Bring Me the Weapon, Mother

Come, my Arab brother, come to the Holy City, to the town for whose sake Omar crossed the deserts. Come and see with your own eyes how your Arab brothers, the people of Jerusalem, live, and how they stand fast before the enemy's fire and his savage assaults, with faith and courage...

Here we are: this is Jerusalem, and this is the Sheikh Jarrah quarter. And there — do you see that old building? In a wretched room, one of its cracked rooms, lives Umm Amer.

You may ask: and who is Umm Amer? She is simply Umm Amer. So she introduces herself, so the people of the Sheikh Jarrah quarter know her, and so the people of Jaffa knew her.

In that wretched room sat Umm Amer, a woman who had not reached her fortieth year, but whom sorrows had broken down until she seemed an old woman of seventy. There was nothing of furniture in that room but a wretched rug and a threadbare mattress, on which slept a young man in the first spring of his life, wrestling with fever. Near the mattress sat Umm Amer, wiping with her tender hands the sweat streaming from the feverish brow of her only son.

The sleeper opened his eyes, and by the light of the dim lamp he saw his mother's face. She smiled at him encouragingly — and how gentle her smile was — and the boy sank back, surrendering to the stupor of the fever. Umm Amer was always smiling. She smiled at the neighbor in morning greeting, at the guest in welcome, at the child in play, at the stricken and the sick in consolation. But no doubt the sweetest of her smiles were those she gave her only son. When she smiled at him, pride and admiration were drawn upon her face, and from her eyes shone the light of faith and the tenderness of motherhood. All her feelings and emotions took form in that smile. And how many a night Amer slept with that smile in place of a hot supper, on the cold nights of December.

★

Memories circled in her head, and she remembered that ill-omened day when she left beloved Jaffa, and with her her son Amer, who had not yet reached his tenth year. As for her husband, he refused to leave the land on which he had crawled as an infant and grown up as a boy, and which he had then watered with the sweat of his brow. Umm Amer remembered the day Abu Amer came with two rifles and said to her: Take this rifle, Umm Amer, and hand it to Amer when his arm grows strong, and tell him: "Your father died a martyr."

And Abu Amer carried the second rifle and went out into the orchard to lie in wait for the enemy, while Umm Amer went out of Jaffa with her only son, forever. On the third day after her arrival in Jerusalem she received the news of her husband's martyrdom, after he had killed five of the Jews; she raised her head to heaven, as was her habit, and said: "O Lord, deliver the homeland, for its nourishment is heart's blood and souls."

Umm Amer sighed at the memory of the wounded homeland, then turned toward her sleeping only son. Her heart was torn as she heard his moans. Only a week ago she had sold the one chair she owned to buy food for her boy — so what could she sell now? She looked about the corners of the room, considering it. Sell the rug? It is worn and old; and who would buy it? Suddenly a shudder ran through her body, for her eyes had fallen on the most precious thing in existence — on a rifle hung upon the wall. Sell it?? No, no, no. If she sold it she would be selling the memory of the dear martyr, he who had charged her to hand it to Amer when he grew up. But Amer is dying, and nothing can save him from death but the price of this rifle.

Umm Amer remained an hour, contending in her soul with conflicting passions; then she rose and prayed to God, and peace returned to her heart. Then, with resolve and firmness, she went to where the rifle hung, took it up, and hurried out. She was gone some time, then came back carrying in her hands the most precious thing in existence — a bottle of medicine.

She had sold the rifle to her neighbor Abu Hasan, who sells arms secretly to the free fighters; then she walked to the pharmacy and bought the medicine for her only son in the dead of night. The mother arrived to find her boy still asleep, and she sat down beside him, smiling in triumph — and that was the only time Umm Amer ever smiled for herself. For she had done a great deed, worthy of a smile and of admiration.

★

Suddenly the sick boy woke trembling and opened his mouth, and her eyes fastened on his lips. He cried out: "I saw him!! I saw my father... I saw him on... on the shore of Jaffa... He is ordering me to win back the homeland... At your call, Palestine! Here I am... Ah... here I come to you... beloved Jaffa..."

In vain the mother tried to calm her son. He forgot that he was feverish, forgot that he was sick, and remembered nothing but beautiful Jaffa. The boy sprang up, shouting:

"Bring me the weapon, Mother!"

And for the first time, the mother was slow to answer her son's wish. The son looked at his mother, and quickly his eyes turned to the wall — and he did not find the rifle. He cried from the depths of his heart: "Where is it??"

The mother answered, tears in her eyes: "I sold it — I sold it, my son, to buy you the medicine."

The son said in horror: "Medicine!! Medicine for me? Do you think that I am sick, Mother?... No — it is the homeland that is sick... Listen... There they are, shelling our Jerusalem with cannon. By God, morning shall not come before I have watered the soil of Jerusalem, thirsty for vengeance, with their blood. Farewell... farewell, Mother; I am going where the heroes go." And the son kissed his mother's hand and hurried out of the room.

★

What had happened? Merciful heavens! Umm Amer stayed frozen in her place for some moments; then suddenly she woke from her daze. Where is Amer? Where has he gone? No doubt the fever has carried off his reason.

Umm Amer knelt, raised her hands to heaven, and went on praying until the break of dawn — not that God might return her son to her safe, for she had vowed him to the homeland from his birth — but praying for the homeland.

In the morning there came a knock at the door. She opened it, and there stood a soldier before her. She stepped back and said in a deep voice: I know what you are going to say. "Amer died a martyr." Yes... I know that.

The soldier stood nailed to his place, looking at her. Her face was silent. And her eyes...

Her eyes spoke everything — faith and patience, loneliness and pain, and stunned bewilderment. At last the soldier opened his mouth and said in broken phrases:

Madam, I do not console you... rather I congratulate you, for you have borne the bravest lad I have ever known. Amer reached us, his forehead streaming with sweat; he snatched up the first rifle he saw and shouted: "Follow me, follow me, my brother fighters!" But the rifle... the rifle, Madam, was old and in need of repair, and it soon burst in his hands, and the blood flowed heavily from his wounds. Even so, he rose quickly and set about aiding this man and helping that one, until he fell, a martyr, upon the soil of the holy city..."

The soldier stumbled in his speech, and did not know what more to say to this Arab woman, not one line of whose face had altered at the news of her only son's martyrdom. But she rescued him, saying:

"I stored Amer up for such a day as this. Today my son died a martyr, as his father died six years ago, and as his grandfather died eighteen years ago. The homeland has need of souls that sacrifice..."

★

The news of Amer's martyrdom spread through the quarter — and another report said that Umm Amer was near to madness, and another that she lay bedridden. But at eight o'clock that morning, only hours after the event, the people of the quarter froze in their places and held their breath, for they saw Umm Amer walking with steady steps, smiling as she had always smiled, toward al-Mutalla' Hospital, where she went every day to wash laundry.