On the Hills of God (27 page)

The husband again put his arm around his wife. “Go ahead, Doctor. If I could speak better English I’d tell the heathens off myself.”

“Tell them,” urged a man in Arabic, “they’d have to kill every one of us before they can go through with this.”

Yousif motioned with both hands for the men to be quiet and give his father a chance to present their case.

“You’ve been in this country thirty years,” the doctor said, looking around at all the soldiers, “and one would think you’d know by now how we feel about our women. About their honor. You either bring women to frsik the women, or I’m afraid there’s going to be more violence.”

“Imbeciles,” the husband shouted in Arabic.

Again, Yousif moved to restrain the man. “Keep calm, please,” he urged.

“Nothing could inflame us more than dishonoring our women,” the doctor warned in his own reserved way.

There was dead silence. The angry soldiers waited for Swindle to give them the signal to resume their search. The Arabs waited for a single move to renew their attack. Yousif stood still, apprehensive. Would the cornered officer swallow his pride, acknowledge defeat, and reverse the order? Would he ignite another riot?

“The search will continue,” Swindle finally said, “but the women will be excused.”

The Arabs sighed with relief. Some of the soldiers looked disappointed. Yousif reached for his father’s hand and squeezed it. The women returned to their places inside the church and the frisking of the men continued. But now everything was calm and the soldiers’ search seemed perfunctory. Within ten minutes Yousif was back in the crowded church.

About three o’clock in the afternoon the soldiers set the people free. It was raining and many wanted to wait until the downpour had stopped. But the soldiers would not let them. They pushed them into the street as further punishment. By the time Yousif stepped out into the square before the church, the rain was torrential. He offered his mother his arm, and his father suggested they stop at his clinic because it was so close. But his wife said no. They were already drenched, and she was anxious to see what the searchers had done to her house.

As she opened the door of their home, she let out a scream. Both her husband and her son were right behind her. Muddy footsteps were all over the Persian rug in the foyer. They walked in, afraid to look. To their left, the living room was in complete disarray. Armchairs were turned over. Cushions were slashed and emptied. To their right, the dining room was also demolished. The fine linen tablecloth was piled up on the floor with the flower vase spilled over it. The drawers in her china cabinet were open and emptied on the bare dining room table. They were stunned. They stood still, tongue-tied. Then she began to cry.

The doctor trembled. Yousif ran to check on the rest of the house. The bedrooms were chaotic. Mattresses were ripped open, closets emptied onto the floors, clothes trampled on. Every mirror was smashed. He ran from his bedroom to his parents’ and then to the kitchen. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach. Flour and rice sacks were spilled onto the floor. Porcelain jugs of oil and glass jars of butter were broken on top of each other.

He could hear his parents’ footsteps.

“Oh, my God!” his mother shrieked, biting her knuckles. She sobbed, tears streaming down her face. He embraced her, letting her lean against his chest and cry again.

“What in hell were they trying to do?” Yousif said, in disbelief.

“They wanted you to know they were here,” his father replied, disgusted.

“Who would hide a gun in a jar of oil?” Yousif asked.

“It’s a thorough search,” the doctor muttered.

“May all their life be a nightmare,” the mother prayed, raising her arms in an appeal to God.

His father led his mother out of the kitchen. Yousif stayed behind, gazing at the mess. After a long moment, he made his way out, stepping over the wet spots, brushing his back against the wall. He headed for the bathroom, took off his pants and shorts and sat down. When he flushed the toilet two minutes later, Yousif was convinced that the world was as filthy as the swirling contents of the commode.

His parents were in the living room. His mother looked like someone who had escaped from the crypt. His father was pacing the floor, looking ashen. Yousif felt anger and pity. They had been caught in an ever-widening tragedy.

It had stopped raining. Yousif opened the front door and walked to the front veranda. Other neighbors opened their doors, stepped outside, and stood motionless. Then everyone, including Yousif, was pulled as if by a magnet to the clearing in front of Uncle Boulus’s house. The neighbors were drawn together, as if in a dreamy slow motion. They gathered and stared. Yousif knew that their hushed silence was not natural. But then, gutting a whole town—every house, every room, every drawer—was not a natural act.

