Then they beat him on the soles of his bare feet with the flat of a sword.
What went far beyond the physical pain was having the torture take place in such fondly remembered surroundings. As Haim was being beaten, he found himself gazing at Rosie’s partially completed wall mural.
Money, the Turks demanded. British spies, guns. The soldiers would leave off for a bit and then the beating would resume.
Haim kept himself docile by thinking of his son. If I insult these bastards they’ll kill me and my boy will be an orphan, he reminded himself.
When it was over Haim had no memory of screaming, but the others said he had, and Haim didn’t doubt them. Others screamed as well, and helplessly listening to their anguish seemed as bad as the torture itself.
The Turks always confined their interrogations to the male members of the kibbutz. There was an epidemic of fever going around the evacuees. The Turks, not wanting to expose themselves to it, left that group alone, and Degania’s women, aware of the Turks’ fastidiousness, always announced to the officers that they had been nursing the sick. The officers would invariably issue an order for their soldiers to leave the women alone.
There was no protection for the men. The soldiers would round them up and jail all of them in one building. They would huddle together, singing songs and nervously joking in a futile attempt to drown out the screams coming from the dining hall.
The Turks always left after a week. There were plenty of other settlements to raid. The physical injuries they inflicted eventually healed, but the shame endured.
* * *
One September day while working along the edge of a field bordered by rocks, Haim heard somebody calling him by name. There was an Arab boy close by, peering out at him from behind a limestone boulder.
“A friend has sent me,” the boy said in Arabic. He looked to be eleven or twelve, wizened by malnutrition. He had close-cropped bristles of hair and sunken onyx-black eyes.
Haim glanced around. His nearest coworker was about fifty meters away and had not heard the boy. The closest thing to a weapon Haim had was his hoe. He kept a tight grip on it in case he was being set up for an ambush.
The boy seemed to read his mind. “Don’t be afraid. I am to lead you to your friend, that’s all.” His hollow-cheeked grin looked disconcertingly skull-like. He was wearing a baggy striped caftan, ludicrously large for him. The fabric draped his skeletal frame like a collapsed tent around its pole.
That the boy knew his name meant nothing. Haim was well known to the fellahin of Um Jumi. He approached, but cautiously. The Arab was a skinny little nothing, but who wasn’t these days? He didn’t look like he belonged to the Bedouins, and it wasn’t like the Bedouins to lure a man into an ambush for no reason. They wouldn’t expect a field worker to be carrying anything of value. Anyway, the Bedouins had made themselves scarce since the Turks came.
Haim followed the boy as best he could, but he had to walk around the boulders while the boy capered up and over the silvery limestone like a lizard. Haim soon found himself out of the line of sight of the other field workers. The boy cut across a bone-dry wadi whose surrounding vegetation was as shriveled as dried sponges. In just a few months, when the rains came, all this dusty marl would turn to mud and the scrub would swell and turn green.
“There.”
The boy pointed his pencil-thin finger at a Bedouin in striped caftan and black coat. The man was slouched against a large stone, a rifle across his knees. The man’s kaffiyeh was drawn across the lower portion of his face, obscuring his features.
The hoe fell to the ground as Haim eyed the man’s rifle. He spread his fingers wide and raised his hands above his head. “I have nothing of value,” he called in Arabic. “Have the boy search me if you like.”
“All I want is my comrade’s embrace,” the Bedouin said in Hebrew.
Haim stared. That voice—“Yol? That’s you?”
The kaffiyeh fell away as Yol leaned his rifle against the stone and got to his feet. Time had put some grey in his beard and he looked very thin and weathered but also fit and healthy. In all he seemed to be in far better condition than on that January night four years ago when he departed Degania with his burden of guilt.
“I’m very glad to see you,” Yol murmured as the two men embraced.
“Everyone will be glad to see you,” Haim laughed. He held on to his friend as if he might vanish. “Especially, in that getup you’re wearing. I swear, little monkey, you had me totally fooled.”
Yol pulled back. “I can’t return with you to the settlement.”
“What?”
