The Almond Tree

by Michelle Cohen Corasanti

  ***

  The tent, for me, symbolised ruin. It was constantly filled with flies, mosquitoes, ants and rats. The insects found our mouths as we slept. I opened the flap to crawl in, but before I could, Mama pushed out through it. She was holding a letter. ‘What does this say?’ She thrust it into my hand. Abbas, who was by my side, began to read along with me.

  The words rose off the paper like waves of heat. I closed my eyes. This had to be a mistake. I reread it. For the first time in my life, I thanked God that Mama was illiterate. It was an Arabic form-letter with one handwritten sentence. The prisoner Mahmud Hamid is sentenced to fourteen years. I glanced at Abbas. He was white as labaneh.

  I crumpled the paper and squeezed it in my left hand. The folded corner dug into my skin.

  ‘Is it about your father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he hurt?’

  ‘No.’ I clutched the wadded-up letter to my chest.

  ‘Does it say when he’s coming home?’

  ‘No.’

  Abbas’ and my eyes met. He knew not to speak.

  ‘Is it about his sentence?’

  My temples throbbed.

  ‘It’s about his sentence, isn’t it?’ When I didn’t answer right away, she grabbed the letter, uncrumpled it and stared at it as if she were willing herself to read.

  She looked directly at Abbas. ‘Tell me what it says.’

  He remained silent.

  Fourteen years. That was 730 weeks rounded down. 5,113 days; 122,712 hours; 7,363,720 minutes; 441,824,200 seconds. Which figure sounded like the least amount of time? I took a long, deep breath and tried to steady my voice. ‘Fourteen years.’

  ‘Fourteen years?’ she echoed. Her face was ashen.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How could he do this to us? Did he forget he had a family? All his preaching about not getting involved in politics, and he jeopardised our lives?’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’ The words stuck in my throat. ‘They can sentence him even though he wasn’t guilty.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Did the weapons plant themselves?’

  ‘They could have planted them,’ Abbas said.

  With the back of my hand, I wiped the sweat off my forehead. The images of Baba in the black prison jumpsuit, chained like an animal, filled my mind. I thought of him out in the pen forced to move sand under the scalding sun. What if he didn’t survive? This wasn’t like death, I tried to tell myself. It was only fourteen years. My mind began to conjure hideous scenarios: Baba hung upside down while they burned him with their cigarettes, shackled to a chair in their banana bend position until they crippled him. All the stories I knew to be true.

  ‘You’re right.’ Mama shook her head. ‘Your father would never do anything like that.’ Then her legs gave out. Abbas and I caught her and helped her to sit down. Whimpering, she buried her wrinkled face in her hefty arms. Her pain scared me.

  ‘What are we going to do? Tell me!’

  ‘I’ll support us,’ I said.

  ‘Doing what?’ Her voice was muffled because her head was in her hands.

  My heart felt heavier. ‘I’ll build houses for the Jews.’ What else could I do? I was caught, again, between the devil and the hell fires.

  ‘How can I let you do that?’ she asked. ‘You’re only a child.’

  ‘Good things make choosing difficult. Bad things leave no choice.’ I repeated what Baba answered when I asked him why he went to work for the Jews. ‘You’ll see. I’ll learn to take money from the lion’s mouth.’

  Mama’s eyes watered. ‘May Allah bless your every breath and footstep.’

  ‘I’ll work too,’ Abbas said.

  Mama shook her head. ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘It’ll be easier if we’re together.’ Abbas smiled at me.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll start working,’ I said with finality. I realised I hadn’t yet told her about the rice: we wouldn’t be eating tonight. Being a man was much harder than it looked.

  ‘Me too,’ Abbas said.

  ‘You’re only eleven,’ Mama reminded him.

  ‘Good things make choosing difficult, bad things leave no choice,’ Abbas repeated with a little grin.

  ***

  The next morning, Mama went outside the tent to boil water and found a sack of rice next to the tent. Abu Khalil, the owner of the general store, must have put himself at risk and brought it to us while we slept. Mama made us tea from well-water and the same tea leaves she’d been using for the last week. I grabbed the pitcher and poured cold water into our tea so that we wouldn’t have to wait for it to cool down. Abbas and I gulped the tea and raced down the hill.

