On the Hills of God (45 page)

“Impotent!” Yousif said under his breath, turning the sheet.

The inside pages were full of poetry, some of it beautiful, ringing with memorable lines and inspired by the impending tragedy. The poets were exhorting the Arabs to defend their country and defy the aggressor. They likened Palestine to a lovely maiden about to be raped by the Zionists. In an obvious reference to the seven members of the Arab League, one of Yousif’s favorite poets, Kamal Nasser, compared them to a cart with seven wheels—speedily running backward.

Sab’on aya qowmo min dowali

Tamshi lil khalfi ala ajali

Yousif loved poetry. But not now. Real drama was unfolding on the ground. People were being killed and mutilated. He had no patience for words or images. In the face of Deir Yasin and now Haifa, the most beautiful poetry in the world grated on his nerves. Gunshots were whistling and flashing in his mind.

“Sorry, not today,” the baker said, standing in the pit in front of the open oven.

Yousif was dismayed. “And what am I to tell the men?” he asked.

“Tell them,” the baker answered, “I wasn’t counting on Haifa to fall. Tell them to come and protect
me
from the hungry mobs. They snatch the bread from my hand before I have a chance to put it on the counter.”

Yousif sympathized with the baker, who looked dusty and exhausted. He watched him pick up the eight-foot wooden spatula and turn the loaves over. The oven glowed like the mouth of hell.

“What’s the least you can give me?” Yousif asked. “They have to eat.”

The short, middle-aged baker seemed to explode. “They have to eat. The poor bastards who lost their homes have to eat. What can I do? I used to pray for a few more customers. Now I’m expected to feed the whole country.”

Yousif stood his ground. “The men won’t like it.”

“I have only two hands and twenty-four hours a day. Every now and then I have a stupid habit of collapsing. The whole town calls me Abul Banat already.
Haik nassibi
. What worse fate can I have? You tell me.”

The baker’s irritability was comical. The few women who had brought their dough to be baked cracked up laughing. The baker’s nickname, they all knew, was in reference to his seven daughters. A man who could produce only girls was shamed like someone who was childless.

“I don’t call you Abul Banat,” Yousif said.

“Go ahead, I’m not stopping you. Even my brothers call me that.”

Yousif waited until the merriment subsided. He was in a quandary. Nearly eighty men on seven hills depended on him for food tonight.

“What if I come back after I finish picking up the other stuff?” Yousif asked. “Will you have a few dozens for me then?”

“You can try but I can’t promise.”

Yousif stormed out of the darkened bakery, swearing. A new mob was rushing in to buy bread, pain and fatigue on their faces. Yousif stood on the crowded sidewalk, wondering whether to try other bakers or to make the rounds to each fighter’s home to see if their families had any bread to spare.

Suddenly he heard incessant honking. He turned around. It was Makram, the taxi-driver with the pearly teeth, trying to get his attention. He had stopped and waved in the middle of a street jammed with cars and pedestrians.

“You know a man by the name of Odeh Haddad?” Makram asked, his hands cupping his mouth.

“You mean Abu Raji?” Yousif shouted back.

Makram checked with two passengers and nodded. “Yes. Abu Raji from Haifa. Do you know if they’re renting anywhere?”

Yousif had a strong feeling who the passengers were. He braved his way through the traffic to find out.

“These two are looking for them,” Makram explained.

Yousif leaned on the car’s door and peered through the window. The young couple on the back seat fit the image he had in mind.

“You must be Izzat and Hiyam,” Yousif said.

The couple looked at each other, then at Yousif, puzzled.

“You know us?” the young man asked.

“You are Izzat Hankash. And you are Hiyam, Imm Raji’s sister. Believe it or not you’re staying at my house.”

“Hallelujah!” Makram crowed. “We’ve been looking for someone who knows something all over town.”

For a second Yousif didn’t know whether to direct them to where the Haddads were staying or to take them home himself. He was anxious about finding bread, yet he wanted to break the happy news to Imm and Abu Raji. For the last few days they had been worried sick over them.

“I’m parked a block away,” Yousif said. “Follow me.”

