Laying Eggs in the Air

By Al Dunford

Adham Rayyes, a Canadian of Palestinian descent, successfully negotiates the path of a young Arab immigrant, but is compelled to seek answers to the ultimate issue that haunts Palestinians everywhere; that of returning to, and finding a home, in the land of his ancestors. Is God conspiring to create surprising circumstances that reunite him with childhood friends, including a Jewish roommate, in a circuitous, but seemingly inevitable confrontation with the truth? The prophets, old and new, Moses, Mohammed, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela and Obama, help to guide him in this odyssey of purification.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496920225

Al Dunford

Al Dunford is an international teacher who has spent time in the Arab world. He has Palestinian and Jewish friends, and his first novel, “Laying Eggs in the Air”, was written to help try to bridge the gulf of distrust between them. The Tears of Rasputin is a cautionary tale regarding the danger (madness?), of trying and convicting an entire world faith, for the sins of a few.

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© 2014 Al Dunford. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/03/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-2023-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-2022-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911644

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

PART 1

Oh Canada!

Chapter 1 The Killers of Beirut

Chapter 2 Moving Camp

Chapter 3 I’m Not Alone

Chapter 4 Fitting In

Chapter 5 Still Arab

Chapter 6 The Mosque

Chapter 7 To Be Wanted

Chapter 8 World Peace

Chapter 9 The Education of the Brotherhood

Chapter 10 Brothers in Bluster (Busy ‘B’s)

Chapter 11 Breaking Bread Together

Chapter 12 Moses…..Meet Moses

Chapter 13 The Resolution

Chapter 14 Some Doubts

Chapter 15 Ari’s Grandfather’s Story

Chapter 16 The Great Debate

Chapter 17 The Zionist of the NHL

Chapter 18 Fair is Fair

PART 2

The Return

Chapter 19 Toronto to New York (Economy Class)

Chapter 20 Pity the Nation

Chapter 21 Returning to the Nest

Chapter 22 Moral Equivalence

Chapter 23 Party with God

Chapter 24 God Forgets Shatila

Chapter 25 The Cats of Shatila

Chapter 25 Wissam’s Telecommunications Tale

Chapter 27 A Miracle of Doggedness

Chapter 28 Judas Iscariot

Chapter 29 Farah’s Garden

Chapter 30 Come Away With Me

Chapter 31 The Appeal

Chapter 32 A Martyr for a Nation

Chapter 33 Laying Eggs in the Air

Chapter 34 Going Home

Chapter 35 Five Years On

PART 3

Oh Palestine!

Chapter 36 The Real Ari Allon

Chapter 37 A Formula for Peace?

Chapter 38 Tweet Tweet

Chapter 39 Biology and Power

Chapter 40 For the Love of Farah

Chapter 41 Ari, Antoinette and Farah Have Tea

Chapter 42 Preparing the Nest

Chapter 43 The Siren Call to the Wall

Chapter 44 No Resistance?…. The Red Sea is Parted?

Chapter 45 Ms Knesevitch Speaks…. and the World is Listening

Chapter 46 How Deep is the Well?

Chapter 47 The Sisters of Gaza

Chapter 48 The Vice is Turned

Chapter 49 Ms Knesevitch is Fading

Chapter 50 Steady as She Goes

Chapter 51 Collision Course

Chapter 52 Abraham Frowns

Chapter 53 At Last Sadat

Chapter 54 Wissam on the Way

PART 4

Oh Israel

Chapter 55 A Most Presidential Vow

Chapter 56 Round and Round We Go

Chapter 57 The Gandhi of Palestine

Chapter 58 Talk of Liberation

Chapter 59 The Ides of March

Chapter 60 Scrambled Eggs

Chapter 61 But Baba?

Post Script

This story is

dedicated to the memory of Captain Wissam Eid. In the face of fear and intimidation, he chose self-respect and dignity over life without it.

FOREWORD

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I’m sure in the writing world, it is not advisable to preface your literary effort with a stream of apologies. But it is precisely because I have no illusions that, not only does this story not qualify as literature, it doesn’t really fit into any of the accepted genres of storytelling, (at least in the present age), that I feel the need to, maybe not apologize, but at least forewarn the reader of what will follow in these pages. I believe it is closest to a parable, but if so, it surely would be considered one of the longest parables ever written!

Although it is a fictional story, I am confident that there is much truth in the pages that follow. Wissam Eid’s contribution to the Hariri tribunal is real. The portion of his life included in this story is not entirely factual. For example, he didn’t live long enough to enjoy fatherhood. The narrator, Adham Rayyes, is a fictional character, but some of his early school-hood experience is based on my own personal experience. Farah is purely a construct of my imagination, as is Ari.

