It found you outside the Civil Administration building, hopelessly stuffing your jacket pocket with forms as though it were a garbage pail for hope. “Take me with you!” it cried. “Take me from this Jerusalem slush. Even the Jew, though you led him here through a blizzard, can only go tsk and mumble vague promises. Take me with you, Rashid! If not now, when? I’m light and I’m clear and I won’t weigh you down. Enough of the hypocrisy of colored forms — forms for the government, and forms for the army, and forms for tired bureaucrats and officers with their games. ‘Yes, by all means, bring your sister and her children, just make sure they’re dying of some illness’—as if any illness could be fatal enough. Take me with you, O Arab of Israel, O displaced citizen who has his rightful place!”
And so you threw away the forms, and Right jumped into your arms like a lion cub, emboldening you so that you asked for your full pay, and the shocked Professor laughed but forked up. And that night, when you reached the village, even the horse sensed that Right was with you and backed away from the gate. Samaher and Afifa turned over in their sleep, hearing Right pass down the hallway, and Grandmother lay with open eyes by Grandfather and smelled it as if sniffing fresh vegetables. “Careful, Rashid, my love,” she thought. “Don’t do anything crazy with this Right you’ve brought home.” Yes, Grandmother. The Law blows up in the lawmaker’s brain, and Right stabs the hearts of the righteous. But what else can I do when it and I have embraced and there is no turning back?
That night you began clearing out your room for Ra’uda and her children. You felt sad giving up the place that had been yours since childhood, the solitary room of your hopes and dreams, of your books and self-abuse and love for the young cousin you protected. It was hard to empty out the drawers, collect the books, and fumigate the same mattress the Jew slept on. But when you took down the colored memos and the pictures, baring ugly patches on the faded walls, you realized that childhood had gone on long enough and love had grown too entangled. It was time, O wise one, to choose exile.
You spent the day painting and plastering. And in the evening, when all came to see, the village informer came too, for who knew what juicy bit of information the police might pay for? But Right was stronger than all payment, and even the old informer could only say “Well done” and depart. Your old enemy alone, Samaher’s husband, was gloomy and nervous and refused to believe that anything had changed. “O husband of my beloved cousin,” you should have said to him, “are you not glad the jinni is leaving?” But he knew that the return of Ra’uda and her children would only strengthen your foothold in this house, even though you had moved to the far end of the village.
Was it he, in desperation, who informed on you that night?
Yes, Calamity burst from you like a dream become a reality, and though you leaped barefoot in the dark to head it off, it was too late. Its swift shadow passed through the room you had prepared and merged outside the window with the certainty awaiting it. Over the hills, in the awakening light, it rolled as all calamities do to a place you had never imagined. O rash Rashid, how could you deliver the boy into the hands of poachers?”
It was afternoon when you arrived in Zababdeh. The winter sun was mild. As on the night of Paradise, you crossed the fields and — noticed only by Calamity, which followed you — kicked down a section of fence. You suspected nothing, happy to see the children in the churchyard looking so nice in their clean clothes, dream-Israelis about to become real ones. Ra’uda was wearing the Jewish judge’s hand-me-downs in honor of her return. You gave her sick old Christian husband a package of your old clothes, too, and some books to pass the time with when his children were gone, and you went to say good-bye to the Abuna, who showered you with twice as many blessings as usual because he sensed that Calamity was on its way. After that you went for a last meal in the basement. The Christian sat silently at the head of the table, eating his soup from his army mess tin in a mood of great fear, as if Calamity were directly overhead. You alone were not frightened or confused. You were as pleased with yourself as if Right and you were now bedfellows.
At three that afternoon you folded the backseats of the minibus, loaded the bundles and kitchenware, and hid the children among them. Ra’uda sat up front with the baby. Ismail and Rasheed put on their big glasses, so that whoever had seen them in the Jewish state would recognize them. Their father gave them some farewell gifts, and they parted with a few words. It had clouded over and begun to drizzle, and you were in a hurry to get back to Israel before dark. The Palestinian police in Kabatiyeh and Jenin knew you were on your way. “Good luck,” they said to your sister. “We too will return some day.” But cutting across the field, you saw a new checkpoint that hadn’t been there before and two soldiers waiting for something, perhaps for you — and you panicked. In fact, you did the worst possible thing. You stopped the car and turned around. And Calamity thought: if one checkpoint with two soldiers can make this Israeli Arab turn and run, how much Right can he have?
The report of the vehicle that had turned back spread like an ink stain. More and more checkpoints went up. You headed east toward Mount Gilboa and reached it at twilight, hoping to find an unguarded path, only to run into a roadblock there too. And yet Calamity was still preventable. The three soldiers, all middle-aged reservists, had no idea what to look for. They checked the bundles and suitcases, searched for explosives and drugs, and lined the children up in a row and demanded to know the history of each. You kept calm. The children, you explained quietly, were all little Israelis who had been visiting their cousins in the Palestinian Authority with their mother. Now they missed their village in the Galilee, which was why it was wrong to detain them, because they were hungry and wanted their Israeli supper.
The dark Arab’s light manner did not entirely assuage the Jews, who failed to grasp what so many ID-less little children were doing at the foot of Mount Gilboa at dusk on a winter day. And yet their commander, a sergeant in his forties whose hair was streaked with gray, was not looking for problems. He had a family of his own, which was sitting down to its supper now, too, and he felt sorry for the children, especially for the black baby sleeping in the arms of its curiously well-dressed mother. He was ready to turn a blind eye — but only one. He would let them all through except for the two older boys, the ones with the funny glasses, who would have to wait for their ID’s.
And then, Rashid, you made your second mistake. You should have noticed the fear in little Rasheed’s coal black eyes and insisted, “Hold on there, my fellow citizens. I have too much Right on my side to compromise. I’m not going anywhere without the two boys. Their grandmother is waiting for them too.”
But you didn’t. You were rattled and started to squirm, afraid the sergeant would open his blind eye too, and you turned tail and headed for the village of Arabuna to find a place for the two boys for the night. Bolts of lightning sliced the air, and you heard a boom of thunder and thought, “I have to hurry,” and you knocked on the door of the first house. The old woman who opened it looked as ancient and used as a ghost from Turkish times. And then you made your third mistake. Instead of saying, “Sorry, I’ve come to the wrong house,” you appointed her temporary grandmother in charge of the two returnees. You even gave her twenty shekels for milk and eggs and told the Dybbuk’s two candle bearers to wait for you, making the younger one promise to obey the older and the older one swear to look after the younger, so that Grandmother Ghost, who had by now awakened Grandfather Ghost to help her, would not be annoyed with them.