save our country. They are what I call the losing generation. On the other hand, I see the students in my class who have gone through hell. Each has lost a father or a brother or a sister. You should see the pain in the stories they tell. We’re the unlucky generation. We were ambushed and expelled before we had a chance to grow up. In my opinion, we’re your hope, the main force you can count on. We’re the future generation that will lead us to victory.”
“And to al-awda to our homeland.”
“Inshallah.”
Basim seemed impressed. “Quite a visionary, I must admit.”
“If that’s the organization you have in mind, I’m ready.”
“Welcome,” Basim said, shaking his hand. “I’ll have more faith in you when you find Salwa.”
Yousif smiled. “I have a new strategy for finding her. So far I’ve been looking for her in refugee camps on every Friday, my day off from school. But apparently not many Christians live there. I guess because they had a little more money on them when they were kicked out.”
Basim nodded. “And in exile they could afford to rent an apartment. As we did. Or build a shack.”
“Now I’m going to start looking for her on Sundays in churches. She’s not a churchgoer but somebody might know where she is.”
“Good idea,” Basim said, wrapping the cord of his nergileh around its neck and getting ready to call it a night. “Have you gotten used to the idea of not having school on Friday?”
“Not really. But it’s the Muslims’ Sunday. And I respect that. Say, Basim, next time you go to Beirut or Damascus will you please bring me some books to read? I’m starving for information.”
“What kind of books? Romantic comedies?” Basim asked, winking.
“You know exactly what I need. Arab history. Jewish history. Biographies. Anything on colonialism or whatever the West calls their evil empires.”
The garcon appeared and Basim paid the bill and tipped him.
“How about The Arab Awakening? Would you like that?”
“I didn’t know there was an awakening.”
Basim put an arm around Yousif’s shoulder and squeezed. “It’s okay to be skeptical, but not cynical. You hear?”
“I’ll try.”
To Yousif’s surprise, the first organizational meeting was held at Ustaz Sa’adeh’s apartment on the third floor of a building just off the business district, facing the post office and the telephone and telegraph buildings. It was small but considerably more comfortable than his and Basim’s dingy and crammed dwelling. Two or three families, according to Ustaz Sa’adeh, were squeezed in each apartment, and children were constantly running up and down the stairway. Their noise, coupled with the sound of traffic on the street below, made it rather safe for the conspirators to debate the issues with relative ease.
Yousif was immensely surprised to discover that his first cousin and his principal were so close. He had not been aware that the two were in cahoots for months. When he confronted them with his disbelief, they laughed and told him that they had kept him in the dark on purpose. They wanted to impress upon him that the essential quality in revolutionary work was secrecy.
“Never trust anyone,” Basim told him.
“Not even your shadow,” Ustaz Sa’adeh concurred.
Soon the attendees began to arrive. The first was Hanna Azar, who had worked at Haifa’s seaport. Basim embraced him, led him inside and made the proper introductions. Yousif judged him to be around forty, although his hair was almost completely gray. He was nervous, sitting first on a chair with his back to the door, then getting up to look out the window, then sitting back down, this time facing the door. His handshake with Ustaz Sa’adeh, however, was long and friendly. The link between the two, obviously, was Basim, who was also the link between these two and the tall balding young man who arrived ten minutes later. This was Ali Bakri, the youngest of the guests—and only six or seven years older than Yousif. Ali still had that college exuberance even though he had graduated from law school several years earlier. He sat on the edge of the seat with his hands clasped between his legs, ready to immerse himself in whatever activity they were about to undertake. Yousif liked him instantly.
Within minutes, the room grew conspicuously quiet.
“Let’s get started,” Hanna said to Basim. “We’re all here, are we not?”
Basim shook his head and took out a pack of cigarettes and passed it around. “One more is coming,” he said, placing an ashtray between him and Hanna.
“Who might that be?” Hanna asked, leaning on his elbow.
“You’ll see,” Basim said, smiling. “While waiting, let me tell you the latest political joke I’ve heard. A Bedouin soldier in Jerusalem was ordered by his lieutenant to take down the numbers off the cars involved in traffic violations. Guess what he did? He went out and literally pulled down the tags off those cars until he had a sack full.”
Some laughed, some rolled their eyes, the rest shook their heads.
“Hard to believe,” Ali said, still laughing.
“It’s absolutely true,” Basim told him, chuckling.
“May God help us,” Hanna said, his fingers tapping the armrest.
“These are our liberators no less,” Basim added, walking toward the window to look out.
“What do you expect from a camel rider who had never been out of the desert?” Ustaz Sa’adeh asked,
Still standing by the window, his hands locked together behind his back, Basim turned and spoke to Ali. “Haven’t you heard one lately? You always have a political joke tucked away.”
“As a matter of fact I have,” Ali said. Then facing the others he began: “Have you heard about the Lebanese who asked a Palestinian refugee to describe what happens in war?”
They all shook their heads and waited.
“Well,” Ali continued, “the Palestinian refugee could see that this particular Lebanese was naive, so he told him: ‘It’s like this. You take a gun and I take a gun. You stand there and I stand here. You aim at me and I aim at you. Then we both shoot.’ The Lebanese was shocked. ‘You mean we shoot for real?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ the Palestinian told him. ‘Mon Dieu,’ the Lebanese shrieked in his affected French, ‘to hell with that game.’”
Amidst the laughter they heard another knock on the door. This time Yousif was seated closer to the door than anyone else, so he was the one to open it. To his surprise, Raja Ballout was standing outside. Basim rushed to greet the mournful-looking, emaciated and famous journalist from Jaffa whose popular editorials often stung readers and authorities alike. His buttoned-up gray jacket with his left hand thrust in his pocket made him look sickly and in pain. The tightness of his lips and the sour expression on his face more than hinted at his derision of the world.
Yousif knew a lot about Raja for reasons other than his journalistic skills. It was said that Raja had suffered brutally at the
