The Orange Grove Read Online Free PDF Page A

grandfather who’d made it. Just paper and wind, as you say.”
    â€œAnd you began to climb the mountain. Am I right? Answer me!”
    â€œWe had to go home with the kite, or our father would have had questions,” Amed explained.
    â€œYes,” Aziz went on. He began to imitate his father’s voice: “Where did you lose it? You have no heart. Lose your grandfather’s gift? Where did you go?”
    â€œHe would have waited for our answer,” Amedcontinued. “And we would have told the truth, we couldn’t lie to our father.”
    â€œThat’s good, you must never lie to he who gave you life.”
    â€œOur father would have killed us,” Aziz said, “if he’d learned that we came here. We had to go back with the kite. We began to climb the mountain. It wasn’t very high. And there was the ghost of a road snaking through the rocks. It was easy to follow. We laughed. It was exciting to climb so high and to see the valley below and, very far off, the green spot of the orange grove.”
    â€œHe who has the courage to rise up embraces his whole life at a glance. And also all his death.”
    Saying that, Soulayed smiled. He offered the boys cigarettes. They smoked, sitting all three on the ground that became, despite the shade, more and more scorching. Soulayed’s neck shone with sweat.
    â€œYour grandfather was right in the end. In his day he planted orange trees on the good side of the mountain. Because on the other side, our dead were being ripped out of their tombs. The living were massacred, their houses destroyed.Their fields and their gardens were razed. Each day that passes, our enemies gnaw away at the land of our ancestors. They are rats!”
    Soulayed took a long drag on his cigarette.
    â€œWell, Amed, and you, Aziz, when you reached the top, what did you see on the other side?”
    â€œThe other side of the sky,” replied Aziz. “I saw the other side of the sky. There was no end. As if my eyes couldn’t reach any farther. And then, in the dust blown up by the wind, I saw in the distance a town, a strange kind of town.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a town,” Amed corrected. “It didn’t look like a town. At each end there was a tower that threw flashes of light into the sky.”
    â€œMilitary installations, that’s what you saw. You saw warehouses surrounded by barbed wire. And do you know what’s inside? Our death. They’ve been planning it for years. But God broke your kite string and now it’s their own death they’re warehousing.”
    Amed and Aziz didn’t understand Soulayed’s last words. They wondered if he was losing his mind.
    â€œYou knew you’d go to the other side of themountain. Who doesn’t? We’ve been at war for so long. You knew it, no? And that’s what you told Halim.”
    â€œNo! We didn’t know it!”
    â€œDon’t lie!”
    â€œMy brother doesn’t lie!” shouted Aziz, standing up. “He only told Halim that our kite flew over the mountain.”
    â€œI just wanted to impress him, that’s all,” added Amed, tears in his voice. “Halim was the best kite flyer around. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
    â€œListen to me, both of you. It doesn’t matter what you knew or didn’t know. And it doesn’t matter what you really told Halim. Those are childish things and we don’t need to talk about them anymore. Do you want to know what really happened that day?”
    Soulayed stood up without waiting for their answer, and set off with long strides toward the mountain.
    â€œFollow me!”
    Â 
    They walked under the sun for a good ten minutes before they came to the foot of the mountain.
    â€œAround here, I imagine, was where you climbed the mountain to find your kite?”
    â€œYes,” Aziz admitted.
    â€œRight there,” his brother added.
    â€œJust what I