Ishmael's Oranges (9 page)

But today the numbers swam before his eyes. What did it matter if one and one made two? The Israelis didn't care about any laws but their own. They could claim one and one makes ten as easily as they said
what's yours is mine
.

Pushing his books to one side, he reached under his pillow. The hard edges of the picture frame met his fingers, cool and reassuring. For eight years it had lain with him while he slept, blending into his dreams.

Now his fingers traced the pale tree under the glass, a dark sliver against ghostly white walls. It was a lifetime ago that they had left it, so sure that they would return one day in triumph.

When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the terror of that day. Jaffa's familiar streets had transformed into a locked labyrinth, threatening to trap them forever until they followed the thousands of others into the churning sea. The Al-Ishmaeli car had frantically hurled itself around, turning countless times, until at last they found their way into the quiet hills and Nadia's waiting
arms.

Since then he'd never given up hope. When they heard Mayor Heikal on the radio saying that Jaffa had fallen, he wouldn't believe it.
Heikal's an idiot
, he'd shouted, like Mazen in the Square that day. Even when he heard Jews had rounded up all the Arabs behind barbed wire fences in Al-Ajami, he trusted Abu Mazen to keep their home
safe.

As the summer burned and the smell of dried sweat filled every corner, he'd begun to understand that the
Najjada
and the Arab Liberation Army and the five nations who'd promised to save them were all failing. And when the green-shirted Jewish army finally came marching into Nazareth, Salim had climbed onto the balcony and screamed
Come on!
Drive us out! Send us back!
But Tareq came to tell them that the kindly Jewish commander had refused to expel them
–
and he'd wept in disappointment.

Now he remembered the worst moment, how Hassan had been parroting something about driving all the Jews into the sea as revenge for Jaffa
–
for Clock Tower Square and Deir Yassin. Tareq had shaken his head, saying, ‘Talk like this will give us more Deir Yassins. Maybe it's time for peace, before we lose the little we have left.' Abu Hassan had slammed his fist on the table, making everyone jump. ‘
Abadan!
' he'd shouted. Never!

His voice sent a spear through Salim's heart; at that very instant he'd been looking at his picture, planning his day of return.
Abadan!
Never! The word came back to him now, ringing through long years of waiting.

He'd heard it in his dreams, seen it in the new world around him and the Star of David flying in their streets and schools. He would not believe
it.

Putting his hand on the fading image he whispered his promise:
I will come back. It's not too late. I'll come back to you, and we'll have our harvest.

The great Tel Aviv adventure
–
as Nadia deemed it
–
dawned on a bright and scorching Thursday. Salim had the day off school; Tareq loaned him a smart pair of trousers and a clean, white shirt.

In the gloomy basement, Salim, Abu Hassan and Tareq squeezed into the faithful old Austin. The deeds to the Orange House and lands were tucked safely away in Tareq's briefcase. The two women and Rafan came downstairs to wish them all good luck. For the first time in his life, Salim felt like a
man.

He leaned his head out of the back window and smiled at his mother. Her clothes were so plain that day
–
a long black dress and clumpy black shoes
–
not her usual style at all. Salim thought it must mean she was going to miss them. She'd be spending the day in the flat on her own; Thursday was Nadia's turn for coffee and chat at the market.

He wished they were all going together, for a family trip somewhere wild and fun like the old carnivals in the desert of Nabi Ruben. Maybe they would do things like that again, once the business in Tel Aviv was
done.

‘Goodbye, Mama!' he called. ‘We'll come back with good news, I promise!'

She crouched down beside him. ‘I know you will,
ya'eini
,' she said. ‘You're such a man all of a sudden.' She touched his cheek for a second. ‘Take care of him, Tareq,' she
said.

‘For sure I will!' Tareq replied cheerfully, leaning back from the driver's seat to slap Salim's shoulder. Rafan pushed past his mother to press his gap-toothed mouth to Salim's cheek. As they pulled away Salim saw the little boy waving, one half of his face alive with smiles, the other hidden in shadow. And then they all dwindled away, lost in the blackness of the garage.

