One afternoon Yousif drove Basim to four hills and five road entrances. What struck Yousif most at these posts were the men. They toted the guns with such enthusiasm, such pride. Looking at their laughing eyes, one would have thought they were getting ready for a wedding party. Among them was Adel Farhat, having a laugh with Rassass. Adel’s gun looked puny compared to his powerful arms. Upon seeing Basim, both Adel and Rassass hastened to shake his hand. Yousif himself stayed several steps behind so as to discourage Adel from approaching him.
On his way back to Ardallah, Yousif was very quiet. Seeing Adel Farhat had depressed him. It also reminded him of how much he missed Salwa. While Basim rattled on about politics and guns and prices, he wondered about the engagement. When was she going to break it? Why wasn’t he helping her? He shouldn’t even let an impending war stand in the way. Maybe she was depending on him to make the next move. At one time he had thought of trying to intercede with her favorite teacher or the priest himself. Why hadn’t he done it? Damn!
He dropped Basim off at the watchtower on the western hill and decided to do something. Enough was enough. Where was she now? What was she doing? What was she thinking? What plans were being hatched behind his back? He was anxious to know.
His first stop was at the house of the Greek Orthodox priest. The gray-bearded Father Samaan would be the one to marry Salwa and Adel Farhat, should she be forced to go ahead. Above all else, Yousif though, he must stave off that dreadful day.
The priest lived in one of the oldest and poorest parts of town, not far from Amin. There was a high stone wall built in front of the dust-colored two-room house, in the tradition of Muslims’ homes—to protect the women from the eyes of strangers. The semi-circle in front was unpaved, and children were playing soccer or hide-and-seek. Yousif recognized many of them as the priest’s grandchildren. He couldn’t help but smile as he remembered this. As a Catholic, accustomed to celibate priests, he had a hard time adjusting to a married priest with five daughters and no less than eight grandchildren. He couldn’t imagine a priest longing for a woman as he himself was longing for Salwa, then holding the Eucharist on Sunday morning. On the other hand, why not? Maybe it was more human than the Catholic tradition. Like everything else, he thought, there were no easy answers.
He felt awkward when he approached the enclosure and came across the priest’s wife, crouching by an outside fire baking shrak, thin bread that looked like large doilies.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m looking for Aboona Samaan.”
The khouriyyeh, whose pale knees were showing, looked startled. She quickly turned her knees away from him and covered them with her elbows.
Yousif felt embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you like this,” he apologized, backing out.
“Wait,” she said, lifting the bread off the concave iron plate. She was wearing heavy-duty gloves. Smoke billowed all around her.
“He’s not here,” she said, getting up and smoothing her dress.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He’s out of town. If it’s an emergency, you need to see Aboona Iskandar, his assistant.”
“No, I need to see him personally. Perhaps later.”
“Aren’t you Dr. Safi’s son?”
“Yes, I am. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Yousif Safi.”
“Good to know you,” she said. “No, son, I can’t tell you when he’ll be back. He had to go to Nazareth. There’s no telling what might delay him.”
“Is it safe? I mean traveling at a time like this?”
“I begged him not to,” she answered, a faraway look in her eyes.
“Did he say when he’ll be back?”
She shook her head. “What’s today, Thursday?” she asked. “Inshallah in two or three days.”
“It can wait. Again, I’m sorry.”
“Think nothing of it. And give my regards to your mother.”
“Thank you,” Yousif told her, and walked back to his car.
Next, he drove to a house behind the Lutheran church. Salwa’s favorite teacher, Sitt Bahiyyeh, lived there. Lights were on, so he assumed she was home. He pulled the car over by the curb and sat with the engine running. He was thinking. Sitt Bahiyyeh was the one Salwa loved most. If any teacher could put in a good word for him, this was the one. But he was hesitant about approaching her on such a delicate matter. Why should she help him break off the engagement when she didn’t even know him? Should he forget all about it and wait for the priest to get back? No, he finally said, the more help the better.
