O Soil of the Forefathers — Scenes from Reality in Palestine

Watfa withdrew to a spot far from the clamor and sat crouched upon her heels, a wave of buried grief brimming from her eyes. She had been in the city, and had learned of the catastrophe... the catastrophe of the sale of her land. It would overturn the circumstances of her tribe, turning their ease into toil, their pride into humiliation, their settled life into wandering and homelessness.

Watfa's tender heart refused to let her disclose to her people what she had learned. Let them enjoy their happy hours... Who knows?... Perhaps this night would be the last of their nights in a home ground where they had grown up and become its protectors, a ground whose soil had mingled with the water of their brows, with their tears and their blood, and with the dust of the graves of their dear ones.

But the girl was in pressing need to pour out what was working in her breast, for in the pouring out there is a lightening of the heart's anguish and the soul's sorrow. She looked about her and found none but her ewe; so she clasped her to her breast, confiding to her her revolt:

"Gone are the days of happiness, my ewe, when you grazed under my care and we roamed together in the shade of my tribe — strong, mighty, lofty the tree of its pride, spreading the shade of its chivalry. Alas for it!... It is heedless in its contentment, unmindful of the treachery hatched against it and the deliberate deceit... The land is no longer our land, my ewe. We have become strangers in it, owning no more of it than the dreamer owns of his dream, or the stranger of the land of his exile. They have sold it... and no hope remains to look for. They sell, my ewe, and live in comfort... while we here are humbled and hounded... Theirs the ease and the journey of summer and of winter; ours the misery, the abasement, and the wretchedness. Theirs the seats of honor and the gain; ours the anguish and the heartbreak. Tomorrow this gathered company will scatter, each to his own quarter, seeking money, bread for the children. Tomorrow we shall depart, my ewe, and these dwellings, with their precious days and nights, will become memories passing through our minds, aching, painful, attended by chokings and shot through with sighs... Tomorrow the land will stand empty of its people, and the houses of their dwellers. Tomorrow our blood will run, our voices will rise in cries, and there will be none to hear our complaint, none to heed our calamity; our death and our life will be all one — for no reason but that we are of the people, weak and poor."

And Watfa turned her gaze this way and that, bidding the grounds farewell and drawing up memories... This brook — how often she had come down to it to drink of its sweet water and fill her jar; and those hills and these green plains, where she had passed the flower of her life, free as the butterflies, greeting with joy the herald of morning and the breezes of evening, delighting in the seasons of summer and winter, reveling in the splendor of spring... and grieving at the dust-gray of autumn. And these dear hollows caked with ash — they were the hearths... the hearths of her tribe and the haunt of their evening company. How often she had sat by them on tranquil evenings, pounding the coffee mortar and preparing the coffee, kindling the fire as a signal to the neighbors, while around her the young women of the Arabs swayed with grace and moved with pride.

The girl wept and the ewe stirred; and voices rose, calling Watfa to join the singers in their song and the dabke dancers in their dance. The girl folded in upon herself, walked with heavy steps, and stood in the middle of the ring, absent of mind, her eyes brimming. Her sorrow had overflowed and betrayed what her soul had hidden... All were struck dumb at the look of their girl; the questioning drew long, as did Watfa's silence; the flame of merriment guttered out, and the people dispersed in knots, guessing and surmising, until the first threads of dawn broke, attended by a strange clatter. The anxious people listened and called out to one another, asking. Watfa climbed a knoll and sent her gaze abroad... It was the strange, new, intruding owner, come with his gear and his numbers, to turn over her land, tear up the roots of her tribe, and efface its landmarks...

The girl closed her eyes and her imagination ran on, comparing the past, with its pride and its might, and the present, with its shames and its submission; and she moaned the moan of the stricken, and her voice rose, hoarse with sorrow and choked with tears.

And the girl came down from the knoll with despair in her heart and resolve in her soul — the resolve to die upon the face of her land, wrapped in the garment of her pride. She walked in majesty to meet the newcomers, and drew her dagger...

The women screamed, the men roared, the two sides closed, blood flowed — and the curtain fell upon a new tragedy, one of the many tragedies of Arabism... in the land of Arabism... the fruit of the neglect of Arabism's own sons!

Haifa, January 1, 1947