The Orange Grove (3 page)

“What are you waiting for, get in,” Soulayed said to them, a smile on his lips. “Don't be afraid, I'm not going to eat you.”

He shifted his machine gun into the backseat to make room for them beside him. When the jeep started up, Amed glimpsed his father in the orange grove. He moved toward the road and watched the jeep disappear into the distance.

Soulayed drove fast. The boys liked that. Aziz sat between Soulayed and his brother. No one talked. They left the road to take the dirt track leading to the mountain. The wind whistled. Blowing dust made their eyes burn. The boys saw the dead body of an animal. Soulayed avoided it with a jerk of the steering wheel. Amed asked what it was. Soulayed shrugged. A few minutes later, the jeep braked to a brutal halt. They could go no farther. The mountain rose up before them, blocking the horizon with its bluish mass. Soulayed got out of the jeep. Took a few steps.

“What's he doing?” Amed asked his brother in a low voice.

Suddenly they heard the sound of water. Stifling his laughter, Aziz said, “He's emptying his bladder.”

After what was to them a long wait, Soulayed came back and sat in the jeep. Lit a cigarette. Took a deep drag and pointed to the mountain, there in front of them.

“A long time ago, I used to come here,” he told them. “I was your age. A few friends and I rode around on our bikes. I would leave them by the side of the road and venture out on foot among the rocks. At that time, there were still wolves. But the wolves have disappeared. Now there are only snakes. There were woods, too, with giant cedars. Magnificent trees. Today only a handful are left in these parts. Look down there, maybe you'll see one. See it, where the land drops down? Well, this cedar, I know it like a brother. It's at least two thousand years old, and my biggest thrill when I was a child was to grab onto its branches and climb to the highest one! I was the only one among my friends who could do this. I wasn't afraid, even when I became dizzy. Once I had a good grip on the top branch, I spent hours just scanning the plain. Up
there, I felt like another person. I saw the past and the future at the same time. I felt immortal . . . untouchable! I could look down on the two slopes of the mountain just by turning my head. On days when the sky was blue, my gaze soared like the outstretched wings of an eagle. Nothing could stand in its way. To the east, I saw the yellow earth of your grandfather. I thought he was mad. Planting trees on this side of the mountain! I shouted insults at him. I wasn't afraid. I knew very well that he couldn't hear me. No one could hear me when I was perched on top of this tree, no one!”

Soulayed stopped talking and scanned the sky as if he'd just heard an airplane. There was nothing in the sky, not even a bird. Soulayed took one last drag of his cigarette. He flicked the butt into the air, then grabbed his machine gun. He stood in the jeep and discharged his weapon in the direction of the cedar. The noise of the machine gun's burst took the boys' breath away. They huddled on the floor of the jeep. Soulayed threw down his weapon and grabbed them by their necks as their father had done in the orange
grove. Soulayed had muscular arms. His whole person radiated strength.

“Guess,” he said in a voice brimming with pride, “what I could see with my child's eyes when I turned to the west? Not this strip of arid land where your grandfather broke his fingers, no! To the west there was a valley where our ancestors had planted magnificent gardens. It was paradise. A pure miracle, I tell you! You could see in the distance, behind a long row of eucalyptus, the outskirts of a village. Between the houses, people had planted date and palm trees. Our land spread out all the way to the foothills leading to the immense chain of mountains bordering the ocean. On my perch, I recited at the top of my lungs the words of our great poet, Nahal:

Paradise is made of water, earth, sky, and a gaze that nothing can obstruct. The gaze is the secret element in space. Never let it die
.

“But if you were to climb to the top of this sick cedar today, what would you see?”

Soulayed shook one of the boys by the shoulders.

“Have you no answer? What would you see today?”

He shook Amed until it hurt. Still, Amed said nothing.

“Have you lost your tongue? Well?”

Amed was terrified. Soulayed got out of the jeep. Took a few steps. Then came back toward the boys. Kicked hard at one of the jeep's wheels. A bit of foam glistened at the edge of his lips.

