First Tears
“The sound of a key turning in the lock brought them back to reality. Hanna, Aaron Zucker’s daughter, came into the salon and was surprised to see Marian still there.
“You’re back so soon! I thought you’d come later,” Ezekiel said to his granddaughter.
“But it’s almost six o’clock! Haven’t you finished your interview?” she said to Marian, without hiding the annoyance she felt to see her still there.
“I’m sorry . . . Time ran away from us, rather.”
“And I bet you haven’t eaten!” Now she turned to her grandfather, but with an evident note of anger in her voice.
“Of course we’ve eaten! Ms. Miller helped me make a salad.”
Marian apologized. She knew she had to leave. But she could not leave her work here half-finished. She felt somewhat manipulated by this man, who had dragged her into an endless conversation in which both of them were filling in the gaps in two parallel histories. Because that’s what they indeed were, parallel, without any possibility of meeting each other, though they might appear to touch.
Ezekiel saw that she seemed a little disappointed and, to her surprise, he suggested that she return the next day.
“Would you like to come tomorrow?”
She accepted happily.
“If it’s not too much trouble, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’ve come to do otherwise.”
“I know, come tomorrow. It’s very stimulating speaking with you.”
“But I think you’ve already given Ms. Miller too much time. Take care,” she said, speaking now to Marian, “my grandfather cannot spend all day talking. If you want, I can help you with all the information you might need about the settlements . . . although it’s a policy I oppose absolutely.”
“Come on, Hanna, let me decide. I like speaking to Marian. I’ll expect you here tomorrow at eleven o’clock, alright?”
Hanna went with Marian Miller to the door and said to her as she let her out:
“Please, don’t tire him too much. He’s still recovering from his last heart attack.”
“Heart attack? I didn’t know . . .”
“He’s survived three so far. The doctor says he doesn’t have long left. He was in the hospital a couple of days ago.”
“I promise I’ll try not to tire him and I’ll finish my job as soon as possible.”
“You do that.”
She felt dizzy. She had spent the whole day in the house swapping stories with that man. They could write a book together: The idea made her smile.
She drove slowly, trying to remember every word. Ezekiel had opened the door to certain people whom she could almost see. She arrived back at the hotel exhausted, wanting only to have a shower and go to sleep so as to stop thinking.
In the morning she arrived at the agreed-upon time. She had gotten up early for a stroll through the Old City. She left the American Colony around eight o’clock, when Jerusalem is already awake, and she walked briskly down to the Damascus Gate. At this time, hundreds of people were already going through it in both directions.
The shopkeepers were getting ready to open up, and the women were pausing in the marketplace, looking with their expert eyes at the produce that had just come in from the nearby farms.
She stopped in front of a stall that smelled of cinnamon and pistachios. She couldn’t resist the temptation, and bought herself some sweets.
Without a clear plan she walked through the Old Town, left the Arab Quarter behind and entered the Christian Quarter, and from there to the Armenian and finally the Jewish quarters.
She couldn’t overcome the sense of discomfort she felt when she saw these Jews in their black coats with ringlets peeking out from under their hats.
It was past ten o’clock when she walked quickly through the Damascus Gate to get back to the hotel and pick up her rental car. This time she drove quickly to Ezekiel’s house, she guessed that the old man was one of those people who was inflexible with regards to punctuality. His granddaughter Hanna opened the door.
“I have to go now, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. My grandfather did not have a good night, but he says he’s fine.”
She gave her a paper with her mobile number written on it.
“I’ll be in class, but I’ll leave my mobile on. I’m worried, so if you see that he’s not looking good, give me a ring. And please, don’t tire him out like you did yesterday.”
Marian promised that she would try to finish the interview that morning.
Ezekiel was sitting in front of the French window that gave onto a view of the mountains of Judea. He seemed distracted, distant.
“I brought you some sweets, I hope you like them,” Marian said, trying to put on her best smile.
“Sit down, did you get enough sleep?”
“Yes, more than eight hours. Hanna said that you didn’t have a very good night . . .”
“We old folk don’t sleep well and my granddaughter was worried for no reason. She wanted to call the university and stay here with me, but I insisted that she go. It’s better this way, don’t you think? Whose turn is it, yours or mine?”
“I don’t want to tire you out . . .”
“And have me lose your account of what happened to the Ziad family? Come on, where were we?”
“The First World War was about to start.”
“Right, well, it’s my turn to listen.”
Dina was worried. She had gone to the market that morning along with Zaida her mother and her daughter Aya, and had heard rumors of the imminent arrival of the pasha Ahmed Cemal, the head of the Empire’s navy, the governor of Syria, and the commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army. If the rumors were true, Cemal was an unpredictable and bloodthirsty man, ready to take to task all Arabs who dreamed of a nation of their own, alongside the empire.
She was afraid for Ahmed, and for her own brother Hassan, who both so often participated in meetings to discuss the Arabs’ imminent independence from the Turks.
She had heard a tanner talking to the butcher, and both of them thought that the future would be uncertain.
“Women always trust the market gossip,” Ahmed said.
A few days later, he went with his wife to watch Cemal’s triumphant entry into the city. They returned in a state of shock at all the ostentation with which the pasha surrounded himself.
“It was a procession the likes of which I’ve never seen, they threw rose petals and people sang enthusiastically. I didn’t see him very well, but he didn’t look that tall,” Dina told Aya, who was anxious to hear all the details.
Scarcely a week later, Ahmed went to one of Omar Salem’s meetings.
“It seems that Cemal Pasha trusts only the Germans,” Salem said bitterly.
“Yes, since the three pashas have been governing, their officers are now all Germans,” Hassan added.
Ahmed listened to them in silence, worried by the degree to which the two men were agitated.
“Well, there are Arabs and even Jews in the sultan’s army,” he plucked up the courage to say, but without much enthusiasm.
“But Cemal doesn’t trust us. They say he has come to try to crush any chance of a rebellion,” his brother-in-law Hassan said.
A servant entered and whispered something in Omar’s ear. Omar stood up with a smile.
“My friends, we have an unexpected visitor, Yusuf Saïd is here.”
The young man, a friend of Hassan and Layla’s sons, was received with friendship by the host and his guests. He seemed tired, as he had just, as he told them, arrived from Cairo.
“I went to your house,” he said to Hassan. “Your wife, Layla, told me that you were here. Omar, please forgive me for coming to your house uninvited.”
“You are always welcome here. Tell us about Sharif Husayn and his sons, Faisal and Abdullah.”
“The sharif is being extremely cautious, but he thinks that this might be our moment. It was not long ago that Abdullah himself was in Cairo to find out what the British think about the future.”
“And what do they think?” Omar wanted to know.
“They have their own commitments, they listened with interest, they promised nothing. They seem convinced they will win the war. We need to be prepared in case that happens.”
They spoke for a long time, and in spite of Yusuf Saïd’s prudence, they reached the conclusion that the sharif would be better disposed toward the European powers if they could guarantee their help in his dream of creating a greater Arab state.
“Of course the Sauds will dispute Husayn’s leadership,” Hassan dropped into the conversation.
“Yes, but don’t forget that Husayn’s legitimacy derives from his ancestry: He is a descendant of the Prophet,” Yusuf said.