Death came again to Ardallah at dawn a few days later. It struck two men riding a bus on their way to Jaffa, even before the roosters crowed. One was a Christian from Ardallah proper, the other a Muslim resident of Ardallah who was originally from Jindas, a village five miles northwest. A couple of miles out of the city limit, bullets ripped into the bus, riddling windows and shattering glass. The twenty-one passengers threw themselves into the aisle or into each others’ laps.

Mitry Freij, the shoemaker from Ardallah, was carrying a large box of custom-made shoes for delivery. The box trapped him in his seat and a bullet exploded in his head. Hani Mahmoud, from Jindas, was a tall man in his fifties, lived alone, and was known to be somewhat retarded. When the ambushers sprang out of nowhere in front of the bus, the driver shouted for the passengers to hit the floor. Not comprehending, poor Hani said he wasn’t sleepy. He was the only one sitting up when he got a bullet in the neck.

How the bus driver, the diminutive Abu Ziad, managed to escape with the rest of the passengers astounded Yousif and the rest of the townspeople. Some called it sheer luck. Others called it an act of courage. But on the hills of God, many preferred to call it a miracle.

That same day there were two funerals, and half the municipality council went to each. At two o’clock, Yousif walked in the funeral of Mitry Freij. As a gesture of community and respect, Yousif’s father was among those who went to Jindas to attend the funeral of Hani Mahmoud.

The procession to Ardallah’s cemetery was again a spectacle. Most of the merchants had closed their shops and joined the thousands of mourners. The march itself was orderly, save for the women’s high-pitched lamentations that only the Boy Scouts’ band could surpass in volume. Heading the Scouts was their leader: an accountant in his late forties—short, solidly built, and sporting a formidable mustache. Behind him were two men hoisting the Scouts’ flag and the Palestinian flag. The band itself consisted of young civil servants and artisans, who marched in four rows of fives. Then came the hundred or so teenagers who marched in unison, their chins jutting and their expression grim. The entire group was dressed in khaki shorts, white shirts, red scarfs, and the traditional Arab headgear of
hatta
and
iqal
. The band players beat their enormous drums and blew their shiny horns with gusto, as though they were in a triumphant procession. The casket was carried on men’s shoulders. Yousif could see the draped white-green-black-red Palestinian flag bobbing above the marchers’ heads as patriotic villagers scurried to share the honor of accompanying the corpse to its grave.

Schools had shut down, and students—from the third grade up—were also marching, as though in an Easter parade. Nuns with fresh-scrubbed, smooth-skinned faces walked beside the fifty or sixty young girls in blue tunics. Yousif would’ve joined his teachers and classmates, but he was escorting Jamal. He could see Amin assisting ustaz Hakim and the principal, ustaz Sa’adeh, in keeping order among the nearly two hundred students, who marched as if they had all lost brothers.

The crowds at the Christian cemetery flowed on both sides of the narrow dirt road. They spilled over the three sections: Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. Yousif and Jamal stayed with hundreds outside the gate, where the old yellow bus, riddled with bullets on both sides, was on display. For two hours, he watched mourners surround Abu Ziad, the driver, and question him about the tragic incident. Yousif smelled incense, heard women crying and priests praying for the souls of the departed, and listened to speakers calling them martyrs destined to heaven. He heard strangers weep, watched men scratch their chins, and saw women tear the fronts of their dresses and beat their bosoms. Feeling a lump in his throat, he wondered who would be the next victim.

“Half the town is here,” Yousif said to Jamal. He was craning his neck to see if Salwa was with Adel Farhat, whom he saw no more than a hundred feet ahead. Happily, she wasn’t.

“That’s no good,” Jamal said, tapping his cane.

“Right now,” Yousif whispered, “the Jews could walk in and capture Ardallah with no trouble.”

Jamal seemed absorbed, his sealed eyes twitching. “I hope we’ll learn to use our heads and not just our hearts.”

Yousif thought of Basim and his plan to protect Ardallah. Could the doctor now, in good conscience, say no to the demand for the hospital money? All around him, men were huddling and talking about one thing—the need for protection.

“We can’t go on like this,” said Yacoub, the house painter.

