13

My grandmother said, “Today we will visit your uncle Wahid.”

Our previous visit to that forest, and the curfew and strikes that followed, did not dissuade her from undertaking a new trip. My mother’s rebuke did not discourage her, and neither did my uncle Amin’s shock or my oldest uncle when he told her angrily, “Tomorrow you will go straight home.” She looked at him and, pointing to her heart, the heart of a mother, she said, “If you had a child, a boy or a girl, this would have moved. It would have trembled!”

She asked me once more as she was wrapping an arous of labneh, sitting near the stove, all the while smiling like a mischievous child my age who wanted to play again. “What do you think, shall we go visit Wahid?”

I asked, joyfully, “And the forest as well?”

She replied, serious yet absentminded: “No, Zawata.”

I asked her about Zawata; she told me it was a small village, very small, where one would find apples, grapes, pomegranates, and a water spring—to me, at that time, it looked like a waterfall. When I visited it years later, there was nothing left but flies, stone quarries, and a swamp.

She wore her borrowed peasant dress and a veil. She carried a basket filled with kibbeh and both cheese and za’atar pies. She looked different, as if she were Umm Nayef or Umm Nashaat, or even Umm Hekmat, Umm Nayef’s neighbor in Asira.

We left the house, and this time she made me wear a dress. I didn’t know where she had gotten it—if she’d had it made or borrowed it. The dress was made from a material that resembled that of the mattresses. It could have been the same material. She braided my hair and secured the braids with rubber bands. She had me wear sandals that looked like those worn by the children of peasants. I did not like the dress, the sandals, or the rubber bands in my hair, but I felt that it would make it easy to make contact with Rabie and stop him from referring to me as a “city girl.”

We crossed the Habs al-Dam alley without attracting the slightest attention; neither the upholsterer, nor the grocer, nor even the baker boy paid any attention to us. It was probably because the place was crowded with peasants and villagers from the east and the south, and even the north, which included Asira, Umm Nayef’s village and that of the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries, however, had moved that same day to Zawata and hid among the trees and the stones, and in the farms.

We took the bus this time, the village bus. It was crowded with men young and old, as well as women with big bellies, baskets filled with their purchases, and cardboard boxes.

The bus let us off on the asphalt and continued on its way to Tulkarem, then Natanya, a Jewish settlement. The large settlement in front of Zawata had spread out like smallpox on top of the hill, from the west side. We were surprised to find out that my uncle and his group went to Zawata, though they knew that Kiryat Aharon was very close, closer to them than Habs al-Dam.

When we got off the bus, a few young men got off as well, and an older man walking with a stick and carrying a bundle. My grandmother said, “Come, let’s ask this old man.” We rushed to catch up with him and with the others who began moving toward Zawata. They took a tortuous road that was coarsely leveled and paved with stones pressed into the ground due to frequent use by the inhabitants.

It was a warm summer day in early July, and the sun was beginning to heat up. But there was a cool breeze that came from the south, carrying the mist of the sea, while the scent of the wild herbs of the mountain was spread by the heat that dried the soft plants, changing them into hard sticks and thorns.

We got closer to the old man, and my grandmother called him, shouting a few times, “Ya Hajj, ya Hajj!” before he finally stopped and looked behind him. He seemed surprised, and there was an inquisitive smile on his face, akin to the smile of someone deaf. And so he seemed to be, as we saw him cup a hand to his ear and shout in a loud voice that everybody heard. Some pedestrians looked back despite the long distance that separated us—they were at least twenty steps ahead. The old man shouted a greeting in answer to one we did not utter, and said, “Peace be upon you, and God’s mercy and His blessings.”

My grandmother turned to me and smiled, and I smiled back. I understood that the conversation with this old man would be, as the proverb says, “a dialogue of the deaf.” It might even attract the attention of all the passersby, who would watch us and would perhaps find out the reason for our visit. Of course, the villages in our region were small and the villagers knew the origin of every inhabitant, from youngest to oldest. The presence of a stranger like my grandmother and a young girl like me would certainly attract attention, no matter how well we tried to hide our identity. But my grandmother was a city woman and she was used to blending and limiting her movements. Even in her visits to Haifa, she had gotten used to traveling door to door, directly to her destination, and so had we. Her previous visit to Asira might have been the first time she bent the rules of custom and tradition that she would normally be subject to. Her visit to Zawata might be the second in a series of consecutive visits to many villages, in a constant pursuit of her most cherished and favorite son. He was her companion in times of hardship and with her in her faith. He was her life companion. He was the only one who never disobeyed her or questioned her decisions, sharing her faith and her spiritual journeys through the moon, the prophesies, the Friday prayers, and the tarawih. I believe that her love for me was a compensation for his absence. I often wondered whether she would have loved me the way she did, so intensely, had Wahid stayed close to her and not moved away because of the revolution. His wholehearted involvement with the revolution—as she saw it, his fighting for the sake of God—was the literal fulfillment of the beliefs she held deeply and her natural inclination toward facing difficulties and dangers head on.