Night had already fallen when Ahmed went home with Yusuf accompanying him, along with Hassan and Hassan’s two sons. Yusuf was going to stay in Hassan’s house. He said he wanted to rest before continuing onwards to Mecca.
Dina’s face lit up when Ahmed told her that Yusuf was in her brother’s house.
“I think this young man is interested in Aya, and he’ll do what it takes to see her.”
“Woman, there are only a few meters between our two houses. You have to keep an eye on our daughter, don’t leave her alone, you don’t want Yusuf to think that we want to marry her off,” Ahmed said.
“Leave it to me, I’ll be very prudent. I hope that Layla is supportive, you know what my sister-in-law is like.”
“Supportive of what?”
“Of engineering a meeting between Yusuf and Aya.”
It was their nephew Jaled who came the next day to invite his uncle and aunt to dinner.
“My mother wants to honor our guest and thought that a family dinner would be the ideal activity.”
Zaida and Dina were enthusiastic and continued with their matchmaking plans. They made Aya put on her best tunic and veil.
“You must be modest, don’t look into his eyes, and don’t speak to him unless he speaks to you first,” Zaida, her grandmother, counseled.
“But you must think I’m stupid!” she protested.
“You are a good Muslim girl. Don’t forget that men do not like girls who are too forward.”
The evening could not have gone any better. Salah and Jaled had exchanged confidences with their friend and had discovered his interest in their cousin. They reminded him that Aya was barely out of adolescence and said that he should not look at her unless it was to ask her hand in marriage. Yusuf said that this was what he wanted. If Ahmed agreed, then they would get married as soon as was decorous.
The men spoke about the latest occurrences in the city, while the women laid the table with tasty plates of food they had cooked themselves. Yusuf praised Aya’s sweets, and she blushed.
The next day, Ahmed told his daughter that Yusuf had asked to speak with him.
“I think I know what he wants,” Ahmed said.
“What he wants is to ask for Aya’s hand in marriage! Allah has heard my prayers!” Dina said enthusiastically.
“And if that were the case, what would you think, Aya?” Ahmed asked his daughter.
“What does it matter what she thinks? We should be honored to join our family to Yusuf Saïd’s,” Dina protested.
“Woman, children must obey their parents, but I want to know what Aya thinks, I wouldn’t like to tie her forever to a man for whom she feels repulsion. If she is repulsed by him then we will look for another husband for her,” Ahmed declared.
Aya stood up, holding her grandmother’s hand. She was happy, and flattered that a man like Yusuf should have paid her any attention, but in love with him? She didn’t know if she was in love with him. She liked that dark-skinned young man, with his deep-set bright eyes, she liked knowing that he was important, but in love with him? She felt a terror in her stomach. She wanted to get married, yes, but she had not thought that it would be so soon.
“Yusuf is very pleasant,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice.
“I will not make you marry him, you can wait a year or two more,” Ahmed insisted.
She hesitated under her mother’s inquisitive gaze.
“She is not such a little girl,” Zaida murmured.
“If Yusuf wants us to be married, then I will accept him,” she said, and as she said so, she felt a strange mixture of joy and terror. To get married meant to leave this house where she had been born to move across the Jordan River to where Yusuf’s family lived, and who knew, maybe even to go to Mecca. She would have to live with her mother-in-law, and this excited her fears.
Ahmed thought there was nothing more to say. He would visit Yusuf that afternoon, and he now knew the answer to give him if, as he hoped, Yusuf asked for Aya’s hand in marriage.
Over the next few months, the Old City knew what terror was once again. Cemal Pasha mistrusted everyone and had spies everywhere, looking for discontented Arabs or nationalists who wanted to stop being the sultan’s subjects.
It began to be a regular occurrence for the pasha to order those he considered his enemies to be hanged, and to instill fear into the citizens of Jerusalem he had made hanging a public spectacle.
“I went past the Damascus Gate and I went to see what was happening, because there was a large group standing around in silence. They were hanging five men,” Ahmed said with regret.
“You shouldn’t have stopped, you know that Cemal Pasha likes hangings to take place at the Damascus Gate, or else the Jaffa Gate. Please be careful, and don’t go to any more of those meetings at Omar Salem’s house. And the same should go for my brother Hassan, he’s putting himself and his children in danger.” Dina could not stop herself from being worried.
“It was horrible, they took so long to die, we watched their death throes. This man is not human,” Ahmed said, referring to Cemal.
“Shush! Don’t let anyone hear you say things like that. I don’t want to think what would happen if Cemal Pasha knew that you were criticizing him.”
“The Jews are not safe either. I have been speaking with Samuel, and he told me that Cemal had met with some important members of the community and had threatened to send them away from Palestine. He has already exiled some Jews to Damascus,” Ahmed explained to his wife.
“As far as I know, Samuel is a Turkish supporter, the Jews like being part of the empire,” Dina replied.
“They live in peace here, which is something that is very important for them, but that doesn’t mean that they support Cemal. Samuel, Ariel, Louis, Jacob . . . they all hate the hangings as much as we do. They are not safe either. Samuel says that they are trying to temporize.”
“What does that mean?”
“To get on well with Cemal, to stop him from doubting that the Jews are loyal to the Empire.”
“It won’t help them,” Dina said.
In spite of the uncertainty and the pain that was felt among the citizens of Jerusalem, Dina carried on preparing for Aya’s wedding. The war was still rumbling on in the European theater, and she felt that all these cities that people were talking about were so far away: Paris, London, Moscow . . . Even so, the devastating effect of the war had reached Palestine. Some of her friends had lost husbands who had been fighting on the front with the Turkish army. She gave thanks to Allah that her husband had been made lame by the accident in the quarry. No one would think to try to call him up. But even though she knew her husband was safe, she couldn’t help worrying about her son Mohammed. She was afraid that they would make him go and fight in this war that had nothing to do with them.
“I’m going to dine at Omar’s house,” Ahmed said, one evening in the autumn of 1915.
“But you’re exhausted,” Dina said, worried that his meetings with this man were becoming ever more frequent.
“Yes, I’ve had a hard day at the quarry.”
“So tell my brother Hassan to make your apologies for you, and that you’ll go another day.”
“I will go because I have to,” Ahmed said with finality.
Dina brought him water and a clean shirt. “At least he will go to Omar’s house decently dressed,” she thought to herself.
“What’s happening in the city is a scandal,” one of Omar’s guests said.
“I know what you mean,” Jaled, Dina’s nephew said, anticipating his father’s words.
“The streets of the Old City are filled with prostitutes. There are widows who will sell themselves for two piasters,” Hassan explained.
“They are almost all Jews,” Salah, his oldest son, added.
“Don’t fool yourself, son, most of them have lost their husbands at the front. There are all kinds of women on the game.”
“I have also seen lots of old people on the street begging for food,” Omar said.
“And in the meantime Cemal and his friends spend money and have fun. Not a night goes by that they don’t have a party with the Turkish bheys, and even some of the folk from Jerusalem. Our mayor, Hussein al-Husseini, is a regular guest,” Hassan complained.
“They told me that a few days ago Cemal organized a party to celebrate the anniversary of Sultan Mehmed’s accession, and that the Turkish officers came accompanied by a goodly number of whores. This man does not respect anything or anybody,” Jaled said.
“Let’s not pay attention to rumor,” Ahmed plucked up the courage to say.
