XXVII

Several months later, Abd ar-Raziq was accepted as a primary student by al-Azhar. For Ahmad Khalil, this was one of the happiest days of his life. He was almost as excited as Abd ar-Raziq. In the weeks that followed, he spent all his spare time eagerly making preparations for the journey. Abd ar-Rahman and Inamullah gave him a pile of old clothes their own children had long since outgrown and discarded and both Asma and Maymuna set to work, washing, mending and meticulously patching them for Abd ar-Raziq to take with him. He did not feel ashamed to wear such shabby clothes because most of the other boys who had been selected as scholarship pupils were just as poor as he. Inamullah’s thirteen-year-old son, Karim, who had also earned a scholarship, had promised to travel with him and assume responsibility for his care and protection.

The night before he was to go, Abd ar-Raziq 253 was far too excited to sleep.

Every few moments he tugged at Ahmad Khalil’s arm, asking: “Is it time to go now”?

Inamullah and his son arrived just after sunrise. Carrying their bundles and provisions, the two boys walked with their fathers to the bus terminal. Ahmad Khalil embraced Abd ar-Raziq and held him tight.

“Now work hard, learn all you can and inshallah you will grow up to be a great scholar”. The child only pulled away.

He was so excited, he couldn’t wait to leave. As the two boys took their seats on the bus, tightly clutching their tickets in hand, it suddenly struck Ahmad Khalil how terribly lonely he would be without Abd ar-Raziq who intended to continue his studies at al-Azhar for many years to come and could afford to return home only once a year for the month of Ramadan. With a pang of sadness mixed with joy and pride, Ahmad Khalil stood with his friend watching the bus until it disappeared down the road.

XXVIII

After Abd ar-Raziq had gone to Cairo, Ismail grew increasingly restless.

Ahmad Khalil tried to persuade him to join the army and devote his life to a military career. Above all else, he hoped that he could be inspired to fight beside Rashid’s sons with the guerilla bands for the liberation of 204 Palestine.

From their early childhood, Rashid had told his sons again and again the story of Palestine; all he could remember about what had happened there when he was a boy; about the village of Iraq al-Manshiya and the war which had driven them into exile.

Somehow he had secured a map of Palestine so large, it almost covered the entire wall which listed not only important cities and towns but all the Arab villages, even the smallest and most obscure, which had existed there before their destruction by the Jews. He had underlined Iraq al-Manshiya with a red pencil and even though he was illiterate, he could readily locate all the places on the map which most concerned him. None of Rashid’s three sons had been able to make any progress with their studies in school. They went only because Ahmad Khalil insisted on it. Although they had memorized long passages from Quran and Hadith, they remained almost entirely illiterate. They grew up without knowledge of any skill, trade or profession. They were interested only in fighting. Rashid had related to them in graphic detail how he had fought with the fedayeen during his youth and his exploits against the Jewish colony of Nahal Midbar. Now that the fedayeen were far stronger, more numerous and highly organized than the generation before them, Rashid’s sons all clamoured to join their ranks. But their enthusiasm to fight for the liberation of Palestine was dampened temporarily when they learned that 255 most of the fedayeen movements were tainted with the ideals of Marx, socialism and communism. However illiterate they may be, they could not be deceived by Communist slogans or propaganda. Their Turkestani neighbours who had fled from persecution in Russia and China had taught them with gruesome tales all they needed to know about Communism.

Although too illiterate to profit by the newspapers, they eagerly listened to all the news bulletins and commentaries about the Palestinians over the radio in the nearby coffeehouse.

Finally the day came when they bid their father and mother farewell and accompanied by two youths belonging to al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, left for a training camp outside Amman to join that branch of the fedayeen where Ikhwan influence prevailed.

Ahmad Khalil was deeply moved to see how intense was their attachment to Palestine after more than a generation, this country they had never seen.

He was sad because he had not been able to accomplish what Rashid had done.

“Oh Ismail! Every day the Jews rob more of our land and kill and torture more of our people! Already they have seized our holy places in Jerusalem and the mosque of Abraham al-Khalil in Hebron, want to turn them into synagogues and forbid Muslims to worship there. If you do not join Rashid’s sons to fight them, who knows that 256 tomorrow they will not send their planes from Tel-Aviv to attack Mecca and Medina?