He turned off the engine, stepped out of the car, walked up to the front door on the second floor, and rang the bell.
When the tall, spinster teacher opened the door, Yousif felt tongue-tied. She seemed surprised to see him, and he didn’t blame her. Only once in his life had he spoken to her, very briefly, at Arif’s bookstore. But he had always liked her for her partiality to Salwa.
“Good evening,” he eventually said.
“Good evening,” she answered, her hazel eyes darkening.
They stood silent for a long moment. “I’d like to have a word with you. May I come in?”
She opened the door wider and then closed it behind him. She led him in, waddling in her usual way. Her patterned, blue dress shifted around her hefty hips.
“Who’s there?” an old female voice asked from within.
“It’s for me, Mother. Don’t worry.” Then turning to Yousif, Sitt Bahiyyeh said, “Ever since Deir Yasin, she hasn’t been the same.”
“I can imagine.”
“Every time the door bell rings she turns white like a sheet, thinking the Zionists are coming to slaughter us.”
“That bad?”
“When I leave in the morning to go to school, she locks the door and puts up the iron bar. Sometimes when I come back in the afternoon, it takes me five to ten minutes to convince her it’s me before she’ll open the door to let me in.”
She motioned for him to sit. He sat in the nearest armchair and remained quiet. The heavily draped and carpeted room looked stuffy and gloomy. He watched her turn on a couple of lamps. The yellow light hardly dispelled the darkness.
“It’s about Salwa,” Yousif began, his throat dry.
“Salwa?”
“Salwa Taweel. You’re her favorite teacher.”
She smiled, sitting on a velvet sofa. “How do you know? You’re not related, are you?”
“She told me,” he answered, shaking his head. “I’ve always known.”
“That’s nice. But what about her?”
“She’s engaged.”
“I know.”
“Well, that’s it. I don’t want her to be. She and I, that is, don’t want her to be.”
“She doesn’t want to be engaged? That’s news to me.”
Yousif looked disappointed. He had expected Salwa to be wallowing in misery. He wanted her to let the whole world know she wanted him.
“We’re in love,” he confessed, his fingertips touching. “Have been for years.”
Sitt Bahiyyeh laughed and crossed her arms around her big sagging bosom. “Been in love for years!” she repeated. “How old are you? Seventeen?”
Yousif wove his fingers and popped his knuckles. “Almost eighteen.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. At your age love can be excruciating. But it was charming. Go on.”
Yousif spilled his heart out for her. Sitt Bahiyyeh was kind, listening attentively. A tapestry of the Last Supper loomed big over her head.
“How sad!” she told him, sighing. “What can I do?”
“She promised to break off the engagement. Will you find out what’s taking her so long? Is she waiting on me to do something? I haven’t been able to see her long enough to ask her myself. Will you tell her I still want her? My God, what am I saying? Tell her I can’t live without her.”
One of Sitt Bahiyyeh’s hands cradled her face. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
�
��I know I’m asking much of you. But I need help. We both do.”
“I’d hate for her father to find out I’ve been meddling in his family affairs. He wouldn’t like it, I can tell you that. We try not to get involved with students’ lives.”
“Please help me. I’m in the dark. Am I hoping against hope?”
“How do your parents feel about all this? Are they for it? I’d hate to have two sets of parents accusing me of indiscretion.”
“Don’t worry about them. I’m my own man.”
She smiled, her eyes growing misty. At that moment Yousif thought he had found an ally. A woman who had been jilted, perhaps because of a suitor’s weakness or family pressure, would understand his deep concern.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Very few men are, you know. But what about the war? People are worried about survival—and here you are making yourself sick over a girl.”
“A very special girl,” Yousif said, rising to leave. “I’d face the bombs better knowing she’s mine.”
“Tejri irriyaho bima la tash tehi issufunu. Sometimes the winds blow against the wish of the ships.”