“I’ve come for you,” Yol replied. “Haim, go back to your work. Tonight after supper tell Rosie you want to go for a walk and—” He stopped. “But you must tell me. How are she and Herschel? The boy is well?”
“Everyone is fine, and Herschel is almost bigger than you, little monkey. You’re welcome at Degania, Yol. You’re still a member; there’s no need to worry.”
“You don’t understand, but you will after tonight if you’ll meet Jibarn”—he gestured toward the Arab boy waiting patiently—“just beyond Degania’s gate. He’ll lead you to my campsite. Will you come?”
Haim made a face, then shrugged. “Of course I’ll come, although I still say you’re being foolish.”
“Remember, no one must know I’m back,” Yol warned. “Now go back to work before the others miss you and come searching. It’d be just my luck to be stoned for a Bedouin.”
Haim reluctantly started back. “Tonight? You’ll be here?”
“Absolutely. I’m not a ghost, you know.”
“And I’m not dreaming.” Haim grinned. “You’re really back.”
The rest of the day crawled by. He could not imagine the reason for Yol’s mysterious behavior. He hardly heard the conversations during supper. He just stared at his plate, pushing the food around with his fork. Several times he glanced up to see Rosie watching him.
At last the meal was over and Haim and his family were strolling back to the cottage in the twilight. “I think I’ll go for a walk,” Haim began.
Herschel, walking beside his father, tugged at Haim’s fingers. “Take me, Papa.”
“We’ll all go,” Rosie agreed.
“Well, I’d like to go by myself.”
“By yourself,” Rosie repeated, her expression deadpan.
“Yes.”
“Haim, you want to tell me what’s going on with you? What is this new silliness?”
“Rosie, don’t talk that way to me.” Haim glared at his wife, the anger raging within him. Lately there had been an almost imperceptible but definite change in Rosie’s attitude. He saw the change in the way she looked at him; it was evident when she listened to him speak, obvious when she replied.
It was a mixture of impatience, aloofness and maybe even a little contempt. Their lovemaking banished it for a time, but always it returned. It chilled Haim the way her wide, sensual mouth hardened into a thin line, while her warm gaze cooled to an icy, impenetrable sheen.
“I’ll see you in a little while.” Haim made his voice calm so as not to upset Herschel, who was anxiously peering up at his parents.
“Maybe later you can confide in your wife,” Rosie said through clenched teeth. She’d been on the verge of apologizing, but she was losing her temper all over again to what she perceived to be his insolent indifference. “Go, do what you want. Your son and I will go home.”
Why does this happen? she wondered. How have I changed? He’s a good man, but I constantly hurt him.
It was the war that was mostly to blame, she believed, the war and the way it had ravaged Degania. She had gotten used to the spartan, self-sufficient kibbutz way of life and had learned to love the harsh, rugged splendor of Galilee, but this valley was no place for the sick and the weak. The evacuees were turning this rough-hewn paradise into hell. How much longer could the membership provide for so many helpless people? And if Degania collapsed, what then?
&nbs
p; There was the Turkish menace too. Those periods of occupation sapped her spirit more than anything. You had to contain your hatred of the soldiers if you wanted to survive. When they came to torture the men, to spread their filth throughout the cottages, to take the food out of the mouths of hungry children, you had to make yourself go numb inside. Denial of the bitterness was the only way to keep it from eating away your heart.
“Mama?” Herschel whispered fearfully. “Don’t cry.”
Rosie bent low to hug her son. “Come on.” She forced brightness into her voice. “We’ll go home and wait for Papa.”
The danger of shutting out your hatred is that you also shut out the other emotions, Rosie thought on the way home.
Haim began to calm down as soon as he’d passed through the gate. The setting sun gave the hills a purple glow, while the distance made their barren turns look as soft as pillows. He stood awhile, letting the cool night breezes wash away the last vestiges of his anger. Then he walked on until he’d turned the bend in the road that put Degania out of sight behind him.