“But Uncle, the whole city knows it! There is no place in the world with more prostitutes than Jerusalem, and the Turks are not renowned for their piety,” Salah replied.
“Ahmed is right, we shouldn’t listen to rumors, but sadly there are a large number of witnesses to these parties by which Cemal Pasha brightens his nights. I have friends in Damascus who tell me that Cemal Pasha lives the same immoral life there as well,” Omar said with regret.
“Yes, he is having parties while other people are dying of hunger,” Salah insisted.
“What can we do?” Jaled asked, ever practical.
“Do? You heard Yusuf the last time he was here: Sharif Husayn wants to come to an agreement with the British. If they help with the plans for an Arab state, then we will help them in their war,” Omar replied.
“A state that covers the whole Mashriq,” Hassan said enthusiastically.
“That is why Husayn has sent some of his more trusted men to speak to the heads of the tribes in the region, although apparently the Sauds will not listen to reason. They are too ambitions,” Omar said.
A servant asked permission to come into the room and serve dinner. For a while the men set aside their worries to do justice to the lamb. Before the dinner was over, as they drank their mint tea, Omar looked at his guests one by one. They all knew that this was not a normal meeting. Before he began to speak, he cleared his throat.
“Well, the time for complaining is over, now we have to do something more than talk. Yesterday a distant relative of mine who lives in Beirut came to visit. He told me that what is happening in his city is not very different from what is happening in Jerusalem. The pasha has ordered all the people he does not trust to be hanged, even honorable members of old families. My relative is a member of a group of patriots who think, like us, that it’s time to free themselves from the Turks. He wants to know if we, when the moment comes, will join the rebellion.”
“The rebellion?” There was fear in Ahmed’s voice.
“Yes, the rebellion. The question is, if we had British support, would we be able to fight against the sultan’s army?” As he spoke, Omar looked directly at Ahmed.
“I am ready to die,” Salah said impetuously, without giving Ahmed time to reply.
“What do they want from us?” Hassan asked, looking angrily at his son because of this interruption.
“They want us to be prepared, and if the sharif calls us to it, to be ready to fight at his side.” Omar’s reply left no room for doubt.
“I don’t know . . . I . . . Well, it is difficult to face an empire. We have always lived dependent on Constantinople. Also, I don’t know if the Arabs should help the British against the Turks, after all in the final count we are both Muslims.” Ahmed felt his friends look at him reproachfully.
“If you don’t agree with Sharif Husayn, then why are you with us?” Omar’s question was like a dagger over silk.
“I . . . Well, I don’t agree that we should be governed from Constantinople. We mean little to the sultan and even less to the three pashas, and now that we are suffering at the hands of Cemal Pasha, I want things to change. I thought that the young officers from the Committee for Union and Progress would be better than the sultan, but they have turned out to be worse,” Ahmed said, feeling guilty for not sharing in his interlocutors’ revolutionary spirit.
“What are you doing here with us? Are you a spy?” one of Omar’s guests asked in a menacing tone.
“I will vouch for my brother-in-law!” Hassan said, getting to his feet.
“Sit down! Ahmed needs to explain himself,” Omar ordered.
“I am a simple man who works from dusk to dawn. I only have my own hands and the respect of my family and my children to rely on,” Ahmed said, to justify himself.
“Your friends think of you as a good man, they talk to you, ask your advice. The families that live alongside you think of you as a guide,” one of the other men said.
“But I am not. Maybe I have been luckier than them, my house is bigger and my orchard is larger, and I have been able to work as a foreman in the quarry, but I am no better or worse than those who surround me.”
“The men in your village listen to you, and the workers in the quarry respect you. That is why you are here, Ahmed, that is why we asked your brother-in-law Hassan to invite you to be with us,” Omar affirmed.
“Uncle, you can’t back out now,” Salah said reproachfully.
“Brother, just let our uncle decide for himself!” Jaled burst out, seeming to read the worry in Ahmed’s eyes.
“We won’t ask for you to fight, you can’t fight with your leg, anyway, but you could help us find men who are willing to commit themselves to the sharif’s cause, to our cause. Men who do not mind fighting. Men who want to be free,” Omar said in a solemn tone.
“The men at the quarry respect you. You could speak with the ones you trust most, you could form a group for when the moment comes and Sharif Husayn wants us to fight together for the greater Arab nation.” Hassan was speaking with enthusiasm now.
“Uncle, you can’t back out now,” Salah repeated.
“Is a man not allowed to have his doubts? I, too, do not like the idea of fighting against my Muslim brothers, for all that we have cause to feel aggrieved. If I have to do it, I will, but not without feeling at least some pain in my heart,” Jaled said in his uncle’s defense.
They carried on discussing the situation for a good long while, and Ahmed accepted his charge, but with sorrow. He hated Cemal Pasha, but he did not feel aggrieved by the Turks. He had always, his whole life, lived knowing that the sultan was in Constantinople. And his forebears had lived the same way. He blamed himself for having been carried away by his brother-in-law Hassan’s ideas. “It’s my fault,” he said to himself, “I was flattered to be invited to dine at Omar’s table. I should have realized that he did not want me for my company.”
When he got home, Dina was waiting for him, anxious to know the smallest details of the dinner at Omar’s house. She felt proud that such an important family should invite her husband to dine with them, and although she did not usually like to boast, she couldn’t help dropping into conversation with her friends that Ahmed was received in Omar Salem’s house.
Dina was surprised when her husband came home with a serious expression on his face and very little desire to talk. He went straight to bed and turned his back to her. She knew that he wasn’t asleep and that something was worrying him.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” she whispered in his ear.
But Ahmed did not reply. Dina did not insist. She knew that he would end up telling her what was bothering him, but not before he had thought out a solution for himself. What they spoke about the next morning was Aya. She seemed sad and nervous, as if the wedding were suddenly a great burden to her.
“I know that there’s no way back now, but I sometimes wonder if that wouldn’t be what our daughter would like,” she said to her husband.
“I said that you were taking things too fast in trying to get her married. She’s very young, she can still wait a few years before thinking about getting married,” Ahmed said in a bad temper.
“When I was her age I was already married to you,” Dina said, annoyed that her husband had spoken to her this way.
“She will marry Yusuf, I have given my word,” Ahmed said, and then left the house to go to the quarry.
That morning he barely spoke a word to Igor, Ruth and Ariel’s son. Every morning they would walk to the quarry together, talking about little details of their daily lives. Igor was a good young man, a hard worker and well behaved, for all that he supported the socialist ideas that his parents had drilled into him and that to Ahmed were little more than words.
He spent a large part of the day thinking about whom he could trust. He wasn’t sure that, moving beyond their daily protests, any of the men would really be willing to raise a rebellion against the Turk. They complained, of course, they wanted a better life, they cursed everything that Cemal Pasha did, but were they willing to go any further?
Jeremiah came up to him when they were about to stop work for lunch.
“You look distracted, is anything worrying you?”
Ahmed started at Jeremiah’s question and regretted that he was unable to hide his state of mind.
“I’m worried about Aya’s wedding, she’s very young,” he said as an excuse.
“Children are always a cause of worry. From what you have told me, Aya is getting married of her own free will, so you don’t have any reason to blame yourself for anything.”
“I will miss her when she’s gone.” There was the ring of truth in his voice.
“It is difficult to imagine a house without children, but Aya will soon give you grandchildren. Your son Mohammed will find a wife soon as well.”
