Caleb’s father stared at the wall opposite his desk, speechless.
“Are you there?” his friend asked.
“Yeah, I’m still here. I guess my son Caleb told the truth.”
“Truth about what?”
“About some of the trouble in Haifa. I had never heard or read anything about the Jews killing and expelling civilians. I thought this was the predicted return of the Jews to the land of their history two thousand years ago, something to celebrate, not a tragedy for the people already there.”
***
Ilias and Khalid walked along with the group of men, prodded by soldiers, heading northeast out of Tantura and up to a pen with a high metal fence. Forced into the enclosure most of the throng of men entered the impossibly small outdoor prison. Some resisted. The soldiers clubbed them into submission. Several fell, bleeding profusely from scalp wounds.
After several hours one guard spoke to them in Arabic. They would leave in lorries for Umm Khalid, a village on the sea south toward Tel Aviv. He explained they would be in a forced labor camp working in the quarries. That was it. No other explanation, nothing about when this would happen or when the men would have food or water. Or how long they would be held as prisoners.
Ilias expressed his only pleasure of at least having a valued friend of many years to share the cruelty. “But I wonder what has happened to Rana and the kids as well as your family, our homes. How will they survive being expelled with no shelter, no food, no protection from the elements or the militias?”
“Only God knows,” Khalid replied. “But He also cares.” He then asked God to go with them, guide and protect them.
Ilias lifted his hands, palms up in Islamic style. He mourned the loss of his only son, Jamal as tears flooded his eyes, and then extolled the greatness of God in the Arabic words of the Quran. After a few moments of quiet, he whispered “Ameen.”
Trying to sleep that night became difficult without food and with very little space to lie on the ground. No ground pads or blankets. Life for the next two days became unbearable with no food and little water until the trucks came to take them to hard labor in the rock quarries of Umm Khalid.
***
As the family plodded southeast, Caleb trudged alongside Adnan. The old man could just manage to walk slowly and with hesitation for almost every step. They tried to stay off the main coastal road, paralleling it by finding smaller roads and trails. This more tortuous route lengthened their journey to Fureidis. Sabria came alongside Adnan opposite Caleb and grasping his arms, they pulled them over their own shoulders. In this way they could keep a better pace and move more quickly and with less chance of Adnan’s falling.
On the second day since the soldiers forced them from their burning homes, they stopped for one of several breaks and sat on the ground. Adnan between Sabria and Caleb, grimaced. “I never thought this would happen to our country, or to us. I’ve had a good life and enjoyed a wonderful family all these years. Losing my wife felt like the world had ended for me, for a while. But because of my children and grandchildren, life became worth living again. But now, I don’t know.”
“Oh Grandfather, don’t say that. We’ll find a way,” Sabria pleaded. “You became so important to the village and to us. God must have a plan for our future or he would not have allowed this to happen.”
“I think he does have a plan for you in this land. I’m not sure about his roadmap for me. I’ve tried to please him. Have made mistakes along the way, but he forgives us over and over. And now, I am not sure how long I’ll be with you. Certainly to see us all to safety in Fureidis. Beyond that . . . I don’t know.”
That’s not what Sabria wanted to hear, but she’d already told him that. She needed his wisdom for the future. “What do you see that we can do?” Sabria said.
“Never lose hope that someday you will return home. I’m going to turn over the key to you, Sabria.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew the key to their home of many years, now gone. “I know that door and the lock don’t exist anymore, but the very land of our birth does, and you shall return someday. The key is only a symbol of belief of return—that justice and mercy will prevail. God has allowed this for reasons we don’t understand now.”
The adults stared at their patriarch who seemed to be reciting his final words to his family. He continued, “Resist evil but never use violence. It breeds more of itself. Keep the key for however many years it takes, as a symbol of your steadfast hope to return to the land that is part of us. It’s in our soul.” With that he handed Sabria the key.
