Yasmine Read Online Free PDF Page B

for one for the past three years. There’s a public phone near the grocery, but it’s always out of order.
    On the eighth or ninth day we had a visitor – the poet and World War II partisan Abba Kovner. We sat on the ground and listened while he talked of his fears for Jewish continuity, which was again in peril. “Once more its fate is in the balance,” he declared, and though he managed not to mention the Holocaust, it hung over our heads: “What must we do when our existence is in danger? Should we confront the evil, or wait till it blows over? Once more we are alone.”
    His words depressed me. I felt I didn’t have the strength to shoulder the anxieties of the Holocaust as well. Faced with Pharaoh, we didn’t need Hitler too.
     
    Another day of inactivity and waiting. We tried to kill time byplaying backgammon, draughts and cards, and debated what more had to happen before Eshkol gave the order. At noon some of the family men were given a day’s leave – so maybe there won’t be a war after all? A group of us went to the canteen, and I asked the guy in charge to turn the radio to the Israeli Arabic-language station. “Again?” he protested, “What the hell do you want the Arabic station for? Screw them!” I explained and pleaded and finally he relented.
    “President Gamal Abd el-Nasser, yesterday in Bir Gafgafa you said you would not retreat a single inch. Well, listen to these words from Israel: the Tiran Straits are an international waterway, open them up or they will be opened some other way, and an Israeli ship will pass through, flying the Israeli flag.”
    The statement did not mention war, but hinted at it. Nothing about force was said, but there was an implication that force would be used. “You do not threaten Arabs, you don’t impugn their honour and you do not insult an Arab ruler!” That was the lesson I was taught by my older brother Kabi when he worked in the government information office for Arab interests, before he joined the Mossad.
    “Son of a bitch!” Trabulsi burst out. “You heard Nasser? ‘If Israel wants war – welcome, ahlan wasahlan !’ Does he think war is a belly dance? Why don’t we take the fight to them? They should be screwed to hell!”
    I look at Trabulsi and I’m filled with envy. He’s just got a new baby, a second child. As for me, I have nothing, no wife or kids, no house and no car. I haven’t even bought that mustard-coloured jacket, like the one my late Uncle Nuri had, which I’d always dreamed of buying. I saw one the other day in the window of OBG, the most exclusive menswear shop in town, but it was too expensive. Now I wish I’d bought it anyway.
    *
    In the evening the order came to get ready to move. It didn’t say where to. Aflalo’s face turned pale, his mouth tightened as he packed his gear and he was ready before anybody else. We boarded the trucks and travelled in darkness. My mouth was dry and my mind blank. I don’t remember how long we were on the road when we got the order to stop overnight in an abandoned orchard. “Sleep with your clothes on,” the commander said. The rumour went round that we were on the outskirts of Gaza City.
    We woke up to a beautiful morning, a bright sky and the air exceptionally clear. A pleasant breeze rustled through the abandoned orchard, which breathed a green freshness. If only we could stop right here, in the beauty, the light and the wind. But at midday the word came: “Tomorrow we go to war!”
    I went to the adjutant and told him that I was an Arabist. “Wait here a minute,” he said and left. The minute stretched to twenty, and I thought he’d forgotten me. Then he returned and took me to the Intelligence Officer, who took me to the Operations Officer, who took me to the Brigade Second-in-Command, and he took me to the Brigade Commander.
    The Brigade Commander showed me a conference table covered with a green cloth, gave me a printed sheet headed “The Instrument of Surrender of the City of