On the Hills of God (7 page)

“It’s already started. But if you want an official declaration, you’ll have to wait another year.”

“When the British Mandate ends?” she asked.

“More or less.”

Cousin Salman, who had not cracked a single joke all evening, folded his arms and seemed to double up. He smiled wryly and his first word seemed to hover on his lips. “Why do you always see the dark side of things?” he asked. “The story of innocent young boys who are curious about lovers was sweet. Why did you have to ruin it?”

“Ruin it?” Basim shot back, pulling out a cigarette from a half-empty pack. “What are you saying? Even young Yousif didn’t believe it. The Zionists were doing this sort of thing in 1936, and they’re doing it now. It’s their system, their style. Last month we caught a group near Hebron; a week ago some Zionist map-makers were caught in the hills overlooking Nablus. It’s nothing new. And for every group we accidentally discover there are dozens more. It’s a pattern the Zionists have been following all over Palestine for years, no doubt in my mind. They’re getting ready for a big offensive. As soon as all the pieces fall in place they’re going to come at us with a vengeance.”

Maha sighed deeply, which attracted everyone’s attention. “It’s 1936 all over again,” she said, leaning her head against the wall behind her and holding her one-year-old close to her bosom.

There was something sad about the curve of her neck, Yousif felt.

“There’s no comparison,” her husband corrected her. “We are on the verge of something catastrophic—either for them or for us.”

“Or for both,” Uncle Boulus added, his thin lips drawn tight.

“Could be,” Basim agreed. “All the troubles we’ve had with the Jews and the British are nothing but a prelude—a rehearsal—for what’s to come. Believe me.”

The mention of 1936 seemed to throw everyone into memories of those hard times. Yousif had grown up hearing stories about Basim and his bravery in 1936. Shocked by Britain’s treacherous merry-go-round policies toward the Arabs, Basim had abandoned a flourishing law practice and at the age of thirty joined the Arab revolt that had broken out against the British and the Zionists. Basim had distinguished himself as a brave man. Eyewitnesses swore they had seen him run after armed British soldiers with an empty revolver, a bayonet, or just a pocket knife. He had killed so many that the British government had once sent a whole battalion to capture him. But he had eluded them.

When the revolt ended in 1939, the British had insisted on exiling him—and Basim would have remained in exile had it not been for petitions and pleas sent by his family to the British High Commissioner in Jerusalem. The Commissioner had refused time and again, until finally, and after five years of roaming the earth, Basim had sent his word that he would stop his anti-government activities.

“If we catch you doing anything wrong,” the British officials had warned him, “we’ll hang you from the highest minaret.”

Basim had accepted their terms, for the sake of his aging parents, knowing very well that he could serve the Arab cause much better from inside the country. Following his return, he reopened his law office, married Maha, the sister of a comrade-in-arms who had been killed during the Revolt, and settled down. But his fire remained ablaze. His family and intimate friends had known that he would never rest until the Palestinians achieved their complete independence and eradicated the new Zionist threat.

“If the Zionists are that active in preparing for war,” Yousif asked, waking up everyone from the doldrums, “what are we doing about it?”

His cousin’s jaws tightened. “Very little,” Basim replied. “It would take a concerted effort on the part of a large number of our people to stop such things from happening. Unfortunately we don’t have an Arab government in Palestine.”

“What about the Arab Higher Commission?” Yousif pressed. “What about the Mufti? He led the 1936 Revolt. Why can’t he lead it now?”

All eyes were on Yousif, who seemed to surprise everyone by his questions. Then they looked at Basim, who seemed reluctant to talk about the Mufti or the Arab Higher Commission. Yousif knew that Basim had more or less broken off with the old resistance movement, but he did not know to what extent. From Basim’s reaction, he thought perhaps the timing of his question was wrong.

Basim stretched his legs before him. “The Mufti and the Arab Higher Commission are still there,” he replied, his low voice full of hurt and disappointment.

Yousif studied his cousin’s words, tone, and gesture. Yousif felt a dark and mysterious bond forming between him and his revolutionary cousin. Their eyes met and held.