“Your grandfather was right in the end,” he cried bitterly. “He planted his oranges on the right side of the mountain! Go, get out of the jeep! Don't look at me like that. You know perfectly well why I brought you here.”

Soulayed pushed the boys out of the jeep. Amed took his brother's hand. His own was shaking.

“You know this place. Before the bombings, you used to come here. I even saw you one day on your bicycles. You were coming here, no? I'm
sure of it. And I know why. You told Halim. And Halim told me.”

“We didn't tell Halim anything, he was lying,” Amed replied in a hurry.

Soulayed smiled. He placed his hands on Amed's shoulders.

“Don't be afraid, child, you did nothing wrong.”

Amed freed himself. Began to run toward the dirt road. Soulayed turned to the other boy. Asked him if he was Amed or Aziz.

“I'm Aziz.”

Then he turned to Amed, who was running away. He cried to him: “Amed, Amed, listen to me, Halim told me about the day your kite string broke. I know what happened that day. God is great. He's the one who broke your string. Believe what I say, Amed! He broke it so that things would come to pass as they must.”

Amed stopped running. Soulayed took Aziz's hand and led him toward his brother. All three sat down in the shadow of a rock.

“You came here to fly your kite. All the children around here know this is the best place for it. Since the bombings, no one risks coming
here anymore, but you two came in spite of the danger. And your string broke and the kite, freed, flew off as if it wanted to rejoin, beyond the hills, the sea's immensity. Suddenly the wind stopped. As if by magic. You saw the kite fall from the sky and vanish on the other side of the mountain. And you went off to find it as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Paper and wind! I think it must have been fabulous, your kite. Full of bright colors. Maybe it was shaped like a bird or a dragon. Or maybe a dragonfly?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” said Aziz. “It was our grandfather who'd made it. Just paper and wind, as you say.”

“And you began to climb the mountain. Am I right? Answer me!”

“We had to go home with the kite, or our father would have had questions,” Amed explained.

“Yes,” Aziz went on. He began to imitate his father's voice: “Where did you lose it? You have no heart. Lose your grandfather's gift? Where did you go?”

“He would have waited for our answer,” Amed
continued. “And we would have told the truth, we couldn't lie to our father.”

“That's good, you must never lie to he who gave you life.”

“Our father would have killed us,” Aziz said, “if he'd learned that we came here. We had to go back with the kite. We began to climb the mountain. It wasn't very high. And there was the ghost of a road snaking through the rocks. It was easy to follow. We laughed. It was exciting to climb so high and to see the valley below and, very far off, the green spot of the orange grove.”

“He who has the courage to rise up embraces his whole life at a glance. And also all his death.”

Saying that, Soulayed smiled. He offered the boys cigarettes. They smoked, sitting all three on the ground that became, despite the shade, more and more scorching. Soulayed's neck shone with sweat.

“Your grandfather was right in the end. In his day he planted orange trees on the good side of the mountain. Because on the other side, our dead were being ripped out of their tombs. The living were massacred, their houses destroyed.
Their fields and their gardens were razed. Each day that passes, our enemies gnaw away at the land of our ancestors. They are rats!”

Soulayed took a long drag on his cigarette.

“Well, Amed, and you, Aziz, when you reached the top, what did you see on the other side?”

“The other side of the sky,” replied Aziz. “I saw the other side of the sky. There was no end. As if my eyes couldn't reach any farther. And then, in the dust blown up by the wind, I saw in the distance a town, a strange kind of town.”

“It wasn't a town,” Amed corrected. “It didn't look like a town. At each end there was a tower that threw flashes of light into the sky.”

“Military installations, that's what you saw. You saw warehouses surrounded by barbed wire. And do you know what's inside? Our death. They've been planning it for years. But God broke your kite string and now it's their own death they're warehousing.”

Amed and Aziz didn't understand Soulayed's last words. They wondered if he was losing his mind.

