On the Hills of God

by Fawal, Ibrahim

  She did not answer; nor did she pick up her knife and fork.

  “And I presume you were serious,” her husband said, “when you told him you’d be there tomorrow.”

  “I was serious,” she said, her eyes widening. “What of it?”

  “Tomorrow I’m busy. Why not wait until we could go together? I’d like to check on her myself.”

  “We’ll go again,” she said, still not touching her food.

  No argument was strong enough to dissuade her. The doctor looked to his son for help.

  “When mother makes up her mind,” Yousif said, “there’s no sense trying to change her mind. I’ll skip school tomorrow and go with her.”

  “You don’t have to,” his mother said.

  “I know I don’t have to,” her son told her. “But you might need protection.”

  9

  Yousif took a day off from school to accompany his mother to see Aunt Widad in Jerusalem. As Makram drove them in his dusty black Mercedes taxi across the thirty-five-mile stretch southeast, his mother voiced concern about her sister. But Yousif was preoccupied with other matters.

  Passing Sarafand, the British military camp, he wondered what the British were going to do with all those arms. Couldn’t the Arabs find a way of getting any of them? Couldn’t some of the officers be bought? Couldn’t they look the other way as the Arabs helped themselves? It would be a shame if all these acres of guns and ammunition were taken out of the country or if they fell in the hands of the Zionists. He should speak to Basim about that.

  A few miles later, he could see the outlines of Lydda and Ramleh, two large Arab towns. They were known for their fertile fields of vegetables. Lydda was also famous for the bravery of her men. Yousif was curious what these brave men were doing now, on the eve of war. Were they thinking of attacking the Sarafand camp, for example? Or were they, like everyone else, wasting their time daydreaming or playing dominos at coffeehouses? Lydda was also the birthplace of Saint George, the dragon slayer, his favorite saint.

  When they reached Latrun, Yousif thought of the Trappist monks who lived in the monastery. Were there Arab monks among them? Were they all Europeans? Where were their earthly loyalties—if they had any? Could their monastery be available to the Arabs to defend themselves? There was no doubt in his mind that Zionist agents had already made their “arrangements.”

  But Yousif’s thoughts were soon interrupted. Across the narrow road from the monastery was a British police station, heavily barb-wired. Two young M.P.s, with cheeks pink from the December weather, stopped the car. Their guns were at the ready. They flanked the Mercedes on both sides. Makram was quick to roll down the window. A gust of raw wind blew inside the car. Yousif saw his mother wrap her beige wool scarf around her neck.

  “Let me see your I.D.,” one M.P. ordered the driver.

  Makram had his hand already at his hip pocket. Within seconds he was showing him a small card with his picture on it. The policeman studied it and then returned it to the driver. He looked at Yousif and his mother.

  “Let me have yours,” the Britisher said.

  “We don’t have any,” Yousif replied, lowering the window on his side.

  “Why not?”

  “Is this a new law?”

  “It’s not a new law,” the policeman answered. “It’s always been a requirement. Get one as soon as you can and make sure you have it on you at all times. And that goes for the lady in the back seat. Lady, do you understand English?”

  She nodded.

  In the meantime, the other M.P. had Makram open his trunk for inspection. Shortly, Makram returned to his seat and they were winding their way up to Jerusalem.

  “If it’s like this here, I can imagine how it is in Jerusalem,” his mother said, tight-jawed.

  The road wound itself around the hills like a snake. Soon they were entering Bab al-Wad, a narrow passageway between high cliffs. It was obvious to Yousif that whoever controlled this strategic point would control the entire highway and be able to cut off Jerusalem from Jaffa and Tel Aviv.

  Such twists and turns in the road seemed to parallel the twists and turns in Yousif’s mind. Palestine must be protected; Arabs must survive—Jews too if he could help it. He would quit school and join whatever resistance group there was and do his share. But where was such a group?

