When he was able to face it he went down to Jericho to grieve with Abu Musa, with Bell, with Moses. Abu Musa burst into tears and gripped him tightly, holding him for long minutes.
Such a fine boy, sputtered Abu Musa. Such an excellent boy. So full of life and laughter and the good things of the earth, our passionate little Ali.
Bell, too, wept. Alone with Yousef under the grape arbor, he bowed his head and let the tears flow, his face a thousand years old in its grief, a timeless map of endurance as scarred and ravaged as the Judean wilderness itself.
Gentle Moses the Ethiopian also expressed his sorrow.
Each morning at four, said Moses, I sing the Psalms for our lost little brother. In my language the very act of prayer is known as to repeat David, to recite the Psalms, and this I do each morning in wonder and thanksgiving at the memory of our departed Ali.
Abu Musa sat hunched in his great bulk. To live, he murmured sadly, is to become expert in farewells.
I feel responsible for his death, said Yousef. I didn't talk with him enough and explore his concerns and help him consider what is and what might be done. It was all so pointless, so useless and to no end, but what can I do now? What can I do?
To each of the three men in Jericho, Yousef put this same question.
You can live honorably and according to your own inner voice, replied Abu Musa. Every man must do that and no man can do more.
I am a monk, said Moses, and I believe a man should seek God with all his heart and all his strength. Many are the ways to seek, but surely they all demand a broad-minded and merciful and humble spirit.
Words. Mere words to Yousef in his pain and suffering. But then Bell's reply seemed less elusive.
People only speak from what they know, said Bell, and we in turn only hear what is already shaping itself within us. Words are always pale reflections of what we feel, shallow and approximate, grossly inexact. At twenty-three you know farewells, but fortunately you haven't become expert in them yet. So for a while, Yousef, perhaps do nothing. I mean, make a point of doing nothing. Don't try to work things out or reach decisions. Let your feelings shift and your thoughts wander. Walk and sit and look at life going on around you. You can't join in it, I know that. So just watch and give yourself a period of doing nothing, three months or six months or whatever. Remind yourself that only regret gives nothing. It's always a sickly futile thing.
You're strong, turn away from it. Then when the time comes go back to teaching school. Do it out of habit, the way you walk down the street. Eventually, things will shape themselves within you. We can talk whenever you like and eventually words will have some meaning for you again. . . .
At the end of the summer Yousef went back to el Azariya. His inattention was still too great to allow him to read when he wasn't at school, so instead he wandered over the hills, looking down on the Judean wilderness and doing nothing as Bell had advised, waiting for his emptiness to subside.
***
That autumn a young stranger moved into el Azariya, a Jew who spoke perfect Arabic, a former Israeli soldier recuperating from wounds received in the June war. The stranger limped with a cane and moved his shoulders stiffly. In a few months he would be nineteen, the same age Ali had been. The stranger's name was Assaf.
The stranger was renting a small house at the end of the village. Each morning he limped over to the store to buy his food and each afternoon he went to sit alone in the coffeeshop. He was correct in his behavior and the villagers couldn't fault his manners. He greeted people when it was appropriate but waited for others to begin a conversation. When asked a question he answered directly.
He had been wounded in the night battle near Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem. A paratrooper. Shrapnel in his legs, his shoulder, his chest. His mother was from Egypt and his father, dead in the 1956 war, had been from Iraq. For his regular meals he ate olives and cheese and tomatoes and bread like everyone else, but he didn't eat much, perhaps because of his wounds. Once or twice a week he went off by bus to visit a hospital.
He had grown up in west Jerusalem. At set hours he limped up and down in front of his house, exercising his legs. A village carpenter rigged bars on ropes in his house so he could exercise his torso. He was quiet and reserved and seldom smiled. He drank neither beer nor arak. In a village as small as el Azariya, Yousef knew all about the young stranger.
Yousef often passed the stranger's house on his walks out of the village in the evening. The first few times he nodded or waved from a distance, then he greeted the stranger and exchanged a few words in passing.
On Friday, his day off, Yousef set out early in the morning to wander across the hills. The sun was just above the Moabite mountains on the far side of the Jordan Valley, the wilderness golden in the first light of day.
When Yousef went by that Friday the stranger was out in front of his house limping back and forth with his cane, exercising his legs.
The stranger smiled. Coffee for the traveler with the world at his feet? he offered.
Yousef accepted the offer and thanked the young man and walked ahead of him through the gate. Despite the early morning chill they sat in the front yard, where there was a sweeping view of the desert dropping away to the Jordan Valley.
It was the first of many visits Yousef made to Assaf's small house. In the beginning they were both careful not to talk about the war, but they couldn't ignore Assaf's wounds and soon Yousef had also spoken of Ali and his death. He had no idea what he was doing, concluded Yousef.
Nor did I that night on the road to Damascus Gate, said Assaf. You just keep pushing on until you're cut down. But now I have to make some sense of what happened, or not make sense of it but live with it anyway.
It was Assaf's wounds and Ali's death that made their friendship grow so quickly, so easily. They shared even more feelings than they knew. Both of them were desperate to reach out and be understood, to be forgiven, to find a way to go on. In their friendship they found the power of forgiveness, which was strengthened by the difference in their ages. Assaf became like a younger brother to Yousef. The need was great for both of them, and before the end of the year Yousef was brought to meet Anna in the old stone house on Ethiopia Street.
Anna liked Yousef. She found him thoughtful beyond his years, a serious young man who was having a beneficial effect on Assaf. She had been doubtful when Assaf said he wanted to live for a time in an Arab village near Jerusalem, while he was getting back the use of his arms and legs. But Tajar was strongly in favor of the idea and convinced Anna she should be too.
Right now, Tajar had said, anything he wants to do should be encouraged. Being on his own is good, living in a village is good. Of course you want to take care of him, but giving him encouragement is probably the best way to help.
Tajar stayed away when the two young men came to visit Anna. He felt it was important for her to be alone with Assaf and his friend. Anna came in from painting and served them one of her vegetable soups, which they gulped down, unused to such fine fare. Afterward, Yousef wandered around the room admiring Anna's landscapes.
They're wonderful, said Yousef. To me, such simplicity conveys great honesty. The hills around Jerusalem look exactly like that. The houses cling to the slopes and seem to grow right out of the rock, to be part of the hills.
Yousef stopped in front of a painting which showed some Arab women sitting under a tree, gathering olives. It was a monochrome rendered with severe economy, the only painting in the room with people in it.