they see us now?” he asked, putting a couple of berries in his mouth.
She looked around, worried. “I am taking a chance. Maybe I should leave. The last thing I need is their gossip.”
She started to walk away, and he reached out to stop her. “Please don’t go. Sooner or later they’ll have to know.”
His confidence seemed to surprise her. “That day will never come,” she teased him and swung away, her round white earrings reflecting the morning sun.
“That day will come,” he insisted, taking and eating a few more berries.
For a moment both seemed to be held in suspension.
“You’ve heard about the amputation,” he said, leaning against the trunk of an apple tree.
“It’s terrible,” she said, nodding.
He pulled out the compass and showed it to her. “Here’s what I found that day,” he said, looking grim.
“What is it?”
“A compass. It must’ve fallen out of their pockets. I just knew they were spies. Basim agrees with me. He also thinks that for all practical purposes the war between us and the Jews has already started.”
She took the compass from him, pouting. “I wish I were a man.”
Yousif looked at her, surprised. “Why?”
“Then I’d be able to fight. Girls can’t do much except hope and pray. I wouldn’t like that.”
A plane swished over their heads. Apparently it had taken off from nearby Lydda airport only a few minutes earlier, for it was still ascending. He could read the airline markings on it. Yousif watched it streak against the blue sky; Salwa kept her eyes glued to the ground. The mood grew somber.
“I want to find a way to help,” Yousif told her.
“There’s only one way.”
He scrutinized her face. “Fighting?”
“What else?”
“It’s not that simple. Oh, Salwa, there’s so much we don’t know.”
When she did not respond, he looked at her. She seemed unmoved.
“Right now it’s like watching a film after the fifth reel,” he explained.
“It’s clear to me,” she said. “All I know is that I’m standing on land my father inherited from his father and he from his father. This berry tree is our berry tree. That house is our house. Everything we own we either inherited or bought and paid for. And if the Zionists want some strangers from Europe to settle here, they’ll have to fight us first.”
“And if they succeed? If they take it all away?”
“We’ll never rest until we get everything back. The thing to do is to make sure nothing falls into their hands. That’s what my father says. And I agree with him.”
They heard her mother calling her from inside the house.
Salwa handed him back the compass and started to leave. Then she turned around and took a good hard look at him. “Relax,” she said. “Our cause is as clear as this glaring sun.”
Yousif glanced at his two young pupils under the fig tree. Finding them busy with their work, he took several steps behind Salwa. “When will I see you again?” he asked, hating to see her go.
“Next Thursday.”
“Not before?”
She smiled and moved away from him. “We’ll see,” she answered, walking in earnest.
As she departed, his heart sank. He held her tall figure in his eyes until she stopped at the top of the stairs, waved her hand, and went inside. Momentarily he returned to the task at hand, finding pleasure in the presence of her two younger brothers.
“Will you bring me a bird next time?” twelve-year-old Akram asked at the end of the morning session. “I did well, didn’t I?”
Yousif smiled and made a mental note to stop at Salman’s shop and buy cannabis for his birds. Aside from going to the movies, his favorite hobby was buying, catching, and trading birds. But his collection of more than two hundred birds was costing him all his allowance. He really needed to sell some of them, but his heart would not let him. He loved them so much that he had a room in both houses designated just for them. Before the end of the summer he would probably catch more. How was he going to cope with that many?
“You deserve the best,” Yousif finally told Akram. “Next time I come I’ll bring you my red canary.”
“What about me?” said eleven-year-old Zuhair. “I did just as well.”
“You know I won’t forget you,” Yousif told him, rising and keeping his eyes on Salwa’s room. “How about a blue cage?”
“YEEEES,” Zuhair responded, shutting the book with a bang.
“That’s not fair,” Akram whimpered. “I’m older and I want the cage.”
Yousif laughed and ruffled their hair, wishing their sister would favor him with one more look.
By the middle of August, most of the vacationers were leaving Ardallah to prepare their children for school. Those from outside Palestine were returning home without a worry in their head. The Palestinians themselves were going away less certain about the future of their country. Even the people of Ardallah had been transformed during the summer months. The future looked worrisome.
Like many of his generation, Yousif was developing a new passion—politics. Day after day he would read newspapers, listen to the radio, and participate in discussions with his father and their night visitors.
One night they had many important guests, including the Appellate Court Judge Hamdi Azzam and his wife. Fouad Jubran and Fareed Afifi and their wives were frequent visitors, but the respectable judge came over only two or three times a year, and each occasion took on a special significance. Yousif’s parents became a bit more formal, and their hospitality a bit more lavish. Instead of sitting on the balcony, as they normally would on summer evenings, tonight they sat in the living room. Yasmin and Fatima were busy in the kitchen sending out dish after dish of maza. While serving the guests drinks and dishes of cheeses and pickles and hummus and, later on, coffee and sweets, Yousif listened to every word they said.
Of particular interest to the men and women that night was what Britain was going to do in Palestine. Her mandate was about to end. For a while, it was generally believed that Britain would choose to stay. Some Arabs were of two minds about that prospect. They wanted Britain to leave, but they did not want the Zionists to replace her.
“Frankly,” Dr. Afifi said, “I prefer Britain’s staying to an open war with the Zionists.”
“I agree,” Fouad Jubran said, lighting a cigarette. “It’s the lesser of two evils. What do you think, Judge?”
“Hard to tell,” the judge answered,
