15

I was sitting in front of the paintings, remembering. There was the tableau of the forest and Sheikh al-Emad, another one depicted Zawata and Kiryat Aharon, a third showed Sanour and the meadow of lilies. I had become a young woman and, like me, Rabie was grown. He had gained some weight and said the most beautiful words. He told me I was beautiful, and he missed me whenever we were separated for more than a month, even a week. He said, “When the war is over and our mission is accomplished, I will ask for your hand from your family, and we will get married. Will your grandmother approve of me? And your mother as well? And your uncle? And Nablus? And the whole Qahtan family?” I would reply, laughing, “Oh, my man!” (He liked it when I called him “my man” or “old man.”) I’d tell him, “My grandmother will say, ‘He is as dear to me as Nidal,’ and my uncle will say that you are his son, and my uncle Amin will say that the country belongs to the peasants.” Rabie would laugh and say, “City girl, would you accept to be a peasant?” I did not reply, but I felt as if the whole world was enjoying a spring season!

I looked into his green eyes and saw fields of wheat and chamomile, smelled the scents of thyme and tayyoun in the depths of the clouds—green clouds like carded green cotton against a satin sky. “How strange,” he said, surprised. “Green clouds against a satin sky? How strange!” I said to myself that love was the strangest thing on the face of the earth. Why did I see the world as beautiful despite the sadness and the miseries of the war? Why did I feel happy, though people were miserable? Why did I forget that he was to be pitied, with no education and no diploma and no profession? That he had no land to cultivate, not even a small lot, though he was a farmer, the son of a farmer, and his mother lived like the peasants in a mud house and sold elt and mulukhiyeh. His mother curdled milk to make yogurt, milked the sheep, and sold her milk to a grocer. Would I become like his mother and his grandmother, Umm Nayef, curdling milk, milking the sheep, and baking my bread in a taboun? Love was an extraordinary thing, and the revolution was even more extraordinary.

As the days went by, we thought that the revolution, much like the fire of love, would make us better and more compassionate. Love, however, is different; it has melodies and harmonies, and creates a spiritual connection between the body and a compassionate heart.

Rabie said that the revolution was better than love. I was upset with him because I believed that nothing in this world was better than love. Love is beauty, love is warmth, love is a breeze on a hot summer’s day, love is the ability to dream. He insisted stubbornly, “And so is the revolution.” I said, “The revolution separates us; the revolution separated my uncle Wahid from my uncle Amin, and separated both of them from my grandmother and my mother, Widad. The revolution created a rift between Jerusalem and Nablus. The Jerusalem leaders said, ‘It is a revolution,’ and the Nablus leaders said, ‘It is a revolution.’ We are confused by the story of the revolutionaries. Who among them rose up? Who fled? And who abandoned the revolutionaries?” Frowning, he said, “Do you mean my father or your father?” We quarreled.

We did not see him for many weeks. I convinced my grandmother and my mother to pay my uncle a visit in Sanour. I told my grandmother that it was springtime and the pond in Sanour would have turned by now into a beautiful tableau, filled with lilies like stars in the sky and cotton fields. I also told her that the gray mare had a foal, and the people there had become more generous because nature, herbs, and the milk of the ewe and the hatching of the chicks made people wealthier and more generous. This meant eating musakhkhan, soft cheese, white butter, and bread cooked over an open fire. My grandmother said, “This is true, the gray mare had a foal and it is springtime. Let’s go, and you come with us, Widad.” But Widad was stubborn; she was in a bad mood. She was always thinking and reflecting and running away from Nablus. She would go to Jerusalem to look for a job that would help her stay there. My grandmother held Lisa, my mother’s colleague, responsible for the change in my mother’s personality. She said, repeatedly, “May God be your judge, Miss Lisa. You have broken many homes.”

