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.