The man said, a second time, “Peace be upon you, and God’s mercy and His blessings.”

She raised her hand above her head, as men do. Then, without smiling, she pointed to the bundle in his hand and said, “Peace be upon you too. Can we help you carry your bundle, Hajj? The girl is strong and is used to carrying heavy things. Go, Nidal, help the hajj.”

I moved one step forward, but he hid his bundle behind his back, causing him to drop his stick. I bent to pick it up but he was faster than me and picked it up without any difficulty. He returned to his previous position and bent his back. My grandmother said in a serious tone, “Come, Nidal, help me. The hajj is strong, God bless him.”

I carried the basket, but I kept an eye on the bundle, as I was dying to find out what it contained. It was obviously heavy, because he kept changing hands while carrying it. When he noticed my eyes on his bundle, he moved it to his left hand, away from me, and resumed a conversation he had started earlier, forgetting his deafness, or having regained his alertness. He asked my grandmother, “Are you coming with us to visit the mayor?”

She did not reply, hoping he would say something else that would help her find out the reason behind the visit to the mayor. And that was exactly what happened. He said, “Do you see these young men? All of them are coming to see the mayor, like you. Do you see my land? The lot at the edge of the valley. Do you see the barbed wires and the tree? This is my land. But from the spot where the oak tree is and even farther away, as far as your eyes can see, the land belongs to the village and the peasants. It does not have a specific owner, but the inhabitants of the village plant it with wheat and barley, potatoes and tomatoes, and they all eat its produce. I used to see the wheat and the grain piled up, by God’s will; there were also plenty of peaches, apricots, and olives, pile upon pile. The land was fertile, and things were good. But then, may God protect you, things changed. They lost the land, they had no work, and they were hungry. The land is very dear, dearer than one’s life. What about you, Hajjeh? How big is your lot?”

She replied vaguely, “My land is of medium size, neither big nor small. But you are right, the land is dear, dearer than one’s life.”

“We’ve become delusional. We have lost our minds. They have driven me crazy and sometimes I feel like a stupid man!”

Suddenly, he stopped talking. She too remained silent, looking left and right in the hope of seeing a trace of her son or some of his men. I too was looking left and right, searching for the boy Rabie.

We reached the village square in front of the mayor’s house. There was a man holding a petition and an inkpot, like a snuffbox, and was going around for the men to sign or to make a thumbprint. They said that it was a petition against the confiscation of the communal land and the adjacent lots. When it was my grandmother’s turn, she made a thumbprint like the others, although she did not own land and she had nothing to do with the communal lot or any other piece of land. She did not stop at that; she asked the man holding the petition to let me sign because I could read and write. He smiled and told her that I was too young to sign. I was embarrassed, and I punched my grandmother in the shoulder as an expression of my disapproval of her attitude. I kept looking left and right, among the people present, behind the rocks and under the trees, but there was no sign of my uncle or Rabie.

The dusty square in front of the mayor’s house belonged to him. They said that the British did not attach it to the collective land or the Jewish colony, although it adjoined the communal lot that later became, according to the law, Kiryat Aharon. My grandmother pulled me by the hand toward the metal barrier to the south, saying, “Come, let’s watch.” I followed her while still searching for my uncle and Rabie.

We stood behind the fence, watching. We saw two tractors plowing the land and another truck with prongs that resembled a comb, gathering stones and pulling them toward the village in order to form a rocky barrier between the settlement and the peasants. We also saw pipes drawing water from the spring, which at that time looked like a waterfall. Many years later, when I returned from abroad, it was a breeding ground for mosquitoes, and droves of rodents and wasps.

My grandmother said, “Here is the land. Do you see the Jews? Do you see the British?” She meant that the British were the ones who took the land and drew the water and gave it to the Jews who came from Europe, on the understanding that the land belonged to the government. As the British imposed their mandate on us and became our government and administrators, the land became the property of the rulers and not the ruled. But the land, as people said, belonged to the village and its inhabitants. It was passed from father to son. They planted it and harvested it and lived on it, generation after generation, for many centuries. Why did foreigners come from Europe and transform it into a settlement called Kiryat Aharon? Why did they take the water of the village spring and give it to Kiryat Aharon? Wasn’t it bad enough that they took the communal land? And now they were taking the village spring. How could the peasants survive?

We stood there watching the tractors and the huge prongs, and the white-skinned conductors, with cloth hats on their heads, wearing shorts that hardly covered their lower bodies. Their bare backs were red, burned by the hot sun. My grandmother said to me, to inform me and draw my attention to the matter, “Do you see the Jews? Do you see the English? Look, look!”

