The Last Cluster

Overflow, O earth — overflow, and fill the houses with wheat and dibs and honey and wine and oil and olives...

*

Shall I tell you the story of those blessed ones?! And who among men does not know their story... the story of the blessing... But for them, no green vine would have grown in the land of Lebanon, nor an olive tree, nor a mulberry tree... But for them, the land of Lebanon would have remained rock and wilderness, where nothing comes up but thorns...!!

*

Those men are gone... nothing of them remains in the mountain country but the broken plowshare and the abandoned pickax...

*

... And the last peasant in my village died a year ago... After him no strong peasants remained in my village to drive the plowshare into the dry soil of the earth so that it sinks deep, under the thick, hard palms... He was a peasant of true stock; his roots went deep into the earth, and the earth reached into every vein of him.

*

No daybreak ever found him but there, with the land — picking, or sowing, or planting, or cutting... and no night ever wrapped him but on the soil of a field, under a trellis or under an oak...

*

He was strong, tall as the oak, fearsome as a specter; in his voice were tones we know in our village only from the old tales... His voice would carry, night and day, from above our valleys, and its echo would ring around the sides of the village...

And at times the whole village, hearing his voice, would reckon that some mouth had reached out to Abu Wahib's plantings somewhere...

We had, in the mountain country, sweet and precious things... We did not know their worth until they went out and were gone, and with them went the good life in the mountain country.

And no one knows — will bounty return to the Lebanese mountain?
And will happiness return?

*

The most precious thing we had was our blessed old men... Truly, those men were a blessing in our lives... In their days we knew neither hunger nor nakedness.

Our chests were full of grain and of all the good things of the earth.
And our great wardrobes were stacked with robes of silk.

And the earth was generous in their days, and their hearts were generous in the love of the earth... and their hands knew nothing but giving... They give, and God fills the belly of the earth with good things and gives to them...

And he lived long, till he had had his fill of years; his figure never bent, nor his frame twisted, nor his voice dried up; his hands never wearied, nor his legs tired.

And he died full of years and full of bounty...

As for years, he always used to say to us: I have lived my life twice over — I lived one life in the day, and I lived another life in the night.

As for bounty, he inherited a little of it from his fathers, and bequeathed much of it to his sons...

In the grape vineyards of our village there was nothing like what Abu Wahib had... The clusters in his vineyards were of shape upon shape — plump, full clusters, hanging like chandeliers of gold, of silver, of crystal, of carnelian, on alluring, high, green vines, always laden, without one weak, shriveled cluster among them... as if his vineyards, alone among the vineyards, were the pampered darlings of the village...

*

Even the sparrows of his vineyards were strange among the sparrows of the vineyards... A sparrow would not leave them until the cluster was cut from its mother, and Abu Wahib's clusters were not cut until the first of winter... And the bird-hunters of the village would die for the fat sparrows of his vineyards.

*

Once I made bold against his vineyards and his sparrows — and rarely did anyone in the village make bold against him... There was a kinship between him and me that emboldened me to it... and my desire ran to the sparrows more than to the clusters... No sooner had I fired the first shot than a thundering voice boomed through the wood: My sparrows — do I raise them for people...?!.. Who are you, boy?... And I heard the fall of his footsteps drawing near me.

I steadied my heart and said: I shall meet him with gentleness and tact... He stopped beside me, and his great shadow spread its tent over me... his stature rivaled the terebinth I stood under.

And when he knew me, his mind was set at rest... He knew I was a guest of the village, a straying amateur of a hunter, who came to the vineyards for something other than sparrow and cluster — and rarely hit a cluster or hit a sparrow.

And he smiled and said to me: I took you for one of those accursed ones who wreck the vineyards and hit nothing but the clusters... So my heart warmed to his tone, and I set about drawing him out with talk:

Your vineyards tempt me, uncle, and your

sparrows tempt me. I come to your vineyards to feast my eyes on their radiant clusters, whose like I do not see in the vineyards... For your vineyard is green and full of clusters, while our vineyard is dry, its clusters shriveled; neither the cluster of our vineyard nor the sparrows in it ever enter my mind.

*

At that his face lit up, and joy spread over his brow, and he rubbed his hands, and sat down beside me under the terebinth, and talked to me for long hours about the story of his life, which is the story of the land in our village — nay, it is the story of the land in all the villages of Lebanon...

He told me of the rocks that became soil, and the soil that became vineyards of grapes here and groves of olives there.

He said: Listen — you remember nothing of it... you were not yet born... This vineyard you see thus was rock and wild wood... I inherited it from my father, rock and wild wood... and my father left me many rocks... I turned the rocks into houses, and turned the wild wood into vineyards... Do not ask me how I worked, or how much I worked... My whole life I spent here... We kept faith with the land, my son, and the land kept faith with us... We gave it our youth. True, we did not live soft as you live soft, nor eat as you eat, nor sleep as you sleep... but we shall never fear going hungry as you fear...

And he shook me by the shoulder: "You will go hungry... You are on the road to hunger... You hunt for the worthless piaster; the salary piaster is worthless, my children... it comes from here and goes as though it had never come...

What has your post in the city done for you? Here are your vineyards, all dried up... Plant one sapling in them out of the salary piaster, if you can!... You will not be able...

Only the piaster of the land endures...

*

A year ago the last Lebanese peasant died in my village, and this summer his three sons told me — and swore to it — that they had not had their fill of grapes, nor their fill of wheat, for the clusters had dried on their mothers; and their cows had not had their fill, for the leaves had dried up with the clusters...

They said: a worm gnawed the grapevines of the village this season. And they said: the sky was stingy with rain this year... But they did not say: the hand of bounty in my village has turned into an idle hand.

*

And they built for us, among the blessings they built, houses of faith — in every quarter of the village's quarters a house of God... They built them with faith, for faith, that faith might remain in us so long as the houses of God remain among us... They spent on them not one piaster of the devil's money... They joined hands and bore one another up and worked by day, and by the light of the moon, and love worked with them... They were with God, so God was with them... and they raised the houses of God high — with love... and the walls of those churches heard those deep rough voices rise in prayer to God, and in thanksgiving, and saw those blessed hands stretched out in supplication to God...

And this summer I came back to my village, and behold — one of those holy houses was falling in upon itself; had not a man in the Mahjar, one of those very blessed ones, come to its rescue and built it up a second time... And behold, two stood abandoned, but for moldering, worn-out icons, and broken-backed books whose sacred letters the damp had wiped away, and dark, deaf walls that hear no voice echoing in the name of God...

God went from my village the day the blessed ones went, and I know not when God will return to my village??

*

And those blessed ones hewed for us, out of the rock, a spring of water... its water welled up pure and clear... The villages envied us the spring that never fails... And we drank from it and prayed God's mercy on them. But for them we should have died of thirst... But the spring, from that day to this, is as it was... no pickax has struck in it, nor has it gone one span deeper into the earth. And the village, God be praised, multiplies and multiplies...

And yesterday you heard us at the top of our voices, crying out to one another and taking counsel:

There is no water in the spring... And we took counsel and cried out, while the spring dries, and its trickle the hooves of the beasts can no longer reach...

*

You ask me: and what bounty is left to you in your village, still??

We have the light of the moon and the stars... a grace from heaven, no hand of ours in it, and no favor owed to any of us...

And we have, of bounty, this graveyard in which those blessed, God-fearing men lie sleeping.