by Malka Marom
“Our women are accustomed to cook with fire, not with electricity or with gas,” the Badu with the hollowed cheeks explained. “Our women, meaning our clan—our children, our men, our maidens—are accustomed to traverse wadis, not paved streets. Our women are accustomed to roam as free as the wind from horizon to horizon, not to be cooped up within four walls and two dunams of land.”
“Two dunams of land is all a man could purchase for his wife and children in our new tribal place, we were told by the sheikh’s men,” Awaad explained.
“What good is all the running water in the new place if a woman can raise only five, or maybe ten, goats in two dunams of land, when, for as long as anyone can remember, our women are accustomed to raising twenty, or maybe even thirty, goats each,” said the Badu sitting right of Awaad.
“Instead of telling the sheikh all that, Awaad had asked you, El Bofessa, if you knew of a place where the Green Patrol would not be able to reach us.” The toothless Badu was shouting at the cassette recorder. “And the day after, you, El Bofessa, told us: the West Bank. All the men of the clan went to look for a water source in the West Bank.”
“O recorder, tell El Bofessa that no one, except the Arab fellah who owns the waterhole here, which is much too close to a target-practice range, was willing to sell us water rights in the West Bank,” the Badu sitting right of Awaad said. Then, one by one, the men around the fire-circle, each in turn, asked the cassette recorder to convey a message to El Bofessa:
“O recorder, tell El Bofessa that it was when we were hesitating to move to this well that the Green Patrol had set our tents on fire . . .”
“O recorder, tell El Bofessa that a Badu can no longer be a Badu in the Negev desert. . .”
“O these are times when the fox and the hyena feel sure, but when lions and hawks can barely endure.”
On and on, the men lamented, until Jum’ah muttered in the darkness: “Ashow, yaa-Arab—wake up, yaa-Arabs—wake up, Wallah.” Only his footsteps were heard in the silence that followed.
“Roast coffee, brew tea,” Awaad muttered to a couple of men when Jum’ah had folded his legs by my side.
Jum’ah pulled out a pack of local cigarettes—Times—and offered me one, almost like a peace-pipe—a sulha—forgiveness. I didn’t ask him why he hadn’t told Tal and me that the Badu was Awaad. And he didn’t ask me why we didn’t entrust him with El Bofessa’s message to Awaad. Jum’ah lit his cigarette and waited for me to light mine. And then he said, “The Green Patrol told you a goat story, and the sheikh told you a water story. But it’s really a money and land story. How much money does each man of your clan have to pay for his two dunams of land in the new tribal place?” Jum’ah asked Awaad.
“No money,” the Badu with the hollowed cheeks replied.
“You mean the sheikh was going to give each man in your clan two dunams of land as a gift?” Jum’ah said.
“No, Wallah, the sheikh knows we of Awaad’s clan would never accept such gifts, and so he offered to trade us land for land,” the Badu sitting right of Awaad replied.
“Your land for his, you mean?” Jum’ah said. “How many dunams in your land?” he asked Awaad.
“Allah aref,” Awaad replied, and the others didn’t know either.
“The land belongs to the clan ever since memory was born,” the Badu with the hollowed cheeks said. “No one had measured her dunams since then.”
“But would you say your land has a hundred or two hundred dunams?” Jum’ah asked him.
“I think the land of the clan is stretching wider than all the dunams in the new place,” Awaad said. “Twice as wide, maybe even four times wider. But a land without water is worthless.”
“Not today, not in the Negev,” Jum’ah said. “I think your troubles with the Green Patrol stem not from goats or from water but from the peace talks with Egypt. That is why the Green Patrol is acting only now on a law twenty-six years old. That is why the sheikh offered to trade you land for land.”
Not one of Awaad’s clan saw the connection. Their circuits were probably overloaded. Awaad and the others looked exhausted, crushed.
“I think your home grounds are very valuable lands, but no one knows it yet, except the sheikh. Information is powerful, Wallah,” Jum’ah said to Awaad.
