I knew cement was a processed form of limestone and ash. To make concrete, the limestone had to be heated in a fossil-fuelled furnace, which released CO2. For every 1,000 kg of cement produced, 900 kg of CO2 was emitted.
Steel, which we used for many things, from rods to reinforce the concrete foundations to the support beams for the floors and roofs, was produced from ore. To produce one ton of steel alone from ore took about 3,000 kWh of energy. Then, I analysed the rest of the heavy building materials. From my calculations, I estimated the house weighed 100 tons.
Before the lunch break was over, I returned to the wheelbarrow. I worked harder than I ever had in my life. I lifted for myself, Abbas and Baba, moved cinderblocks, mixed mortar, lifted beams. The whole time, I calculated how many cinderblocks we’d need to build the rest of the apartment building, the number of blocks in each area and how much cement I’d need to make a small house for my family. In the house, there was a room for each child, new sinks, white bath tubs, running water and electricity.
My back ached and it was as though I were slogging through deep water. Every movement took more energy than before my little brother had been broken like so many twigs. My ears stayed warm though, because Mama had given me his hat to wear to work.
***
When I returned to the tent, Mama was waiting. ‘The swelling needs to go down,’ she said. ‘He might be paralysed, if he wakes up at all.’
Nadia looked at me with mournful eyes as she cuddled Hani.
I went out and climbed Shahida, my almond tree. Desperate to talk to someone, I turned to her. ‘I’ll do anything. I’ll give you my eyes, my arms, my legs, if you make Abbas well.’ I pleaded with the almond tree as if she had the power to heal him. ‘I’ll work harder than anyone has ever worked. I’ll make something of my life.’ A wind came and shook the leaves on the tree. ‘Please don’t let him die. Abbas is so good. He didn’t even take breaks at work. He should’ve been at school. I sent him to call the cement dispenser because I could tie the rebar faster. He wasn’t as quick as me. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I should’ve gone myself.’
All night, I remained awake estimating distances, weights, anything. At least Yossi had obtained a permit for Mama to travel to see Abbas until he was out of hospital.
Day and night blurred into one another. In my head, I worked through logic problems in maths, devised ways to make a thermoelectric battery, an electric motor, a wireless radio. I calculated the speed of a missile fired from an aeroplane, the force of a bullet fired from a machine-gun.
Mama prayed all night.
After her third day at the hospital, Mama returned home smiling. ‘Abbas woke up.’ Three words never brought such happiness. ‘His eyes fluttered and he stared at me. Get materials for another tent; Abbas will need to be alone with me.’
I practically ran to the village square.
***
A week later, Mama brought Abbas home. Fadi, Hani and I waited at the bottom of the hill. Abbas lay on the wooden cart with Mama and Um Sayyid on either side of him. Sayyid pulled the donkey’s reins and the cart stopped. I realised that just because he was awake, didn’t mean he was well.
Bringing Abbas home wasn’t a good idea. There were no doctors or nurses in our village. If there was an emergency, we’d need a permit from the military to transport him back to the hospital. And even if we were lucky enough to get a permit, we might not be able to get through the roadblocks. But what choice did we have? We couldn’t afford to pay for him to remain in the hospital any longer.
‘We’re here,’ Mama said.
Abbas opened his eyes.
I jumped on the back of the cart, crouched down and kissed his cheeks and forehead. ‘Thank God,’ I said.
‘My back is killing me.’ Abbas squeezed his eyes shut. His speech was slow and slurred.
The sound of his voice made my hand go to my mouth.
‘May Allah improve your health and speed your recovery,’ Hani said.
Fadi clenched his jaw. Fadi, Hani and I moved Abbas onto the plank the villagers used to carry corpses to their graves. He moaned in pain as we lifted him onto our shoulders, carried him up the hill and placed him in his new tent. Mama knelt next to him.
