Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

But not me.

Never! You know my commitment to and faith in our right to our country. I just talk that way. We’re not in a meeting or at a lecture. We’re conversing, so let the stories take us where they will.

Where were we?

I was trying to pull together for you scraps of the story of my father. They were in Tarshiha, and that’s where Yasin died. Not really died but fell beneath death’s wing and survived. It was after Qal’at Jeddin fell into the hands of the Jews. “We took refuge at Tarshiha while waiting to return to our villages,” said my grandmother. “But instead of us getting closer to our villages, the Jews got closer to us. Jeddin fell, and Tarshiha was exposed to regular bombardments.”

One day – the day Yasin came to call the day of his true death – the planes started shelling Tarshiha: “I was in the market and suddenly found myself running with the crowd. I holed up in Ahmad Shirayh’s shop, and suddenly the shop started shaking and the walls toppling, and there was smoke everywhere. A bomb fell into the shop and demolished it. Everyone died. I was standing in the only corner that wasn’t demolished, with rubble above me, below me, and all around me – and the dead. I started groaning. I don’t know if I was in pain, but the groaning emerged from deep inside me. Then I felt a hand pulling me. Everything was on top of everything else. They picked me up, shouting ‘God is most great!’ and I found I hadn’t died.”

Yasin said that when he discovered he was still alive, he started running in the direction of the house they’d been staying in. The mother had gotten everything ready and was standing with her three daughters, and they’d lifted the woolen blankets and pots and pans onto their heads waiting for Yasin. The second they saw him, their new march began.

“My mother didn’t ask me where I’d been or why I was covered with dust. She was in a hurry. She set off, my sisters behind her, and me behind everybody, until we got to Deir al-Qasi. There we couldn’t find a house, so my mother set up her tent beneath the olive trees and made up her mind yet again that this life was intolerable and that she’d go to her village to get provisions.

“My sister, Munirah, said, ‘No, I’ll go.’

“My mother protested, but the matter was settled, and Munirah and I and a girl whose name I can’t remember – a friend of my sister’s who lived under a woolen blanket near ours – set off. We went down to the Acre plain and hid in the cornfields. The cornstalks were more than a meter and a half tall. We had just begun picking okra, cucumbers, and tomatoes when, suddenly, a man carrying a rifle came toward us and took the vegetables away from the girls by force. The vegetable guard was Jew named Melikha. We knew him, and he knew my sister – so why did he get out his weapon and threaten us and confiscate the vegetables we’d taken from our own land? I watched my sister hand over everything and raise her hands. Then she looked back to warn me and left. This alerted him to my presence. I’d been standing stock still, preparing myself to put my hands up so Melikha wouldn’t kill me, but I found myself throwing my sack to the ground and running as I heard the sound of shots. I ran and ran, and when I reached my sister and her friend, I felt something hot trickling down my left thigh, which at that moment I didn’t know was blood. But my sister tore my shirt and tied up the wound and ran in front of me, crying. It wasn’t an actual wound in the true sense of the word; it was gunpowder from the double-barreled shotgun the guard had fired. It had burned through my trousers and several grains of buckshot had lodged in my left thigh. There was blood everywhere. My sister tied up my wound, and we ran back to our tent without picking anything. That was my second heroic deed. The first time I was the only person who managed to get vegetables from al-Ghabsiyyeh, and the second time I returned wounded like a martyr. I can’t describe what my mother did when she saw the blood covering my trousers.”

“What can I tell you about him, my dear?” my grandmother would say. “Your father was a hero. I saw him and I saw the blood, and I ran to him, my tears flying ahead of me – my only son dying for the sake of a handful of okra – and started screaming: ‘the Jews killed him, I killed him! I’ve killed my son. Come, everyone, and see!’ I didn’t stop when I discovered the injury was trivial. I gave him a wedding, as they do for martyrs. I belted out youyousand wailed and waved above me his blood-stained trousers. I did what all the mothers of martyrs did, I thanked God. I brandished the trousers over my head, and our neighbor, Umm Kamel, came and sprinkled me with vapors of incense and sprinkled the trousers and sprinkled you. I thought, This is my slice of martyrdom. I did what the mothers of martyrs do so I might spare myself later. I thought, My son has died. That means he’ll never die again after today. But he betrayed me and betrayed his wife and betrayed you. He left us and died on the doorstep of this house that I built with my tears. God help me, in Deir al-Qasi I thought death would not come back and that I could escape from it with my children, but it caught up with me here and snatched away my son and left me on my own with this boy who’s the spitting image of Yasin. My son was scared of the vegetable guard. He feared for his life – they were killing all the young men. He didn’t put his hands up to surrender in order to escape death. At the door, seeing the revolver pointing at him, he tried to put his hands up, but he didn’t have enough time, and they didn’t let him surrender. They killed him.”

