by Malu Halasa
Ahmad’s eldest son had started coming regularly to the farm. His work, it seemed, was confined to the buildings around back, and whenever he came into the barn for tools he paid her scant attention. He was interested only in the boars and was too free with the electric prod for Umm al-Khanaazeer’s liking. It was then she noticed the body-length rubber apron he wore and the sharp long knives in his pocket. He took out boars that never returned. The rancid smell of his bloodstained apron made her retch. Her suspicions were aroused but she was still unsure why.
She didn’t pay any attention to the cluster of low buildings behind the barn; they were too far away for her to see and a wall was being built around them. But Abu Za’atar, the architect of the wall’s placement and design, had been in the barn, reading from a raft of Internet printouts when he glanced down at her.
“Now I understand why pork, as tender as it is sweet, never became a popular meat,” he announced to Umm al-Khanaazeer. “When the early Arabs slaughtered your ancestors, they thought the animals dumb. But pigs are smart: the stress of seeing one of your own kind killed releases a hormone that poisons the meat.” He teased her, “People don’t mind eating something cleverer than they are, but it has to taste nice.”
The wall, which was supposed to shield her from a terrible knowledge, made matters worse.
Eventually the stress of her murdered sons entered Umm al-Khanaazeer’s heart and the infection spread to her brain, until all she could smell were bespoke hams, spiced sausages, and the bloody corpses of murdered children. A loving pig became moody and belligerent. Suddenly the demands on her body were too great. With so many babies underfoot, needing her attention, sucking up her life’s blood, there was not one she trusted to survive Ahmad’s son and the electric prod. She turned nasty before feeding, and the cleanliness she prided herself on started to slip. Nothing gave her pleasure or rest. During the day or night, waking or sleeping, she was gripped by horrific nightmares. Only Hussein, who artificially impregnated her, and Ahmad, devoted to her care, wondered about this change in her behavior.
17
The final piece of Al Jid’s legacy lies at the end of a dirt track in a fold between three hills. The secluded location makes it ideal for pig rearing. Nobody is likely to come up here, but that’s not the reason Hussein chose to keep this part of his father’s land. What makes it special is the tiny spring, which collects in a cleft at the base of the hills.
The spring was always there, only Hussein didn’t know about it. Shortly after leaving the army, he engaged the services of a water diviner. He had not yet decided to sell his father’s farmland and was desperate to find ways to make it more profitable. For five days he trailed behind a wizened old fellow who methodically walked over every inch of ground, holding the two ends of a Y-shaped branch. Several times the stick twitched, but these were false alarms. On the last day they went up to Al Jid’s most inhospitable parcel. As soon as they arrived, the diviner’s eyes lit up. Without even using his implement, he marched purposefully over to a low pile of rock and rubble. “Dig here,” he commanded, and withdrew to the shade of a bush where he sat with his arms folded.
Hussein removed the boulders. Only a few inches below the surface, water began to seep into a shallow depression, and by the time he excavated a basin three feet deep it was filling rapidly. He carefully lined the hole with stones and came to regard it as a shrine to his father’s memory. When he sold off most of Al Jid’s property, he never once thought of getting rid of the seventy dunams surrounding the spring.
“My father would have thought this nothing short of a miracle.”
Hussein is standing with Mustafa by the stones and a trickle of water. Taking the soldier’s bags between them, they have taken the path opposite the farm buildings toward an outlying rocky crop. Mustafa doesn’t look entirely at home in civvies, but he will no doubt grow into them, notes Hussein, as they start negotiating an ever-steepening track. They eventually stop at the lone terebinth tree, beneath whose spindly boughs Hussein’s father once kept a vigil during a rainless season. Family and friends begged Al Jid to quit his fasting and take at the very least some water, but his answer was always the same. The parched land was a test sent by God alone. He cited the irascible Saint Sabas, who put his hands against heaven and each finger burst into a miraculous flame.
