The Almond Tree

by Michelle Cohen Corasanti

  ‘We need to stock up,’ she said, without looking back at me. ‘The goat, chicken and vegetables we have won’t be enough, especially if we’re stuck up there.’

  I realised war really was coming.

  The next morning, I went down to the square to wait for the Israeli employers, but not one of them showed. So I sat in the tea house with the other men and listened to broadcasts from Egypt.

  ‘Go back to where you came from. You don’t stand a chance,’ said an Arab voice in accented Hebrew on the radio. I couldn’t suppress my smile. This whole nightmare could soon be over and Baba released if the Arabs won.

  We devoured the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The first-page headline read Arabs Threaten to Push Us to the Sea. The weight I’d carried around for the last seven years suddenly lightened with hope.

  ***

  On May the 16th, 1967, when Egypt expelled the United Nations Emergency Forces from the Sinai, we danced the dabkeh in the village square, in front of the tea house. The Mukhtar, twirling a string of beads, led me and the other men who linked arms while we stomped, kicked and jumped to the lively tempo. With each stomp, we emphasised our connection to the land.

  An explosion – flames and smoke – blew through the square like a sudden wind of fire. I was blown backwards and hit my head on the corner of a table. Hot tea splashed into my eyes and burned my skin. Glasses shattered all around me. Abu Hassan fell on top of me and others were on top of him. The screaming was primal. I felt the back of my head. There wasn’t any blood.

  ‘Abdul Karim Alwali was hit.’

  I pushed my way from under the other men, jumped to my feet and looked. Nothing was left of him but blood, chunks of flesh and fragments of bone. His brother Ziad, who had been on one side of him, was on the ground. There were cords of red flesh, like pieces of raw meat, attached to his forearms where his hands had been seconds before. Shrapnel was buried in his face through bullet-sized holes. His left eye was swollen shut and his screams were gut-wrenching.

  The Mukhtar’s pick-up truck ripped down the road and screeched to a halt in front of us. Villagers lifted Ziad into the back. His mother ran to the truck, took one look at her son, screamed and burst into tears. She climbed into the back next to him and the Mukhtar took off. Some of the children came from their houses with plastic containers and began to gather Abdul Karim’s flesh.

  Abbas was stuck in the tent. It was hard for him to come down the hill and impossible for him to run. There was no reason for him to see this, and I was grateful he was spared. I wondered what Rafi, Zoher and Motie were doing.

  ***

  On May the 22nd, I was in the tea house when Egypt announced it was closing the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying Israeli flags. We thrust our fists in the air and paraded around the village square chanting, ‘In blood, in spirit, we will liberate Palestine.’ Other villagers joined in as we made our way through the village.

  ***

  On June the 5th at 7:45am the civil defence sirens sounded. My spirits soared. I raced down to the damaged tea house. We chanted while we pulsed the V for victory in the air. Tears welled up in my eyes. Palestine would return to Arab hands.

  ‘Israeli bombers crossed into Egyptian airspace,’ the voice of the Arabs reported from Cairo. ‘Egyptian aircraft fire shot down three-quarters of the attacking Israeli jets.’

  Transfixed by the radio, I drank cup after cup of coffee.

  ‘The Egyptian air force launched a counter-attack against Israel. Israeli forces penetrated Sinai, but Egyptian troops engaged the enemy and have taken the offensive.’ We pounded our fists on the tables. The Arabs were winning. Baba could be released. Victory was in our hands.

  ‘Throughout Cairo, the citizens are celebrating. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian citizens have taken to the streets, chanting “Down with Israel! We will win the war!”’ The radio delivered more good news. ‘We have shot down eight enemy planes.’ I prayed for survivors so that there could be a prisoner exchange.

  ‘Our aeroplanes and missiles are at this moment shelling all Israel’s towns and villages. We will avenge the dignity we lost in 1948.’ I felt like my luck was finally changing. I went to share the good news with my family.