Abbas was incapable of any physical activity. Mama cared for him as though he were a newborn. She bathed him with a sponge and spoon-fed him rice. We had less money than ever. I was hungry all the time. Fadi, who was now ten years old, dropped out of school to help me work. At night, when I returned from Teacher Mohammad’s, I tried to tutor Fadi, but he was too tired and Abbas was too sick.
Every day Mama moved Abbas’ limbs into different positions. She had him sit and gave him rocks to lift. She and I got on either side of him at night and lifted him to his feet. At first we were holding him up. Then Mama made him start putting one foot in front of the other as he leaned heavily on us. Over the next few weeks, he began to walk. He complained bitterly of the pain, but Mama was relentless. At first he could only take a few steps, but every day Mama pushed him more and more. Abbas walked bent over like he was carrying an enormous burden. Permanent dark circles formed around his eyes. His hands trembled, but he was improving.
Still, I couldn’t sleep listening to him suffer and cry out.
CHAPTER 18
Isplashed water on my face, rinsing the cement dust from my eyes.
‘The moshav is building a slaughterhouse,’ Mama said as she appeared from the tent.
I turned and noticed the wisps of grey hair where it had once been black. ‘Where?’
‘In the area where you used to hunt rabbits.’
‘But the moshav’s in the south,’ I said, drying my hands. ‘Why would they build in the north?’
Mama shrugged. ‘They’re taking more from our east, too. They need more pasture for a cattle race. Look for work there.’
Abbas called out from his tent. ‘They steal our land and we’re helping them.’
***
Fadi and I found employment at the slaughterhouse construction site. I was sixteen and Fadi thirteen. Although the slaughterhouse was built on our village’s land, the barbed-wire fence they’d built around us required that we go to the one small gate, our only way out, and wait with the other workers for the guards to walk us over. Every week the number of villagers who sought employment from the Israelis grew; there just wasn’t enough land left inside the fence to farm, and what was there had been overused.
The slaughterhouse and its accompanying maze of concrete-walled factories were up and running in a year. We were offered the jobs the Jews were unwilling to do and were happy to have the work.
While we waited to be walked over to our jobs, I’d listen to the cattle. Their constant mooing could be heard throughout the village. Mama often missed the muezzin’s call to prayer because of the volume. I watched the Israelis, mounted on horses, galloping along the alley between the two pens with long whips they never hesitated to crack as they drove the animals to their deaths.
Inside the slaughterhouse, I’d wait for them to kill the first cow of the day so that I could begin my work. They forced each cow into a small pen, alone. Three Israelis tied a rope around the cow’s legs and forced it, thrashing, to the ground. Once it was down, one man stood on its legs while others – including one man holding its head in place with a sharp metal pole – restrained it. Another wrapped a chain around one of the cow’s hind legs. The kosher butcher, the shoket, entered and said a prayer before he slit the cow’s jugular vein and carotid artery.
After the shoket cut the cow’s throat, they hoisted it in the air by its shackled leg to bleed out. The cow struggled in this position, bellowing, for many minutes as buckets of blood gushed out. My job was to shovel the blood through holes in the floor which drained to holding tanks below. By the end of the day, I was standing in blood up to my ankles, despite the drain.
While I shovelled the blood, I watched the headmen behead the cows – it always took three strokes. Then others ripped off the cows’ skin
, rolled it up and took it away. Those were the good jobs. The Israeli jobs.
Our villagers dragged the meat into the chilling room to hang. The cows’ blood and guts which I helped push through the holes in the floor were used in the pickling, canning and packing rooms where Fadi and the other children worked because of their small fingers. There was also a building where grease was piped and made into lard soap. The heads and feet were turned into glue, and the bones into fertiliser. Nothing went to waste.
The animals shrieked and kicked and struggled. Now I understood why Baba and Albert Einstein were vegetarians. After our experiences in the slaughterhouse, no one in my family ever ate meat again.
Moshav Dan had good reason not to want the slaughterhouse right next door. In the summer, the place filled with steaming blood and an overpowering stench. In the winter, the blood and guts froze my hands and feet. I’d go to work shivering and return with my teeth chattering. Hour after hour, day after day, I waded through guts from six in the morning until five in the evening with a thirty-minute break for lunch.