Ismail shrugged his shoulders. “Father, will you never stop talking about that? If we Arabs would only face facts as they are instead of as you would wish them to be, we would seek our gain by coming to terms with them.”

“Then Ismail, what are you going to do?”

“I am going to Jeddah to find work. What is there to do here? This is such a gloomy and depressing place, it has only the peace of the grave.”

“Ismail, you are no longer a child. You must decide for yourself what is best.”

“Rafiq is coming with me. We shall find work together…”

Since they had joined the Ikhwan group of the Fedayeen, Rashid received letters from his sons only when their comrades had the leisure to write for them. Ahmad Khalil read the letters aloud to his cousin. These letters were of great interest to him and he insisted that Rashid not carelessly let them be lost, destroyed or thrown away but carefully keep them in another box on the shelf beside those from his father.

One day Ahmad Khalil was surprised to see their photograph on the front page of the city’s daily newspaper which told of their successful return from a raid deep inside enemy territory. When Ahmad Khalil showed his 257 cousin the picture, Rashid’s face grew radiant with pride at the sight of the three husky youths in full battle attire, squatting around a machine-gun, their kaffiyehs drawn so tightly across their dark faces that only their fierce black eyes could be seen.

Then suddenly a letter from Ismail arrived. He and Rafiq had found work in an American-owned factory bottling Coca-Cola.

Ahmad Khalil was astonished by the sum of money enclosed in the envelope. Never before had he seen so much money at once, let alone possess it. Obviously Ismail and Rafiq earned more in a month than he did in a year. With the money, he bought extra food, delighted Asma with bright new dresses and a pair of stout leather sandals for himself. The remainder he decided to send to Abd ar-Raziq so that he could buy the books he needed. Enthusiastically he wrote to his father how Ismail and Rafiq had found work in the factory and how Abd ar-Raziq was learning to read and write in braille. His father’s letters eased the pain of loneliness somewhat but most of all he counted the days until Ramadan when Abd ar-Raziq would return for the holidays, rejoicing in his happiness at the university but he could hardly bear to see him leave, knowing that it would be another year before he would see him again.

After Abd ar-Raziq had gone, Ahmad Khalil felt such acute loneliness that even the presence of his wife, his cousin and friends could not compensate.

