He didn’t come to Nahalal the next day or for five days after that. Only later would Natalie learn that he had been in Paris and Amman preparing for her introduction into the field—operational spadework, he called it. When finally he returned to the farm it was at noon on a warm and breezy Thursday, as Natalie was becoming acquainted with some of the unique features of her new mobile phone. He informed her that they were going to take another field trip, just the two of them, and instructed her to dress as Leila. She chose a green hijab with embroidered edges, a white blouse that concealed the shape of her breasts and hips, and long pants that left only the insteps of her feet visible. Her pumps were Bruno Magli. Leila, it seemed, had a soft spot for Italian footwear.
“Where are we going?”
“North,” was all he said.
“No bodyguards.”
“Not today,” he answered. “Today I am free.”
The car was a rather ordinary Korean sedan, which he drove very fast and with an uncharacteristic abandon.
“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” observed Natalie.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been behind the wheel of a car. The world looks different from the backseat of an armored SUV.”
“How so?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified.”
“But I’m one of you now.”
“Not quite,” he answered, “but we’re getting close.”
They were the last words he spoke for several minutes. Natalie slipped on a pair of stylish sunglasses and watched a sepia-toned version of Acre slide past her window. A few miles to the north was Lohamei HaGeta’ot, a kibbutz founded by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. It was a tidy little farming community of neat houses, green lawns, and regular streets lined with cypress. The sight of an obviously Israeli man driving a car in which a veiled woman was the sole passenger elicited glances of only mild curiosity.
“What’s that?” asked Natalie, pointing toward a white conical structure rising above the rooftops of the kibbutz.
“It’s called Yad Layeled. It’s a memorial for the children killed in the Holocaust.” There was a curious note of detachment in his voice. “But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to see something much more important.”
“What’s that?”
“Your home.”
He drove to a shopping center just north of the kibbutz and parked in a distant corner of the lot.
“How charming,” said Natalie.
“This isn’t it.” He pointed toward a patch of uncultivated land between the car park and Highway 4. “Your home is out there, Leila. The home that was stolen from you by the Jews.”
He climbed out of the car without another word and led Natalie across a service road, into a field of weeds and prickly pear and broken blocks of limestone. “Welcome to Sumayriyya, Leila.” He turned to face her. “Say it for me, please. Say it as though it is the most beautiful word you’ve ever heard. Say it as though it is the name of your mother.”
“Sumayriyya,” she repeated.
“Very good.” He turned and watched the traffic rushing along the highway. “In May 1948 there were eight hundred people living here, all Muslims.” He pointed toward the arches of an ancient aqueduct, largely intact, running along the edge of a field of soy. “That was theirs. It carried water from the springs and irrigated the fields that produced the sweetest melons and bananas in the Galilee. They buried their dead over there,” he added, swinging his arm to the left. “And they prayed to Allah here”—he placed his hand on the ruins of an arched doorway—“in the mosque. They were your ancestors, Leila. This is who you are.”
“‘My roots were entrenched before the birth of time.’”
“You’ve been reading your Darwish.” He walked deeper into the weeds and the ruins, closer to the highway. When he spoke again, he had to raise his voice to be heard over the whitewater rush of the traffic. “Your home was over there. Your ancestors were called Hadawi. This is your name, too. You are Leila Hadawi. You were born in France, educated in France, and you practice medicine in France. But whenever someone asks where you’re from, you answer Sumayriyya.”
“What happened here?”
“Al-Nakba happened here. Operation Ben-Ami happened here.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Have your instructors mentioned Ben-Ami to you?”
“It was an operation undertaken by the Haganah in the spring of 1948 to secure the coast road between Acre and the Lebanese border, and to prepare the Western Galilee for the coming invasion by the regular Arab armies.”
“Zionist lies!” he snapped. “Ben-Ami had one purpose and one purpose only, to capture the Arab villages of the Western Galilee and cast their inhabitants into exile.”
“Is that the truth?”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s true. It’s what Leila believes. It’s what she knows. You see, Leila, your grandfather, Daoud Hadawi, was there that night the Zionist forces of the Haganah came up the road from Acre in a convoy. The residents of Sumayriyya had heard what had happened in some of the other villages conquered by the Jews, so they immediately took flight. A few stayed behind but most fled to Lebanon, where they waited for the Arab armies to recapture Palestine from the Jews. And when the Arab armies were routed, the villagers of Sumayriyya became refugees, exiles. The Hadawi family lived in Ein al-Hilweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. Open sewers, cinderblock houses . . . hell on earth.”
Gabriel led her past the rubble of the little houses—houses that were dynamited by the Haganah soon after Sumayriyya fell—and stopped at the edge of an orchard.
“It belonged to the people of Sumayriyya. Now it is the property of the kibbutz. Many years ago they were having trouble making the water flow through the irrigation tubes. A man appeared, an Arab who spoke a bit of Hebrew, and patiently explained how to do it. The kibbutzniks were amazed, and they asked the Arab how it was he knew how to make the water flow. And do you know what the Arab told them?”
“It was his orchard.”
“No, Leila, it was your orchard.”
He lapsed into silence. There was only the wind in the weeds and the rushing of the traffic along the highway. He was staring at the ruins of a house that lay scattered at his feet, the ruins of a life, the ruins of a people. He seemed angry; whether it was genuine or for Leila’s benefit, Natalie could not tell.
“Why did you choose this place for me?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” he answered distantly. “It chose me.”
“How?”
“I knew a woman from here, a woman like you.”
“Was she like Natalie or Leila?”
“There is no Natalie,” he said to the veiled woman standing next to him. “Not anymore.”
22
NAHALAL, ISRAEL