“Every day it belongs to us less,” Mohammed replied.
“I respect your decision, but you also have to respect mine. If you take too long to come back to work I will have to replace you. I am not going to stop work in the quarry; I will go today and look for other men, there are a lot of Jews who do not know how to earn a living and who would be glad to have a steady job in the quarry. Yes, I know that a lot of the German Jews who have come are bourgeois, university professors, merchants, musicians . . . You don’t think that they will be able to fight with the stones in the quarry, but they will, you’ll see. Of course they will be able to swap their violins for picks.”
Neither said another word. They had been honest with each other. Mohammed sought out Igor, as he knew that as foreman it would be he who would have to find men to substitute for the Arab quarrymen.
“Where is all this going to lead, Mohammed?” Igor asked.
“I don’t know. All we want to do is halt immigration, and for people to recognize that we have a right to our own land. The British are very generous with what does not belong to them.”
“We will not leave, Mohammed,” Igor said.
“I have never said that you should leave,” he said, holding back the indignation that had surged up inside him.
“Jeremiah will make me employ more men . . .”
“I know, he’s just said as much to me. But there are moments in life when you should not decide so as not to betray yourself.”
Igor had no option but to agree with Mohammed’s words.
Over the next few days Dina ignored her son’s advice and continued going to Hope Orchard. The women were devastated. Kassia wept as she embraced Dina.
“There has to be a solution! We cannot be against each other! Let the British get out and leave the Arabs and the Jews in peace! You’ll see that we can sort things out among ourselves,” Dina said.
They were both grey-haired now, and their work in the fields and the inevitable passing of time had left their faces wrinkled. Any difference between them would never be enough to prevent them from caring for each other and being friends. Dina was a firm believer in Allah, and Kassia was a romantic socialist who believed in nothing more than what her hands could touch and her eyes could see. One of them had been born in Jerusalem, the other in Vilnius; one covered her hair with a veil and always wore a tunic that covered her whole body, the other showed her legs and arms, wore trousers, and never looked away when she spoke to a stranger. But these differences had become irrelevant in lives in which the only measure was friendship and affection.
The general strike was a success and a failure at the same time. A good portion of the Palestinian Arabs joined it, and were proud to see how, overnight, this little piece of land was practically paralyzed. The strike was also accompanied by attacks and ambushes on Jews and the British alike, but while the latter were overwhelmed by events, the former decided to fight back. The port of Jaffa was paralyzed, and the response of the Jewish community was unexpected—they built a wooden dock in Tel Aviv in record time, where ships could dock and unload.
The positions occupied by Arab peasants were immediately filled by Jews who had just arrived in the Promised Land. Overnight, thousands of Jews became quarrymen, blacksmiths, sailors . . .
But the Palestinian Arabs were not alone. The mufti had declared a holy war, and in answer to his declaration men began to come from Abdullah’s Transjordan, from Iraq, from Syria. The British reacted by sending more troops to Palestine.
“I want to talk to Omar,” Louis said to Mohammed.
Louis had arrived that day at Hope Orchard and had waited until nightfall to go over to Mohammed’s house. Dina was pleased to see him.
“I don’t know if it is the best moment for you to go to Omar’s house. If anyone found out there could be problems,” Mohammed said in response to Louis’s request.
“That’s exactly what I want to talk to him about . . . Do you realize what is happening? If the most fanatical people think that it’s a betrayal simply for the Arabs and the Jews to talk to one another, what will happen when the strike comes to an end? Because it will have to end one day. I don’t like coming to see you under cover of night as if I were a thief, and much less do I like knowing that my presence here might put you in danger. I know that people have criticized Dina’s friendship with Kassia, with Ruth, with Miriam . . . And your sister Aya has fought with her neighbors to defend her friendship with Marinna.”
“The Arabs are the ones who are suffering here. Do you think I’m not aware of what will happen when the strike ends? We won’t have any work, you will have taken all our jobs . . . I know that Jeremiah has contracted a group of German Jews in the quarry. None of them knows what it is like to work in a quarry, they’ve never held a pick or a mallet in their hands before, but there they are and there they’ll stay. We will die of hunger.”
“Did you really think that we were going to do nothing? That we were going to let our farms dry up, our shops close, our businesses go bust? Don’t you realize that the mufti is leading you all to disaster? He is rich and nothing will change for him when the strike ends, but what about everyone else?”
“There is no reward without sacrifice,” Mohammed said ill-humoredly.
“Only a madman would think that you are going to destroy the British Empire, or that the Jews are going to sit around and do nothing. We lowered our head before the tsar for too long. And you know us, Mohammed. We came to our ancestor’s land with nothing, and we have built something that we will never let anyone destroy. Jewish and Arab workers have the same interests, we are not enemies.”
“So speaks the Bolshevik!”
“So speaks your friend. Will you have Omar Salem see me?”
“I’ll ask my brother-in-law Yusuf, as he may come tomorrow with Aya and the children.”
“I will stay at Hope Orchard for a few days.”
When Louis had left, Dina asked her son when the strike would be over.
