Khirbet Khizeh (8 page)

We climbed the slope of a hill, which had never even in its dreams seen anything driving over it with such dizzying boldness, as the incline was dislodged beneath wheels that repeatedly grabbed at its cascading pebbles; drawing a momentary effort, and raging with all its strength and joyful desire at a trial of strength, the jeep quickly reached the topmost height, and there we sought out a place and surveyed the entire land below us.

A first glance and the great land stretched out before you, emphasizing all its sharp-hewn outlines, hunched and hollowed with drenched lushness, in a light that was growing whiter, and with a bit of a breeze that had started in the meantime and blew upon us a breath of beauty, of enjoyment, to the point that it could be tasted, a thrill of pleasure. Everything took on a new dimension, areas were opened and closed, and it appeared there was something that had almost been forgotten but actually seemed solid, and you could lean on it—until the next moment, as its being became real, suddenly here was the checkerboard of fields, plowed and verdant, and the patches of shade-dappled orchards, and the hedges that dissected the area into peaceful forms stretching into the distance, and the variegated hills that blocked and revealed distant pale bluish horizons—and suddenly upon all these an orphaned longing descended, a shadowy veil. Fields that would never be harvested, plantations that would never be irrigated, paths that would become desolate. A sense of destruction and worthlessness. An image of thistles and brambles everywhere, a desolate tawniness, a braying wilderness. And already from those fields accusing eyes peered out at you, that silent accusatory look as of a reproachful animal, staring and following you so there was no refuge.

Then we saw in the distance, on another hill, which was cut by the big dirt track, several trucks rolling heavily along, crawling like blind beetles, struggling with the potholes in the road, their sound still inaudible. Apparently what I was thinking was visible on my face without my knowing it, as the wireless operator, in the midst of his communication, turned to me and said:

“You're in some mood today, what's up?”

“I'm not in any mood today, and nothing's up,” I snapped in a tone that didn't exactly suggest the sound of sheep chewing cud at sunset, and that shouted, if you don't mind—“you wanna get hit, come and get hit!” with the vehemence of a man cursing another out of hatred for his face that had betrayed what he held in his heart.

We descended from the hilltop, into the jaws of death (that flattered my inner thoughts), to another plantation, and while we were sinking into the sludge and the mire, frantically moving backward and forward trying to find a way out, Yehuda, who had climbed out to help by pushing, got doused by a dollop of mud and came back to us, smeared, dripping, and sprayed; he bellowed a heartfelt roar at the driver for his witticisms that were no longer funny and cursed our laughter and mockery, promising that he would show us, but his fury still hadn't been assuaged when we finally emerged onto the dirt track, nor even when we comforted him with the thought that as soon as he was dry the whole lot would fall off without leaving a trace, because mud isn't dirt but simply wet soil.

We continued to circle on the desolate paths, we wandered between hedges huddled like frightened sheep, crossing open, spongy, absorbent tracks, beyond which the crops were sprouting as from time immemorial, combed by the breeze with waves of shallow shadows, with their usual ebb and flow. But I imagined I saw a hand inscribing sternly, “Won't be harvested,” and wearily crossing the entire field and its neighbor, and passing over the fallow, and the plow, and being swallowed up with a faint shudder among the hills. We examined the entire agricultural plan of the village and its fields, we fathomed their purpose in selecting places for planting, and we grasped their reasoning in the layout of the vegetable plots; the purpose of the field crops, the fallow land, and the crop rotation became clear to us, it was all so evident (even if you could have planned something better suited to our tastes, and we had already started to do so, without realizing it, each of us in his own mind) and all that was needed was for them to come and carry on with what they were doing. Some plots were left fallow, and others were sown, by design, everything was carefully thought out, they had looked at the clouds and observed the wind, and they might also have foreseen drought, flooding, mildew, and even field mice; they had also calculated the implications of rising and falling prices, so that if you were beset by a loss in one sector you'd be saved by a gain in another, and if you lost on grain, the onions might come to the rescue, apart, of course, from the one calculation that they had failed to make, and that was the one that was stalking around, here and now, descending into their spacious fields in order to dispossess them.

