On the Hills of God (42 page)

Slowly Yousif bent down and lifted his dead father to his shoulder. Basim and others tried to help, but he would not let them.

Kneeling in the back of the pickup truck with his father’s warm body stretched on the floor beside him, Yousif caressed the dead man’s forehead in disbelief. Too choked up to make a sound, his eyes swelled with tears and his body tensed. Then he threw himself over the corpse, sobbing.

When they reached the paved road on the western side of town, the driver shifted gears and sped down the street. He drove a few hundred yards, then abruptly pulled to the side of the road and stepped down. He asked Basim if they should drive directly to the doctor’s house to inform his wife, or get some elderly relative to help them break the bad news. This was customary. Basim turned to look at Yousif and found him still crying.

“Yousif,” Basim said, bending to touch the youth’s shoulder. “What should we do? Who’s going to tell your mother?”

Yousif hesitated, then said, “I am.”

“It’ll be hard on both of you,” Basim cautioned. “Let’s wake up Uncle Boulus. He could break it to her gently.”

“No,” Yousif said.

“I’d do it myself, except for all this blood from my own wounds. It might scare her.”

Yousif shook his head. Convinced that Yousif would not change his mind, Basim motioned for the driver to move on.

On the way home, Yousif thought of that brief exchange. He had never before been consulted on such grave matters. These were adult people’s decisions. But now he was an adult. Half an hour ago he had been the doctor’s son; now, as the only male survivor, he was the head of the house. He began to understand death in realistic terms: the torch had been passed.

A new grief gripped Yousif when they reached his house. As they parked the pickup truck in the driveway, he could see his mother pacing in the living room and then hastily appearing at the window. The sound of the truck had startled her. Even at a distance Yousif could sense her state of mind. He climbed down, headed toward the house. She came out and stood on the veranda in the dark. He walked slowly toward her, suppressing the pain in his heart. Oh, God, how could he tell her? He saw his mother’s hand go up to her mouth. She knew, he told himself. She walked down the steps like a phantom.

“Oh, no, no!” she murmured as they embraced, her face frightened.

Then she wailed, going limp in his arms. Basim put his un-injured arm around her waist. Both he and Yousif struggled to take her inside the house.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” she kept screaming.

“Mother, Mother, let me hold you,” Yousif consoled her, his chin trembling.

“How did it happen?” she cried, searching their faces. “He hasn’t been gone an hour—”

On the veranda she beat her head against the marble column, shaking like a leaf.

Thunderstruck, Yousif looked at Basim for help.

“Let her get it out of her system,” Basim said, his face grim.

“Did he suffer?” she cried, her eyes reflecting unimaginable terror. “Was he killed on the spot?”

“What’s the use?” Yousif said. “He’s gone.”

“I want to know,” she begged, clawing her face. “Were you beside him when he died? Did he say anything?”

Yousif broke into tears and couldn’t answer. But Basim stood between them and led them inside.

Within minutes, the neighbors began to gather. Uncle Boulus and Aunt Hilaneh were the first to arrive. Then the barber and his wife, the widow seamstress, and the bus driver and his wife and middle-aged daughter.

“Before the house fills up,” Basim said to Yousif, “you need to pick out a suit to put on him. He can’t be buried like this.”

True, Yousif thought, banging his head against the wall. Then he rushed to his parents’ bedroom and opened the chifforobe. The birds in the adjacent room were in an uproar.

His father’s large wardrobe of expensive suits stared at him like witnesses to a tragedy. Which one should he pick? Which silk shirt, which tie? What the hell did it matter, he said to himself. He grabbed the first one of each he could put his hands on and went back to the dining room, where his father’s corpse was now laid on the table. Basim and Uncle Boulus were there, but no one else. Yasmin wanted to help, but the men would not let her.

“Just bring us some hot water and a few bath towels,” Basim told her, “we’ll do the rest.”