Sabria took it, unable to say anything. She nodded, wiped away a tear, and bowed her head. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She couldn’t imagine life without her grandfather. She wondered what had happened to her own father Khalid, and to Ilias who lost his only son Jamal. Killed . . . no murdered. Their homes, their means of livelihood, their possessions . . . gone.
Caleb slipped his arm around Sabria and held her close. Adnan grasped her other hand in silence.
Chapter 49
It had been a week since the struggling family had reached their distant cousins in Fureidis. Despite hosting two other refugee families, they made a special place in the barn for Adnan and his group. In the warm spring the horses lived outside, and the abundant hay made beds in the loft above the stalls. Sabria thanked them over and over, for shelter, for food shared at the house with so many. But meals always seemed to be enough. With the electrical power and a short-wave radio, their host showed Caleb how to tune in to the British Broadcasting Company to learn what was going on in Palestine. He and Adnan listened intently every evening. The BBC had good coverage of the situation and sounded objective in their reporting. Caleb grew to love Sabria’s grandfather, a patriarch with an active mind even as he became increasingly weak. The younger man felt accepted by the family and loved. He had become a voluntary refugee, barely escaping imprisonment with Khalid and Ilias.
As Adnan grew weaker, he spent most of the daytime lying on a makeshift hay bed outside under a tree. His family gathered around as they had time, volunteering to work where needed in the fields or the gardens. Caleb and Adnan talked for long periods every evening. The young man drank in the wisdom of many years that Adnan usually shared after the broadcast.
The family had enjoyed having a peaceful place, a rest after the turmoil of leaving their beloved Tantura. One evening Adnan didn’t have the energy to converse at length. Caleb helped him to his improvised bed just as the light faded into darkness and the children lit the kerosene lamps.
The family gathered around Adnan and lifted their voices in thanksgiving for a place of peace. They prayed for Ilias and Khalid and finally for Adnan, that inshallah, if God wills, he would restore him to health and vigor. But the “if” became large in Caleb’s mind. Perhaps the great Shepherd had something better for his elderly sheep than being a perpetual refugee with no home.
They all kissed Adnan and walked quietly out of the barn, gathering to talk as the full moon arose in the eastern sky over the plain. Caleb held Sabria’s hand as they discussed all that Adnan had meant to them. He noticed tears glistening in Hana, Judith and Sabria’s eyes. He too had trouble controlling his emotion.
Adnan died sometime during the night. Finding no church building in Fureidis, a primarily Muslim village, the family held an outdoor memorial gathering of all who knew him. He had led them to safety after providing for them over many years. Saying goodbye, Caleb felt the grief and loneliness of losing a dear friend and mentor. How could he himself leave this family? Fathers and husbands gone. He somehow by default, had become the guard and protector of the women and children. He loved them. They had become his family.
***
Although sleep had seemed almost impossible in the crowded pen outside the village, Khalid awoke to the shouts of the guards. He had dreamed he was in Tantura but somehow couldn’t find his family. Weak from no food, his throat parched with little water over the past three days, he looked at h
is friend Ilias who moaned and turned to his side. The orders, shouted by the guards in poor Arabic, grated on his mind. Something about getting aboard a truck. He struggled to his feet, brushing away the dirt clinging to his sweaty clothes, and reached for Ilias’s hand. His friend, weak from hunger, could barely stand up. They struggled forward through the open gate of the enclosed pen. Climbing up onto the truck bed he reached to help Ilias, who couldn’t manage it. A guard with a rifle poked his rifle barrel into Ilias’s ribs, but then turned it around and brought the stock down hard on his head. Blood gushed from the wound. Khalid quickly grabbed his neighbor by the shoulder and dragged him up onto the truck. He used his own shirt to put pressure on the wound to stop the hemorrhage. Other prisoners helped to drag Ilias forward out of reach of the guard. He looked dazed and didn’t speak.