We heard noise behind us and saw the man who was holding the petition, standing on the threshold of the mayor’s door. He was telling the villagers who were squatting on the ground and those who were sitting in the square, “May your efforts be rewarded, people. You have done your duty and more. Now that you have signed and made your marks on the petition, his honor the mayor will submit it to the government. You have to leave now, no disrespect to you.”

One of the young men we had seen getting off the bus shouted, “What do you mean leave? We need to see the mayor. We’d like to know if he is with us or with them. If he is with us, let him say loud and clear that he is with us. Call the mayor!”

In a special tone of voice, to convey to those present the importance of his mission and of those who had appointed him to accomplish it, he said, “His honor, the mayor, is busy with a government delegation. They say that they intend to build a mosque and schools in Zawata.”

“God be praised, this means that our children will be doctors!” someone mocked.

Another said, “And a big mosque, large enough for us and for our neighbors in Kiryat Aharon.”

Some of the men laughed, but others had an empty, stunned look; they squatted or sat on the ground with their chins resting on their fists, desperate, not knowing whether their trip to see the mayor would bring something new or whether the signed petition would have an impact. The young men who called for the meeting had told them that gathering at the house of the mayor would have a great impact; when he saw them united, declaring that they wouldn’t budge and would remain in front of his house, he would convince the government to give them back their land, the way he got his land back. They would express themselves in a manner that would move him and touch his generous heart and noble feelings. They would remind him that the Jews were not part of our people and their traditions were different from ours. They spent their days in shorts, their backs and thighs uncovered before the women and the young girls, and this was not acceptable to God or to us or even to his honor the mayor. Wasn’t he concerned for his honor? For his land? Whoever took the collectively owned land would take the land that surrounded it as well. What did he have? His land was like the collectively owned land; it belonged to Zawata and the inhabitants of Zawata. The spring belonged to the people of Zawata as well. The naked people from Europe came and took the land, uprooted the trees, and drank the water, while we remained without land, without water, and without a way to protect the honor of our women. Did the honorable mayor approve of this?

Someone standing near the wire shouted, “Look, look, they uprooted the olive trees!”

We saw the old man who was sitting on a rock and whom my grandmother had befriended and talked to along the way, stand up and shout, “Those olive trees are on my land! The land planted with olive trees is my land and the olive trees are mine!”

A man sitting close to him tried to shut him up, saying, “Sit down, old man, in the prophet’s name. We are all like you. Shut up, and let’s come to an understanding and find a solution.”

The old man neither shut up nor sat down. He dropped his stick and hurried southward, leaving his bundle on the rock. He walked with firm steps and a bent back until he reached the barrier. He saw the tractor pull out a tree by the roots and throw it near other trees on the ground, looking like lifeless corpses, their roots turned upward toward the sky. Some of the broken branches were on the ground, their leaves shining under the glare of the sun.

The old man was pounding his head and wailing with a rattle in his throat, saying, “The olive trees, the olive trees!” All the others were still arguing with the man of the petition and demanding to see the mayor to come to an understanding with him. The man repeated what he had told them already, about the mayor being busy with a government delegation with plans to build schools and a vast mosque for the people of the village.

They continued to shout from all directions: “Call the mayor, call the mayor!” But the man in charge of the petition, getting somewhat concerned, raised his hand and motioned for silence, while his other hand held the petition to his chest. He moved his bunched fingers up and down, in an effort to calm the people down, but the voices grew louder. The old man, on the other hand, was shouting and telling them, “Come see this disaster! The olives, the olives!” But the others were preoccupied with more important matters: with the land, the spring, and the half-naked Jews who came from Europe, had no shame, and did not fear God. Those who uprooted the trees, plowed the land, and stole the water, knowing very well that the land did not belong to them, and the water of the spring was not theirs, but belonged to the village—the small village that the mandate and the government had forgotten. Now this mayor and his followers were telling them that the government would build them a big mosque and schools. What use were the mosque and the schools to those who had no land to feed them and no water to quench their thirst and no mayor to defend them? Where was the mayor?

They shouted again, louder, “Call the mayor, call the mayor!” The man was scared and pretended that the shouting was hurting his ears and made it impossible for him to hear and understand their demands and their words. He placed his palms over his ears and the petition covered his eyes.

A young man who had been with us on the bus shouted, “Soak this petition in water and drink it together with the mayor. Call the mayor!”

Others shouted as well, “Call the mayor, call the mayor!” Then they all shouted in unison, “Call the mayor, call the mayor!” It looked like the situation was about to lead to a clash, as a number of guards came out of the mayor’s garden and stood behind the man in charge of the petition, with the intention of blocking the entrance and making it impossible for the people to force their way into the house.

