That summer there was a terrible famine in the south of the country. From the start of winter and up until its end not a single drop of water fell. The windows of heaven closed and did not open even a single time. In vain did the holy hajjis pray, in vain did the dervishes call out and the face of the earth cried. The face of the heavens was hard as iron, fine as crystal, and contained no sign of rain. Occasionally clouds would rise up from the north and west and wind would blow strongly too – and there was hope in the heart of man. But the clouds only reached halfway across the sky and stopped, and the wind changed its course. People can see the rain from afar, see the drops raining down in the north – but not reaching them… And again the sky is cleared and the wind is as if it never was. A deep moan bursts from the heart of man, and mourning and with their heads covered, the people return to their tents and hide themselves so as not so see the tragedy in its entirety. And sometimes a hidden curse would follow after the light clouds…
And that summer, the sons of the south did not open their granaries and did not sow their fields. Like unwanted objects the plows lie cast aside behind the tents, their faces full of shame and humiliation. And sometimes the tent dwellers would cast a glance of hatred and anger their way, as if they were to blame for the evil… And the cattle and sheep wandered about the fields with their heads bowed in sorrow, seeking pasture and not finding it. The hard earth did not bring forth any grass or herb, and sometimes the beasts would stand and chew their cuds in silence. And in their silence was a kind of bitter resentment, and the herder looked at them and his heart broke. The horses and camels still ate, but in sadness they saw how their sacks were emptying and were no longer being filled.
By the middle of winter, the wheat and barley had run out. The poor pawned all they had to their rich brethren, and those of middling means bought grain for money. The price of cereal rose to double and triple its usual rate. The money was exhausted from the vessels of the affluent, and the vessels were gone from the tents of poor, and the famine grew ever stronger all the days of winter.
And when spring came, the sons of the south dismantled their tents and took their journey.
Camp by camp they journeyed from the south to the north, the tents and all of their contents loaded on the backs of the thin camels who walk slowly, swaying listlessly. Behind them slowly walk the oxen, the cows, and the sheep, all of them thin, their bones sticking out, and their gazes are as if they are saying a prayer: beg mercy for us! Ahead of the camels walk the men, their faces angry and dulled, the hair on their heads and their beards grown out, their faces buried in the ground. And when they meet people who greet them, they hardly answer at all, they are ashamed… And behind the cattle and sheep walk the women and children: their faces wrinkled and vile, their lips dry, their eyes enduring, their gazes sickly… Such a camp is saddening to look upon, as if a terrible sign had been stuck to it reading: famine….
They do not approach the villages. The Fellahin look at them with an evil eye. Some distance from the village they pitch their tents in a temporary camp. The livestock scatter in all directions seeking pasture. The women go to the village to fetch water. The children follow after them and on the way they gather the peels of fruit and remnants of rotten vegetables and they swallow what they gather while it is still in their hands. The men stand around in a gang and talk in whispers – consulting amongst themselves. Finally, they go to the herd, select a few sheep or a calf and lead them towards the village. From there they return: one is loaded with a sack of grain, the others accompany him… in awe, as if in reverence of something holy, they empty the contents of the sack on a sheet that is spread on the ground: wheat, sorghum, and barley, all mixed together. The women begin to mill it. The men gather thistles and dry weeds and light a bonfire. Soon the cereal will become flour. They place the flour with the bran in bowls, pour water, and make dough. They knead the dough and bake pitas… And the pitas are passed from hand to hand and eaten while they are still hot…
_____
When the numbers of those leaving the south had increased, the sons of the north began to whisper together worriedly. And emissaries set out from the villages to the ministers of state in the cities to say: the sons of the south have set upon us and have devoured our pasture, drank our water, and filled the land with robbery and theft. But from the capital comes a command not to take the tithe or the verko from the tent-dwellers of the south, and to let them settle wherever they find pasture and water. And the representatives of the Fellahin returned sorely disappointed. And the Bedouins dwelled surrounding the villages. With envy did the Bedouins look at the villagers, and with hatred did the Fellahin look at the Bedouins. The hard-hearted Fellahin forgot all the good the south had borne them each year. When they went there to harvest, they would return laden with abundant goods, they, their camels and their asses. And the Bedouins felt the insult and were silent. Only their faces grew blacker and more angry day by day. At times the youth wished to raid the fields of the Fellahin: those soft-hearted donkeys would not stop them! But the elders rebuked them. The commandment of the great sheikhs was forceful: not to cause to fall to the ground a single hair of the Fellahin and not to steal anything from a donkey to a shoelace. When God had mercy on them and caused his rain to fall, they would return in peace to their homes…
_____
So too did they come to the Jewish moshavot. First, only a few and afterwards, more and more. They did not know how these “foreigners” would receive them; perhaps they would drive them away by means of “consuls”. There were indeed people among the moshavot who feared an increase in theft and sought to drive away the uninvited guests. But there were also those in whom the faces of the hungry aroused feelings of sorrow and commiseration, and there were those who suggested helping them. In the end, the sons of the moshavot and the southerners grew closer to one another: the southerners drank water of the moshavot and grazed in their fields. And the dwellers of the moshavot found among the Bedouins cheap laborers. When a fight broke out once between a Hebrew moshava and an Arab village, the Bedouins came to the farmers’ assistance and beat up the Fellahin.
