On the Hills of God

by Fawal, Ibrahim

  Yousif turned off the radio. “The rumors we heard about violations and illegal shipments during the truce all turned out to be true.”

  “It makes me sick.”

  And then the refugees came—like a raging flood.

  Early one morning in mid-July, Yousif opened the door to bring in the milk container and saw two women walking with huge bundles of clothing on their heads. He stopped and looked. A flood of other men and women followed, some carrying babies, others holding children’s hands. They were coming from the west, from the direction of Lydda and Ramleh, which in the last few days had seen the worst fighting.

  Yousif hurried inside and told Salwa and his mother. Salwa in turn knocked on Hiyam and Izzat’s bedroom and woke them up. They all rushed out to see the street full of people filing past. Yousif walked toward the wrought-iron gate, followed by the others. The morning was quiet except for children crying and the ominous thud of a thousand feet. The long street down the hill was jammed with strangers. Men and women were carrying suitcases. Others were walking empty-handed. Many just sat anywhere they could, looking wide-eyed, tired, bewildered.

  “My God,” Salwa exclaimed, “there must be thousands of them.”

  A middle-aged woman carrying an infant dragged her feet toward them. “A glass of water, ya khalti.”

  The misery in the woman’s eyes broke Yousif’s heart. He ran inside to get a pitcher and a few glasses. When he came out, he saw that some of the arrivals had turned in their driveway and were walking toward the house, dropping whatever they were carrying and collapsing. Cries for water rose from all directions as the strangers saw the tray of water in his hands. He filled the two glasses and handed them to those closest to him. A woman reached for the pitcher and took it from his hand. Yousif ran inside again to get more water. Yasmin and Salwa were right behind him.

  “Salwa, habibti, start slicing some bread,” his mother said, lighting the stove.

  “How can we feed all these people?” Salwa fretted, reaching for a knife.

  “We’ll do all we can,” Hiyam said, joining them.

  “There must be at least a hundred in the front yard,” Salwa said.

  Izzat and Yousif took out all the glasses and pitchers they could find and filled them with water. But too many hands were outstretched. Too many eyes were begging. Yousif did not have enough drinking glasses to go around. The anguish on these faces appalled him. On his way back to the house, he saw Izzat energetically pumping the cistern. People were camping everywhere: in the driveway, on the Chrysler, on the doorsteps. Yousif could hardly make his way inside without stepping on someone.

  From the balcony he could see that all the neighbors were faced with a similar situation. The street below his house was crowded. So was the street which led to the cemetery. Half an hour ago the refugees had arrived from one or two streets. Now they were converging from all directions. Ardallah was being overwhelmed with people. Everywhere he looked he saw streams of humanity. Because of their vast numbers, they seemed to stand still.

  In less than fifteen minutes all the vegetables and fruits in their garden were consumed. Now they were short of groceries, so Salwa sent Yousif to the nearest store. He jumped off the balcony, crossed the neighbors’ yard, and took shortcuts to avoid the crowds. Luckily he arrived at Salman’s store early enough to get five dozen cans of sardines and Spam.

  “Is it that bad?” Salman asked, beginning to feel the rush.

  “You can’t imagine,” Yousif answered, hurrying out.

  He carried the basket and went to another store for bread. He thought of the baker Abul Banat and decided to leave him alone. He’d probably be short of temper this morning. Everywhere Yousif went he was almost too late. The most he could get was a dozen loaves of pita bread. Fatima would have to bake more.

  The avalanche of people continued. So did the steady stampede on groceries. Salwa had not asked him for any vegetables, but when he saw people reaching for everything in sight, he bought all the tomatoes and lettuce he could carry. Yousif carried the full basket and headed home. The streets were getting more congested by the minute.

  All day Yousif worked in and out of the kitchen passing food and water. His mother took out the jars of cheese and olives and pickles she normally put up for winter and began to dish them out in plates and saucers. Salwa boiled eggs and potatoes. Hiyam sliced tomatoes and cucumbers and opened sardine cans. Yousif and Izzat delivered the food to the hungry crowds. Soon the people were in the house using the bathroom. There was a long waiting line. Yousif had to show them the out-house in the lower yard that served Fatima’s family and the field workers.

