X

Day after day as the storm blew the sand, Ahmad Khalil squatted against the cold damp stone wall, his face half-buried in his arms, impassively watching the clouds of dust from the street blow through the crack under the door.

66 Allah had disappointed him. His prayer had not been granted for Abdul Aziz had suddenly become much worse. Prolonged high fever had weakened him so badly that he could not stand or walk unassisted. Only with difficulty could he sit upright. He suffered from violent bouts of coughing and often he spit up blood. Ahmad Khalil did not believe that anyone - even a doctor - could help him now. He sagged against the wall, listless, sad and depressed.

Meanwhile his aunt, Halimah was busy cooking a pot full of lentils and rice. Rashid and Khalifa huddled close together near the fire, coarse burlap flour sacks stamped with Hebrew letters drawn tightly around their bare shoulders for warmth. They rubbed their numbed fingers together and then held both hands, blue with cold, over the flames.

Rashid kept begging his mother for titbits and when she demanded that he be patient because the meal was not yet ready, he began to cry.

But Halimah was glad to see that four-year-old Khalifa was weaned at last. She had very little milk now, never enough to satisfy him and he constantly moaned and cried from hunger.

Gently her son, Rashid with infinite patience for a child only six, coaxed him near and held out the fingers of his right hand, greasy with lentils, until Khalifa eagerly licked them clean. Khalifa stared at his plate with big hungry eyes.

Rashid scooped up 67 more lentils in a piece of bread and put it into his mouth. The food tasted good and satisfying. He chewed it and swallowed it. Then he begged his cousin for more. He never asked Halimah for her breast again.

Khalifa had rarely done anything but sit in the same place every day from morning to night. The other village children did not tease or torment him. They merely ignored him and ran past him on the street as if he were not there.

Only Rashid liked to keep him company and for the first time, he taught him how to play.

Ahmad Khalil was startled out of his apathy when he heard Abdul Aziz calling out to him in a faint voice scarcely louder than a whisper. He was stabbed with a sharp pain, seeing him lying helplessly on his mat too weak to rise, a bluish-black pallor on his sallow face. Each day his eyes seemed to grow larger in their hollow sockets and there was a glitter in their soft dark-brown as if all that remained of his active life was concentrated there. Trembling, Ahmad Khalil went to him. Abdul Aziz reached for his knife which he always kept with him even now that he was bedridden. He held it up in the light for his cousin to admire. The razor-sharp steel blade gleamed in the semi-darkness. The black ivory handle and the richly inlaid scabbard was covered with beautifully hand-carved Quranic inscriptions. This knife his father had brought him from Gaza as a special present for the end of Ramadan, was all he owned 68 and the envy of every boy in the village.

All the tribesmen were eager to see it. They told Yusuf Malik that the knife must have been fashioned by a master-craftsman centuries ago when all things were made by hand.

They said it must have originally come from Damascus which had long been famous for its steel weapons. It was indeed a thing of value for since machine-produced factory articles had invaded the bazaar, things of such beauty were no longer made and now rarely to be found.

With this knife, his father had ordered him to go to Negba with a group of other tribesmen to avenge the slaying of his six uncles but to his despair, Abdul Aziz was far too sick to show any enthusiasm for battle. All day he lay on his mat, nursed by his mother and trying to avoid his father’s fierce, forbidding eyes. He was the only surviving son and he knew how bitterly he had disappointed him.

He turned to Ahmad Khalil and put the weapon in his hand. ‘’Take my knife. It is yours now. It will never be of any use to me. Promise me to guard it carefully and never go anywhere without it. Inshallah it will be your protection against all your enemies. Promise to keep it with you for the remainder of your life so that you might remember me after I am gone. . . . . ‘’.

Ahmad Khalil clasped his feeble bony hand, held it against his face and kissed it. “I promise”

69