Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  Mohammed came over to Wädi and Rami. He was proud to see that they had grown into such fine men.

  Yusuf had managed to get Omar Salem to put his son at the head of one of his companies, a fabric merchant’s. Rami had managed to double their profits in just two years.

  “Us old men bore you youngsters, always talking about politics,” Mohammed said.

  “Everything is politics, Father, war and peace are two sides of the same politics,” Wädi said, looking at his father with affection.

  It was late when the meal broke up. It was cold, as always in Jerusalem in February. And February 1946 was no exception.

  Wädi went to see his former teachers from St. George’s School. They received him with affection, all the more when they found out that he had fought on their side in the war. He asked them to give him some advice about how to get work as a teacher. One of the teachers, strict Mr. Brown, promised to give him a letter of recommendation to pass on to a Franciscan friar who had opened a school to teach Arab children whose families were not able to pay fees.

  “The friar is a good man,” Mr. Brown said. “He’s a dreamer, he keeps his school running with donations alone. It’s not odd to see him in the streets of the Old City with his aluminum cup, asking for help with the school’s upkeep.”

  Mohammed did not want to disillusion his son when he showed him with great satisfaction the letter of recommendation from Mr. Brown. He had heard of the mad friar who had turned an old warehouse by the Damascus Gate into a school. The warehouse belonged to Omar Salem, who had given it over free of charge to the insistent friar who wanted to teach those who had no money to go to school. Omar Salem did not like the idea of a Christian taking charge of the education of Arab children, but the friar convinced him that the object of his plan was not to convert the children but to help them learn to read and write; and when he was convinced of this, Omar agreed to help, and provided his warehouse free of charge.

  “You see, you didn’t want to ask for help from Omar Salem, and now fate has brought you to him,” Mohammed said to his son.

  The sun had barely risen when Wädi turned up at the friar’s school and he immediately knew that this was the only place he wanted to work.

  He found Brother Agustín sweeping the floor. The friar was no more than forty years old, and he was tall, thin, and strong. After the usual greetings, Wädi gave him the letter from Mr. Brown, which the friar read at once.

  “So, you want to work . . . I would like to tell you to stay, but you see that this is not a school, just a place where people are taught to read and write. Omar Salem gave us the blackboard and a local merchant was kind enough to give us two carpets so that the children don’t have to sit on the floor. We barely have enough from donations to be able to buy exercise books and pencils, so it would be hard for me to pay you what a teacher deserves to earn.”

  “I don’t need much,” Wädi replied.

  “My son, I barely have enough to keep this building together. I would like to have a good teacher like you, but I cannot rely on your goodwill. You are a young man, you will have a wife and children to keep one of these days, and I promise that with what I give you, you will not even have enough to eat.”

  Wädi was not willing to give in, and he convinced the friar to let him come and work for a trial period.

  “Alright, stay, you can lend me a hand and then we’ll see.”

  The children started to come as the morning progressed. Some came at one time, others came at another. They arrived, and Brother Agustín, patiently, started to teach them to read. Some of them stayed for an hour, others for more time. Sometimes they heard a mother calling for her son and a child would stand up and run out without saying goodbye.

  Wädi sat next to a group of children who were six or seven years old and who were looking in admiration at how the older children were writing. They were the youngest and Brother Agustín scarcely paid them any attention, giving them pieces of paper and pencils and telling them to draw whatever they wanted while he turned his efforts to the older children.

  After a while Wädi had managed to teach these children a couple of letters, and they seemed happy to learn them.

  At mid-morning, Brother Agustín gave the children a piece of pita with some cheese.

  It was time to rest, to stretch their legs, and to fill their stomachs with this modest repast.

  “There’s a baker nearby, a good man, who every now and then gives me pita for the children. We were lucky today. The cheese is made by nuns. It’s good for the children to have something in their stomachs.”

  By two o’clock not a single child remained. Brother Agustín set himself to tidying the mess that the little ones had left. Wädi helped him, doing what he was told. When they had finished, the friar looked at him gratefully.

  “May I come back tomorrow?” Wädi said, desperate for the answer to be a positive one.

  “If only I could pay you . . . But I cannot take advantage of your goodwill. You are young . . .”

  “I could try to get funds for the school, I don’t think it would take much to keep it going. Is it only Arab children who come?

  “Well, some Christian children do, but they are the minority, and not a single Jew. The only thing I desire is for the least fortunate to have the chance to learn to read and write. I don’t claim to do any more, as I cannot. I open the door every morning, and sometimes twenty children come and sometimes thirty, and sometimes not even five . . . It all depends on what they have to do, what they are allowed to do by their families. It’s not easy to convince the parents in families who have nothing to give their children time off to come to the school. If they let them come it’s only because it doesn’t cost them anything.”

  “Why do you do this?” Wädi asked with interest.