  At night they had to make room for some of the new arrivals to sleep in the house. Still they could not accommodate more than six or seven families. Yousif and Izzat moved furniture and spread extra mattresses around the floor. They spread carpets and rugs on the balcony and distributed pillows. Some had to bundle their jackets or sweaters or abayas under their heads. One man opened the car windows and put his two children to sleep on the front and back seats. Strange, Yousif thought, staring out the window. In the confusion he had not heard a single account of what had happened. All he could remember now was a woman saying they were lucky it was summer. Such an exodus in winter would have been hell.

  It was a perfect cloudless night. Moonlight filled the bedroom. Before he went to bed, Yousif checked on his mother in the adjacent room. She had looked weary and he wanted to make sure she was all right.

  He knocked, then opened the door. “Mother,” he said, “have you taken your blood pressure pill?”

  “No use,” she said quietly.

  Her voice was so low he had to strain his ears.

  “Whoever thought Lydda and Ramleh would fall?” she asked. “That’s the beginning of the end.”

  Yousif nodded. “Lydda’s men are known for their courage. They wouldn’t have left on their own.”

  “Absolutely not. They would’ve come out fighting. Not like this. Not like herded sheep.”

  Yousif couldn’t say anything that would make her feel better. His mind wandered. It occurred to Yasmin that the doors of the house were open with so many strangers roaming around.

  “Nearly everything we own is in this house,” she whispered, “yet I’m not afraid. Maybe I should be, but for some reason I’m not.”

  A baby began to cry outside the bedroom door. Yousif could hear the mother trying to calm it. Muffled voices from outside came through the open window. Yousif looked out. The view was panoramic. The night sky had a soft, blue tone. Under the fruit and pine trees, the ground was strewn with sleeping bodies.

  Early next morning some of the people on Yousif’s property began to leave. By noon half of them were gone. More victims were on the street, staggering. But now Yousif could see Jordanian army vehicles and private automobiles meeting the weary crowds at the edge of town and carrying them to open fields.

  For Yousif, however, the day promised to be as hectic as the one before. A quick trip to the souk assured him there was no let-up in what had to be done. Mobs were bottlenecked in the narrow streets. The spacious court in front of the Greek Orthodox church was overflowing. Some families became separated from each other. Children were looking for their parents, parents for their children. The turmoil made the chances of their finding each other most difficult.

  Here and there Yousif heard snatches of dialogue. They had been forced to travel up and down the rocky mountains on foot, a man was saying. They had been forbidden to use the highways because the enemy claimed to need them for military purposes. Several men were gathered around the husky unshaven young man who was telling his story. Yousif joined the listeners and heard the man describe the brutal march up and down the mountains.

  “It was awful,” the man recounted. “Guns behind our backs, guns over our heads. But the worst part about it was the heat. Simply unbearable. A drop of water was more precious than gold. Several people died from thirst.”

  Yousif’s throat
tightened. Others cursed and shook their heads.

  “What did you do with the dead?” a cigar-smoker asked.

  “Left them behind,” the unshaven man answered. “What else could we have done? God knows what happened to them by now.”

  Yousif could only imagine the corpses in the heat. Food for worms, he thought, remembering his father. He chewed on his lower lip.

  “Didn’t the Jordanian army try to meet you?” a watermelon vendor asked.

  The displaced man nodded sarcastically.

  “Sure,” he said. “On the outskirts of Ardallah. It was hot like hell and we’d been walking for more than twenty hours. The distance we crossed was about twenty miles, but it felt ten times longer because of the terrain. Up and down the mountains. Up and down. When we got to the highway, there was a prim and proper soldier standing by his jeep. He took one look at a woman and saw the hem of her dress raised above her knee and the front of her dress open. ‘Have you no shame, woman?’ he said gruffly. ‘Cover up before you embarrass the men around you.’”