“Aywa—yes,” Awaad muttered, then he poured a steaming glass of tea for Jum’ah. “Oshrob, oshrob—drink, drink tea until the coffee is done,” Awaad urged Jum’ah, sounding like he felt defeated, impotent, threatened, and had to assert himself as the master of the compound—to show Jum’ah who was boss, despite the power bestowed by information. Jum’ah did as he was told.
“We cannot hear, we cannot hear,” the women muttered from behind the burlap flap as soon as the daqq-daqq-daqq started to sound again, like a drum.
“Raise your voice,” Awaad ordered Jum’ah, as if he thought the women were the only allies he and his clansmen had now.
Jum’ah looked like he wished he had kept his mouth shut. Then raising his voice for all to hear, Jum’ah explained, “The government feeds information-power to the sheikh, because the government knows that the more power the sheikh has the more the tribe will fear the sheikh and obey him. But the more the tribe fears and obeys the sheikh, the more power the sheikh has to demand from the government—more information, more power: that is how the power-circle works. And so, if the sheikh had offered to trade you land for land, someone high up in the government must have informed the sheikh that a peace pact with Egypt is imminent; therefore, the government is planning to transfer all the military installations from the Sinai desert to the Negev, and for this purpose the government is planning to purchase every dunam of unsettled land in the Negev.”
“Yaa-Allah,” exclaimed the Badu and Badawias at both fire-circles.
“Do you know what the sheikh will do to you if you do not have his permission to battle the Green Patrol in the court of law?” said Jum’ah. “Do you know what favours the sheikh can receive from the Green Patrol if he stops you from starting such a court battle? Do you know what favours the sheikh receives from the government, the army, the Green Patrol, the trade unions—and from the kibbutzim as well?” Jum’ah obviously thought the kibbutzim had complained to the sheikh about the water Awaad’s people were stealing. And the sheikh, instead of dispatching a water truck, had dispatched the Green Patrol to drive them from their land, to his. But Jum’ah kept it to himself.
“A sheikh, Wallah, his teeth are bright with gold. You hear him belch as he comes to greet. A belt he won’t wear, having too much to eat,” one of the men muttered, then spat.
“Talk that is against your sheikh, your tribesmen, is against yourself as well,”said Awaad to the Badu on his left.
“Aywa—yes,” the Badu with the hollowed cheeks muttered, and then he asked Jum’ah, “What would you do, were you in our place?”
“I would hire a lawyer to negotiate for my clansmen the sale of my clan’s home grounds,” Jum’ah replied.
“But if we sell our home grounds, where will we live?” the Badu with the hollowed cheeks said.
“Allah aref,” Jum’ah replied, and then he explained. “If and when a peace pact with Egypt will be signed, the government is bound to confiscate your lands anyway, for The Land of Israel is small and settled, and only in the Negev is there space for all the Israeli’s military installations.”
“But, if and when a peace pact is signed with Egypt, surely there will be no need for military installations,” I thought Awaad was about to say—only to hear him say, “You mean our home ground will become a fire zone?”
“Yes, a fire zone, or an air base, or a training camp,” Jum’ah replied.
“You mean the kibbutzim will live near a fire zone like we do here?” Awaad said.
“Aywa—yes. The kibbutzim will have no choice,” Jum’ah replied. Then he asked them, “Do you have a paper with writing
on it called a land deed—you know, like an identity card with writing on it that tells that you are you, a land deed tells that your lands are your lands,” he explained.
“Let me have the papers with the writing on it,” Awaad spoke to the women’s section of the tent. Judging by the jingle-jangle, the Badawias all had to get up to make room for Awaad’s wife. Further jingle-jangles said she was opening cartons or untying sacks . . . She lifted the burlap curtain to pass over the papers wrapped in a piece of cloth. Awaad untied the cloth and passed the contents to Jum’ah.
Jum’ah leaned closer to the fire, took a quick glance at the papers, then he asked me in Hebrew, “Doesn’t look like a deed to me, but who knows what a deed from the British or the Turkish time looks like.”