  “I was born in a miserable little village, lost on the Castilian plain in Spain. My father was a shepherd and he could read and write only with great difficulty, and my mother couldn’t even do that. She understood that it was only by study that I could escape from this tiny world, which was all that our miserable existence had reduced itself to. My mother dreamed, dreamed out loud. When my brother and I were little my mother told us fantastic stories. I don’t know how she managed, but she convinced Don Fulgencio, the village priest, to recommend me to be admitted to a seminary in Toledo. I was no more than nine years old when my parents said goodbye to me at the door of our modest little house and let the priest take me away with him to the seminary. I did not stop crying and I refused to go with him. He had to let go of my hand after I bit him. My mother was scared that Don Fulgencio would turn back and refuse to take me to the seminary. So she said that she would come with us, even if she had to come back on foot, and that is what she did, in spite of my father’s protests. At the seminary door she reproved me, but kindly, when I refused to leave her arms. ‘What I am doing for you is something you will have to do for other children in the future. You will be a man of God and there is no better way of honoring our Lord than by teaching those who need to learn. Promise me you will do this,’ she said. I promised without knowing very well what I was promising. I understood this many years later when I was at her deathbed and she reminded me of my promise. ‘You are a friar now, and God will remember you for having chosen to live in poverty, but he will never forgive you if you do not help other people to learn what you have learned. Find people who do not know and teach them. All my life I have felt a deep pain at not being able to read books, not being able to understand writing. It is a pain that hurts my chest and makes me cry. I have fallen sick from this, but you will teach others; yes, you will teach others.’”

  So the friar was carrying out a promise he had made his mother, a simple woman with an insatiable desire for knowledge.

  When he got back home that afternoon, Wädi felt happier than he had for many years, those years when his only aim had been to kill so as not to be ki
lled.

  Salma listened to her son attentively. She didn’t dare tell him that helping a Christian priest was not what she would call a good job. She wanted the best for her son. She and Mohammed had not stopped making plans for when he would return from the war. But Wädi had no ambition. He acted with rectitude and in accordance with his conscience, and this seemed enough for him.

  “Maybe you could find a job in one of the schools in Deir Yassin. It’s the village where your Aunt Aya lives, and there are two schools there: one for boys and the other for girls. Maybe Yusuf can recommend you. The village is getting ever more prosperous, and it’s nearby, just to the east of Jerusalem. It wouldn’t take you long to go and come back.”

  “Yes, I am sure that Yusuf could recommend me, but I prefer this job that I have found for myself. The children I met today need someone to help them learn. The friar cannot do it alone.”

  Salma did not insist, but Mohammed made his disapproval clear later on.

  “You can give the friar a hand, but you have to find a real job. The friars live off charity, but you are not a Christian friar and you need to work. You also need to think about marrying and setting up your own home.”

  “I would like the warehouse to become, in time, a real school. I would like the children not to have to sit on the floor . . . Maybe Omar Salem could do more than just provide the warehouse, and his friends have enough money to help those who have nothing. And these children need someone to pay attention to them and teach them. It’s only boys at the moment, although there is more than enough space to make a separate hall for girls. Brother Agustín keeps the school running by asking for charity. I will do the same. I will ask all the people I know to make a donation. The money will go to a good cause.”

  “Your attitude is very praiseworthy, but you also need to think about yourself,” Mohammed insisted.

  “Father, I promise that I will not be a burden on you. When I finish in the school for the day I will work wherever I need to and make myself a salary.”

  “That’s not what I am asking of you. Allah has always been generous with us. This house and this farm will be yours. My father lived here, and my grandfather and my great-grandfather . . . The Ziads have lived on this land for generations and they should still do so. You will get married and bring your wife here, your children will be born here, and your children’s children. Our duty is to help our neighbors and ourselves before them.”

  However, Wädi had decided to continue on his own path, even though he was upset that his father didn’t agree with the choice he had made.

  “I need little to live, and if I find a woman to marry then she should be capable of renouncing superfluous things. You know what, Father? We are lucky because, without being rich, we have all that we need to live with dignity.”

  “Thanks to our having jobs.” Mohammed was not pleased with the way this conversation was going.

  “I will bring in a salary and I will teach these children. I promise you that you will be proud of me.”

  Wädi kept his promise. He went to the warehouse every morning before eight o’clock and stayed there until the middle of the day, helping Brother Agustín with these lively little boys who wanted to learn so much.

  “You’re a good teacher and the children like you.”

  “I like to teach, I like to see them learn.”

  “And you are patient, which is a virtue that is not always my companion. Sometimes, when they are not paying attention, one of these boys will earn himself a slap, which is not good, but I don’t know how to avoid getting angry,” the friar confessed.

  “Well, we’ve all been slapped by our teachers in our time, little boys can be impossible.”

  But Brother Agustín saw that Wädi never raised his hand and never even got cross when some of the children, instead of paying attention, started to play games in class. Wädi had the gift of being able to teach.