Ahmed would have liked to have told Jeremiah the truth. He considered him not only a good man, but also a fair one, but would he understand that there were conspirators in the quarry, ready to take up arms against the Turks?
When the working day was done, Igor came up to Ahmed so they could go home together.
“You go ahead, I’ve got things to do,” he said, and left the quarry with half a dozen quarrymen.
They all walked in silence, waiting to hear what Ahmed had to say. It was not until they reached the city and were in a café that Ahmed told them. He was convinced that he had chosen well, he had known these men since he was a child; they were his friends, they had shared joyful and sad times, he knew how they thought, but above all he trusted that they would not betray him. They ordered coffee and waited to hear Ahmed speak. He didn’t say much. All they had to do was decide whether, when the moment came, they would join the rebellion and fight under the banner of Sharif Husayn for an Arab homeland, free from the Turks.
The men listened to him in silence, shocked by what he proposed, and all the more so because it was he who proposed it. They thought of him as a prudent man, far distant from any form of extremism. One after another, anxious to hear more from him, they asked him who the leaders of the movement were apart from Sharif Husayn. They wanted to know what was expected of them, if they had to stop working in the quarry, and what would happen to their families. If they did not work, what would their children live on?
Ahmed answered all these questions freely, but without much concrete information. Four of the men claimed that they were ready to make any sacrifice; the other two held back, but said that they would support any action, even if they did not take part in it. They also agreed to sound out their friends and family.
From that night onwards they met on further occasions. Ahmed was overwhelmed by this new responsibility. He told his brother-in-law Hassan and Omar about his actions, and they both told him that he should be prudent, but also ready at any moment to leap into action.
He slept badly and had lost his appetite, but at least Dina didn’t bother him with questions, as she was too busy planning the wedding.
Dina had invited all her friends to the ceremony, and did not hesitate to go to Hope Orchard to invite her neighbors to Aya’s wedding.
“We will all come,” Jacob said, in spite of the fact that Kassia showed little enthusiasm.
Samuel had promised Ahmed that all the members of Hope Orchard would come, but Zaida had insisted that Dina, as the mother of the bride, should ensure that Kassia and Marinna came.
Three days before the wedding, Yusuf came to Jerusalem along with his widowed mother, his three sisters and two brothers, as well as various uncles and cousins who set up camp in the houses of their friends.
Dina was not surprised that two days before the wedding the men were all invited to Omar Salem’s house. She wanted to spend these last days with her daughter before turning her over to married life. Tactfully, both Zaida, as the bride’s grandmother, and she herself, as the bride’s mother, had instructed Aya in the secrets of matrimony. The young woman went pale as she heard what her mother and grandmother had to tell her, but they made her promise that she would behave as men expected their good wives to behave.
Although Aya didn’t dare say so, she regretted having accepted this marriage so easily. She had been flattered that a young man like Yusuf should be interested in her, but getting married was quite a different matter. When no one was watching, she cried. One afternoon she bumped into Marinna and, although she tried to hide, the young Jewish woman went up to her, moved to pity by her tears.
Marinna listened to what she had to say very seriously. She tried to console her, and even advised her to speak to her parents and tell them the truth, that she did not want to get married. But Aya made her promise not to say anything, and to be sure that this never reached Yusuf’s ears, as it would offend him if it ever did.
“I cannot break my promise, I would shame my parents.”
So Marinna kept the secret and from that moment on she tried to be friendly and helpful with all the preparations for the wedding. Dina was surprised to see Marinna helping with such enthusiasm.
“It seems that her love for Mohammed must have passed. I am pleased for her, as it means that she no longer suffers, and that your brother has no obstacles to finding a woman to marry,” Dina said to Aya.
Ahmed paid very little attention to the preparations, so caught up was he in finding men for the rebellion. Those six friends he had spoken to at first had brought more and more of their friends to the ever more regular meetings.
“You should come,” he said to his brother-in-law Hassan.
“There’s no need, you are doing it. Omar wants each of us to be responsible for a group,” Hassan replied.
“But the men want to know who their leaders are . . .”
“You stand in front of them, Ahmed, you are their leader; when the time comes for fighting, you will tell them who will lead them into the fray. Omar Salem will give us instructions. We will eat tonight in his house. Yusuf has things to tell us.”
“Layla has been very generous tonight, preparing a feast for all the women,” Ahmed said gratefully.
“That is how things should be between relatives. They will gather to talk of their own things, they won’t miss us. Also, my mother is helping Layla cook.”
“Poor Zaida,” Ahmed thought. His mother-in-law was a very old woman, even though she always wanted to lend a hand.
When he got home he noticed that Dina was in a bad mood.
“My mother has been cooking in Layla’s house all day and Aya is so nervous that she doesn’t want to eat tonight. Speak to her, we can’t disappoint all the guests, especially not Yusuf’s mother and sisters.”
Aya was in the room that she shared with her grandmother, carefully folding some veils and laying them on the bed.
“Daughter . . . ,” Ahmed said, without knowing very well how to continue.
“Here you are . . . How was the work in the quarry? Do you think that Jeremiah and Anastasia will come? I told Anastasia that she should bring all her children.”
She was nervous, talking for the sake of it, and on her cheeks were the tracks of her tears.
Ahmed did not dare hug her. She was no longer a little girl, even though for him she would always be one.
“You have to go to the meal your Aunt Layla has cooked. It would be very impolite if you didn’t go, as well as being an insult to your mother-in-law.”
“I will go, Father, I will go. Don’t worry, even though I told Mother I wouldn’t go, I know it’s my duty and I don’t want to do anything that would shame you. I . . . I invited Kassia and Marinna, and they said they would come.”
“It seems like a good plan. Marinna has always been a good friend of yours, and Kassia has known you since you were a child. They will enjoy the meal.”
“You know, Father, I’m worried. Mohammed has still not come . . .”
“Your brother will be here tomorrow. I’m sure he will come to your wedding.”
He left the room feeling sad. Aya was not happy, and he felt responsible for his daughter’s tears. He shouldn’t have given in to Dina’s plan to get Aya married off, but now there was no way back.
He washed quickly and dressed himself in the clothes that his wife had laid out. “You have to be elegant,” Dina had said. “After all, you are the father of the bride.”
There were more guests at Omar Salem’s house than on previous occasions. Men whom Ahmed knew and others whom he was seeing for the first time. Everyone congratulated him on the upcoming wedding.
Omar greeted Ahmed and Hassan with a large smile.
“Come in, come in, your sons are already here, you have two wonderful sons, Hassan. I want to say how much I love the energy that your oldest son Salah shows.”
“Jaled is more reflective,” Hassan replied, flattered.
“Too prudent, I would say, just like his Uncle Ahmed.”
This comment made them feel uncomfortable, but they could not think of anything to say to their host. If on previous visits Omar had given the occasional sign that he was a man of high position, then tonight he had outdone himself, and showed them that his was one of the most important houses in all Jerusalem.
Yusuf was the most important guest, and people gathered round him asking for news of Sharif Husayn.
“There’s not a great deal I can tell you, all I can say is that the sharif is in constant contact with Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner for Egypt.”
“So they do support us . . . ,” Hassan summed up.
