Chapter 2 – Abu Anwar in the Fields

tear gas and other garbage

Abu Anwar picked his way carefully along the rocky path. “Watch the thorns,” he said to the donkey, who whinnied in resigned acknowledgment. He steered the beast away from the thorny cactus lining the trail. They slowly climbed rock terraces. He walked next to the donkey, one hand on its scraggly mane, the other steadying the mound of tarps, tools and provisions tied onto the animal’s back. The terraces were not a problem for him, he knew them like he knew his own children. They were built by his family and his neighbors’ families, over the decades, with the rocks they cleared from their olive groves. But he had to pay close attention to the exposed sewage pipe, pouring waste from the settlement of Elkana into Azzawiya’s precious soil. He guided the donkey over one shallow pool of sludge, partially covered with branches. Soon though, they came to a raging river of filth, too wide to step across.

“Ya haram,” for shame, Abu Anwar exclaimed.

He looped a rope loosely around the donkey’s front legs and tied it to a nearby olive tree. He clambered back over the low stone wall and wandered down the path, looking for a plank of wood big enough to make a bridge for them. He shook his head, muttering at the debris rotting in the fetid earth: plastic soda bottles that had carried water for last year’s olive picking, bits of tools long since corroded and cracked, rotting meat, a pair of baby shoes.

More surprising was the adult shoe a hundred meters further down. A woman’s shoe, high heeled, shiny leather, in good condition. Abu Anwar mused over the shoe as he continued to scour the litter. Some young women dressed to go to the fields as if they were going to a wedding and changed into picking clothes when they reached the trees. He supposed someone might have gone to the fields in her good party shoes, but at the end of a long day’s picking, not bothered to change out of her sneakers. Laden with buckets, picnic supplies and children, it was plausible that she would not have seen a shoe slip out of one of her bundles. Satisfied with that explanation, he let it go.

He spied a board about a hundred meters away that looked like it would hold the donkey’s weight. A thicket of brambles blocked his path. As he bent to clear it, a bit of bright violet caught his eye. He reached cautiously into the tangle of branches and exposed the source of the bright spot – a small circle of cloth, gathered with elastic bands, caught on one of the thorns.

Abu Anwar knew that something was not right. He couldn’t have told you how he knew it, but he would bet his house on it. He also knew it was none of his affair. He would leave the bit of cloth where it was, and the shoe, and take the board and go tend his trees and return home to eat his wife’s makluube and smoke sheesha with his brothers in the evening. If something evil was walking their lands, it would no doubt find them in its own time, like the soldiers who came in the night to take their sons and the settlers who set fire to their trees. He would not do anything to hasten it.

He reached the board and pried it loose from the bed of mud and slime. He scraped it on an old tire. A wave of dizziness fell over him as he straightened up. He lost his balance and toppled over in the high grass. He clutched at the long weeds for support, and the sharp prickles tore at his hands. He lay for a few minutes, stunned.

“Shu bisir?” What is happening? he asked.

Something was definitely wrong. In his sixty-eight years on earth, he had never had a moment when he did not know where his feet were. No Palestinian could lose himself on his own land. The earth was a continuation of his feet. Abu Anwar sat up slowly. His old bones ached uncharacteristically. He looked around, shaking his head over his clumsiness. Could it be that he was losing his faculties? He got unsteadily to his feet.

He saw the pair to the girl’s shoe a few meters from where he had landed when he fell. That was more unsettling. Two shoes would hardly have been dropped by accident, and no Palestinian girl would intentionally throw away two good shoes like this. Abu Anwar bent to look at the second shoe more closely.

“Haram!” he said aloud again. “Allah yirhamha,” he automatically added the prayer for her soul.

This shoe was attached to a girl. Ajnabiya – a foreign girl. Abu Anwar was careful not to touch her, but he thought she had been dead for some hours. Her skin had a bluish cast, and the faint odor which rose from her reminded him of the stench that could hang around your compound after the ritual slaughter of a cow for Eid, if you didn’t clean up well enough. She was wearing the violet blouse with gathered sleeves, and black slacks. Her hair was shiny black and her features small and delicate. Abu Anwar thought she must be Japanese. She reminded him of pictures he saw once from the bombing of Hiroshima. At the time he had only thought, “If the Israelis get hold of this weapon, we are truly finished.” But now he heard that they had the weapons. Yet he and his family were still there, Allah be praised.

Abu Anwar was quite undecided about what to do. This girl was not a Palestinian, and no Palestinian would have left her in this state. Still, it was Palestinian land, so it was a matter for the Palestinian police. But if Abu Anwar called them, to report this dead girl, the Palestinian police would call the Israeli police. The Israelis would ask the Palestinian police who had found the girl, and then they might decide Abu Anwar had something to do with her getting dead, and he could find himself in a belagan – a big mess.

He left the girl where she lay. He took his board and went back to where he had tied up the donkey. It did not seem right to let her rot in the sun, but he could not think right now. He would work on his trees, and when he was done, he would go back to the village and discuss it with his brother, Thamer, the mayor of Azzawiya.

He slowly untied the donkey and headed into the groves.

Go to Chapter 3

Advertisement