“My father really did believe it was a matter of conviction. Water would come if he prayed hard enough. And it did.” No matter how many times Hussein turns it over in his mind, he is not so much surprised by the event but by the maliciousness of nature. “Thunder broke over Jebel Musa and turned into a deluge. Al Jid danced for joy but was humiliated by the ensuing flash floods.” Hussein is momentarily lost. The story always leaves him with no resolution.
He and Mustafa gaze down on the terraced fields Al Jid once plowed, now scraggly and underutilized; his hectares on the town’s edge lying fallow will in time fall to developers’ bulldozers. Near and far, the arid steppe and the mountains running alongside the river valley change color from brown to gray, purple, and gold in the bright sunlight and shadows. Mustafa takes in the tranquil scene with a deep breath. “He sounds like a man of deep and abiding belief.”
But that, Hussein feels, is never enough. “You could say he spent his whole life battling injustice. My father was convinced if there was a Promised Land, then there was also a land denied.”
Hussein doesn’t have to spell it out. The contrast between the mountainous scrub and patched greenery on the east bank and the pastures of plenty on the other side is like an insult or a dare. Faced with such an obstacle, most men would have submitted to nature. However, Al Jid was a realist who was in many ways a fool.
“It had been my father’s mission to make this side of the river remember.”
Every day without fail, Al Jid left home hours before dawn and returned after dark. Fatigued oftentimes to the breaking point, he never completely gave up. The year his fortunes finally changed, the rains arrived early. He had seen other promising starts end in disaster, so he carried on as usual, expecting the worst. Throughout the season the weather continued to be clement, and the fields turned green, but still he did not allow himself to rest. When harvest came he found that, after a lifetime of clinging to a precarious subsistence, he finally had enough to feed his family, with a small surplus left over to sell. There were plenty of things to spend the money on—the children’s clothes were threadbare and their old house of mud brick and stone in desperate need of repair—but Al Jid had plans of his own.
Education had been a lifelong passion. In a fit of self-improvement, he taught himself to read and write. He came to believe that all roads, whether that of the caravan or the colonizer, passed through the Middle East. The region nurtured the earliest stirrings of civilization and had given rise to religions that ruled the world. People carried faith in their hearts, and this was the basis for morality, which survived only because of farming that began thousands of years ago in the fields and plains all around them, when animals were herded and the first seeds were sown.
Al Jid prided himself on an erudite knowledge of religion and history, although he realized that if his sons were ever to be free from the tyranny of the land they needed a more pragmatic wisdom. The European powers, which had dominated since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, were withdrawing, and the consequent reshaping of the political map could not be predicted with any accuracy. The educated might survive, while the ignorant would only continue suffering. The family’s lifeline wasn’t the land the old man fought and tamed but the children he educated and insisted on sending overseas.
Hussein never analyzed his father’s motives too deeply; he had been too preoccupied with rebelling against them. Now, in the company of the fatherless soldier, he feels compelled to talk about Al Jid and his life.
“He was determined that all his sons would do well. When my brothers and I came of age, he picked our respective fields—science, business, engineering, medicine, the military, commerce,
property and retail. To be honest, I wasn’t keen on the army, but good men like you and your brother made my time there worthwhile.” Sweating, he puts down the soldier’s duffel bag; he is that out of shape. “And when I retired I vowed not to take on any of my father’s battles.”
The natural trajectory of the path descends to a distant ravine, and then it’s a steep few miles to the bottom and the town. Instead, Hussein lifts Mustafa’s duffel bag, shoves it onto a ledge above them, and then scrambles up after it. A few feet away he climbs through a tight opening in the rock and waits for Mustafa to push his bags through to him. Once these are on the other side, Mustafa comes through the gap, which widens onto another rocky promontory. Hussein has his own reason for familiarizing the soldier with the terrain around the farm, which he hints at: “You already know from your time in the field, preparation is the first line of defense.”