I was standing quite far back, a few meters away from the gate and the guards, my heart pounding, when I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder. I turned to find out who was touching me, and saw Rabie. I wanted to throw myself at him, overwhelmed with feelings of fear, surprise, and longing. Instead, I kept looking at him and crying, my mouth wide open, unable to utter even his name. I had dreamt about such an encounter for weeks, and maybe months, wishing to see him before me in person and not in my imagination, looking at one another, calling his name and he calling mine, then hugging him, kissing his neck, and he kissing me all over, telling me that he missed me as much as I missed him and more. But when my dream became a reality and I saw him before me, I did not shout out his name, as I had imagined, and I did not throw myself at his neck, as I had wished, and I did not tell him that I was dying of love. All I did was stand stiffly, startled, tears running down my face and my mouth wide open.

I heard him say as he pulled my arm, “Let’s go. Come with me, let’s go.”

I did not want to go. I wanted to hear more and find out how the issue would be resolved. But I was afraid of the guards, who pulled their rifles down and held them against their chests, ready to fire.

He pulled me once more by my arm, saying in a commanding voice, “Come with me. It’s cloudy and it might rain.”

I understood that the situation was becoming serious and the clouds and the rain meant that a confrontation between the guards and the peasants, or between the revolutionaries and the guards, was imminent. Rabie’s presence in the crowd meant that a group of revolutionaries was present.

He pulled me forcefully and, amid voices getting louder and the sight of an unusual movement behind the guards, he shouted, “Let’s leave. Al-Zaybaq is here. Let’s go, let’s go!”

I did not know who al-Zaybaq was, but I imagined him to be someone like an ogre or a Jewish tractor plowing the ground, overturning the trees and stepping on people, squashing them under its wheels. I panicked and looked for my grandmother. I saw her standing by the fence near the old man, watching the tractors and the olive trees. Her face as pale as a candle; she was mumbling mysterious words I could not hear, possibly prayers or incantations, while her hand was placed on the old man’s head.

I made my way through the crowd, banging against them, with Rabie behind me, telling me, “Let’s go. Come with me.” When he saw me get close to my grandmother, he said again, “Let’s go. Come with me.”

I looked at my grandmother, perplexed, and she looked at the old man and said slowly, pointing at him squatting behind the fence, “What about this poor man?”

Rabie shouted at her, “Everybody is to be pitied. Come on, Hajjeh, come on! Let’s go!”

She glanced at him with a strange look, shook her head a few times, as if in regret or commiseration, then turned to the old man, put her hand over his head, and resumed praying.

A masked young man approached and shouted to the old man, “Bring the bundle.”

The old man pointed to the bundle on the rock, then turned to my grandmother and said to her, “Thank you. This is my son. Now get going.”

My grandmother turned to Rabie, then to me, and whispered sadly, “There is no power and no strength save in God.”

I was truly scared by then, and the fear made me lose control. Shaking, I began shouting, “For God’s sake, Grandma, let’s go!”

She pulled herself away and walked leaning on Rabie’s shoulder, while he was pushing me from behind to help us break through the crowds, until we reached the entrance of an alley between the houses. My grandmother stopped and looked back, and we stopped. We saw people pushing each other and one of the guards was beating a man on the head with his rifle, while another was shooting into the air to scare the people. Then we heard a loud explosion from the south and saw one of the tractors fly high in the air and fall, in pieces, down to the bottom of the valley. Rabie kept insisting that we move fast, “before the arrival of the army.” He had hardly finished his sentence when we heard a second explosion deep in the valley. People were running left and right, while the whistles of the guards pierced the ears. They panicked even more; they were scared, running fast, almost flying like birds, while the older people were falling to the ground and moving on their knees. Some pulled them up to help them escape before the arrival of the army.

We kept running behind the gardens of the houses, then between the rocks on the side of the mountain. There we saw a gaping hole between the rocks and the white poplars, and the water of a spring cascading out. Close by, we saw the remaining pieces of a huge pipe and water flowing from its mouth and running like a river, before gathering in a large pool that resembled a swamp. A masked young man was standing above the springhead, holding a huge ax in one hand; with the other hand he was directing us to move fast. We rushed between the rocks and under the trees until we reached the caves of the quarry and the piles of pebbles, sand, and chunks of rock. There, close to the quarry, were my uncle and some of the revolutionaries.

He opened his arms and hugged us. He embraced my grandmother and said in a shaky voice, “Thank God you’re safe, Hajjeh. What brought you our way?”

She did not reply, but took a few steps back to examine his face, look him over, and make sure he was doing well. Then she turned toward Zawata and whispered, “Their turn will come.”

A few minutes later, we heard the planes fly over Zawata and the mountaintops. We entered the cave to hide, to listen and to watch the rest of the operation, to learn what happened to Zawata, to the mayor, and to the rest of the revolution and the revolutionaries.