Why did they kill him?

My grandmother asked you why, and I’m asking you, too.

Wouldn’t it have been better if he’d died in the cornfields? Was it necessary for him to go through that long agony from Deir al-Qasi to Beit Lif and from Beit Lif to al-Mansourah and from al-Mansourah to al-Rashidiyyeh and from al-Rashidiyyeh to Shatila, and to death?

My grandmother hated bananas.

No one in the world hates bananas, but Shahineh hated them.

You don’t know the story of this woman and bananas because you don’t know how she would use banana leaves to cover the floor of her tent in the al-Rashidiyyeh camp. Banana leaves were the only thing they could find to protect them from the rain that was inundating them. You weren’t there to see how the banana leaves covered them, and you weren’t there to see how Nahilah stole her own food and the food for her children from her confiscated land.

You were nowhere. You’d entered your secret world that made you think that things were the way they’d always been, while Shahineh was spreading the floor of her tent with banana leaves and eating dust, and Nahilah was stealing olives from her confiscated land, before your father, the sheikh, returned to his post and started receiving his livelihood from the Deir al-Asad Mosque Endowment. You may or may not know that there was no such endowment or anyone to make one – the Israelis had confiscated all the lands. The sheikh convinced himself about the endowment so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge that he’d become a beggar, a beggar living off the donations of people who were poorer than himself but were embarrassed to look into his sightless eyes and by the belly of his daughter-in-law, always swollen with children.

My grandmother hated bananas, and Nahilah hated the endowment and went to work in the moshavthe Yemeni Jews had built along the edges of the rubble of the village of al-Birwa. You don’t know these things. You’ll ask why she didn’t let you know. Do you have to be told in order to know? I’d like to believe you and forgive you now, because you didn’t know how we lived, how they lived, but tell me, what did you do for them and for us? Why did you let us go through such hell?

I hear your laughter breaking through the veil of your death. You’re laughing and dragging on your cigarette until it burns down to nothing, and you raise your hand with a nonchalant gesture. Your voice shouts out, “Hell? You, Khalil, are talking to me about hell? What do you know about hell?”

And I hear, coming from the depths of your voice, the voice of Yasin, bringing with it the stories of the banana leaves that covered the ground and the roof of the tent so that those inside wouldn’t drown.

My grandmother said she entered Lebanon on a donkey. “We hired a donkey to cross the Lebanese border. We had to abandon everything on the spot, we weren’t allowed to bring anything with us.” But in fact, my grandmother brought her jewelry, which allowed her to live reasonably during the first few years in Lebanon.

She said she’d been in Deir al-Qasi. All the people were asleep in their tents, but she couldn’t get to sleep. She said she felt as though everything were lost. It was night and the stars were like red spots in the sky, and the sounds of distant howling mixed with scattered gunfire and silence. The armed young men who guarded Deir al-Qasi’s tents stuck close to the olive trees as though fear had petrified them to the spot.

A woman on her own, sitting in front of her shelter of olive branches, seeing nothing but darkness. A dead husband, four small children, a father whose whereabouts were known only to God, an unsure future, and a village that had died. My grandmother said that during those moments, when night was concealed in her eyes, she realized that al-Ghabsiyyeh was dead and that she had to do something to save her own life and that of her children, and she remembered that she’d left her gold jewelry and twenty Palestinian lira, which were her entire dowry, in the bottom of a chest.

The woman sat in front of her tent, the howling around her, the night covering her, the tears flowing from her eyes. Then she found herself in front of her eldest daughter, Munirah. Munirah was sixteen years old and greatly resembled her mother. Shahineh went up to her sleeping daughter and shook her gently. The girl woke with a start.

“Get up! Get up!” said her mother.

The mother took her daughter’s hand and led her out of the tent. Outside the girl listened to her mother but understood nothing.

“I don’t understand a thing,” said Munirah.