The bags are left beside a series of irregularly shaped openings in the rock, some rabbit-size, others large enough for four men. They enter one of the larger ones where the air is motionless and dry. Hussein lights a cigarette. “We’re not so far away from Jebel Musa and the monastery. When the number of hermits overran their cells, they migrated to some of the caves around here. In one, I discovered a wooden cup and bowl, not much of a reward for a life spent on your knees in prayer.”
He gestures toward the dark heart of the cave. “If you follow it around, always heading downward, there is a way of coming back out on the path we just left, which doubles back toward the ravine. If you don’t lose your way, after eight miles you’ll reach the town. It’s not a walk I’d do in the dark, but it’s not impossible.”
Hussein makes one of his sad jokes again. “The trouble with the army, it gets you ready or gets you scared. I keep a few things here just in case.” He pulls back a rock near the entrance and shows Mustafa a cloth sack and its contents: a working flashlight, a rope, a lighter, a candle, and a plastic bottle of water. “And I’m not the only one,” he points out. “I found a pile of women’s robes in one of the other caves and I put them in here too.” He shines the flashlight into the interior. The light glances off the side onto a pile of rocks, behind which is another bundle.
The soldier nods. “You never know what comes in handy.”
They understand each other. Working together, they stow the bags again out of sight behind the rocks, bathed in the glow of afternoon light coming in through the cave’s entrance. Outside, a sweep of rock hits a blunt blue sky. It is a majestic view that once inspired prophets and desert fathers.
“You can feel God,” says Mustafa.
“Sure,” Hussein is non-committal, although he wonders what is more phantasmagorical, the fingers of a saint catching fire or a diviner’s rod that uncovers water by default. He throws his cigarette on the ground and maneuvers himself through the opening in the rocks, then along the ledge and down. As they retrace their steps, Hussein formulates a plan: he will take the soldier to the barn and show him what will alienate him forever or provide another colorful anecdote for his travels home.
At the spring on the path to the farm, Hussein picks up the sound of a car engine straining on the mountain. He can tell almost to the second when it leaves the smooth asphalt and turns onto the rough dirt track toward the farm. Around the second bend, by the low buildings crammed into the narrow valley between the steep hillsides, one of the dilapidated taxis from town pulls into view.
Ahmad is already outside the barn, calling to him. Glimpsing the car’s unlikely occupants, Hussein quickens his step. “Take Mustafa inside,” he instructs his farm manager. The soldier will have to make up his own mind. His ex-commander is required elsewhere.
“Mikhail, welcome!” Hussein reaches in through the open window of the cab to shake the driver’s hand. He doesn’t have to ask; he can tell something’s up. Laila rarely comes to the farm these days. He expects her and the boys to tell him, but the three sit perfectly still. When he opens the front door, his dishevelled sons tumble into his arms. He regards his wife.
“They were in a fight,” she says.
Hussein inspects Mansoor’s black eye. “Fair assessment.”
At the sound of their father’s voice, the children start sobbing, and as Hussein consoles them, Laila gets out of the taxi and pays Mikhail. But before the driver leaves, Hussein motions over his sons’ heads for him to wait. After he disengages himself from the boys, he goes into the processing block, where Ahmad and Mustafa are taking tea together. The soldier looks fine. Jihad is more treacherous than the whirring Wurstmeister. Hussein returns to the service taxi, carrying a string of sausages wrapped in wax paper. “For your wife, Mikhail. I know she is fond of them.”
The driver, clearly pleased, bids Hussein and his family goodbye: “Ma’ al-salameh.”
Hussein regards his sons sternly. He expects the appropriate polite response no matter how badly they feel. “And what do you say?”
“Bi salam Allah,” the boys answer respectfully through their sniffles.
As the car reverses along the track that eventually leads to the road, Hussein stands with his children and waves. He then takes them over to a large, flat rock, where they sit down. Gently he probes Mansoor’s face where the skin is soft and tender. “Was it about the farm?”
They don’t answer. He repeats his question but Mansoor and Salem avoid his eye. Hussein pleads with wife. “Honestly, Laila, tell them it’s not worth fighting over pigs.”
