ترجمة قصة "هدية العيد" لغسان كنفاني
A Present for the Holiday
By
Ghassan Kanafani
Translated by:
Hasan M. Abu Khalil
I went to sleep very late. I have been reading a book by a Chinese author called San Tsee, who lived a hundred years before Christianity. I was totally engrossed by the book which relieved me of all my fatigue, but all this has nothing to do with our subject here. In his book he said that war is a trick, and victory is your ability to anticipate everything and prevent your enemy from anticipating anything. He also said that war is a surprise. He said that war is the domination of high spirits. He said that…
But all this has nothing to do with our subject.
I went to sleep very late, while the phone rang very early. The voice on the other end of the phone was quite alert, wakeful; it was almost joyful and proud. It didn’t imply any feeling of guilt. I was half awake. I said to myself: this is a man who is an early riser, he has nothing to be busy with at night. It was a rainy, stormy and thunderous night. I was wondering where, in such conditions, were those men who were crawling through darkness to offer us pure unsoiled honor? It was a rainy night, and this man on the other end of the phone…
But all this also has nothing to do with our subject.
He said: "I have an idea. We are going to collect children toys and send them to the expatriates in Jordan, to the refugee camps. You know, it is the holiday season".
I was half awake. The refugee camps, those stains of disgrace that are stained on our exhausted foreheads, those worn rags fluttering like banners of defeat, scattered haphazardly over the steppes of mud, dust, and pity. I used to teach in one of these camps. One of my little students was named Darweesh, he used to sell round-cakes after school. I was chasing him around the tents and metal sheets, stepping in mud and mud puddles to carry him to the evening class. He had short, curly always damp hair. He was very smart, and he was the best in class at writing a composition. Had he had something to live on, he would have been a genius. The camp was big, it was called……
But all this has nothing to do with the subject.
The man on the other end of the phone said: "An excellent project, isn't it? You are going to help us. We need a press campaign, you know". I was half awake. A suitable description came to mind. “Mr. X spent the holiday collecting toys for the refugees, and the ladies of elite society are going to distribute these toys in the refugee camps.” But the camps are muddy, and the fashion this year dictates short dresses and white high heels. Yesterday I tore out a photo with news clipping that said: “The beauty X was seen spending the evening in X night club. The man sitting with her spilled his drink on her dress, and in retaliation she poured the bottle on his suit.” I said: it must have cost one hundred pounds at least. I said: and this price…
But all this also has nothing to do with the subject.
He continued speaking: “We are going to wrap them in protective wrapping paper, and we'll look for trucks to transport them for free. We will distribute them there wrapped, and it's going to be a surprise.” Surprise? War is a surprise! That's what the Chinese writer, San Tsee who lived five hundred years before Christ, said. I was half awake, and I couldn't hold back my visions. I have such a psychological state of mind, especially when I get tired, or when I can't believe what my eyes see. Sometimes I look at people and wonder: are these really our faces? How can we clean from them the mud shed over them by June so fast? Can we really smile? Can we…
But this also has nothing to do with the subject.
As the telephone receiver was slipping out of my hand he said:
"Each child is going to get his present wrapped on the morning of the holiday, having in it an unknown toy. Each and his luck"
The telephone receiver dropped out of my hand as my head rested on the pillow and my memory went back in time to nineteen years ago.
It was 1949. They told us that day that the Red Crescent was going to distribute holiday toys among us. I was a child, wearing short trousers and a grey shirt made of linen, and putting on worn out shoes with no socks. It was the coldest winter the region had ever had. On that morning, when I began to walk, my toes got frozen and were covered with a thin glass-like layer. I sat on the sidewalk crying before a man came and carried me to a near-by shop. They were burning wood there in a tin drum, and they made me sit close to it. I pushed my feet towards the flames until they were almost in it. Then I continued running towards the Red Crescent headquarters, where I lined up with hundreds of children waiting for our turn.
The packages were far away from us, and we were shivering like an exposed crop of reeds. We hopped so that the blood would keep circulating in our veins. A million years passed before it was my turn, when a clean nurse handed me a square red box.
I went running back home without opening that box. Now, after 19 years, I do not remember at all what that box contained, except for one thing, one thing only: it was a pack of powdered lentil soup.
I held the packet of soup tight with my cold reddened hands, and I hugged it to my chest facing ten children: my brothers, sisters, and some relatives who looked at me through twenty wide open eyes.
The box of course contained a wonderful toy, but it was not edible, and so it was ignored and lost. I kept the packet of soup with me for a week. I used to give my mother the amount of a cup of water to cook it for us.
I can remember nothing but cold and ice which froze my toes, and the packet of soup.
The voice of the early waking man was still buzzing in my ears in that grey exhausted morning, when the bells began to ring through a terrifying emptiness, and I was coming back from my short excursion to the past which is still pulsing in my mind, and I was…..
But all this, also, has nothing to do with the subject.
]December 1968
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http://www.arabswata.org/forums/uplo...1172504053.doc
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