“As I said,” Basim continued, “we don’t have the organizations or the money or the manpower to ‘police’ the countryside. The British authorities who are still running the country don’t care. So the Zionists are left free to roam our mountains and valleys as they wish. The payoff for them will come when they jump us from every cave and nook and cranny they’ve been mapping all these years.”

Silence, as thick as fog, enveloped all those present. The doctor puffed on his black pipe and said nothing. Uncle Boulus opened his gold vest watch and closed it indifferently. Yousif got the impression that not everyone agreed with Basim; some seemed to regard him an alarmist.

“Why don’t we organize?” Yousif asked, impatient. Again the eyes focused on him. “That’s what we should all do,” he added, almost in defiance of their stares.

“‘And a child shall lead them . . .’” Uncle Boulus quoted, smiling.

Yousif bristled. “How old do I have to be to be called an adult?”

“I apologize, Yousif, you are not a child,” his uncle told him, his tone respectful. “In fact, you impress me as being more grown up than most.”

Yousif nodded in his uncle’s direction and then turned to Basim. “And what do you do with the spies you catch?” he asked, surprising his parents by his persistence.

“We take their maps,” Basim replied, “and we interrogate each and every one separately.”

Yousif waited for more. When Basim did not volunteer any further information, Yousif asked, “Who’s ‘we’?”

“A few associates of mine here and there, that’s all,” Basim said, smoke billowing all around him.

“I see,” Yousif muttered, thinking. “And what do you do with them afterwards?”

“We beat them,” Basim said. “Some we shoot.”

By gesture and word they all seemed horrified. The barber’s plump old wife sneezed, causing the baby in Maha’s arms to cry. Even the Spanish woman looked confused until her husband explained to her what was going on in her own language. Visibly rattled, she reached for a pinch of snuff from the barber’s wife.

“Without trial?” said Yousif’s mother.

“Just like that?” asked the barber.

“What if the Zionists begin shooting our boys at random,” asked the retiree, resting on a cane with an ivory handle.

“I didn’t say we shoot them at random,” Basim defended himself. “We shoot the ones we catch spying on us.”

“Is that wise?”

“Why not?” Basim wanted to know.

“It could start the violence all over again,” Uncle Boulus predicted.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have open war,” Basim argued, taking his crying baby from his wife. “No sense pretending otherwise.”

Shooting was a grave mistake, Yousif thought. But who among them, their silence seemed to say, could argue with a hero who had actually fought in battle against the British and the Zionists? Basim’s patriotism was beyond reproach—and so were all his political and military actions, it seemed.

“What do you think, Father?” Yousif asked. “Do you think they should kill the ones they suspect of spying?”

“No, I don’t,” the doctor answered, drawing on his pipe.

“And why not?” Basim snapped. “What do you want us to do? Accuse them of trespassing?”

“You can do more than that,” Yousif argued. “You can interrogate them, learn all about their secret cells, lock them up—but you don’t have to kill them. For one thing, you might use them in the future for an exchange.”

“A trade for what?” Basim insisted. “For whom?”

“One day they’ll probably hold some of our people,” Yousif protested. “There could be an exchange of prisoners.”

“Who has the time or the money to feed and look after them?” Basim asked. “They are our enemies, and they are working overtime to throw us out.”

The clicking of Uncle Boulus’s worry beads was the only thing that could be heard.

“I can tell you we’re facing hardened people,” Basim continued. They’re coming at us with full force. Or have we forgotten the bombing of the King David Hotel?”

“And that was a year ago,” Uncle Boulus agreed.

“Their terrorists,” Basim added, “blew up that hotel at the height of the rush hour. Over a hundred people were killed—all of them innocent. They didn’t blink an eye. And you tell us to restrain ourselves? War is hell and we might as well face it—we
are
at war.”

“Then take these spies as prisoners of war,” Yousif suggested. “Wouldn’t that be the decent thing to do?”

Disappointment flashed on Basim’s face. “So far I’ve been impressed with you, Yousif. I hope I don’t change my mind.”

Suddenly Yousif remembered the compass he had stumbled on that fateful day. He had hidden it in a drawer full of socks. He rushed into his bedroom and returned within a minute.

“I found this in the fields, just before Amin broke his arm,” Yousif explained.

“Let me see it.”

