One of the first days of the month of Shevat. From behind the Judaean Hills, as if from the netherworld, rises a red ball – a ball of fire. The sky is crystal clear and beautiful, not darkened even by a cloud as small as a man’s hand. The sky’s appearance is pale blue, and as it extends eastwards it reddens into a flame-like ruby. The air is crisp and chilly and no movement whatsoever can be felt in it. The trees are motionless, and the small leaves on the tops of the eucalyptuses are silent too.
Myself and two Arabs, the one old and the other young, went out from my yard. My house is built at the foot of a hill. We ascended the eastern side of the hill, and from its peak the entire moshava became visible to us as if on the palm of one’s hand: the red roofs, wet from yesterday’s rain, glistening in the light of the sun’s first rays. Fine, clear smoke rises over the roofs of some of them, ascending aloft to the sky in a straight column. All around lies a carpet of wildflowers, most of them blood-red, their stalks full of water from the dew. The almond orchards, visible far off, are covered with white flowers, as if snow had fallen on them and covered them completely. The olive groves of Ramla can be seen from amongst the hills and pour out into a sea of greenery…
An abundance of colors, of lights, of radiance fills the air, fills the entire universe – as if everything is laughing, as if it is speaking poetry…
“How beautiful is God’s world!” – the young Arab joyfully cried out.
“Yes, the world God made is beautiful, but people in their great inequity have corrupted it and filled it with ugliness,” the older one answered him in a soft voice.
The old man is about sixty, blind in one eye, and his name is Rashid. This is the first time I have seen him. The young man, about twenty, is a lively youth and full of motion, cheerful and happy, and his name is Muhammed. Him I already knew.
“Let the people sin as much as they may, and the world will not cease from being beautiful!” – Muhammed continued his philosophizing, and he turned to me and asked,
“Khawaja, where is more beautiful, here or there in Moskob?”
“Of course here,” I answered him. “There it is cold, snow, ice… and when the sun rises and warms the air, everything turns to mud and mire…”
“And I thought it was more beautiful there! Why then did you go back there again?”
“You colossal fool!” – The old man cried. “You’re still a boy, light as water! A man doesn’t seek a beautiful place, but a good place. Do you understand? And there you have no tithe, no soldiers, and no Ati Jabra.” – And the old man sighed deeply.
“Why is your heart so bitter?” – I asked the old man.
He sighed again and for some moments answered me not a word. Then he said in a whisper:
“Khawaja, everything is from heaven!”
“If you like, let me tell you what has befallen Rashid, that you may know his bitter heart,” said Muhammed to me.
“Most certainly, tell me and I will listen.”
And this is what Muhammed told me in brief utterances, half mockingly and half laughing, as was his way always:
Rashid was eighteen years old when the soldiers seized him and took him away and delivered him to the army. Rashid was still young and it was not yet his time to stand for military service. And he had several other claims in his favor: his father was very old, his brothers and sisters were small, and he fed and supported them all. But the village elders held a grudge against him…
While Rashid was posted to the barracks at Jaffa, the ill tidings reached him that his father was dead and all of his household were destined to starve, and his heart ached very much. Together with him in the barracks was an old military man who had committed an offense and had been sent to Acre and was now returning to his home in Gaza. Rashid poured out all the bitterness of his heart to his new acquaintance. The man was practiced and experienced, had seen much in his life and done much. The man advised him to pierce his right eye, as then he would no longer be fit for the army and would go free and could go to his home, to his elderly mother and his little brothers and sisters. Rashid liked the idea and so he did. At night, he took a sharp nail from his friend, hid in the corner, and pierced his one eye… But God had confused his thoughts. He had pierced his left eye… The next day the thing became known to the authorities. They thrashed his flesh with whips and they sent him to labor for the military in Yemen ten years instead of five…
When Rashid returned to his village two years ago, at the end of his ten years of labor in the army, he found not his mother and his brothers and sisters, nor did he find his father’s house and plot of land, for they had gone to others.
“Rashid returned from military labor just two years ago?” – I asked, astounded.
“Yes,” Rashid answered me. “Ten years I worked for the army and for two years I am here in my home.”
“How old were you when you left for the army?”
“Eighteen years old.”
“And how old are you today?”
“I am thirty or thirty-one…”
“How horrible,” I thought in my heart, and I had thought him to be sixty!
And Rashid seemed to notice and recognize my thoughts and said, “Few are my years, but many are my torments…”
With deep anguish I looked to the man who walked beside me. A broken shard. I was downfallen from the impressions of what I had heard and the face I saw.
“And what will you do now?”
“When I returned to the village, the elders took pity on me and returned to me the plot that had been my father’s. I could no longer plow and sow, so I mortgaged the land to Ati Jabra. I took money from him and bought a camel that I now work with. The moshava provides me enough work: transporting manure, grapes, goods from Jaffa, praise be to Allah…”
“How much did you borrow from Ati Jabra?”
“Two hundred francs.”
“And when will you pay off your debt?”
“I will never pay it off. He will take the land, this is his way always. I am not the first and not the last…”
“How much interest do you pay him?”
“Two francs a week.”
“A week?! How much do you earn?”
“Who knows? I am not learned in maths… Ten years I worked for the Sultan, and now I will work my whole life for Ati Jabra. Everything is from God, khawaja…”
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