A shiver went down Yousif’s spine. “Please don’t say that.”
“Breaking off an engagement is about as rare around here as a three-headed cat.”
“There’s always a first time. I’ve also been to see Father Samaan. With the help of you two . . .”
“Father Samaan?” she asked, standing. “Did he say he’d help you?”
Yousif looked startled. “No, he wasn’t home. But I intend to see him when he comes back from out of town. What’s wrong?”
“Father Samaan is Salwa’s father’s relative. Second or third cousin, I’m not sure. Anyway, he’s not going to turn against his own kin. I wouldn’t count on his help if I were you.”
Yousif could feel his knees buckle under him. “I see,” he said, sweating. “But isn’t this a church matter? Would he marry her against her own free will? What do family ties have to do with it?”
She shook her head. “Blood runs thicker than you think.”
Yousif looked at her straight in the eye. “That means you’re my only hope. That means you’ve got to help me. Will you, please?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
In the vestibule Yousif ran into Sitt Bahiyyeh’s eighty-year-old mother. She looked like a ghost leaning on a cane. Her frightened eyes matched his.
21
Yousif decided to spend that night on the western hill. The sky was clear, the air nippy. The moon was full. A dozen men—a school teacher, a postman, a truck driver, a farmer, an electrical engineer, a bartender, a garbage collector, two former policemen, and a few shopkeepers—were sitting in a circle, all wishing the enemy would show up. They looked motley in their disparate clothing. At best, they were a long way from the steel-helmeted soldiers he had watched in movies, and from British soldiers he had grown up seeing in Palestine, all decked out in starched cotton khaki uniforms.
Was this what people referred to as the “front”? Where were the bunkers and the trenches? The watchtower Abu Amin had started was so far no more than six feet tall. Even when finished it wouldn’t be more than a dingy closet. Was this war?
Soon a few men began to pace alone. One carried his rifle in his hand; others had them slung over their shoulders. It was getting cold and Yousif was fighting himself not to shiver in front of others.
“To do this job properly,” Basim said, “we need at least two hundred guns and six hundred men. Maybe more.”
“That many?” asked Omar Kilani, owner of the elegant variety store.
“Think about it,” Basim said. “To protect each mountain you need three shifts, each consisting of thirty men. That means ninety men around the clock. Multiply that by seven (the number of mountains) and you’d need six hundred and thirty men. And don’t forget another hundred men, at least, in the town itself—to guard the streets from a surprise attack.”
“And Ardallah is a small town,” Yousif observed. “What about big cities like Haifa and Jaffa? How many men do we need there?”
“Thousands,” said Salah Shaaban, a public school teacher.
“Of course,” Basim agreed. “And these cities have only recently begun buying some arms, just like us. We’re totally unprepared. On the other hand, the Zionists have started taking their fighter planes out of the hangers that we must’ve mistaken for barns full of hay. They have a squadron of Messerschmidtt-109s from Czechoslovakia. Their American bombers include B-17s, C-46s, Constellations, Piper Cubs, Austers, Rapides. And what do we have?” He gestured lewdly with his middle finger.
“Damn the Arab armies,” said the postman, Costa, his small eyes glistening in his apple-shaped face.
When they dispersed, Yousif heard Basim call out his name. He turned around and waited, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly, Basim threw a rifle at him.
“It’s not loaded, is it?” Yousif asked, catching it.
“No,” Basim replied, smiling. “You don’t know much about guns, do you?”
“Nothing,” Yousif replied, embarrassed.
“This is what you call an Enfield 303. British made. Had one like it in 1936—a gift from the Mufti.”
Yousif didn’t know one gun from another. Not even the difference between a gun and a rifle.
“What’s a Mauser?” Yousif asked, for the sake of conversation. “I used to hear about it all the time.”
“A clip-loaded German rifle,” Basim told him. “A mighty good one, too.”
“And the bazooka and the mortar?” Yousif asked. “What are they? Two names for the same thing?”