Packed into two trucks, the men of Tantura endured a miserable two hours bumping on the hard truck bed toward Umm Khalid. Arriving at the forced labor camp, Khalid saw some tents erected near a rock quarry, all surrounded by a high wire fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. It all looked new, hastily built. Ilias still lay on the truck floor. Another man helped Khalid carry him off and the two men supported him on either side, heading toward the tents. The guards surrounded the walking and struggling group. A young man Khalid knew to be a friend of Jamal broke away, running toward several trees nearby. As Khalid watched, the nearby guard raised his rifle and fired. The boy had just finished his first year in college. He fell, only to get up limping, and tried to continue toward the trees. One more shot and he fell. This time unmoving.
Khalid shook his head, numb from this following Jamal’s and the mass executions he had witnessed over the past several days. He wondered why he still lived.
The two men eased Ilias onto a mat, one of ten crowded together in a small tent that would be home for the foreseeable future. Khalid found a water jug, and used his own shirt to wash his friend’s scalp laceration. He sat down on an adjacent mat. Ilias remained conscious, but moved little. He seemed utterly spent by the last three hours’ events. Asking one of their tormentors for medical assistance, the man turned away from Khalid without answering.
The guard who had filled the tent with prisoners, tossed each one a potato. He announced that would be breakfast. They would get a dried fish for lunch. Water was available a few hundred meters away. Each man would have a jug. They would rest for the day. Tomorrow the rock quarries awaited.
***
Valerie had arrived home after dark, taking a taxi from the bus depot in Jerusalem. Exhausted from all the experiences in Tantura, she went right to bed but couldn’t sleep. Finally she got up and checked the house everywhere. It had remained empty, undisturbed and locked. She wondered if the Star of David flag in the window had saved it.
The shock of all that had happened with Eldad in Qatamon and then finding him in charge of the troops evicting and murdering Arab people in Tantura seemed like a bad dream. Could she have done anything to prevent it by confronting Eldad earlier in her home when she had the chance? She had never searched for her son because of his father whom she hated passionately. He had ruined her chances for a normal family life.
Sabria had somehow helped bridge the chasm of a lifetime of isolation from Eldad. And now she and her family suffered from his Zionist cruelty joining the thousands of Arab refugees who had no home.
Her thoughts consumed her as Valerie sat on the kitchen chair across the table from where Eldad had listened as she wept, remembering that she had met her son, the baby she had abandoned. They’d had a kind of reconciliation shortly before he died overlooking the beach of execution in Tantura. He had done what he could to prevent further death and destruction in the final moments of his life, apparently realizing the barbarity of the crimes he and his troops inflicted on an innocent civilian population. Perhaps his untimely death somehow would atone for what he had done.
But what about the living, her friends she left heading for an unknown future? She had a home that had not been destroyed. The Arab families forced out of their homes had to move somewhere. She had no idea where. No safety. No home.
Qatamon had been cleansed of Arab families. West Jerusalem had become a home for Jews only. She would have to explore the neighborhood in the next few days to get a sense of what had happened and how if possible she might help her friends.
Chapter 50
June 1948
Sabria smiled to herself at the family’s plight only because they lived in a barn displacing the horses. Then she thought, the Jewish militias evict us. We do the same to these beautiful creatures. And we keep them from coming back to their home. Not fair to the horses. They lived here first. But if we are more important than they, it must be right to do it.
Are Zionists not a special people, more important and a superior race to the un-westernized Arabs? Sabria’s mind flirted with bitterness. Through having suffered themselves, does that not give them the right to drive out or kill the other? They must think so or they wouldn’t do it. The Nazis, a superior educated race, tried to cleanse Germany of its Jews, Gypsies, and the disabled. Now the abused turn to abuse the inferior natives in order to have a pure Jewish state.
Then she thought of Jesus, the most famous Jew, born not far away in a place for animals. He did not cling to his rights nor even resist an unjust execution. She paused staring into the dark night, and asked him to take away her bitterness and to thank him for coming into our world to bring hope.
