“But we left the dead behind, and that was shameful,” said an elderly man as he got up to leave.
Umm Sa’ad Radi wasn’t at the wake to tell her story.
Amina Mohammed Mousa — Umm Sa’ad Radi — died a month before Husam was martyred. If she’d been there, she’d have told you; she would have stopped the flood of nostalgia and memories.
If Umm Sa’ad Radi had been there she’d have said: “My husband and I left al-Kabri the day before it fell. We were on the Kabri-Tarshiha road and they slaughtered us. I wasn’t able to dig a grave for my husband. I see him in my dreams, stretched out in the ground. He sits up and tries to speak, but he has no voice.
“We were on the road when darkness fell. My husband decided we should spend the night in the fields, and we slept under an olive tree. At dawn, as my husband was getting ready to say his prayers, our friend, Raja, passed and urged us to flee. He said the Jews were getting very close. My husband finished his prayers, and we kept going toward Tarshiha, where we ran into them. They were approaching al-Kabri from the north and the south. We were stopped, searched, and taken in an armored car to our village.
“They left us in the square; I could see the troops dancing and singing and eating. A Jewish officer came over to us, chewing on bread wrapped in brown paper and started asking us questions. He pointed his rifle at my husband’s neck and asked in good Arabic, ‘You’re from al-Kabri?’
“‘No,’ I answered. ‘We’re from al-Sheikh Dawoud.’
“‘I’m not asking you, I’m asking him,’ he said.
“‘We’re from al-Sheikh Dawoud,’ my husband repeated, his voice shaking.
“At that instant, a man with a sackcloth bag over his head came over. I recognized him — it was Ali Abd al-Aziz. The bag had two holes for his eyes, and one for his lips. Ali nodded; he was breathing through his mouth, the bag was stuck to his nose, and he was puffing as though he were about to choke. I knew him from his nose, from the way the bag clung to his face.
“The bastard nodded his head, and I recognized him.
“‘You’re from al-Kabri,’ said the officer after the man with the bag over his head had confirmed it for him.
“They took my husband, along with Ibrahim Dabaja, Hussein al-Khubeizeh, Osman As’ad Abdallah, and Khalil al-Timlawi, and left the women in the square. We stood motionless while they danced and sang and ate around us. Then the officer came over and said he would have liked to bring my husband back to me except that he’d been killed. He also told me not to cry. Then he showed me a picture of Fares Sarhan and asked if I knew him.
“‘Tell Fares we’ll occupy all of Palestine and catch up with him in Lebanon.’
“I burst into tears, but they weren’t real tears. Real tears found me on the second day when I saw my husband’s body and tried to carry it to the cemetery and couldn’t. That’s when I cried, the tears gushing even from my mouth.
“The officer raised his rifle and ordered us to leave the square. We slept in the fields, and in the morning Umm Hassan and I returned to al-Kabri and saw the chickens in the streets. I don’t know who’d let them out. Their feathers were ruffled and they were making strange noises. Umm Hassan tried to round them up. I don’t know what we were thinking of, but we started rounding up the chickens. Then I got scared. Scared of the chickens. They seemed wild and were making such strange noises. I fled to the spring. I was thirsty, so I left Umm Hassan rounding up the chickens and fled. On the way I found Umm Mustafa. She hugged me and started sobbing: ‘Go gather up your husband, he’s dead.’ She took me by the hand and we ran to the square.
“I found him there, lying on his stomach. He had been shot in the back of his head. The sun! The sun burned into everything. What, dear God, was I to do? I carried him into the shade. No, I dragged him into the shade. I didn’t dare turn him over. I left him like that, took hold of his feet and pulled him into the shade. I looked around. Umm Mustafa had disappeared, and Umm Hassan was still over there with the chickens. I went looking for her and I found her in the street, bleeding, with the chickens hopping around her. I pushed her ahead of me to where my husband was. Upon seeing him, she calmed down, went off, and came back with a plank. We turned him over onto his back and carried him to the cemetery, but we weren’t able to dig a grave for him. We pushed some earth to the side and buried him above his mother’s bones. To this day I pray, haunted that I wasn’t able to bury him properly. We didn’t wash him because he’s a martyr, and martyrs are purified by their own blood. And besides, dear God, how were we to wash him in such conditions?
“But the chickens!
“I don’t know what got into the chickens.
“I went back to my house on my own and stayed in al-Kabri five days not daring to go out — you could still hear scattered shots. On the sixth day, I went out. I found blood everywhere and couldn’t see the chickens. I’m sure they’d shot them all and eaten them. I didn’t see a single chicken. I went to Umm Hussein’s house. Where was her husband? Her husband was with mine and had to be buried, too. The door of her house was off its hinges, and no one was inside. I looked around for her and stumbled upon old Abu Salim, a seventy-five-year-old man, who said he was looking for his son. He kept saying he’d lost his son and needed my help, and it was only then that I came to my senses again.
“Suddenly, I could see straight. I was someone else during those five days I’d spent hidden in my house after burying my husband. I remember nothing, or I remember that I fried some dough and ate it. I was completely lost, as though the soul of some other woman had entered my body. Five days that ran together like one single day, or one hour!
“When I found Abu Salim and walked through the deserted streets with him in search of his lost son, I came back to myself.
“I took the old man’s hand and brought him with me to Tarshiha. I told him he was the one who was lost, not his son. He went with me and didn’t say a thing. He bowed his head and went like a little child. At the entrance to Tarshiha, I saw my sister and rushed over to her. Then I couldn’t find the old man again. His son said he looked for him everywhere but in vain. I swear I don’t know. Maybe he went back to al-Kabri and died there.”
Umm Sa’ad Radi died before the families of the district of Acre assembled at Abu Husam’s house to congratulate him on the glorious death of his son.
If she’d been there she’d have told everyone her story, and told Abu Husam to stop boasting of his fictive heroic deeds.
I visited her a few days before her death. She wasn’t sick; it was more as if her life force were draining away. I prescribed some vitamins even though I knew they wouldn’t do any good. But I did my duty; a doctor has to do his duty to the end — he is the guardian of the spark of life. I’m the guardian of your life force, dear Abu Salem; I won’t abandon you. It’s my duty to defend the life in you against all odds.
With Umm Sa’ad Radi I did my duty. Radi was there, a man of about sixty, his children and grandchildren with him, hovering around his mother’s bed, afraid of death.
Umm Sa’ad Radi spoke in a low voice, almost inaudibly. “His grave,” she said, almost as if she could see him shaking the earth off his bones, raising his head a little, then sitting up with his pale, cracked face and looking at her as though in reproach. The woman kept repeating, “His grave. Go to his grave.”
She died in fear. She lived her whole life in fear, waiting at the entrance of the fedayeen camp for the fighters coming back or going to southern Lebanon and imploring one after another: “I beg you, go to the cemetery at al-Kabri.”