On the Hills of God (43 page)

The hushed gathering, Yousif thought, bespoke of the town’s eulogy to his father—a song of death composed of every moment he had lived.

He wanted to cry.

He wanted to cry because his father had left it all. And because his father had not touched every stone, embraced every tree, and kissed every face farewell.

He heard himself speaking. The words rolled out of his mouth. He listened to them as if they were uttered by someone else. After the opening sentences, he gained confidence. He was not choking with emotion; his voice was not failing him. The words were flowing as if he were reading a prepared speech. He glanced around; people were listening.

It was no secret, he told them, that his father had loved Ardallah and its people. Deep in his heart, the doctor had known that the feeling was mutual.

“With your help, his hospital will be built,” Yousif declared. “It will stand—not in his memory only, but in the memory of those who share in his dream. But
built it will be
. If not this year, next year. If not next year, the year after. We will work on it as soon as this war, which we neither provoked nor instigated, is over and Palestine is made safe. But now that the war is upon us, it must be won. We all wish we had not been dragged into this fight. And should someone, even at this late stage, dare to wage
peace,
he shall find us ready to embrace it. Should someone challenge us with generosity of spirit, he shall not go wanting. For nothing will please us—nothing will more exalt my father’s soul—than to see harmony return to Palestine, this holy, precious, tragic land.”

The eyes of the near thousand mourners seemed to approve. His mother sniffled and dabbed her eyes. Salwa stared at him, her cheeks wet.

Yousif stood still for a long moment, feeling abandoned like Jesus at Gethsemane. If Jesus could not drink the cup of pain and sorrow, how could he? Then Yousif knelt by the open casket and kissed his father’s forehead. It felt as hard and cold as a piece of marble. Its putrid taste lingered on his lips as several men converged on him and pulled him up.

“Control yourself,” Salman told him, clutching his arm.

“Ma’a es salameh,”
Yousif said, gripped with emotion. “Go with peace.”

As the grave diggers stepped forward to close the casket and lower it in the grave, the crowd began to disperse. Though tearful, Yousif was proud it was a befitting funeral. His father was honored in death. Many of his father’s adversaries, including the lame councilman Ayoub Salameh and the stuttering Ghanem Jadallah—even the pudgy postman, Costa—were among those in attendance. Yousif was impressed but not surprised. Death occupied a special place among the Arabs. Whenever calamity struck, they all shared each other’s sorrow and tended to forget and forgive.

“A man who left behind a son like you did not die,” Jihan Afifi told Yousif. She hugged him and kissed him, but his eyes were on Salwa, who was standing at the other side of the grave. Finally, Salwa and her mother made their way to offer their condolences to him and his mother.

“Yislem rasak,”
Salwa told him, locking her eyes with his. “May you be safe.”

“Oo rasik
. And thank you for coming,” Yousif told her, shaking and squeezing her hand.

Not only did she squeeze his back, but she patted it with her other hand.

It was a poignant moment. He took her warmth as a good signal. Her feelings for him were intact. It was enough to lift his spirit.

Salwa’s mother was equally genuine. Her father, on the other hand, paid his respect to his mother and the rest of the family—but not to him. Yousif was sure it was a deliberate slight. It bothered him, not because he was ignored, but because it foretold trouble.

Yousif skipped school for the rest of the week. Their house was full of people who continued to drop in at all hours to pay their respects. Relatives kept Yousif and his mother company—from morning till almost midnight. His mother never cooked or was allowed near the kitchen. Fatima showed Maha and Abla where everything was and these two relatives prepared all the food. On the third day, Yousif’s grandparents and Aunt Widad and her family arrived from Jerusalem. Emotions erupted once again and the house trembled. After the situation had quieted down, the grief-stricken grandparents stayed with Yousif and his mother; Aunt Widad and Uncle Rasheed Ghattas and their three children stayed at Uncle Boulus’s house, across the street.