0 Mahmud Wahab

258 The house seemed so empty without any children. Ahmad Khalil tried to forget this by working harder than ever in the garden, finding joy in watching the flowers bloom and the date-palm trees flourish. More time dragged past and the newspapers were filled with articles about the third and most recent Arab-Israeli war and its consequences. Ahmad Khalil, imagining the fate of his father, trapped in Gaza under enemy occupation, could not sleep at night. His worries grew more and more acute as the weeks passed and no letters from his father came. Each day he would anxiously wait for the postman as he made his rounds of the neighbourhood and feel the pang of bitter disappointment when there was no mail for him. Ever since he had lived here in Medina for more than twenty-five years, Mahmud Wahab never neglected to write to him at least once or twice each month. Ahmad Khalil had carefully preserved every one of his father’s letters, tying them in bundles with pieces of string and storing them in a box on a high shelf. After four months of silence, three letters, delayed for many weeks by strict censorship, reached him. They painted a picture of Gaza, transformed into a gigantic concentration camp where the constant threat of week-long curfews, midnight searches, destruction of house after house suspected of sheltering *fedayeen* with powerful explosives, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, torture and mass 259 shootings had become the ordinary routine of daily life. At the school, the Israeli authorities had confiscated all the books and made the texts printed in Tel-Aviv mandatory so Malak Wahab dispensed with textbooks entirely and taught only from the black-board. Forgetting and forgiving all the conflicts he had suffered with his father which had been so painful to him when he was young and driven only by the intensity of the blood-tie that bound them together and could not be erased by time, distance or any other differences between them, Ahmad Khalil frantically begged his father to escape across the border before it was too late and join him in Medina, but the reply was always a stubborn refusal. Ahmad Khalil received this with a mixture of fears and anxiety because he wanted his father’s life to be spared and relief because he knew in his heart even now, they could not live together. Malak Wahab wrote that he considered it his duty to keep the school functioning and protect his students as much as he could. Another six months of silence followed. At last when the letter came, Ahmad Khalil was shocked that it had been sent not from Gaza but postmarked Amman and that the handwriting on the envelope was not his father’s. With trembling fingers, he ripped it open. It was from his uncle, Mansur. As he read the letter aloud to Rashid, he felt so faint, he almost collapsed. “… I am dictating this letter to a public scribe here on the streets of Amman because I cannot write …” 260 Since the Jewish occupation of Gaza, life has become beyond endurance. In retaliation for the revolt of the underground resistance movement, napalm bombs were dropped from airplanes upon the camps and villages. Many children in my brother’s class were killed. Others are lying in the hospital. Repeatedly Malak Wahab was warned that unless he taught his students as he was told, the school would be closed. However, he finally managed to receive special permission to leave the refugee camp and go to the city to buy supplies he needed for the school. As he was crossing the main street on the way back, a jeep full of soldiers drunk with wine struck him down by accident. He was killed instantly. When I complained, more soldiers came, beat me and searched my room for weapons. They found none but carried away everything I possessed. It was only through the kindness of friends and the mercy of Allah that I escaped to safety across the Jordanian border. I am too old to work and now that I am alone, I do not know what will happen to me tomorrow …” Immediately Ahmad Khalil answered that nothing could bring Rashid greater happiness than to be reunited. Urging him to join them, Ahmad Khalil took the whole sum Ismail and Rafiq had sent him in their last letter and bought a postal foreign money-order so that his uncle could pay the fare of the long journey. After Mansur had arrived, he and Rashid were overjoyed to see each other after so many years but to Ahmad Khalil he was a pathetic sight because he had grown so frail and bent with age. Ismail continued to send money regularly and for the first time in Ahmad Khalil’s life, there was 261 enough to eat. But Ahmad Khalil had no appetite. He tired easily and could not work nearly so hard as before. In the afternoons the fever rose and at night he was racked by long spells of coughing. One morning while he was weeding the garden, he felt too ill to continue his work. Painfully he made his way to the mosque which at this time of day was empty. Exhausted, he collapsed on the matted floor. He did not know how long he lay there when suddenly he was aware of a firm gentle arm supporting him. He opened his eyes. It was night. Had he been lying here the whole day? In the dim light he gazed up deep into his wife’s face twisted with anxiety and concern. “Why did you not tell me you were ill?” asked Asma. “I have been worried about you because you have been looking sick for a long time.” He leaned heavily on her as she helped him to his feet. “Come, you must go home and rest.” ## XXIX In the long