She throws up her hands. “Why not? Everybody wants to!”
There is an edge of panic in her voice that worries Hussein. He puts his hand on his sons’ shoulders and says, “Boys, go and find Ahmad—he’s in the processing block by the sausage machine. Ask him if Umm al-Khanaazeer has had her new piglets.”
The hesitant children start off slowly but are running and laughing by the time they reach the processing block. Laila sits down on the rock beside her husband and opens the food bag. There is tabbouleh and sliced meat in a plastic container, bread wrapped in a napkin, and a quantity of fruit. She offers it to Hussein. “Your mother is better equipped to deal with a crisis than I am. If you relied on me, there would be nothing to eat but grass. Then,” she adds glumly, “we’d all be as dumb as sheep, if we’re not already.”
Hussein, a little perplexed by her words, takes an apple, but after rolling it around in his fingers for a few seconds, he returns it to the bag. “I’m not hungry. This business with the boys is not the only occurrence of the day.” He describes his past couple of hours at length, including the appearance of the soldier Mustafa. He even makes Laila laugh when he describes Abu Za’atar’s crazy antics. “All in all”—he shakes his head—“it’s been most illuminating.”
“That’s not a word you normally use.” Laila is scrutinizing him closely, but he knows his eyes are clear and his breath doesn’t smell as strongly as it normally does by late afternoon.
“I feel like someone, and not Mrs. Habash, is trying to tell me something,” he jokes. He wants to lighten the mood as much for his sake as hers.
She responds sarcastically, “Husband, I can tell you exactly who it is. Guess if you can.” Stroking movements with one hand under her chin represents a beard, while the other sweeping across her forehead indicates a turban. “He gave the khutbah at the mosque today.”
Despite their problems, Hussein finds himself smiling. “No, that’s not what I mean. There have been too many signs of late. It’s clear to me now that if I carry on the way I have been it will lead to disaster, but it’s not just me: the family, the farm, all of us must change.”
Intrigued by her husband’s seriousness and sobriety, Laila nods in agreement. “Separately the two of us have come to the same conclusion. What are we going to do, Hussein?” She lays her hand on top of his, but he makes no move to take it.
“I don’t know. I have to think more about it, but sooner or later I will be forced into a decision. I only hope there is enough time to make the right one for us.” He takes his wife’s
hand and caresses the soft skin with his thumb. “Tell me truthfully, Laila, have we all that we need? Are we lacking in anything? The house is filled, the children well fed. Many people could not say the same. Look at Mikhail.” Hussein hopes she will immediately understand that many of the town’s families survive on little. “Can you be happy with what we have and expect nothing more?”
He has never before spoken to her so honestly, and she is touched by the genuine nature of his concern. In the past she took it for granted that his motives were as selfish as hers. Now she realizes he has been thinking about her and the family all along. He has even placed them above his own happiness. She cannot believe that through her neglect she has acted so badly toward the only man who has treated her well. Everything, even the putrid stink of the farm, melts away. All she can see is Hussein’s face. For the first time in many months she feels a stirring of desire for her husband and, leaning forward, she kisses him tenderly on the lips.
He puts his arm around her and she leans against him. “We have our health and our children,” he says. “What more can we expect?”
It occurs to Laila that despite all they have been through, they might actually learn to love each other again. They sit together in silence. The sun is edging slowly behind one of the hilltops. There will be light in the town and on parts of the mountaintop for a few more hours, but because of the farm’s location, dusk comes early. Laila hasn’t been here in a long time. After the first profits came in, she lost interest. Whenever the rest of the family went, she purposely stayed at home as another way of punishing her husband. Periodically she asked after the health of Umm al-Khanaazeer but never showed much interest.
Hussein breaks the silence. “I plan to ask Mustafa to help out on the farm until he feels ready to go home. He will have the time he needs to adjust to life before he returns to his own family. It’s God’s will that he comes to us now. With all the pressure, I don’t know how much longer we can expect Ahmad to carry on.”