The drive from Nazareth to Tel Aviv was a journey from the old world into the new. At the edge of the Galilean hill country, ancient Arab towns and villages balanced precariously on the land's broken bones. Heading south-west and downwards, these dark green, rocky slopes smoothed into the undulating yellows of the Jezreel Valley.

At school they'd learned about the centuries of Turkish rule, when great Palestinian granaries were sown here in the Vale of Esdraelon. But that was before the Sursuk family from Lebanon sold out to the Jewish National Fund. They reached out their arms from Beirut, Nadia told him on one of their sad evenings, and cleared nearly seven hundred
fellahin
out of their farms. The Jews paid the peasants for their trouble
–
a pittance of silver for an easy conscience. And that's why they came, she said, the
fellahin
–
flooding into Haifa, and Jaffa and Nazareth, with nothing but their names and a handful of coins. Their fields were handed over to the Jews, empty but for birds and
mice.

As the Jezreel Valley ended Salim began to sense the tang of the sea. The wide coastal plain stretched out before him
–
a bare and hard world where Arab and Jew had once worked side by side, draining swamps and raising great plantations from Jaffa to Acre. But then the Zionists came, Nadia said. And soon no Arabs were working on the colonies springing up along the plains. Nadia told him that foreign landlords and even the
ay'an
, men like his father, had sold
dunam
after
dunam
to the Jews, transforming tenant farms and pastures into mountains of fodder for the Jewish dream. ‘They let the land slip away from us,' she said. ‘It slipped away until only stones and bitterness were left.'

On the intersection of the Plain of Sharon and the Philistine Plain stood Tel Aviv. Salim saw it rising out of the haze less than an hour after leaving Nazareth, the sun glinting sharply off its razor-thin edges and smooth, eyeless façades.

It was blisteringly bright and, as they got nearer, snarled in traffic and smoke. As they slowed to a crawl, Salim began to worry that they would not make their appointment at noon. Tareq was tapping anxiously on the steering wheel as the horns blared all around them. ‘
Insha'Allah
we'll make it,' he
said.

Salim pressed his nose to the window, his breath coming back to warm his cheeks. The roads were wide and full of expensive-looking cars, surrounded by a world of angles, glass and glare.

By the time Tareq parked the car across the road from the City Hall it was already five minutes to noon. Salim jumped out of the back seat and opened the door for Abu Hassan.

The building was a quaint old hotel, sadly dilapidated next to its newer neighbours. It was thronged with a mass of motorbikes and people pushing past them. Salim and Tareq both had to elbow their way through, pulling Abu Hassan behind them, until they reached the cool of the lobby.

Tareq started looking around for Abu Mazen. ‘We're on time,' he said, shaking his watch to his ear. ‘So where is he, by God?' Then, something made him catch his breath.

Standing at the receptionist's desk was a tall figure, almost as shabby as the building itself. On seeing the Al-Ishmaelis coming up the steps, he walked towards them, speaking the Arabic greeting: ‘
Ahlan wa sahlan
,
Abu Hassan'
–
you're as welcome as my family. Salim could not believe his eyes. It was Isak Yashuv.

Abu Hassan looked dumbstruck too. He took Isak's hand in a daze and stuttered the traditional return, ‘
Ahlaeen
.'

Isak then turned to Salim and said, ‘How's life, Salim? How's your mama? Elia wanted me to say hello to you. He misses you.' Salim nodded and tried to smile. It was wonderful and painful to see him again. But what in the world could bring him
here?

‘Forgive me for coming here without an invitation,' Isak said, spreading his hands to Abu Hassan and Tareq. ‘I am working now, as a… liaison, you might say, between this municipality and the Arabs in Jaffa. I guess because I speak Arabic and, frankly,' he ducked his head, looking embarrassed, ‘I'm not much use for anything else these days, with my eyes too bad for sewing. Anyway, I saw your name on the appointment list and I wanted to ask if I could help you at all. I know the man you're seeing
–
he's not a bad one, but young.'

He looked from Abu Hassan to Tareq, his dark eyes narrow as ever but more clouded now. With his dusty and deeply lined face, Isak looked more like a
fellah
than anyone else Salim
knew.

