Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

Didn’t anyone ask him what they did after the battle?

Didn’t they expect a counterattack? Did they prepare for one?

But tell me, dear friend, what did Khalil Kallas do, commander of the group of thirty ALA men stationed near Fares Sarhan’s house in al-Kabri?

“ Withdrew ,” you’ll say.

“When?” I’ll ask.

“Three days before the village fell.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew.”

“And you? You all didn’t know?”

Abu Husam said they were taken by surprise by the attack on al-Kabri.

However, Fawziyyeh, the widow of Mohammed Ahmad Hassan and wife of Ali Kamel, knew, because she left the village the day that the ALA men left.

Fawziyyeh, whose husband died in the battle of Jeddin, didn’t remarry for twenty years, and Ali Kamel, her second husband, discovered that she was a virgin.

Her first husband died in the battle of Jeddin without taking part in it. He was a cameleer, transporting goods among the villages. On that day in March 1948, he was returning from Kafar Yasif to al-Kabri when he passed by the Israeli ambush pinned under the gunfire of the village militia. He was hit and died. The man fell, but the camel continued on its way to the village, ambling along in its own blood, until it reached its owner’s house, where it collapsed.

Fawziyyeh said the camel was hit in the hump and belly, and the militia men ate it to celebrate their victory. “No one paid any attention to my tragedy. I was seventeen years old and hadn’t been married more than a month. My husband died, and they slaughtered the camel and ate it. They invited me to eat with them. I won’t deny that I joined them, but I could taste death, and from that day I haven’t eaten meat, not even on feast days or holidays. When I see meat, I see the body of Mohammed Ahmad Hassan and feel faint. I didn’t touch meat again until I married Ali Kamel twenty years later. Poor thing, he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that I was a virgin. He was a widower, like me. When he took me, and he saw the blood, he went crazy — he kissed me and laughed and danced. I was frightened, I swear I was frightened. I mean, how could it be? It was as if I’d never been married and blood had never spotted the sheets in al-Kabri. He wanted to say a few things about Mohammed Ahmad Hassan, but no, I assure you, Mohammed was a real man, it was just that I had turned back into a virgin. My virginity came back when I saw them eating the camel and wiping the grease from their hands.

“Ali Kamel, poor Ali, couldn’t make sense of it. He went to the doctor and came back reassured. The doctor told him it meant I hadn’t had sex since the death of my first husband. But how could I have? I was living in a hovel with my father in Shatila, and he watched me like a hawk. He even stopped me from working in the embroidery workshop — he said he’d rather die of hunger than see his daughter go out to work. Then this widower with no teeth comes along and tells everyone he’s taken my maidenhood! But it’s not true; Mohammed was the one. Ali was like glue — he’d stick to my body and lick me like a piece of chocolate. Umm Hassan laughed at him when he told her he wanted a child. She explained that I wasn’t a virgin and that his seed was weak, but he didn’t get it. A man over sixty and a woman in her forties, and he wants children!”

Fawziyyeh was sitting apart from the others at the wake, and al-Kabri rose up before everyone’s eyes. Abu Husam spoke of his exploits while the village faded like an old photo.

“But we left the dead behind, and that was shameful,” said an elderly man as he got up to leave.

Umm Sa’ad Radi wasn’t at the wake to tell her story.

Amina Mohammed Mousa — Umm Sa’ad Radi — died a month before Husam was martyred. If she’d been there, she’d have told you; she would have stopped the flood of nostalgia and memories.

If Umm Sa’ad Radi had been there she’d have said: “My husband and I left al-Kabri the day before it fell. We were on the Kabri-Tarshiha road and they slaughtered us. I wasn’t able to dig a grave for my husband. I see him in my dreams, stretched out in the ground. He sits up and tries to speak, but he has no voice.

“We were on the road when darkness fell. My husband decided we should spend the night in the fields, and we slept under an olive tree. At dawn, as my husband was getting ready to say his prayers, our friend, Raja, passed and urged us to flee. He said the Jews were getting very close. My husband finished his prayers, and we kept going toward Tarshiha, where we ran into them. They were approaching al-Kabri from the north and the south. We were stopped, searched, and taken in an armored car to our village.

“They left us in the square; I could see the troops dancing and singing and eating. A Jewish officer came over to us, chewing on bread wrapped in brown paper and started asking us questions. He pointed his rifle at my husband’s neck and asked in good Arabic, ‘You’re from al-Kabri?’

“‘No,’ I answered. ‘We’re from al-Sheikh Dawoud.’

“‘I’m not asking you, I’m asking him,’ he said.

“‘We’re from al-Sheikh Dawoud,’ my husband repeated, his voice shaking.

“At that instant, a man with a sackcloth bag over his head came over. I recognized him — it was Ali Abd al-Aziz. The bag had two holes for his eyes, and one for his lips. Ali nodded; he was breathing through his mouth, the bag was stuck to his nose, and he was puffing as though he were about to choke. I knew him from his nose, from the way the bag clung to his face.

“The bastard nodded his head, and I recognized him.

“‘You’re from al-Kabri,’ said the officer after the man with the bag over his head had confirmed it for him.

“They took my husband, along with Ibrahim Dabaja, Hussein al-Khubeizeh, Osman As’ad Abdallah, and Khalil al-Timlawi, and left the women in the square. We stood motionless while they danced and sang and ate around us. Then the officer came over and said he would have liked to bring my husband back to me except that he’d been killed. He also told me not to cry. Then he showed me a picture of Fares Sarhan and asked if I knew him.

“‘Tell Fares we’ll occupy all of Palestine and catch up with him in Lebanon.’

“I burst into tears, but they weren’t real tears. Real tears found me on the second day when I saw my husband’s body and tried to carry it to the cemetery and couldn’t. That’s when I cried, the tears gushing even from my mouth.

“The officer raised his rifle and ordered us to leave the square. We slept in the fields, and in the morning Umm Hassan and I returned to al-Kabri and saw the chickens in the streets. I don’t know who’d let them out. Their feathers were ruffled and they were making strange noises. Umm Hassan tried to round them up. I don’t know what we were thinking of, but we started rounding up the chickens. Then I got scared. Scared of the chickens. They seemed wild and were making such strange noises. I fled to the spring. I was thirsty, so I left Umm Hassan rounding up the chickens and fled. On the way I found Umm Mustafa. She hugged me and started sobbing: ‘Go gather up your husband, he’s dead.’ She took me by the hand and we ran to the square.

“I found him there, lying on his stomach. He had been shot in the back of his head. The sun! The sun burned into everything. What, dear God, was I to do? I carried him into the shade. No, I dragged him into the shade. I didn’t dare turn him over. I left him like that, took hold of his feet and pulled him into the shade. I looked around. Umm Mustafa had disappeared, and Umm Hassan was still over there with the chickens. I went looking for her and I found her in the street, bleeding, with the chickens hopping around her. I pushed her ahead of me to where my husband was. Upon seeing him, she calmed down, went off, and came back with a plank. We turned him over onto his back and carried him to the cemetery, but we weren’t able to dig a grave for him. We pushed some earth to the side and buried him above his mother’s bones. To this day I pray, haunted that I wasn’t able to bury him properly. We didn’t wash him because he’s a martyr, and martyrs are purified by their own blood. And besides, dear God, how were we to wash him in such conditions?