The Haj - Leon Uris [58]
I had never seen a toilet.
I had never seen a medical clinic.
I had never seen a machine shop.
I had never seen anything like the big barn filled with tractors and tools and automatic machines that milked the cows.
I had never seen electric lights, except in the distance, out on the highway or lights from the kibbutz. I often wondered how they worked. There was a light bulb in our classroom in Ramle, but it didn’t work.
I had never seen a painting made by a human hand.
I had never been in a room in the wintertime that was really warm.
I had never seen a pond where they actually grew fish to harvest.
I saw a great chicken house that was lit up all night to confuse the chickens so they wouldn’t know day from night.
As you can well imagine, dear reader, I made myself invaluable to Mr. Salmi and by the end of the fourth visit I was teaching some of the smaller children all by myself because I wanted to keep coming back.
The Jews were very friendly. At first this made me suspicious that they were trying to lure me into a trap, but as time passed I began to trust them a little. I did keep out a sharp eye so I wouldn’t suddenly be seized by them, and I always remained within shouting distance of Mr. Salmi.
There was a Jewish girl named Hannah who had come from Syria and spoke a little Arabic she remembered from her earlier years. She became my helper in the classroom. Like Nada, Hannah was a few years older than me. The first time she took me by the hand, I pulled it back instantly and my mouth went dry. Surely someone would see her touch me and I would be killed.
Then I saw the strangest thing of all. Boys and girls, older and younger than me, held hands and played. They formed circles and danced and sang together. Often they kissed and hugged. Perhaps this was the beginning of a secret orgy? I was so astonished about all the things I saw I even forgot about the naked legs of the girls. Hannah did not seem ashamed about hers.
What was most difficult to comprehend was the way Mr. Salmi acted when he was with the Jews. He laughed and joked while he taught them. He never did that with us in Ramle.
Mr. Salmi seemed to be good friends with many of the Jews. He often patted the children on the head when they gave correct answers. I saw him embrace some Jews the same way Arab men greet each other. I even saw a Jewish woman put her arms around him once and laugh, and her husband was standing right next to them! The Jews always sent him to catch his bus with a market basket filled with vegetables, fruits, eggs, and an occasional chicken. The very next day in Ramle he would go into a rage about his hatred of the Jews.
I think my mind started going crazy with confusion. Was Shemesh Kibbutz all a trick of Satan to lure us Moslems away from being true believers? After all, our mission was to convert them or kill them. That was what the Koran said. Oh God, I wanted to ask someone. One day I caught a glimpse of Mr. Gideon Asch and longed to speak to him. I dared not, for he might tell Haj Ibrahim I was there. He was friends with my father and therefore I could not trust him. All I knew was that someone hadn’t been telling me the truth and that it was dangerous for me to learn the truth.
I became so obsessed with going to Shemesh I often dreamed about it. If the Jews did practice human sacrifices and held orgies, they did it so no one could see, and by the end of my fifth trip I began to doubt that they even did those things.
Despite the dangers, I determined to find out the truth, and that is when disaster fell. On that awful night I tried to slip through our yard into the kitchen, as I always did when I had been to the kibbutz. This night my father filled the doorway. I ducked under the first swing of his walking stick, but he caught me with the backlash in my ribs and sent me sprawling and screaming over the yard. He was atop me, immense as a giant, his feet kicking into my body, his face contorted with rage, and curses ringing off his lips.
‘I will kill you if you ever go near the Jews again! May