The Attack

by Yasmina Khadra

  I kiss his hand and kneel at his feet. His tapered fingers rummage in my hair while he tries to gather enough breath to tell me how much my return to the family home fills him with happiness. I lay my head on his chest, just as I did as a spoiled child when I came to him weeping for favors others had refused me.

  “My doctor,” he says in his shaky voice. “My doctor.”

  Faten, his thirty-five-year-old granddaughter, is at his side. I wouldn’t have recognized her in the street. It’s been such a long time. When last I saw her, she was a skittish kid, always picking fights with her cousins and then running off as though she had the devil on her heels. The family news I used to get sporadically in Tel Aviv pictured her as chronically unlucky. People with wicked tongues call her “the Virgin Widow.” It’s certainly true that Faten has had more than her share of misfortune. Her first husband died in their wedding procession, which came to a sudden end when the automobile they were riding in suffered a freakish blowout, followed by a collision; her second fiancé was killed in a clash with an Israeli patrol two days before the wedding night. Immediately, gossiping shrews inferred that she was accursed, and no suitor has ever knocked at her door again. She’s a sturdy, uncouth young woman, formed by a lifetime of demanding household tasks and the austere existence of the enclaved villages. Her greeting is robust and her kisses noisy.

  When the eldest of the tribe consents to let go of my hand, Wissam, who has already picked up my bag, shows me to my room. I’m asleep before my head touches the pillow. Toward evening, Wissam comes to wake me up. He and Faten have installed the table under the arbor. They’ve spared no expense for this meal. Old Omr, sunk in his wheelchair, sits at the head of the table, not taking his eyes off me for a second. We have dinner outside, the four of us. Wissam tells amusing stories from the front until late in the night. Omr’s chin has dropped onto his chest, but his eyes laugh, looking up from under their lids. Wissam is a piece of work; it’s hard for me to believe that such a shy boy has developed such a hilarious sense of humor.

  I go back to my room, intoxicated by his tales.

  The next morning, I’m on my feet just as night begins to pull her black skirts away from the first touch of dawn. I’ve slept like a child. I may have had some fine dreams, but I don’t recall any of them. I feel fresh, cleansed. Faten’s already got Omr out on the patio; I see him through the window, hieratic on his throne, like a convalescent totem. He’s waiting for the sun to rise. Faten’s just finished preparing some flat cakes for later, and now she serves me breakfast in the living room: coffee and milk, olives, hard-boiled eggs, various fruits, and slices of buttered bread dipped in honey. I eat alone—Wissam’s still in bed. From time to time, Faten comes in to see whether I need anything. After my meal, I join Omr on the patio. He squeezes my hand tightly when I lean down to kiss him on the top of his forehead. If he doesn’t say very much, it’s because he wants to savor entirely every instant I offer him. Faten goes to the henhouse to feed the chickens. Every time she passes in front of me, she gives me the same smile. Despite the harshness of farm life and the cruelties of fate, she’s hanging on. Her eyes look deserted and her movements are graceless, but her smile has jealously kept a trace of self-conscious affection.

  “I want to take a walk,” I say to Omr. “Who knows, I may find the copper button I lost somewhere around here more than forty years ago.”

  Omr nods but forgets to release my hand. His old eyes, reddened by sandstorms and adversity, shine like dirty jewels.

  I cut through the kitchen garden, plunge into part of what remains of the orchard—a cluster of skeletal trees—looking for the trails we blazed in my childhood. The paths of yesteryear have disappeared, but the goats, perhaps less inspired but no more carefree than we were, have made new ones. I spot the hill I used to charge down in one of my periodic assaults on the general tranquillity. The cabin my father turned into his studio has fallen in; one wall has refused to abandon its post, but the rest is a mere ruin, completely rotted by the rains. I come upon the little wall behind which a band of cousins and I would plot ambushes against invisible armies. Part of the wall is cracked, its exposed insides filled with weeds. It was in this exact spot that my mother buried my stillborn puppy. My grief was so great that she wept along with me. My mother . . . a charitable soul who’s disappearing off the coast of my memory; a soul lost forever in the murmur of the ages. I sit on a large stone and remember. I was no sultan’s son, but what I see in my mind’s eye is a prince, his arms spread like a bird’s wings, flying over the misery of the world like a prayer over a battlefield, like a song that breaks the silence of those who can’t take it anymore.

  Now the sun breaks in on my thoughts. I rise to my feet and climb the hill, which is topped by a few shaggy trees. I scramble up the slope until I’m standing on the crest; in the time of the happy wars, this place was my watchtower. When I stood here in those days, I could see so far that with a little bit of concentration, I could glimpse the edge of the world. Today, there’s a hideous great wall, built to further who knows what pernicious design, thrusting up incongruously into what was my sky when I was a child, a thing so obscene that the dogs prefer lifting their legs on brambles to pissing at its foot.

  “Sharon’s reading the Torah backward,” a voice says, addressing my back.

