Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

  Ghassan exhaled smoke from the argileh. “When the moment presents itself.”

  I rolled my eyes but kept it to myself. That kind of cryptic talk annoyed me.

  “What about Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur?” Faisal pressed. “Like when Gamal Abdel Nasser caught them off guard.”

  Ghassan said, “Yes, that’s the kind of moment we’re waiting for.” To be fair, Ghassan was stoned. I guessed he was still in touch with the Nazareth tour guide. Bilal wasn’t smoking with him that evening. They had tried it together, but Ghassan didn’t stop, forming what appeared to be a new habit.

  Samer changed the subject. “I’ve been doing some research about ancient warfare. You’ll be amazed how many high-tech weapons there were! Look at this,” he said, pointing to a photo printout. “It’s an ancient Chinese semiautomatic crossbow called the Zhuge Nu. We could easily reproduce and learn to use it.” He looked around at us. “It’s already been posted to the online message board. Someone else in the group put up instructions on how to make blowguns. Indigenous tribes in the Americas used them to hunt big game with poison arrows.”

  He passed another photo around. “This is another powerful crossbow, invented by the Greeks in the fifth century BC. Something else, called a polybolos, is a repeating artillery system they invented in the third century BC. And, of course, the ninjas, invented by the Palestinians in the twentieth century’s Intifada.” Samer laughed and pointed to a photo of the tire-puncturing devices made from large iron nails inserted into rubber discs from used tires.

  Bilal grabbed the picture. “I remember these. I was already in prison, but during the Intifada people would throw them all over the street in advance of the military and watch their jeeps run off the road with flat tires.”

  The sun had been gone for a while and we sat under a marquee of stars against a thick darkness that sent our imaginations and fears roaming. They could put Jandal and thousands like him in their crosshairs and pull the trigger, but we were not powerless. The possibilities for creative armed resistance were vast.

  Bilal and I picnicked in a tent nestled among trees at the outer edge of his family’s olive groves one Friday evening, not far from “our spot.” We hadn’t gone back there since Jandal was killed, even though some of his flock remained. One of Jandal’s cousins had taken over shepherding, a way to continue Jandal’s legacy. But it wasn’t the same for Bilal, and he rarely checked on the animals anymore.

  “I want you to know in case anything happens to me. Only Ghassan knows,” Bilal said, sipping tea.

  I waited.

  “You see how the almond trees are dying?”

  I did. We had talked about it before. Israel rationed water to Palestinians, especially farmers, and would then move in to confiscate farms and groves of dying trees for being neglected. “Are you afraid the Jews are going to take the groves?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and looked away, thinking about how to say something. “One of the laborers who worked on the settlement water pipeline is an old friend. He took the job out of desperation, so I don’t fault him. But I paid him to drill two holes in the pipe and run narrow tubing from it to water the almonds,” he said.

  “That’s brilliant!”

  “The tubes run down the side of the footings into the ground and spring up about three meters out. He couldn’t take them farther without getting caught. I have to run them the rest of the way to connect with our watering system here,” he said, showing me where he had buried an underground hose from the tent. “I’ve been pretending to weed around the trees and turn over the soil to extend the tubing, but the last bit is still out of reach without being detected.”

  I listened, waiting to hear the rest, the tarps of the tent flapping gently in the breeze. The tent had only three sides and a roof. The fourth side opened to the hillsides of trees and a green valley. An old rug carpeted the tarp floor, and heavy Bedouin wool lined the walls inside to muffle the tarps. I sat cross-legged, toying with the frayed edge of the rug.

  “Can I help connect the hoses?” I said finally.

  He was on the edge of words, but didn’t speak.

  “Whatever it is, I’ll do it,” I said.

  “We’re sure they have surveillance of some sort, but they’re not established enough yet to have fixed cameras. From what I can tell, they just have one station of soldiers on lookout since it’s still a relatively small settlement,” Bilal began. “I need you to connect the tubing while I distract the soldiers. I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

  “How are you going to distract them?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. “Will it get you arrested?”

  “Possibly.”

  I thought for a moment. “It sounds like you’ve thought this through, and I trust you. Tell me when and what you need.”