“No, not exactly, let’s say that the British can use our help, and that they can accept some of the suggestions that Sharif Husayn has made. Also, we have an unexpected ally, a British officer named Lawrence, whom McMahon has put in charge of communicating with the sharif,” Yusuf explained.
“The Jews are not looking to make the British their allies,” one of the guests said.
“They are divided, some of them are happy to remain subject to the sultan, and refuse to support any action that might put his position in danger; while others want to have the British on their side and have offered to fight alongside them. But as far as I know, the British are not particularly enthusiastic about having them for allies, although they have allowed them to form the Zion Mule Corps,” Yusuf said.
“Cemal Pasha has arrested and deported hundreds of Jews, he doesn’t trust them. The Jews are suffering too,” Ahmed said, looking fixedly at his future son-in-law.
“That is true, so I hope they will realize that like us they have no other option than to fight against the Turks,” Yusuf replied.
They ate and talked until well into the night, then one after another little groups began to say goodbye to their host, thanking him for the evening and promising to see him again in two days’ time for Yusuf’s wedding.
That night Ahmed went home in a better mood than on previous occasions. Omar had congratulated him for putting together a group of men who were ready to fight.
“You know them, and you will give them their orders when the time comes. They will answer to you,” Omar said, with a certain degree of solemnity.
As he walked past Hope Orchard he was surprised to see lights burning there even though it was nearly midnight. He approached the farm to see if there was any problem he could help with. He was surprised to see Anastasia there.
“We’ve found out that they arrested Louis a few days ago. They have deported him to Egypt, but not only him, they burst into Jeremiah’s house this evening and took him away, too. Anastasia has come to ask for help. Her children are very scared, Cemal Pasha’s troops took Jeremiah without the least consideration for his family. We can’t do anything now, but we will try to get him freed tomorrow,” Samuel explained.
Anastasia came to Ahmed and asked him insistently to take charge of the quarry.
“My husband trusts you, you know what needs to be done until he returns,” Anastasia said, and he calmed her down by saying he would take charge.
Ahmed appeared at the quarry when it was barely dawn. He stood outside and smoked as he watched the men arrive. The first to come was Igor, who said that he should have waited for him.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night either, if I’d known you were coming I could have come with you.”
When the rest of the quarrymen had arrived Ahmed explained the situation, and they all said how much they regretted what had happened to Jeremiah. They had heard rumors that the owner of the quarry was one of the leaders of the Jewish Zionists, and they knew about his socialist ideas, but they had never imagined that anything like this could happen, although in those days anyone could end up falling foul of Cemal Pasha’s anger.
After bringing the men up to speed, Ahmed told them that they should work as if it were just another day at the quarry, and not to lose time discussing the situation. They would work as if the boss were still there.
When the day was over, some of the men came up to him looking worried. They were the ones who came to the secret meetings.
“We should be careful,” said one man who had a large mustache.
“We are careful. Don’t worry, what has happened to Jeremiah has nothing to do with our activities. Cemal Pasha wants us all to be scared,” Ahmed replied.
“But what if they suspect us?” one of the other men said.
“Yes, we will be careful, Cemal Pasha hates patriots, if he knew what we think then we’d all be for the noose,” a young man said.
“Go home and don’t worry. Jeremiah’s friends will bribe someone for him to be set free.”
“What will happen tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is a day of rest, and it’s my daughter’s wedding, nothing will happen,” Ahmed insisted, trying to cheer up his men.
He walked home alone. Igor was a discreet young man who, when he saw Ahmed stand aside with a group of men, knew he shouldn’t wait to accompany him. Also, he preferred to be alone that evening. He was worried, and not just about Jeremiah’s arrest. Every day Cemal Pasha was acting more and more cruelly. He refused himself nothing, while the whole city suffered in poverty.
A little before he reached home, Ahmed saw Samuel waiting at the entrance to Hope Orchard; he was smoking and seemed distracted. Ahmed went up to him.
“Is there any news of Jeremiah?” he asked, hoping that Samuel would say that he had been freed.
“Yes, and it’s not good. They are going to deport him, him and more than five hundred other Jews. Cemal Pasha is threatening to disperse the Jews throughout the empire. You see, it’s not been any use at all for us to support the Sublime Porte in this stupid war. They have even deported one of the men who has done as much as anyone to support the empire. Yes, they’ve told me that Ben-Gurion is being deported as well.”
“What are we going to do?” Ahmed asked, worried about the responsibility that would now fall on his shoulders at the quarry.
“What do you think we can do? Maybe Cemal Pasha will decide to deport us tomorrow, as he has deported Jeremiah, or Louis, or so many other people. Jacob wants us to forge new alliances, he trusts the British. He says that if they win the war it will be they who decide the future of this country.”
“I don’t know . . . He may be right. Are you going to ask them for help?” Ahmed wanted to know.
“Help? More likely we’ll have to offer them our help. There are already some Jews who are fighting for them. As you can see, we are divided, some Jews are in the sultan’s armies, and others are fighting for the French and the British.”
“And the Russian Jews?”
“Yes, I mustn’t forget Mother Russia,” Samuel said bitterly.
“We have to make it through all this . . .”
“We will try, Ahmed, we will try. I went with Yossi to find out what was happening with Jeremiah, and they nearly arrested us, too. You know that Raquel, Yossi’s mother, is a Sephardi. She has always felt grateful to the Ottoman Empire for welcoming the Jews to Thessaloniki when they were expelled from Spain. This is our fate: to be expelled, to be persecuted, to be exiled . . . Raquel has always felt safe under the protection of the Turks, and has instilled in Yossi a special devotion to the sultan. Yossi says that his mother is more Turk than Jew . . . but now Raquel is a stranger in her own land. I don’t know what old Abraham would have thought about this all . . .”
“We are all strangers in our own land, don’t forget that Cemal Pasha feels no pity for the Arabs either, and that not a day goes past but that there is a new body hanging at the Damascus Gate or the Jaffa Gate.”
“You’re right, my friend, we’re all suffering from the same causes. I’m afraid, Ahmed, that the world as we know it is crumbling away, and from now on we will all be chess pieces, whether Germany and Turkey or the Allies win the war. No, nothing will be the same from now on.”
“Will you go back to France?”
“No, not unless they deport me, but if they do, then I will have to go, I suppose. I cannot carry on looking for a homeland forever, I’ll make do with this one, the land of my forefathers.”
“I understand, you’re a Jew.”
“Sometimes I ask myself what it means to be a Jew. For years I fought hard not to be one, I wanted to be just like everyone else, I couldn’t bear being made to feel different. You can’t imagine the efforts I made to change the way people looked at me, judged me. Everything bad that has happened to me has happened because I am a Jew. My family was murdered in a pogrom, I lost my mother, my brother, my sister, my grandmother . . . Who would want to be a Jew after all that? Not me.”
“You mustn’t blame the Almighty, he knows why things happen.”
“Do you think I can find any reason, any justification for my family being killed simply for being Jews?”
“My friend, we cannot understand the reasons of Allah.”
“I don’t want to make you worried on the eve of Aya’s wedding. Let’s talk about more cheerful things. I still haven’t seen Mohammed . . .”
“He will be back tomorrow. I hope everything is alright . . .”
“You mean with Marinna and Kassia? Don’t worry, they won’t do anything that could upset the wedding. Marinna suffered a great deal from the separation with Mohammed. They grew up together, they fell in love, and it has not been easy for either of them to face the fact that they cannot fulfill their dreams.”