  It didn’t take him long to find paid work as well. Brother Agustín told him about a printing press run by a British man who needed an employee who could write English as well as Arabic, and all the better if he knew some Hebrew as well.

  Mr. Moore was a citizen of Jerusalem. The son of an Anglican priest, whose family had moved to Jerusalem fifty years earlier. Mr. Moore’s father was a famous expert on sacred texts and as soon as he set foot in Jerusalem, accompanied by his pregnant wife, he knew that he would never return to the United Kingdom. His son Fred had been born there, but was educated as if he were in the heart of London. It was not until he reached the age of sixteen that Alfred Moore had learned Arabic and a little Hebrew.

  His parents died of old age and they were buried in Jerusalem, convinced that on the Day of Judgment God would distinguish them from among all his children.

  Wädi was surprised that a Catholic friar should be such good friends with an Anglican like Moore, but it became more and more clear to him that either he knew nothing about friars, which might well be the case, or else Brother Agustín was a very special friar, which he thought might be closer to the truth. In any case, on Brother Agustín’s recommendation, Fred Moore contracted him to work in his print shop. He started to work at around one o’clock, and it was night by the time he finished. Every Friday Wädi went to the mosque to give thanks to Allah for his good luck. He was paid a fair wage in the print shop, and Mr. Moore did not mind him coming at midday as long as he did all the work he was given. In the middle of the afternoon, Elizabeth, Alfred Moore’s wife, would make him a cup of tea, which he didn’t refuse. The Moores didn’t have children. “If God has not wanted to bless us with them, then he surely has his reasons,” they said. However, Mrs. Moore helped Brother Agustín as often as she could by making cakes for him to share with the children. Mr. Moore was very discreet and said nothing that didn’t concern the print shop and how it was working, but his wife was less rigid in this respect. One afternoon, when she gave him a package of exercise books to take to the school, Wädi said that he would take them across to the friar before heading home. Mrs. Moore’s reply surprised him.

  “It’s better if you take them tomorrow, who knows where Brother Agustín could be?”

  “I suppose he’ll be in the Franciscan monastery,” Wädi said, surprised.

  “No, he won’t be there . . . I don’t think that Brother Agustín gets on well with the Franciscans . . .”

  “Well, where will I be able to find him?”

  Elizabeth shrugged as she wondered whether or not to answer.

  “I don’t know . . . He sleeps where he can . . . He has sometimes slept in the school itself. He . . . Well, he’s not a friar like the rest of them, I don’t know if he’ll even carry on being one . . . Hasn’t he told you about this?”

  Wädi’s surprised expression showed her that he knew nothing about the friar.

  “My husband will be angry with me . . . Anyway, we don’t know much about Brother Agustín, all we know is that he had problems in Spain and had to leave the convent, apparently he went to the Holy Land to expiate his sins, whatever they were. Some people say he was expelled from the order . . .”

  “But he wears a Franciscan habit,” Wädi said.

  “He wears an old and patched habit. But there are a number of penitents who don’t wear habits either,” Elizabeth explained.

  “But someone will know about him . . .”

  “No, I assure you that no one knows anything about Brother Agustín. He appeared in Jerusalem a few years ago, and ever since then has lived on charity.”

  “But . . . Well, you know him . . .”

  “He saved my husband’s life. One night, my husband was working late in the print shop. As he was walking home he realized that someone was following him. He tried to walk faster, but the man caught up with him and told him to give him all that he had on him. He didn’t have anything of value, so his attacker got angry and started to hit him. Brother Agustín appea
red suddenly and confronted the ruffian and knocked him down with a single blow. Then he helped my husband get up. He had been lying in the street, confused by all the blows he had been given. He took him home. You can imagine how I felt to see him in such a state. The friar helped me clean his wounds, my husband moaned in pain. We owe him a debt. So whatever his sins are, we will always think of him as a good man.”

  It was a relief to Mohammed and Salma that their son had found a good job, and in their minds all that was left was for him to find a suitable wife.

  “Life has been generous to us,” Salma said to Mohammed one night as they waited for their son to come home.

  “Yes, we have been lucky. Wädi seems to have found his path in life, and Naima seems to be happy with Târeq. It is difficult for me to imagine that our little girl is now a mother. I still think of her as a child when I look at her.”

  Mohammed took Salma’s hand in his own and looked at her with affection. He blamed himself for not having been able to love her as she deserved to be loved. He was sure that Salma knew of his love for Marinna, but he had never heard a single word of reproach come from her lips. No, he did not regret having married her. His mother had been right to choose her as a bride and in spite of the absence of any deeper feelings, he had loved her in his way and had been happy with her.

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds and she smiled. It was a gaze that spoke of his having also been a good husband to her, although she would have liked him to have loved her with the same intensity that he felt for Marinna. Neither of them said anything. There was no need.

  “We should start to look for a wife for Wädi,” Salma suggested to her husband.