We arrived in Sanour and saw the lake as it had been described: a field of white lilies that covered the surface of the water and extended for thousands of miles. The ground was flat and sticky, and the rains gathered there to form a kind of lake—an ideal ground for wild iris and lily of the valley, and for the flies and the butterflies. From afar, the place looked like a field of cotton, but Rabie had described it accurately. This enabled me to inform my grandmother that what we saw was not cotton but one of nature’s blessings for our country, helped by the amount of rain the land received from the sky.

My grandmother understood the language of plants and the language of nature. She explained things according to her own logic. For her, a flower was a miracle and plants were a marvel. My mother, on the other hand, saw things in a pragmatic and rigid way, but on this day, she surprised me. She was mesmerized by the sight and watched it with emotions that moved her to tears, as if she were in love.

I remember my grandmother used to mutter invocations, over and over, asking God to compensate Widad for her loss. I used to hear this as a child and I did not understand it, but when I grew up I began to understand and to have questions. And when I asked my grandmother, she explained frankly that I was grown now and one day I would marry, and so would my uncle Wahid and my uncle Amin. My uncle Samir was in Saudi Arabia, and she was getting old and would soon die. Who would be left with Widad? It was a question of logic, and I should think about it. My grandmother said that Widad was young and had been deprived, and that she had the right to live like everybody else. I began watching her, following up on what she said and did, until one day I heard her say, “I want to live.” I felt a certain repulsion and rejection, and wished to God that she would not do what she wanted to do. I felt somehow threatened when she became emotional at the sight of the lake. I discovered that she had feelings, and this meant that she would live her life and leave us.

We did not wait long in front of the lake of lilies before we caught a glimpse of my uncle Wahid together with my uncle Amin. They were riding horses and my grandmother was happy to see them both, since she had not expected a visit from Amin. She began to walk faster toward them, and I followed her, but Widad did not budge. I went back to stand with her, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, compassion. At this strange moment, my emotions overcame my fear. I stood beside her in silence, not knowing what was in store.

When Rabie arrived, my uncle asked him to take us to his house, to my grandmother’s immense joy. She was happy to hear the word house instead of a cave or a forest or a quarry. This was proof that her son was beginning to lead a normal life, sleep on a real bed, eat cooked food, take baths, and shave his beard. However, she was surprised by the attitude of the two young men, who were engaged in a serious conversation and behaving in a grim manner. We had expected a joyful reception at our arrival on a glorious sunny spring day, best suited for fun and an outing. We were puzzled that my two uncles continued on their way to the eastern side of the village.

Rabie took us to a country house located in the middle of a farm that seemed neglected and abandoned. The ground was filled with boxthorn and weeds. He told us that the country house belonged to a rich Lebanese man who had sold a piece of the land to a Jewish colony and left Palestine for fear of reprisals from the revolutionaries. My uncle’s group got hold of the farm and the houses of the farmers, as well as the horses’ stables. Members of my uncle’s group settled in the farmers’ houses and my uncle lived in the main house, where he began making plans to settle permanently.

As we entered the house, we saw two women—an older woman and a tall young woman with a beautiful face, called Hasna. The old woman stayed with my grandmother and my mother, and Hasna went out to the garden to bake the bread on an open fire. I sneaked out, looking for Rabie, and found him in the huge stable taking care of the gray mare and its foal. He changed their water and gave them fodder and vegetable leaves.

Rabie did not seem happy to see me. He was absentminded, in a bad mood, and his answers to my questions were brief and lukewarm. He kept moving between the bales of hay and the water basin, seeming preoccupied with a serious matter. This explained my uncles’ tepid attitude toward us as well—totally different from previous occasions when Wahid would welcome us with hugs and kisses. Amin’s unexpected presence made me suspect a secret, something unusual that made them serious and gloomy.

When I shared my concerns with Rabie, he did not deny the matter. He said that none of them felt great because the general conditions made my uncle’s group consider disbanding. After the death of Abu Tir, who was the fifth group member to die, and after others had returned to their villages and some had joined highway robbers such as Abu Jildeh and al-Zaybaq, only a few men remained, and they were unqualified to pursue the struggle. They had even become a burden to my uncle, as he was trying to find the funds to feed them and provide them with weapons and ammunition. Most of them, too, decided to leave and return to their villages to take care of their families. They were all poor and complained of the human and financial losses. As a result, my uncle was facing a difficult time; he would have to give up the revolution and the revolutionaries, settle down in Sanour, and probably get married.