“I think a great deal of Marinna, I think there would be no better wife for Mohammed, but I know that in spite of you all . . . Well, you are not religious, or at least not practicing, but she will never convert to Islam.”
“You are right, she will not. But at least you and I can understand the pains of despair, of first love. Religion is such an absurd thing, to stop two young people who are in love from being together. The day will come when this is not a problem, and I hope I am alive to see it.”
“Mohammed has suffered as well.”
“I know. You know what, Ahmed? It seems to me absurd that men can fight simply because we believe that the God we pray to is better than the God they pray to.”
“We don’t fight.”
“You’re right, it’s the Christians who don’t tolerate the Jews, although the Muslims have also deported people from Sepharad. They don’t let you carry on being who you are. They have wanted to impose their truth and kill for it; at least the Jews and the Muslims are capable of living in peace and respecting one another, even if our youngsters are not allowed to fall in love. At least we don’t kill each other.”
The shadows fell on this piece of land that the two men shared as they smoked one cigarette after another. Neither was calm enough to sleep, and well into the night neither could relax.
The day was festive. Aya was shy and beautiful. Marinna and Kassia, Dina and Zaida, they had all helped her dress in her bridal gown.
Mohammed and Marinna had greeted each other normally, but immediately thereafter had avoided each other. Mohammed looked after the guests, and Marinna stayed with the women. She heard Aya’s nervous little comments and took her hand to try to calm her down.
Dina had made every effort in preparing the wedding, and had been helped by her ever-generous brother Hassan. She wanted to make a good impression on Yusuf Saïd’s family. She knew how devoted Yusuf was to his mother. Dina had told Zaida to pay attention to anything this woman might want. As for Layla, Dina had to admit that her sister-in-law was, when she wanted to be, quite charming, and so she had told her to look after Yusuf’s sisters.
She was worried by how pale Aya was, and had been afraid that she would burst into tears during the wedding. She did not look happy, for all that Dina tried to calm herself down by thinking that it was normal for her to be scared. Dina, too, had been scared on the day she was married to Ahmed, but then she had said to herself that she would not have wanted a different husband. They had been happy together, and their married life had been made bitter only by the loss of their two sons. She still cried over little Ismail, and the child who had been born dead and whom she had not been allowed to see.
In the end, though, everything had happened as predicted and her daughter became Yusuf’s wife. She looked around and was happy to see Aya surrounded by women, with Yusuf’s mother behaving affectionately toward her, and Marinna protecting her. What a shame that this Jew had not wanted to convert to Islam! She would have been a good wife for Mohammed.
The men seemed to be satisfied, talking together as they ate. Dina kept on serving food and heard little fragments of various conversations. Some people were murmuring in low voices about the latest hangings, and the deportations of Jews. She pouted, she didn’t want the day to be spoiled with people talking about things that had them all worried. She smiled when the musicians hired for the party by her brother Hassan arrived.
“Are you mad? Why did you think of hiring musicians?” Ahmed reproached her.
“I told you, they are a present from my brother Hassan . . . You didn’t tell me not to do it . . .”
“I didn’t tell you to do it, either.”
Kassia came up to them, smiling.
“It’s a wonderful wedding, a shame that Anastasia didn’t come . . . She would so much have liked to have seen your daughter . . .”
“I can understand that she wouldn’t want to come with her husband in prison. But I will take her a plate of sweets, at least then she will enjoy something of the wedding,” Dina said.
It was at this moment when they heard shouts and noises and saw some men forcing their way through the crowd. Everyone fell silent. They were some of Cemal Pasha’s policemen. One of them went directly to where Ahmed was standing.
“Ahmed Ziad! You are arrested for conspiracy against the sultan, and for taking part in illegal activities against the Empire,” he said, as two other policemen took Ahmed’s arms.
“What’s going on here? There must have been a mistake. My father hasn’t done anything. We are loyal subject of the sultan.” Mohammed had gotten between the policeman and his father.
“You are Mohammed Ziad, we know about you. For now we have no orders to take you with us, but they will come. Get away from me, or else . . .”
Mohammed did not stand aside. One of the policemen pushed him so hard that had it not been for Samuel, he would have fallen to the ground. Samuel then spoke to the policemen.
“I am Ahmed Ziad’s landlord, and I can confirm that he is a good man and a loyal subject of the sultan, as are we all. Anyone who has informed you otherwise is a liar.”
“So you support the traitor, maybe you’re a traitor as well,” the policeman who was in charge said.
“I will make a formal complaint . . .”
One of the policemen hit him in the face and broke his lip. Samuel did nothing, but Mikhail came forward.
“Enough! How dare you? This is a wedding. This man,” he said, looking at Ahmed, “has done nothing, nor have any of us who are here. There must have been a misunderstanding . . .”
They hit him, and then they hit Mohammed again, as he tried to force his way to where his father was and free him. But it was useless. In spite of the protests of everyone present, they took Ahmed away.
Dina hugged Aya, both of them terrified and crying, and the guests took their leave, keen to get away from this unlucky house.
“Someone betrayed him,” Yusuf said as soon as the guests had left.
“Betrayed him?” Samuel said in surprise.
“Yes, someone has denounced him. It must have been one of the men who . . .” And he fell silent. He knew that Samuel was Ahmed’s friend, but he didn’t trust this Jew, he didn’t know him, and he wasn’t prepared to put himself in the hands of a stranger.
Samuel’s gaze sought out Mohammed and he asked him:
“What is your father caught up in? Tell me, it’s better that we know so we can figure out how to help him.”
“If you haven’t been able to help Jeremiah or Louis, much less will you be able to help my father,” Mohammed said angrily.
“You can trust me,” Samuel said, although Mohammed’s reply had hurt him.
“I know I can, but there are things that . . . well, that we shouldn’t even share with you. I’m sorry, Samuel, thank you for your help, but now you need to let the family decide what to do.”
Samuel turned on his heel and left the house, followed by Kassia, Jacob, Ariel, Igor, Mikhail, and Ruth. Marinna stayed with Aya, who was still weeping uncontrollably. Mohammed looked at her and she stared back at him defiantly, but made no effort to leave.
“Marinna, it is better if you go. For your own good, for your own safety, there are things that . . . Well, it’s better if you don’t know them.”
“So you do not trust us,” she said angrily.
“Of course I trust you! But it is better, just for the time being, that you are not here. I will go speak with Samuel as soon as I can.”
She left without saying goodbye, and Mohammed, who knew her well, knew that she would never forgive him for having treated her as an outsider.
The two families stayed clear of each other for a few days. It was not until a week later that they met again.
A large group stood at the Damascus Gate, waiting for dawn to break. That morning there would be several men hanged, and as usual their families and friends were waiting, hoping to be able to say goodbye, or even impart a look of consolation to the condemned men.
Dina was there, with her children Mohammed and Aya, with her brother Hassan, with her nephews Salah and Jaled, and her son-in-law Yusuf. Some of the men from the quarry had come as well. Yossi Yonah, Abraham’s son, was there. He had gone alone, in spite of his mother Rachel’s protests. The Yonah family had close ties to the Ziads, and Rachel had stayed at home, crying, with her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter Yasmin. Yossi had been inflexible: he would not allow his old mother to see Ahmed’s execution.