The three men went to work, although Basim was handicapped. Uncle Boulus, his face yellow, stripped his brother-in-law naked. It was the first time Yousif had ever seen his father’s genitals and he wished he had been spared the experience. It revolted him that his father’s privacy was being violated. The doctor had always been prim, proper, decorous. Now, this! “Oh God!” Yousif said, crying. The doctor’s chest and abdomen were covered with sticky blood and dirt.

They heard a knock on the door. Before they could open it Fatima stepped in with a large aluminum bowl full of steaming water. A load of towels draped her shoulder. Instinctively, Yousif threw his father’s trousers over his genitals.

“Let me clean him up for you,” she said, the sleeves of her ankle-length dress rolled up high on her white arms. The men looked at each other. But Fatima forced her way in and placed the water on the dining room table.

“Yousif,” she said, “remove your father’s watch and ring.”

“No, no, no,” Yousif protested, anger grabbing his throat. “I want them to go with him.”

“What for?” Uncle Boulus agreed with Fatima. “You might as well wear them.”

“I want him buried the way he always was: a dignified man,” Yousif said, standing aside, pulling his hair.

“Things don’t give dignity,” Uncle Boulus reminded him, untying the black leather band.

“Keep the wedding band on him, that’s all,” Basim said, trying to remove the doctor’s shoes with one hand.

Uncle Boulus handed the watch and black sapphire ring to Yousif. The water in the large bowl soon turned murky, like homemade red wine with sediment.

“Poor, poor Dr. Safi,” Fatima lamented, scrubbing around the “sucking wound” that looked like a ripe black fig that had been torn open. “Who’s going to make you Arabic coffee? Who’s going to prepare the
nergileh
for you?”

Yousif moaned. “All that intelligence . . . all that nobility . . . food for worms,” he said.

“Stop it now,” Uncle Boulus told him, putting his arms around his shoulder. “It’s not Christian.”

“Food for worms,” Yousif repeated, crying.

“Maybe you should go out. Fatima is doing all the work anyway.”

Fifteen minutes later, Fatima helped the men carry the doctor’s groomed body to the living room. He looked natural, Yousif thought, except his hair line was crooked and his striped red tie askew. The body was laid in a makeshift coffin: a mattress and a pillow in the middle of the room, covered with a white bed sheet. It radiated with goodness—in death as in life.

Time had been overturned. Night had become day. People came in droves. Each arrival sparked new misery. Amin and his parents, Jamal, even old man Abu Khalil, the bone fixer, were among those whose sleep had been disturbed. The house was soon filled with infernal noise. Neighbors and relatives continued to stream in, all with mouths creased, anxious, tearful.

Yousif collapsed on the sofa under the half-moon-shaped window, his arms around his mother. She buried her face in his chest. He tried to console her, but needed consolation himself. His hot tears fell on her head; she shook with sobbing. He was surrounded by a sea of agonized faces, not one wearing make-up. Aunt Hilaneh and Abla, cousin Salman’s wife, tore the fronts of their dresses and beat their bosoms. The men had solemn faces; some even cried. Again and again Fatima howled. When Nurse Laila and her ramrod-straight husband arrived, the women went wild with dirges. Maha, Basim’s wife, entered the house, her arms flailing. Salman threw himself over his uncle’s body and cried like an old woman. Blow your trumpets, Cherubim! Yousif thought, as he glanced at winged angels embroidered on the draperies. Heavens, open your gates: one of God’s noblest is on his way.

The dining room and one of the bedrooms were quickly transformed into sitting rooms. The furniture was removed and stacked elsewhere. Fouad Jubran noticed Basim standing in a corner on the eastern balcony with his left hand clutching his right shoulder. He had changed his blood-drenched shirt for one of Yousif’s. But it too was now blotted. Basim was withdrawn, listening to bullets cracking and resonating in the distance. The rest of the men sat tensely quiet.

“My God, Basim,” Fouad Jubran said, walking toward him. “You need help.”

Basim shook his head. “What I need is someone to drive me back to the hill.”

Yousif, who had been inside, appeared at the door. “Dr. Afifi is on his way,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Basim asked, turning around.

“I just talked to him. He and Jihan will be here within ten minutes.”