The chimneys from the slaughterhouse and accompanying factories spread thick, oily, black smoke throughout our village. Because we had no sewage system, the filth, grease and chemicals from the slaughterhouse soaked into our soil. Bubbles of carbonic acid rose to the surface, while grease and filth caked the land. Every now and then the land would catch fire and the whole village would run and put it out with buckets of well-water.
CHAPTER 19
The cardboard boxes were long gone and the rain leaked in through our tent and dripped onto my face. The rugs under us were wet and muddy. The cold was relentless. Four years had passed, and we were still living in a tent. It was larger than our original one, but still untenable.
‘Someone help me,’ Abbas groaned. ‘I can’t get up.’
‘You’re just stiff.’ Mama went and helped him up. ‘It’s the rain.’
‘We need a house,’ I said.
‘We’re still paying off Abbas’ bills,’ Mama said. ‘And we don’t have a permit.’
‘They’ll never give us a permit with Baba in prison,’ I said. ‘Look at Abbas. What choice do we have?’
***
For two months, Fadi and I made mud bricks after work, on Friday evenings and on Saturdays. Hani helped us after school. We built a one-room house next to our tent. Mama and Nadia lined the floor with the rugs we had used in the tent. We didn’t fill it with all of our belongings; we knew what we’d done was illegal, so we left some of our valued possessions in the tent. That way we wouldn’t have everything at risk in either place.
The first night we slept in our new home, I listened to the rain patter on our roof from underneath a blanket on a rush mat. I awoke in the morning dry and well-rested.
‘I slept for a couple of hours,’ Abbas said. Usually his pain was so severe he couldn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time. I was proud that my brothers and I were able to work together to alleviate his suffering. Things were going to change.
***
But the next evening when Fadi and I returned from work, we saw smoke rising from the direction of our home. Running up the hill, we found Hani crying, Abbas cursing the Jews, and Mama and Nadia shovelling dirt onto the last flames of what had been our new house. When Mama saw us, she dropped to her knees and began praying. She called on Allah, Mohammad and anyone else she felt could help us. Our house was now a pile of rubble.
‘The Israeli settlers heard we built,’ Mama said. ‘The soldiers came to inspect.’
Nadia shook her head. Her eyes were red and swollen. ‘When we couldn’t produce a permit, the soldiers drenched our home in paraffin and set it on fire.’
‘We tried to save the mats, the blankets, anything.’ Mama shook her head. ‘It was too late.’
‘The flames were shooting from the house.’ Nadia raised her hands. They were wrapped in rags. ‘Thank God Abbas and Hani were in the tent, and not in the house, when the soldiers came. The flames grew so quickly, though, they soon caught the tent.’
Mama saw the shock on my face. ‘We barely had time to move Abbas,’ she said. ‘We used up the jug of water we had. There was no time to run to the well.’
Fadi grabbed a large rock and rushed down the hill. I wanted to go after him, but I couldn’t leave Nadia and Mama alone before the fire was completely extinguished.
When it was finally out, I hurried down to the village square. We needed to make a new tent. While I was haggling over the price of the cloth, I saw two soldiers wearing helmets and face shields dragging my handcuffed little brother towards their Jeep. I dropped the fabric and ran to him.
‘What happened?’ I asked Fadi in Arabic.
‘They destroyed our home,’ he said. ‘I had no choice, brother.’ The faces of the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old soldiers who were dragging him away were childlike, but not as childlike as his: he was twelve years old.
One of them smacked him across the face. ‘Did I give you permission to speak?’ He shook Fadi.
Anger grew inside me, but I remained still. ‘Where are you taking him?’ I kept my voice calm.
‘The same place we take all the stone throwers we catch,’ he said. ‘To prison.’
The other soldier shoved Fadi face down onto the floor in the back of the military Jeep, got in and drove his black military boots into Fadi’s arms, handcuffed behind his back. I winced, feeling his pain.
