On the Hills of God. Ibrahim Fawal

at the arithmetic problems.

      “No,” they both said.

      “It’s okay if you did. Both of you did well. I’m proud of you.”

      “You’re a good teacher,” Akram said, smiling.

      “That’s nice of you to say, Akram. Today we’re going to study Arabic. Do you have your books with you?”

      “I do but I hate grammar,” Zuhair complained.

      “But it’s very important,” Yousif emphasized. “You can’t speak or write well without it.”

      “It’s hard and boring,” Zuhair insisted, his lips twisting.

      “Look at it this way. When you play soccer, don’t you follow certain rules?”

      “Yes,” Zuhair answered, uncertain.

      “Without the rules the game would be a mess. We wouldn’t be able to tell the winner from the loser. Am I right? It’s the same thing in reading and writing. The fun is knowing your opportunities and your limitations.”

      As Yousif explained the intricacies of Arabic grammar to his young pupils, his eyes constantly watched Salwa’s windows and balcony. He hoped she would come down to hang her mother’s washing on the backyard clothes line, or shake a rug over the balcony railing. Finally, he heard her footsteps and then was able to see her through a curtain of fig leaves. She was wearing a red skirt and a white blouse. In her right hand was a plate of white berries. Yousif decided it was an excuse for her to see him. He smiled with that knowledge.

      He heard her murmur good morning.

      “Good morning,” he replied. He was so happy he could only stare at her.

      “I picked them this morning,” she said. “I thought you might like some.”

      He nodded. “I’ll be with you in just a minute,” he said.

      “Can’t stay long,” she demurred. “Mother is waiting.”

      “Please,” he said, fixing her with a meaningful look.

      He gave her brothers a long assignment and walked from under the leafy tree to where Salwa was standing.

      “I’d rather help you pick them off the tree,” he told her, taking the plate of white berries from her hand.

      “What would the neighbors say if they saw us together?” she laughed, her thin gold bracelets tinkling around her wrist.

      “Can’t they see us now?” he asked, putting a couple of berries in his mouth.

      She looked around, worried. “I am taking a chance. Maybe I should leave. The last thing I need is their gossip.”

      She started to walk away, and he reached out to stop her. “Please don’t go. Sooner or later they’ll have to know.”

      His confidence seemed to surprise her. “That day will never come,” she teased him and swung away, her round white earrings reflecting the morning sun.

      “That day will come,” he insisted, taking and eating a few more berries.

      For a moment both seemed to be held in suspension.

      “You’ve heard about the amputation,” he said, leaning against the trunk of an apple tree.

      “It’s terrible,” she said, nodding.

      He pulled out the compass and showed it to her. “Here’s what I found that day,” he said, looking grim.

      “What is it?”

      “A compass. It must’ve fallen out of their pockets. I just knew they were spies. Basim agrees with me. He also thinks that for all practical purposes the war between us and the Jews has already started.”

      She took the compass from him, pouting. “I wish I were a man.”

      Yousif looked at her, surprised. “Why?”

      “Then I’d be able to fight. Girls can’t do much except hope and pray. I wouldn’t like that.”

      A plane swished over their heads. Apparently it had taken off from nearby Lydda airport only a few minutes earlier, for it was still ascending. He could read the airline markings on it. Yousif watched it streak against the blue sky; Salwa kept her eyes glued to the ground. The mood grew somber.

      “I want to find a way to help,” Yousif told her.

      “There’s only one way.”

      He scrutinized her face. “Fighting?”

      “What else?”

      “It’s not that simple. Oh, Salwa, there’s so much we don’t know.”

      When she did not respond, he looked at her. She seemed unmoved.

      “Right now it’s like watching a film after the fifth reel,” he explained.

      “It’s clear to me,” she said. “All I know is that I’m standing on land my father inherited from his father and he from his father. This berry tree is our berry tree. That house is our house. Everything we own we either inherited or bought and paid for. And if the Zionists want some strangers from Europe to settle here, they’ll have to fight us first.”

      “And if they succeed? If they take it all away?”

      “We’ll never rest until we get everything back. The thing to do is to make sure nothing falls into their hands. That’s what my father says. And I agree with him.”

      They heard her mother calling her from inside the house.

      Salwa handed him back the compass and started to leave. Then she turned around and took a good hard look at him. “Relax,” she said. “Our cause is as clear as this glaring sun.”

      Yousif glanced at his two young pupils under the fig tree. Finding them busy with their work, he took several steps behind Salwa. “When will I see you again?” he asked, hating to see her go.

      “Next Thursday.”

      “Not before?”

      She smiled and moved away from him. “We’ll see,” she answered, walking in earnest.

      As she departed, his heart sank. He held her tall figure in his eyes until she stopped at the top of the stairs, waved her hand, and went inside. Momentarily he returned to the task at hand, finding pleasure in the presence of her two younger brothers.

      “Will you bring me a bird next time?” twelve-year-old Akram asked at the end of the morning session. “I did well, didn’t I?”

      Yousif smiled and made a mental note to stop at Salman’s shop and buy cannabis for his birds. Aside from going to the movies, his favorite hobby was buying, catching, and trading birds. But his collection of more than two hundred birds was costing him all his allowance. He really needed to sell some of them, but his heart would not let him. He loved them so much that he had a room in both houses designated just for them. Before the end of the summer he would probably catch more. How was he going to cope with that many?

      “You deserve the best,” Yousif finally told Akram. “Next time I come I’ll bring you my red canary.”

      “What about me?” said eleven-year-old Zuhair. “I did just as well.”

      “You know I won’t forget you,” Yousif told him, rising and keeping his eyes on Salwa’s room. “How about a blue cage?”

      “YEEEES,” Zuhair responded, shutting the book with a bang.

      “That’s not fair,” Akram whimpered. “I’m older and I want the cage.”

      Yousif laughed and ruffled their hair, wishing their sister would favor him with one more look.

      By the middle of August, most of the vacationers were leaving Ardallah to prepare their children for school.