Saleem Ali El-Kayali was first arrested when he was twenty-four. His father had just passed away and they came for him on the third day of mourning. He came and went from prison for eight years, finally settling in a dark cell for one year before he stood in front of a military judge for the five minutes it took to read out his verdict: a life sentence for possession of a weapon—an allegation that he neither confessed to nor was presented evidence of. We are discussing this over afternoon tea with his family. His brother, Ismail, narrates what has happened since Saleem disappeared into prison in 1982 for the last time.
Saleem’s wife gave birth to their daughter in 1983. Instead of attending the delivery of his daughter, Saleem was just beginning his incarceration. The two did not have any contact for fifteen years. It was only then that she was permitted to show her birth certificate to the warden, confirming for the Israelis what had been obvious to everyone else for one-and-a-half decades: she was in fact Saleem’s daughter. She visited several times and they frantically tried to share what he had missed: toilet training, bedtime stories, days at the beach, the sun, the sky, the sea, scrapes and bruises, tears, laughs, joy, learning to read, learning to write, learning to love, learning to remember, remember that the stranger’s face in the portrait was Father. Each visit was laborious. It involved waiting at the border for hours in order to be allowed forty-five minutes together. She only visited several times because when she turned eighteen, in the eyes of the authorities, she ceased to be Saleem’s daughter. She has spent perhaps five hours in total with the man who brought her into this world.
Saleem is now fifty-seven. Spending twenty-nine years in jail has left him with diabetes, stomach problems, and high blood pressure. At least, those were the problems he had four years ago when Ismail was able to visit him last. Now his daughter has a daughter of her own. I ask if he knows that he is a grandfather. They tell me that he probably does. Probably, as in there is not a one hundred percent chance that Saleem is aware of her existence. However, they are hopeful. Every year as a gift for the Eid each prisoner is allowed some news of his family. It is more likely however that Saleem first found out through the prison grapevine, a network that shares news heard on the radio. Maybe someone whispered to him out of nowhere, like a knife in the dark, like a shadow of joy—you’re a grandfather. This is how the Israelis extract their retribution from anyone who dares to resist an illegal occupation.
Ghaiqa, his mother, sits with us today. She has not seen her son in more than ten years. She tells us that she misses him and now cries openly. I shamefacedly hang my head low in silence, and the silence is deafening because there is no message I can impart that will change the fact that she is ninety-seven years old and aching for her son. She sobs, I am going to die. I want to see my son. I hang my head lower because not only have I bought the walls that prevent her son from caring for his fragile mother but I have paid for the jailors as well. She is not even asking for his freedom, just for a visit, a glimpse. No one in the room wants to voice the likelihood that she will not receive it so they console her with the same word that is so common here in Gaza. It is the answer to the fishermen’s wish to do their work without getting shot at and abducted by the Israeli navy. It is the answer to the hope that the drone buzzing above will not give way to the shriek of an F16 and the whistle that only two tons of freefalling TNT can make. It is the answer to the university patient or the cancer patient stuck at the border. Insha’allah.