moment of frigid silence, Ismail stood in the doorway, his face contorted with worry and anxiety as he gazed into his father’s feverish eyes. Awkward in the presence of his mother and Rashid, Ismail felt too much a stranger in his own home even to dare step inside. In the three years he had been away, he had found a new life for himself in Jeddah. He felt he had broadened 262 out, widened his horizons, never realizing until now, how narrow, limited and restricted his earlier life had been. Only the most urgent emergency could have brought him back here. “Father, I received the telegram from your friend, Abd ar Rahman, that while you were working in the mosque-garden you fainted again so I had to come at once. But before I left Jeddah, I arranged an appointment with the doctor at the clinic connected to the factory where I work for you to be examined and treated.” Ahmad Khalil only regarded his son with utter bewilderment. He scarcely recognized Ismail as so many years before his father had seemed to him so alien and ugly in his foreign dress. “My son, is it not enough that you work for the Americans? Must you also look like one?” “This is what all of us wear in the factory. The robes are forbidden because they snarl in machinery. What did you do with the money I sent you?” “I sent it to Abd ar Raziq so that he can buy the books he needs at the university.” Ismail grew tense with silent bitter rage. More than any living being, he despised his fosterbrother. Although Abd ar Raziq came home from *al-Azhar* only for the month of Ramadan, it seemed to Ismail that his father thought of no one else. 263 “Didn’t I tell you to buy yourself a pair of shoes and some decent clothes?” Ahmad Khalil’s voice rose angry and annoyed. “A son has no right to tell his father what to do! What use have I for shoes when I have never worn them before in all my life? The sandals I bought are very good and quite enough.” “Now that we are no longer poor, you could at least dress decently. I am ashamed if my father is mistaken for a beggar.” Seeing the deeply hurt expression on his father’s face, Ismail was instantly contrite. “Please forgive me, Father. I didn’t really mean that. Are you ready to go? We must leave now if we are to arrive in Jeddah in time for our appointment.” Rashid rose and clasped his cousin’s hand. “If you go,” he promised eagerly, “I will come with you. I will take care of you.” “That will not be necessary,” snapped Ismail. “You are neither a doctor nor a nurse.” Asma paused in her sewing to stare at her son. To her, Ismail was as much a stranger as he was to her husband. She did not trust him. She did not like his arrogant manner or the condescending tone of his voice. Yet she remained determined. “You must not refuse this help your own son offers you. That you grow strong and well again - nothing else matters to me now.” Ahmad Khalil tried to protest but when he 264 saw his wife’s pleading eyes bright with tears, all resistance died. Jeddah was so much bigger and noisier than he had remembered it when he had been there more than twenty five years earlier on *Hajj.* Gone were the winding narrow streets for it had been transformed within the span of less than a decade from an Eastern to a Western city. Almost all the old buildings had been torn down. Except for the pedestrians, many of whom still wore their traditional Arab dress, it could have almost been a part of urban Europe and America. The straight wide avenues, lined with non-descript high-rise flats, offices and shops which looked like bleak concrete and glass boxes, were jammed with sleek American cars, buses and trucks. Not a single camel was to be seen for camels, scorned by the authorities as a symbol of shameful “backwardness,” were banned on all the main roads and thoroughfares. “Here we are,” said Ismail at last. In the Company clinic, Ahmad Khalil had to wait several hours for his turn but this he did not mind. Then the door of the office opened and a bald, ruddy-faced man wearing a white coat appeared and motioned in his direction. “Please come with me this way,” he urged. A nurse stood in the room. When the doctor wanted to examine him, he refused to strip unless she left. The doctor ordered her to leave but Ahmad Khalil still felt acutely embarrassed to expose 265 his body before a stranger. And the instruments were frightening to him. “What is *that*?” “This”, explained the doctor, “is an X-ray machine. We are going to take X-rays of your chest. Now stand still. It will not hurt at all”. At last the doctor told Ahmad Khalil he could dress, sent him out of the room and turned to Ismail. “Your father has tuberculosis. The disease is well advanced but still not by any means hopeless. These days with all the new drugs and surgical techniques we can work wonders even with the sickest of our patients. But he will require prolonged treatment…” “I am a foreman of the factory here”, explained Ismail. “My salary ought to be enough to cover the cost of his care”. The doctor smiled. “That won’t be necessary. Now that Saudi Arabia has become a modern welfare state, the Government provides all medical care free. Now don’t you worry. At the American hospital, your father will receive the very best there is”. The events that followed were so bewildering to Ahmad Khalil, he thought this must be a nightmare. All of a sudden he found himself in a whitewashed room. Jutting out from the wall was a white enamel tub into which flowed a steady stream of hot water. The rush of the