The Almond Tree

by Michelle Cohen Corasanti

  ***

  Abbas and I went to the cemetery and dug a hole next to Amal’s grave. The sun felt like fire on our backs, but we didn’t stop until our hole was two metres deep. Abbas and I were so dry, we were no longer perspiring.

  ‘The Israelis will pay for this,’ Abbas kept muttering. ‘They only understand violence. It’s the only language they speak.’ He stopped digging. ‘An eye for an eye.’

  Mama carried the tiny body to the grave. Nadia never let go of her hand. We kissed her cheeks. Fadi and Hani clenched their fists. Abbas’ eyes were stone. Mama lowered Sara into the ground, but refused to let her go. Nadia cried.

  ‘No,’ Mama said. ‘This is a mistake.’

  Finally, I took Sara from her. In the hole, I laid her down. I bit my lip. When I climbed out, Abbas and I covered her with dirt. As I filled the grave I kept seeing Baba in the bottom of a hole like this one, being covered in dirt by some Israeli bulldozer. All hope was gone.

  Where would we live? What would we do? We needed a home to protect us from the brutal summer heat and the torrential winter rains. We couldn’t build. We didn’t even have enough money to buy a tent.

  CHAPTER 7

  Uncle Kamal bought us a tent from the village market. For the past two weeks we’d all slept outside, under Shahida, dressed in the ill-fitting clothes Mama made from rags that Uncle Kamal found for us. Abbas and I used rocks to knock cedar stakes into the ground under the almond tree and, when curfew began, the six of us squeezed in and lay crushed together, the little ones on top of the bigger ones. The high temperatures, body heat, sweat, lack of air and inability to move made sleep impossible.

  ***

  The moment the curfew ended, I ran to the military’s outpost again, determined to find out what had happened to Baba. For the past four weeks, I’d waited in line every day with hundreds of other villagers who sought permits to marry, or bury loved ones, or build a home; or to leave the village to go to the hospital, or work, or classes. A handful of villagers, like me, sought news of loved ones who had been arrested or taken from the village to unknown locations. Every evening I returned home not even knowing if Baba was alive. Today would be different, I told myself when I arrived.

  Abu Yossef got in line behind me. ‘You’re not trying to get a permit to rebuild, are you?’

  The heat was suffocating. The air was thick with the stink from open sewage, donkey dung and uncollected rubbish.

  ‘I know better than that,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘Still haven’t heard about your father?’

  ‘He did nothing.’

  ‘They say he was brutalised.’

  I looked at the thirty people ahead of me. They presumably lived closer than I did. If there wasn’t a curfew, I would’ve slept at the outpost. ‘What are you here for?’ I asked.

  ‘Permission to buy apricots and oranges from my own trees, the ones my great grandfather planted and I kept alive in drought and war.’

  ‘I hope my father’s alright.’ I looked at the ground.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Abu Yossef said.

  ‘He isn’t strong.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate your father. He may be more of a fighter than you know.’

  ‘Ichmad,’ Abbas called, ‘come here, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll hold your spot.’ Abu Yossef gestured for me to go.

  Sweat dripped off Abbas’ eyebrows and chin. ‘They arrested Uncle Kamal last night.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Aiding a terrorist.’

  Did Ali go to his house as well? ‘What terrorist?’ I asked.

  ‘Baba,’ Abbas said. His eyes were bloodshot.

  We were on our own.

  ***

  Five minutes before the curfew, I returned to the tent exhausted, Baba’s whereabouts still unknown. For the next six weeks, I continued to stand in line all day, every day, with no luck. I no longer went to school.

  ***

  I was cooking rice and almonds on a fire that I had built near our almond tree when the barber’s son appeared. We greeted each other quickly.

  ‘My father was released yesterday,’ he said. ‘Do you know where your father is?’

  ‘We haven’t heard anything,’ I said. ‘It’s been two months.’

  ‘My father would like to see you.’ He wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘It’s about your father.’

  I feared I might be targeted if I was caught meeting with a released political prisoner. But this was about Baba. How could I not go?

