Leon Uris (19 page)

Inside the homes of most of the villagers the combined living and dining room had goatskin rugs on the floor and a long bench of mud brick to seat the family and visitors.

The kitchen held an open hearth for cooking. In the more affluent homes one could find a Primus kerosene stove, which the Jews manufactured in Palestine. A stone mortar and pestle was the main utensil. The rest of the kitchenware consisted of a few platters and tin tools and pots. The one fine thing everyone owned was the coffee finjan and cups.

Clay jars holding salt, coffee, beans, and other staples lined the wall. Other large jars or empty kerosene tins sat near the door and were used to carry water from the well. Attached to the kitchen were clay bins to hold grains, nuts, dried fruits, and other food that would not spoil.

Because of our wealth, our kitchen also had a caldron for preparing grape syrup and rendering the sheep fat that was used in most of the cooking.

The balance of the rooms were bedrooms. These were nothing more than large square cells with thin rush mats and goatskins for sleeping.

As more children came into the world and older sons brought new brides home, new sleeping cells were added. This way everyone was garrisoned in together in his own clan’s sector of the village. One of our villagers, who had nine married sons, had fifty-two people in his extended-family house.

My father’s house had many things the others did not have. In his living room were wooden, instead of mud-brick, benches filled with pillows covered with elaborate stitching that was embroidered in Bethlehem. We also had two very fine Western-type overstuffed chairs, one for Ibrahim and one for the honored guest. We were not allowed to sit on them.

We had glass over our windows, while the other houses had wooden shutters. My father had the only raised bedstead, and when he married Ramiza he had the only two bedsteads.

Beyond the cluster of houses and the village square came a confusion of small farming plots that had been divided and redivided many times through inheritance. The season of the year dictated the kind of crop. Winter crops of wheat, barley, horse beans, and lentils were mainly for our own subsistence. Fenugreek, or Greek hay, was grown for forage. Summer crops were for selling in the souk. We grew magnificent hand-watered melons, chick peas, sesame, and a large variety of vegetables.

Many of our fields and orchards were communal. Tabah had exceptionally rich land for Palestine. Our pride was our fruit trees and our almond and walnut trees and, mostly, our ancient olive grove. The year’s final crop was the grape and this was also communal, as were the grazing grounds for the goat and sheep herds.

Until the time of the trucks the cameleers came up from the Wahhabi tribe several times a year to haul crops and bring in lime for replastering houses. The cameleers mainly traded for our surplus dung. Since the Bedouin were the greatest smugglers in all the world, our dung was usually paid for with hashish.

Every field, every prominent tree or rock or patch crossing had separate names such as ‘the place the old woman died,’ ‘the place of the spoiled figs,’ ‘the frog stone,’ ‘the widower’s tree,’ ‘the prophet’s tomb,’ ‘the place of the burning battle,’ ‘Joshua’s mound,’ ‘the place of stitching,’ which was Rahaab’s stone house.

My father had the only clock in the village, although he could scarcely read time and did not adhere to it. Each day at sunset he would set the clock at twelve, which made no sense. Time was kept by the location of the sun.

My father also had the only calendar, which he did not use either. Time of year was told in the ancient way by phases of the moon or the season.

My father was wealthy enough to burn kerosene for light. His lamp was much brighter than those that burned a wick of sheep’s wool dipped in a bowl of olive oil. He did keep a small oil fire burning in his bedrooms to ward off the evil spirits.

Attached to each house was a barnyard containing the household donkey, cow, a milking goat, and perhaps a brace of oxen. Many of the oxen were jointly owned with other families of the same clan and a great number of family feuds erupted over their use. The farmers considered the household animals some kind of relatives. Often they would walk to the fields while holding conversations with them. Most of the barns opened into the house because the animals gave off heat from their bodies, which was essential in helping to keep the house warm. Beyond the barn was a small plot of vegetables and perhaps a few fruit trees and chickens. Chickens and eggs were the wife’s domain. By tradition they were allowed to sell the surplus eggs and keep the egg money for themselves. All the little individual yards were walled off by cactus fences.

