“Let them dream,” shouted a cab driver, gesturing and dropping ashes from his half-chewed cigar.
“If we don’t send the Zionists a message loud and clear,” Basim cried, “if they think we’re bluffing or inept, then we might as well lie down and die, because Palestine will be lost and we will be lost.”
A multitude of clenched fists were raised and a thunderous cheer shook the square. Yousif and his two friends looked at each other, recognizing each other’s fears. Because they were standing at the edge of the crowd, they were the first to notice the British soldiers arrive in two jeeps. They saw them park their vehicles and scramble out, their hands on their rifles. Amin and Isaac wanted to leave, and began to move away.
“Wait,” Yousif said.
“What do these bastards want?” Amin asked.
“I’m leaving,” Isaac answered, his voice shaking. “They’re telling the people to go home. Can’t you hear them?”
The crowd eyed the soldiers with anger and hate. The men in the street seemed to form a human wall to block their way. As the eight soldiers tried to push through, the people pushed back. Yousif stood on a nearby chair and watched. He saw a thin soldier squeeze by and run up the steps toward Basim. Basim and the soldier seemed to have an argument and then began to push and shove each other. Freeing himself from Basim’s grip, the soldier turned around and blew a whistle. Two more soldiers, their rifles in both hands, dashed up the steps and the three tried to arrest Basim. Arabs chased them up the stairs and were clutching at their feet. One soldier kicked a man and he fell back. Other men reached Basim and began to create a wall between him and the British soldiers.
Yousif became worried. He jumped in and rushed through the crowd, urging for calm. Seeing Basim struggling to defend himself, he was afraid that the soldiers might know Basim’s identity and have him arrested. He wished his cousin would try to escape.
Two shots were fired. The crowd gasped; Yousif froze. His heart fluttering, he hoped the shots were just a warning. For a second the crowd grew calm; Yousif prayed that no one was hurt. Anxious and afraid, he stood on his toes and craned his neck. Basim stood still on top of the stairs, gesturing. A wall of men separated him from the soldiers. Slowly the crowd recovered. They were urging Basim to resist.
“We’re with you, Basim!” one man shouted.
“We’re all with you!” another seconded.
Basim raised his arm, and the crowd hushed. “They want to take me to jail,” he told them. “What would you say to that?”
“Hell no, they won’t,” Yousif yelled. “Tell them we’re all with you.”
The crowd roared, “YEEESSS! We’re all with you!”
Basim looked at the police, defiant. A moment later one of the soldiers who tried to arrest Basim turned and faced the hundred or so people below.
“Clear out—all of you,” he shouted, waving his arm. “If you’ll calm down and go home there will be no trouble.”
“We won’t go until Basim tells us to leave,” Yousif shouted back. “You cannot order us around anymore.”
“Not anymore,” the crowd again roared.
Before Yousif knew it, he was being lifted up on somebody’s shoulders.
“Tell them, Yousif, tell them,” a woman cried.
“This trouble,” Yousif went on, “was started by the UN, not us. Leave us alone or we’ll turn this peaceful gathering into a demonstration against you.”
There was a dramatic pause. Yousif also wished the man who had lifted him on his shoulders would put him down. His neck was crushing Yousif’s balls. And Yousif hadn’t planned on getting involved. But someone had to support Basim and stand up for what was right.
“What should we do, Basim?” Yousif asked his cousin, as though speaking for the crowd.
Basim raised both his hands in triumph, his smile broad and his eyes fixed on Yousif. “We will choose the time and place for a confrontation. We won’t fight until we’re ready. Today let us be satisfied that we have raised our voice and that the British government has heard it. Tomorrow is another day. For now, let’s all go home and start preparing for war.”
Before he was put down, Yousif saw a group of men turn one of the jeeps upside down. The way they lifted it, swung it around, and tossed it aside, it seemed no more than a toy. Then someone doused it with lighter fluid and touched a match to it.
The sight of fire and black smoke and the smell of burning plastic and rubber made all those in the street disperse. By the time the crowd thinned out Basim had vanished and Yousif couldn’t find Amin or Isaac. What he did find broke his heart. Crushed on the street was the blue cage with the birds they had caught that afternoon—flattened in the stampede. Why hadn’t his friends picked up the cage and taken it with them? But this was no time to worry about birds. Human lives were at stake. The fate of Palestine itself was hanging in the balance.
Then, as if on cue, a drizzling rain began to fall.
By the time Yousif had run as far as the blacksmith’s shop, the jeep’s gas tank exploded. Would it be the first blast of war?
Approaching the hilltop on his way home, Yousif found his neighborhood in an uproar. Many had poured out of their houses and were standing in the streets despite the drizzle, too shocked to discuss their new dilemma. The gloom was palpable. Some kitchen windows were lit, but most of the street was wrapped up in shadow. Those gathered seemed already touched by the memory of a simple good life that was about to be snatched away from them for reasons they could not understand. Some of the women wore house slippers and their arms were folded. The men looked stung, paralyzed. Yousif greeted several people he knew. No one even nodded back.
“What was that explosion?” the wife of a mattress maker asked.
Yousif told her what he had seen.
“Was it the British soldiers who did the shooting?” asked the bosomy wife of a bus driver.
Yousif looked at her. “Who did you think?” he asked.
“I was hoping it was one of our men,” the same woman answered.
A quiet moment of understanding passed between them. Suddenly the crowd perked up, showering him with questions.
“Tell us what happened. Was anyone hurt?”
Yousif briefed them, skipping the part about himself. No one was hurt as far as he knew, he told them as they clustered around. Soon they themselves passed on the news: from the wife of the bus driver in the street to the seamstress standing at her doorway, to a widow on the balcony above, to a spinster school teacher at the window across the courtyard, to an endless chain of women at other doorways, windows, and balconies.
His father was home early, standing with his mother on the steps in front of their house, talking to some men and women from their neighborhood. Only his mother acknowledged his arrival with a nod.
“When they postponed the voting two days ago,” a neighbor said, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
Yousif