water from the faucet 266 hypnotized Ahmad Khalil. He had never seen so much of it before. When the tub was half-filled, the nurse abruptly shut the faucet off. “Now take off your clothes”, she commanded in very bad Arabic with a strong foreign accent, “and get in”. Ahmad Khalil had never taken this kind of bath before. He wondered what sort of people were these who could be so dirty as to bathe in their own polluted water? He waited for her to leave the room but she stubbornly remained rooted to the spot, her arms akimbo. “Well, hurry up, so I can wash you”. Ahmad Khalil only stared with hate-filled eyes at her brassy blonde hair and the brown mole that marred her hard pink face. He would rather kill him with his bare hands or else die first before she could lay hands on him. Just then a half dozen young girls who were nurses in training trooped into the room. “What’s the commotion about?” asked one of them in English. “He won’t undress and I need your help”. The girls burst out giggling. Enraged and burning with shame, Ahmad Khalil clenched his teeth, gleaming white and even and not one missing. “Now take that bottle of disinfectant, and 267 wash his head. If he has lice, I wouldn’t be at all surprised”. Ahmad Khalil was placed in a room with four beds. Three were empty and the fourth was occupied by a small child *who* could not have been more than five years old. Ahmad Khalil was too exhausted to notice him. He tried to rest but the narrow bed was so terribly uncomfortable. He constantly feared he might fall out. Then a familiar voice startled him out of a daze. “Father”, Ismail instructed. “Do everything they tell you to do and soon you will be well. As long as you stay here, I promise to come everyday to see you”. Ismail had not been gone long when another nurse set a heaping tray of food before him. It looked so tempting that his mouth watered with hunger. Eagerly he scooped up a big chunk of meat but before he had a chance to taste it, the nurse made him drop it back on the plate and shoved a fork into his hand. He looked at it dully as if he did not know what it was. “You ought to know better than that!” she scolded. “We do not permit the patients here to eat with their fingers”. Clumsily Ahmad Khalil grasped the fork but the piece of meat fell from it before he could raise it to his mouth and the gravy dripped all over the clean white sheets. 268 “You are worse than a child”, exclaimed the nurse fretfully. “I will have to feed you”. Ahmad Khalil pushed the tray away and turned his face to the wall. “Go away!” he sobbed. “Go away and leave me alone!” He took the sheet and completely covered himself with it. Whenever a nurse approached him, he also covered his face. He did not want to look at these young women and girls in their indecent half-naked uniforms and he did not wish to be seen by them. Night fell. Hour after hour he lay sleepless in the dark. He was exhausted and desperate for some sleep but how could he sleep in this terribly uncomfortable bed? Suddenly the little boy began to cry: “It hurts! Mother! I want my Mother!” No nurse came and for a long time Ahmad Khalil lay awake in the dark listening to the child’s harrowing cries. Then quietly he crept out of bed, walked over to the little boy and picked him up in his arms. “Don’t cry”, he whispered, caressing his soft curly hair. “I will tell you a story”. “But it hurts so much”, wailed the child. “Sh-sh-sh”, hushed Ahmad Khalil. “You must be a very brave boy. Now I will tell you the story……” 269 And while he talked to the child, he took all the blankets and sheets off the bed and wrapping them securely around himself and the child, he lay down on the floor in blissful comfort, “Tell me another story”, pleaded the child. I promise I will tomorrow, *inshallah,* but now ## you must go to sleep……” The next thing he knew, the sun was streaming in through the windows and somebody was standing over him. “What are you doing on the floor?” shouted the nurse. “Now get back to bed at once and no more of your silly nonsense!” The little boy began to cry and the nurse picked him up roughly. A doctor went up to the nurse. “Take him to the pediatric ward. There is room for him there now where he belongs”. “Now don’t you cry”, the nurse said. “There will be lots of toys and sweets and children for you to play with and you can eat all the ice-cream you want”. The nurse walked out with the child screaming, “It hurts! It hurts! Mother! I want my mother!” After the child had gone a group of white-coated doctors approached him. On the table beside his bed, the nurse spread out an assorted array of cruel-looking stainless steel instruments. 270 They stripped him to the waist and examined him carefully and thoroughly. Ahmad Khalil sat stoically in bed while a young intern ran his fingers across his bony ribs. “He needs more flesh on him”, he commented, addressing himself to the other doctors. Ahmad Khalil was so embarrassed and shamed. How humiliating and degrading it was to be compelled to submit one’s body into these impersonal and unfeeling hands! “This is a very bad case”, one of them said to the others, “in fact, the worst case of tuberculosis I have ever seen! Both lungs are involved. This afternoon we must collapse the lung that is most infected.” The doctors then walked away conversing among themselves in highly technical jargon as if he were not a human being but merely a pair of diseased lungs. At last he was left alone. His eyes burned and felt hot and gritty from lack of sleep. He had only been able to sleep for a few hours the previous night with the child. He was so tired. He lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes but sleep would ## not come. It was no use. He could only sleep on the floor. He strained his ears to hear the solemn mingling and pulsing of melodious voices, faint but distinct, from the mosques in the far distance, 271 summoning the people for the early afternoon *Salat.