Her mother Hava stirred on her blanket. She turned in the blackness and asked Sabria in a whisper whether she was awake.
“Yes, I am. What’s on your mind?”
“We have been so blessed for the past month. A shelter, food provided, a chance to work in the fields to contribute to the host cousins. The children have a safe place to play and roam around. But we can’t stay here. This is temporary. Judith and Rana are wondering what to do, where to go, how to provide for their family.”
“I know, Mother. Let’s have a family conference about it this evening. Caleb has been keeping up on short-wave radio with our cousins so he has some information that could help us decide what to do. I agree, we can’t stay here forever.
***
After the evening meal with the cousins and two other refugee families, the children gathered to play in the twilight. Sabria smiled seeing them scatter over the fields of new mown hay running and laughing. The family sat on the ground around a small campfire outside the barn in a more serious mode.
Her mother Hava began the conversation. “It’s now nearing the end of June, over a month since we fled Tantura. We have lost our father and grandfather who led us here. The militias killed Judith’s husband in Haifa and Jamal in Tantura. They’ve imprisoned our husbands, Khalid and Ilias somewhere. We don’t know where. And they have no idea what has happened to us.”
“And all of us grandchildren miss them so much,” Sabria added. “We have become refugees like so many women and children, with our men captured or dead.” Turning to Caleb, Sabria reached to grasp his hand, “This man has been through hell with us, a foreigner, a ‘Good Samaritan’ who has chosen to remain with us for this time as our protector, confidant and link to the rest of the world. I want to thank him for staying with us when he could easily go back to the comfort of his homeland in Texas.” Sabria pulled Caleb close and planted a kiss on his cheek.
Caleb flushed and seemed at a loss for words momentarily. Then recovering, “This young woman by my side has . . . ” he paused as he took a deep breath, “stolen my heart. I have also experienced with you the price you pay for being Arab. You have not deserved this. I’ve learned to love you . . . I cannot leave you in what seems like an impossible situation.”
Rana wiped away a tear turning toward Caleb. “I can hardly believe you choose to stay with us. You remind me of Jamal, who put himself at risk by fighting to protect Jaffa. It cost him his life. And now will Ilias meet the same fate and leave me a grieving mother and widow?”
�
��I remember reading in the book of Ecclesiastes,” Judith said. “It guides me as a young widow, ‘a time to be born and a time to die, a time for war and a time for peace, a time to weep and a time to laugh and a time for every purpose under heaven.’ We just haven’t learned the purpose yet, why God allows such things to happen.”
“And we probably never will,” Hava mused. “The time for mourning is coming to an end. We need to have more understanding of the situation here in Palestine to help guide us for the next steps. Caleb, Sabria says you have been keeping up with events by short-wave radio and can bring some perspective to our situation. Will you tell us what you are learning?”
“I will tell you. But first, let me bring some wood from the brush pile to stoke up the fire.”
***
Caleb sat down next to Sabria as the fire suddenly brightened with the dry limb fragments of olive and cherry wood. “I don’t speak German or Hebrew, or Arabic for that matter, so I listen to the BBC primarily getting a view from the West. They along with a few reporters for the New York Times seem to have an accurate picture of what is going on. The Israeli press in English, is very guarded and tells only the triumphs of what is now called the Israeli Defense Force or IDF, the old Hagana. They claim to fight the Arab ‘terrorists.’” He chuckled. “That’s you all.”
“What has happened to the armies of the other Arab states?” Hava asked.
“They have been active in a few areas but unable to stop the hurricane of militia takeovers blowing over the land. Lebanese stay home to defend their borders. Iraq doesn’t do much. Egypt never really prepared to counter the IDF in their haste to mobilize. Syria is weak, and Transjordan’s King Abdullah is in league with Ben Gurion to take over the territory allotted by the UN to Arabs. So the Jordanians fight, but only to preserve the so-called ‘West Bank’ and East Jerusalem for themselves.”
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