Regarding the heart of the story, the decades-old conflict between Israel and Palestine, all I can say is that I don’t promise a balanced commentary. From the time I was old enough to have an opinion, I have followed this real life tragi-drama with interest. My best friend was a Christian Zionist. We argued a lot over this. I have done my best to augment my understanding of the conflict with additional research, but I don’t present myself as any kind of an authority, either morally or scholarly.

It is a lay person’s perspective; non-Arab; non-Jewish. It is my conviction that, details of history aside, the broad strokes of the conflict could be understood by a child. Indeed, a child’s intuited concept of fairness is part of the story. At the end of the day, it is a problem of sharing a piece of land. It is really the story of bullying on an international scale. Children understand bullying. You can’t read this parable without coming away with my feelings about which direction the bullying takes.

I hope the reader finds some pleasure in the telling. Perhaps I could be accused of a touch of vanity or presumptuousness when I say, I also hope that my parable becomes one more drop in the ocean of hope, for an end to this shameful chapter of history.

PART 1

OH CANADA!

CHAPTER 1

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The Killers of Beirut

The landscape was grieving but we were not. We had died and gone to heaven. Not the heaven of the sixty-four virgins, but a boy’s heaven; a heaven on earth. And we were not martyrs but soldiers. The rubble, the craters, the crippled ruins of our once divine Beirut, were the ethereal arena of our daily wars. For nine-year old survivors of the real war, like Wissam and me, this was what we lived for. Sure, we did our penance in school from eight to three every day like all the other kids. But from the moment we woke to the inevitable dinnertime truce, this was all we thought and cared about. We and about twenty others… including Farah… I’ll get to her later.

Of course our platoons were always in flux. They were subject to the vagaries of uncompleted homework and various other misdemeanors of boyhood. There were days when we had to enlist the likes of Talal or Hamed; 6 year-olds clearly too young for urban guerrilla warfare, but necessary to fill out the roster.

The rules of engagement were clear, fair, and democratically argued. Consensus is easy for 9-year olds. You can’t have fun without consensus; the wisdom of children. And, although once the games began, every soldier was equal in rank, there could be no doubt that Wissam and I were the generals. We were the brains behind the games. Like the real wars, logistics mattered; not the logistics of re-supply, but rather the logistics of site selection, rotating enemies, and safety. Yes safety! I know, not the first thing that comes to mind for rough and tumble, battle-hardened killers like we boys of Beirut. But that’s why Wissam and I were the generals. We could see a few steps ahead. I was especially alert for any dangers lurking in the rubble, because my mother had been very severe on this point. For me at least, the message couldn’t have been any clearer. The first time one of us got seriously wounded in action… a cave in, an unstable wall, a bayoneting by rusty steel….. the perils were many….., my rank would mean nothing. The Commander –in – Chief would intervene and the games would end. This was unthinkable. And so the games needed generals and Wissam and I wore the mantle and we wore it well. Sure, scratches, bruises and cuts, were commonplace. But it couldn’t be war without at least some wounded. Not even the make believe, 9-year olds battles of Beirut in 1985.

Our games went on after almost every school day that year, with drawn out skirmishes on weekends, when Wissam and I would also do our reconnaissance for the following week’s battles, looking for new and promising venues. Yes, this was heaven, and I prayed it would never end.

The rules of kid’s war games are usually straightforward. After all, most of us were 9 or 10, and when you consider Talal, Hamed and the other underage enlisted, we had to keep things pretty simple. But on the other hand, anyone who knows anything at all about the Israeli invasion of 1982, knows that it was anything but simple. Wissam and I were generals with good reason. It was tough to co-ordinate war games real enough to accommodate the actual slate of adversaries involved in the original version; the Palestinians, the Phalange, the Druze, the Maronites, Amal and of course the Israelis; this was tough!

It wasn’t perfect, our heaven. We had to make room for Satan. Someone had to be the Israelis and someone had to be the Phalange. Really, to be truthful, that was the only reason Farah got in. Everybody was against the idea but me. Even Wissam, who generally was the kindest most caring kid in our neighbourhood, was opposed. Not just opposed; he was downright mean about it. Farah went home in tears when we rejected her the first time. She had hung around hoping we might be so short of personnel that we might have to reconsider. Wissam surprised me by adding to her misery by calling her ‘maluus zobr’ (she has no dick), which made everybody laugh. This was not like Wissam. Even as a 9-year old, he seemed to have an adult sense of people’s pain and was the first in line to console, in any situation. But in our world, this was not real war with a girl brandishing a kalashnikov; especially a make-believe wooden, caricature of a kalashnikov, carved by nature, from the famed cedars of the Lebanese highlands. Our imaginations were malleable, but even kids have their limits in fiction.

