“That’s Aziz Ayyoub,” said Umm Hassan, and she told them his wife and children lived in the Burj al-Shamali camp near Tyre, and that she’d seen his son, who’d grown into a fine man and worked as a broker for the lemon growers in Tyre.
The people of al-Jdeideh couldn’t believe that their Ayyoub was this Aziz Ayyoub.
Their Ayyoub was a phantom; our Aziz was a man.
Their Ayyoub was a saint; our Aziz died when the young Yasin left him and fled into the valley.
Ayyoub, or Aziz Ayyoub, lived his life a solitary phantom in a village inhabited by ghosts. He lived alone close to the tree and the mosque, sleeping in the mosque with the cows and eating plants that grew on the land and the remains of provisions that had been left behind in the abandoned houses. They’d see him walking through the fields or sitting under the lotus tree or praying in the mosque or giving the call to prayer. His clothes were a brilliant white, as though all the muck that surrounded him left no mark.
People called him White Ayyoub.
After lighting their candles under the tree, they’d approach him hoping for a blessing, but he’d walk away. No one could touch him. Umm Hassan didn’t know how they knew his name. “He didn’t speak to anyone, he didn’t respond, so how did they know? This, my son, I’m not able to tell you. They said he was as pure as an angel, that he’d clean out the mosque and become even more immaculate.”
Umm Hassan says she thinks a good number the stories circulating about Ayyoub are just fantasies. The mosque wasn’t used continuously as a cow pen, most likely the Jews kept their cattle there during the winter. She didn’t think they’d leave their cows with Ayyoub.
“Ayyoub went mad,” said Umm Hassan. “How could anybody live alone among those ruins and not lose his mind? If he hadn’t lost his mind, he’d have left al-Ghabsiyyeh and gone to live in another village, any other village, among people.”
“But that’s not the point of the story, Son,” said Umm Hassan. “The point is that Aziz Ayyoub became a saint after he died.”
One day a woman came to the lotus tree to fulfil a vow, and she saw him. She threw down her candles and ran to al-Jdeideh, and everyone came. Ayyoub was dead beneath the holy tree, his neck tied to a rope, the rope on the ground, as though the man had fallen from a branch of the tree. At one end of the rope was Ayyoub’s neck, which had turned thin and black, and at the other end was a branch of the lotus tree that had been torn from its mother and had fallen to the ground.
“No one touch him,” someone said. “The man committed suicide, and suicide is an impure act.”
The people backed away from the body of White Ayyoub, whispering in strangled voices. One woman left the throng, went over to the corpse, took off her headscarf, and covered the face of the dead man. Then she knelt bareheaded and started to weep.
“They killed him,” said the kneeling woman. “They killed the guardian of the lotus tree. It’s a sign.”
Sheikh Abd al-Ahad, imam of the Jdeideh mosque, said that Ayyoub hadn’t committed suicide. “Ayyoub is a martyr, my friends.”
The sheikh gave orders to take the body into the mosque, where it was washed and wrapped in a shroud. The burial took place beside the lotus tree, where they built Ayyoub a tomb.
“Now, Son, when you go to al-Ghabsiyyeh, you’ll see cacti everywhere. Only the cactus bears witness to our endurance. And there next to the tree, you’ll see the tomb of Ayyoub. The tree is lush and beautiful and green. Ah, how beautiful lotus trees are! Have you ever seen a lotus tree in your life? Of course you haven’t. Your generation hasn’t seen anything. There, Son, sleeps Aziz Ayyoub, Saint Ayyoub. People visit his tomb and leave him gifts and votive offerings, and he answers their prayers. I saw the tomb. A small tomb with a window. I leaned my head down and shouted, ‘Aziz! Can you hear me? Dear beloved one, you truly have earned your name!* You rose above an entire people. You ended your life on the tree you guarded. Aziz, Dear Saint, Beloved of God!’ That’s how the people invoke him, Son. They come from all around; they put their heads near the window and call, ‘Ayyoub!’”
Umm Hassan said she thought Aziz Ayyoub had committed suicide. “A man all alone, afflicted by madness, what was he to do? But he was transformed into a sheikh, and they swear by his name and await his blessings. Poor humans!”
Even though Umm Hassan didn’t believe that Aziz Ayyoub had become a saint, in her last days, she’d swear by his name and ask me to tell her the story of how I’d stood with my father behind the donkey, and how Aziz grabbed the donkey’s tail and told my father to stand behind him. I’d describe the scene to her and she’d burst into laughter: “What was that? Did I think the donkey would act as a barrier and protect them from the bullets?”
As you see, dear master, things have become mixed up in my mind just like in yours. I had nothing to do with it: It was Yasin, my father, who stood behind the donkey. But, you see, I’ve been infected by Umm Hassan and have started talking about these people as though I knew them all personally. But Ayyoub did become a saint. What do saints do to become saints? Nothing, I suppose, because people invent them. People invent wonders and believe in them because they need them. True as that is, it changes nothing. Ayyoub’s a saint, whether we willed it or not.
Aziz was guardian of the mosque and the lotus tree and the cemetery. He’d inherited his profession from his father, who’d inherited it from his father, who’d inherited it from his father, who. . until you run out of fathers. Every day he filled his water jar, washed the graves, cleaned the mosque, walked around the lotus tree, and slept.
“A man who sleeps in a cemetery.” That was how Umm Hassan described him.
And the man who slept in a cemetery started curing the sick, helping women get pregnant, bringing back those who had gone away, and finding husbands for girls.
Ayyoub gave his name to the tree, which became known as the Tree of Ayyoub.
Now I understand why you get things mixed up, Father. I asked you about the lotus tree, and you answered that there was no such thing as a lotus tree in al-Ghabsiyyeh, and that the people of Deir al-Asad used to talk of a tree called an Ayyoubi but you didn’t know what kind of tree that was.
The tree, Father, is the lotus, and its guardian is Ayyoub — a man who hanged himself from its branches, so the tree proclaimed him a saint.
“Listen, Khalil,” said Umm Hassan. “It could be that he hung himself, or it could be that the man tied the rope around his neck and climbed onto a branch of the tree to put an end to his misery and loneliness, but the tree took pity on him and broke so as not to allow him to commit the defilement of suicide. The tree, which is ruled by a saint, proclaimed him a saint, so now it has two saints, the first one, whose name we don’t know, and Ayyoub, of our village, whose name was Aziz. The sheikh of al-Jdeideh has a different opinion. He believes the Israelis strangled him, then tied a rope around his neck to make people think he’d committed suicide. ‘Why should he commit suicide?’ the sheikh asked me. ‘The man chose to live alone in the service of God — they killed him. They killed him because they wanted to uproot the tree, but we’ll never let them do that. I’ll appoint a new guard, for the tree and the tomb.’”
The sheikh of al-Jdeideh didn’t appoint a guard as he’d promised Umm Hassan, and the tomb remained alone, but no one lifted a hand against the sacred tree.