My uncle settling down and getting married? And disbanding his group, as if all they had done, their sacrifices and what they died for, had become a mirage? As if what happened on top of the mountains—the planes, the pursuits, the snipers, the hunting dogs, the assassinations, and the outcomes of the operations and the armed engagements resulting in deaths, destruction, and catastrophes, whole neighborhoods demolished—had all been in vain? Was he to give it up for nothing?

I repeated, in a low voice, what people had been saying about the deteriorating conditions and what my uncle Amin was writing on the subject. He said that the revolution was repeating past mistakes. He and others wrote about them. They said that what happened during the revolution of 1929 was repeated in the revolution of 1936 and was now being repeated in 1939. I asked Rabie if what they had written was true and if they were truly repeating the same mistakes.

His face grew red as he shouted at me, “Is it my mistake? Am I responsible for what happened? Who is responsible?”

I understood that he was referring indirectly to my uncle. I lowered my head and felt responsible because my uncle was in charge. I asked, because I found it hard to believe and admit the truth of what was happening, “Does this mean that my uncle is the one to blame?”

He wrung his hands and said mournfully, while turning his face away from me, “Your uncle is to be pitied. He is helpless.”

It pained me to hear the word helpless attributed to the man I considered to be the ultimate example of sacrifice and self-abnegation. He was the most generous, truthful, compassionate, and best man as far as I and many others were concerned, as well as the most courageous. Here was Rabie, the young man I loved and dreamed about, demeaning the man who made me proud. He was denigrating the man I wished I had as a father, the man who made me wish I were a boy so I could emulate him. I felt an immense hatred for Rabie. He was not big in my eyes anymore.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as we were sitting on a wooden bench behind the stable, staring at the ground and wondering what was happening to us. Was our love lost? As far as I was concerned, my world was crumbling because I had lost my uncle and Rabie at the same time. As a defeated young boy, Rabie was not close to my heart anymore, and I no longer longed for him, even as he sat near me. Was it because I saw him defeated, or because he had destroyed my uncle’s image and thrown it to the ground? Or was it because he brought me down to earth and made me see my uncle, his men, and all those who lit our way during these dark years as helpless people to be pitied?

He turned toward me and looked at me for a long time—a look that was far from being an expression of compassion and love. It was as if he hated me, as if he was blaming me, as if he was seeing me for the first time and had discovered things in my face he did not like. Finally, he said with deep sadness, as if reciting a lesson, that when he joined the revolution, he thought that my uncle would be a substitute for his father, and that the group would replace his family, the life of the village, and the ignominy of poverty. He thought that the revolution would liberate the country from the British and the Jewish colonies. Then people would have a comfortable life and he would be able to buy a lot of land, cultivate it, build a house, manage his future, and become a man. Now, however, the way things were happening—with my uncle getting ready to marry, settle down, and forget the revolution, and forget him, and with the members of the group going back to their families—what good was there in staying? Now that he was alone, he was forgotten. How would he survive? What would his future be? Was there any hope in the future?

He got off the bench and went into the stable. I heard him carry the bags of fodder and the piles of straw and start mucking out.

I raised my head and looked out at the distant trees, under which the grass and thorns of the wilderness grew. There, I saw the gray horse and its foal suckling; the mother was grazing peacefully, turning her long neck toward her young foal, as if she was blessing it and smiling at it. I was mesmerized by the sight and thought that the scene would make a marvelous painting. Normally, I would have rushed to the house and asked for some paper to draw this beautiful scene, a scene that conveyed hope, motherhood, the new generation, and the future. But now, love was collapsing and the young boy had remained a young boy and did not represent a hope for the future. I looked at the gray horse, envious, and said to myself what every young woman who loses love would say: “Even the gray horse became a mother. What about me? Will I ever be a mother?”