  ***

  The sky filled with the noise of an approaching helicopter. It hovered over our village. Then a deafening explosion shook the earth. The helicopter had fired a rocket into the mosque. I stood frozen. The muezzin had called the villagers to prayer minutes before. I ran for the mosque.

  Bodies littered the ground, bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Hands stuck out from the rubble. Shrapnel-laden bits of arms, legs, torsos and heads were splattered throughout the square. I spotted Um Tariq face down on the ground, quiet and motionless, while blood oozed out from under her skull into the dirt around her. Small bits of brain matter clung to her black hair. Her four children were pulling at her robe, screaming for her to get up. Why were they firing into unarmed villages?

  Panicked villagers were screaming and running. They pushed and bumped into each other. The sound of the names of missing loved ones being called by terrified family members floated up. Thick smoke billowed, obstructing my vision and making my eyes water. With my head down, I dug through the rubble until my hands bled, and then I dug some more. Maybe there were people buried alive. Others dug nearby. The sky darkened. I could no longer see. I had to go back to my family. I found Mama and Nadia huddled together crying.

  ‘The Israelis must pay for this,’ Abbas told Fadi. He was so angry he shook.

  All night Mama, Abbas, Nadia, Fadi, Hani and I clung to each other. We knew that any one of us could die at any minute.

  Desperate to hear encouraging news, I went down to the tea house. By 11am, the radio announced that Jordanian forces had begun firing long-range artillery towards Israeli suburbs near Tel Aviv. Within an hour, the radio reported that Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi fighter jets were slicing into Israeli airspace.

  ‘The Zionist barracks in Palestine are about to be destroyed,’ Egyptian radio declared.

  Explosions and the welcome sound of fighter jets graced the air. Our Arab brothers were on their way.

  ‘The Syrian Air Force has begun to bomb Israeli cities and destroy Israeli positions,’ Damascus Radio announced.

  ‘We’re today living the holiest hours of our life; united with all the other armies of the Arab nation, we’re fighting a war of heroism and honour against our common enemy,’ Prime Minister Juna said on the radio. ‘We have waited years for this battle to erase the stain of the past. Take up your weapons and take back your country stolen by the Jews.’

  Suddenly I heard gunfire spraying outside the tea house. We ran out. Israeli soldiers were everywhere. A few barefoot Jordanian solders had entered with primitive guns. An Israeli tank fired a missile. The Jordanian soldiers ran in circles, their uniforms and flesh aflame. They dropped to the ground, rolling in the dirt to try to put out the fire, but the flames devoured them. Thirteen charred Jordanian corpses lay in the village square, their arms and legs in unnatural positions, their flesh, muscles and tissue burned off. All that was left of them was charred bones.

  That night none of us could sleep. We listened to the explosions of mortars and rockets in the distance. After a few hours of shelling it was quiet again. Then, a mortar exploded near our tent and blazed the sky like lightning. Another mortar exploded close to us.

  ‘Get out of the tent!’ Mama screamed.

  The back side of our tent was on fire. Pushing and shoving, my siblings fled into the night. We had no cover. Black smoke billowed. Mama’s face bled. Blood was splattered across Nadia’s face. Abbas held his left arm. Hani cried. I ran my hands over my face and they filled with warm blood. The shrapnel had sliced through the tent into our skin.

  We gathered under the almond tree and once again watched as fire destroyed what little we had. The flames that shot from the tent illuminated Mama’s anguished face. Helicopters above us drowned out my thoughts.

  We slept in
the open air. In the middle of the night, another explosion lit up the sky. Planes fired missiles into our village. Flames shot up from homes. I dreamed that Professor Sharon called me to the board to solve a mathematical equation and I couldn’t see the numbers. He grinned and the Israelis laughed and taunted me. In the distance the mortars and rockets continued to explode.

  In the morning, I awoke to the high-pitched whistle of yet another missile. Nadia comforted Hani as he cried. I heard shots and screams and ran down the hill.

  People wandered about dazed and crying. Everywhere, rubble smouldered. The smell of burned human flesh was overpowering. The road was covered in reddish brown where Palestinian blood had been spilled.