  Like the rest of the men around the unshaven narrator, Yousif smiled cynically. He could only imagine the woman’s reply.

  “What did she say?” Yousif asked.

  “She just looked at him with contempt,” the narrator continued. “‘Men, did you say?’ she asked. ‘I don’t see any men. If there were men around we wouldn’t be refugees. There are no men around here. You show me real men and I’ll cover up. I wouldn’t think of embarrassing them.’”

  Yousif walked home thinking of the story he had just heard. He found Salwa and his mother and Hiyam sitting on the doorstep crying while trying to console a hysterical young woman. She was a bride of a few weeks, she sobbed, when Lydda had fallen. A little girl who had just climbed down a tree came and stood by her. She was her niece, a six-year-old girl with rosy cheeks and round black eyes full of wonder and light. Yousif thought she was the most adorable child he had ever seen.

  “Two Israelis came to our house and told us to leave. They pointed their guns at us and we felt there was no sense in arguing with them. I told them I’d like to take a few things with us, but one of them put the muzzle of his gun up my face and said not to touch a thing. Just move.”

  “Damn them!” Salwa said.

  “So we moved. We were almost outside the front gate when one of them shouted to wait. He came running behind us. He said he wanted to search us for jewelry. But my husband and I said we had no jewelry except our wedding bands. We took them off and handed them to the soldier, but he wanted to frisk us. While I was pleading with them to let us go, my husband tried to escape. He had all our jewelry hidden on his body and couldn’t stand there and let them rob us. So he tried to run away. But as soon as he started to run, they shot him in the back.”

  “Aaaaaah!!!” the audience gasped.

  “He fell to the ground and died on the spot,” the young bride continued, wiping her tears. “They emptied his pockets and his shoes and took every piece of jewelry we owned and all the money he had on him.”

  “Tell them how he slapped you,” the six-year-old girl prodded, her eyes shining.

  “He slapped me on both sides,” the bride said, combing the little girl’s hair with her fingers.

  “Ikassir idaih,” the young girl said. “May his hands be broken.”

  Yousif’s mother made the sign of the cross over the young girl’s head and invoked God to protect her from the evil eye.

  “Then he pushed me with the butt of his gun,” the young woman continued. “I threw myself on my husband’s body and began to scream. But they picked me up and kept shoving me until I joined the rest of the crowd at the edge of town.”

  Her crying turned into intense sobbing. Yousif saw all the women’s eyes fill up again with tears.

  He turned to the little girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Zahra,” she said, with confidence beyond her age.

  “That’s a pretty name,” Yousif told her. “Tell me, Zahra. What are you going to do when you grow up?”

  “I’m going to kick them in the shin,” she said, demonstrating with her tiny foot.

  No one laughed. Yousif wasn’t sure who would start the inevitable revolution—the Arab forces that were being denied a victory or the Arab masses who were being victimized. If he were a betting man he’d bet on the Zahras of the future.

  That evening, after all the refugees had left Yousif’s ground, Yasmin could not wait for Izzat and Hiyam to leave the house. While they were getting ready to go out, Yousif could hear his mother and wife whispering and then opening and closing many drawers.

  “What was the banging all about?” Yousif asked his mother as she came into the living room. “What are you two up to?”

  “We were looking for these,” Yasmin told him, holding a hammer and a chisel.

  Yousif did not understand. He looked to Salwa for an explanation.

  “She thinks we need to hide the jewelry,” Salwa told him. “You heard what the people of Lydda and Ramleh said. The Zionists will rob us if they come.”

  Yousif put down the book he was reading. “Mother, the Zionists are not coming here.”

  His mother paid him no attention. “Don’t bet on it,” she said. “Come, let me show you.”

  Salwa went back to the kitchen. Yousif followed his mother into her bedroom. “Where do you think is the best place?” Yasmin asked.

  “Under the chifforobe. But I don’t think—”

  Without giving him a chance to finish, she opened the chifforobe and began to empty it. First she took out her dresses and laid them on her bed. In the meantime, Yousif, resigned to what she was about to do, began taking out the bottom drawers and stacking them in the hallway.