No lanterns were lit in the compound at night. The Turks had confiscated all the kerosene. In a little while one of the night watchmen would light a torch to mark the gate, but for now the countryside was as dark as God had created it. Haim listened to the crickets massed along the reedy banks of the Kinneret and the cawing of the blackbirds settling down for the night in the fields.
Then from someplace very near came the summons from Yol’s little Arab runner. Haim moved toward the sound until the boy’s form detached itself from a black and twisted shape that turned out to be the stump of a gnarled carob tree.
“Not so fast this time,” Haim cautioned the boy. “I’ll lose you in the dark.”
“All right.” The boy obediently stayed at Haim’s side. “It is not so far.”
“Your name is Jibarn, yes?”
The boy nodded.
“And your surname? The name of your father?”
“I have no father. Yol will answer all your questions, I do think.”
Jibarn led him through a limestone gorge. Haim smelled burning wood and a moment later caught sight of a small, flickering fire surrounded by stones. Here was Yol’s camp. Several blankets were spread out upon the dust beside the barest trickle of a stream overgrown with cattails. Haim thought he heard a mule’s soft, nervous whinny.
The site was deserted. Haim was about to ask Jibarn where Yol was when his old comrade, still in Bedouin garb, stepped from the shadows.
“I heard you coming,” Yol said. “Of course I expected you, but—”
“We came very quietly,” Haim said. He smiled approvingly. “You’ve learned a great deal since you left. Tell me everything.”
“Of course, but first please sit.” Yol indicated the blankets. “I will brew us some tea.”
As Haim took a place near the fire he saw Jibarn wander off into the darkness and he glanced inquiringly at Yol, who smiled and shrugged.
“Jibarn does not care to be still for very long. He will patrol the area and if intruders approach, either warn us or take appropriate action to stop them.”
“That little beanpole?” Haim chuckled.
“Jibarn has slit half a dozen Turkish throats in the last two years,” Yol said, scooping some water from the stream into a small pot. He added a handful of tea and set the utensil on the fire.
“Something tells me my old friend has changed since his Degania days.”
“Somewhat.” Yol smiled modestly.
“How did Jibarn come to join you?”
“I’ll start at the beginning. When I left you on that winter’s night in 1913, it was my plan to journey to Um Jumi and from there take the boat to Tiberias. Well, the boat was delayed for several nights. I found myself stuck in the last place on earth I’d wanted to be, the village of the dead shepherd. At first I despaired, but gradually perverse curiosity got the better of me. I was well known in Um Jumi, so it was not hard for me to have a talk with the mayor. I asked him if the shepherd had left any family.”
“Oh, no, Yol.”
“The headman told me the shepherd—his name was Mohammed Ahmed, by the way—had only a grandson, a boy named Jibarn no more than eight years old.
“‘Then he is an oprhan, this Jibarn?’ I asked. The headman nodded and told me that all that could be done for the boy would be done, but—Well, Haim, you’ve seen the miserable existence the most well-to-do fellahin lead.”
Haim nodded. The boy would have been doomed to an early death, there was no question of that.
The tea was ready. Yol poured it into two small brass cups and set one before Haim.
“I went to see Jibarn,” Yol continued. “I stayed several nights with him in his grandfather’s hut. In my mind I was appeasing the old man’s ghost. The boatmen came to tell me they were leaving for Tiberias, but now I was not ready. I ended up staying in Um Jumi for a month. Little by little I got Jibarn to trust me. Then one night I told him what had happened to his grandfather.”
“Yol,” Haim gasped, “You didn’t! You risked a blood feud?”
“There was no chance of that,” Yol declared. “I was right there in the village. The fellahin could have executed me and closed the matter if Jibarn had chosen to speak out.”
“You put your trust in an eight-year-old Arab?”
“I prefer to think that I put my trust in God,” Yol said earnestly. “Jibarn was only the instrument God might have used to punish me had that been His decision.”
Haim nodded. “But obviously it wasn’t.”
Yol smiled. “Jibarn listened, as silent and intent as an owl, as I stumbled through my halting explanation. It was quite strange, Haim, quite cathartic.” His tone was distant as he remembered. “Jibarn has always been precocious. He’s an odd boy—”
“That I’ve noticed.”