“I don’t know, Mother, I just don’t know.”
“And the attacks on the Jews?” Salma, sweet Salma, the loyal and faithful wife, looked into her husband’s eyes and could make out something there akin to a reproach.
“Attacks?” he asked, to win himself some time.
“I heard in the market that Jews have been attacked when they have tried to go through Arab villages, and even that the roads have been sprinkled with nails to burst car tires, and . . .”
“They are only trying to make it more difficult for the different colonies to communicate, it’s not a question of hurting anyone. You shouldn’t be so worried.”
“I also heard that two Jewish nurses were killed at the government hospital in Jaffa, and they say it was a group of Arabs . . .”
“I say again that you shouldn’t worry about it, or if you do, why not ask me about the sufferings of our own people?” Mohammed left the house to go and smoke a cigarette in the cool of the afternoon.
Mohammed did not want to share his worries with his wife or his mother. He felt upset with the things that were happening. He felt upset to know that there were groups of men who went out at night to the Jewish-farmed areas and pulled up the trees they had planted, or set fire to the olive groves, or destroyed their harvests. He, who loved the land so much, was pained thinking of these ruined orchards. If he managed to survive and if his family did not suffer any long-term effects from the strike, it would be precisely for this, the little piece of land they owned. He looked at the line of olive trees and fruit trees and sighed. He left time for his wife and his mother to go to bed before he went back indoors. He knew Dina, and knew that she would be waiting for him to come back so she could speak to him without Salma present.
When he finally got into bed, he fell into a deep sleep. Sleep was always a truce.
It was Dina who woke with a start. Through the window, a breeze carrie
d the smell of burning wood. She went over to the window and stood still for a few seconds, then she started to scream. A piercing scream that woke up everyone in the house. Mohammed ran, followed by Salma, into his mother’s bedroom. Dina was getting dressed as quickly as she could.
“Fire! There’s a fire at Hope Orchard . . .”
Mohammed looked out the window and shuddered. Smoke stopped him from being able to see all the way to Hope Orchard, fire and smoke covered everything. He ran out of the room, shouting “Marinna, Marinna!” Dina did not dare look at Salma, but she thought that her daughter-in-law might be weeping.
“Get dressed, we need to go . . . ,” she said.
Wädi and Naima had woken up as well.
“You stay here,” Salma ordered. “We’ll go and see what can be done.”
“Let Naima stay! I can help, I need to go,” Wädi shouted as he ran out after his father.
Mohammed ran into Moshe, who was throwing water against one of the trees that surrounded the shed they had made into their home. Eva, Moshe’s wife, came with another bucket in her hand. Neither of the two men said anything. Mohammed carried on running to the main house. He could see almost nothing because of the smoke, but he heard voices, Miriam’s, Daniel’s, old Netanel’s . . .
“Marinna! Marinna!” he shouted again.
He walked into a thick cloud of smoke and headed directly for the flames. He thought he could hear Louis giving orders and Igor talking to Ben, but what about Marinna? Where was Marinna? He called her name again and again as he walked through the smoke, until he finally ran into a body and a pair of arms wrapped themselves round his neck.
“Mohammed . . . My God!” Marinna whispered and hugged him desperately tight.
“Are you alright? Are you alright?” He did nothing more than ask the question over and over again.
“Yes, I’m alright, my son is with Igor trying to put the fire out . . . Ruth fainted from the smoke and my mother is with her.”
They kept hugging each other, they couldn’t let each other go, and that is how Louis found them.
“Mohammed, we need you to help us, and you, Marinna, get your mother and Ruth away from where they are, the fire seems to be headed toward them, and then go with Miriam, we still haven’t found Ezekiel . . .”
At this moment Wädi arrived, coughing from the smoke. Sixteen years old, he was a brave young man, always ready to help others.
“I want to help,” he said, without anyone paying him too much attention.
Dalida was crying and calling out her brother’s name: “Ezekiel! Ezekiel!” Igor tried to hold Miriam back, but she insisted on going back into the flames to look for her son.
“Where could he be?” Igor asked, confused by the situation.
“I don’t know, I was holding his hand, but we couldn’t see anything because of the smoke, and suddenly he let go and I thought he had gone out, but . . . ,” Miriam burst into tears.
“He must be inside,” Marinna muttered.
Wädi picked up a blanket from the floor, soaked it in water from a bucket, threw it over his head and ran into the house. Mohammed ran after his son, but Wädi had disappeared into the smoke and flames. Marinna ran after Mohammed to stop him from entering the house. This was when Dina and Salma arrived. When Salma heard that Wädi had gone into the house, she screamed with such despair that the rest of them were even more overwhelmed. Two or three minutes went by, then Wädi came out of the house with a bundle in his arms. They ran toward him. In spite of the burns Wädi was smiling, and he had Ezekiel in his arms.
“He was just by the door, he must have slipped and hit his head, he’s bleeding and he can’t talk.” Wädi said nothing more and fainted.