When Yousif returned to school on Monday, wearing his father’s gold wristwatch and black sapphire ring, he was touched by his teachers’ and classmates’ deference to him. No trace of ill will was left toward him or his deceased father. They all shook his hands, offered their condolences, and stood still around him as though his sorrow were theirs. A new bond seemed to pull them together. Yousif checked the tears in his eyes, but was grateful.

Despite the personal tragedy, Yousif never stopped thinking about politics. Now he was particularly encouraged by news that the Syrian military commander Fawzi al-Kawiqji and his thousand volunteers were engaging the enemy in battle near Beisan, in Galilee. Everybody else was encouraged too, except ustaz Hakim.

This morning they were in the school’s basement, which had been converted into a simple gymnasium. The rectangular room had two ping pong tables, two punching bags, two dumbbells, and a set of gymnastic bars. All the students, including Yousif, wore blue shorts and white shirts and lined up against the walls, watching ustaz Hakim, who truly believed in the ideal of a fit mind in a fit body. Yousif felt guilty smiling at his teacher’s antics on the bars, yet he couldn’t help it. He marveled at seeing him swinging between the bars, flipping several times in mid-air to change directions, and then clutching the top bars without missing a beat. Yousif hated the comparison, but ustaz Hakim was as natural as a monkey on a tree.

“Skirmishes are not enough,” ustaz Hakim said, his powerful hands gripping the top bars and his body swinging in the air. “It’s an all-out war, and we’re still twiddling our thumbs.”

Yousif watched in awe as ustaz stood upside down between the bars, his biceps as big as oranges, then flipped backward with a flourish to land on his feet.

At least the teacher was doing his share, Yousif thought. Ustaz Hakim had spent the night before guarding Ardallah on top of one of the hills. At daybreak he went home, took a shower, changed clothes, and came straight to school.

Ustaz Hakim began sending the students up to perform for him, one at a time. Adnan was the best athlete in class and he got on first. Yousif could tell that Adnan intended to emulate his teacher, and Yousif feared for him. No one could be that accomplished without a natural talent and years of experience. For a while the students and teacher stopped talking politics and just watched. Adnan started out doing a few fancy tricks, the muscles of his biceps bulging—but not as big as the teacher’s. He was skillful, but too eager to be in the master’s class.

“What’s the latest?” Amin asked the teacher.

“Don’t you read the papers?” the ustaz chided him, his breathing even.

“We like to hear your opinion,” Amin prodded.

“The United Nations,” ustaz Hakim said, “is realizing that it has no actual power to enforce the partition. Now it’s trying at Lake Success, in New York, to stop the fighting and create a trusteeship. We Arabs, or rather the heads of states, are meeting at Aley, Lebanon, and trying to stem the tide.”

“And agreeing
not
to agree,” said Yousif, repeating a popular sarcasm.

“Exactly,” the ustaz said, mopping his face with a towel. “In the meantime, ships at Haifa and Jaffa harbors are still unloading thousands of Jewish immigrants and tons of ammunition.”

Some of the students swore under their breath; others gathered around the teacher. Yousif folded his arms, wishing he could withdraw from the whole human race. A world that killed his father wasn’t fit to live in. He glanced at his father’s gold watch and rubbed his sapphire ring as though evoking him to reappear.

“King Abdullah seems to be our only hope,” ustaz Hakim said. “His Arab Legion is the best trained and best equipped. But will he commit it seriously in total battle? An Englishman, Glubb Pasha, is commanding his army and Britain is financing his kingdom. Britain isn’t about to let him have a free hand and deal the Zionists a blow. After all it was Balfour, another Englishman, who promised the Zionists a national home in Palestine.”

Yousif and his classmates were all ears.

“Even if Britain permits the defeat of the Zionists,” ustaz Hakim went on calmly, “will the United States stand idly by? This is an election year. Truman wants to live four more years at the White House.”

“Fuck him,” Adnan said, apparently keeping his ears tuned while swinging.

“Watch your tongue,” the teacher continued. “Truman says he has more Jewish constituents than Arab, which is true. Therefore, he won’t allow the Zionists to be defeated, because his election is much more important to him than a tiny distant country called Palestine could ever be. Personal tragedies don’t concern him.”

