An Intifadeh Of the Soul

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But Palestinians have also proved to be their own accomplished enemies, with a long record of missed political chances and a tradition of terrorism that the West has had trouble accepting as the work of freedom fighters. It is no wonder that even their Arab brothers are sometimes afraid to let them in.

The Barakats, reunited, told stories about when they were young in Anabta, their native village, near Nablus. Adel, now prosperous with real estate, remembers the primal Anabta, famous for its olive and almond trees, where he wants to retire to play backgammon and think of his childhood: "You have the most happiness in your life when you are a child. You had good dreams and you were happy in your village."

Palestinian memories of the native villages grow idealized in exile and occupation. The world's 4.5 million Palestinians have polished the stone of that primal Palestine in nightly retellings until it shines in the mind like the first innocence: ur-Palestine, the origin myth.

The Palestinian after the fall has been double-selfed, abstracted out of homeland. But many Palestinians have also flourished, soared even, in their forced dispersion. It is not always pitiable to be double-selfed.

The memories are a stylized passion for the essential thing: a land, and therefore an identity of one's own. Would all those Palestinians prospering in Kuwait or Detroit, working as doctors, merchants, engineers, really wish to return, to invest their money and skills in the Palestinian homeland they demand? If the homeland ever comes, reality will test nostalgia.

THE DAUGHTERS OF GAZA

Three daughters of Abu Faisal sit in the sunlight in a courtyard in Gaza. Zeita remembers the evening during Ramadan when soldiers fired tear gas because the shabab (young Palestinians) had been throwing stones in their refugee camp, Jabalia. A canister sailed over the wall into the courtyard. Screams, confusion. The canister pinwheeled on the floor, spewing gas. The daughters ran for the bottles of cologne that they keep. They soaked tissues with it and held them to nose and mouth as they retreated gasping to the corners of the house. Cologne works against tear gas. So do onions.

Two of the sisters are named for other sisters who are now dead. One night in 1971, six armed P.L.O. fedayeen were crossing the street, just outside the house, and heading east toward Israel when they were spotted by an Israeli patrol.

A street battle started. One Palestinian fell wounded. Faika, who was 18, also belonged to the P.L.O. She grabbed her two-year-old sister Hanan as a prop -- just a baby-sitter blundering into a fight -- and got to the fallen man, seizing his Kalashnikov. She was about to start firing when the Israelis shot her down, and her two-year-old sister. There are many martyred babies in the tribal cause. "We are proud of our sisters who were killed," say the girls in the courtyard. Their shining black eyes are direct and passionate.

The house of Abu Faisal is a peaceful island this morning. Outside its walls, the unpaved, rutted streets brim with last night's rain. Goats browse in the street garbage. Donkeys graze among gravestones. An open sewer empties into an enormous, death-gray cesspond. Astonishing metal debris lies everywhere, as if a sadist of automobiles had been stabbing cars and ripping them apart and scattering their flesh.