* The *Adhan* reassured and comforted him. Avid for the sight of the slender minarets, he stared longingly out the window near his bed but all he could see were the concrete slabs of the hospital walls. The hours passed slowly, interminably and his body grew hot with fever. Asma’s face swelled before him several times normal size. He listened to her soothing voice but when he reached out his arms to embrace her, she was gone. After several moments, however, she reappeared with his cousin and his beloved adopted son, Abd ar-Raziq. He was convinced that they were in the same room with him and he listened, comforted by the sound of their voices. The phantoms disappeared when the nurse brought him his tray but he only covered himself, including his face, with the sheet and left the food untouched. His memory wandered back into the past until he found himself walking the narrow dusty streets of Iraq al Manshiya. The waves of shimmering ripe grain, swayed by the cool gentle breeze, caressed his face. And he knew that he had only to walk behind the plow and crumble the fertile earth between his fingers and he would be healed. Now he saw *Salah-ud-din Ayyubi,* majestic in shining armour on horseback approaching Jerusalem with thousands of turbaned warriors behind him. As 272 they passed, wave upon wave, he saw his son, Ismail, among them shouting in triumph, “The Holy Land is ours forever”! Then he thought he saw the Holy Prophet talking with a very young man in a long white robe and a beautiful face radiant with loving kindness. As Ahmad Khalil approached him, he stretched forth his hand and at his gentle touch, at once an exhilaration of well-being swept through him. “Who are you?” asked Ahmad Khalil. The young man looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t you recognize me? I am Jesus”. Then he heard Muhammad say, “I am closest to Jesus, the son of Mary because our Message was the same and there was no Prophet between us”. Ahmad Khalil was startled by grave guttural voices. There were three prophets standing over him - Abraham, Moses and Jesus. “You better start giving him the anesthesia now. As soon as he’s under it, we’ll wheel him into the operating room and collapse that lung.” Ahmad Khalil jumped. He bolted upright in bed and set such fierce, penetrating black eyes upon the doctors that they shrank away. No, Jesus was not here. His power to heal the sick had come from Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. He looked at the table of shiny cruel instruments. No, Jesus did not belong here. Had he walked in, he would have been driven away… 273 “Put the mask over him.” Unable to control himself any longer, Ahmad Khalil swept all the sterilized instruments off the table. As they made a great clattering noise on the tiled floor, he jumped out of bed and ran out of the room down the hall with the doctors at his heels. When they caught him, he kicked and struggled. He was so wild, he was strong. A half dozen husky male attendants had to restrain him before they finally forced him back into bed. A nurse who was carrying a tray of food to another patient ran to the doctor and gasped, “For God’s sake! What’s happened?” “He has a high fever and is very delirious.” The following morning when Ismail came to visit his father, the doctors summoned him. “We are giving you a prescription for some medicine he can take at home. It might slow the advance of the disease and these tablets I am giving you should make your father feel more comfortable if he will take them as directed…” Ismail’s face paled. “But-but”, he stammered. “I don’t understand. My father was admitted to this hospital only several days ago and you said that he needed prolonged care.” The doctor shook his head. “I hate to say this to you but it is best that I tell you the truth. 274 We did all we could. I’m terribly sorry but we can do nothing more for your father. We need every bed for patients who have hope for recovery.” Ismail’s body shook and his voice trembled. “But-but”, surely with the new drugs, the latest surgery you told me that there was a good chance ## the disease could at least be arrested ….. “ “We can do nothing for a patient who refuses to cooperate with us and your father has been impossible. And you brought him too late, when the disease had already reached the terminal stage. Without intensive treatment here, he cannot last ## longer than two or three months . …. “ When Ismail went upstairs to the wards to seek his father, Ahmad Khalil was lying on his bed with his face to the wall. “Father!” he called. Ahmad Khalil turned but his expression plainly showed that he was not particularly glad to see his son. “Father, the doctors say you cannot stay here any longer. I have come to take you home”. “Nurse, will you get him dressed and ready to go”? Ahmad Khalil’s whole face lit up with a radiant smile. Tears flowed from his eyes, he was so happy. He was as excited as a child. Asma, Rashid and Abd ar-Raziq awaited his return. He knew that 275 the mere sight of their faces would make him well again.