  We were the only ones at the entrance to the village. I remembered Baba telling me that he’d started working for the Jews accidentally. He’d woken up early one morning to go and work at the moshav picking oranges. He’d been the first one waiting at the entrance when a truck of Jewish workers drove by. He’d put his arm out, thinking it was the moshav’s truck. When it stopped, the driver told him that they were construction workers and that they could use a cheap, strong Arab labourer. He’d decided to try it out.

  Abbas and I stepped into the middle of the road when we heard the engine. The truck came straight at us. I didn’t care. I’d do whatever it took to make it stop. A few metres in front of me, the driver slammed on his brakes and the truck skidded to the side of the road. I ran to the driver’s window while Abbas positioned himself in front with his arms out.

  ‘Please hire us.’ I’d rehearsed in my head all night what I’d say in Hebrew.

  ‘You’re children.’ The driver looked us up and down.

  ‘We’re strong.’

  ‘Move out of my way.’ The driver beeped the horn.

  ‘We’ll work for free today. If we’re not good, don’t pay us. Please, give us a chance.’

  ‘Free?’ The driver raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s the catch?’

  ‘My father can’t work. We have a large family.’ I took a deep breath. ‘We need money.’

  ‘If you’re not good, you two will have to walk back.’

  ‘You won’t regret this.’

  ‘I already do.’ The driver motioned for us to get in the back with the other workers.

  Abbas and I climbed into the cargo area. The olive-skinned labourers sat on the left, the light-skinned ones on the right.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ an olive-skinned worker asked in Hebrew with a heavy Arabic accent.

  ‘We’re going to work,’ I said in Arabic.

  ‘In this country, we speak Hebrew,’ Olive-Skin said. ‘Arabs and Arabic aren’t welcome.’

  Abbas opened his mouth to respond. He was not afraid to defend himself and others, which had led to more than a few fights at school. I squeezed his hand as tight as I could and stared into his eyes.

  Abbas and I moved into the corner and the truck sped away from the village. All eyes glared at us as if we were vermin. The first second we were alone, I made Abbas promise not to respond, no matter what. I knew how difficult that would be for him, but he also knew that the welfare of our family depended on us. He gave me his word and I knew he wouldn’t let me down.

  CHAPTER 10

  During the break at work, the Ashkenazi Jews from Russia, Poland, Romania, Transylvania and Lithuania sat together under one clump of olive trees speaking in a language I didn’t understand. We learned Hebrew in school, but this wasn’t it. They mainly had light eyes, which turned to slits under the sun, while their fair skin turned bright red. They were our bosses. They gave directions from shady spots under the trees or inside the structures we built.

  Under a different clump of olive trees sat the Jewish Sephardim from Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Morocco. They drank tea and coffee and spoke to each other in Arabic. The Iraqi told the Yemenite that the Ashkenazim spoke in Yiddish. I guess Sephardim only spoke Arabic when they didn’t want the Ashkenazim to understand them.

  The Ashkenazim lau
ghed at the Sephardim when they drank their steaming liquids. ‘Aren’t you hot enough?’ The Russian pointed to their coffee. The Ashkenazim didn’t understand heat.

  Abbas and I worked through the break.

  ‘Robot brothers!’ Our main boss Yossi, a Polish Jew, motioned for us to come over. He’d given us the nickname after he saw we weren’t stopping to rest.

  Abbas looked at me, his eyes filled with distrust. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I reassured him. Yossi met us halfway. Together we were so small that we could fit into his shadow.

  ‘I changed my mind. You’re worth a full Arab’s wage. But know this: I can change it back if I see either of you slacking.’

  I wondered what he meant by a full Arab’s wage. We weren’t even making a fraction of what Baba earned. ‘We won’t disappoint you,’ I said.