  “What are we going to do with your father’s clothes?” she asked, breathing hard.

  Yousif had a lump in his throat when he saw all his father’s suits. “Put them on the other bed,” he told her.

  “I mean what are we going to do with them?” she asked again. “We can’t keep them in the house forever.”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” he said, putting his shoulder to the chifforobe. It was a big tall closet with two long mirrors on front of it. But now that it was empty, he could move it inch by inch.

  “Let me help you,” she said.

  “It’s better if I do it alone,” he told her.

  After he had cleared a tile that was sitting right under the chifforobe, Yousif took the tools and crouched down. Very gently he went around the tile, chiseling and hammering and blowing the dust away until he loosened it. Then he put the chisel under one side and lifted it up. He was pleased he had done it without chipping or breaking the beautiful tile which bore Arabesque decorations in light blue. Then he began digging a hole which he knew would have to be at least five or six inches deep.

  By the time he was through, his mother came into the room. Under her left arm she was carrying a bundle wrapped in a white and green scarf. He knew it was the jewelry. In her hand was a small tin can in which she was stirring a cement mix.

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” he asked, taking the bundle from her.

  “Why not?” she said, watching him unwrap it.

  The gold bracelets, crosses and chains, and the diamond rings and broaches and watches were all there. In his hand was a little treasure. She had two diamond rings that were worth some money: one two karats and the other four karats. Even Salwa’s diamond ring and bracelets were there. Even a bride wasn’t allowed to show off her wedding treasures, he thought.

  “What are you going to do every time either of you needs them? Dig them up?”

  “I won’t need them,” she said, “until the war is over.”

  Yousif wasn’t sure. “If you say so,” he said, bending down to bury them under the ground and re-cement the tile.

  After he had finished, Yousif washed his hands in the bathroom. Then the smell of cumin filled his nostrils and he went to watch his mother teach Salwa to cook. She w
as preparing bamiyeh with meat and a side dish of rice. The dried okra was tiny and browned just as he liked them.

  “Do you think we should take our money out of the bank?” he asked, standing behind his mother.

  Yasmin stirred the pine nuts in the skillet, thinking. “Maybe we should get some of it.”

  “The Zionists might steal it from us. But there’s a chance we may be able to sneak out with some of it.”

  “Good thinking,” Salwa told him, piling rice on a platter.

  Yousif threw the towel over his shoulder. “I’ll get to the bank early in the morning,” He said.

  An hour later, Yousif saw his Uncle Boulus in the driveway walking toward the house. He looked paler and thinner than usual.

  “Some Ardallah families are getting ready to leave,” his uncle informed them, lighting a cigarette. “I can’t really say I blame them.”

  Yousif and Salwa were disappointed; his mother was sympathetic.

  “I can’t blame them either,” Yasmin said, placing an ashtray next to her brother. “Maybe we should go away ourselves.”

  “We just may,” the uncle confided, crossing his legs. “If only for a few weeks or months until the storm passes over.”

  “That’s running away,” Yousif objected. “At least the people of Lydda and Ramleh were driven out. We haven’t been.”

  His uncle seemed irritated. “The handwriting is on the wall,” he lectured him.

  There was a pause. What bothered Yousif most was the calm and finality with which his uncle brushed him aside. Yousif remained quiet and watched his uncle stare out the window. Beneath the surface, the older man’s nerves seemed jangled.

  Still, Yousif refused to give in. “I wish father were alive to see them running away like rabbits.”

  “That’s what I say,” Salwa said in a huff.

  His uncle looked at them curiously. “I’m surprised at both of you. I’d like for you two to show understanding and compassion and not to be so quick condemning people and calling them names. Maybe you’re not afraid. But most people are. The stories they hear from the refugees are scaring them. The enemy has consolidated its gains on the coast and is probably getting ready to go after central Palestine. Logic will tell you we’ll be next. After all, how far are they from us now? No more than a twenty-minute drive. Who’s going to stop them if they show up with their tanks and planes? The thirty or forty guns Basim bought?”