Nuha said she’d pieced the story of their return together from scraps of stories. She could picture the scene as though she were remembering it herself. Going back, her mother told her, was difficult, but people did return. “Suddenly, all the members of a family would disappear, and we’d know they’d returned. Your father was like a madman, hunting for scraps of news and abusing your mother. One morning in April of ’51, he told us, ‘Come on, we’re going back.’ We didn’t take anything with us. We returned as we’d left, with nothing but our clothes, two flasks of water, a bundle of bread, some potatoes, and some boiled eggs. We got a taxi to Tyre and another to Rimeish, and from there, we started our march to al-Birwa. Going back was easy. We went around the villages and walked in the rough. The Stone walked as though on the palm of his hand — he’d stretch his hand out in front of him and read from his palm, he said everything was written there. We walked behind him in silence, your grandmother carrying you, me carrying your brother, and the Stone walking ahead of us. Finally we arrived. We’d walked the whole night and arrived at dawn. At the outskirts of the village, he told us to wait under an olive tree.
“There, the Stone started walking in an odd way. He bent over as though he were getting ready for a fight and started leaping until he disappeared from our view. Your grandmother went crazy. She started to go after him, but he waved her off, placing his finger on his lips to ask her to be quiet. Then he disappeared.
“And us, what were we to do? How could I wait when I had this half-paralyzed old woman with me? Suddenly the strength left your grandmother. All the way there, she’d been like a horse, but at the outskirts of the village her knees gave out and she collapsed, dripping with sweat. She was carrying you in her arms and the sweat dripped onto you. You started crying, and I took you from her and gave you my breast. No, you weren’t still breast feeding, you were two years old and I’d weaned you more than a year before, but for some reason, I took you from her arms, wiped the old woman’s sweat off you and gave you my breast. You stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep.
“The Stone returned.
“The sun was starting to set and your grandmother was sitting on her own under an isolated olive tree. Upon seeing her son, she struggled to stand up but couldn’t, so she crawled. We helped her to sit up; her eyes fixed on her son’s lips.
“We sat around him. He drank some water, ate a boiled egg, and asked us to wait for him before making his way toward the olive grove and disappearing again.
“He came back the next morning and said he was going to Kafar Yasif.
“We understood.
“The old woman bowed her head and began sobbing. I tried to question him. I asked him about my father’s house — I thought, Never mind; if our house has been demolished, we can go and live in my father’s house. ‘Listen, woman,’ he said, ‘I’m going to Kafar Yasif.’ And we understood. I said to him, ‘They demolished all the houses, right?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’
“When I heard the word yes I fell to the ground. I couldn’t see; everything had gone black. The Stone tried to bring me around.
“He explained everything to me.
“‘Al-Birwa is dead,’ he said. ‘You stay here, I’ll go.’
“He didn’t wait for nightfall. He said he’d go, and he went. His head must have been hurting him because he kept putting his hands to his temples and pressing. He ordered us not to move from where we were.
“We waited for three days and nights. April was cold, and we had only brought two woolen blankets. The four of us slept under them, the old woman shivering and talking in her sleep. We weren’t hungry. I had brought some bread, and your grandmother gathered thyme and some seeds from the land that we ate also.
“On the third night, the old woman disappeared.
“I woke up and didn’t find her with us under the blankets. I looked everywhere, but she’d disappeared.
“The Stone came back to tell us that we had to go to Kafar Yasif in the night, everything was arranged. Al-Birwa had been completely demolished, and the Jews had built the settlement of Achihud on top of it. Kafar Yasif was the only solution.
“I told him about his mother’s disappearance.
“‘She’s over there,’ he said. ‘I know her. I’ll go and get her, and don’t you move from here.’
“I wanted to tell him not to go, but I didn’t dare. How can you tell someone to abandon his mother? I begged him to wait for night to fall, but he didn’t answer. He left and didn’t return until sunset. He said he’d seen her and that she’d refused to come back with him. She was sitting alone on top of the ruins.
“A ruined village, and a woman sitting on top of the remains of her house, and a man trying to persuade her to go with him, and her stubborn silence. He talked, and she remained silent. He’d ask her to come with him, but she’d pay no attention.
“He said he’d told her about Kafar Yasif, that he’d found a house and that everything would be all right. She continued to refuse.
“He slept with us that night, got up at dawn and brought her back. He brought her back like a prisoner and said, ‘Let’s go to Kafar Yasif.’ I started getting ready. I folded the blankets and was checking around the huge olive tree among whose roots we’d been sleeping when I heard the old woman say, ‘No.’ She picked you up and started walking in the direction of Lebanon.”
Nuha said her grandmother had told her about three young men who’d approached her and how they’d pelted her with stones. She’d told them she was so-and-so, the daughter of so-and-so and that this was her house, so they pelted her with stones.
“‘I told them I was staying.’
“‘I told them this was my house, why did you destroy my house?’
“‘I told them they were stupid because they’d cut down so many olive trees.’
“‘I told them these were Roman olive trees. How could anyone dare cut down Christ’s olive trees? These were Father Jebran’s olive trees.’
“‘I told them lots of things.’
“She said she told them she didn’t care — ‘You took the land — take it. You took the fields and the olives and everything else — take them. But I want to live here. I’ll put up a tent and live here. It’s better than the camp. The air is clean here. Take everything and leave me the air.’
“The three young men backed away and started throwing stones at her.
“‘They were afraid,’ she said.
“The stones started raining down on her and piled up around her and she became a bundle of wounds.
“She said they spoke Arabic to her. They spoke like the Yemeni headman she’d met in ’47 when she wandered into the Jewish settlement near Tiberias by mistake.
“‘At first they came over to me and seemed kind. They weren’t aggressive. But when I told them I was so-and-so, daughter of so-and-so, they began inching away. They drew back one step for every one of my words. Then suddenly they all bent over as if they’d received some kind of signal and the stones started raining down.’
“The old woman sat under the olive tree and my mother went to get a rag and a flask of water so she could clean her wounds. At the same time the Stone was telling them about Kafar Yasif and the house Sa’ad’s son had found and the job in his workshop. He said, ‘We’re here now and we can’t go back to Lebanon.’ He said, ‘We’ll live in Kafar Yasif, then we’ll see.’ He talked and talked and talked; the old woman sat on the ground looking into the distance. She didn’t tell them what had happened to her. She didn’t say she’d tried to talk to the Yemenis. She didn’t say she’d talked about a tent she was going to put up in the ruins of al-Birwa. She was like a tree with its branches broken. Suddenly she got up, picked up two-year-old Nuha, and set off in the direction of Lebanon.”