LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Hear Me Out: Time for cease-fire between a gay Palestinian son and his father |
by Mubarak Dahir |
My father and I have been waging a family war over my sexuality for more than a decade. But today that very personal battle, which has often consumed me in alternating waves of anger and guilt and recrimination, seems almost irrelevant. Regardless of what my father has done to me as his gay son, regardless of the rejection and hurt and betrayal, I do not want him to die at the hands of Israeli army bullets or advancing tanks. Today, more than ever, that seems a real fear, a real possibility. Sabir, my father, is now 82 years old and lives in his native Palestinian village just a mile from Ramallah, home of the Palestinian Authority headquarters where Yasir Arafat is holed up in a candle-lit office while Israeli army tanks smash through concrete walls just outside and splatter the surrounding buildings with gunfire. I look at the newspaper photos of destruction and watch the television reports of Israeli soldiers rounding up Palestinian men, blindfolding them, and taking them to determent camps to plant numbers on their forearms. I sigh relief that my father is too old to suffer this particular humiliation. But I know that bullets and bombs do not spare the elderly, and I worry he may fall victim to the violence, that his body could be just another number in the rising death rate of Palestinians who, as of this writing, have suffered about four times as many deaths as Israelis in the past 18 months since the latest intifadeh, or uprising, began. I can't remember the last time I actually spoke with my father. Perhaps it was 18 months ago, when the new intifadeh got under way. Maybe it was even longer than that. I do remember finally answering his letters a little more than two years ago. For 11 years, he had written me claiming he wanted us to maintain our relationship as father and son. But for me, he had severed that relationship in 1989, when he fractured our family into pieces. Soon after discovering I was gay, my father retired as a college professor in the United States and returned to his homeland with his American wife, my mother. The move had long been expected, as my father had always talked about going "back home." My mother, who had spent ten years of her life in the Middle East and learned a new language and adopted to a new culture, happily followed the man she had loved for 30 years. But a year after they returned to the Middle East, my father took unexpected, drastic measures to deal with the fact that I, his only son, was a gay man who would not produce a male offspring to carry on the family name: He divorced my mother, leaving her homeless and penniless. Then 69 years old, he wed a woman 40 years his junior through an arranged marriage, with the sole purpose of producing new baby boys, straight ones this time, he hoped, who would bear him grandchildren, heirs to the family name. Sabir got his wish, and fathered four more children, two of them boys. But with that, he lost his first son, forever. Or so I thought. After my mother died two and a half years ago, I surprised even myself with the decision that I needed to reestablish some kind of contact with Sabir. Not knowing just what to expect, I finally answered one of the many letters he had sent me over the years. Sabir seemed happy to hear from me. But he showed no remorse for what he had done. I finally accepted he would never say he was sorry. Even worse, however, after a few letters and phone calls, it became clear he was still trying to manipulate the conditions of our relationship. The number one sticking point: He didn't want to hear the gay details of my life. It wasn't long before I lost heart in our fragile, faltering, and flawed peace process. Our contact dwindled to the occasional e-mail. But now it is all out war, and I realize for the first time that Sabir really could die, and with him, any hopes of salvaging a peace to our family's past. At the urging of my lover, I skip the e-mail and pick up the phone. The connection is so scratchy, I can barely make out Sabir's voice when he answers his cell phone. Six times, we get cut off. Six times, I call back. Yelling over the static and the years of estrangement, Sabir tells me how, for months, they have only been allowed to go the mile to Ramallah on foot because cars and buses were banned. Now, they are not even allowed to make the walk. The village survives on local fruits and vegetables, and bread baked in another village a mile in the opposite direction from Ramallah, a village people are still allowed to walk to. An Israeli military checkpoint has been directly in front of the house where Sabir lives, because the road splits there. Most days, nothing and no one gets past. Some nights, Sabir says, Israeli soldiers conduct military exercises through the streets of the village, yelling and running and shooting off their guns in the air. Mostly, it is meant as a reminder that they are still there, that the war goes on. I think about our own, personal war as I listen intently while Sabir fills in the desperate details: The children have not been to school in a week. Because of roadblocks, it's been a year since he's been able to reach the university where he used to teach. It's impossible to make his way into Ramallah even to see a doctor and get his high blood pressure and diabetes medicine. "We are all in one big jail," he tells me. "We feel the noose tightening around our necks." I do not talk about my gay life, or even mention the lover who insisted I call him rather than e-mail. And for once, that doesn't seem to matter.Mubarak Dahir receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 03, April 5, 2002 |