Time of White Horses: A Novel by Ibrahim Nasrallah

Author:Ibrahim Nasrallah [Nasrallah, Ibrahim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2016-01-03T07:00:00+00:00

Silent Fire

THE PEOPLE OF HADIYA WOKE one morning to find that the barbed wire around the neighboring settlement had been moved more than two hundred meters, swallowing up part of their land and the northern and southern pasturelands that surrounded it. When they went there to touch with their hands what their eyes were seeing, they were fired at along the entire length of the western front. They went down on their stomachs or hid behind the nearest hillock. They tried to determine exactly where the shots were coming from, but they didn’t see a single body moving on the other side.

They retreated.

They knew they were up against a major problem, and that in a few weeks’ time they would need to go out into their fields to harvest the wheat on the plains that ran parallel to the wires. They realized that any problem that came up now might deprive them of the fruits of their hard work.

That evening, some of the men were sitting in Muhammad Shahada’s and Shakir Muhanna’s coffee shops to hear the news, switching from one station to another. They were delighted when they heard the ‘Palestine Radio Station,’ which was being inaugurated as they listened, broadcasting out of Ramallah. Not long afterward, however, they heard a speech being delivered in Hebrew. It came as a total shock to them.

“This means that from now on, the Jews will be in all our houses!” commented Muhammad Shahada, and he angrily turned the radio off.*

The sun began scorching the ears of grain, the ears of grain that seemed more luxuriant to them than they had been in a long time. The plants were so tall that if a rider passed through the wheat fields on horseback, he could easily tie two stalks together over his saddle.

They hadn’t reached the edges of the fields yet when the settlement began to fire on them. They retreated. When they went to the headquarters of the British officer Edward Peterson, he said heatedly, “We can’t send an army patrol out with anybody who wants to harvest his field!”

They looked in the direction of the settlement, but saw no movement that indicated there was someone lying in wait for them. The silence was so complete, they could have heard the tiniest of God’s creatures in that vast expanse. Then they rushed out to the fields with their scythes and started working with all their might. However, before they had worked their way more than three meters into the field, shots rang out again, and the people scattered in all directions.

They went to Peterson again, only to meet with the same response, and they came away feeling more hopeless than they had felt before they went.

At sundown, a number of men gathered in Hajj Khaled’s guesthouse. Shaykh Husni, the imam at the mosque, was there, as well as al-Barmaki, who had been reduced by the passing of the years and the loss of his son. For fear of hearing words of reproach from

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