In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees

by Jeff Talarigo

  “No, but it should be soon,” the man with a walkie-talkie says.

  “Yes, but anything could happen, as we know all too well.”

  I try focusing on the conversation, searching for any hint that could tell something of what is awaiting me, but their words are much like the smoke they blow into the morning air, there one second, gone the next. I look off into the distance, about fifty yards away, where there is a fence with barbed wire strung atop it. That must be the border, I think, and I try to get a better glimpse of it through the fence. The men are still talking and I walk away from my father.

  “Don’t go too far, Zaid.”

  “I won’t,” I answer and I don’t, going not more than twenty steps away to where the tent doesn’t obstruct my view. But it isn’t all that much better from here, for there is a girl standing atop an overturned blue milk crate. I imagine that she is seeing a hundred things that I have never seen, but it is my birthday and it should be me seeing them, not her. I am about to turn and go back to my father when she speaks.

  “Hi.”

  The single word startles me. I cannot move; it is as though I am stuck in knee-deep muck and when I hear her laugh it is even more impossible to do so.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” Her voice is like that of a lemon, or a lime, if either of them could speak—sour, pinched in the throat, but refreshing.

  “It’s my birthday,” I say, turning around. Now that she is close by and standing on the ground, I can see that she is shorter than me. I want to ask why she isn’t in school, but dare not do so.

  “My birthday isn’t until March. I’ll be thirteen.”

  Thirteen, I think, so much older than me. Then suddenly, somehow, my birthday has lost its significance and I don’t want to be talking with her anymore. I am walking away when she stops me again. This time she says nothing, but it is her movement that keeps me locked to the ground and I can’t pry my eyes from her, although, over and over voices in my head are yelling that it is not polite to look, even a peek is rude, but staring as you are now is unmentionable. I imagine my father seeing me gawking at this girl—today two years older than me—but in a few short months, three years older, making it all the more rude, but I can’t force my head to turn away from her as she lifts the bottom of her dirty brown robe and adjusts, left then right, the bottom half of her legs. She does so as if it is the most natural thing to do, standing there as if she were simply tying a shoe. For the first time, I notice a pair of metal crutches on the ground.

  “I stepped on a cluster bomb,” she says, with the same casualness as she adjusted those legs.

  I am still staring.

  “I’m sorry,” is all I can think of saying.

  “It’s okay. It happened when I was five, so I am used to it. Anyway, I have to go to work. You can stand on the crate for a couple of minutes if you want; you can get a better view of the sea from there,” she says, picking up the crutches.

  “Thanks,” I say, but now I cannot look at her at all as if she has disappeared along with her legs.

  I go over to the milk crate and step atop it. As she said, there is a nice view.

  “Happy birthday,” she says and I thank her without looking around.

  A minute passes before I glance over my shoulder and notice that she is no longer there; I can’t find her until she waves to me from the entrance to the market, thirty yards away, where she is sitting on the ground next to a banana and date stall, which I think she is working at, until a woman bends down and gives her a coin and a handful of dates. I can see her thanking the woman and next to her, leaning against the stall, are her crutches.

  My father’s voice rescues me and I jump from the crate and run to him. There is a commotion coming from the direction of one of the white tents and my father takes me to where about a dozen men are around it. There is an opening, a large hole in the ground beneath the tent. One man is reaching down into the opening, so far down, that his head and chest and stomach disappear while another man has ahold of him as though trying to keep him from being swallowed by the hole.

  “It’s all right, Zaid. The man has him and he will not fall.”

  I want to tell my father that I know this, although I really don’t.

  “I have it,” yells a voice inside the tunnel. “Pull me up!”

  My father goes over to the tunnel and grabs the man by the waist while the other still has ahold of his legs. The face of my father is red from exertion and his eyes are bigger than normal, looking like he did on those mornings he used to take me with him to the market and he strained while hauling those large baskets of fish. Although my father’s face looks like that, this place is nothing at all like the market—smells nothing like it, has none of its constant commotion, certainly not the colors. Somehow this place seems secretive.

  I see the head of the large cat first and it looks as though the man’s body has now taken on this face, but soon I see the man’s face next to it, not red, like my father’s, purple almost. The man is full out of the tunnel’s mouth now, yet still my father has him by the waist, as if he is preventing him from running away with the enormous cat. But I can see now that the cat will not run away, not because the man has it, but because it appears dead; eyes closed, giant paws dangling from long legs, mouth open a bit, a little of its pink, fleshy tongue slipping out. Father has let go of the man and he walks toward me, the man with the cat next to him. I take a couple of steps back, before bumping into the man with the walkie-talkie.

  “Happy birthday,” he says.

  My father repeats the words and the other men also join in the chorus and I don’t know what to feel or say. My first thought is that the cat is too big for our house and where would it sleep; probably in the front room where mother keeps her loom to make and sell her carpets. But I can’t imagine Mother allowing that, for she rarely permits me to go in there, and never alone, only when she or Father is with me. The man with the cat bends down and I can hear its soft purr and now I am certain that the cat is not dead, just asleep.

  “Go ahead, Zaid, pet him,” my father says.