  The Grand Mufti, who had led the revolt in the 1930s, was still a leader around whom some rallied. But not many. Most people, Yousif now remembered, had no qualms with the Mufti’s patriotism. But to others, he had become obsolete. They had little faith in his band of villagers and their outmoded tactics. Even Basim, one of the Mufti’s closest aides, was striking out on his own. Yousif watched the road as they passed two more Arab towns well perched above high hills. Kastal and Abu Ghoush were on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

  A sense of foreboding seemed to grip Yousif as they crossed the city limits. The atmosphere in this city of churches, mosques, and synagogues seemed funereal. The sights and sounds of bustle were gone. The usually clean roads were littered with yesterday’s debris. Were the sweepers on strike, Yousif wondered, or were they afraid to do their work? There were few shoppers on the sidewalks. Some of the stores were even closed. Posters bearing the star of David were plastered on walls and over movie billboards. The writing on them was in Hebrew. Yousif could tell they were urging Jewish men and women to join the Hagana, the Jewish underground. Blue and white banners, some of them ripped, were hanging from telephone posts.

  “Get us out of here,” Yousif’s mother said to the driver.

  Yousif looked at his mother. Her face was as yellow as a lemon.

  “You’d think you’re in Tel Aviv,” Makram remarked, shaking his head. “Look at all the Hebrew signs.”

  “It’s not that,” the mother complained. “I feel uneasy . . .”

  They passed a number of rabbis and orthodox Jews, all clad in black. Some huddled in groups; many walked along the sidewalks, their elbows and fur-trimmed hats touching the wall. Several blocks later Yousif saw a fist fight.

  “Where did you say you’re going?” Makram asked, looking in the rear-view mirror. “The French Hospital?”

  “That’s right,” she answered, clutching her purse. “But don’t take us there. Stop us at Jaffa Gate and we’ll walk up the couple of blocks. I need to buy something for Widad.”

  Yousif was surprised. “Like what?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “A robe, a bottle of perfume. Something.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. It’s too dangerous.”

  His mother frowned. “You don’t expect me to visit her empty-handed?”

  “This is no time for formalities between sisters,” he answered. “Look, why don’t we let Makram drop us off at Barclays Bank. You can buy a box of chocolate from the delicatessen next door. It’ll save us time.”

  His mother would have none of it. She was not coming to Jerusalem every day. Now that she was here, there were a few things she needed to do. This was her hometown. She wanted to light a candle at the Qiyameh, Holy Sepulchre. And she wanted to see her parents.

  “You wouldn’t come all the way to Jerusalem and not see your grandparents, would you?” she asked, looking him in the eye.

  She succeeded in making him feel guilty. He turned around and faced the road ahead of him. A city in mourning zipped by. He felt a lump in his throat. Some of his happiest recollections resonated around this sacred and blessed city of shrines, temples, belfries, minarets, and domes. From childhood, he had loved everything about Jerusalem: the old and the new, the visits with his grandparents in the old district of Musrara and with his cousins up at modern Qatamon. He had loved the exotic and appetizing smells of herbs and foods drifting from restaurants and sidewalk cafes, the sounds of church bells and muezzins, the voices of vendors and heavy traffic, the sight of silks and leather goods hanging in the middle of the streets and touching the pedestrians’ heads, the bazaars in souk Khan iz-Zait and the modern shops at Al-Manshi
yyeh, the skullcap and the fez, the priest and the rabbi and the shaykh, the chic and the dowdy, the marble of new Jerusalem and the mud huts of old, the cobblestoned labyrinth of old Jerusalem within the ancient, imposing, wind- and sun-beaten stonewall.

  Maneuvering his way through the heavy traffic, Makram seemed to know his way around the holy city. Staying on Jaffa Road, he cut through Jerusalem from almost one end to the other. Strangely, there were no checkpoints along the way, mainly grim soldiers patrolling the jittery, empty metropolis. Government buildings looked like fortresses.

  Makram honked and sped around a stalled truck. “Just tell me when and where to pick you up,” he said. “I’m at your service all day.”

  “Let me think,” the mother said, checking her make-up in the small mirror she was holding.

  Yousif turned to Makram. “Why don’t you pick us up where you’re going to drop us off. In front of Barclays Bank. It has a canopy we could stand under if it rains. Is that okay with you, Mother?”