  ***

  The barber sat in the corner of his tent, a patch over his left eye. Cigarette burns covered his hands.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t get up.’ The barber’s voice shook when he spoke.

  ‘You have news about my father?’

  ‘He’s at the Dror Detention Centre,’ the barber said. ‘In the Negev Desert.’

  Joy surged through my veins. ‘He’s alive?’

  ‘Barely.’ The barber lowered his eyes. ‘He wants you to visit him. You have to get him out.’

  For the first time, I began to wonder what would’ve been worse: for Baba to have been killed, or to survive only to be subjected to long-term torture. If they didn’t kill Baba, the snakes and scorpions in the desert might.

  Every day I went to the military governor’s outpost and begged for a permit to travel to the Dror Detention Centre. One month later, the military governor granted me permission. I knew I had to go and confess to Baba. I’d insist that we switch places. The thought of him in prison for my crime was too horrible.

  With the little money Abbas and I made selling almonds from our tree, I bought the six bus tickets I needed for my trip. Abbas didn’t even bother to ask me if he could come. He knew we didn’t have enough money.

  CHAPTER 8

  I had only ever heard rumours of this place, so scorched that nothing could live. The Negev. Sand like ground glass blasted through the open window, pounding my flesh and eyes and settling in the dry corners of my mouth.

  The bus finally stopped next to a tall barbed-wire pen with guard towers in each corner. I thought I wanted nothing more than to get off the sweltering, stinking bus, but when I saw what awaited me, I wondered if it wasn’t the face of hell. On the barbed wire a sign with a black skull cautioned in Arabic and Hebrew: Warning! Danger of Death. The Hebrew was for show – there were no Jewish political prisoners detained here. My legs resisted after so long on the vinyl seat, but I forced them to hurry, my head down, past grim-faced guards standing lookout with rifles and German shepherds.

  Maybe a thousand prisoners in black jumpsuits were working in this furnace of a yard. None raised his eyes when the bus arrived. I did; I had to look – could Baba be in there? What if I could not recognise him? I studied each man quickly, divining his height against a median, eliminating those more than two standard deviations from the mean – only those of average height could be my Baba. Some shovelled sand into large bags or dragged concrete blocks to a massive three-storey structure they were building, their black jumpsuits attracting the punishing sun. I looked for Baba on the scaffolding, mixing cement, lifting cinderblocks.

  A gaunt, almost skeletal, prisoner dug his shovel into the sand pile, but when he tried to lift it, his body trembled, the sand spilled before his wheelbarrow and he collapsed. He lay there, ignored, like a crushed bird.

  Next to the work area, inside the barbed wire, was another pen surrounding massive tents with no sides above wood-plank floors lined with mats.

  I hurried to an area outside the gate where hundreds of other Palestinians sat on the ground and listened to a soldier call prisoners’ names. There were women and children, old men, and other sons like me, alone. They were calling out the names of every prisoner, in order, while everyone waited. There was no shade. No water.

  Two hours later the soldier called ‘Mahmud Hamid.’ Guards swarmed towards me as I entered the detention centre. One asked, ‘Who are you coming to see?’

  ‘My father, Ma
hmud Hamid.’ I tried to stand taller than my twelve years on earth allowed. I tried to be a man, unafraid.

  ‘He’s yours,’ the guard said to someone behind me in Hebrew. He motioned for me to walk through the metal detector.

  An Uzi-bearing guard escorted me towards a door. Fear melted the muscles in my legs as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Inside, guards groped naked men who stood against the wall.

  ‘Strip,’ my guard said.

  My trembling body refused to obey.

  ‘Strip.’

  I willed my arms to move. Mechanically, I removed the shirt Mama had made for me the previous day from a used sheet. For hours, she had searched through the jars at the village square until she found matching buttons. The rest of the day she had spent stitching it together by hand, using dark thread to make each buttonhole. The guard extended his rubber-gloved hand, grabbed the shirt from me and tossed it on the dirty floor.

  ‘Everything off.’

  I slipped off my sandals, trousers and underwear, laid them next to my shirt and stood naked before the guard with my eyes glued to the floor.