  As if to show me it is all right to do so he touches the cat atop its head. I hesitate and my father takes my hand and places it on the animal’s head, which is larger than both my father’s and my hand together. The cat is the color of the school ground, not during the rainy months of winter, when it is a dark brown and sticky, but of summer, after the sun has been beating down upon it. The fur is not as soft as that of the cat I sometimes see running across the metal rooftops of Jabaliya.

  “You are the first boy in Gaza to touch a lion, Zaid,” the man says.

  The word lion jerks away my hand. The men, including my father, laugh.

  “It’s okay, he’s asleep.”

  “I thought it was a cat.”

  “Well, it is a cat, just a big one.”

  “How are we going to take him home?”

  “We’re not taking him home. I just brought you here for your birthday.”

  “Then where are they taking him?”

  “To the zoo, Zaid. And that’s where we are going. You are going to take the first lion in Gaza to the zoo.”

  We are walking away from the tunnel and the man continues to hold the sleeping lion in his arms. Again, I have my father’s hand and I am tortured by the thought of the lion waking up and how it would tear apart the men, like the lions I heard about in stories. Unexpectedly, I ask my father:

  “I want to show the lion to that girl over there.”

  My father looks to where I am pointing. There are other people there, but only one girl and I’m certain my father knows who I am speaking of.

  “I don’t think that’s possible, son. We need to get the lion to the zoo before she wakes up.”

  “But she has no legs.”

  “What do you mean no legs?”

  “The girl. She stepped on a bomb.”

  “Zaid, we…”

  “Please, Father.”

  My father calls t
o the man ahead of us and they talk for a short time. They look at the lion and then at me.

  “Okay, but quickly,” the man says to me, more serious than angry.

  We arrive beside the girl before she notices us.

  “Would you like to see the first lion in Gaza?”

  She answers as if she had been waiting for the question.

  “Sure.”

  The man with the lion bends down and brings it close to the girl. She reaches out, not hesitating at all. Softly she touches the head and back of the lion. I watch the hand move overtop the lion and the girl seems happy and I look up to my father and then to the man holding the lion and they, too, appear happy; even the lion seems peaceful. The thought that the lion will wake up no longer agonizes me, for I am certain that as long as the girl continues to pet the lion that peace will reign.

  We ride in the front of the pickup truck with the groggy lion in a cage in the back. Through the window, I see into the truck’s cabin. My father tells me that kneeling on the seat, and looking through the window that way, would be easier. I do that and slowly the lion becomes more alert as the drugs begin to wear off. She opens her eyes—the man told me that the lion is female and that they hope to have a male in the zoo next month—and what were a few minutes earlier slivers of greenish-brown have become larger orbs, and they continue to grow until they are as big as the spoons we will use later tonight to eat the couscous my mother is now at home preparing for dinner.

  My face is less than three feet from the lion’s and my breath has steamed the window, but when I pull back a little the steam evaporates in seconds. We stare at each other and I think that she is really nothing at all like the lions I have read about in books—ferocious and terrifying, with mouths so big and teeth so sharp that they gobble children in one clean sweep. When I first believed she was a cat, I thought she was huge, but after finding out she is a lion, she began to look different, small almost. Her eyes have a milky look to them and there are tiny dots in the middle as though someone has taken a pen and drawn them there. My father and the man, Shafiq, whom he has introduced as the veterinarian at the zoo, are talking, but I pay them little attention.

  Without warning, and impossible as it may seem, the lion’s eyes grow even larger, as though they are eating away at her face. Suddenly, and with great force, the lion springs from its crouch and smacks the cage, throwing it against the window. I feel it against my face and I fly backward, out of fright more than the force, losing my balance and hitting against the dashboard, then half-falling between the seat and floor.

  “What is it, Zaid?” my father asks, and begins to laugh when he realizes what has happened. The driver also laughs and I climb back onto the seat between the two men. I sit there with my eyes locked straight ahead, not daring to look through the cabin window. The whole time, however, something is twisting my head trying to force me to look again at the lion. I am convinced that she has broken through the cage and is now racing in the opposite direction along Salahadin Road to the border and when she gets there she will thrust aside the workers and jump into the tunnel and return to where she came from.

  And it is with this thought—I am not sure why it has taken so long to realize—that I understand why my father no longer comes home smelling like the sea and why he has this red soil under his nails and on his clothes. He is one of the tunnel workers. My father is looking at me when I turn to him and he smiles and gives my hair a rustle. I hear the cage in the back of the truck rattling and I spin around, not kneeling on the seat as before, just turning enough to see the lion hitting into the cage with her paws and I think that she will tire herself out just like my mother tells me that my little sister, when she is throwing a tantrum, will tire herself out and fall asleep.

  “We’re here,” my father says.

  I watch as the truck passes by the entrance of the Gaza Zoo. I have never been here before; some kids at school have talked about the zoo, which has been open for more than a year. A few months ago the United Nations gave out day passes, but I didn’t get one. We drive slowly past cages—ponies and birds and monkeys and goats—and at each one I can see that the animals are restless and uneasy. Some make noises, especially the birds and monkeys, others just look anxious as they pace back and forth. I think that the lion is growling at them, but when I look at her I see that she is silent, but staring at the other animals with those eyes that both frighten and enrapture me.