The mother explained her plan to her daughter. She hadn’t had a plan when she’d awakened her, she hadn’t known what she was going to say to her; she just wanted to break her solitude and speak to someone about the loss of her dowry. But instead of complaining, she found herself laying out the plan to her daughter. She said she was going to go there at dawn to get her money and her jewelry, and that if anything bad should happen, God forbid, she was to go with her brother and sisters where everyone else went. If they go to Lebanon: “Go with them and ask about your grandfather, Rabbah al-Awad. You grandfather’s still alive, he’s fighting now with the others, I don’t know where. Look for him, and he’ll take care of you.” Munirah proposed that she go instead of her mother, but her mother refused. “No, Daughter. I’ll go on my own. You’re still young, and your life’s ahead of you. Just don’t forget to ask for your grandfather. His name’s Rabbah, Rabbah al-Awad, and he’s with the Sha’ab garrison now, and everyone knows him. Wait for me until tomorrow night. I’ll come back tonight, but something may hold me up. Wait two nights for me. If I’m not back, something will have happened. Forget me, go with the others, and put your trust in God.”

Munirah said she understood and went into the tent and fell into a deep sleep. Shahineh couldn’t believe her eyes. How could the girl sleep after what her mother had just told her? Shahineh went into the tent again and bent over Munirah, who was breathing quietly.

Shahineh put a crust of bread inside the front of her dress and set off. It was dark. Shahineh didn’t know what time it was, but the veil of night was breaking to reveal dim colors. She walked and walked, and no one appeared to stop her – not the camp guards, who kept close to the olive trees, nor the Jews, who had invaded the villages and spread out over the hills. She walked alone on paths she knew. She bent over and stumbled and almost fell but caught herself. She walked for about two hours. Distances in Galilee aren’t great – as you once told me, Galilee is like the palm of a hand. She walked until she reached the Bubbler. She bent over the water, washed her hands and her face, drank, and entered the village.

The spring called the Bubbler isn’t more than two kilometers from al-Ghabsiyyeh, but it was the longest leg of her journey. She walked and walked and never arrived. Shahineh knew the road and could have done it with her eyes closed since she was used to fetching water from the Bubbler every day – but what did every day have to do with that day? Her head felt heavy, as though she were carrying three water jars on it. She kept going, weighed down by her head; her fear welled up and out of her mouth in the form of labored breathing.

Many years later, she’d tell me that this adventure had taught her to see.

“You know, Son, it was there that I saw. Before I hadn’t seen, and after I left the village I didn’t see again.”

“And what did you see, Grandma?”

“I saw everything there. It’s difficult to explain, my boy. With one look I saw all the houses and all the trees, as though my eyes had pierced the walls and could see everything.”

On her journey to al-Ghabsiyyeh, Shahineh walked bent over. She bent over to avoid the branches of the olive trees, she bent over because of the night, she bent over out of fear, she bent over for water from the Bubbler, and she bent over for the lotus tree. When she passed the mosque, however, she suddenly straightened up. She held her head high and walked calmly into the village as though she’d never left it. Her frightened panting subsided, and she saw everything. She saw the houses and the trees and the orchards, and she heard the voices of the people and the cries of the children. The woman walked calmly toward her house. The door was open. She ran into the room, opened the chest, and reached in. There she found her money and her jewelry – her gold signet ring, her twisted bracelets, and her necklace of pearls. She put everything inside the front of her dress and decided to go back. No. She was famished. She took the crust of bread out of the front of her dress and started to gnaw on it. Then she hurried to the kitchen, found the bread in its place, looked around for the molasses, mixed it with tahini and stood in the kitchen eating. She ate three pieces of bread with tahini, and then made some tea. She sat and drank and began to feel sleepy. Overcome by drowsiness, she stood up heavily and found herself stretched out on the bed slipping into unconsciousness. She slept like someone who doesn’t know she’s asleep – that’s how she’d describe it later. She didn’t shut the door and she didn’t take off her clothes. She lay down as she was, her hands sticky with molasses, and drowsiness overcame her. When she awoke, darkness had started to steal into the house. She opened her eyes and was completely disoriented.

“I was lost, I didn’t know where I was.”

For a moment, she didn’t dare move. She opened her eyes and went rigid.