There was another burst of gunfire on a hill. Yousif was sure the Jews could not have returned to the same place. Basim perked his ears, then moved around the balcony, facing west. Others watched him and waited for some reaction.

“Hanna,” Basim yelled.

The driver of the pickup truck jumped to his feet.

“Go back to the western hill,” Basim told him, “and see what’s going on. If things are quiet, bring the wounded for Dr. Afifi to take a look at them. We might as well let him make a night of it.”

Several volunteered to go with Hanna, either to help him bring down the wounded or to stay as replacements. In the meantime, Dr. Jamil Safi’s villa shook with grief, as more and more mourners arrived.

Basim was very quiet. “We need to double the number of men on every hill,” he finally said.

Yousif moved closer to him. “But we beat them, didn’t we?” Yousif whispered.

“Sure we did. But if we drove them away before they could pick up their casualties, they’d come back to get them. No good soldiers would leave their comrades behind.”

Yousif gripped the railing, thinking. “Let’s hope they weren’t good soldiers,” he said.

By noon, over a thousand people met at the doctor’s house to bid him a last farewell. The cortege passed slowly through the town. Yousif walked by his mother’s side, her arm entwined with his. He watched as men, including Amin and ustaz Hakim, took turns shouldering the coffin of their new martyr. Ardallah had better get used to such scenes, Yousif thought. The real war hadn’t even started. Wait until the dead are counted by the hundreds.

The business district closed down for the funeral. The merchants who had their shops still open were seen rolling down their corrugated steel doors out of respect for the dead. The long column was headed by priests, ministers, Muslim religious leaders, the Arab District Commissioner, the mayor and the city council, and dignitaries of Ardallah and the neighboring towns and villages. Behind them was the open wooden casket held up high. Freckled twenty-year-old Mirwan, a distant cousin, walked behind them holding the cover. Following them were Basim and Yousif and their immediate family. The rest of the procession trailed behind.

The ceremony at St. George Catholic Church was brief. Yousif regretted that the patriarch or at least the bishop wasn’t there for a proper send-off for his father. His father deserved the best. Father Mikhail gave what Yousif considered a short but dignified eulogy, praising the doctor’s many virtues and citing examples of his dedication to Ardallah. Even the doctor’s worst critics, he reminded them, must admit that the doctor had been a deeply religious man, a conscientious human being, and that the conflict that had erupted recently between him and the people of Ardallah was motivated by pure love.

“It’s a reminder of the fallen state of mankind that this man of spirit, this beautiful soul, should have been considered too idealistic, too abstract for us ordinary people. Why isn’t the world a fit place for such a good man? Because the world was capable of massacres like Deir Yasin.”

Father Mikhail paused, lowered his voice and added, “The massacre of Deir Yasin gave rise to a cry that nearly tore him apart. His faith in the goodness of man was, to be sure, strained, shaken, shattered. But, it is a measure of his ultimate faith in humanity—that he did not succumb to utter despair. Till the very end he refused to believe that the grace of God would allow man to annihilate himself, but rather would lift him from the lower depths and would help him triumph and endure. Therefore, we must conclude that our departed brother, Dr. Jamil Safi, did not die a defeated man.”

At the graveside, Yousif was ready to speak. He looked pale and distraught. He was afraid of breaking down and crying in public. To his surprise, the tears dried in his eyes. The crowd stood still, waiting for him to begin.

Basim was standing to his left, his shoulder heavily bandaged. Jamal’s chin was trembling. Amin and all the teachers and classmates were there. His uncles and aunts were there—but not his grandparents and aunt Widad: they lived in Jerusalem and could not escape some raging battle in the Holy City. Ustaz Saadeh, was there; so was ustaz Rashad Hakim. So were hundreds of acquaintances and total strangers. So were Salwa and her parents. Yousif was sure Adel Farhat was there too, but he could not locate him. He wished Salwa could be at his side; he wished he had won her hand before his father’s death. His mother was at his right, but he was afraid his emotions would fail him if he looked at her. Their eyes must not meet.