Samuel, Jacob, and Ariel had come as well, but they exchanged no more than a couple of words with Mohammed.
The condemned men came with their hands tied, Cemal Pasha’s guards made them walk quickly by pushing them along.
Ahmed looked for his family and when he saw Dina and his children he could scarcely keep back his tears. They shouldn’t be there, he thought, they shouldn’t see their father die in such a manner. But he knew that nothing in the world would have stopped Dina from being there during his last moments. He was comforted to see Yusuf standing next to Aya. He looked at them, trying to show with his gaze the infinite amount of love he bore for them. Aya, his little Aya, the light of his life. Mohammed, his well-educated son, in whom all his hopes were placed. And Dina, his dear wife, always well-meaning. He would have liked to be the one to comfort them, to say that he did not want to die, but that if it were Allah’s will then he was happy to die for a good cause.
He still wondered who could have betrayed him, who out of all these men he considered his friends had pointed the finger at him. He looked one by one at the other men who were to be hanged. Some of them were from the quarry, good men, people whom he had convinced to join in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire. Had they been naïve? Even stupid? But he wanted no bitter thoughts during his last minutes of life. Suddenly he saw Samuel and could not help smiling. It wasn’t strange for him to be here, he had been sure that Samuel would come, that he would be there with him at this moment. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and both of them knew what each man wanted to say. They knew each other well.
The hangman put the nooses around the necks of the condemned men. While he did so they heard sounds of anguish from the crowd, Dina’s voice, Aya’s.
Why did the hangman take so long? Why didn’t he put an end to this once and for all? This moment seemed useless and eternal to Ahmed. He wondered if he would go to paradise. He had thought he might, ever since he was a child, but now . . . Suddenly, the noose tightened so strongly round his neck that his existence came to an end.
Mohammed held his mother’s arm as she cried and struggled, trying to get close to her husband’s inert corpse. She couldn’t do it. Cemal Pasha liked the hanged men to stay there for several hours as a warning to Arab nationalists.
Aya fainted, and Yusuf had to pick her up and get her away from the crowd to protect her.
Dina refused to go home, she wanted to stay there until they gave her Ahmed’s body, and neither Mohammed nor her brother Hassan were able to convince her to change her mind.
“I will stay here, I won’t go until I can bring him with me,” she said through her tears.
In the face of his mother’s determination, Mohammed gave in. He knew her well, and he knew that she would stay for as long as it took, whether hours or days.
Ahmed’s body was displayed at the Damascus Gate for a whole day. It was only later that Mohammed found out that it had taken an intervention from Omar to get them to return the body.
Although Cemal Pasha liked that the great families of Jerusalem knew who was in charge, and for this reason almost never limited his cruelty, he listened every now and then to appeals for clemency. The Salem family was rich and influential, so Cemal Pasha decided to show his magnanimity and order the body to be cut down from where it hung next to those of other rascals. But a gesture of this nature had to be accompanied by one that caused terror, and so he enjoyed a lengthy interrogation of Omar, whom he mistrusted and even thought might be a traitor, given his interest in the executed conspirator.
Omar held his fury in check at this humiliation, in having to beg for Ahmed’s corpse from this scoundrel. It was the least he owed the Ziad family.
Dina did not rest until Ahmed’s body was safely laid in the ground, until she herself and Zaida had washed and prepared the body. Mohammed had wanted to do it, but Dina refused. She didn’t care what the law said.
Yusuf took Aya away after Ahmed had been buried. He had been part of the pain and the disgrace of the Ziad family, but now they had to move on. He was one of the sharif’s men, and his job was to be where he could be useful. He left Aya with his mother in Amman, on the other side of the Jordan River. His family would look after her. They had had no chance to be alone together, and he had not looked for one. He knew that Aya would not be his until the wound from her father’s death had healed.
A few days had to go by before Mohammed felt strong enough to go to Hope Orchard. He owed them an explanation. Samuel had been his father’s friend, he knew how much affection they had felt for each other. But he still had thought it necessary to sort out their problems as a family. It was now up to him to make decisions. And the first decision had been: revenge.
Mohammed thought he would be able to find out the name of the traitor from Ahmed’s group who had spoken about them to the police. Ahmed had been hanged along with other quarrymen and farmers, so he had to search among those who had not been touched by the police. There were five of them.
Two days after he had buried his father, accompanied by his cousins Jaled and Salah, he went to the houses of each of these men without warning. The first man seemed to be sincere in his profession of grief; he swore to them that he would kill the traitor with his own hands if they found out who he was. The second man also seemed affected by Ahmed’s death. It was in the third house that they found the seeds of treachery. The three men they had not yet visited were all there; when they saw the three members of Ahmed’s family they grew nervous. Mohammed accused them directly of having betrayed his father, and one of them bowed his head in shame without daring to reply, while the others shouted angrily against such an accusation. Jaled and Salah spoke to the quarrymen and told them that they had a friend who knew one of Cemal Pasha’s policemen, and that he had told them who the traitors were. They started to argue, but Mohammed had no doubt that these were the guilty men, so he took out the knife he had concealed and cut the throat of the silent man in one stroke. The other two men tried to escape, but Jaled and Salah held them back. Mohammed had no pity on them either. They left them on the floor in a pool of blood. He had avenged his father’s death, although he knew that Ahmed himself would never have countenanced revenge. But his father was no longer alive, and he, to carry on living, had to take the lives of those who had sent Ahmed to the gallows.
And whether it was because of the indifference of the police, or maybe simply because the authorities couldn’t prove anything, Mohammed was never arrested for the deaths of these men, although everyone in the quarry murmured that it must have been he who had taken revenge on them. So when he arrived at Hope Orchard, Samuel knew what had happened.
Samuel invited him to sit and eat with them. Mohammed took a moment to accept, because Marinna was there, but in the end he decided to stay, he could not run away from her forever. They ate and remembered Ahmed, everyone told some story about him, then Kassia made a sign and Marinna and Ruth left the men to themselves. They knew that Mohammed would not talk with the women present.
Looking him straight in the eyes, Samuel asked:
“Did you kill those men?”
Mohammed did not bother to deny it.
“What would you have done in my place?”
“My mother and my brother and sister were murdered when I was a child, my father was murdered when I was a man. What did I do then? Nothing, I did nothing except run away. That is what I did. Don’t think that I am proud to have left Russia, for all that you ask me what I would have done.”
“You could have looked for his killers,” Mohammed replied.
“Yes, I suppose I could have stayed, I could have joined one of the groups opposed to the tsar, one of those groups that promotes violence as a way to fight injustice. But my father would not have wanted me to. He died so that I might live.”
“You know what, Samuel, there are times in life when the only way to save yourself is by dying, or killing. I have decided to save myself by taking revenge for my father, even though it cost me my own life.”
They were silent and looked at each other, understanding each other without the need to speak.
“Ahmed would not have liked anyone to die for him,” Ariel said.
Mohammed shrugged. He knew better than these men how his father was and what he would have thought, although it was true that he would never have sought revenge.
“They might arrest you, there are lots of people whispering that it was you,” Samuel said.
“And what are you going to do now?” Jacob asked.
“I will stay with my mother. But I need to work. If you could talk to Anastasia and have her employ me in the quarry . . .”
“Your father always wanted you to study, why don’t you go back to Constantinople?” Samuel wanted to know.