  ‘Against the wall.’

  Trembling, I leaned forward.

  ‘Shake your head.’

  I shook my head.

  The guard ran his gloved fingers through my hair as the smell of cigarettes on his breath soured my stomach. He thrust my head back and shone a light into my nose and mouth. I closed my eyes. After a metal probe was inserted into my nose and the crevices of my ears, I tasted blood. What was he looking for?

  I wouldn’t scream or whimper or beg. The gloved hands proceeded down my body to my buttocks and legs, which the guard kicked apart. I squeezed my eyes tighter and thought of Baba. Baba who was here because of me. I could endure anything to see him again. To tell him how sorry I was.

  ‘Squat down.’

  The guard pulled my buttocks apart and I gasped with pain as the instrument penetrated my rectum. I held my breath. When the instrument scraped my insides, my eyes watered. It was all I could do to keep from whimpering. The instrument snaked deeper inside me. My ears popped when the guard finally removed it.

  Humiliated and naked, I stood before the guard, a person not that much older than me, while he examined every millimetre of my clothes.

  ‘Get dressed.’ He threw my clothes at my feet.

  In the ten-by-ten-metre waiting room with the other visitors, no one made eye contact. We each knew what the other had gone through to get here, and we were ashamed. Veils covered the wrinkled faces of women as they squatted on the concrete floor. Leathery-skinned men in tattered robes and headdresses leaned against the walls. Parents attempted in vain to entertain their children, who cried and screamed and pushed each other. I stood in the corner and counted the people. Two hundred and twenty-four. I estimated that forty-four were under the age of five; sixty-eight were between six and eighteen; sixty were between nineteen and fifty-nine; and fifty-two were over sixty. The desert summer and number of people stole the air from the room.

  Hours later, a guard led me to a glass booth with a telephone. Two guards assisted a shackled man dressed in a black jumpsuit into the room. My soul deflated. Baba hobbled towards me. When the soldiers burst into our family’s home and beat him, a pit had formed in my stomach. Now that pit doubled in size.

  His nose was thicker and tilted to the left. His left eyebrow and cheekbone were bigger than his right. I wanted to flee. I was going to pass out. But when Baba sat in the chair on the other side of the glass and picked up the phone, I did the same. He never lifted his eyes from the ground. Scabs covered his scalp. His once silky hair was gone.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he said.

  ‘How are you?’ The lump in my throat made speech difficult. My eyes darted around the room at the other families gathered at glass windows.

  ‘Ilhamdillah,’ Baba replied in a low voice. Praise to Allah.

  What could I say?

  ‘How’s your mother?’ Baba’s head was still down.

  ‘She wanted to come, but it was too expensive.’

  ‘I’m glad she didn’t have to see me like this.’

  I rubbed my eyes.

  ‘Did anyone find out what happened? I swear to you on Allah’s life, I did nothing.’ Baba’s voice cracked and he took a deep breath. ‘This is a big mistake.’ He struggled to go on. ‘But I’m afraid the Israelis will take their time uncovering the truth. My fellow inmate has been in here four years without being charged. You and your mother may need to provide for the family for a year or more. God willing, I’ll be released sooner, but we need to prepare ourselves for the worst.’ He laboured to breathe.

  ‘A year?’

  ‘They can detain me for a long time, even if I’m not guilty. They don’t need to charge me with anything.’

  The receiver slipped out of my sweaty hand. When I got it back to my ear, Baba said, ‘I’m…’

  On my left a woman began to wail while five young children clung to her legs. To the right of me, an elderly man held his hands over his face.

  ‘This is all my fault,’ I interrupted Baba, my voice barely a whisper.

  Baba looked up for the first time. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Haltingly, I began the story I had travelled so far to tell. The shame of it kept me from looking at him as I spoke.

  Baba came close to the glass. My breath left me.

  ‘Ichmad, my son, you’re only twelve years old. Promise me you’ll never tell another living soul that it was you, not me. Don’t even tell your mother.’

  Our eyes met for the first time since I began my confession. He was as white as a dove.

  ‘Why should you be punished for my crime?’