“I agree,” a choir leader answered. “It’s getting to be too dangerous.”

Yacoub smacked his thin lips. “Something must be done,” he said.

A round of bullets ripped the air. For a moment everyone was startled. Then they all realized that the shots were fired at the graveside—as a gesture of farewell to the victim.

“They’d better save their ammunition,” Jamal said.

Yousif could sense worry and the desire for revenge casting a long shadow over a sea of grim faces. As he mulled over the ugly incident, he realized that the floodgates of pain and sorrow were beginning to burst open.

“I have a feeling,” Yousif said, “that Palestine is falling apart.”

A week later, Yousif lay in bed at six o’clock in the morning. His first thoughts were of Salwa. He had seen her in a kaleidoscopic dream which was nothing but torture. Like the Grecian Urn lovers, like Tantalus and the dangling bunch of grapes, he and Salwa were inches apart yet could never touch. What should he do, Yousif thought, to win her back? Should he unload his problem on her Greek Orthodox priest, Father Samaan, and ask for help? Should he beseech her favorite teacher? He thrashed about, wondering.

He looked outside, thinking what a glorious day it was. Early spring had arrived. Despite the torturous dream, he was glad he had slept with the window open. Ardallah’s air was cool and invigorating. The sky was bluer than Salwa’s silk dress and the tree tops were as motionless as unlit candles.

He wished his thoughts were as calm, as peaceful. He had gone to bed troubled by his mother’s fretting over the expense and time it was taking to replace all in their house that had been damaged by the British soldiers. Night visitors were still shocked by the attack on the bus. But where was Basim? they all asked. With all the fighting at Bab al-Wad, Yousif knew, it wasn’t likely that Basim would spend any nights at home.

In five weeks the British would be gone—completely evacuated. Instead of moving out in August, as the UN resolution had stipulated, they decided to step up their withdrawal and be gone by May 15th. And the battle for the control of Jerusalem was already raging. For weeks the Zionists had been trying to secure a safe passage for their military convoys to Jerusalem. But the Palestinians, led by their ablest commander, Abd al-Qadir, had repeatedly pinned them down at the bottleneck at Bab al-Wad.

Yousif did not believe in military heroes, but if he had to name one it had to be Abd al-Qadir—an honest man doing honest work. The Grand Mufti’s cousin, Abd al-Qadir was a seasoned soldier with an impeccable reputation. Basim and his late father-in-law, Maha’s father, had served with him during the Revolt of 1936 and had come to love him for his courage, patriotism, and determination. Yousif grew up linking Basim’s name to Abd al-Qadir’s, knowing that they represented Palestine’s finest fighting spirit. Of late, Yousif had often seen Abd al-Qadir’s picture in the newspapers. Handsome, stout, and with bandoleer criss-crossing his chest, he looked like the Palestinians’ best hope to thwart the Zionists’ pipe dream. A week earlier Abd al-Qadir had gone to Damascus pleading to the Arab leaders meeting there for immediate help. When they balked at his urgent request and condescended to give him only a few guns and a few rounds of ammunition—not nearly enough for his few hundred volunteers—he reportedly stormed out of the room, shouting: “The blood of Palestine is on your heads.”

A fresh wave of morning slumber caressed Yousif’s eyes. Then he heard the muffled ringing of the phone. Another sick call for the doctor, he thought, turning over on his side, wondering how he could help, surrendering to another moment of sleep . . . With all the fighting at Bab al-Wad, only twenty miles away, surely he could run food supplies . . . medications . . .

“Wake up, Yousif, wake up,” his mother said, banging on this bedroom door. “The Zionists are back, the Zionists are back!”

Yousif jumped out of his bed, thinking it was a bad dream. But the banging on the door was persistent, his mother’s voice real. He opened the door, expecting the Zionists to be running through the corridor.

“What are you saying?” he asked, pulling up his pajama pants.

“The Zionists . . . they’re here,” she answered, gesturing for him to hurry.

He followed her to her bedroom. His father was sitting on the edge of the bed talking on the phone.

“It’s true,” the doctor said, hanging up. “That was the mayor.”

His mother told him what she had heard from the milkwoman. What had happened to Abu Ziad’s bus a week earlier happened again this morning.

