Gate of the Sun (35 page)

On July 21, Sha'ab fell for the first time, without a fight!

The ALA, concentrated in al al-Layyat, Majd al-Kuroum, and al-Ramah, didn't intervene. It seems the Israeli attack took everyone by surprise. War was everywhere, and it took you by surprise!

The village collapsed before its defenders fired a single shot, and the Jews came in.

You said you lived those six days in the fields and could see Sha'ab from a distance. It was as though the village had fallen into the valley. Sha'ab is hemmed in by hills on all sides, and had become a valley of death. After
the fall of al-Birwa and Mi'ar, Sha'ab was under fire, and the only way to protect it was by concerted military action. Abu Is'af tried to organize the fighters. He divided them into four detachments and assigned each one the task of protecting one of the village borders, but he didn't leave a central force capable of responding to emergencies.

Practically speaking, there was no battle.

The shelling and screaming caused terrible confusion among the peasants and the fighters, and the battle ended before it had begun.

In the fields, the Sha'ab fighters discovered they were impotent. Attempts at surveillance and infiltration were useless. “We can't attack,” said Abu Is'af, “without preparatory shelling, and we don't have any artillery.” He assigned the task of contacting the ALA to assure artillery support to Yunes.

Yunes went to al al-Layyat and entered into impossible negotiations with Mahdi and Jasem. Every plan he proposed was rejected on the grounds that it would cause huge losses to both peasants and fighters.

“I suggested an attack from al al-Layyat, and they said the artillery at Mi'ar would wipe us out. I suggested an attack from the fields to the east, and they said they'd discover us and wipe us out before we arrived. I suggested that the ALA unit move, to give the impression that the attack would come from their positions while we attacked from the east, and they said they had no order to move. All my plans were refused, and their suggestion was to reflect and wait. I told them, ‘You're the army. You propose something and we'll carry it out.' They said, ‘Of course, but we're waiting for orders.' I said we couldn't stand around waiting. They said, ‘In war, you have to obey orders.'

“I said, they said . . .

“My mission ended in failure. I went back to the field where everyone was waiting for me. Everybody thought I'd returned with the order to liberate Sha'ab in my pocket. When I told them, their faces darkened but they made no comment, as though I were telling them about some other village.”

The table for breaking the fast was set at sunset. They were starving, miserable, yet nevertheless keeping the fast.

When I ask you about the meal, you'll tell me you were tired but not hungry. You'll tell me you never used to feel real hunger unless you were with her, after you'd made love to her in the cave of Bab al-Shams. On ordinary days you didn't feel hungry, you ate just to fill your stomach. On that day, however, you did try to eat from that meager table. There was almost nothing – greens and weeds. There wasn't even any bread.

Perhaps that was the reason.

Why didn't you tell me the Jews attacked Sha'ab precisely at sunset in the month of Ramadan, as the villagers were all around their tables, breaking the fast? The shelling started, your defenses collapsed, and you were defeated. Hungry, you fled to the fields in that terrible chaos; then, as you were fleeing, you saw the flames springing up in the middle of the village. You thought they were burning the village, and this added to your panic and drove you out into the neighboring fields.

When Yunes got back, he found everyone eating. He was hungry, but he didn't eat. He put his hand out, and before the food reached his mouth, he threw it down and said, “We'll attack on our own.” There followed a long, noisy, involved discussion about military plans, but there was no plan. Only Yunes' blind father said, “There's no hope. Everything's lost.” People saw the tears falling from his closed eyes while the gathering broke up without a decision. That night everyone slept like the dead, even those who'd taken it upon themselves to act as guards; in the face of the despair, the fear, and the hunger, only the door of sleep remained open.

In the morning, the two women were struck by something resembling madness.

They were discussing ways of getting water from the spring, when suddenly a hubbub arose and everyone saw Nahilah and Reem leaving.

Nahilah said she couldn't take it any longer.

Reem said death would be more honorable.

The women set off behind them. Abu Is'af and Khalil Suleiman Abd al-Mu'ti
tried to stop them, but they were like a torrent sweeping everything in its path.

“At the outskirts of the village, we started to fire. We attacked without a plan. We were running and firing at random. It wasn't a battle, it was like a Bedouin brawl, and we found ourselves in the village with the Jews gone. A few of our people were dead, first among them, Reem's Hassan. I can't describe the battle because it wasn't a battle, it was a charge. We were back into the village in less than an hour. Afterward we found out that Dandan's group of Yemeni and Iraqi volunteers in the ALA had mutinied against their commander when we started our attack and opened fire from their positions at Tal al-Layyat, deluding the Jews into thinking there was a coordinated attack. Then Dandan and his men came to join us, after they'd been thrown out of the army.”

Yunes said that when he met Abu Is'af more than twenty years later, he was astonished to hear the Sha'ab garrison leader's version of the story.

“Abu Is'af is more than a brother to me. Being comrades in arms is something time can't erase, as you know well. Your comrade in arms can turn up, after twenty years, and you discover he still has his place in your heart. Abu Is'af came and we sat and drank tea, and the conversation took us back to '48.

“He said the Israelis threw white powder into the square at Sha'ab as they withdrew, that they set fire to it to frighten us. When he saw the fire, feeling that he couldn't bear one more retreat, he threw himself into it and discovered that it was just flames.

“I remember things differently – the fire started when they occupied the village, not when they withdrew. But that's not important.

“Abu Is'af knew very well that I was the military official in charge of the whole South Lebanon sector, but he still treated me as though I were a junior officer, raising his hand and expecting me to be silent, like in '48.