Abu Hassan shrugged his shoulders. ‘You're welcome to help if you can, Abu Elia,' he said. ‘My son-in-law here,' he motioned to Tareq, ‘is a lawyer, and he tells me he understands
your
laws.' His emphasis was clearly deliberate but Isak didn't blink.

‘Help would be wonderful.' Tareq's reply was instant and firm. ‘Thank you for your kindness.'

‘All right then,' said Isak. ‘Well, let's go up. I'll show you the
way.'

The sign on the door of their appointment read:
Office of the Custodian, Tel Aviv Municipality.
A young, pale man sat at a cluttered desk inside, wire-rimmed glasses over his blue eyes and sweat beaded on his receding hairline.

‘Come in, come in,' he said, in Hebrew. ‘You're on time, that's a good start.' Hebrew was now compulsory in school; Salim was now reasonably fluent but he had yet to hear Abu Hassan utter a single word. It put them at a disadvantage now. Doing business in Hebrew was like trying to do arithmetic while balancing on a
log.

Isak gestured for Abu Hassan to take the seat in front of the desk, while Tareq and Salim stood behind. ‘Saeed Al-Ishmaeli, this is Mr Gideon Livnor,' he
said.

Mr Livnor reached out his hand to Abu Hassan; it was a second before the old man took it, and then dropped it quickly.

‘Thank you,' said Livnor, briskly. ‘You're welcome, Mr Al-Ishmaeli. I hope we can sort this issue out for you today. I have some records here,' he indicated a folder in front of him, ‘and I believe you have some with you? The deeds to the properties?'

Tareq translated quickly for Abu Hassan, who replied, ‘Yes, yes,' and held out the papers from Tareq's briefcase. Livnor took them, and looked them over, occasionally rubbing the steam off his glasses. Opening the file in front of him, Salim saw he was comparing another set of papers inside. It confused him for a moment before he realized
–
these must be the papers Abu Mazen protected for them all these years.

At last Livnor sighed and took his glasses off again. Salim began to wish he would leave them alone. Grimy and misted, they seemed to bode
ill.

‘I want to be sure I understand things properly here,' he said. ‘Mr Al-Ishmaeli, you claim to own two pieces of land in Jaffa
–
a house in Al-Ajami district and fifteen
dunams
of citrus farm outside of Jaffa. Correct? And now you want to sell these lands to the State?' Abu Hassan simply stared, but Tareq answered in Hebrew: ‘That's right.' Livnor looked from one to the other before turning back to his papers.

‘Well, there are two problems, Mr Al-Ishmaeli. First, our records show that you left your property here in Jaffa in May of 'forty-eight. This house and your other
dunams
have been vacant since then. Which classifies you under our national legislation as a “present absentee”.' The words
nifkadim nohahim
sounded almost funny in Hebrew, like a child's skipping rhyme.

‘I never left,' interrupted Abu Hassan. ‘My family has been there the whole time.'

‘You may not have left the country, but you left your farmlands,' Livnor said. ‘As a present absentee, your land defaults to the Custodianship Council. Our records show that your orange groves outside Jaffa have already been appropriated, Mr Al-Ishmaeli.' His voice was flat, mechanical, and Salim found himself wondering how many people he'd delivered this bitter news to, and whether he wept for them later in his bed at night.

‘It is morally, legally and in all ways wrong, this thing you are doing,' said Tareq, his voice thick and furious.

‘It's the law. Many people left their homes. Hundreds of villages and farms were standing empty. They could have been fallow for generations. Now they are being put to good use, for all Israeli citizens.'

‘Did you take the homes that the Jews left?' Salim asked, his voice shaking in his throat. Tareq shot him a warning look, but Livnor ignored him completely.

‘The State will give you the compensation to which the law entitles you,' he said, eyes fixed on Abu Hassan. ‘Our taxation records,' he brandished another paper from the file, ‘show that your orange groves were valued at four hundred and fifty Israeli pounds in 'forty-eight. Unfortunately,' and here he glanced up at Tareq, ‘our records also show a large tax debt to Mandate authorities, which remains valid. Taking this debt into account,' he scribbled on the ledger in front of him, ‘you can claim three hundred Israeli pounds in compensation for these abandoned lands.'