up.” And I was surprised at first—but now—I admit that I am in fact imprisoned and not arrested or detained—because a detainee should be detained only until he is brought to court. And from this idea I have immediately progressed to the fact that neither the Governor of the Brigade nor the High Commissioner himself has any right to imprison anyone. In any case—the detention of around fifty of us is due to end on about the 22nd or 23rd of this month—but I do not know if the authority will renew the detention period—we shall see. It would not surprise me—everything here is insulting.
Although the August heat had not abated, something in the air began whistling of autumn, and the sun seemed always to be setting. Hani started writing letters to a newspaper in Jaffa for publication, as a more formal outlet for his frustration. With plenty of time to think in Sarafand, he had been contemplating how adept the British always were at naming: they bombed Jaffa, and named it urban renewal. They arrested a nationalist, and named him a criminal, and naturally Palestinians were all known as Muslims. And since they had announced a plan to declare martial law, and reinforcements were arriving at Haifa in the thousands, with no other weapons at his disposal but the power of his mind and his pen, this was one more battle Hani might try to fight. He began to spend the hours between the bland lunch of bread and tomato sauce and the bland dinner of rice and meat sauce constructing dispassionate arguments in Arabic, describing with phrases borrowed from legal records and Arabic rhetorical tradition the most striking examples of British injustice.
He was in the garden one afternoon writing one of these letters, on the difference between a prisoner and a detainee, consulting Sahar’s correspondence for inspiration, when he looked up from his lap and saw, through an aperture between the neighbouring barracks’ walls, a procession of Arabs in single file with their hands behind their backs. In one of the split seconds allowed by the aperture, Hani saw and recognised the compact body and bright eyes of Abd al-Hamid Shuman, and groaned.
“What is wrong now?” said Hussam Effendi, putting his hands down on his desk.
“They’ve got Shuman,” said Hani. The last soldier vanished behind the wall, and a cloud of dust filled the breach.
Abd al-Hamid Shuman was the founder of the Arab Bank, and Secretary of the Strike Fund Committee. The detainees in Hani’s barracks had often comforted each other by remarking that the British might cut off “organisers” like Hani all they wished and have no discernible effect on their struggle. Once the spirit of revolution was abroad in the chest of the fellah, it would not be repressed. But now it looked as though they had finally gone for the coffers. A wiser strategy; one must at least give them that credit.
Abd al-Hamid did not seem in low spirits, however. During the exercise hour he greeted Hani with four kisses and a grin, and asked for his news in a non-particular way as if they had happened to run into each other on the street. Then, with a spurt of energy, he turned on his heel and approached one of the guards. The sun baked down. Hani watched; they seemed to be laughing. The guard addressed his colleague, then a fourth man joined them, and within a few minutes, Abd al-Hamid emerged from the exchange carrying a football.
“What are you doing with that?” said Hani.
“Yalla everyone,” called Abd al-Hamid.
Across the yard, heads lifted.
“I need two teams.”
The arrival of Abd al-Hamid thus inaugurated a strange period in the detention camp when, at any one time, one could find at least fourteen men playing football on the sports field under his umpirage.
Hani did not participate in these games. Occasionally he would sit and watch, but increasingly he took advantage of the peace in the garden while everyone was on the field. One day in the middle of August, he was composing a new letter to the newspaper on the topic of martial law when he developed a terrible toothache.
He assumed it was a muscular injury. But over the course of the afternoon the ache narrowed its focus to three particular teeth, around which the gum became so inflamed that at dinner he was forced to chew exclusively on the other side of his mouth. The doctor at the medical centre gave him a bag of salt with