Yousif handed him the compass. He felt alone with Basim, remote from the rest. The muttering and the whispering around him did not seem to matter. Basim turned the compass over and over in his hand and was now directing his eyes at those around him.

“Salman, what do you think of this?” Basim said to the frail shopkeeper beside him. “Made in Brooklyn. Hardly an object for lovers, don’t you think?”

Basim’s mild sarcasm made Salman’s lips twitch. Again there was silence.

So they were spies, Yousif thought. There were plans for war. On the one hand, he felt vindicated; on the other, he felt initiated to a world he did not like, a world of insecurity, mistrust, and suffering. Everything around him began to look and sound different. The crickets began to chatter. The moon grimaced like a one-eyed god. The lights of Jaffa, twenty miles to the west, looked aflame. Some of his caged birds inside the house twittered in disharmony. He sat next to the railing, toying with the compass, the omen of mysterious and threatening things to come.

Yousif could read fear on the faces around him.

“Can you believe this!” Yousif’s mother exclaimed next morning on the balcony, as she watched two men unload a pickup truck packed with boxes of oranges.

Yousif shook his head. The truckload was a gift from the family friend who bought the orange grove his parents had visited a few days earlier. The stack of boxes was now getting taller than the men. Yousif was overcome with disbelief. He loved oranges, but what could one do with two thousand of them?

“That’s the Arabs for you,” his mother said, bemused. “No sense of moderation.”

“We’re generous people, that’s all,” Yousif said. Taking his knife, he made a precise incision around the top of one orange. He took pride in the art of peeling. Whereas most people peeled and ate a whole orange in a couple of minutes, he spent far longer. For him the trick was to strip the fruit naked without injuring the flesh. The pleasure was in the ritual as much as it was in the fruit itself.

“What are we going to do with all these oranges?” his mother now asked, wiping her hands with her apron.

“I’ll take a few with me to Salwa,” he said, offering her half of the orange he had just peeled. “I’m late already.”

“Don’t take a few, I’ll send a box with Fatima sometime today. We need to distribute all these before they rot. Let me see, a box to Basim’s house, a box to brother Boulus’s house, a box to Salman’s house, a box to . . .”

“Don’t forget Amin and Isaac,” Yousif reminded her.

“Of course not.”

“Do you think Father will take me and Isaac when he goes to visit Amin?”

“I don’t see why not. Poor Amin,” she said and resumed counting on her fingers the names of those to whom she would send a box of oranges.

On his way to see Salwa that morning, Yousif carried the compass in his pocket. Amin’s amputation broke his heart; Basim’s talk of war rang in his ears. The thought of war and the taste of oranges reminded him that the big, juicy, fragrant Jaffa orange was Winston Churchill’s favorite fruit. Yousif’s father once told him that during World War II Churchill always had special oranges shipped to him from Palestine. Yousif could picture Churchill pacing and plotting his strategy against Hitler while savoring the flavor and delicacy of a Jaffa orange.

Yousif admired the British for their role in defeating the Axis powers, but their continued presence in Palestine was an injustice he couldn’t accept. To his mind, the Arabs had not fought with the Allies during World War I in hopes of throwing out the Turks only to be saddled with the British in Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, and with the French in Syria and Lebanon. But that was exactly what had happened.

Yousif wished he knew more about how and why Britain ended up in Palestine for a thirty-year mandate. That was part of the peace agreement, he had been told, which had brought no peace to his people. It irked him not to know what part Churchill had played in the formulation of the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. In one brief, ambiguous paragraph, Britain had ignored the Palestinians and promised the Zionists a national home in Palestine. What a dilemma, Yousif thought. First the Turks, then the British, now the Zionists. And that was only in recent history. In ancient times it was even worse. Were the Palestinians to be subjugated forever?

Now, in 1947, what mattered most to him was the fact that a foreigner—be it Balfour or Churchill or anyone else—could sit thousands of miles away from Palestine and dictate to the Palestinians what would or would not happen to them and their country. The arrogance!