In Tabah everyone thinks of everyone else as a tribal brother or sister and the elders as aunts and uncles. Although everyone is supposed to be responsible for everyone else, for the Koran commands love among the believers, fighting within the family, the clan, and the tribe is the bane of Arab life. No clan or tribe is without many enemies.

I knew it was dangerous and difficult for me to go to school and aspire to things like writing poetry and stories and learning foreign languages, for it made my brothers very jealous. I was the only child in Tabah who aspired. Because we had no organized schooling or recreation, the children hung around the adults, each child tagging along with the man or woman whose position they would eventually replace.

Kamal stayed fiercely at my father’s side because he wanted to become the muktar and head of the home and clan when Ibrahim died. Omar, who ran the stalls in the bazaar, would eventually become the store and café keeper and he could usually be found around my Uncle Farouk waiting on tables and selling behind the counter. Jamil who would be the principal farmer, stayed with a cousin who was foreman of our fields. As I slowly gained my father’s confidence, the danger from my brothers grew.

For the peasants of Tabah, the land, the village, the family, and the religion were one and the same. The village awakened to morning prayer, which was called for from the minaret by the muezzin. We had breakfast of pita bread, goat’s cheese, olives, figs, thyme, and coffee and everyone went to work, except my father.

Because we lived so close to each other it was inevitable that fights broke out all the time. Each of the five clans had its own sheik who was also a village elder. Fighting inside a family or clan could usually be contained by the sheik. It was when two clans disputed that a blood feud could form that could last for generations.

Haj Ibrahim was a powerful muktar. His dispensation of justice was swift and final. The best way to keep a man in his place was to have communal humiliation imposed upon him and his family. To an Arab, humiliation is the ultimate punishment.

The humiliation of Izzat’s family had been particularly harsh. His father, Tareq, was a member of our own Soukori clan. Between harvests most of the men had to find outside work. Many went to Gaza when the orange crop was being picked and they could stay in nearby Wahhabi tents. Others, with relatives in Jaffa, worked the docks during shipping seasons. Since the Jews now had many settlements, it was easy to find extra work in their fields during the harvests and still be close to home. However, Haj Ibrahim had forbidden anyone in Tabah to work for the Jews. When Tareq broke the ban my father forbade him to enter the café, cut off his credit, forbade him to enter the mosque, to join festivals, or to share equally in communal income. His poor wife was so berated by the women at the water well and the ovens that she would only go there when the others had left. The village boys were forbidden to play with Tareq’s three sons, although I did keep on being friends with Izzat.

After nearly three years of it, Tareq went berserk and ran off to Trans-Jordan, abandoning his family. Such a separation from kin in the Arab world is living death.

Men and women were locked into lifelong roles from which there was no chance of change or escape. My father explained that only through blind acceptance could one expect to get through this life without going mad. Many people went mad anyhow.

One only had to enter a house in Tabah or the café or the ovens to realize that no one got pleasure from their toil. Work was considered to be the worst curse in the world. My father did not have to work and had reached the highest station in Arab life. Work was a reason to survive, but there was no reason to improve one’s house or land, for few owned them; most were simply bound to them.

Although the women had a secret subculture, they were destined to go from birth to death with no permission to have pleasure. They were always separated from the men on social occasions. They could not sing or dance at weddings, except off by themselves. They could not travel without a male member of the family accompanying them to oversee the family honor. Some male villagers went to a cinema in Lydda once or twice a year, but this was forbidden to the women.

The men were able to gather at the café or at a celebration of a saint’s birthday or a wedding or a funeral. A lot of frustration was vented on these occasions. The only time women could gather was at their daily work. Almost every day there was a fight among the women at the well or the ovens. Their language often became more vicious than the males’.