After all these years, I still remember Farah. I don’t exactly know why. Outside of Wissam, I have only vague memories of the others. Maybe it was because she was the only classmate that stood between me and being the smartest in the class. As hard as I tried she always seemed to be a little bit better. Maybe it was because she was pretty. I don’t remember liking her in any teasing way like that. More likely it was because she was strong and pretty. She stood out from the other girls because she wore the hijab. Lebanese girls, at least those of Beirut in 1985 generally didn’t; especially 9 year olds. But rumor had it that this was Farah’s choice. Even her older sister went hijab-less, which lent credence to the gossip. Wearing the hijab is a sign of devotion in Islam. I can remember thinking how odd that Farah could feel this devotion to God and at the same time feel so broken-hearted at being turned away from our war. She was certainly different.

Maybe this was why I decided to intervene on her behalf. After all, I was a general, even if only in my own mind. And besides, apart from Wissam, to be honest, at least in the fog of my memory, (and it was 25 years ago don’t forget), we didn’t have the brightest collection of recruits that the LLA has ever put together. So when I argued that adding Farah to the Israeli army each day (and that was a non-negotiable pre-condition), it would make our battles even more real than we had managed to make them already, the dopes…, I mean the infantry…, quietly nodded their agreement and the deal was done. Everybody knew of the conscription of female Israeli soldiers, from their fathers or grandfathers. It was just another perversion of the Zionists to go along with their drinking of the blood of Arab children and, the idea that Allah turned Jews into apes and pigs, that we were taught to believe in our indoctrination of hatred for them. If we had any disagreements or tension in our games, it was almost always about who had to play the Israelis on any particular day. But being 9 years old, any reservation about your allegiances, quickly dissipated in the thrill of battle. Including Farah as our lone female sabra, simply meant one less soul, or pardon me, soldier, that had to wrestle with this necessary burden of identity. And of course, guess what? Just like the classroom, Farah proved to be a cut above. She altered the balance of power.

We had parted with reality by agreeing on equal numbers for every battle. Whereas the Israelis, to be authentic, should have had two or three times the numbers, and better weapons, we conceded that level of authenticity for obvious reasons. But here was Farah, with her surprising quickness and surefootedness over precarious rubble-strewn terrain, causing the rank and file to complain about the teams being unfair.

I intervened again. There was no way we were changing. Farah was going to stay our lone sabra. Sure she was cunning. And true, it seemed the make-believe Israelis always seemed to be a little more organized. But this had more to do with her natural ability to lead (all of us could sense it) than the fact that her team had the advantage of one constant member versus the daily flux of the other groups. No, we would just have to raise our own game plans. I knew, except for Wissam, the others weren’t up to the challenge. But for me, it heightened the excitement and the fun to a whole new level. I could hardly think of anything else during the day. Algebra be damned; unless of course it held any key to outwitting Farah. It didn’t.

And then it didn’t matter. Just like that the wars ended; at least for me. The ceasefire was imposed from outside. What was left was total personal annihilation… my friends, my school, Farah, Wissam, in short, my life…. all gone; and the humiliation of defeat. My life as I knew it was over. But the beauty of being nine of course, is that humiliations are fleeting; the resilience almost magical. In very short order my mind had leapt the canyon of pain and landed on the other side of what may as well have been for me, Never- Never Land. I was going to a faraway land. I was going to become a Canadian.

CHAPTER 2

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Moving Camp

My father Bashir, was an electrical- engineer with Siemens, one of the world’s biggest engineering conglomerates. For better or for worse (I was undecided) he was being transferred to an office in Toronto Canada. I found out later they referred to him as a rising star in the corporation. Of course for me, at the time, this meant nothing other than our family was being uprooted and our roots ran deep.

For a young boy, this translated into nervous excitement. On the other hand, for my sister Dalal, it seemed there was much more anguish than excitement. After my parents broke the news to us, she ran to her best friend’s house in tears and only came back very late in the night. I could hear her sobbing long after midnight. For 16-yr old girls, I guess friendships are not just about jokes and games, but more about shared feelings and understandings; maybe even feelings about boys! I worried about her.

As far as my mother Noriya was concerned, it was impossible to know her feelings. She went about the impossible task of packing up and moving our family the same way she approached every challenge in our home. Arab mothers are good at managing calamity. They are the generals of the household and they seem to just accept things