Harvest time came, and then the days of the grape harvest. The hungry ones fell on the work and did it for half price, and the number of those who gathered after them was tenfold what it had been each year. To the vineyards came old people and children and gathered up the remains of grapes from under the carts and ate them, dirt and filth and all.
They took the watch in the vineyards on themselves at cheap prices. But the vine-growers were wary of giving over their vineyards to them, and especially the vineyards that were far from the moshava.
And I gave the watch over my vineyard, which was next to my home, to one of the hungry, his name was Muhammed. His face, which exuded a kind of nobility, drew my heart to him and aroused in me feelings of trust. But my watchman’s nobility deceived me, not because I did not find in him fine qualities, but because he was too noble…
_____
Muhammed was tall, swarthy, with a long and thin face, black hair, and a black beard covered his chin. His eyes were black and deep and a hint of fatigue flickered in them, of mild despair. In the morning, afternoon, and evening he would wash his hands and feet, stretch himself on the ground, and pray with great heartiness. The temporary hut he had built was very plain: four uprights with a covering of weeds and thistles overhead. In the shade of the hut Muhammed would sleep during the day or sit and look towards the distant south. He had a wife and a son, a small boy, who remained sitting there among the tents of the hungry beneath the hill of the moshava…
At night, I liked to sit with my watchman and talk of the south.
“Muhammed, do such years of famine come to you frequently?”
“To us? Certainly not!” he answered me somewhat proudly and somewhat like a man whose face had been shamed, “Our south, the blessing of Allah rests on it! During the days of the harvest, they come to us from all ends of the land: from the north, and from Egypt, and from the mountains of Hebron.”
Muhammed was silent for a moment and then added, “I am twenty-eight years old now and I have not seen such a year. They tell that when I was small, there was such an accursed year, then too did God close the gates of rain, for our many sins!”
“And why do you not leave some from the years of plenty that you may have something to eat in the famine year?”
“Leave some? The wealthy leave some and they are not hungry. And the poor, even in the years of satiety they cannot find more than will feed the souls of their household with bread.”
“And how is it that the wealthy have run out of grain this year?”
“Run out? Nothing of the kind! If the great sheikhs opened their granaries, they could feed all the sons of the south with bread and still have some to spare.”
“And why have they not opened them?”
“They open them a little at a time. They sell the grain in Gaza, and bring back sacks full of silver and gold.”
And again Muhammed was silent for a few moments, then he began to speak again, engrossed in his thoughts, “Yes, Khawaja, sometimes in the granaries there are thousands of portions of wheat and barley and all around are thousands of people hungry for bread…”
And again silence.
“Your wealthy are wicked. In a year like this, they should have opened their granaries and given bread to all the hungry ones. When a man is starving, does it stand to reason to not give him bread?”
“Wicked? Yes, they are wicked. And who are the wealthy who are good? And in your moshava is it not also like this? So it is the world over.”
Again Muhammed was silent, and then he added, “Thus Allah created the world. To the few he gave much, and to the many he did not give even a little.”
And while my watchman was immersed in such thoughts concerning the world order, he would not observe that a fox crept into the vineyard and enjoyed the fruits that belong to others. And when I spoke to him concerning the ways of vineyard watching, he would get up lazily from his place, saunter over towards the perimeter, and who knows if the thought didn’t cross his mind at that moment:
“This one too is hungry…”
“Muhammed, how do you come to have the face of a nobleman, and you are a pauper hungry for bread?” I asked my watchman on a different occasion, as we sat at night by his meagre temporary hut.
“The face of a nobleman?” Muhammed asked me in wonderment as if he didn’t understand how I could know such a thing.
“Yes, your face is delicate and your hands are soft. It can only mean you have not worked much.”
“It is true. I have not worked and I will not be able to. I have the body of a rich man and the soul of a pauper… I cannot work, neither can I exploit the others.”
And Muhammed told me in jumbled words something of his history:
He was the son of one of the wealthy and distinguished families, and all his relatives were wealthy. He too had inherited from his father rights to a broad plot of fields and herds of sheep and cattle. But his wealth dwindled away. Most of his land remained uncultivated, and the little that was cultivated – its fruits were eaten by the laborers. With the sheep and cattle too he saw no blessings: the ones that weren’t stolen, died. From his entire inheritance he found only enough bread for his small household. Neither did he have money. His relatives ridiculed him. They thought him lazy and a half-wit. And in years of famine, he was like all the other paupers of his tribe.
“And your rich relatives will not help you in a famine year? Would they let you, your wife, and your only child starve to death?”
“Perhaps they would help, if I asked….”
“So why don’t you ask?”
“I cannot, khawaja. My soul is too great.”
The half-naked Bedouin’s voice, and his facial expression while he talked, amazed me. I felt that he really did possess such great loftiness that he could not ask.