The papers were mostly thank-you notes in English—one from an agronomist who had apparently stayed with Awaad’s clan when he had studied desert plants, and one from an ethnologist thanking them for their hospitality and for the songs and poems they had allowed him to record. The rest of the papers were articles about them and their way of life, all written by Russell; one of them published ten years ago, two years after Russell moved from Canada to The Land.
“The deed to your lands is not here,” Jum’ah said, passing the papers back to Awaad. “Maybe you gave it to the sheikh—when he offered to trade you land for land, I mean. Did the sheikh not ask you to show him proof that your lands were your lands?”
“No, Wallah. The sheikh knows our lands were always our lands,” Awaad replied. And the others laughed at the notion that anyone would not know that their lands were their lands.
They were still laughing when Jum’ah wondered aloud, “Did the Green Patrol, or the sheikh, or anyone in the past few weeks or months request or demand that you sign or put your thumbprint on a paper with writing on it that says you waive your claim to your home grounds?”
“No,” Awaad replied.
And now Awaad poured another round of sulha, offering the first cup to Jum’ah. This time Jum’ah didn’t reject Awaad’s offering, but when he accepted it, he looked like he thought his hosts were too forgiving, too generous, too noble, too far behind the times.
While Jum’ah was sipping his second or third cup, toddlers started to crawl back and forth from their mothers to their fathers until the burlap flap that separated the women’s section of the tent from the men’s, was rolled up. Then one maiden after another played flute. All, as befitting Badu maidens modest-proper, averted their eyes from Jum’ah—all except the one that Jum’ah kept looking at as if he had galloped to this compound to see for himself the girl his parents had arranged for him to marry, and to his surprise they had picked for him a dream girl. The sparks that flew when his eyes and hers met, aroused even the moon—rising now, full and bright, above the hills east of the compound.
“Visit-stay . . . visit-stay,” the Badawias beseeched Jum’ah and me. “The women have had no woman visitor ever since we went into hiding in these Ad-daffah al-Gharbiyyah—West Bank—hills,” Awaad told Jum’ah and me. “Visit-stay . . . visit-stay. . .”
As soon as the children and the maidens heard me say that I’d visit-stay with them until tomorrow, Inshallah, if it would not burden them, they whispered, giggled and laughed, unable to contain their excitement and their joy. And the women told the men to sacrifice a goat. Jum’ah and I protested that we both had had our fill of honour. But the men obeyed the women. They had probably eaten no meat since they had been driven into hiding in these West Bank hills.
CHAPTER 37
Early next morning, Jum’ah left to gather support for Awaad’s clan in the tribe. He also volunteered to call Tal before Tal reports me missing to the police or to the army.
“This evening, or early tomorrow,” Jum’ah assured me, he’d return with wheels to escort me back to Herzliyya.
The men of Awaad’s clan left shortly after Jum’ah. “To look for another well, secure other water rights,” Awaad’s wife told me.
It was not till I went with her to the well that I understood what scraping rock bottom meant.
Time and again, one Badawia dropped a pail tied to a long rope over the lip of the waterhole; time and again, the pail came up empty. “For the water is trapped between the rocks at the very bottom of the well,” Awaad’s wife explained. Finally, in desperation, the Badawias tied a rope around a child’s waist and slowly and carefully lowered the child into what seemed like a bottomless pit. Then they lowered a pail and moved away from the lip of the well to afford the child enough light to see. Whenever the child cried, “I found it, I found it,” the pail would be pulled up, full of murky, stale water that smelled and tasted even worse than it looked. If they were not so addicted to tea, they’d probably all be shivering and sweating with malaria by now.
The sun was high, and there was nothing to block the Khamsin—the fifty winds—as that same Badu child-boy led me to visit-stay with the shepherds of his clan. I don’t know how far we walked, up and down one hill after another, one dry riverbed after another till we reached the cave where the shepherds—the maidens and children—were taking their lunch break in the cool shade.
All too soon the goats discovered there was nothing to munch in the dry riverbed below, and lunch break was over. The shepherds were about to head out separately in search of pasture when Awaad’s children insisted that, since I was their guest, I should join them, and the others insisted that I was the guest of the whole clan.
