All men dream, el-Aurens had written. His book lay abandoned
on Abdul-Malik’s shelf; he had never been able to finish it. Like his other
English hardbacks it gathered dust, a memorial to a younger man who still
believed the promises.
All men dream: but not
equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in
the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous
men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I
did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty
millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace
of their national thoughts.
Like Musa, Lawrence had led them from the desert. For a few
gruelling, terrible, wonderful months all had seemed possible. Thirty years on
and Lawrence was dead. Feisal’s kingdom hadn’t lasted a year. Across the
valley, the last remnants of their dream-palace were burning.
Abdul-Malik knew he would never see those youths again.
It’s over, Yael.
For the first time since he’d come on to the roof-top, Abdul-Malik allowed his
attention to stray to the Webley revolver which lay neatly among the coffee
things. Another relic of the first War. Two bullets remained in the drum.
So what do I do now?
‘Abdul-Malik! Abdul-Malik!’ The cry jolted him from his
reverie. His fingers recoiled from the gun. Yusuf was running along the path
towards the house. ‘We need to get out! We need to leave. The Jews are here! We
need to leave now!’
The Jews. He says it
like they’re monsters. I’m glad you’re not here to see this, Yael.
He picked up the gun. So easy to imagine using it. One
bullet through Yusuf’s skull. The second for himself. Dark thoughts, not worthy
of him. He slipped the revolver into his waistband.
The sound of the engines died. The sudden silence was even
worse.
Abdul-Malik was getting to his feet as the first shell
exploded. The blast tore through one of the houses near the well, filling the
air with dust and flame and fragments of mud-brick and almost knocking him flat
on his back. The screaming had barely had time to begin when a second artillery
shell blew apart the little square building that served as school to the
village’s dozen children. Gunfire rattled out from houses up and down the slope
of the village. What were they even shooting at, Abdul-Malik wondered. He still
hadn’t seen so much as a glimpse of a Jew.
Stumbling slightly and coughing on the dust-filled air, he
hurried down the steps and out to where Yusuf was waiting. His old friend’s
face was ashen.
‘Hibah’s dead,’ Yusuf said without preamble. ‘They shot her
in the fields.’
Abdul-Malik didn’t know what to say to that. He found
himself just nodding. Yusuf and his wife had been having problems lately;
everyone in the village knew that. Their failure to have children had been a
strain on both of them. Now Abdul-Malik wondered if it wasn’t a blessing.
‘My cousin is in Ishwa,’ Yusuf said. ‘He has a car. If we
can get to him we can drive east to Jordan.’
Leave Palestine.
The thought left Abdul-Malik peculiarly numb. His boyhood had been far to the
south in the sandy expanses of the Hejaz; he wasn’t a Palestinian by birth.
Whatever that meant. It was not a word that would even have made sense to him a
few years ago. He was an Arab, a Muslim, a Howeitat; a child of the desert and
of Wejh on the Gulf of Aqaba. We never had
nations. Not until the Europeans brought them in the name of freedom and
progress. Another shell ripped through houses on the next tier down. They brought a lot else besides.
But Palestine had been the only home he had known for three
decades. Despite the indignities and frustrations of life under the British
Mandate, it was somewhere he’d been happy. More than anywhere else, he’d felt
he belonged. Like everyone else he had watched with concern and anger when the
Zionists began to arrive in their droves. The British feigned even-handedness,
but it was no secret they’d favoured the establishment of a Jewish state. Yael
had shown him things weren’t as straightforward as he’d imagined. For the
British, realisation of the situation’s complexity came more painfully.
Frustrated with the violence and messiness of it all, they’d packed up their
things and got on their ships. Frightful business, but when all’s said and done
there was plenty more of the Empire; England lay green and timeless far across
the waters. Abdul-Malik imagined the frustrated nation-builders pitching up in
London and cursing Jew and Arab alike. They’re
as bad as each other. Just not civilised. They’d tut and commiserate and go
back to their cribbage and G & Ts.
In their wake they’d left a war that was not. The Zionists
had declared that Palestine was now Eretz
Yisrael – the Land of Israel, that God had promised to them, and only them,
in ancient times. After the horrors which had been visited on them by the
Europeans in the War and in the centuries which had preceded it, they’d
returned home to reclaim their birthright. A safe haven where they need never
be threatened or dispossessed again. And Israel, they pronounced to the world,
lay empty and waiting for them. A land without people for a people without
land. The rest of the world nodded approvingly and congratulated each other on
the justice of it all.
The presence of a million Arabs whose ancestors had lived
and worked in these unpeopled lands for nearly two millennia was a trifling
detail, and one they had wasted no time in setting about tidying up. With
superior numbers and superior weapons they fell upon the villages of fellaheen,
burning and murdering and driving families from their homes. The radio and the
newspapers spoke of massacres. Abdul-Malik didn’t know how much of that was
true, and he’d spent enough time around politicians at the end of the Great
Revolt to wonder whether the Arab leaders were quite as blameless as they
painted themselves. But he didn’t doubt that the new Israeli government meant
to drive every Arab from the borders of their fledgling state. Ethnic and
national purity writ in Palestinian blood.