  The truck is backed up to a large cage with its gate open.

  “Stay in here, Zaid, until we get the lion into her cage, then we’ll take a look around the zoo.”

  My father climbs onto the bed of the truck and I am again on my knees watching through the cabin window. The lion is on all fours and I can see how small the cage is. My father pushes the cage while the driver pulls on it getting it closer to the back of the truck. With one quick motion the driver flips the lock and the lion springs out and into the larger zoo cage. And now I again hear the stirring of other animals and feel their terror that they have for this newest member in the zoo. I think of Mustafa and how it is nearly lunch and tonight, when I get home, he will come to our house and celebrate my birthday and I can tell him and all the others at school tomorrow of how I touched this most fearsome of animals and how I helped to bring him from his homeland, so very far away, into our world of Gaza.

  As I look at her through the cage, the lion again appears small. She is at the back, half-hidden behind a rock, devouring, with large teeth, a dead chicken. From where I am, I can hear the crunching of the chicken bones. It is both horrifying and thrilling. As she eats, her eyes are smaller than when I saw them though the cabin window, and when the sun hits them at a certain angle, their color wavers from a light brown to a milky green and somewhere in between the two.

  “Where is she from?” I ask my father standing next to me.

  “Africa, I imagine.”

  “How long have you been working in the tunnels?”

  “How do you know that is where I work?”

  “I figured it out today.”

  “Almost six months now, since I lost my job fishing. I am lucky; a lot of men don’t have a job.”

  The lion comes out from behind the rock and stalks around. I cannot tell if she is angry or lonely; it seems as if every time I see her she changes. She looks at my father and I wonder if she recognizes us.

  “Do you like working in the tunnels?”

  “It is very different from fishing where you are surrounded by the vastness of the water. Inside the tunnels, it is very narrow and you have to crawl most of the time.”

  “How can you bring such big animals through them?”

  “They put the animals to sleep, like they did the lion, and bring them through one of the larger tunnels. Some of the tunnels are big enough to bring cars through. Don’t get too close to the cage.”

  My father and I take a couple of steps away as the lion nears. She doesn’t growl but rather makes a low gurgling sound from her throat. Her paws are very large, but as she passes they seem soft on the bottom, like bread dough, and I wish that I had touched them to see if it were true. Each step she takes, however, her claws, long and sharp, poke out, threateningly. The whole day is as if a dream and it is hard to fathom that only a few hours ago I petted her. As she gets closer to the front of the cage, the monkeys and peacocks across the way become more agitated. I take my father’s hand and we go over to the monkeys. One of the bigger monkeys sits above a smaller one and plucks at its head and back, eating the insects that it picks. The monkeys pay us little attention; their focus is on the lion, behind us now.

  “I think we should be heading back. Your mother is preparing dinner for you.”

  I look to the sky and see that evening is rapidly approaching. If this were summer, we would have several more hours of daylight and could perhaps even go to the beach. We turn from the monkeys and head toward the gate. One final time I look back at the lion, but cannot see her. I know that by the time we arrive in J
abaliya it will be dark and that there will be no moon on this night, for the new moon will not be out until Saturday. I think of the girl and wonder if she is still begging for money and whether or not, when she goes to sleep, she wears the legs that are, at the same time, both hers and not hers.

  I will not see the lion again until the following summer.

  On the school grounds a few of us are playing soccer, not a match, but just shooting at the goal from various angles and distances. I have won the game and Hatem, an older boy who doesn’t like to lose, comes over and says that although I was the first to pet the lion, that he also touched it, which was now much larger than when I did so, more than eight months before.

  “I even have a photo of me with the lion!”

  “You talk too much.”

  “It’s at my house. I’ll show you the photo for an ice cream.”

  “Okay,” I say, no longer really doubting his claim, but wanting to see the picture. “Let me see the photo first.”

  We hurry to block number nine where Hatem lives.

  “Wait out here. My father doesn’t want me to be showing the photo to anyone.”

  I am the only one of my friends who has come along; the others have stayed at the school grounds. I wait and the heat tires me, so I go across the street to the wall and sit against its two o’clock-wide shadow. Even in the shade the heat lashes me. Through my ever-growing tired eyes, people pass as though through a mist. A horse-drawn cart clicks by, unreal, as though it is walking through butter. I shut my eyes, the hot shade an unwanted quilt atop me. Everything is heavy—my hair, my ears, even the drops of sweat that slither down my neck, down my back. I have lost track of time and may have even slept a little while when I am shaken by Hatem.

  “You owe me an ice cream.” He is holding a photo, one of poor quality, with him, his arm around a lion. It is one of the pictures with a date on it: 6-20-07. Hatem seems uncomfortable in the photo, stilted. I take the picture and study it closely. The lion is certainly the one I petted on my birthday. Her eyes, although they look distant and sad, are those that I stared into so often that day. She has grown to nearly twice the size of when she was brought through the tunnels.