For a few seconds everything was confused. Ezekiel had some burns, but Wädi had gotten the worst of it, as he had wrapped the child in the blanket and had left his own body exposed to the flames. But Wädi was like that, always ready to sacrifice himself for others.
“Don’t touch them!” Netanel the old pharmacist had arrived, and he knelt next to them on the floor.
After examining them he said that it was best if they were taken to the hospital.
“Wädi is in a bad way. Daniel, go get the van and spread a rug in it for them. We have to take them to the hospital at once. And someone tell Yossi,” he said with authority.
Mohammed took Wädi in his arms and Miriam carried Ezekiel. The two children groaned in pain.
Though Daniel drove very fast, the trip to the hospital seemed to last an eternity. Salma cried disconsolately, as did Dina and Miriam. Mohammed did not feel calm until he saw Wädi and Ezekiel in hospital beds, surrounded by doctors and nurses.
Miriam told Daniel to go to her brother-in-law Yossi’s house.
“Ask your uncle to come.”
Half an hour later, Yossi arrived with Mikhail. His daughter Yasmin had stayed at home to look after her mother, Judith, who needed someone to be with her day and night.
The doctor on call allowed Yossi to go into the room where Wädi and Ezekiel were being treated, and it was he who came out an hour later to tell them what the situation was.
“They’ll live,” was the first thing he said, looking at his sister-in-law Miriam, whose face, like those of Dina and Salma, was covered in tears.
One of the doctors explained the situation.
“Wädi is a brave boy, and he didn’t even complain when we took the shirt off his burnt flesh. He has first-degree burns on his arms and his neck, and on his chest. The ones on his face are not so bad, but even so . . . We’ll have to wait a few hours to evaluate his condition. We’ve given them each a tranquilizer to put them to sleep. They need to rest.”
“And Ezekiel?” Miriam said, anxious to know about her son.
“The little boy? He’s better than Wädi, his burns are not so worrisome, but the one on his neck is the worst. We’ve given him a tranquilizer. He’ll be under observation all night, you can go through to see them, but don’t make any noise. What they really need is sleep. Then you should leave them in our hands. Our nurses will look after them.”
But Miriam and Salma’s begging softened the heart of the doctor, and in the end he allowed them to stay by their children’s bedsides. No one, they said, could keep them away.
Dina wanted to stay with her grandson, but Mohammed convinced her to come back with them to Hope Orchard.
“You need to help, they need someone to cook them a bit of food, give them a place to rest. Mother, they need you more at Hope Orchard.”
Yossi and Mikhail came with them. All their forces were not much to fight against the fire, which according to Daniel had started in the fruit trees around the house. A branch of a tree had fallen onto the laboratory roof, and from that moment on the smoke and fire had spread everywhere.
“I don’t know how we managed to get out . . . We were all asleep,” Daniel explained, scarcely able to keep back his tears.
They fought all night against the flames, and in the morning there were still glowing embers everywhere. The back of the house had collapsed, it was no more than ashes, but the tragedy had really taken hold in the orchard and the fields, which were now nothing more than a thick layer of ashes.
Kassia cried with despair. Her life’s work had gone up in flames. Her oranges, tomatoes, herbs, the olive trees . . . There was nothing left.
“Mother, we shall plant it again,” Marinna tried to console her, but Kassia did not listen.
Igor and Ben had taken Ruth to Dina’s house. Naima, Mohammed and Salma’s daughter, looked after her. She was thirteen years old and was as shy as she was serious.
Kassia went over to Mohammed and asked him, looking his straight in the eyes:
“Who was it? Who hates us so much as to do this?”
Mohammed had no answer. What had happened that night had not been an exception, it was a par
t of the struggle that was being carried out everywhere. But would they win like this? He couldn’t stop thinking about his son, and Marinna . . . If he had lost them, what would he have done? He knew he would not have been able to bear it. He had always done what was expected of him, and that was why he had married Salma, but he had never stopped loving Marinna, not for a single moment.
Kassia looked at him, waiting for him to reply, and he made an effort to find words.
“I don’t know, Kassia, I don’t know who it was, but I swear he will pay.”
They saw Marinna coming toward them, and Mohammed shuddered.
“You love her.” Kassia was not asking but simply stating the obvious. She did not expect Mohammed to reply.
Kassia saw how both of them made an effort not to fall into each other’s arms, so as not to upset Igor, who was watching them.
“We will have to start again. But we will, and we will need you to help us. We cannot do it alone,” she said to Mohammed.
“I promise you that Hope Orchard will be what it once was . . . My childhood is here, and the best part of my life.”
“Come on,” Kassia said, “they’re looking at us, don’t make anyone suffer any more, what has happened is enough.”
It was late in the morning when Dina convinced them to go to her house to rest for a while. Exhausted, they accepted. While Dina, with the help of her granddaughter Naima, served them tea and bread with goat cheese, Louis summed up the damage they had suffered.
“The structure of the house did not hold. Samuel built it on the frame of a shed that was not very solid. We will have to build it again. Moshe’s shed is gone, and the laboratory . . . Well, I don’t know if it was a branch that fell there or one of the torches . . .”
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