I have two bullets.
What can I do with those? Nothing, besides run.
‘If we go to Jordan, the Zionists win,’ he told Yusuf. They
were running through the olive-groves, up the hill away from the fighting.
Abdul-Malik’s heart was pounding painfully in his chest. He was too old for
this. War came. Again and again, it always came. But why couldn’t it come just
for the young men? Why couldn’t it leave those who’d already done their turn in
peace?
‘So what else? We stay? They burn down the villages and lay
mines so we cannot return. That’s if we even survive the war at all. You heard
what happened at Deir Yassin!’
‘They’re people! Like Yael. They’re the Jews! They won’t
wipe out an entire people,’ Abdul-Malik reassured him, trying to out block the
sounds of carnage and the smell of burning that rose up from the village.
‘Ever the optimist,’ Yusuf said, flashing Abdul-Malik a grim
half-smile.
A moment later a bullet burst his head.
Abdul-Malik shook, blinking gore from his eyes. Even time
seemed to forget to move forward as he struggled to comprehend what was
happening.
Then Yusuf’s body hit the dry earth and a second bullet blew
splinters out of the olive tree beside Abdul-Malik’s head.
With an energy he thought he had long-since lost, he threw
himself aside, scouring the grove for signs of the shooter.
There, on the far side. Two Zionist fighters. The shooter
still had his rifle raised, his eyes keen as he waited for another opportunity.
The other had been interrupted while dousing the trees with petrol, to judge
from the jerry cans at his feet. He dragged a man from bushes and began beating
him with the stock of his rifle. At first the victim resisted but his defiance
soon crumbled under the barrage of blows.
He wasn’t from the village, Abdul-Malik realised. Looking
closer, he wasn’t even Arab. He wore the traditional robes of a Bedouin Arab at
the time of the Great Revolt but this poor fellow was European. Italian or
Spanish, perhaps?
I know this man.
The realisation came out of nowhere. A distant memory he
couldn’t recall ever having remembered before. He struggled to place where they
could have met.
The Jew with the rifle advanced slowly through the grove
towards Abdul-Malik. His comrade showed no sign of tiring of his violence.
Abdul-Malik’s fingers tightened around the Webley. Two men. Two bullets. I can’t do anything
for Palestine, but I can do this.
He could hear Yael’s voice in his mind, telling him this was
stupid and pointless. More killing would achieve nothing. Nations weren’t built
this way.
I’m sorry, he told
her.Like the foolish youths from the village, like the foolish
youth he’d been thirty years ago he burst out of hiding, shouting ‘Allah-u-Akbar!’
The Webley kicked in his hand and the Jew beating the
European went down. For a moment Abdul-Malik saw a flash of fear in the other
Jew’s eyes. He brought the Webley to bear.
The rifle fired first.
Abdul-Malik didn’t feel the pain immediately. Just confusion
and embarrassment as he tumbled forwards into the dust, the pistol flying
uselessly from his hand. The gunshot had caught him in his leg, blasting it out
from under him.
What was I thinking?
Useless old man. Always too optimistic. Should have listened, Yael.
The soldier approached, keeping the rifle trained on him. He
was young, but probably didn’t think it. Twenty-five, thirty maybe. A sensitive
face and thoughtful eyes.
‘Why?’ Abdul-Malik
grunted. ‘This was done to you. Why do you do it to us?’
The young man looked at him quizzically. New arrival,
Abdul-Malik realised. He didn’t speak Arabic. He waited a moment, as if to see
if Abdul-Malik would say anything more. When he didn’t, the Zionist pointed the
rifle at his head. Abdul-Malik strained to lift his head, to make eye-contact. Do this, boy, he thought. But do it looking into my eyes.
The Jew’s finger tightened on the trigger.
The olive-grove resounded to a shot.
Abdul-Malik realised with some surprise that he was still
alive. The Jew lay in a pool of blood in front of him, a wound in his chest and
an expression of surprise on his face.
Across the grove, the European stood braced against an
olive-tree. Smoke curled from the end of a Luger in his hand.
With effort he staggered over to Abdul-Malik.
‘Are you all right? It seems I owe you my thanks.’
The pain was finally making itself felt in the wound in his
leg. He twisted where he lay, tried to look down to see how bad it was.
‘Don’t worry about the leg. I have medical equipment. I can
make it better.’
Abdul-Malik nodded gratefully. ‘Alhamdulillah,’ he gasped. ‘Thank you. Are you… Are you a doctor?’
This seemed to amuse his rescuer. A slight, sardonic smile
played across his dark, neatly-bearded face.
‘No. No, I’m afraid not. But you might say I’m the next best
thing. And I think, Mister al-Belawi, that we can be of very great help to one
other.’
He reached out a hand to help lift Abdul-Malik to his feet.
Abdul-Malik smiled, and took it.
~~~