When the two cars stopped in front of the Nussrallah’s house, where the Haddads were staying, about ten people rushed to the edge of the balcony to see who it was. The first sounding of Yousif’s horn brought Imm and Abu Raji and their children running to the street. There were hugs and kisses and tears and a lot of noise. Izzat and Hiyam were among the last to be driven out of Haifa, and everyone wanted to hear the latest news. To Yousif they looked like two people who had fallen off a truck. All they carried with them was a tan leather scuffed suitcase.

Minutes later they were all settled on the Nussrallah’s big balcony. Though she appeared dishevelled and distraught, Hiyam was a lovely girl with a charming pout and natural
kuhol
around her eyes. Yousif thought she was about two inches shorter than Salwa, but there was nothing small about her figure. She was ripe and rounded in all the right places. But she looked frightened, clinging to her young husband. Now nervous and unkempt, Izzat was tall, thin, and sported a mustache that covered his wide upper lip. It made him look older than twenty-two.

“What happened to your family, dear?” Yasmin asked Hiyam. “Are they alright?”

Yousif was surprised that his mother was actually out of her house at this time. Normally, a bereaved mother or wife would not venture out for forty days—sometimes even up to six months. But his mother must have felt that she and the Haddads were bonded by sorrow—that it was in keeping with her mourning to visit with them.

“I don’t know,” Hiyam answered, clutching Izzat’s arm. “I haven’t seen them in a week.”

“Oh dear! You think they’re still back there?” Yasmin inquired, immersed in black.

“Could be. But I doubt it. From what we could tell the Jews weren’t allowing anybody to stay.”

Abu Raji crossed his long legs, his lips turning bluish. “Only God knows where they’ll end up. And you, Izzat. What about your family?”

Izzat, who looked dehydrated, asked for a glass of water. Margo, one of the Nusrallah daughters, rushed to the kitchen and returned with two, for him and his wife.

Izzat took a long sip. “When we first told my parents we were coming to Ardallah,” he said, “they thought we were crazy. They didn’t think any part of Palestine was safe. They themselves wanted to go to Lebanon. But we had already promised to join you and didn’t want to change our plans or worry you more.”

“It was terrible,” Hiyam said, resting her head on her husband’s shoulder.

“Mother wanted to come with us,” Izzat continued, his finger circling the rim of the glass, “but when the time came my father was undecided. This angered the Jewish soldier. He pushed them with the butt of his gun, demanding they make up their minds.”

“About what?” Mrs. Haddad asked, patting her sister’s hand.

“He wanted them to either get on the boat to Lebanon or join us in the taxi. My father would take one step this way and another step that way. Finally the soldier slammed the door of the taxi shut and told the driver to go on.” Izzat’s chin looked wrinkled.

Listening to Izzat, Yousif remembered his own father’s death. Agony swelled in him anew. He looked at his mother and feared that her porcelain skin would crack.

“And then?” Yousif asked, holding back the tears.

“Izzat turned around,” Hiyam took over in the telling, “to wave goodbye to his parents. His father was already a heap on the ground.”

“Aaaaaaaahhhhh,” several shrieked.

The death scene on the hill top replayed itself in Yousif’s mind. His father flat on his back, the sucking wound, the last words, the peace and contentment on his face.

“Did they kill him?” Abu Raji wanted to know. “Did you hear a shot?”

“Shots were going on all the time,” Izzat answered, his eyes misty. “Whether they killed him or not we don’t know. All I saw was my father stretched out on the ground. Maybe he was wounded, I don’t know.”

It was too much for Yousif to take. He wanted to leave. But out of respect for Izzat, he stayed.

“He’s probably still alive, then,” the widow seamstress presumed.

“I hope so,” Izzat said, smoothing Hiyam’s hair.

“Most likely they shot him in the leg,” the bus driver’s wife offered, her hands characteristically under the hem of her sweater.

“Allah ija zee hom,”
Mrs. Nusrallah prayed. “May God punish them.”

The quiet on the balcony drowned the street traffic. Ardallah was filling up. A couple of cars full of anxious people stopped to ask for a room to rent. Housing was becoming a major problem. People were getting desperate.

“If you ask every one of these people,” Abu Raji said, referring to those who’d just been turned away, “he’d tell you a horror story.”