“I was silent so as not to upset him. After all, Abu Is'af is truly dedicated to the struggle, and I respect him immensely. When we disagreed over the flame powder, and he started to get upset, I lied and claimed he was right. I recounted how I had followed him, how I, too, had thrown myself into the
flames. I let him tell whatever stories he liked in front of his sister and grandchildren – how he caught on fire himself and how all the other fighters did the same, and this terrified the Jews.”

“We were like demons,” said Abu Is'af, “like demons that spring from the heart of a fire, and they fled, leaving their arms on the battlefield.”

I
ASKED YOU
about the woman of Sha'ab, and you told me about the flames. Fine, but now I want a clear explanation of why you said that Sha'ab didn't fall.

What did happen?

What were you doing there?

“The truth,” said Yunes, “is that after we'd liberated the village, we buried the four martyrs and met on the threshing floor. We decided that the women, children, and old men should leave and that only the militiamen should stay. Everyone agreed. In the morning, all the women, old men, and children left, except for my father and mother, and Nahilah.

“My father said he'd never go, that he was going to stay so he could conduct prayers. And my mother said she'd never leave him. And Nahilah stayed with the two of them. Then we learned that many of the older men had stayed behind secretly, or had come back secretly.

“That's how Sha'ab became a den for fighters and a retreat for old people – about two hundred fighters and more than a hundred old men and women.

“We waited for three months, the women coming into the village at night to get provisions. We stood guard, awaiting a major offensive, but they launched only limited attacks. The first was on July 27, the day after the liberation of the village. The attacks continued through August and September, but I can't say there was even an all-out invasion. They'd open fire without any real attempt at advancing. We provoked them into fighting on several occasions, even though our ammunition was low. Then we withdrew.”

You withdrew, just like that, for no reason?

“No, we withdrew because it became impossible to stay any longer. On
November 29, 1948, the Jews bombed Tarshiha from the air. Then the bombardment expanded to include al-Jish and al-Bqei'a, and the ALA began its withdrawal to Lebanon. Jasem came to Sha'ab and said, ‘Friends, they've betrayed us all. The Sha'ab garrison must withdraw before they close the Lebanese border.' We realized that everything had collapsed.

“That day, Abu Is'af made the decision and said, ‘We'll withdraw. If everyone else withdraws and we're left on our own, it won't work.' He said, ‘We'll go now, then come back.'

“I told him, ‘If we go, we'll never come back.'

“‘What do you suggest?' he asked.

“‘Nothing,' I said.

“He said, ‘We'll withdraw, then come back.'

“So we withdrew. All the fighters withdrew with their arms.

“But the old people refused to withdraw.

“Hussein al-Fa'our, who was to die later in the mud of Zabbouba, said, ‘Take your arms and go. We're going to stay in our village. They can't do anything to us. We're old people; they have nothing to gain by killing us.'

“But they killed them.

“Nahilah told me about the massacre of the old people in the village and how the Israeli officer called Avraham came in and ordered them all to gather near the pond. He stood among them like an officer inspecting his troops, as though they were a military lineup. He even ordered al-Hajj Mousa Darwish, who was disabled, to be brought from his house. It was his wife's fault. She told the Israeli officer she'd left her husband in the house because he was disabled. She told him about her husband because she was afraid they were going to blow up the houses, as they'd done in al-Birwa. The officer ordered her to get him. She said she couldn't carry him on her own and a man volunteered to help her, but the officer waved his rifle in his face and said no. She went on her own and came back dragging her husband along the ground. She wept as she dragged him. The woman was dragging her husband and the officer was smiling, pleased with himself. We could see his white teeth. There was something strange about the whiteness
of his teeth. When the woman had brought her husband to the officer, al-Hajj Mousa Darwish gave a loud snort, black liquid gushed from his mouth, and he died.

“The officer saw nothing; it was as if he hadn't seen the man die. Instead he started pointing at various men. Anyone the finger pointed to had to move to the other side. He chose about twenty old men. Then he pointed at Yunes' blind father. The man didn't see the finger, so the officer pulled out his revolver. Yunes' mother screamed ‘No!', went over to her husband, and led him to where the others stood before returning to her place. A truck came and the officer ordered them to get in. My mother ran up and took hold of my father's hand and explained that he was blind.

“‘Get back, woman,' the officer yelled.

“Nahilah ran over, her son in her arms, and took told of the blind sheikh's hand.

“‘Get back, all of you,' shouted the officer.

“They didn't get back. They took my father and went back to the pond where most of the people were, and the truck set off. The Israelis started firing over the heads of the people, who scattered into the fields looking for new villages or the Lebanese border.

“The story of Zabbouba, my son, is the real embodiment of our tragedy,” said Yunes.

No more was heard of the twenty men that the officer's finger had put onto the truck until Marwan al-Fa'our appeared in Lebanon. Marwan al-Fa'our was the only one to survive what we would later come to call the Massacre of the Mud.

Marwan al-Fa'our told of the rain.

“It was a diluvial downpour and the truck forged through it. We reached Zabbouba, close to Jenin on the Jordanian border. They made us get down from the truck, ordered to us to cross to the Arab side, and started firing over our heads.”

It was a march of rain, death, and mud.

The mud covered the ground, and the rain was like ropes. Cold, darkness,
and fear. Twenty men walking, sliding, grabbing at the ropes of rain hung down from the sky and falling down. They'd try to rise, and they'd get stuck in the mud.

Twenty men hanging onto ropes of rain, sobbing and coughing, trying to walk but sliding and sticking in the mud.

The mud was like glue.

They stuck to the ground. They fell and the mud swallowed them.