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To bring order into things, a famous tea agent was brought who would write fiery articles about Zionism as a spiritual center. And the wise old man, who was the first Jew who saw Arabs in the Land, wrote a fiery article and for the first time since Nehemiah killed prophets in his room at night, he hit a beloved and admired person. The matter was forgiven. People said that Nehemiah suffered enough when he saw foreigners vilifying his wife, who hadn't stopped weeping. A Jew from the committee argued with the agent and the official who wanted to bring a ship up to Jerusalem. They stood next to the well the official had taken for himself and distributed its water according to his own malice. He stood there wearing an officer's uniform unidentified with any known plan, a woman held a parasol over his head, but the argument ended to everybody's satisfaction. The water was transferred to the authority of the committee, the house was sold, and Nehemiah won the official tenancy of his house. One youth slaughtered himself at the well in torments of malaria. Those who came to his funeral were arrested and taken in handcuffs to Ramle. Rebecca saw a Turkish shavish approaching her as she went to visit Nehemiah, who was one of those arrested. After a hefty ransom was paid, they were all released. Rebecca didn't forgive the shavish who looked at her and lusted for her. When he approached her in the garden of the Russian church and tried to lift her onto the mare, she kicked him. He chased her to her house in the settlement. At the house Rebecca shot the mare and the shavish thought he had been shot himself and lay on the ground a whole day without moving. The fellow who slaughtered himself lay dead in the community center, and the men decided to cancel the excommunication of Rabbi Nathan and mark the plot of Secret Glory as a cemetery for the settlement. Horowitz said: If Yashka died (that fellow who committed suicide), we're all liable to die and it's impossible to bury everybody in another settlement, since we can't have one settlement all for the living and another all for the dead. And after they dug the first grave, they put a fence around the plot. Nehemiah delivered an excited speech about the torments brought by the purification of salvation and resurrection. Excited by Nehemiah's impressive words, the men sat and argued what to call the cemetery. The names "House of the Eternal" and "Cemetery" and "House of the Next World" didn't appeal to them. Nehemiah thought there was no need to give it a name. It's enough that we know, he said, that we'll be buried there. But Jews yelled and somebody suggested calling the place "Roots." Nehemiah said: Absolutely not. Anybody who calls his first cemetery "Roots" calls the Jewish state that will rise here "Hill of Graves" and that's forbidden. But his words fell on deaf ears and the name remained.
The official left one day and didn't come back. The synagogue was renovated and was once again a place for prayer. The citrus fruits were also planted and flourished. The new authority was more enlightened. The Turks were busy with the Young Turks' revolution and were bound by secret letters that would come in the middle of the night from anonymous and veiled emissaries. Nehemiah again gave speeches in the community center and in Roots. Rebecca didn't stop weeping, and between her and Nehemiah grew Ebenezer. The Turks, who were waiting for the end of the revolution, said: The Jews will kill each other all by themselves and that will save us gallows and expensive bullets. From pogroms we came, Rebecca told Ebenezer, who didn't yet understand the meaning of the words, and to pogroms we shall return. Between the speeches, Nehemiah had to fertilize, chop, plow, and sow. He was delicate and fragile. The climate of the Land was hard for him, and he struggled with it in a silence produced by a lover's envy. The farmers did win a certain freedom but still felt like slaves. In Nehemiah's house, Rebecca's depressed spirit prevailed and a foolish child got underfoot. The drought that year was worse than the last year and some of the new citrus groves died, but in the winter the new saplings that had been planted grew as high as a child and the rain came in time and then came the Bedouins and started grazing their flocks on the young saplings. When the farmers resisted the Bedouins, they attacked at night. The Arab guard ran away and appeared the next day accompanied by Turkish police and asked for the money he was owed. Within a few days, the area was devoured by the black goats. The carts that went to the distant fields were attacked by the friends of the guard who didn't get his gold, even though the Turks got what was coming to them to ignore the place. One day the young farmers hid in the cart, with sticks in their hands, covered themselves with straw and sacks, and when they were attacked by the Bedouins, they burst out of the cart, about twenty of them, and beat the Bedouins roundly. The next day, Nehemiah made a long speech into the night: our force is our reply, he said, blow for blow.
A young Arab woman from the village of Marar cooked and laundered in Nehemiah's house. His fields flourished because of the help of his experienced friend Nathan. He now had a small dairy, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, there was a quarry whose profits the farmers shared. In the nearby settlement bigger houses were built. The women played piano. The men drank tea or coffee and smoked cigarettes. The officials vanished, replaced by various committees and representatives of institutions. In the Jerusalem newspaper with a circulation of five thousand readers, they called the nearby settlement Little Paris. At night the girls sang a Puccini opera and an eminent man from Poland applauded so enthusiastically that everybody refused to join him for fear of offending him. He contributed money to the settlers to buy gramophones. The disease of music increased the appetite of the cows the Arabs milked in the nearby barns. Nehemiah's comrades, who heard him talk about the new "Hellenizers" in the nearby settlement, envied the inhabitants of the settlement and the delightful girls in splendid clothes and secretly brought fine fabrics from Jaffa, gorgeous abbiyas from Damascus, silk from Tadmor, carpets from Aleppo, and kerosene lamps from Gaza, and the mosquitoes, said Nehemiah contemptuously, now had to stick to choice silk, because they didn't like the sacks anymore. There were more Arab settlers who came from Egypt to spread rumors of the Jews' gold. As the way became harder, Nehemiah's love for that Land grew greater. Logic and facts of life had no place in his considerations. He grew roots at an alarming rate, and Nehemiah would give speeches that were not forgotten many years later. He would swallow quinine against malaria and see visions: behold, Rebecca stopped weeping and is bringing up an ancient Hebrew shepherd for him. Every week he would examine Ebenezer to be sure he didn't look like Joseph. Rachel Brin, who went to America with her son Secret Glory, wrote Rebecca a long remorseful letter. She told that she had divorced, married a shirt dealer from Long Island, moved to a place called Connecticut, and Secret Glory, now called Lionel, would go to an American school next year. Rebecca wept more bitterly when she read the letter and then she crumpled it up and rubbed her son's face in it.