Our seasons were very specific: wet or dry. By March the rains had stopped, and this was the time to prepare the soil, set out new vines, and plant new trees. Getting rid of the winter’s dampness was a huge chore. None of our homes, even the stone ones, were warm enough or dry enough. Many children died of the cough when they were infants. After the rains all the household goods, sleeping mats, clothing, goatskin rugs, and quilts were moldy. These were set on the rooftops to dry while the houses were repaired.

Garden plots were planted and the sheep sheared. Many of the older women still spun wool with hand spindles. The damp wool was discarded from our sleeping quilts and new wool stuffed into them.

By midsummer we were harvesting. When the grain crop came in, a sense of urgency swept over Tabah. Everyone turned a hand to work, except my father and some of the village elders, for we were in a race against rain and the dread of rotting grain. We feverishly sorted the grains, dried them on the roofs, and took them to the threshing floor, working day and night.

Our winter needs in grains, lentils, and beans were sorted on goatskins and stored in the large clay bins attached to the house. Rents were paid with half the crop, and what was left over after personal needs was sold in the souks.

Spoilable crops such as eggplants, tomatoes, and figs were dried in the sun so they could be stored for the winter.

By September we made the final harvest, a communal gathering of grapes. Many were sold to the Trappist monastery at Latrun, a few miles up the road. The monks were crazy, but they made a famous wine. None of them was allowed to speak except the superior.

The village men trampled the balance of the grapes. It was considered to be work too immodest for women, who would have to show bare legs above their knees. The grape juice was boiled in open hearths. At the same time the sheep, which had been carefully fattened on mulberry leaves, were slaughtered and their meat was boiled down to extract the fat. The Valley of Ayalon was permeated with the smells of the fires: the grapes and the sheep fat, and the smoke from them hung low on windless autumn days.

The poorest of our lot moved the goat herds up into the Bab el Wad for the winter. Often wives and children travelled with the men and lived in caves. They paid cave rent and pasturage fees by collecting and sacking goat dung.

When we were all tucked in and awaiting the rains, the women used the time for mending, sewing, and embroidering their fancy dresses. The women of Tabah had a unique geometric pattern of embroidery down the front of their black gowns. Men would repair tools and harnesses, but mostly they would sit around the café, listening to the radio and repeating stories of great courage in battle or greater prowess in bed. Repetition in tales and poetry, repetition in the shapes of our houses, repetition in the music over the radio, repetition in everything was our life.

In the relaxed atmosphere of the wet season many babies were made, new marriage contracts completed, and the subsequent weddings helped alleviate the boredom. That was the time of the year my father took his second wife.

I remember it because the beginning of the wet season was the time the Armenians came to take pictures and the circumciser came and cut off the foreskins of all the boys who had been born that year. They all lined up in one of the rooms in the khans, held in their mothers’ arms. Soon every one was shrieking and bleeding from the pain. Fathers congratulated one another while the mothers soothed the pain with sheep fat and fondling.

I cannot leave the story of my memories of Tabah without writing something about Islam, the Koran, the Sunna, and jinn.

Islam means ‘the submission to God’s will.’

A Moslem is ‘one who submits.’

Mohammed was an impoverished and illiterate camel driver from Mecca who married a rich widow. This allowed him to pursue his calling. He received his mission by going up to Mount Arafat for forty days and receiving instructions from Allah Himself.

The Koran, a collection of Mohammed’s sermons, was not written until many years after his death, by people who had listened to him and were divinely inspired to remember everything he said. Since he was the final prophet, all other religions were therefore obsolete.

Mohammed was awakened one night by the angel Gabriel in Mecca and was told he was to take a night journey to paradise. To prepare for the journey, the angel slit Mohammed’s body open, removed his heart, and washed it; when it was replaced it was filled with faith and wisdom. Mohammed then mounted a sort of horse, a mare named el-Buraq. I say a sort of horse because the mare had a woman’s face, a mule’s body, and a peacock’s tail. This amazing animal could travel as far as the eye could see in a single stride.

The Koran has a passage that mentions ‘the farthest place.’ Jerusalem is never mentioned by name, but the early wise men figured ‘the farthest place’ was Jerusalem.