Since the paths were muddy, and because we had circled the extremities of the fields (no one had appeared, apart from one time on a hillock to the side, when we saw a few people, but a single shot scattered them as though they had been swallowed up by the earth), we returned to the big dirt track after a considerable delay, and when we drove up onto it, four big transport trucks were waiting there in a row, in front of a long pool of water, which had opted for idleness and fallen peacefully asleep in the middle of the road, without leaving any room to pass on either side, and on its shores the drivers and their assistants were standing around, roaring advice and warnings to the other side, and apart from some other expressions they also said they had had enough of sinking in—and from now on the hell with it. It wouldn't—in their view—hurt any Ayrab in the world to stir his dainty feet and walk up here, and thank us for this too! Meanwhile, facing them was our lieutenant who roared at them from the other side, but it was clear that he wasn't making any headway, and, in fact, he was losing ground, his claim that you didn't sink to the bottom of standing water was not accepted by anyone, since they refused to believe in the existence of any bottom underneath the water. Then our jeep was chosen to be the guinea pig and they suggested that we should cross the water, both fast enough not to get stuck and slowly enough not to get stuck. Of course exactly in the middle of the puddle, for some reason, our engine stalled, and it hardly mattered that a moment later it started up again and the jeep crossed the pool as easily as anything, spewing turbid waves on either side, apart from a filthy jet that found its way to the last remaining dry spot on Yehuda's clothing, and the poor wretch was so enraged that he could only maintain an ominous and ludicrous silence, but the matter was not settled and the drivers refused to listen and declared that they were turning round, in various maneuvers, on the spot, on the dirt track, and we should bring our Arabs up through a gap in the hedge, and we had wasted so much time for nothing, which was exactly what they had predicted at the outset. Then our lieutenant climbed back into the jeep and returned to the village, leaving us with instructions to widen the gap and prepare the way.

Naturally none of us lifted a finger, apart from casually bashing two or three cactus leaves with our rifle butts, and instead we sat down to watch the struggles of the drivers with their clumsy vehicles in the narrow road, appraising each of their movements with professional knowledge, artistic insight, and cigarette smoke. But Yehuda went to the other side, the sunny one, and stood there casting disappointed glances at the sun and wondering at its power. In the midst of all this activity, we did not notice the sudden arrival of the first groups of Arabs, who stood before us with that distinctive smell of their clothes. At once our laughter died down and we put on curious, dutiful faces, and I had the impression that we felt that something was beginning here, something that was greater than what we'd been expecting, apparently.

I don't know if they had been told before they left what was awaiting them or where they were being taken. At any rate their appearance and their gait recalled nothing so much as a confused, obedient, groaning flock of sheep, unable to take stock of their situation. Nevertheless, here and there, a few of them appeared to be imagining the worst, and some of them may have even been suspecting, wordlessly, with fear in their hearts, with panic in their breasts, that they were all being led to the slaughter.

The first group was standing by the gap in the hedge. This field might have belonged to one of them. And this place, which we considered just any old place, they considered a specific place that was close to something and far from something else and belonged to somebody and had a greater meaning than just some big dirt track. They stared at the trucks with a gaze that gradually filled with a realization of what was happening to them. And then they turned their eyes on us, seeking out among us someone with whom they might be able to speak, from whom they could hope for something. One of them, in a striped robe with a gleaming buckle on his leather belt, held up his left hand, with the bent fingers of a working man who was not working, and grumbled something. Immediately someone shouted at him in a voice that, whatever it was like really, sounded unnecessarily loud and grating: “
Yallah! Yallah!
” And the anonymous mass of people started moving and stooped at the breach, and came through one after another, and they continued walking uphill in a row along the low cactus hedge, and came out again on the other side of the puddle next to the first truck, whose tailgate had been lowered.