  Abbas and I filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with cinderblocks from the truck on the road and wheeled them over to the construction site where we unloaded them. We worked together to move the wheelbarrow because we were half the size of the rest of the workers. My back ached. My clothes were soaked with sweat and covered with dirt. We built villas from the bottom up. In the week since Abbas and I started, we’d already built a first floor, and the second was two-thirds done.

  The sun beat down. Abbas and I were loading the cinderblocks into the wheelbarrow when he pressed his hands on his back and groaned.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I could see the pain in his face. He looked like an old man, not an eleven-year-old boy.

  ‘My back’s stiff from bending.’

  ‘Stand straight. I’ll hand the blocks to you. Just load them into the wheelbarrow.’ I bent and handed the blocks to Abbas. When the wheelbarrow was loaded, we took it to the mason. As we rolled it past the Sephardim, my eyes met the Iraqi’s.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ the Iraqi asked me in Hebrew with a heavy Arabic accent. Too many years of coffee and tea had left their mark on his teeth. He thrust his arms at me from a dozen metres away, like he was going to wring my neck. I lowered my eyes and pushed the wheelbarrow forward.

  ‘Ben Zonah.’ Son of a whore. The Iraqi swore at me in Hebrew even though Israelis almost always swear in Arabic.

  At lunchtime, we all grabbed our paper sacks from the back of the truck and retreated to our usual places. Abbas and I ate alone.

  The Iraqi and the Yemenite rolled their rice into balls with their fingers before eating. The Ashkenazim used forks, knives and spoons. Mama packed Abbas and me a piece of pita and a bag of rice and almonds.

  ‘Here.’ I handed Abbas the pita. He ripped it in half and gave me the larger portion. ‘No, you take it.’ I held it to him but he wouldn’t take it. ‘Please, Abbas. I’ll throw it away if you don’t take it.’ I held it up as if to toss it; he grabbed it at the last moment. I took the smaller piece and placed the bag of rice on the ground between us, so we could scoop it up with pieces of the pita. When we finished eating, the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim threw their bags in with the rubbish. I folded ours and put it in my pocket, so Mama could use it the next day.

  Before we left each day, Abbas and I always passed by the rubbish dump. Yesterday, we had found an old shirt and a radio battery. A couple of days before, we had found a plastic toy car. Even though we felt like scavengers harvesting olives after a locust swarm, that didn’t stop us. We didn’t care that the entire ride home the Jews laughed at us as we clutched their rubbish.

  The Iraqi was the worst. I don’t know why. When we stopped at his house to drop him off, there were at least fifteen children of all ages running around, dirty and unkempt. His wife emerged pregnant, with curlers in her hair and a missing front tooth. They lived in an Arab villa; once whitewashed, it was now the colour of mud. Laundry hung on lines, rubbish lay strewn across the yard, the gardens were overrun with weeds.

  About the time the sun started to set on the western horizon, Yossi stopped on the road outside our village and Abbas and I jumped out. We walked painfully back to our tent. The tightness of the muscles in my back and neck made me stagger as if I were dragging shackles.

  Mama made me write Baba a letter to tell him that Abbas and I had found work. She said it was important to let him think we were alright. Baba wrote back that he wished we could stay in school. With great sadness, I wrote to him that it was impossible.

  CHAPTER 11

  The tar wouldn’t come off my hands. Since water had failed, I was using sand, a trick Baba had taught me. I had begun to think I might be scrubbing off my skin, when I heard footsteps coming up the hill.

  ‘Ichmad,’ Teacher Mohammad called.

  Ashamed, I hid my hands behind my back.

  ‘Your absences from school are inexcusable.’

  What did he want me to do?

  He reached me and stood a metre away. ‘Do not turn your back on your gifts. Let them be the lights that guide you through life. When obstacles get in your way, look to your lights.’ He touched my chin to tilt my face towards him. ‘You are destined for great things.’

  I couldn’t escape his eyes. ‘There’s no choice.’

  ‘There’s always a choice.’

  ‘I have to work all day.’ I turned from him just enough to evade his terrible compassionate stare.

  I remembered the day I graduated from third grade. During the small ceremony in our classroom, Teacher Mohammad presented each student with a diploma. Afterwards, he called me back up.