  An old man wrapped in faded but clean robes is standing behind me. He’s got a hoary mane and a dour expression, and he leans on a cudgel as he eyes the great rampart blocking the horizon. I think of Moses staring at the Golden Calf.

  “The Jew wanders because he can’t stand walls,” he says, without paying any attention to me. “It’s not by chance that Jews have built a wall for the express purpose of moaning in front of it. Sharon’s reading the Torah backward. He thinks he’s protecting Israel from its enemies, but all he’s really doing is enclosing it in another ghetto, less terrifying, of course, but equally unjust. . . .”

  He turns to me at last. “Forgive me for disturbing you. I saw you coming up the path, and I took you for an old friend who’s no longer with us, a man I miss. You have his silhouette, his way of walking, and—now that I see you close-up—some of his features. Would you perhaps be Amin, the son of Redwan the painter?”

  “I would indeed.”

  “I was sure of it. It’s amazing how much you resemble him. For a moment, I took you for his ghost.”

  He holds out a gnarled hand. “My name is Shlomi Hirsh, but the Arabs call me ‘Zeev the Hermit.’ There was some old-time ascetic by that name. I live in the hut up there, beyond the orange trees. Once upon a time, I worked as a wholesaler for your patriarch. After he lost his lands, I reinvented myself as a charlatan. Everyone knows I don’t have any more power than the chickens I sacrifice, but no one seems to care. People still come to me and order up miracles I have no hope of performing. I promise better days for a few miserable shekels; since that’s not exactly enough to make my fortune, none of my clients holds it against me if my prophecies miss their mark.”

  I shake his hand. He says, “Are you sure I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Not anymore,” I assure him.

  “Very good. Not too many people come up this way, not these days. Because of the Wall. It’s really hideous, the Wall, isn’t it? How can people build such monstrosities?”

  “Its hideousness isn’t just a question of architecture.”

  “Of course not, but, frankly, they should have been able to do better than this. A wall? What’s it supposed to mean? The Jew is born as free as the wind, as indomitable as the Judean desert. Why did he mark the boundaries of his homeland so carelessly that it was nearly taken from him? Because for a long time he believed that the Promised Land is, first and foremost, the land where there’s no wall to keep him from seeing farther than his cries can carry.”

  “And the cries of the others? What does he do about those?”

  The old man bows his head, picks up a bit of earth, and crumbles it between his fingers. “‘What to me is the mul
titude of your sacrifices?’ says the Lord. ‘I have had enough of burnt offerings . . .’ ”

  “Isaiah 1:11,” I say.

  The old fellow gives me an admiring look. “Bravo,” he says.

  “‘How the faithful city has become a harlot, she that was full of justice!’ ” I recite. “‘Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.’”

  “‘O my people, your leaders mislead you, and confuse the course of your paths.’”

  “‘. . . the land is burned, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares his brother. They snatch on the right, but are still hungry, and they devour on the left, but are not satisfied; each devours his neighbor’s flesh.’”

  “‘When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride.’”

  “So all Sharon has to do is behave himself, amen!”

  We both burst out laughing.

  “You astonish me,” he declares. “Where did you learn all those verses from Isaiah?”

  “Every Jew in Palestine is a bit of an Arab, and no Arab in Israel can deny that he’s a little Jewish.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. So why so much hate between relatives?”

  “It’s because we haven’t learned much from the prophets and hardly anything about the elementary rules of life.”

  He nods his head sadly. “Then what’s to be done?” he asks.

  “First of all, give God back his freedom. He’s been hostage to our bigotries too long.”

  A car is heading in our direction from the farm, trailing a long cloud of dust.

  “That’s surely for you,” the old man announces. “People who come to pick me up ride only donkeys.”

  I offer him my hand, bid him farewell, and walk down the hillside to the trail to meet the car.

  * * *

  There’s a crowd in the patriarch’s house. Aunt Najet is there in person; she was at her daughter’s in Tubas, but she came back at once as soon as she heard of my return to the family home. She’s ninety now, but she hasn’t slowed down a bit. She’s always been solid on her feet, with flashing eyes and precise gestures. As the patriarch’s youngest wife and only widow, she’s the mother of all of us. When my real mother was about to scold me, all I had to do was cry out Aunt Najet’s name and I’d be spared. Her tears run down onto my shirt. Cousins, uncles, nephews, nieces, and other relatives patiently wait their turn to embrace me. No one resents me for having gone far away and stayed there a long time. They’re all happy to see me again, to have me to themselves, even if only long enough for a hug; they all forgive me for having ignored them for years and years, for having preferred gleaming buildings to dusty hills, broad avenues to goat paths, glitz and flash to the enduring, simple things of life. Surrounded by all these people who love me, and realizing that I have nothing but a smile to share with them, I measure how impoverished I’ve become. When I turned my back on these tormented, stifled lands, I thought I was breaking away for good. I didn’t want to be like my family, to be subjected to the same misery and nourished by the same stoicism. I remember always trotting behind my father as he forged ahead, carrying his canvas like a shield and brandishing his paintbrush like a lance, determined to pursue his unicorn through a land where all the legends are depressing. Every time an art merchant shook his head, he erased the two of us. It was horrible. My father never gave up; he was convinced that, sooner or later, the wished-for miracle was going to occur. His failures infuriated me, and his perseverance gave me strength. And it was because I never wanted my fate to depend on a commonplace nod of the head that I renounced my grandfather’s orchards, my childhood games, even my mother—that seemed the only way to make an epic destiny for myself. I was clearly unqualified for any other kind. . . .