  The only thing that remained from the mosque was the top spire of the minaret with its onion-shaped crown.

  Chanting villagers packed the tea house.

  ‘Filistine! Filistine!’ Joining in with the others, I repeated the mantra over and over. My body swayed back and forth. Two Israeli tanks entered the village square.

  ‘Go to Jordan or we’ll kill you! You don’t belong here!’ the Israeli soldiers called from the first tank’s loudspeaker. ‘This time we’ll leave no villagers alive!’ The tanks started firing at the villagers. We scrambled through the back door. I ran up the road to the almond tree.

  Mama was cooking a pot of rice over a small fire near Shahida. I decided not to tell her what the soldiers had told us. If they forced us to cross over the border, we would deal with it as it came. We had so little left, it wouldn’t take long to pack it up.

  ‘I have to hear news.’ Abbas pulled himself over the ground. ‘Help me down there.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous.’ He’d never be able to get himself out of harm’s way, and there was nothing but harm in the village. I’d build him his own radio. I opened the plastic container I kept under the almond tree.

  Separating the telephone wires, I wrapped one end around a branch, the second around a paperclip inserted into a piece of cardboard and the third around a piece of metal washer pipe, which I stuck into the ground. I threaded the end of a fourth wire through an empty toilet-paper tube and connected both ends of the wire to a paper clip.

  I connected the earphone wire to the first paper clip by heating up the copper with a lighter, letting it cool and slipping it under the clip. I twisted a piece of wire into a V and mounted the dull end onto the paper clip. I pressed the pointed end into the copper, and connected the other earphone wire to the other paper clip. With the earphones on, I slowly moved the tip of the twisted wire across the surface of the copper until I heard Arabic. Abbas listened to the news all night.

  ***

  At 6:30pm on June the 10th, Israeli radio informed us that the war was over. The United Nations had imposed a ceasefire. The Israelis had destroyed the Egyptian Air Force before it even took off on the first day. They had captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the Old City with its holy sites. Villagers cried and hugged one another. I put my head on the table and hid my eyes. The Arab radio stations had all lied.

  ‘It started at 7:10 in the morning,’ the Israeli radio station Kol HaShalom reported. ‘Two hundred of our planes flew into Egypt so low that not even one of Egypt’s eighty-two radar sites detected them. Our pilots were so practised they were able to fly in complete radio silence.’

  I put my hands over my ears, but I could still hear.

  ‘We knew in advance about our Egyptian targets: the location of each Egyptian jet, together with the name and even the voice of the pilot. The Egyptians concentrated their planes by type: MiGs, Ilyushins, Topolors, each to its own base, which allowed us to prioritise our targets.

  ‘The Egyptian jets were parked on open-air aprons. Almost all of their planes were on the ground, their pilots eating breakfast. The conditions for the attack could not have been better. Visibility was excellent. The wind-chill factor was close to zero. The Egyptian pilots didn’t have time to reach their planes.’

  It was so unfair.

  ‘Not only did we destroy all of the Egyptian planes, we also destroyed their runways with Durandal bombs, which left craters five metres wide and one point six metres deep. The Egyptian planes were inextricably trapped, easy prey for the thirty-millimetre cannons and heat-seeking rockets that next raked them. By 8am our time, twenty-five sorties had been carried out. Four airfields in Sinai and two in Egypt had been knocked out. The main communication cable linking Egyptian forces with headquarters had been severed. In less than an hour, our air force destroyed 204 planes. Not only were our tanks, artillery and aircraft superior to those of the enemy; we knew how to use them more effectively.’

  Israel decided to assimilate only East Jerusalem and the surrounding area, while it kept the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as zones of military occupation to leave open the option of one day returning them in exchange for peace.

  Israel’s territory grew by a factor of three, including about one million additional Palestinians placed under Israel’s direct control. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Israel had showed the Arabs that it was able and willing to initiate strategic strikes that could change the regional balance. Now Israel had a bargaining chip. Land for peace. The war was over.

  CHAPTER 28

  Fadi and I worked at the slaughterhouse all week to afford the materials for a new tent. Once it was completed, we all gathered inside to eat almonds and rice.

