Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

Suddenly the village was overrun and destroyed; you couldn’t find it.

As you were coming home, with your English rifle slung over your shoulder, you saw Palmach men everywhere but you didn’t do a thing; you didn’t fire a single shot. You took a bit of iron, heated it in the fire and scratched the date on your left wrist. Then you ran off to the fields, heard how the village had fallen, and swore vengeance.

Ain al-Zaitoun marked the major turning point of the war in Galilee. On the night of May 1, 1948, a Palmach unit with mules carrying ammunition advanced on Ain al-Zaitoun via the hill of al-Dweirat, which overlooks the village from the north, and from the hill the Palmach men rolled barrels of explosives down onto the village.

Umm Suleiman said, weeping, that they’d killed your father.

In the olive grove, you saw their forlorn wandering ghosts. You grabbed Umm Suleiman by the shoulder, but she didn’t stop. She kept going, and you kept trying to catch up with her.

“Umm Suleiman, it’s me, Yunes,” you yelled.

Then she turned around and saw you, but she didn’t stop. She said, “They killed your father. Go look for your mother and your wife up ahead.”

You took off running and spotted your mother and Nahilah in the crowd. Drops of salty sweat mixed with your tears as you searched for your son. You got close to them and saw that your mother was leading the blind sheikh and Nahilah was walking next to them, carrying the child.

You walked beside them and didn’t say a word. You didn’t ask about your father’s death because you could see he was alive. You’ll tell me you were lost, mistaking the living for the dead and the dead for the living. Everything got tangled up, and you spent years after this first great disaster, the Nakba, *trying to draw a line between the dead and the living.

Your father didn’t die. Umm Suleiman was mistaken, and you didn’t ask about it. But when you reached Sha’ab and the Khatib family house, you tried to discover what had actually happened. Upon seeing Umm Suleiman sitting in the doorway of the mosque with her hands clasped like a young schoolgirl, you told her that the sheikh hadn’t died, and she looked at you as though she didn’t know you. People began gathering in the courtyard of the mosque and Hamed Ali Hassan arrived.

Hamed Ali Hassan’s clothes were dripping with blood when he reached the courtyard of the mosque of Sha’ab. Hamed was in his early twenties with green eyes like those of his dark-skinned Bedouin mother. He left the village when he’d found himself alone with bombs exploding around him.

Hamed Ali stopped in the courtyard of the mosque and said that Rashid Khalil Hassan had been killed.

“We went back,” said Hamed. “We were six young men from the Hassan family. We wanted to get the money buried in the courtyard of our house. Rashid was the first to enter the village: He was hit by a bullet in the neck and fell. Bullets rained down on us from all sides, and we were driven off. We have to go back to bury Rashid.”

He sat down. Your mother ran over and gave him some water. No one else moved. No one got up and said, “Come on. Let’s go get the body.”

They were in the courtyard of the mosque of Sha’ab, wrapped in their astonishment like ghosts in long black mantles.

It was there that you found out what had happened.

On the morning of May 2, the armed men withdrew from the village and people were penned up inside their houses, trapped by the gunfire. When the Palmach soldiers arrived, they ordered the people to gather in the courtyard of Mahmoud Hamed’s house.

Umm Suleiman had hid in the stable near her house, then finally decided to join the others in the courtyard, carrying a makeshift white flag.

“What can I say, Son? We were standing there, and they were firing over our heads. We started to crouch down, some of us kneeling, some squatting, some lying flat on the ground. Then Yusef Ibrahim al-Hajjar stood up. His wife was beside him, and she tried to pull him down, but he stood. He raised his hands as though surrendering, but the firing didn’t stop. Yusef Ibrahim al-Hajjar went toward the soldiers, bearing the seventy-five years of his life on the shoulders of his huge body.

“‘I want to say something. Listen to me.

“‘We surrender. Our village has fallen, and our men are defeated, and we surrender and expect to be treated humanely. Pay attention now. We are captives, and you must treat us the way captured civilians are treated in wartime. We’re not begging for your sympathy. We are requesting it and will repay it. If you treat us well, we’ll repay your good deed with many more. Tomorrow, as you know, Arab armies will enter Palestine and we’ll defeat you and then we’ll treat you as you treat us today. It would be better for you that we come to an understanding. I have said what I must, as God is my witness.’

“A young officer approached Yusef and slapped him across the face. Then he pulled out his revolver and fired at Yusef’s head, and the man’s brains scattered over the ground. None of us moved. Even his wife remained kneeling. Then the soldiers chose about forty young men and drove them ahead of them, and after they disappeared from sight, we heard firing. They killed the young men and then drove us like sheep toward the valley of al-Karrar, where we gathered before setting off toward Sha’ab.”

As they talked you looked for Hanna Kamil Mousa. Hanna was the leader of the village militia and closer to you than a brother. You’d met Abd al-Qadir Husseini with him in Saffouri, and you were inseparable.

“Where’s Hanna?” you yelled.

Ahmad Hamed told you he’d seen him.

“I was hiding in the house,” he said, “before I decided that it would be better to give myself up. So I went out and walked along the street where the Hamed clan lived, making my way to the square. Before I got to Abu Sultan Hamed’s house, they grabbed me and started dragging me along: I’d put up my hands in surrender, but they dragged me along as though they’d captured me. It was behind the square that I saw him. He was in the oak tree. I don’t know if he was alive because they wouldn’t let me get near him. One of them had a tight grip on my neck and was pulling me along as if he’d tied a rope around it. I couldn’t resist. I had no intention of resisting, I just wanted to stop in front of the oak, but they wouldn’t let me. Then they led me to the square where they had just killed Yusef Ibrahim al-Hajjar. They’d done the same with the sheikh, your father — didn’t your mother tell you? Where is the blind man? Have they taken him away?

“Hanna Kamil Mousa is still crucified on the tree. Go and get him down, Son. I wish I could come with you. I don’t know where his family is. They’ve probably come to Sha’ab. Perhaps they went to Amqa, lots of people went toward Amqa. Go to Amqa, maybe you’ll find his mother or father there. Tell them Ahmad Hamed saw him crucified, and we have to get him down from the oak.”

You left him midsentence and rushed to the Khatib house to confirm, for the umpteenth time, that your father was alive. You found the sheikh sitting in the courtyard drinking coffee and talking about the terrible events of the First World War!

You were gone for three weeks. Everyone believed you’d gone to Ain al-Zaitoun to get Hanna down from his cross, and when you came back you didn’t tell anyone about what you’d seen.

Tell me, is it true they crucified him? And what does it mean that they crucified him? Did they drive nails through his hands? Did they tie him to the tree with a rope and then kill him? Or did they tie him there and leave him to die, the way the Romans did with their slaves?

You don’t know, because when you slunk into the village and went to the oak tree, you found no one.