How Old is the Queen of England?
The old dog lumbers beside me, exhaling and inhaling laboriously and tracking my steps with her bowed head turned white with old age. Owls perch on the branches canopying the path, against the indigo background of the darkening sky. They give us sideways glances and emit long whistles like rubber toys. Their eyes are open in wonderment.
It s a familiar route. It begins at the breach in the concrete fence, shortly before sunset, and ends at the exact same place half an hour later. A twilight walk through the park. Except that this neighborhood park, which divides Tel Aviv s last remaining open fields their fate sealed, they merely await execution by contractor from the affluent suburbs of the northern city, happens to also be the Kiryat Shaul Regional Cemetery.
Tawfīq Zayyād accompanied by Amal and Rābʿa Murqus, the daughters of Nimer Murqus in Rāas an-Nāqūra. Photo from the Digital Archive of the Palestinian Museum.
Unlike the author of this academic biography who never met the Palestinian leader Tawfiq Zayyad and only knew of him through the mainly Zionist Hebrew press, I knew Tawfiq Zayyad and respected him since the Nakba. At that life-changing juncture, he was nearly twice my age of eleven years, someone with literary promise, revolutionary bend of mind, daring, Palestinian nationalism, communist convictions and a booming voice to back it all up in his speeches. Yet this rising star was approachable even to me and my agemates. His harsh-edged voice was difficult to ignore especially with the-then-recent addition of loudspeakers.