“I slept on the only bed we owned. My husband, God rest his soul, bought a brass bed unlike any in the whole village. I didn’t sleep on it after he died, because, in our day, the bed was for the man. He’d sleep on the bed, and I’d sleep on a mattress on the floor. Then he started asking me to sleep in the bed next to him. He said it was because he loved me. In our day, Son, no one used that word. A husband loved his wife, but he wouldn’t tell her. But your grandfather Khalil, he made me sleep up there.”

That day Shahineh slept on the brass bed. “I hadn’t slept in the bed since his death. It was his bed. I used to make it every day and wash the sheets once a week, but I never slept in it. That day, though, when my eyes grew heavy with sleep, I threw myself down on it and slept. You can imagine what it was like when I woke up and saw darkness everywhere. For an instant I didn’t know where I was; it was as though my husband had never died, the village hadn’t fallen, and the children weren’t waiting in a field in Deir al-Qasi. I forgot everything and found myself at home. When I remembered where I was and where I’d come from, I was struck by fear and started shivering. I jumped off the bed, patted my chest, found the jewellery in its place and thought I’d better go back.”

Shahineh said she regretted one thing. “I’m sorry I didn’t make the bed. In my fear and haste, it was like I didn’t care. I know my husband was angry with me: I dreamt of him, Son. We were here in the camp, and he came to me in a dream and said, ‘Even so, Shahineh, is that any way to leave my bed? Where am I going to rest now?’ I went to the Green Sheikh, God set him straight, and told him about my dream, and he reassured me and said the dead don’t return to their houses, and that my husband was a martyr, and the martyrs are in Heaven, and he asked me to come and visit him from time to time. I didn’t visit him, though. I’d seen that look in his eye; praise God, I didn’t visit him even once. He looked me up and down and licked his lips, saying, ‘The martyrs are in Heaven, where there’s ease, and houris. Your husband, Shahineh, is enjoying his fill of the houris now.’ As he said houris, he licked his lips as though he were, God forbid. .! Is that how to behave with martyrs’ widows? I mean, who did that old lecher think he was? No, dear God, I spit on his beard and the beards of all like him. He picks up the Book of God and then looks with that lustful look?”

Shahineh said she came to her senses and started to shiver.

“I got up, drank some water, and left.”

She said the village was empty – no one. Not a sound, nothing. Only the wind whispering to the branches of the trees and the sound of her footsteps.

In front of the mosque, she heard someone quietly clearing his throat. She threw herself on the ground, and saw the man coming.

“Who’s there?” whispered the man.

Shahineh couldn’t find her voice to reply. She tried to make herself as small as she could. The White Sheikh was coming toward her, carrying what looked like a rifle in his hand.

Shahineh said she closed her eyes and started reciting the Throne Verse in her heart to conjure away the Evil One when a stick tapped her and she heard her name.

“Get up, Shahineh my daughter. What are you doing here?”

She opened her eyes and screamed, “I seek refuge with God against Satan – I beg you, please not me! Don’t take me, Aziz! Please, I have children.”

He held out his stick as though he wanted her to take hold of it to raise herself up.

“What’s the matter, Daughter? I’m Uncle Aziz Ayyoub.”

“But you’re dead, Uncle. Leave me alone. I have children.”

“Me, dead! Have you gone crazy? Did you ever hear of a dead man talking? Here I am in front of you. Get up.”

“I beheld my uncle, Sheikh Aziz Ayyoub, and discovered that Yasin had lied to me. Aziz Ayyoub hadn’t died; there he was, taking me inside the mosque, lighting a fire, giving me tea, and asking after my children. But you know, Son, not one person believed me. They said I’d seen a ghost. Even his daughter, Safiyyeh, laughed at me and said that he was dead and gone, but I’m sure. I saw him, and he gave me tea and said he couldn’t leave the village because he had to guard the mosque and the tree.”

Nobody believed her, Father. Even I didn’t believe her, and, finally, she started to doubt herself. Poor grandmother. She died before Umm Hassan returned from her journey over there and confirmed the man wasn’t a ghost, and that he died in a strange way.

Aziz Ayyoub told Shahineh they’d been guarding the tree for five generations and they couldn’t abandon it. “I asked my wife to stay on here, but she refused because she was afraid of the Jews. ‘What can the Jews do?’ I asked her. ‘The worst has already happened.’ And she said, ‘I’m afraid of Deir Yasin.’” ^*

Sheikh Aziz said he wasn’t afraid. “I’m the fifth generation and I won’t leave the lotus tree. Who will look after the holy saints? Who will pray in the mosque? Who will wash the graves?”