“Well, he was even more that way when he was younger. Sometime during that confession I broke into tears. Suddenly it was as if he was the man and I the little boy. He put his arms around me as best he could and told me that from now on we belonged to each other.”
“I shouldn’t doubt that he saw it that way.”
“I thought you’d understand,” Yol snapped, suddenly angry. “I thought you of all people would understand about an orphan who needed somebody to take care of him and a man who needed somebody to care for in order to absolve his own grief.”
Haim was ashamed. Many years ago, when he and Yol first met and were sharing living quarters as stonecutters in Jerusalem, he had told the story of himself and Abe. Yol was indeed right. He of all people should have understood.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s the war perhaps. I’ve seen so many orphans. I guess I’ve forgotten—or want to deny my own origins.”
Yol patted his hand and for a moment Haim caught a glimpse of the warm-hearted jokester his friend had once been.
“So I take it that Jibarn left Um Jumi with you?”
Yol nodded. “The mayor did not hesitate to put him into my care. The boy and I wandered together, working on farms and in the towns. We stayed a good long time in Jerusalem. Jibarn had always wanted to visit the Holy City. It was my great pleasure to show it to him. I taught him Hebrew and all about Zionism. Together we both learned a bit of English. I also enrolled him in a mosque school so he could learn his own religion. It was not my intention to turn him into some sort of mockery of a Jew. I owed it to his grandfather to raise him to be true to his own God.”
Haim was quiet for a few moments. He realized his tea had gone untouched and was now cold. He had been too engrossed in Yol’s story to drink it.
“Do you love this boy as your son? I must know, Yol, so that I don’t further insult you . . . I mean, he is an Arab, and I must learn to think of him differently if I am not to offend you.”
“He is not my son, Haim. Our relationship is based on debt. I killed his grandfather and now I take care of him. Do I love him? I suppose I do, but indirectly I am loving myself—or rat
her, I can consider myself worthy of living because of what I do for Jibarn. If he loves me I can’t say. He is an Arab, after all, and sees and feels differently than we do.”
“You mentioned that Jibarn has killed Turks?”
“Absolutely, and so have I. So shall you if you choose to join us. Eighteen months ago Jibarn and I linked up with a number of Hashomer. The Watchmen are skilled horsemen; they speak Arabic and know how to live in the wild. I daresay they’ve battled Bedouins for so long they’ve come to think and act like nomads.” Yol winked. “That’s why I’m dressed up like a Bedouin. If you were to cross the Jordan and journey about six kilometers, you would find an encampment of forty mounted men similarly dressed, but every man of them is a Jew and all members of the Hashomer, as I now am, I might add.”
“You’re a raiding party?”
“Like the Britisher Lawrence with his Arabs to the south of us,” Yol agreed. “We do what we can to harass the Turks. We cross the Jordan, hit them and retreat before they can organize a defense. The Turks are convinced that we are nomads, so there is no danger of retribution against the settlements.”
“Until one of your band is captured or killed,” Haim pointed out. “Then the Turks will see quite well that you are no Bedouin tribe.”
“But so far they’ve not caught or killed any of us.” Yol shrugged. “It’s a chance we’re willing to take. The British have Jerusalem; Jaffa may soon fall. The Allies are slowly advancing, but the rains are coming. The mud may do what the Turks cannot—stop the British in their tracks. When the roads dry the British will again advance, and it is our hope to have sufficiently weakened key Turkish positions to make that advance all the easier.”
Haim made a face. “And you’ve come to ask me to join you?”
“I’ve come to offer you the opportunity to join us, old friend. The Hashomer will accept you at my behest. Jibarn, you see, fights with us but is loyal to me. An Arab boy is a great help to a band of Jews desiring to appear to be Bedouins. He is talented at stealth, and on the rare occasions when he is discovered, his appearance and charm usually persuade the soldier to lower his guard. That’s when Jibarn’s knife does its work.”
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