  Wissam has slaughtered three sheep to provide us with a meshwi worthy of the good old days. The reunions are all very touching; after awhile, I can hardly stand. Our whole family history comes back to me at a gallop, as magnificent as a troop of mounted warriors on parade. I’m introduced to frightened kids, new in-laws, future relatives. Some neighbors show up, as well as old acquaintances and a few friends of my father, including a couple of aging rascals. The feast is still going strong at the break of dawn.

  On the fourth day, the patriarch’s house returns to its habitual serenity. Faten sees to the chores. Aunt Najet and Uncle Omr pass their days on the patio, watching the mosquitoes dancing above the kitchen garden. A telephone call refocuses Wissam, who asks our permission to return to Jenin. He puts some things in a pack and then embraces the old folks and his sister Faten. Before leaving us, he tells me how lucky he feels to have met me “in time.” I don’t grasp what “in time” means, but I’m uneasy as I watch him depart. Nevertheless, I don’t regret this sojourn among my family. Their warmth consoles me; their generosity reassures me. I divide my days between the farm, where I keep the eldest of the tribe and Hajja Najet company, and the hill, where I meet old Zeev and listen to his hilarious stories about the credulity of the simple folk who are his clients.

  Zeev’s a fascinating character, a bit crazy, but wise, a kind of outcast saint who prefers to take things as they come, undifferentiated and at random, the way a person might take the next train, the idea being that every new discovery is enriching, even for one whose adventures tend to turn out badly. If it were up to him, he’d gladly trade his Mosaic rod for a witch’s broom and amuse himself with casting spells as therapeutic as the miracles he promises to the wretches who come to beg his mercy, mistaking his destitution for abstinence and his marginalization for asceticism. I learn a lot about other people as well as myself in his company. His sense of humor makes trials and tribulations easier to bear; his sobriety keeps reality at a distance, for all its broken promises and dashed hopes. All I have to do is listen to him, and my worries fade away. When he launches into one of his torrential theories concerning the mad rage and the empty vanities of mankind, nothing can hold him back; he carries everything before him, starting with me. “A man’s life is worth much more than any sacrifice, no matter how great,” he declares, looking me in the eye. “For the greatest, the most just, the noblest cause on earth is the right to live. . . .” I find this man delightful. He’s got the ability to resist being overwhelmed by events and the decency not to yield to the blows of misfortune. His empire is the hut he lives in, his feasts the meals he shares with people he likes, his glory a simple thought in the minds of those who will survive him.

  We talk for hours on end, sitting on a big rock on the crest of the hill, our backs turned to the Wall and our eyes stubbornly fixed on the few orchards still standing on tribal land.

  But one night, after I’ve taken my leave of him, trouble catches up with me.

  The patio is filled with women dressed in black. Faten sits to one side, her head in her hands. Her sobs smother her moans, filling the farm with evil omens. A few men are chatting near the henhouse—relatives, neighbors.

  I don’t see the old man anywhere.

  Has Uncle Omr died?

  “He’s in his room,” a cousin informs me. “Hajja Najet is with him. He took the news very hard.”

  “What news?”

  “Wissam. He died in action today. He filled his car with explosives and drove into an Israeli checkpoint.”

  The soldiers invade the orchard at daybreak. They arrive in machines covered with wire netting and surround the patriarch’s house. Soon a tank transporter brings in a bulldozer. The commanding officer asks to see the eldest of the tribe. Since Omr’s not well, I represent him. The officer informs me that as a consequence of the suicide operation carried out by Wissam Jaafari against an army checkpoint and in accordance with the instructions he’s received from his superiors, we have half an hour to evacuate the dwelling so that he can proceed to destroy it.

  “What do you mean?” I protest. “You’re going to destroy the house?”

  “Sir, you have twenty-nine minute
s.”

  “It’s out of the question. We’re not going to let you destroy our house. What’s the meaning of this? The people who live here, where do you expect them to go? There are two old people here, both of them well past ninety, trying to do the best they can in the few days remaining to them. You don’t have the right. This is the patriarch’s house, the most important center of the whole tribe. You have to leave here. At once.”

  “Twenty-eight minutes, sir.”

  “We’re staying inside. We’re not going to budge.”

  “That’s not my problem,” the officer says. “My bulldozer’s blind. Once it starts, it keeps going to the end. You’ve been warned.”

  “Come on,” Faten says, pulling my arm. “These people have no more heart than their machines do. Let’s salvage what we can and get out.”