Yousif walked up and down two hills on his way to Salwa’s house, paying no attention to those he was passing. He was preoccupied with Britain’s duplicity. First the Balfour declaration in 1917. Then the White Paper of 1939, with which Britain had tried to modify the Balfour Declaration. This, in turn, infuriated the Zionists. Yousif shook his head as he thought of Britain’s chicanery, and pitied Arabs and Jews who were her victims. Once Churchill had declared, “The cause of unrest in Palestine, and the only cause, arises from the Zionist movement and our promises and pledges to it.” Yet, his government, like all British governments before it, had either vacillated or been brutally supportive of everything Zionist. Still, that British Bear received special shipments of Jaffa oranges, even when the world was aflame, when the Mediterranean sea and sky were impassable. The nerve! Yousif wondered what Churchill was thinking now, and whether he had any remorse.

There was so much to tell Salwa. Yousif marveled at how lucky he was to have the opportunity to visit her house every Thursday. Ever since the beginning of summer vacation two weeks earlier, he and Salwa’s bothers, Akram and Zuhair, would hold their class in the family garden. They would carry their stubby chairs with the straw bottoms and walk around until they found a suitable spot. On both Thursdays Yousif chose a spot that afforded him a perfect view of Salwa’s room.

Today Akram and Zuhair were waiting for him on the balcony, but Salwa was not in sight. They had their books in their hands and behind them were the familiar stubby chairs.

“Good morning,” Yousif said, as he approached them.

“Good morning,” the two boys answered.

“Where would you like to sit today?” Yousif asked.

The two boys looked at each other. “I don’t care,” Akram said.

“Why not inside for a change?” Zuhair added.

Yousif frowned. “It’s too pretty to be inside. Come on, I’ll show you where.”

They went down two narrow fields and again sat under a huge fig tree. Yousif wanted to be away from the house for a measure of privacy, just in case he was able to talk to Salwa.

He reviewed the boys’ homework. “Did you help each other?” he asked, looking at the arithmetic problems.

“No,” they both said.

“It’s okay if you did. Both of you did well. I’m proud of you.”

“You’re a good teacher,” Akram said, smiling.

“That’s nice of you to say, Akram. Today we’re going to study Arabic. Do you have your books with you?”

“I do but I hate grammar,” Zuhair complained.

“But it’s very important,” Yousif emphasized. “You can’t speak or write well without it.”

“It’s hard and boring,” Zuhair insisted, his lips twisting.

“Look at it this way. When you play soccer, don’t you follow certain rules?”

“Yes,” Zuhair answered, uncertain.

“Without the rules the game would be a mess. We wouldn’t be able to tell the winner from the loser. Am I right? It’s the same thing in reading and writing. The fun is knowing your opportunities and your limitations.”

As Yousif explained the intricacies of Arabic grammar to his young pupils, his eyes constantly watched Salwa’s windows and balcony. He hoped she would come down to hang her mother’s washing on the backyard clothes line, or shake a rug over the balcony railing. Finally, he heard her footsteps and then was able to see her through a curtain of fig leaves. She was wearing a red skirt and a white blouse. In her right hand was a plate of white berries. Yousif decided it was an excuse for her to see him. He smiled with that knowledge.

He heard her murmur good morning.

“Good morning,” he replied. He was so happy he could only stare at her.

“I picked them this morning,” she said. “I thought you might like some.”

He nodded. “I’ll be with you in just a minute,” he said.

“Can’t stay long,” she demurred. “Mother is waiting.”

“Please,” he said, fixing her with a meaningful look.

He gave her brothers a long assignment and walked from under the leafy tree to where Salwa was standing.

“I’d rather help you pick them off the tree,” he told her, taking the plate of white berries from her hand.

“What would the neighbors say if they saw us together?” she laughed, her thin gold bracelets tinkling around her wrist.

“Can’t they see us now?” he asked, putting a couple of berries in his mouth.

She looked around, worried. “I am taking a chance. Maybe I should leave. The last thing I need is their gossip.”

She started to walk away, and he reached out to stop her. “Please don’t go. Sooner or later they’ll have to know.”

His confidence seemed to surprise her. “That day will never come,” she teased him and swung away, her round white earrings reflecting the morning sun.

“That day will come,” he insisted, taking and eating a few more berries.

For a moment both seemed to be held in suspension.

“You’ve heard about the amputation,” he said, leaning against the trunk of an apple tree.

“It’s terrible,” she said, nodding.

He pulled out the compass and showed it to her. “Here’s what I found that day,” he said, looking grim.