Basim grinned. “Boy, you are green,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “They’re not even close. The bazooka is carried on the shoulder. It’s used for knocking out tanks and armored cars. I wish we had a few of those. The mortar is like that one over there. It sits on a base, has a long tube, and it takes two men to operate. One to feed it the shell, and one to adjust the angle of firing. Who knows, before the war is over you might know a thing or two about weapons.”
The Enfield rifle felt heavy and cold in Yousif’s hands. Again he was full of doubts. If he couldn’t carry a gun, what was he doing here? He looked at the gun and then at Basim, feeling awkward.
“I might as well give you a lesson right now,” Basim said, stepping closer.
In the moonlight Yousif could see his cousin’s cunning grin. Yousif was inclined to tell him that he didn’t want to learn how to use the gun, that he didn’t believe in violence. But he kept quiet. This was neither the time nor the place. Besides, they both knew how the other felt.
Basim took the gun to demonstrate how it should be used. He removed the safety latch, cocked the firing mechanism, and showed Yousif how to aim. When he clicked it the other men were startled, but Basim quickly explained what he was doing.
“Hold it firm in your hands,” Basim instructed him. “And support it with your shoulder. If you don’t, it’ll knock you down. I have no bullets to spare, but that’s all you really have to know for now. Line the sight with the head of your enemy and shoot.”
Yousif cringed. “Just like that? Shoot only to kill?”
“If that man is out to kill you, killing him first is easy,” Basim said, the lines of his jaws firm. “Anyway, by the time you get a gun, the war might be over.”
There was always that note of frustration, Yousif thought.
“Keep it for a while,” Basim said, again handing him the gun. “You need to get used to it.”
“It’s so heavy,” Yousif said, cradling it.
Basim nodded and went to talk to a couple of men about fifty feet away. They talked in whispers, as if afraid to make a noise. Basim was the only one who gestured. Then each went his way, passing Yousif in silence.
Far below, Yousif could see the lights of the international airport in Lydda. He could also see Jaffa, a town as Arab as London is British. Yet at its harbor, ship after ship had come full of Jewish refugees
bent on making Jaffa their own. How could that be! It boggled his mind that the Jews could even think it possible. Palestine was theirs but not his? Ridiculous!
The mere mention of the word Palestine tingled his spine. The sound of it was music to his soul. Did the Jewish immigrants grow up in Palestine? Did they have an inalienable birthright to it but he didn’t? What a travesty on logic! Did they play on these hills and in these valleys? When they were in Poland and Hungary and Germany and Russia and South Africa—did they pick almonds and figs and olives and oranges off the trees in the plush orchards that dotted the land of Palestine? Did they swim on the shores of Jaffa and Haifa and float on the salty waters of the Dead Sea? Did they smell the sweet open air, touch the soil, eat the fruits?
For thousands of years, the Palestinians had been here. And now the Jews want to come back and reclaim it? Just like that? How could they even think it? Even if they did capture it, how long could they hold it? A generation or two—then what? What would they do when justice reared its head?
Yousif thought of the Palestinians who had sought their fortunes abroad but had always come back. He thought of the people of Ramallah and Bethlehem who had migrated to North and South America. They had gone, toiled for many years, but always returned to live and die in the homeland—Palestine. All the glitter and gold had not kept them away. Very few families, less than one tenth of one percent, had gone and stayed. Only Palestinian water could quench their thirst.
Yousif closed his eyes and took a deep breath, drinking in the soft cool air. The stillness enthralled him. The gun in his lap held no magic for him. He himself did not want to fight the Jews—only to warn them. Their dream would only turn to dust. They would be creating a bed of thorns for themselves and for their children and their children’s children. A Jewish nation carved by the sword would never, never have peace. Simply because no Jew could possibly love the land of Palestine more than those who were born and raised on it could. Simply because in the Palestinian’s veins ran the distillation of all his living on the hills of God.
On the Hills of God Page 35