“And how would I pay for my studies? I cannot leave my grandmother and my mother unprotected either. They would have to go and live in my Uncle Hassan’s house and my mother would suffer. It’s not that Hassan would not look after them, or that his wife, Layla, would not behave properly, but they lived right next door. No, I will not leave my mother.”
“We could help them until you have finished your studies. Your father wanted you to become an important man,” Ariel insisted.
“Yes, he wanted me to be a doctor, but he accepted it when I began to study law, and now . . . now things will be how they have to be. Can you help me?”
“Anastasia is going to Galilee, to stay with her sister Olga and Nikolai. Do you remember Olga, Anastasia’s sister? They live on a farm with other families. She will stay with them until Jeremiah can come home. But I will speak to her and ask her to find you a job in the quarry, although . . . If you want to carry on studying, I can help you pay your way and you can pay me back later,” Samuel said, repeating Ariel’s offer.
“Thank you, but I cannot abandon my mother. Tell me, who will become foreman now?”
“Anastasia has given that job to Igor. He is very young, but he’s tireless and he has won the respect of all the quarrymen,” Ariel said, proud of his son.
“Do you want me?” Mohammed looked at Igor, who had remained silent up until that point.
“You know I do. If Anastasia agrees, we can work together.”
“I will go and see her tomorrow, she’s packing for the journey. I will go with her to Galilee,” Samuel explained.
“So you’re going, too . . .”
“No, I’m not going, I’m only accompanying her,” Samuel interrupted. “Mikhail will come with us. It’s not safe to travel alone with children. We’ll come back as soon as she’s settled in. We are going through a difficult time.”
“Yes, we are, and we have to live through it. I will get married in a few months,” Mohammed said.
They were silent without knowing what to say. It was Ariel who asked.
“You’re getting married? We didn’t know you were engaged.”
“I thought about announcing it during my sister’s wedding . . . My mother has insisted so much that I need to get married . . . When I arrived my father said that he had found me a suitable wife. He seemed happy, she’s the daughter of a friend of his, one of his friends who was hanged at the same time as him . . . I barely know her, I remember when she was a child . . . My father asked if I was willing to marry her. I said I would and I will keep my word. We will wait for at least a year, it would not be suitable if we were to marry sooner. When her uncles and brothers think the time has come, they will tell me. Meanwhile, I will get my house ready for when Salma comes.”
They listened to him speak without knowing what to say. It was not the right time for simple congratulations. Mohammed looked at Jacob out of the corner of his eye, knowing how much he was suffering on Marinna’s behalf. He was suffering, too. Not just because he knew that it would hurt her when he found out that he was to be married, but also because he was still in love with her. He had never managed to stop loving her, for all that he had tried to, but now more than ever he needed to carry out his dead father’s wishes.
A week later, Mohammed was working in the quarry alongside Igor. Anastasia had given her consent to employing him as a deputy foreman. She also had affection for Ahmed and his family, and in spite of Mohammed seeming a strange person, all caught up in his own thoughts, she knew he was good inside.
Time went by, and Mohammed was ever more involved in Sharif Husayn’s cause. He hated the Turks, whom he blamed for his father’s death, so he made his brother-in-law’s cause his own. His brother-in-law, Yusuf Saïd, who was married to his dear sister Aya.
Every now and then Yusuf came to Jerusalem to meet with Omar Salem, with Hassan, and with all the men with whom he shared a dream: an Arab nation from Damascus to Beirut, from Mecca to Jerusalem.
In 1917, Sharif Husayn and the British were already working together. Each group defended its own interests, and although the British had not been clear about what they offered for the future, the sharif had no doubt that they would help them build the kingdom that would take the place of the Ottoman Empire.
“You have to come with me, Faisal will surprise you. He has won the respect of the British,” Yusuf said to Mohammed, talking about the sharif’s son.
“I can’t leave my mother and my grandmother unprotected,” he said with regret.
“But your Uncle Hassan is the oldest son of your grandmother Zaida, and it is his obligation to protect her. As for your mother, I know that your Aunt Layla is fond of her,” Yusuf insisted.
But Mohammed knew that neither Zaida nor Dina wanted to share a house with Hassan and Layla.
“I will talk to my uncle, maybe there’s a way for him to take charge of them and still let them stay in their house. That is what my father would have wished.”
“You have to join with us and fight. You can’t stay on the margins looking after two women.”
Mohammed wanted to participate. He admired Faisal, who had won the reputation of being a warrior as daring as he was intelligent.
“Are you sure of what the British have promised?” Omar Salem asked Yusuf.
“The sharif is in contact with the military headquarters in Cairo. They need us to help defeat the Turks. Sir Henry McMahon has delegated one of his officers, T. E. Lawrence, to help Faisal. Lawrence is Faisal’s adviser and the Bedouin respect him.”
Mohammed decided to speak with his Uncle Hassan. He wanted to fight.
“Uncle, I want to join my brother-in-law and fight in Faisal’s group, but I cannot go away and leave my mother and Zaida without the protection of a man.”
“My mother and my sister are welcome in my house. You know that well. My wife is fond of them and my sons respect them. You can go in peace.”
But this was not what Mohammed wanted, and he spent a long time trying to convince his uncle to allow the two women to live in their own house under Hassan’s protection. Hassan resisted. Mohammed made him see that the two houses were only a couple of meters apart, and that it would be as if they were living together.
In the end Hassan accepted this proposal, although he didn’t like it much. He knew that Layla would scold him for being so soft in the face of his obligations toward his mother and his sister. But he had already given his promise to his nephew, so this was how things would be done.
Mohammed did not leave by himself, his cousins Salah and Jaled went with him. They were young and they wanted to fight to establish their own country.
Hassan carried on going to Omar Salem’s house, where he was always able to get some news about how the war was going, and of the fight between the sharif’s men and the Turks. In June 1917 they celebrated the great success of Faisal’s troops in Aqaba, the Red Sea town where they had taken the Turks by surprise. News of the victory spread across the desert sands. It was no small success, and Faisal, after conquering the port, placed it in the hands of the British, who needed time to unload men and weapons in order to reinforce General Edmund Allenby’s position.
“Allenby will take Jerusalem,” Omar Salem assured Hassan, “and from here he will go to Damascus, you’ll see. We’ll soon be free of the Turks.”
“Allah be praised,” Hassan replied.
“Your sons and your nephew have survived the battle. They say that they are strong men who do not fear to look death in the face. You should be pleased.”
Hassan went to see his mother and his sister Dina every day, and that night he went with his heart lighter than normal.
“I am coming from Omar’s house, we should be pleased, our sons have fought and been victorious in Aqaba. They have been truly brave.”
“When are they coming back?” Zaida asked, as she cared little about the battle and wanted only to see her three grandsons back again.
“The war is not yet over, they need to keep fighting.”
“I don’t want them to kill my son,” Dina said, defying Hassan’s gaze.
“Who wants to lose a son? Don’t you think that Layla and I are suffering from Salah and Jaled’s absence? But if we want a homeland then we will have to fight. We need to be proud of their sacrifice.”
“The Turks have taken my husband, I only wish the worst for them, but not at the cost of my son’s life. Why don’t they come see us?”
Hassan tried to explain the glorious gesture their sons were making, but Dina and Zaida, just like Layla, wanted nothing more than to have them back and safe.