Wearing well-pressed pants and short-sleeved sport shirts, Yousif and his friends, Amin and Isaac, were out for their ritual Sunday afternoon stroll. Yousif was Christian, Amin Muslim, Isaac Jewish. They were born within a few blocks of each other. They had gone through elementary and secondary school together. Together they had switched from short to long pants, learned to appreciate girls, enjoyed catching birds, suffered over acne, and, because they were all Semites, wondered who among them would have the biggest nose. They were so often together that the whole town began to accept them as inseparable.
Yousif, considered by many to be the leader of the three, was tall and had a thick black head of hair. He was first in his class, many considered him handsome, and no one doubted that he was relatively rich, being the only son of the most popular doctor in town. Amin was short and compact, with a perfect set of gleaming white teeth and skin that was a shade darker than the other two. He was the oldest of nine children and the poorest of the three companions: for his father was a stonecutter and all his family lived in a one-room house in the oldest district in town. Isaac was of medium height, with high cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and a shy, winsome smile. His father was a merchant who sold fabrics, mostly to the villagers who came to shop in the “big” city, in a store he had inherited from his father.
None of the three boys wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Yousif wanted to be a lawyer; Amin a doctor; Isaac a musician. Such were the dreams that fluttered in their hearts as they walked together, like birds awaiting the full development of their wings to fly.
That afternoon these three were enjoying a favorite Ardallah pastime: tourist watching. Ardallah was a town thirty miles northwest of Jerusalem and fifteen miles east of Jaffa. Tourists made the population of this summer resort swell from ten thousand in the off season to nearly double that during the summer, and to perhaps twenty-two thousand over the weekends. Ardallah swarmed with automobiles and pedestrians. There were occasional camels and mules, which, however archaic, were still viable means for moving goods. Pushcart vendors weaved from one sidewalk to another, undaunted by the heavy traffic or by the angry, sometimes rhythmic honking from drivers who were not above coupling their blasts with a few choice words or obscene gestures. The many little shops—and the few big ones—did a thriving business. Shoppers coming out of the Muslim and Jewish stores had their arms laden with packages. But to the Christian shopkeepers of this predominantly Christian town, Sunday was truly a day of rest.
On that particular Sunday, the three boys nudged each other in anticipation as they saw a group of nine tourists descend from the Jerusalem-Ardallah bus, which stopped at the saha, the main clearing at the entrance of town.
Normally such an arrival would have drawn little or no attention, for the sidewalks were crowded with strangers and the outdoor cafe across the street was jammed with locals and chic tourists luxuriating under red, yellow, and blue umbrellas sparkling in the bright Mediterranean sun. But the newcomers who had just stepped off the shining yellow bus were noticeable for their conspicuous good looks and identical khaki clothes. A couple of the men had cameras strapped to their shoulders; a third had what seemed like a flask of water strapped around his neck. The attractive young women wore shorts that displayed legs and thighs, clashing sharply with Muslim women, who hid their faces behind black veils. For although the great majority of the Arab women in town did wear modern western dresses, most were on the conservative side, and quite a few still wore the traditional ankle-length and heavily embroidered native costumes. The most stylish, even daring, of the Arab women wore short sleeves, or knee-length skirts, or low-cut dresses. Any spirited female dressing in this fashion invited tongue wagging and faced the possibility of a fight with her husband or father or brothers. Such was the society into which these nine tourists entered. Their bronze-deep tans and the generous exposure of female flesh drew some lecherous looks and good-natured whistles. Even the four tall handsome men accompanying them, who carried duffle bags on their backs, wore shorts, and had their sleeves rolled up on their brown muscular arms. The group became self-conscious and laughed, and the spectators laughed with them. So did Yousif and his two friends.
“I think they’re Jewish,” Yousif said.
“Who cares?” Amin glowed. “Seeing them here is better than taking a half-hour ride to Jaffa to watch them swimming on the beach.”
“They’re Jews, I tell you,” Yousif insisted, as if Isaac were not there.
“They could be English,” Amin told him. “We have a lot of them around.”
“I don’t think so,” Yousif argued. “Only the Jews speak Arabic with that guttural sound. I heard one of them say khabibi instead of habibi.” He knew that the mispronunciation of the h was the shibboleth that most quickly set Arab and Jew apart.
Isaac laughed. “The Jews I know don’t have that sound. I say habibi just as well as you do.”
Yousif looked surprised. “I meant Jews who were not born and raised here, the recent immigrants—”
“I know what you mean,” Isaac said, his eyes following the scantily clad arrivals. “But I think it’s Yiddish.”
“You think? Don’t you know?”
“I speak Hebrew—but the few words I caught sounded Yiddish to me.”
The three boys trailed the exotic group down a sidewalk crowded not only with pedestrians but with men playing dominos or backgammon in front of shops. Passing magazine stands and tables laden with leather and brass goods, the boys followed the strangers all the way from the Sha’b Pharmacy right up to Karawan Travel Agency, the only travel agency in town. Arm in arm, the men and women looked like close friends.
Yousif envied them. He bit his lip as he saw one of them hug the waist of the girl walking next to him. He wished he could put his arm around Salwa.
Three blocks from the bus stop, two of the tourists stopped and bought multi-colored ice cream cones from a pushcart at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in town.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Amin asked, rubbing his hands.
“What are you thinking?” Yousif asked.
“That we’re not trailing just boyfriends and girlfriends on a Sunday stroll?”
Isaac looked at him and scratched his chin. “Who are we trailing then?”
“Lovers,” Amin grinned. “Lovers intent on serious business.”
“You’re crazy,” Isaac told him, disinterested.
“You’ll see,” Amin said. “Before long they’re going to be on top of each other. And I’m going to be there watching. Yousif, what do you think?”
All his life Yousif had heard that Jewish girls were promiscuous, and these women seemed even more loving than most. Were the stories he had always heard about them true? Was it true that the girls of Tel Aviv had seduced many an Arab man? Supposedly they would romance them for a weekend and leave them dry.
Bearing this in mind, Yousif found it entirely possible that these attractive and healthy-looking men and women were lovers looking for a place to camp and make love, that they had come to consummate their passion in the seclusion of Ardallah’s wooded hills.
“It’s hard to say what they are,” Yousif answered finally.
“Look what they’re carrying,” Amin replied with conviction. “What do you think they have in those