“Look at his record,” Yousif said.

“Exactly. He’s the only one to drop the atomic bomb. History will never forgive him for that, if nothing else.”

Adnan jumped down and Radwan took his place. When Yousif’s turn came he passed. He was more interested in politics than gymnastics. Could King Abdullah be trusted? Would he come to help and leave, or would he stay as an invader?

“My father says King Abdullah is a schemer,” square-jawed Khaled said. “He says that if King Abdullah fights, he’ll seize part of Palestine for himself. Do you agree?”

Ustaz Hakim smiled and threw the towel around his neck. “Abdullah is a shrewd, ambitious king,” he told them. “No doubt about it. God knows what he and the British have in mind. Don’t forget: he owes his throne to Churchill.”

On Saturday Yousif went out to Salman’s shop to buy cannabis for his birds. When he returned home, he saw a green Buick parked in the driveway behind his father’s green Chrysler. Whose was it?

Once inside, he immediately recognized its owners as the Haddad family from Haifa. The two families had known each other from years past when the Haddads had rented Yousif’s next door neighbor’s house for the summer. Yousif smiled when he saw them. Fond memories flooded his mind.

He remembered visiting them with his parents in Haifa. The Haddads lived in the Deir Mar Elias section of Mount Carmel, overlooking the splendid bay and the golden cupola of the Bahai Temple. Mr. Haddad owned a huge liquor business on the corner of El-Mulouk and Khayyat Streets and could afford a beautiful house, furnished with opulence typical of wealthy Arabs. And he was a prince in his house. Yousif’s father had thought highly of him and always described his hospitality as
karam Araby
at its best. What Yousif had enjoyed most, he now recalled, were the magnificent ships at the harbor—especially at night.

The father, Abu Raji, was taller than most Arabs. His huge hands seemed to engulf Yousif’s. Usually a well dressed man, Abu Raji today wore no jacket and no tie. He looked different, nervous. His wife was chubby and sweet. She hugged and kissed Yousif and told him how sorry she was to hear about his father’s death. They had just arrived in town, taken a room at a hotel, and come to see the Nussrallah family in the middle of the block about renting their house again. Only then did they learn of the doctor’s death. Mrs. Haddad apologized for her bright dress, looking at the other ladies in the room who wore black. On one side of the room were the Haddad’s two sons, Raji and Munir. Raji was about fifteen and Munir twelve. They both looked taller than the summer before. Yousif shook their hands and sat next to them.

Abu Raji reached for his pack of cigarettes. Yousif felt he was failing as a host. He jumped to his feet, hastening to pick up a medium-sized silver tray full of cigarette packs and a box of Cuban cigars. It was a remnant of the week of the funeral when the house had been full of mourners. When Abu Raji reached for a cigarette from the tray Yousif was holding before him, Yousif insisted that he take a whole pack and a handful of cigars.

“Allah yirhamu,”
Abu Raji said, accepting only the pack of Players and praying for the doctor’s soul.

“I didn’t even bring a black dress with me,” Imm Raji apologized. “We left in such haste . . . such haste.”

“We couldn’t help it,” her husband interrupted, lighting a cigarette.

“He didn’t give me time to pack,” Imm Raji continued.

“Time, she says,” her husband scoffed, crossing his legs.

Imm Raji took a deep breath. “I was in the kitchen washing dishes when the phone rang. All I could hear him say was, ‘Get ready, get ready, we’re leaving.’ ‘Leaving where?’ I asked, trembling. ‘Haifa,’ he shouted back. He said he was on his way to pick up the boys from school and then we’d be leaving. In less than half an hour we closed the door and left everything behind us. Everything . . .” she said, wiping her eyes.

Yousif was disappointed that they had actually abandoned Haifa. Under no circumstance would he pick up and leave his home. No matter what the Zionists did or said, he would stay. He scanned the women around him, all looking like a flock of black crows, and found them attentive. He wondered where his grandfather and Uncle Rasheed were, but didn’t ask.