“What is it?”

“A compass. It must’ve fallen out of their pockets. I just knew they were spies. Basim agrees with me. He also thinks that for all practical purposes the war between us and the Jews has already started.”

She took the compass from him, pouting. “I wish I were a man.”

Yousif looked at her, surprised. “Why?”

“Then I’d be able to fight. Girls can’t do much except hope and pray. I wouldn’t like that.”

A plane swished over their heads. Apparently it had taken off from nearby Lydda airport only a few minutes earlier, for it was still ascending. He could read the airline markings on it. Yousif watched it streak against the blue sky; Salwa kept her eyes glued to the ground. The mood grew somber.

“I want to find a way to help,” Yousif told her.

“There’s only one way.”

He scrutinized her face. “Fighting?”

“What else?”

“It’s not that simple. Oh, Salwa, there’s so much we don’t know.”

When she did not respond, he looked at her. She seemed unmoved.

“Right now it’s like watching a film after the fifth reel,” he explained.

“It’s clear to me,” she said. “All I know is that I’m standing on land my father inherited from his father and he from
his
father. This berry tree is our berry tree. That house is our house. Everything we own we either inherited or bought and paid for. And if the Zionists want some strangers from Europe to settle here, they’ll have to fight us first.”

“And if they succeed? If they take it all away?”

“We’ll never rest until we get everything back. The thing to do is to make sure nothing falls into their hands. That’s what my father says. And I agree with him.”

They heard her mother calling her from inside the house.

Salwa handed him back the compass and started to leave. Then she turned around and took a good hard look at him. “Relax,” she said. “Our cause is as clear as this glaring sun.”

Yousif glanced at his two young pupils under the fig tree. Finding them busy with their work, he took several steps behind Salwa. “When will I see you again?” he asked, hating to see her go.

“Next Thursday.”

“Not before?”

She smiled and moved away from him. “We’ll see,” she answered, walking in earnest.

As she departed, his heart sank. He held her tall figure in his eyes until she stopped at the top of the stairs, waved her hand, and went inside. Momentarily he returned to the task at hand, finding pleasure in the presence of her two younger brothers.

“Will you bring me a bird next time?” twelve-year-old Akram asked at the end of the morning session. “I did well, didn’t I?”

Yousif smiled and made a mental note to stop at Salman’s shop and buy cannabis for his birds. Aside from going to the movies, his favorite hobby was buying, catching, and trading birds. But his collection of more than two hundred birds was costing him all his allowance. He really needed to sell some of them, but his heart would not let him. He loved them so much that he had a room in both houses designated just for them. Before the end of the summer he would probably catch more. How was he going to cope with that many?

“You deserve the best,” Yousif finally told Akram. “Next time I come I’ll bring you my red canary.”

“What about me?” said eleven-year-old Zuhair. “I did just as well.”

“You know I won’t forget you,” Yousif told him, rising and keeping his eyes on Salwa’s room. “How about a blue cage?”

“YEEEES,” Zuhair responded, shutting the book with a bang.

“That’s not fair,” Akram whimpered. “I’m older and I want the cage.”

Yousif laughed and ruffled their hair, wishing their sister would favor him with one more look.

By the middle of August, most of the vacationers were leaving Ardallah to prepare their children for school. Those from outside Palestine were returning home without a worry in their head. The Palestinians themselves were going away less certain about the future of their country. Even the people of Ardallah had been transformed during the summer months. The future looked worrisome.

Like many of his generation, Yousif was developing a new passion—politics. Day after day he would read newspapers, listen to the radio, and participate in discussions with his father and their night visitors.

One night they had many important guests, including the Appellate Court Judge Hamdi Azzam and his wife. Fouad Jubran and Fareed Afifi and their wives were frequent visitors, but the respectable judge came over only two or three times a year, and each occasion took on a special significance. Yousif’s parents became a bit more formal, and their hospitality a bit more lavish. Instead of sitting on the balcony, as they normally would on summer evenings, tonight they sat in the living room. Yasmin and Fatima were busy in the kitchen sending out dish after dish of maza. While serving the guests drinks and dishes of cheeses and pickles and
hummus
and, later on, coffee and sweets, Yousif listened to every word they said.