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The memories came rushing back, starting with the moment love began on top of Mount Ebal, and ending in the lake of lilies and the village of Sanour. We returned to Sanour at the start of the summer vacation. My uncle had settled in that house and the adjoining farm. It became his after he signed an agreement with the mayor and the village council, who seized the properties of the Lebanese man, as an absentee owner, and because of the illegal deal he made in selling land to the Jews that later became the Sanour settlement. My uncle rented the house and took a lease on the farm with all its vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees. He made a commitment to take half the crops and leave the other half for the council, who would provide him with farm workers and mowers, as well as water for irrigation and fertilizer for the land.

My uncle became one of Sanour’s people—a farmer and a peasant working the land, trimming the trees, picking grapes, figs, and olives and stacking them in baskets and boxes that he exported to large cities on the coast, to Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Qaysariya, and even to the Lebanese cities of Sur and Saida. He bought fertilizers and vegetable seeds and palm seedlings, following the example of the Jews. He bought a yellow tractor, the color of lemons, that always shone under the sun. It resembled the one he had seen in Akhshaf Kibbutz, and it saved the village council the salaries of the farm workers and the plowmen.

When we visited my uncle, we thought that he had forgotten his past, his love for a woman who reminded him of his achievements in the golden days—the days of the revolution, when he was the right-hand man of the sheikh of Galilee and his retinue. He was a respected leader among the revolutionaries. He discussed politics and raised the issue of the rights of the wronged people in the villages of Shamsin, Wadi al-Hawareth, and Ain Galud. Now he was preoccupied with manure, plowing the land, the crops of the season, and the division of the income with the village council. He talked about the endless problems with the workers, and about Hasna’s efforts to deal with their absences, their impudence, their tendency to steal from the crops, and their neglecting to spray the produce and remove the wild grass growing on the land.

Hasna acted as the person responsible for the farm, mainly because she lived there and managed the affairs of the house and its upkeep with her aunt. She behaved as if she were the owner of the farm, with the responsibility to supervise the workers and the peasants and follow up on all the details. She was highly capable and quite familiar with matters related to the land and the animals. She knew the different types of grains, fruits, and vegetables, and the right season for each—when to water one plant and not the other, where to use manure, and which ones to fertilize. She knew when to spray the grapes with insecticide to protect them against worms, insects, and parasitic fungi. She was firm with the seasonal workers and knew how to prevent them from cheating in their work or stealing. She was the opposite of my uncle, who was not familiar with all those things because he was a city man and a mechanic and understood only how to deal with tractors and the upkeep of the engines. He felt that she was more capable than him, and brighter. He gradually began to depend on her for everything: she took care of the household chores, milked the cows, looked after the horses, and supervised the farm workers and paid them. She settled the accounts with the village council and made the deals.

She ended up playing the role of a wife without their being married; in other words, she became the partner on whom my uncle counted totally and for everything, but without the advantages of being a husband or head of household. Rather, he felt that she was the head of the household, the master of the farm, and the guardian of the horses. It was she who helped the gray mare lie down and took care of the foal. She was the one who sold the two horses, Maraad and Hazza, and replaced them with a new tractor that became the talk of the town and a point of interest for those who lived in or visited Sanour. It was a source of pride for the village council, who considered it a huge advantage and informed the councils of the nearby villages about the miraculous achievements of that tractor. The mayors would visit the village to see it, and my uncle, Sheikh al-Qahtan, showed them the engine and explained the functions of the tractor, and how it worked without a mule or a donkey. He felt like a professor of mechanics in Akhshaf Kibbutz, though one with the beard of a pious sheikh and the history of a mujahid who had fought for the love of God, and then retired.

He was living like the villagers, doing the same kind of work: plowing, threshing, planting, and harvesting. He would watch the Jewish settlement nearby, how it grew and expanded and took over lands that belonged to the nation, with the support of the government and the backing of the law, while here he was, a mujahid, the heir of the sheikh of Galilee, reduced to driving a yellow tractor that looked like a child’s toy. The peasants viewed Sheikh al-Qahtan as a retired man without prestige because he trusted his business to a strong woman who controlled him and the affairs of the farm, while he understood only matters related to his yellow toy tractor and repairing stoves. The malicious workers made fun of him behind his back, because he did not know the land and did not understand agriculture and knew nothing about manure and fertilizers. He was a city man out of place in this country life.

Sheikh al-Qahtan got into the habit of driving the tractor for two to three hours a day. He would then go to the mosque to pray, and after praying he would surround himself with the peasants and tell them about his life as a mujahid and his activities with the other mujahideen. He related their attacks on the Jews in such and such a battle and how they surprised the British in such and such a location. He told them how they used to roam the mountains and valleys of Palestine and how their reputation spread all over the world. People respected them and joined them, and called them mujahideen and revolutionaries, people of valor and the pride of the heroes. The peasants used to listen to him and shake their heads in commiseration and resentment because they could see the Jewish farm nearby, growing and expanding, while they sat in a circle around a man who had become a sheikh, and who pretended to have been a hero and a valorous commander among the revolutionaries, but now was reduced to nothing.