

and his mother would never see Haifa

again. Hamza showed

me his bed where I was to sleep that

night. He was to be on duty.

His mother came in and set a tray down on

the low table. Two plates.

He put pancakes, a few lettuce

leaves, some quartered tomatoes, 4

sardines, and I think 3

hard boiled eggs. They

ate Hamza and the Godless Christian.

At about 3:00 in the afternoon in the

month of Ramadan, when the sun had

scarcely started to sink in the sky,

the sounds of guns and mortars had got

nearer, answered by bursts of machine

gun fire and odd rifle shots of the

fedayeen and Ibid,

are they fully dressed on Hamza's bed,

listening to the sound of fighting, sharp

as though decisive. There were

two gentle knocks on the door to my room.

I didn't answer as I didn't know how to

say come in in Arabic.

The door opened. The light of the

starry sky flooded into my room

and behind I could see a tall shadow.

I pretended to be asleep.

My eyes were half closed, but I could see

everything between my lashes. His

mother had come in.

Had she come out of the now ear splitting

darkness or the freezing night that I

always carry with me everywhere?

She was carrying a tray, which she put

down very gently on the low blue table

with yellow and black flowers.

She then moved the table and put it at

the head of the bed so that I could reach

it. Without making a

sound, she went out and closed the door.

With the starry sky gone, I could open my

eyes. On the

tray there was a cup of Turkish coffee

and a glass of water. I drank them.

I closed my eyes and waited,

hoping I hadn't made any noise.

Again, 2 little knocks at the door,

just like the first two.

In the light of the stars and the waning

moon, the same long shadow

appeared, this time

familiar as though all my

life, every night before I

slept, at the same time the shadow had

come into the room. Or rather, that she

was familiar to the point of being

inside me rather than

outside ever since my birth.

Coming to me through the night to bring

me a cup of Turkish coffee.

Through my lashes, I saw her remove the

blue table and silently put it back in

place with the assurance of one born

blind. She then took up the tray

and left, closing the door.

It all happened so skillfully that I

understood that his mother came every

night to bring Hemza a cup of coffee and

a glass of water without a

sound. Except for four little

taps on the door and in the distance,

as in a picture of Ditai,

gunfire against a background of stars.

That night, as he was fighting in his

room and in his bed, I had taken the

place and perhaps the role of the sun.

For one night, and for the duration of

one simple, often repeated act,

a man older than her became the sun.

Of the mother younger than me.

During this familiar familial

act, she remained Hamza's mother,

and yet became my mother too. It was

during that night, my personal

portable night, that the door of my

room opened and closed again. I

fell asleep.

Hamza returned at dawn. His

skin was dusty, his eyes tired,

his smile joyful. He

stowed his gun away in the shelter by the

bed. He then went to bed

and probably fell asleep right away.

I went into his mother's room, intending

just to say goodbye, not to linger.

She smiled at me. She was

crouching down. Kneading the dough for

that evening, she stood up and

prepared tea for me.

I decided to leave when the collective

taxi was ready. It was

almost 11:00. I

said goodbye to his mother and sister.

They were both preparing the food for

that evening and the coming night,

one for her son, the other for her

husband. I spent one or

two hours walking through the still

undamaged streets.

The taxi set off towards Dura.

As soon as we had left Jordan, the image

of Hamza and his mother started to haunt

me. I had not seen

Hamza and his mother long enough to be

sure that for the next 14 years

it was always their true faces I saw in

my mind.

Why talk about this revolution?It

too resembles a long drawn out burial

with me following the funeral procession

from afar.

In my hotel room on a Walkman,

I was listening to Mozart's Requiem.

Oh.

... ...

Why talk about this revolution?It too

resembles a long drawn out burial

with me following the funeral procession

from afar.

A fedayy must conquer, die

or betray. Either a

Palestinian falls and dies, or

if he survives, he is imprisoned for

torture sessions. After that, the desert

takes him and keeps him in the camps not

far from Zarqa.

I was told that this was Hamza's fate.