‘I’ll get you out,’ I screamed to Fadi as they drove away. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ There were only fifteen minutes until curfew. I couldn’t help Fadi, so I spent all of my wages on cloth for the new tent, cedar stakes and ropes, and went back to the almond tree. My family were gathered on the ground under her.
I had grown numb to delivering bad news. ‘Fadi was taken away,’ I said.
Mama looked at me with disbelief. ‘Why?’
‘He threw a stone,’ I said. ‘At the soldiers.’
Mama extended her arms with her palms facing the sky. ‘Allah, please, show us your mercy.’ Her faith, in the harsh light of reality, was difficult to fathom.
Abbas’ whole body shook with rage. ‘These Jews only understand violence.’
Nadia wrapped her arms around Hani as they cried.
‘Mama,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to go to the military outpost tomorrow. I have to work. If I miss even one day, I’ll lose my job.’
Mama went to the military outpost every day for the next week without success. Then a letter from Baba arrived. Fadi was imprisoned with him at the Dror Detention Centre. The Israelis demanded the equivalent of three weeks of my wages to release Fadi. I wrote to Baba that I’d be at the prison as soon as I raised the money.
***
Four weeks later, I took the bus to retrieve Fadi. I couldn’t see Baba because visiting day was only the first Tuesday of every month and that was three weeks away. Mama wanted her child back as soon as possible.
The Fadi that emerged from the prison wasn’t the same boy who had entered. The skin around his eyes was yellow, the way a bruise looks before it goes away. Red scars were visible around his wrists. He seemed calmer, though not in a good way, as if the soldiers had broken his spirit.
‘I saw Baba,’ Fadi mumbled on the bus back. ‘I’ll never do anything like this again.’
I leaned over and hugged him. ‘We all make mistakes.’
‘Baba is so strong,’ he said with a certain amount of wonder.
I knew exactly what he meant.
CHAPTER 20
As the sun dropped low in the sky, the guards led us back into the village. Teacher Mohammad, stood by the gate, began to walk towards us. Did something happen to Mama? Or Baba? Maybe it was Abbas. Why didn’t one of my family members come? What if my family was dead? The workers around me were talking, but all I could hear was Teacher Mohammad’s approaching footsteps growing louder and louder.
‘The Israelis are holding a maths competition for students in their last year of school,’ he said. ‘You could
win a scholarship to the Hebrew University.’
For a moment, I felt exhilarated. And then, just as fast, I remembered. ‘I don’t have time.’
‘You cannot throw away your gift,’ he said. ‘I know it seems like there is no way out right now, but you can choose a better path.’
If only I could believe him, but he was suggesting the impossible. What could I do except what I was doing already? Abbas’ injury had happened five years ago, but I was still paying off his medical bills. Abbas was improving, but he couldn’t work. The only jobs available to us involved physical labour, which Abbas would never be able to do. He was in constant pain. His friends would come to the tent to visit him or he’d meet them at their homes or at the tea house, but, other than that, he wasn’t able to do much. ‘My brothers don’t make enough without me.’
‘If you win, I’ll find jobs for your brothers in my cousin’s moving company.’
‘I need to support them.’
‘If you graduate from college, you’ll be able to earn more money. Let’s just see if you win.’
‘No, I can’t.’
The smile left him. ‘I am not your father, Ichmad, but I can’t believe this is what he wants for a son with gifts such as yours.’
I wrote to Baba about the competition and my decision not to participate. Almost immediately he sent me a response.
To my dearest Ichmad,
You must participate in the competition and do the best you can. I’ll love you whether you win or lose, but I’ll be disappointed if you don’t try. I know the family will initially suffer, but in the long run it will be better if you graduate from college. You’ll be able to secure a better and more interesting job. When you do what you love, the money will come.
Love,
Baba
The moment I told Teacher Mohammad about my decision to compete, tears came to his eyes and he hugged me.