  ‘They’d imprison you.’ Baba’s facial muscles tightened. ‘If they didn’t, others would have their young sons perpetrate these acts of liberation. They’re not stupid. I’d be punished more if it was you in here.’

  ‘But I should take responsibility.’

  ‘It’s my duty as a father to protect you.’ He tapped his chest. Cigarette burns dotted his hands. ‘A man is nothing unless he stands up for his family. Promise me that you’ll make something of your life. Don’t get sucked into this struggle. Make me proud. Don’t let my imprisonment ruin your life. You need to find the best way to help your mother. She has no experience of being on her own. You’re the man of the family now.’

  ‘Please don’t say such things. You’ll be home soon.’ I felt like I was falling down a well. There was nothing to grab hold of.

  ‘No I won’t.’ He stared into my eyes. ‘Promise me you’ll take my role.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can.’

  ‘When you have a son of your own, you’ll realise what it means to love someone more than yourself.’ Baba’s voice cracked. ‘I’d rather take a dagger to my chest than watch you suffer. Who knows what the soldiers would do to you?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Don’t waste money visiting me. You’ll need all you earn to support the family. Let everyone know my wishes. We can write. I’ll be fine. Don’t allow guilt to enter your heart, because it’s a disease, like cancer, that’ll eat away at you until there’s nothing left.’

  ‘What are we going to do without you?’

  ‘Your mother and siblings will need you. Just promise me you’ll make something of your life. I’ve so many things to tell you.’ His voice choked. ‘We only have a few moments left.’ He spoke quickly. ‘Go to my father’s grave. Water the plants there every Friday.’

  The phone went dead. I lifted my hand to the glass and so did he. We looked at each other for a moment, until a guard came and yanked him up. Baba was so thin; it was like the man shook an empty uniform. He waved and the guard escorted him away. Without looking back, he disappeared through the door.

  I stayed there, hoping something would happen. That the guard would return with him, tell me there was a mistake, that he was being released. Everyone around me was crying. The five wailing children on my left waved goodbye to their father. The
ir clothes were tattered, their stomachs distended.

  I had promised Mama not to tell Baba about Sara or our house until he was released.

  ‘There’s nothing he can do about it while he’s locked up.’ She was adamant.

  Now I realised that she was right; how could Baba stand to know that Sara was dead?

  Courage, I realised, was not the absence of fear: it was the absence of selfishness; putting someone else’s interest before one’s own. I’d been wrong about Baba. He wasn’t a coward. How would we survive without him?

  CHAPTER 9

  After school Abbas and I made our way to the village square on an errand for Mama. We passed carts pulled by donkeys, and women with baskets on their heads, but when villagers saw us, they retreated, like they did when soldiers strutted through the village.

  In the square, fresh apricots and apples gleamed in the sunlight. The sheep baaed and the lambs bleated. Two children peered into the moving-picture story box.

  We turned towards the tea house and I thought of the day that I won the village backgammon championship. Baba had bought tea for everyone in the place – it took him a year to pay off his tab. The radio blared the latest news from Jordan, but I didn’t tarry.

  Inside the general store, Abbas and I scanned the wooden shelves behind the checkout counter. Arabic coffee, tea, tins of sardines, containers of olive oil. On the ground beneath the shelves sat large clay jugs marked bulgur wheat, semolina and rice. Three soldiers entered the store behind us.

  ‘I’d like a sack of rice please, doctor,’ I said; ‘and charge it to my father’s account.’

  ‘His account’s been cancelled,’ the store owner said as he peered at the soldiers. Then he bent and whispered to Abbas and me, ‘I’m so sorry.’ I dared not argue with him, but how could I be the man of the house if I could not even get a little rice?

  Abbas and I left the store empty-handed, knowing that we had eaten the very last of the rice the previous night. We had nothing else.

  Fathers and sons were everywhere I went. In an attempt to keep from dwelling on thoughts about my own father, I played mathematical games. I estimated the number of villagers who came to the square daily. I thought of the factors that influenced the equation, like how many came to the mosque daily, the hours the tea house and store were open, the number of times people came to use the village well.