Since December 1971, I

haven't met anybody able to confirm to me

that Hamza is still alive.

I am unable to explain the origin of the

resistance. It must be stated,

however, that hundreds of years are

not enough for the final destruction of

the people.

The defeat of the Palestinians from Salt

to Irbid, either through murder,

escape, imprisonment, torture camps,

showed me that the lightness of the

Fedayeen's lives was in fact caused by

the closeness of death always floating

over them. The Fedayeen who had

become my friends, though this was a

friendship never leaned on, were

killed. Injured, imprisoned,

on the run, or they had regrouped

to fight other battles in othercountries.

Why did I come back here?

Would I ever see Hamza again?Do I

need to see him again?

His mother must have become transparent

by now, almost invisible.

Did I have to see in her more than the

remains of a life?She and

her son, their love,

my love for them. Didn't they

tell all there was to tell about myself?

When I returned to Irbid in 1984,

the discovery of the town, the

camp, their house, his mother,

all of Hamza's glorious past was indeed

the past after the

massacres at Ajlun and Irbid. The

Jordanian army had tortured Hamza. He

had been imprisoned in a camp at Zarqa.

What had happened to him at Zarqa and

what kind of life did he live there if he

was still alive?So we

set out for Irbid, Nidal and I. Now,

Nidal is the name of a blonde and very

beautiful Lebanese woman who speaks

Arabic and French. I had

talked a lot about Hamza and his life in

prison. His supposed tortures.

The Zarka desert. His probable death.

We traveled from Amman to Irbid. It took

two hours by car. The

front door was open. Nidal went in

first. I went up the three steps.

Nidal was already talking to a frail old

woman with white hair.

I cautiously stretched my hand towards

her. She touched it as a cat mite wet its

paw. She also said sit down.

Nidal asked her. Do you recognize this

Frenchman?My eyes are very bad now.

He came here to your place with Hamza in

1970. She said in a very

low voice. I remember that one day my son

came in during Ramadan with a

foreigner, perhaps a Frenchman. I don't

remember. The longer I

looked at the wrinkles around her mouth

and those on her forehead, the less I

recognized the woman I had known. Lively

and strong. Hamza is working in

Germany. He is married to a German,

she said. I can't give you his address. I

don't have it. This is his phone number.

You can phone him this evening from the

phone booth.

As soon as I got back to Amman that

evening, I dialed the code of a town in

Germany and then Hamza's number

in Germany. Somebody answered.

Hamza Nam. Yes, in

Arabic. When I rang Hamza, the first

thing that surprised me was the

gentleness of his voice. In that

there was a true despair. Are you going

to return one day to your country?Which

country?Jordan. That isn't

my country, Jean. I'm

finished. I have Gray hair at

my temples. My injuries often hurt me.

Even if I hadn't forgotten his voice,

it's very gentleness surprised me.

And once again, the thought passed

through my mind. It isn't the justice of

their cause that moves me, it's its

rightness.

When I left the house, I knew that I had

encountered the poetry of the

70s with the Fedayeen,

a total confidence, cautiously aware

I was afraid. As I felt the warm air

outside on my face, it

seemed to me that everything that had

taken place in that house had been a

dream. I left

almost on tiptoe, as one leaves a

room where the bed itself has fallen

asleep.

In September 1982, the massacre

at Shatila wasn't perhaps the turning

point. It happened.

I was affected by it. I talked about

it. I decided to write this book.

Everything that wasn't this book became

distant, almost invisible.

All that I have said and written

happened. But

why is this couple the only real,

profound memory I have left of the

Palestinian revolution?I

did the best I could. To understand to

what extent this revolution was unlike

others, and in a certain way I

did understand. But what remains of it

for me will always be this small house

in Irbid where I slept one night

and 14 years during which I tried to know

if this night had really happened. This

last page of my book is transparent.

The page that was before white

is now overrun from top to bottom with

tiny black marks.

Is reality the sum of these black marks?

Was the Palestinian revolution?Written on

nothingness. An artifice

upon nothingness.