And now, sitting day and night by the boy’s bed, you wonder how Calamity took over that night and Right stabbed you in the back. Because Rasheed freaked when you didn’t come back. He didn’t even take off his funny glasses, because he was sure you would return in a minute to bring him to Israel. He must have thought you loved him best of all because his name was just like yours. And you did, because he was the most darling. But when the two old folks gave him his supper, he began to cry and scream at the old lady that he didn’t want to be left behind in Palestine. And even then she might have calmed him if only Ismail, a moody child in the best of times, hadn’t slapped him and made him cry even harder for his mother. And at night, when they were all asleep with the windows shut and the door locked, he wriggled through a transom in the bathroom. Although at first he meant to wait for his uncle, he was lured on by the lights of Israel in the distance. He was sure that once he reached them, no one would ask him for any ID. He didn’t know that Fate prowled on the mountain, disguised as the hunter whose gun would fill out the forms you had thrown away.
17.
’CAUSE WHY NOT TRY? The lights are bright and near and I can reach them. Why be afraid of the soldiers if my mother was born there and can speak their language? The village is called Mansura. We were there twice. Grandmother gave us candies and told us to come back. What made Mamma leave? She shouldn’t have done it for Babba. He’s sick. Let him die in Jenin, where he was born.
But why does this path keep going up? I thought it was just a little mountain. Now I see it’s a big one. And there’s nothing on it. I should have slept in that old witch’s house. But I made a mistake and I can’t go back.
THE DRUZE OFFICER SLEPT all day and all night in his friend’s dental clinic, woozy from the painkillers he took for his pulled tooth. At dawn he arose, amazed and contentedly refreshed by his long slumber. He phoned headquarters to make sure his leave had not been canceled, went to his jeep, which was stocked with six battle rations, two canteens of fresh milk mixed with grated cheese, and a carton of stale bread, and took out a military map of Mount Gilboa. Spreading it on the floor of the clinic, he studied it carefully. Then he picked out a route and some good spots for hunters’ blinds, committed them to his photographic memory, and folded and put away the map. The dentist, none of his patients protesting, called off his appointments for the next day; the lawyer postponed all his meetings, giving each client a different excuse; and the two Christian hunters sat down to clean and oil their guns in preparation for the Druze extravaganza.
A light rain was falling in the glare of their headlights as they set out. They stopped in a field, to pick some alfalfa for the lamb half of the lambcat, and arrived at evening, fully armed and bundled in their windbreakers, at Netur Kontar’s father’s house. There, over a cozy supper, the old hunter described what he had seen. The main thing, he warned, was to catch the animal alive. This was important not only for science, but also for tourism, especially if — though the task seemed impossible — the sexless lambcat could be made to propagate.
It was nine o’clock when the three hunters returned to their jeep and set out for Mount Gilboa. Parking by a spring chosen by the Druze officer, they spread the alfalfa on a rock, poured the milk and cheese into a bowl, and added a fish head given them by Netur’s mother, who knew nothing of the strange beast that had frolicked with her husband. The Druze positioned his two friends and climbed a tree that looked down on the bait. In the next few hours the bait drew partridges, conies, and even a wary young fox, who left nothing for the lambcat. The rain beat down harder.
IT WAS RAINING SO hard that I couldn’t even see the darkness and had to take off my glasses. As soon as I did, I lost them. That’s too bad, I thought, ’cause now no one in Israel will know me, and I’ll be like Babba, without a right to return. It’s best to cross now in the dark when the soldiers are asleep, ’cause if they see that I don’t know any Hebrew except for “Hello” and “Screw you” they’ll bring me back to my sick father in the basement.
I was getting hungry. Between Ismail and the old woman, I didn’t eat any supper, so I broke off a leaf and chewed it and thought, maybe it’s poison and I’ll die before Babba. I felt sorry for leaving him all sick and pale in the church. What if the Abuna forgets to take care of him? And I felt bad that I hadn’t opened his present or said thank-you, so I looked in my pocket and there it was, wrapped in some newspaper, and I took it out and it was a little pen, and I wondered what would happen when Babba died, and I missed him and wanted to cry and go back.
There was a fishy smell. I went to see what it was. A flashlight shone on me. “There he is,” someone whispered. That’s right, I thought, here I am, but why are you talking in Arabic?
AFTER THE SMALL GAME of Gilboa had eaten all the bait and vanished without a shot being fired, Netur Kontar decided to leave the spring for a new spot on Brave Men’s Hill. They drove over Buttercup Pass and down the Old Patrol Road for five hundred meters. Once again they spread the alfalfa and put out the milk and cheese, into which they now tossed the fish’s tail. This time the Druze remained below and told the two Christians to climb trees.
The more the night progressed, the more temperamental Netur Kontar became. He began to order the doctor and lawyer around as if they were trackers under his command, barking at them what to do and demanding such silence that not only laughter but smiles were forbidden. “Who does he think he is?” the lawyer whispered indignantly to the dentist. “we didn’t stay out of the Jews’ army in order to serve in a Druze’s. We haven’t caught a damn thing tonight.”
But as Netur was determined to trap the lambcat, and the keys to the jeep were in his pocket, there was nothing the two Christians could do but climb into their harnesses and up two wet-branched trees. They perched there in their windbreakers, the victims of Netur Kontar’s father’s fantasy. They would, they decided, give it until three in the morning. If the lambcat had not turned up by then, they would look for other game.
The silence was total. Although the rain picked up again, the dentist and the lawyer soon fell asleep in the branches. They were half-dreaming when the Druze shone his flashlight on the bushes and whispered, “There he is.” By then it was too late to stop him.
AND I THOUGHT, if they’re talking Arabic, I haven’t reached the border and it must be Ismail coming to spank me. “Don’t,” I wanted to beg him. “Go easy. Don’t spank me too hard, ’cause I’m worried about Babba, who’s sick and all alone, and I’m mad at Mamma for leaving him.” It was wet and cold and dark and I ran and I ran until I couldn’t run any more and I heard my brother growling beneath a tree. He wasn’t shouting or cursing, just making these crazy animal sounds. I was good and scared. So I ran some more and my present fell from my pocket and I bent to pick it up and something whistled and I felt an awful pain as if Babba’s pen were stuck in my back.
AN EXPERIENCED HUNTER LIKE Netur Kontar knew at once that no animal moved or made sounds like that. Perhaps, he thought, the beast that had fired his father’s imagination was a werelamb. Waking the two Christians in the treetops, he signaled them to slip quietly down and execute a flanking movement and — though he had been warned by his father to catch the lambcat alive — opened the safety catch on his shotgun and took off in hot pursuit.