Upstairs, Downstairs at Andala Page #2

A Palestinian Ghost Story

• Fantasy

								


"Permit me as a favor to see your face once. Hello. Are you still here? Who are you? Why are you here?"  I repeated in vain.  But, by then my fear of him had disappeared for the most part.  “Not so fast kid. You will see me when you know.” “Know what?” He didn’t answer, now making me feel like this was a theater where a performance had been arranged and his strange behavior were part of the attractions. But if so, who was the audience? Another night I was carrying the trash to the dumpster when I heard the roar of dishes and slamming of pots. “What is going on?” I rushed back in.
“What can I do for you son?” I was unprepared for that sudden question. I paused before answering, “Well, there are things I like to know.”
“Okay. But first have you any painkillers?”
“Painkillers?!”
“Yes. You know. Aspirin, Tylenol.”
“No. Why?”
“Because you’re giving me a headache with your non-stop inquiries.  Good night son.”  I wished he would stop calling me that. I had lost my father when I was a young child and practically had no memory of him.  At night, I had a dream that I was at our village mosque and the preacher was reading a poem: “You hear the news from Palestine?/Wherever he is they test him/He refuses his days/As a head that collects the illusion of others.”  In the dream I was listening attentively sitting next to my younger brothers in a crowd until I raised my head and saw that the preacher, flanked by a row of Palestinian security, was none other than Yasser Arafat. The discovery jolted me and I woke up in a state of excitement. I looked outside and saw the dim glare of a half moon through the darkly clouds.  Quickly I reached for my cell to look up Arafat on Yutube and then randomly hit on one of his interviews -- with an American reporter. Then I switched to the one on Arafat’s speech at the United Nations  dressed in a neat khaki uniform and his familiar black and white keffiyeh,  head-dress -- and I was stunned when I heard him repeat to an applauding audience, “Don’t let the olive branch fall from my hands.”   

         Instantly I called home and was able to reach my mother after several attempts with the busy circuit. “Mother.  I have to tell you something.  There is a ghost at Andala. It’s chairman Arafat.”  She laughed hysterically and instantly thought I was trying to cheer her up; and when I insisted that it was the truth she marveled that same thing had happened to her when she was young, with her own grandfather.   “Don’t laugh mother. This is serious. What should I do?”  She paused for a moment and then in a make-believe serious tone said, “give him my regards. God bless always wanted to die in Jerusalem.” She then recounted that sometime after my father’s death, Arafat had paid us a courtesy visit and had put me on his lap and let me play with his beard. “We even had a picture taken with him,” she recalled. “Really?! How come I never saw it mother?”  She said that for our own security she had destroyed it ‘after the troubles began and we had to relocate.”  I was mesmerized, wished Chairman Arafat would be visible for only a few minutes so that I could take a picture with him. 

-III-

          I kept cursing myself.  The ghost had abandoned Andala after I had blown his cover by childishly yelling the next night “Hello Chairman Arafat. It’s you isn’t it Sir?”  I felt sad and frustrated when he didn’t show up to do his regular chore at the night’s end, blaming myself. How could I let our beloved, and deceased, leader, lower himself like that -- idiot. “My sincere apology Sir. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”  It was useless.  After a few days, I tried to forget about him, especially after I talked to my mother again and she cautioned me to stop my freak hallucinations.   “You always did have a fertile imagination. I shouldn’t have read you the Arabian Nights all that time when you were sick with chicken pox.”  Was I dreaming this fascinating yet inexplicable encounter, and could it be that through a miracle I had been turned into a character inside one of Princess Sheharezad’s Thousand and One Night stories? I found myself pondering this highly improbable scenario, but only for a passing moment. The following night I was able to locate that French song on my cell phone and I was reading it when the ghost interrupted me.
“Haha. I’m impressed.  But with your Arab accent no one knows what you’re singing.”  He obviously couldn’t hear himself, I almost laughed. “It’s the pronunciation son.”
“YOU ARE CHAIRMAN ARAFAT, NO?”
“I am who you want me to be.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?”
“Me?”
“Yes. You.  I’m talking to you. I don’t see any other ghost here.”
“You say I ‘m a ghost?”
“You’re not?”
“No. Of course not. You are.”
“I am what?”
“A ghost.”
“But you just called me Arafat.”
“Yes. You are – the ghost of Arafat.”
“Make up your mind now. I am or the ghost of Arafat, can’t be both.” He chuckled.
“I listened to your speeches. Same exact voice, especially when you say “don’t let me drop the olive branch.”
“Oh that line. You must admit has a nice rhythm to it, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
“Me too. Makes two of us.”
“But why?”
“Why what?”
“Well, why did you say it?”
“Simple. It was falling, too heavy, I needed help.”
“I see. You needed the whole world to help you with some branch.” 
“You’re cracking me up boy.  If we’re not to be ghost of a nation, any help counts.” He then confided in me that he has recently ran into some of those delegates at the UN and they had confessed to him that they felt like getting up and dancing when he was repeating that line.  “Oops. Some one’s coming.” It was Hassan. “Let’s go it’s late.” “Okay” I said and turned the lights off, even though I hated cutting short that first meaningful conversation with Mister Arafat’s ghost.  “You need to teach me French.” I whispered on the way out. “With pleasure son, but after I quiz your Arabic, haha.” But I knew what my most immediate and important assignment was: to read and learn all there was to know about Arafat. 

“Mother. Tell me about Arafat. Did he get, like, get angry about little things?” I popped the question on the way home in a freezing temperature. My mother was somewhat disappointed, had thought in earnest that her son was cured of the malady which had disturbed his mind. The lines were fuzzy and she pretended that I was talking about my dad and I didn’t bother to correct her when she answered an emphatic no. “Your dad was the coolest man in the world, really.” I seized the moment to touch a family taboo. “How did he die again?” “Well. I don’t like to talk about these things on the telephone. You know how he died, a hero.”  Of course she would defend him to the death, but wasn’t my father a local police and had been accused of being a collaborator?  “Don’t listen to what people say. He just did his duty.” “Duty to whom?” I pressed her.  All I knew was that my father had been caught in the middle of a fight between our village and the settlers and he had blocked a counter-attack at a school, a sin for which he subsequently paid with his life.  Instead of answering, my mom changed the subject to the more pressing issue of money -- she still had not received the sum that I had sent her through my uncle, who was now pressing me to go and join him in Detroit. At least she now seemed less worried about my visitations by ghosts, particularly one that simply disappeared few days at a time without any explanation, each time leaving me in the suspense of whether or not I had seen, heard, the last of our past president.

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