  ‘Ichmad Hamid. Come outside,’ a voice boomed through a megaphone. My family froze in place. The soldiers always called the villagers out before they blew up a house, but I’d never heard of them calling us by name. Whenever they hunted down someone specific, they always came at night, so they could take him when he was asleep. This must have something to do with Professor Sharon. What if Professor Sharon had told them to arrest me? I couldn’t wait inside for them to come up and possibly harm my family, so I began to stand up. Mama grabbed my shoulders.

  ‘No, please Ichmad, don’t go,’ she whispered in my ear, pulling me towards her.

  Fadi, Nadia and Hani were like pillars of salt. Fadi held a folded piece of pita suspended over his plate. Abbas cursed louder than he probably realised, since he had earphones in and was listening to the news. Since I had built him the radio, he was always listening to it. Nadia hugged Hani.

  ‘Ichmad Hamid, come outside!’

  I prised myself from Mama’s embrace. She covered her mouth with her hands. ‘Ichmad!’ she whispered with a desperation I had never heard. I turned to look at her. Her arms extended towards me.

  I raised my hand. ‘It’ll be alright.’ I stepped out and closed the flap.

  ‘Are you Ichmad Hamid?’ The soldier used the megaphone even though I was standing right in front of him. ‘Identify yourself.’

  ‘Yes, I’m Ichmad Hamid.’

  The soldier lifted the megaphone and spoke in the direction of the village this time. ‘We have Ichmad Hamid. Bring him up.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’ I asked in Hebrew.

  ‘Someone wants to see you.’

  I could make out the shape of a civilian being escorted up the hill by soldiers. Among the green fatigues, metal helmets and M16s, I met Rafi’s bloodshot eyes and went to him.

  ‘Zoher’s gone,’ Rafi said. ‘He was killed in the Sinai when his tank stalled.’

  I shook my head. What was Rafi doing in my village with the military? Was he in with Professor Sharon on his scheme to expel me? After all the help I had given him. I had thought of him as a friend, as preposterous as it sounded now. Maybe Professor Sharon had told Rafi about Baba.

  ‘His ashes were scattered at sea.’

  Was Rafi here to blame me? Why else would Rafi travel five hours to enter a Palestinian village with a military escort?

  I lowered my head. Did Rafi know about Baba?

  ‘He figured out what happened. He went to the Dean. You have been exonerated.’

  I looked up at him. Tears
spilt from his eyes.

  ‘Now, Professor Sharon’s fate is in your hands.’

  A million thoughts raced through my head. It was hard to believe Zoher had defended me against his own, and Rafi had driven all the way to my village to get me. It suddenly occurred to me, I’d never see Zoher again. I felt a void inside.

  ‘Where’s your house?’ Rafi asked.

  I pointed to the tent.

  He seemed surprised. ‘Trying to get in touch with your Bedouin roots?’

  ‘No permit.’

  The distant roar of helicopters grew louder. I shuddered and forced myself not to run back to my family to protect them.

  Rafi turned to a nearby soldier, incredulous. ‘Isn’t the war over?’

  ‘It’s never over,’ he said.

  Rafi motioned with his head towards the bottom of the hill. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Ichmad!’ Mama called as Abbas limped out from the tent behind her.

  ‘I’m going back to the university,’ I yelled, so that she’d hear my voice over the helicopter.

  She was holding a jug in her hand. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Can it wait?’

  Abbas’ face lost its colour. He took the earphones out of his ears. ‘You’re leaving with them?’

  Rafi was at the bottom of the hill. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  He looked up at the helicopter.

  Mama threw the jug to the ground. It shattered. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ She crossed her arms over her chest.

  I took a couple of steps towards her. ‘I have to.’

  ‘Don’t do this to me,’ she pleaded, on the verge of tears.

  I knew this was an unwinnable argument. ‘I’m doing this for us.’

  ‘They’re going to kill you.’

  ‘Ichmad,’ Rafi called. ‘We need to go.’