“You mean the terrorists killed more passengers?” Yousif wanted to know.

“No one has been killed—yet,” the doctor said, rising. “This time we were ready for them.”

Yousif hesitated, surprised. “Ready? How?”

“According to the mayor,” his father said, wiping his glasses with the edge of his pajama top, “Basim and few others have been waiting nights at the same spot for the terrorists to return. This morning they did.”

“I thought Basim was at Bab al-Wad,” Yousif said.

“So did I,” his father said. “But apparently we’re in firm control there and at the village of Kastal overlooking it. So Basim took a few of the men to guard the Ardallah-Jaffa road.”

They walked out of the room, with Yousif pressing for concrete details. But his parents knew very little.

They ended up on the front balcony, facing Uncle Boulus’s house. The roosters were crowing, and the
muezzin
was chanting the Qur’an. Yousif looked at his watch. It was only 6:30, but the neighborhood was already humming with people. Men and women were outside, jabbering and gesturing across their yards. A few men hurried past the Safis’ gate. Yousif rushed to question them. Men of all ages, even some children, were approaching from the direction of the flour-mill. Some were in slippers, others in pajamas. Some carried broomsticks and axe handles.

“Aren’t you coming, Yousif?” a boy from school asked, his tone cheerful.

“Where?” Yousif asked, bewildered.

“To catch the terrorists,” Ribhi said. “They’re trapped in a field not too far from here. We’re all going to catch them.”

“Basim is already there.”

“He needs help.”

It sounded bizarre. Yet Yousif did not want to miss out on whatever was happening. He ran back to the house, slipped on his clothes, and hurried out. His parents tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. Outside the gate, he headed against the flow.

“Wrong way,” a sixty-year-old shepherd told him, pointing west.

“I’m going to get a friend,” Yousif answered.

Minutes later he ran into Amin and his father. They were rushing along with the crowd.

“I was coming to get you,” Yousif said.

“Hell, the whole town is up in arms,” the stonecutter said.

“How did they find out?” Yousif asked.

“From the bus driver, Abu Ziad,” Amin said. “At the sound of the first bullet he turned around and came back to alert the rest of us.”

Yousif was impressed. “But the terrorists and Basim’s men are armed. What are we going to do with bare hands?”

“Not every morning do we get our hands on some real terrorists,” the old man answered, with relish. “I want to see us have a go at them.”

Yousif and Amin exchanged looks.

As they walked along with the crowd, Yousif had a hard time reconciling the seriousness of the matter and the unorthodox approach of the townspeople. So many people were in the posse—almost two hundred. What struck him most was their festive mood. The sticks and brooms and pipes and crow bars they were carrying belied the unnatural glow on their faces. What was going on? Was this a celebration? Even Raouf, the town’s only deaf-mute, was walking along with his parents. Even women were in the stampede: young and old, in modern dresses, in native garments, in curlers, some with housecoats thrown on their backs.

The procession reminded Yousif of picking season, when the villagers and landowners would rush to the fields to pick figs or olives. It reminded him of the Saturday before Easter when the burning “light” would be brought from the Holy Sepulchre, when the multitudes would rush to the outskirts of town with their candles. It reminded him of 1946, when many of Ardallah’s men had returned from America and families had rushed to the harbors in Haifa and Jaffa to welcome their loved ones. The same kind of exhilaration was in the people’s walk that morning. He looked around and saw Sami Awad walking fast, dabs of shaving-cream on his face and ear lobe, a towel around his neck and a cane in his hand.

At the outskirts of Ardallah, hundreds more people were already there, mainly watching. Yousif could hear gunshots in the distance. The battle scene was no bigger than fifteen football fields, cut up in squares and rectangles and—more often than not—terraced. On the right he could see two local men chasing an ambusher who had abandoned half of his Arab guise and was running for his life. On the right were men swinging at each other with all their might and tumbling over bushes or piles of stone. The new arrivals dispersed on both sides of the road. The hills seemed dotted with men and women from the other villages. Everyone seemed determined to block every conceivable path the enemy might take. Yousif and Amin did not know which way to go. They turned left and crossed several rocky vine groves. They jumped over stone walls and stood on a low hill to watch.