I don’t want to die disfigured under the rubble. I want to be hit in the middle of the street by a shell, suddenly. I want to burn completely, to turn into charcoal, so that not even those worms in the novel can do their eternal duty on me: worms don’t eat charcoal. I’ll therefore say to myself I’m looking for a newspaper, to justify my walking in a street empty even of cats and dogs. I’ll pay no heed to what’s happening outside the window—shells, rockets, ships, jets, artillery—all blowing my way like a raging wind, falling like rain, shaking the place like an earthquake. Human will can’t do anything against these; they’re a fate that can’t be turned back. All the unimaginably evil inventions human creativity has ever come up with and all the advances technology has achieved—their efficacy is now being tested on our bodies. Will this be the longest day in history? No one is washing the dead. Let the dead then wash themselves—I mean with blood flowing more freely than water. I hoard my treasure of water and use each drop with extreme care. Every drop has a role. I almost have to measure water in drops. Five hundred for washing the hair. Two thousand for the body. One hundred for the mouth. One hundred for shaving. Twenty for each ear. Fifty for each armpit. And…And…For every drop there’s a corresponding part of the body.

What is water? Who says it has no color, flavor, or odor? What is water? Chemically, it’s H₂O. But is it only that? What, then, is the fragrance that opens out the skin, to bring us to a feast there, in the vastness of the body and its quarters, until we almost take on the nature of butterflies? Water is the joy of the senses and the air that surrounds them. Water is that very air, distilled, tangible, perceptible, saturated with light. For this reason, prophets have urged their people to love water: “We made from water every living thing.”^[9] I remember Ibn Fadlan’s Epistle and feel nauseated by that one vessel of water used to wash a whole army.^[10] Our water has been cut by those acting on behalf of leftover Crusaders, yet Saladin used to send ice and fruits to the enemy in the hope that “their hearts would melt,” as he used to say.

All of a sudden I break out laughing over the song that says, “Water will quench the thirst of the thirsty.” “How did the singer arrive at this stunning discovery?” I ask myself. In Tel Zaatar, the killers used to hunt Palestinian women at the spring, at the broken water pipe, as if hunting thirsty gazelles.^[11] Killer water. Water mixed with the blood of the thirsty who risked their lives for a cup of it. Water that lit the fires of war among the Bedouins in times gone by. Water good for improving the negotiating position of those whose dried-up humanity hasn’t been melted by water. Water that got Arab kings moving, saddling them with the burden of getting in touch with the American president by phone to make a profitable deal: Take the oil, give us water. Take us, but give us water!

The sound of water is a wedding celebration louder, much louder, than the roar of these jets. The sound of water is a mirror for the living roots of the earth. The sound of water is freedom. The sound of water is humanity itself.

And no sooner did the White House in Washington announce that the water had been turned on again in West Beirut than people rushed to their taps. All except us, the tenants of this tall building rising to the highest call of thirst. Its owner had put us under siege several years before Beirut itself came under siege. When authority in the country collapsed, he went mad with his own authority—power over water. Whenever he had a quarrel with one of his tenants, his wife, or his bank account, he rushed to cut off the water for all of us. For that reason, he had long ago instilled in us a patience for water. He had led us to value water and had taught us to feel a greater joy when it gushed for an hour than all the desert tribes of Dahis had ever felt. He had transformed us into watchmen over water pipes, alert from dawn for the sound of the awaited water. And when we heard the water gurgle, we declared a holiday and stored what we could in pots and pans, bottles and dishes, cups and glasses, and in the pockets of leather jackets. For water in this building was a treasure to be celebrated with rituals and discussed at evening get-togethers. Talk of water had united us and turned us into one family. But the owner of the building was jealous of Ariel Sharon, and competed with him in sadism. When West Beirut rejoiced over the release of the water, we had to be content with mere solidarity, because the water did not reach us and their joy did not include us. “We’re the last prisoners, O landord. Forgive us sins we haven’t committed, O Abu Rabi’. There’s a war going on, O landlord. Be magnanimous, O Abu Rabi’. Give us our share of the water, O landlord.” But no one heard, and no one came to intercede for us, until I turned to the armed people’s committees for help. They came and released the water by force, and from sheer joy over the water we forgot about the war and the siege.