“You knew you'd go to the other side of the
mountain. Who doesn't? We've been at war for so long. You knew it, no? And that's what you told Halim.”

“No! We didn't know it!”

“Don't lie!”

“My brother doesn't lie!” shouted Aziz, standing up. “He only told Halim that our kite flew over the mountain.”

“I just wanted to impress him, that's all,” added Amed, tears in his voice. “Halim was the best kite flyer around. I didn't do anything wrong.”

“Listen to me, both of you. It doesn't matter what you knew or didn't know. And it doesn't matter what you really told Halim. Those are childish things and we don't need to talk about them anymore. Do you want to know what really happened that day?”

Soulayed stood up without waiting for their answer, and set off with long strides toward the mountain.

“Follow me!”

They walked under the sun for a good ten minutes before they came to the foot of the mountain.

“Around here, I imagine, was where you climbed the mountain to find your kite?”

“Yes,” Aziz admitted.

“Right there,” his brother added.

“Just what I thought.”

Soulayed wrapped his arms around the two boys.

“You didn't know that with every step you took, you could have been blown up by a mine. You didn't know that, did you?”

Soulayed stroked the boys' heads.

“A miracle is what really happened that day. God broke your kite string and God guided your steps on the mountain.”

They returned to the road in silence. Aziz felt like throwing up because of the cigarette Soulayed had given him.

Back at the jeep, Soulayed burst out laughing. He picked up a bottle of water lying at his feet. It was half-full. He opened it and poured its contents over his head. The water washed over his hair and his beard and wet his shirt. His laughter frightened the boys. He turned to them with a big grin. His white teeth were beautiful, perfect. He started the motor. Amed didn't dare say that he was thirsty too. He searched with his eyes to see if another bottle was lying around. There was no other. Soulayed drove faster than he had on the way there. He said in a loud voice, speaking over the noise of the jeep and the wind: “Do you see now what you've accomplished? You found a road to lead you to that strange town. You're the only ones who've done it. Others who've tried to do so were blown to smithereens by the mines. In a few days, one of you will go back there. You, Aziz, or you, Amed. Your father will decide. And the one who is chosen will wear a belt of explosives. He will go down to that strange town and make it disappear forever.”

Before leaving them, Soulayed said again: “God has chosen you. God has blessed you.”

Amed took refuge in the house. For a long time, Aziz stood watching the cloud of dust stirred up by the jeep's departure.

While the boys waited for Soulayed to return, time became strangely long. Minutes stretched out as if made of dough. One of the brothers would be going off to war to blow up military installations in the strange town, as Soulayed had called it. They talked about it all the time. Who would their father choose? Why one rather than the other? Aziz swore that he wouldn't let his brother go off without him. Amed said the same thing. Despite their youth, they were aware of the honor Soulayed was conferring on them. Suddenly they had become real fighters.

To kill time, they played at blowing themselves up in the orange grove. Aziz had stolen an old belt from his father that they weighted with three tin cans full of sand. They took turns wearing it, slipping into the skin of a future
martyr. The orange trees also played war with them. The trees became enemies, endless rows of warriors poised to launch their explosive fruits at the slightest suspicious noise. The boys worked their way between them, crawling and scraping their knees. When they activated the detonator—an old shoelace—trees were uprooted by the force of the explosion, shooting into the sky in a thousand fragments, falling back down onto their shredded bodies.

Amed and Aziz tried to imagine the impact of that fatal moment.

“Do you think it will hurt?”

“No, Amed.”

“Are you sure? And Halim?”

“What about Halim?”

“There must be little pieces of Halim all over now.”

“I guess so.”

“Do you think that's a problem?”

“Why a problem?”

“For going to heaven.”

“Think, Amed. It doesn't matter what happens on earth. The real Halim, the whole Halim, is already in heaven.”

“That's what I think too, Aziz.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“Nothing. Yesterday I had a dream. Our father had chosen me. Before leaving, I gave you my yellow truck.”

“What yellow truck?”

“The one in my dream.”

“You never had a yellow truck.”