The Haj - Leon Uris [61]
The stone houses were the only ones with their own outdoor toilets. Each clan had a pair of abandoned houses that were used for toilets and to throw away garbage. One house was for the men and one for the women. I was glad my house had its own toilet.
Communal life centered around the village square, with its picturesque water well and a small overflow stream. The women washed the family clothing in the stream. Next to the well was the communal bakery, partly below ground because of the ovens. The water well, stream, and ovens were the main meeting places of the women for gossip.
By the opposite side of the square was our mosque, with its own small minaret. Uncle Farouk was the priest, or imam. He was also the village barber. One of the old clan chiefs acted as muezzin and climbed to the top of the minaret each day to call us to prayer.
On the third side of the square was the café, store, and khan, all owned jointly by my father and Uncle Farouk. The khan, a two-room hostel, had one room for men and one room for women and a place to hitch camels.
The khan was always ready to receive any members of the Wahhabi tribe. All Arabs are extremely hospitable and even the poorest home had a stack of mats to put down on the floor for visiting relatives. Moreover, the khan was used during those times of the year—harvests, festivals, for the dung trade—when the cameleers came.
I think Haj Ibrahim kept the khan for his own vanity too. It gave him a large gathering place for clan chiefs of other villages to come to Tabah to discuss communal matters or as a room where my father could throw his fabled parties.
If the water well and ovens belonged to the women, the café belonged to the men. The radio wailed from sunup to sundown with oriental music, sermons, and news from Jerusalem and Damascus. At nighttime we could hear from as far away as Baghdad and Cairo.
On one side of the café was the village store. Women were allowed on the store side to make purchases. Before the Jews came to Palestine everything in the store was foreign: tobacco from Syria, sardines from Portugal, matches, razor blades, and sewing needles from Sweden, tinware from England. There were a few medicines such as aspirin and baking soda but, as Moslems, we did not believe too much in them. Illness was caused by evil spirits and the healing herbs and special brews were made and kept by older village women. The most important item in the store was kerosene, but few families could afford it. At Shemesh Kibbutz the Jews had a cannery and canned many of their fruits and vegetables. My father did not allow them in the store. There was a story around that they would probably sell us poisoned cans so we would all die and they would get our land.
Everyone in the village owed money or some crop to the store. My father was very liberal at letting the villagers run up a debt on the theory that ‘a man in your debt cannot call you a dog, for he is the dog and must obey.’ More than once my father used a villager’s debt to convince him to think accordingly on various questions.
The final part of the village square was a communal threshing floor. It was a favorite gathering place of younger people because it was one of the few places where boys and girls could come into proximity with one