The driver and his mate stood there to keep them moving, extending a hand to one or another and sending him on his way with a push, saying a word to one, observing about this one that he was fat and about that one that he must be a real bastard, and about yet another that he was so old he must be eighty or even ninety, for sure. It was amazing how none of them protested or objected. With resignation they climbed up and huddled together on the truck.

“That's it,” said the driver with satisfaction.

“Count how many you've got there,” they shouted at him from this side of the water.

“How come they're not taking any stuff with them?” asked the driver.

“What stuff?” they asked him.

“Possessions, bedding, I dunno.”

“There's no stuff. There's nothing. Take them away from here and let them go to hell,” they answered him from our side. And again there was something that didn't seem right or proper, but nobody interfered.

At this point suddenly from on top of the truck an Arab, the one with the striped shirt and shiny belt buckle, turned to us and said:

“
Ya khawaja”—
his voice gaining strength as he spoke—“
ya khawajat
,” he corrected himself to the plural “sirs,” so as to address us all, and he started speaking, reciting, expounding, as though he were reading holy writ, and with something of the vehemence of someone who knew he was innocent and could prove it. But we couldn't understand much of what he was saying, and the harsh guttural consonants of his pronunciation seemed strange and almost exaggerated to us, like sounds in and of themselves. Our silence only encouraged him and he waved his left hand to reinforce his demands, and there seemed to be a rustle of approval from on board the truck and glances from there watching for any sign of success. But in the meantime the next group had begun approaching, and we stopped paying attention to him.

The new arrivals moved in line. The sight of their predecessors on the truck startled them and they stopped walking. There were some women at the end of the line, and a sound of weeping broke from them. (My skin began to tingle.) It seemed as though this time something would happen. Two old men passed in front of me, mumbling as they walked, both to each other and each to himself. They tried to pause opposite the jeep, which seemed to them a place of honor, to have their say, but they were waved on with
yallah yallah
. And they did what they were told. But instead of crossing at the gap in the hedge they continued straight through the puddle, their bare feet dabbling in the water as they casually raised the hems of their robes, as if there was nothing special about walking through a puddle, and the others walked behind them, assuming that this was the way, splashing through the water. Somebody sighed and removed his shoes to walk through the water. I don't know why this gesture seemed so humiliating and demeaning. Like animals, I thought, like animals. However, as soon as the women had crossed one of them turned toward us and took hold of Shlomo's sleeve, weeping and pleading with him. Shlomo shook her off, looking here and there for suggestions, or, maybe, permission to show her pity. But Yehuda, who was standing there, forgetting all about his spattered clothes, said to her sternly: “
Yallah yallah
, you too!” And the woman, startled, walked on, while Shlomo said dismissively, either by way of explanation or excuse: “And what would she have done all alone in the village anyway…”

Then a woman came toward us clutching a skinny baby, lugging it like an unwanted object. A gray-hued, gaunt, sickly, undersized infant. Her mother held her in her rags and waved and danced her in front of us as she said to us with something that was neither mockery nor disgust, and not crazed weeping, but, perhaps, all three together: “Do you want her? Take her, take her and keep her!” We screwed up our faces in revulsion, and seeing this, she apparently took it as a sign of success and continued to dangle the pitiful creature, bound in filthy rags, in one hand, while with the other she pounded her chest, “Here, take her, give her bread, take her and keep her!” Until someone thought better and said to her sternly,
Yallah, yallah
and even raised his hand—I don't know why—and she fled, half-laughing half-weeping, and entered the puddle, dancing the baby in her hands, laughing and weeping brokenly.

“They're just like animals!” Yehuda explained to us, but we did not reply.

The women were gathered onto another truck, and they began to scream and weep, and no one envied those who had to look after them. And there was one guy by the truck, who raised his voice and shouted at them that they had nothing to cry for because we weren't going to do anything to them, just take them to their husbands. But whether it was his Arabic or his reasoning that was not understood, the screaming and weeping only intensified, and they fell upon him since he had given them an opening, with a thousand cries, demands, complaints, accusations, entreaties, and pleas, until he retreated in confusion, and somebody else put him out of his misery by silencing them with the full blast of his voice.