  “What time?” she wanted to know.

  “How about three o’clock? That’ll give you nearly five hours to do all your errands.”

  She thought for a second, then nodded.

  “Look at these sand bags,” Yousif remarked, as they passed the main Post Office.

  “Look at the barbed wire.”

  Yousif’s imagination ran wild, and his concern mounted.

  Carrying a large box of imported biscuits and a brown bag of apples and bananas, Yousif and his mother followed a beautiful young nun in a white habit as she moved silently down the sparkling marble floor of the huge French Hospital. They were the first visitors to be admitted. Because of the quiet, Yousif found himself tiptoeing. The nun stopped in front of room 26 and waited for them to enter, her kindly face turning crimson.

  “Thank you, Sister,” the mother said, bowing her head.

  “You’re welcome,” the nun answered, smiling. “I hope you’ll find your patient doing well.”

  They stepped into a semi-private room with a large window. The outdoor view was blocked by a curtain drawn between the two beds. Aunt Widad was asleep, her long neck bent on the high pillow. Although she was his mother’s twin sister, she looked older. The resemblance between the two sisters was slight. His mother was fair-complexioned, but his aunt was olive-skinned. Aunt Widad must have sensed their presence. She opened her eyes—glad to see them. The two sisters embraced and kissed. Then it was Yousif’s turn.

  Aunt Widad told them all about the sharp pain from the gallbladder attack and her subsequent surgery. God must have listened to her prayers, she said. She had felt the pain all that weekend, but she did not have to be rushed to the hospital until after the curfew had been lifted. The first night and the following day after the resolution was passed, the Jews were dancing right under the Widads’ window. Then something strange happened. Their next-door neighbors, Jews they had known for years, stopped talking to them.

  “The UN resolution seems to make it illegal or immoral for Arabs and Jews to have any contacts with each other,” she said, frowning.

  “Did you try to speak to them?” Yousif asked, standing by her bed.

  Aunt Widad nodded. “They mumbled something,” she said. “But you could tell they didn’t want to talk. After that, kindly old Jewish men started walking around wearing black arm bands and carrying guns. We could see them parading through the neighborhood. Then we began to hear firing going on in every direction. Bombs exploding . . . ambulances screaming. It was awful.” She sighed and pointed her finger toward the curtain. “The lady in the next bed is one of the first victims. A sniper’s bullet hit her in the jaw. They had to operate on her for five hours. Look behind that curtain—she doesn’t mind.”

  Both Yousif and his mother got up from their seats and walked to see the patient in the next bed. She was up, peering at them from behind a white mask but unable to speak. Her bandaged head looked like a mummy’s. They nodded in her direction. Yousif bit his lower lip; his mother covered her mouth with her hand.

  They returned to stand around Aunt Widad’s bed.

  “We saw nothing like this in Ardallah,” Yousif’s mother said, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “Any place is safer than Jerusalem,” Widad explained, her fingers folding and unfolding the bed sheet. “We’re afraid the worst is yet to come.”

  They stayed with her for the next half hour. By 10:30, they hugged her, kissed her goodbye, and wished her a speedy recovery.

  “Have a safe trip back home,” Aunt Widad said.

  At the door both Yousif and his mother stood silent, absorbing her words. Yousif wondered if they would ever see Aunt Widad other again.

  Yousif and his mother walked downhill past Notre Dame until they reached Bab el-Amood, two long blocks away. Like the new Jerusalem, the old city within the ancient wall was distressing. People were shopping and going about their business, but they seemed dispirited. Yousif and his mother walked through the narrow, congested streets, not stopping at any shop but heading for the Qiyameh, the Holy Sepulchre. Suddenly, there was excitement in the street. People began to push each other as if to make room for someone on the run. In a chain reaction, people were elbowing each other or stepping on each other’s feet down the narrow, crowded street. Yousif saw a young man running and a British soldier following him. As they ran, they toppled pushcarts and knocked over fruit stands. The street was strewn with apples, bananas—and crucifixes and crosses from a small showcase that had been knocked over.

