They called him that because of his dog, whom he loved more than his own soul.
His proper name was Abdullah.
So his father had called him, when he came out of slavery to freedom.
His father had been a slave. One of the effendis of Jaffa had bought his father in the Egyptian market. For most of his days, his father had served his owner and dwelled with him. When he went free, he settled in one of the villages and became a shepherd.
When Abdullah was weaned, his mother died, and when he was able to go into the field after the flock, his father died. And the son took his father’s place. He was then five years old.
As was the father, so was his son Abdullah black, his face as shiny as the luster of a polished shoe. His forehead was high and wide and the hair of his head small, curly, and hard as iron wire. The cornea of his eye was black, and the white of it was the color of beeswax. His nose was broad and flat and his nostrils large and wide, his lips hard and thick, and through them shone two rows of small white teeth.
Thus was Abdullah’s appearance when he was five years old and herded the sheep of the Fellahin in the little village, and so was his appearance at sixty – when I made his acquaintance – and he herded the sheep of the Bedouin in the broad fields of Wadi-il-hur. Only his stature had increased slightly and on his chin grew two or three small and hard white whiskers.
_____
The village where Abdullah was a shepherd was very small: a few dozen houses on rocky ground near the seashore, on the way from Jaffa to Caesarea.
And in that village – Abdullah was the only black person. And this unique situation was his misfortune. The men would mock him, make fun of him. “Black,” “demon,” they’d call him. Often, they would also beat him. But they loved him. The women pitied him, but hated him: the pregnant ones would close their eyes when he walked along the street towards them. And the little ones would bully him, throw stones at him. He was the constant object of their childish malice… and not out of hatred, far from it, for them there was no great difference between black Abdullah and his gaunt little dog, who happened to be white.
Yes, white was the little shepherd’s dog, and for this the black man loved him.
Once, when he was grazing his sheep on the beach, him being about twelve, he stumbled upon a small dog, trembling from cold and hunger. One of the patrolmen must have lost him. The shepherd fell on his find as if it were a treasure. His happiness and joy knew no bounds on that day. The misfortune of his black color had caused him much grief. And from within his misfortune, within his loneliness, he felt as if he lacked something, but he did not know what. And when they beat him, when he was hungry, when they bullied him, he didn’t cry, didn’t yell, and did not complain, but wedged himself into some corner and communed with the deep pain in his soul. And this pain did not arise from the blows, nor from the hunger or the ridicule, but from his loneliness, – something was missing… but he didn’t know what it was that he missed.
Now that he had found his dog – he was no longer lonesome, and he loved his dog and kept it, and took pride in it, because it was white. All of his concern, all his spare hours, all the life of his soul he dedicated to his dog.
When he was given bread and a little rice fried in oil, he would give the rice to his dog and he would eat the bread. And when he had nothing but dry bread, he would soak half of it in water, to soften it for his dog. The dog was very small, its hairs were curly, and its entire appearance was unusual. The village boys bullied it just as they did its master and threw stones at it. And the little shepherd, who turned his back when beaten, as if that was what he was created for, and did not lose heart, and did not defend himself, would be aroused in all his strength to defend his dog… Sometimes he would cover it with his body to receive the boys’ blows. And sometimes he would yell at them: “But he’s white!”
More than Abdullah loved his dog – he loved its whiteness…
_____
And then once, when the dog was ill and would not taste the bread his owner gave him, Abdullah stole some sheep’s milk and gave it to his dog… He had never dared to do such a thing for his own sake.
And the thing became known to his master.
The brutes beat the poor dog to death.
That night Abdullah left the village of his birth, he was then about fifteen years old, and went to the Bedouins of Wadi-il-hur and stayed there for the rest of his days.
He had no dog anymore, but his name Abu-il-kalb stayed with him all the days of his life.
When Abdullah grew up, his blackness no longer caused him torment and bodily suffering as before. Among the Bedouins there were those black like him, and the little ones no longer dared touch him. But if he was delivered from suffering of the body, then from suffering of the soul he was not delivered in the slightest.
He suffered in the innermost of his soul. He wanted to be like all those around him. While still small, he had secretly nurtured, in one of the corners of his melancholy soul, the hope that he might become white… And this hope he hid in his heart with the utmost jealousy. Sometimes he would wash his face for hours on end with briny sea water and rub it with beach sand. And when his face was burning and aching from the abrasion, he would approach the village with his heart pounding. And as he heard the little ones’ voices: “black” – he knew his hope had not come…
When he grew up and understood that his hope was in vain, he still did not despair completely. His soul’s desire took a new form: He hoped to buy a white wife and beget white sons. And in this hope he lived all his days until he grew old… Because he could not afford to buy a wife, even a black one: In all his days, he had never seen in his hand even a single coin. As wages for his labor he would receive bread to eat and a cloth gown to wear. He was not given money. When Jews began to pass through the area, he did earn some actual money once or twice, but the money was little, and old age had already taken hold of him…
_____
Once, when a shipload of lumber arrived for me and I went to the tents of the Bedouin who dwelled on the border of Hadera and Wadi-il-hur to seek a watchman, the old shepherd acceded to my request to spend the night near the wood. And as we sat together on the beach, and the sea raged and the waves crashed, and bursts of cold water fell on us, the old watchman told me the tale of the days of his life.
And after he had finished what he had to say and the two of us were silent for a few moments, he roused again, as if he had remembered the main point, and said:
“But the dog was white…”
▄