On the Hills of God. Ibrahim Fawal

of Uncle Boulus’s worry beads was the only thing that could be heard.

      “I can tell you we’re facing hardened people,” Basim continued. They’re coming at us with full force. Or have we forgotten the bombing of the King David Hotel?”

      “And that was a year ago,” Uncle Boulus agreed.

      “Their terrorists,” Basim added, “blew up that hotel at the height of the rush hour. Over a hundred people were killed—all of them innocent. They didn’t blink an eye. And you tell us to restrain ourselves? War is hell and we might as well face it—we are at war.”

      “Then take these spies as prisoners of war,” Yousif suggested. “Wouldn’t that be the decent thing to do?”

      Disappointment flashed on Basim’s face. “So far I’ve been impressed with you, Yousif. I hope I don’t change my mind.”

      Suddenly Yousif remembered the compass he had stumbled on that fateful day. He had hidden it in a drawer full of socks. He rushed into his bedroom and returned within a minute.

      “I found this in the fields, just before Amin broke his arm,” Yousif explained.

      “Let me see it.”

      Yousif handed him the compass. He felt alone with Basim, remote from the rest. The muttering and the whispering around him did not seem to matter. Basim turned the compass over and over in his hand and was now directing his eyes at those around him.

      “Salman, what do you think of this?” Basim said to the frail shopkeeper beside him. “Made in Brooklyn. Hardly an object for lovers, don’t you think?”

      Basim’s mild sarcasm made Salman’s lips twitch. Again there was silence.

      So they were spies, Yousif thought. There were plans for war. On the one hand, he felt vindicated; on the other, he felt initiated to a world he did not like, a world of insecurity, mistrust, and suffering. Everything around him began to look and sound different. The crickets began to chatter. The moon grimaced like a one-eyed god. The lights of Jaffa, twenty miles to the west, looked aflame. Some of his caged birds inside the house twittered in disharmony. He sat next to the railing, toying with the compass, the omen of mysterious and threatening things to come.

      Yousif could read fear on the faces around him.

6

      “Can you believe this!” Yousif’s mother exclaimed next morning on the balcony, as she watched two men unload a pickup truck packed with boxes of oranges.

      Yousif shook his head. The truckload was a gift from the family friend who bought the orange grove his parents had visited a few days earlier. The stack of boxes was now getting taller than the men. Yousif was overcome with disbelief. He loved oranges, but what could one do with two thousand of them?

      “That’s the Arabs for you,” his mother said, bemused. “No sense of moderation.”

      “We’re generous people, that’s all,” Yousif said. Taking his knife, he made a precise incision around the top of one orange. He took pride in the art of peeling. Whereas most people peeled and ate a whole orange in a couple of minutes, he spent far longer. For him the trick was to strip the fruit naked without injuring the flesh. The pleasure was in the ritual as much as it was in the fruit itself.

      “What are we going to do with all these oranges?” his mother now asked, wiping her hands with her apron.

      “I’ll take a few with me to Salwa,” he said, offering her half of the orange he had just peeled. “I’m late already.”

      “Don’t take a few, I’ll send a box with Fatima sometime today. We need to distribute all these before they rot. Let me see, a box to Basim’s house, a box to brother Boulus’s house, a box to Salman’s house, a box to . . .”

      “Don’t forget Amin and Isaac,” Yousif reminded her.

      “Of course not.”

      “Do you think Father will take me and Isaac when he goes to visit Amin?”

      “I don’t see why not. Poor Amin,” she said and resumed counting on her fingers the names of those to whom she would send a box of oranges.

      On his way to see Salwa that morning, Yousif carried the compass in his pocket. Amin’s amputation broke his heart; Basim’s talk of war rang in his ears. The thought of war and the taste of oranges reminded him that the big, juicy, fragrant Jaffa orange was Winston Churchill’s favorite fruit. Yousif’s father once told him that during World War II Churchill always had special oranges shipped to him from Palestine. Yousif could picture Churchill pacing and plotting his strategy against Hitler while savoring the flavor and delicacy of a Jaffa orange.

      Yousif admired the British for their role in defeating the Axis powers, but their continued presence in Palestine was an injustice he couldn’t accept. To his mind, the Arabs had not fought with the Allies during World War I in hopes of throwing out the Turks only to be saddled with the British in Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, and with the French in Syria and Lebanon. But that was exactly what had happened.

      Yousif wished he knew more about how and why Britain ended up in Palestine for a thirty-year mandate. That was part of the peace agreement, he had been told, which had brought no peace to his people. It irked him not to know what part Churchill had played in the formulation of the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. In one brief, ambiguous paragraph, Britain had ignored the Palestinians and promised the Zionists a national home in Palestine. What a dilemma, Yousif thought. First the Turks, then the British, now the Zionists. And that was only in recent history. In ancient times it was even worse. Were the Palestinians to be subjugated forever?

      Now, in 1947, what mattered most to him was the fact that a foreigner—be it Balfour or Churchill or anyone else—could sit thousands of miles away from Palestine and dictate to the Palestinians what would or would not happen to them and their country. The arrogance!

      Yousif walked up and down two hills on his way to Salwa’s house, paying no attention to those he was passing. He was preoccupied with Britain’s duplicity. First the Balfour declaration in 1917. Then the White Paper of 1939, with which Britain had tried to modify the Balfour Declaration. This, in turn, infuriated the Zionists. Yousif shook his head as he thought of Britain’s chicanery, and pitied Arabs and Jews who were her victims. Once Churchill had declared, “The cause of unrest in Palestine, and the only cause, arises from the Zionist movement and our promises and pledges to it.” Yet, his government, like all British governments before it, had either vacillated or been brutally supportive of everything Zionist. Still, that British Bear received special shipments of Jaffa oranges, even when the world was aflame, when the Mediterranean sea and sky were impassable. The nerve! Yousif wondered what Churchill was thinking now, and whether he had any remorse.

      There was so much to tell Salwa. Yousif marveled at how lucky he was to have the opportunity to visit her house every Thursday. Ever since the beginning of summer vacation two weeks earlier, he and Salwa’s bothers, Akram and Zuhair, would hold their class in the family garden. They would carry their stubby chairs with the straw bottoms and walk around until they found a suitable spot. On both Thursdays Yousif chose a spot that afforded him a perfect view of Salwa’s room.

      Today Akram and Zuhair were waiting for him on the balcony, but Salwa was not in sight. They had their books in their hands and behind them were the familiar stubby chairs.

      “Good morning,” Yousif said, as he approached them.

      “Good morning,” the two boys answered.

      “Where would you like to sit today?” Yousif asked.

      The two boys looked at each other. “I don’t care,” Akram said.

      “Why not inside for a change?” Zuhair added.

      Yousif frowned. “It’s too pretty to be inside. Come on, I’ll show you where.”

      They