The silence was funereal. The end of Abu Raji’s cigarette glowed like an evil eye. When Yousif left to feed the fighters, he did not know whether he was running away from death or toward it.

Jaffa’s fall within a week after Haifa’s sounded a clanging alarm in Yousif’s head. He recalled Basim’s prediction that when the Zionists finished with Haifa they would turn their attention either to Jaffa in the south or Acre in the north. After that they would start hitting towns such as Lydda and Ramleh. The recent attack on Ardallah must have been an advance for a major assault on the inland.

It was late in the afternoon when Yousif decided to check with Dr. Afifi about his father’s office. What should they do with it now? Close it? Sell it? To whom? Ever since his father’s death Yousif had not had the heart to set foot in it. He had even sent nurse Laila’s salary through Uncle Boulus, telling her he would see her soon.

Dr. Afifi’s office was in the old district, only a couple of miles or so away from Yousif’s house. Yousif decided to go on foot rather than drive. As he walked through the town, he was astonished at the transformation. Refugees from Jaffa were arriving in large numbers. Truck after truck passed him, loaded with mattresses, pots and pans, chairs—all piled up on top of each other. Children were strapped on or held onto whatever they could. It was a grim procession of desperate people looking for a place to hide.

On his way to the clinic, Yousif saw people clustering around the new arrivals. Their stories of the Zionist invasion were shocking. The onslaught had been swift and devastating. People had been ordered to leave. One warned another, until the trickle had turned into an avalanche.

Listening to an unshaven fisherman wearing the baggy pants of his trade, Yousif lost his patience.

“But why did you all leave?” Yousif snapped.

Angry eyes pierced Yousif as though he were the enemy.

“Watch your tone, mister,” a tall cross-eyed stranger threatened.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Yousif said. “I’m sorry.”

The fisherman was still stung. “Listen to him,” he said. “When they come after you here in Ardallah, I hope I’ll be around to watch you shake in your boots. There’s no bravery in the face of the big guns, especially if you are as defenseless as we are.”

“That’s the truth,” another refugee grunted.

“The odds were a hundred to one against us,” the fisherman went on, staring at Yousif.

“I’m sorry,” Yousif again apologized. He could hear Salwa lambasting him for being so insensitive. If he felt so strongly about Palestine, why didn’t he fight? Why didn’t he carry a gun?

“Before we left Jaffa,” the weather-beaten man continued, now addressing the crowd, “I saw something I never thought possible. On top of Hassan Bey Mosque was a white and blue flag. I had never seen it before, but I just knew it had to belong to the Zionists.”

“Oh!” groaned all those surrounding him.

“Disgusting!” said a stranger with two dimples.

“Just think,” the fisherman murmured, “a Zionist flag on top of Hassan Bey Mosque!” He lowered his head in shame and clutched it with both hands.

Men buzzed like bees in a jar. They caucused here and there and spoke of one thing—Jaffa. They seemed to make a sharp distinction between Jaffa and Haifa. Haifa, they rationalized, had a sizeable Jewish majority; Jaffa, on the other hand, was close to one hundred per cent Arab. Even the UN had parceled it to the Arabs. Jaffa’s fall to the enemy meant only one thing: the Zionists were grabbing more than they had been allotted. They were seizing all they could before the Arab armies arrived. Yousif could imagine how Salwa would feel if she were to hear all this.

Navigating his way through the crowds, Yousif began to acknowledge that the Arabs were losing round one. But, by God, round one only. His stomach began to churn. One day, he vowed, these people who were now pouring out their hearts on the sidewalks and in the streets—would galvanize the wrath of God. Those who scored first were not necessarily the ultimate victors. Out of desperation, he found himself quoting poetry:

Itha esha‘bo yowman arada al-hayah

Fala budda an yestajeeba al-kaddar

If one day the people desire life

It’s inevitable for fate to respond

Yousif climbed the narrow exterior steps to Dr. Afifi’s office. He had never been there before. He found it weird that he, the son of the most prominent doctor in town, would be going to somebody else’s clinic. Thank God he wasn’t sick. On the other hand, he might as well get used to the vicissitudes of life. His father was dead. Should he and his mother—or even Salwa—need medical help from now on, there was no one better to see than Dr. Afifi.