  “Tonight,” he said, and proceeded to explain the plan, step by step, before leaving me in the tent with a handheld motorized spiral digger, tubing, plastic tape, and a timer—alone.

  Night fell, and I understood why Bilal had insisted I bring along a sweater and jacket. Even though the weather was still warm, winter came at night. I shivered inside the tent, waiting for the signal, a bonfire in the distance on the lower slopes of hills behind Ghassan’s home.

  A symphony of crickets filled the darkness as my anxiety rose. Alone in the open outdoors, the memory of Kuwait came back to me, the long-ago place in a long-ago time on the beach, when a broken shard of glass dug deeper and deeper into my back with each thrust of the man on top of me. I felt shooting pain from the scar that marked that night on my body forever, and it occurred to me how much my life had changed. Two frightful nights alone in nature, one fraught with despair and a sense of endings, the other ripe with possibility, life, love, anticipation, and power—both personal and collective.

  There it was. I sprang to my feet as firecrackers popped like a thousand fiery eyes blinking in the darkness. My heart pounding in my chest, I started the timer, grabbed the tubing, and measured forty paces from the tree he had marked; then I dropped to the ground, feeling for a mound of small rocks, as Bilal had instructed. I checked the timer and panicked. I was already too slow. I felt around more frantically without luck, but just as I almost gave up, I found the rocks and dug until I found the plastic. The tubing attached easily. Bilal had worried the ends would not fit and instructed me to improvise with the roll of tape, but I didn’t need to. I crawled a few paces to the right and felt for the second tube. Nothing. Then I remembered that I had to go left.

  The firecrackers were still going off, spaced between a few seconds of quiet. I found the second mound and attached the tube. Now I had to dig two small trenches to bury both tubes the length of the forbidden zone between the water pipeline and the edge of the groves. I held my breath and waited for the firecrackers to intensify so I could start the digger. This was the dangerous part. The motor was noisy. I turned the lever, pushed the digger slanted into the ground as it came on, and ran with it toward the tree line. It was surprisingly easy, because the force of the digger pulled me along. I quickly buried the first tube and rolled my body down the hill to pack in the dirt. I felt my way to the second tube and waited for another burst of firecrackers before repeating the same procedure.

  The firecrackers stopped. The fire on the hillside went out. And I began walking along the road toward the house. I couldn’t see much but I was sure I was covered in dirt, sweat, and possibly bugs. If Bilal was arrested, I’d have to walk the rest of the way alone, which was the riskiest part of his plan. My heart beat faster and harder than I thought possible.

  I didn’t get far before Bilal pulled up alongside me on the road. “Get in,” he yelled.

  “It’s done,” I said, and he grinned as I had never seen him. He grabbed my face and kissed me square on the lips, almost driving off the road before swerving back, laughing all the while.

  We thought the Israeli military would come that night, but they didn’t. They didn’t come the next day, or the day after, or the o
ne after that. They didn’t come for Ghassan either for the firecrackers, which aren’t allowed for Palestinians, and it made us all nervous that they were planning something big.

  “Or maybe they just don’t know who did it,” Ghassan said.

  “Did what?” I asked.

  Ghassan laughed approvingly.

  Bilal and I returned to the groves, pretending to prune and weed while we connected the tubes I had planted to what Bilal had already run underground. He looked out toward the pipeline. The two trenches I had dug and filled in were still visible, but only if you knew what to look for.

  “You did a nice job,” he said.

  An irrigation system had long been in place, supplied from a water barrel at the top of the hill, just behind the tent, which Bilal sometimes filled from costly water-truck deliveries when rainfall wasn’t enough. But now, as we sat with a tray of snacks, sipping hot tea, a small pump siphoned water from the underground tube into the barrel, from which it then trickled to the trees.

  “Stealing from thieves,” I said.

  “I’m just taking back a bit of what’s ours,” he said. Bilal wasn’t much for humor.

  He showed me how to connect the pump. “Bring it with you whenever you come,” he said.

  “Do you think they just don’t know it was you?” I asked. “Or maybe they didn’t think the firecrackers were a big deal.”