  “Catch him! Catch him!” the British soldier shouted, unable to shoot lest he hit someone else. But the people would not cooperate. Most of them were Arabs and the fugitive was one of them.

  “Don’t listen to him,” screamed the man running.

  “Catch him,” insisted the soldier, “he’s carrying a bomb. Catch him before it explodes.”

  “He’s lying,” shouted the Arab, merging with the crowd.

  Nevertheless, the word “bomb” brought more alarm to the scene.

  “A bomb!” said Yousif’s mother, horrified.

  “Don’t be afraid, Mother. He’s too far from us now.”

  “But there are others to be afraid for,” she said, reproachful. “How could you say a thing like that? Look at them, like ants. If the bomb goes off God knows how many will be killed.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  Angry shouts flew from store owners whose goods had been knocked over. Someone picked up a huge ripe melon and threw it at the soldier. It hit him in the back of the head and he stumbled and fell on the cobblestone pavement. Before he could get up, the Arabs converged on him and held him to the ground.

  “There’s a bomb on that man,” the soldier pleaded.

  “He says you’re lying.”

  “I’m telling you the God’s truth.”

  “Shove it up your ass.”

  Just then down the street the bomb went off with a horrible, deafening blast. But the screaming was even louder than the sound of the explosion.

  “Oh no . . . oh no!” said Yousif’s mother.

  The roof of the arcade was blown away. Soon the pedestrians were showered with rubble. A dozen men and women were piled up in the middle of the narrow street, rendering it impassable. Dust particles danced in the sun rays like those in the beam of a motion picture projector. Goods were now the color of dry clay. Blood oozed from the arm of one man nearby, and Yousif rushed to help. Images of Amin flashed in his mind and he envisioned an amputation.

  “You need to cover it from all the dust,” Yousif warned the injured man, offering him a handkerchief.

  “Aaaaaahhh . . .” the man cried, not heeding Yousif.

  It was a cry among many. Here was a ten-year old girl yelling for help and squeezing her right eye. When Yousif tried to help her she pushed him away, groping for whomever had been with her. There was a crying woman with her headdress knocked off. A wound as wide as a pencil ran from her right ear to below her chin. Mothers were calling for their childr
en. Children were lost and hurt. Silk scarfs, leather hassocks, embroidered vests were scattered everywhere. Earthen jars full of honey, molasses, and sesame oil had broken open. Sweet and tangy smells filled the air.

  Yousif slipped over a box of halkum and a jar of pistachio nuts, catching himself in time. He was pulling a bald-headed old man up, when he heard his own mother calling.

  “Yousif, what are you doing?” she reproached. “Let’s get out of here. I’m about to die.”

  She did look crimson, but Yousif knew she was prone to exaggeration. He wanted to stay and help out, yet he couldn’t abandon his own mother. After all, her blood pressure was a problem. He pushed his way toward her.

  “Come on,” he obliged, putting his arm around her and hurrying her away.

  In the rush to escape, they failed to turn on souk Khan iz-Zait, which would have taken them to the Qiyameh, where Yousif’s mother had wanted to light a candle. Instead they were on Via Dolorosa and then al-Wad Road, stopping every now and then to catch their breath. When they reached the Khalidiyeh Library, at the corner of the Jewish Quarter, they slowed down so as not to arouse suspicion. On the top of a few roofs Yousif could see Jewish men looking at them down the barrel of a gun. He kept it to himself lest his mother become alarmed.

  They turned right on Bab al-Silsilah Road, crossing several streets until they got to Omar Square, just inside Jaffa Gate. It was not twelve o’clock yet but she was too tired to go any further. To the right, less than a block from the Tourist Information Center, was a small restaurant in a dark alcove. She wanted to stop there and freshen up and have a glass of water. She needed to take the pills for her high blood pressure. But the restaurant was closed.

  “Let’s go to Al-Amad just outside the gate,” Yousif told her, remembering a place famous for its kabab. He could almost smell the appetizing aroma drifting from the popular restaurant.

  “No, let’s stay in the old city for a while,” she told him, leaning against a wall. “We’re not far from the Qiyameh. Now that we’re here we might as well visit.”