Once I was returning home from work, and as I passed through my vineyard near my house, I did not find my watchman under his temporary hut. I did not find him late in the evening either. Only at night, as I left the house, did I see his silhouette as he walked beneath the hill. The next day, too, as I passed by the vineyard, I did not find him, and it bothered me. I went to the Bedouin tents to see what the matter was with my watchman. I could see his tent from afar, its flaps slightly raised. Muhammed was seated, bent over, minding the cradle in front of him.
“Muhammed, ho, Muhammed!”
“Here I am, khawaja.”
“How can you leave my vineyard abandoned and go busy yourself in your tent?”
“My son is sick!”
The brief answer angered somewhat the boss in me. What did he mean? Was this my vineyard’s fault?
“If your son is sick, let your wife mind him. I pay you to watch the vineyard!” I said angrily as I approached the meagre tent.
Muhammed raised his head from his child’s cradle and cast me a glance full of sadness and innocence.
“Khawaja, I have not sold you my soul… You have pity for your vineyard that is not bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. And should not I spare my son, who is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh and part of my soul?”
His look and the sound of his words caused my anger to dissipate completely. The boss in me was replaced by the human.
“But it is in your soul and in the soul of your son, Muhammed. I will not forsake my vineyard. I will give it to another watchman, and where will your bread come from?”
“I know this. But I cannot…”
And again I felt that this half-naked Bedouin truly could not leave his sick child, as he could not ask for help of his wealthy kin.
I looked at the small and meagre cloth tent, full of patches upon patches, at the gaunt woman, no more than a heap of bones in a thin and translucent skin, at the jar of water, at the sack in the corner of the tent that held the flour he had bought for the price of the mejidi I had given him, and at the cradle, from which could be heard a soft and weak moaning. And I thought to myself, “And where will the additional soul come from?”
_____
I did not take another watchman. The child died the next day, and the day after that Muhammed returned to work. His face had become seemingly even longer and thinner and the look in his eyes more despairing. I gave him another mejidi, to cover the burial costs. At night I heard his disjointed singing, no more than a series of sighs, and by day I saw him lying in the shade of his temporary hut.
Some two weeks passed by. I had not spoken to my watchman. I had been busy. One morning, Muhammed came to me. I could tell from his face that his visit this time was not a usual one. Something was up.
“How are you, Muhammed?”
“Not well…”
“Why?”
“I miss the south…”
“The south?” I asked in amazement and laughed, “But there is not there now either a tree for shade nor green grass. Everything there is burnt in the heat of the blazing sun…”
Muhammed’s face conveyed an intense anguish. His eyes were shiny and he was completely changed into someone else. Something had risen up in him, some strong and animate feeling.
“Please, khawaja, don’t talk like that. There is nowhere so beautiful as the south. That is the large place of the Lord, the blessing of Allah rests there. Nothing there separates heaven from earth. The land is preserved as on the day it was created by God. The trees have not wounded it… And nothing breaks your view from looking to the end of the skies… In the air there the soul of my son hovers…”
Muhammed fell silent.
“Khawaja,” he added a few moments later, “How I would like to return now to my home!”
And his eyes looked south, looked and wandered, as if seeking for that which his soul desired.
“Isn’t it enough for you to have gone hungry all summer until now?”
He remained silent and didn’t answer me.
“Khawaja, how many more days must I watch for the money you have given me?”
I glanced in my notebook and told him: “Two more days.”
“Khawaja, in two days seek you a watchman… I shall go back.”
“Madman! You and your wife will both starve to death.”
“I cannot do otherwise, khawaja, my soul yearns to go there.”
And Muhammed looks south and from his eyes could be seen deep and intense longing.
I didn’t say anything to him. I knew that if Muhammed’s soul desired something, he could not deny it the thing. I felt that here was revealed to me longing that drives a man out of his mind.
“In two weeks time you won’t find any work here.”
“Everything is from the hands of God!”
_____
Muhammed left. I took another watchman and forgot my nobleman with his great soul. About a month passed. One evening, I sat outside enjoying the pleasant coolness that followed the heat of day. The grape harvest was over. There was nothing left in the vineyard but scant gleanings that the workers would gather on their way back from work in the winery. I looked to my vineyard and saw the figure of a Bedouin walking among the vines, and I took him for another one of the gatherers. But he did not touch the vines and came straight towards me. Several moments later, he stood before me. I looked at him and did not recognize him at first.
“A pleasant evening to you, khawaja!”
“Muhammed?”
I recognized him by his voice. And by his eyes. But his face had changed greatly. I saw before me the symbol of hunger in the shape of a man. His color was something like the color of dirt, and his hair had hardened and stood on end. His bones stuck out.
“How are you, Muhammed?”
“Not well.”
“How goes it in the south?”
“Hungry.”
“How is your wife?”
“She has gone to her relatives.”
“And you?”
He was silent.
“Muhammed, save yourself, go to your kin. You cannot work and you will not find work.”
He did not answer me a thing.
“Khawaja, may I gather the gleanings?”
“You may, Muhammed, you may…”
And so he went. I saw him from afar, gathering and swallowing hungrily. A “hungry nobleman,” I thought to myself. And for a long time his image stayed in front of me. And for a long time his strange voice rang in my ears saying: “I cannot…”
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