  “Trust me, they know, and they’ll come.”

  “Why don’t you just hide out?”

  “It’ll be worse if I do. They’ll demolish the house or do something else to hurt the people I love.”

  The hum of the pump gave me an idea. “When the tank is full, we should reverse the pump and send our sewage into their pipeline,” I said.

  Soldiers came at four thirty in the morning on Wednesday. Bilal was sleeping, but Hajjeh Um Mhammad was performing wudu cleansing in preparation for the fajr prayer. I woke to an explosion busting down the courtyard gate and hurried to pull on a sweater over my pajamas. By the time I made it to the door, soldiers were already rushing in and dragging Bilal outside, shirtless, wrists tied behind his back. Hajjeh Um Mhammad began screaming, and a soldier pushed her to the ground. As I ran to help her up, one of them yanked me back and bound my wrists too, the plastic ties cutting into my skin. Hajjeh Um Mhammad threw everything within arm’s reach at the soldiers—an ashtray, a carved wooden trinket, a shoe, the argileh. When she rose to her feet, one of them raised a threatening open hand to her, and she spat at him, her curses unceasing. Another soldier pulled him away and, perhaps to save face, grabbed me instead, dragging me by the hair outside with Bilal.

  The early morning was still dark and cool. I was glad for my sweater. Bilal stood across the front yard guarded, as I was, by two soldiers. Light from the moon and porch lamp misted his body. I had never seen him without a shirt, though I had imagined it. He was thin, his chest muscular with a triangular tuft of black hair tapering to a line that ran down the center of him to his belly button into his pants. His belly was slightly soft. I had felt it many times when we embraced. He was staring at me, mutual anguish, lust, fear, and rage moving between us. Our eyes locked as we listened to things breaking inside. Lights in nearby homes came on. People would gather soon. Some were already walking through the olive groves to avoid soldiers stationed on the road. They came for solidarity, curiosity, to bear witness, and because they would want people to show up when their time came.

  Daylight slowly washed out the moon and stars as more soldiers appeared walking up the pathway.

  Bilal gave a scornful laugh. “Well, well! Look who’s here! To what do we owe the honor, Commander?” he jeered at the approaching uniformed Israeli. The two men stood face-to-face. I heard Bilal whisper, “Hello, Tama—” before the Israeli struck him unconscious with the butt of his rifle. I knew. At last. Here was Tamara.

  Four soldiers scooped Bilal from the ground, dragging him along the path toward the road, each holding one of Bilal’s limbs, his limp head bobbing with their steps.

  The commander turned to me, contemplating my face. Then he looked away and ordered them to cut me loose. By this time a crowd had gathered. Soldiers were pushing them back, firing bullets into the air and throwing tear gas canisters toward villagers approaching on the hill. I heard Jumana before I saw her. A soldier moving past her had pushed her to the ground. “Sharmoot! Ibn sharmoota,” she cried out. Whore! Son of a whore!

  The sun was up by the time the Israelis left, taking Bilal with them. Although it was bound to happen, I was tormented by his arrest, and later by his absence, spending sleepless nights wondering what interrogators were doing to him.

  Jumana and I fetched Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s heart and blood pressure pills and made her a small breakfast, which she refused to eat. All the cabinets throughout the house had been opened, some broken, their contents spilled onto the floor. A regiment of neighbors and kinfolk surrounded Hajjeh Um Mhammad, who hurled curses at the vanished soldiers. I saw then the formidable woman who had endured a lifetime of military occupation, toil, and widowhood. She alternated between curses and entreaties to God to strike Israelis down, to bring the wicked to their knees, as all oppressors must be punished and the victims avenged. But she shed not one tear. She was a rock. A wall. A force. A woman. She would cry later, anguished and bitter tears, but only in solitude or in the company of her sisters and dearest friends. I thought of my mother and Sitti Wasfiyeh, Um Buraq and all the women of our hara in Kuwait who had endured these traumas of colonialism.

  Jumana put her arm around me. “Bilal is a warrior. He’ll be fine. Let’s fix this mess,” and we began another cleanup. We refolded and organized scattered clothes, gathered spilled foods, salvaged what we could of the rice flung across the kitchen floor, vacuumed the sugar and flour off the furniture and wiped it off the walls.