While they were still debating, two or three Palestinian child-boys, shepherding a herd of sheep twice the size, at least, of all the goatherds of Awaad’s clan, entered the wadi. As soon as they saw me, they told the children and maidens of Awaad’s clan that their clan, as well as their Yahodiya guest, would not live to see tomorrow if I was not gone by early dawn.
“How do they know that I’m a Yahodiya?” I asked the children of Awaad’s clan.
“Get rid of the Yahodiya—Jewish woman—or your throats will be slit,” the Palestinian shepherd children demanded before the Badu children could reply.
Only children, and already so hateful—only two hours by Jeep from Mount Herzl and Arik, and the dreams buried with him—a life sacrificed so that no one would ever say anywhere in the world, “Get rid of the Yahodiya . . .” And now Levi was pressing me to allow him to court yet another sacrifice, as if military power could do anything to eradicate such hate.
“Get rid of the Yahodiya,” the Palestinian shepherd-boys insisted when the might of the Yahodiya’s air force was whirling overhead and napalm was exploding only a few hills away. Children’s hatred transcended the Real here, like that of those young thugs who lay in ambush at Christie Pits for Dave when he was little and beat him up to rid Canada of “dirty Jews.”
“Get rid of the Yahodiya,” the Palestinian shepherd-boys demanded; then they cursed and told the boys of Awaad’s clan what they thought of their sisters, mothers, and of their female Yahodiya guest.
The children and the maidens of Awaad’s clan cursed them back, but in whispers. “They are but fellahin —peasants,” they told me, standing tall and glaring with disdain at the Palestinian shepherd-boys, until they disappeared behind the bend of the dry riverbed.
“Get rid of the Yahodiya or . . .” The hills echoed after them.
“There is nothing to fear,” the children and maidens of Awaad’s clan assured me. But quick-fast, almost at a run, they escorted me back to their compound. The women in Awaad’s compound agreed with the children and the maidens. “There was nothing to fear,” they assured me, then they explained that it was not because there is something to fear, but only because these Palestinians child-sheepherders were of the Palestinian clan who owned the waterhole that they would tell their men of the fellahin’s empty threat.
I don’t remember if it was nine or ten at night when the men of Awaad’s clan returned to the compound. I do remember it was dark, the children were sleeping, an
d the pitas and the rice were cold.
“It was the Arab,” Awaad said. He meant the Arab who had appeared only to disappear in the hills when Tal and I were crawling in the Jeep behind Awaad. “This Arab must have threatened to slit the throats of his fellow Felastiniyiin who live in these hills if we would not get rid of our Yahodiya guest. That Arab is a terrorist,” Awaad said, echoing what Tal had thought of that same Arab.
Jum’ah didn’t get back that night.
Awaad’s clan re-pitched their tents in a circle, tight, defensive—like in the old black-and-white cowboy movies when the wagon train was under attack. Only the goats slept in the tents; the men slept, or lay awake, in a protective circle around the women and the children. Awaad’s wife stretched out between me and her husband, only a foot or two from me.
“Should we have to flee-hide, you stay between me and Awaad,” she told me. And then she urged me to sleep, so that she could have a moment alone with her husband, I sensed. So, I feigned sleep. A while later I heard Awaad whisper to her that he would have to sell one of her goats or the most beautiful of her hand-woven welcome-carpets she had managed to rescue from the fire set by the Green Patrol, because it was bound to cost more money than he had to escort me to Jerusalem, or to Tel Aviv, or to wherever my escort-guardian lived.
Oh, how I cursed those Jew-hating Palestinian shepherd boys . . . Their hatred poisoned me.
And, in but a few weeks from now Levi, my son—your son, Arik—will be exposed to this venom. Only a few weeks from now, for the first time in his life, Levi will see another human being, another tribe, as the enemy; or at best he’ll take sides, in a way that his mother, slowly, without realizing it, has relinquished by dropping out to Canada.