  ‘This certificate goes to the top student in the class.’ He shook my hand and kissed me on each cheek. ‘Keep your eyes on this boy. He’s going to make our people proud.’ Baba had made the V for victory with his index and middle fingers.

  ***

  ‘I would like to tutor you,’ Teacher Mohammad said. ‘Every day after work. Let us start tonight. Have you had anything to eat yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. I was starving.

  ‘Come to my house now. We still have two hours until curfew.’

  The open blisters on my feet stung with every step I took towards his house. We sat at his kitchen table.

  ‘Can I get you something to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks.’ I didn’t want to become a burden. My stomach growled and I squeezed it with my fist.

  He wrote a maths problem on a slate and passed it to me. My hand was weak and burned from carrying hot tar up scaffolding, but I didn’t care. If a person like Teacher Mohammad believed in me, I’d do whatever it took.

  CHAPTER 12

  Ashadow appeared over me. It had to be a soldier; no one visited us anymore. Abbas cowered next to me. Slowly, I turned.

  ‘It’s Uncle Kamal,’ I said. He had been released. His cheeks were hollow and his shoulders slumped. He limped over.

  ‘What happened?’ Abbas shook his head.

  ‘I fell.’

  That’s when I noticed his cane.

  ‘Twisted my ankle.’

  His wrists were bandaged.

  Fadi and Hani sat in the dirt outside the tent comparing bullet casings.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘You could get sent back.’

  ‘I had to see you.’

  Neither Abbas nor I had ever spoken man to man with my uncle. At least three times a week, he’d come to play backgammon, or smoke water pipes with Baba. They’d talked of the days before the creation of the State of Israel when they’d travelled throughout Palestine.

  Baba and Uncle Kamal had spoken of the coastal plains along the Mediterranean Sea with its sandy shoreline, bordered by stretches of fertile land. Mountain ranges. The hills of the Galilee with streams and ample rainfall that kept it green all year round. The rolling hills of the West Bank with its rocky hilltops and fertile valleys.

  Abbas and I charted their travels on a map we drew that divided Palestine into districts: Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Gaza, Tiberius, Baysan, Nazareth, Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Hebron, Be’er Sheva, Tulkaram, Al-Ramla and Safed. Any time Baba and Uncle Kamal mentioned one of the over 600 Palestinian villages or
numerous cities, we’d mark it on the map.

  Jaffa, the bride of Palestine, occupied many of their talks. From these talks, Abbas and I learned how in the mid-nineteenth century Palestinians developed the Shamouti orange, also known as the Jaffa orange. Jaffa, a major port, was by 1870 already exporting thirty-eight million of those oranges through imperial and global distribution networks, along with other commodities. Baba even spoke about Tel Aviv, the city the Jews built in the sand dunes next to Jaffa. The only place Baba didn’t speak highly of was the Negev desert, which unfortunately was still a desert.

  The man who stood in front of us looked nothing like our Uncle Kamal, who used to love to laugh and speak of his great adventures. It was hard to see him this way. As the head of our household, I did what Baba would have done. ‘We appreciate all you did for us.’ I poured well-water into the pan and Abbas put it on to boil. ‘But, you have a family of ten.’

  ‘I want to help,’ he said.

  I tried to sound grown up. ‘They’ll send you back.’

  Uncle Kamal’s eyes darted around. He lowered his voice. ‘What’s happened to your father?’

  ‘In his letters, he says he’s fine. He said that one of the guards overheard him singing. They actually brought him an oud and he entertains them.’

  The water began to boil and Abbas dumped the rice in.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it’s so hard for the poor guards. How are you?’

  ‘Abbas, take Fadi and Hani inside.’ I motioned towards the tent and Abbas was immediately on it. We worked well as a team.

  ‘May Allah have mercy on you, Uncle Kamal,’ Hani said, before he disappeared inside.

  Fadi remained outside staring at Uncle Kamal.

  ‘Go!’ Abbas pushed him in and then returned to my side.

  ‘How are you boys?’ Uncle Kamal asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Abbas and I answered in unison.