  The following day brought news of Ghassan’s arrest. Hajjeh Um Mhammad cooked a meal for his family, and we piled into Bilal’s car to drive to their home, which had also been ransacked. Many were already there cleaning up, but Jumana and I stayed to help before returning with Hajjeh Um Mhammad to finish putting our own home back together.

  In another day’s time, a local carpenter had mended broken cup-boards, drawers, and shelves. Over the following weeks Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s sisters, and the multitude of families who loved her, brought more food than we could eat. We refrigerated some and gave away the rest. The sun went down and rose again, as if nothing had happened, indifferent to Bilal’s and Ghassan’s absence, to the knowledge that they were being harmed in ways we couldn’t bear to imagine. There was no charge. No trial. Both were held in “administrative detention.” All of this just to secure a bit of water for the trees.

  The tenacity of heartache can take a toll on the body. Hajjeh Um Mhammad grew thin in the months after Bilal’s arrest, and I stayed to care for her. Jumana split her time between her own house, ours, and the salon. Once a week, she also accompanied me to run the pump and fill the water barrel. Ghassan’s sister and other family members took over running the bakery. Continuing Bilal and Ghassan’s work was how we all coped with their imprisonment.

  Their administrative detention orders were renewed twice at six-month intervals. Neither Bilal nor Ghassan was charged with a crime. In those eighteen months, Wadee married his fiancée, Samer got a scholarship to study in Russia, Hajjeh Um Mhammad spent a week in the hospital, and the olive harvest came and went without her and me, as I remained by her side while the whole village picked, sorted, and pressed the olives. Settler attacks increased, but in all it was a good crop, I was told. It was the first harvest Hajjeh Um Mhammad had ever missed in all her life.

  It was late October again, another harvest season, when news came that Bilal would be released. Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s joy was effusive. “Praise and gratitude to you, Almighty. Praise Him!” she sang, laughing and crying at the same time. Giddy for the rest of the day, she moved about the house in song. Her sisters and friends arrived to help make mansaf, Bilal�
�s favorite lamb dish. We didn’t know exactly when he’d be released, but his lawyer assured us today was the day. Hajjeh Um Mhammad busied herself all morning preparing the meat and the jameed, fermented dried yogurt. She sent Jumana and me out to source the best and freshest lamb cuts.

  “If it has a gamy smell, it was slaughtered too old, and the meat is no good. Same with color. Make sure you look for meat that has a lighter pink color. Red meat is too rough and won’t be as tender when I cook it,” she instructed.

  “Haader, ya sit el kol,” we both replied. Yes, ma’am.

  “Get some fresh cardamom too. I’ll grind it here.”

  “Haader, ya sit el kol.”

  “And make sure you get it from Abu Abdelkarim. He’s my favorite spice seller. And make sure you tell them who it’s for.”

  She tried to give us money, but we refused, of course. Since I’d stopped working to take care of Hajjeh Um Mhammad, cash was low, but Jehad had come through for me with enough to last for a couple of months. Between his job, the computer freelancing he did, and managing Sitti Wasfiyeh’s newfound fortune, my brother was doing well.

  “At least take these for Abu Farooq and Abu Abdelkarim,” she said, handing us bags of fruits and vegetables to gift the butcher and spice merchant. “I always take them a few things from my garden.”

  News had spread fast. People stopped Jumana and me on the street to ask if it was true Bilal was coming home. When they asked about Ghassan, Jumana’s eyes would betray her private despair over his continued detention.

  The butcher gave us extra cuts of meat, and the spice merchant loaded us with gifts of coffee beans, cashews, and fresh turmeric, “for the hajjeh and our hero Bilal.”

  Hajjeh Um Mhammad had already soaked the rice and dissolved the jameed by the time we got back. The other women had worked a bit in her garden and gone home, taking a few vegetables and fruits with them, keeping to their habit of sharing from home gardens. Jumana and I watched eagerly while Hajjeh Um Mhammad went through the bags we brought, sniffing the spices and inspecting the meat.