Shahineh listened to what the man said as though she were in a dream, and in dreams words have no meaning. “He asked me to tell his wife he was still alive. I didn’t ask him anything. It was very strange – whenever I was about to ask him something, I’d hear the answer before I could ask. Merciful and Compassionate God, it was as though he could read my heart. He said the Jews came from time to time. A patrol of three armed soldiers would come, roam around the village, then go into the houses and loot the gold. ‘You found your gold by God’s will, my daughter, but the gold’s disappeared. They think I’m insane. When they see me, they run away, so I climb the minaret and say the call to prayer; the call frightens them and protects me. Off with you now, Daughter. Go to your children.’”

My grandmother said the journey back to the fields of Deir al-Qasi was as quick as a flash. “I ran the whole way. I ran, without looking back once. I felt there was someone running behind me. I couldn’t hear a thing, as though my ears had been blocked by the wind. I ran and the wind carried me until I arrived. I arrived at our camp and saw my four children sitting there, waiting for me. I arrived and threw myself among them. I took them into the tent and told them to sleep. They leaned close to one another in silence. It was then that I smelled myself. It was sweat; it had stained my clothes, and the smell of it spread inside the tent. I was embarrassed and asked Munirah to get up and help me wash. That day I divided the wealth between the two of us. I put ten lira into the front of my dress and ten into the front of hers. I took the signet ring and the pearl necklace and gave her the twisted bracelets. With this money we were able to live for a whole year in Qana before my girls had to go and work in the stone quarries.”

You don’t know Aziz Ayyoub, Father, you never told me anything about him or about the life he led alone in our village. Didn’t you visit al-Ghabsiyyeh? Didn’t you hear the story of the holy saint who was killed? If it weren’t for Umm Hassan, I’d have known nothing. You ought to have heard her telling me. How wonderful Umm Hassan was – I wish she’d been my mother! At least I’d sleep comfortably. Did you know I’m afraid of sleeping? I told you, I’m scared of sleeping and waking up to find myself in a strange land whose language I can’t speak. I’m scared I won’t wake up. I’m scared I won’t find my house or I won’t find you or I won’t find the hospital or I don’t know what.

With Umm Hassan I would have slept. My grandmother used to scare me at night. I’d hear the sound of her footsteps in the house as though she couldn’t sleep and couldn’t let me sleep. She’d walk and walk, then come to my bed and ask me if I was asleep. I’d awaken with a jolt to find her at my side saying she’d remembered something, and she’d start to repeat her tedious stories about Yasin, of his life and of his death, on and on.

With Umm Hassan, sleep comes to you. With her you feel the world is stable, not about to be dislodged. Oh, where are you now, Umm Hassan? And where’s the nursing certificate you kept from the days of the British Mandate? Umm Hassan told me about my grandfather’s uncle, Aziz Ayyoub. She said he’d become a saint and that people made oaths in his name and that he could cure illnesses. She said that during her visit to her brother in al-Jdeideh, she’d remembered her promise to my grandmother to visit al-Ghabsiyyeh and light a candle under the lotus tree.

Have you seen the lotus tree, Father?

Have you tasted its fruit?

Umm Hassan said its fruit was called doumand were like medlars, or even more delicious than medlars.

Umm Hassan told the people in Jdeideh that she had to go al-Ghabsiyyeh to fulfill her vow under the lotus tree, and she went on her own because her brother was afraid to go with her. He told her that since the Ayyoub incident and the building of his tomb there, the Israelis had started to clamp down and stop people from visiting the village. Al-Ghabsiyyeh was a military area, and if anyone was found there they were taken to prison and had to pay a huge fine.

Her brother took her to the village of al-Nahar and showed her the way. She said that when she reached the tree, she made a prostration. She saw melted candles and ribbons hung over the delicate small leaves, which covered the branches. She made a prostration there and then entered the mosque, where she knelt in a corner and prayed.

When she returned, she told me about Ayyoub.

She said the people in al-Jdeideh talked about him. They told her about a white man with a white beard and white clothes who guarded a tree and talked to its branches. People would come from the surrounding villages to fulfill their vows to the tree and see the man. Umm Hassan told them it was Aziz. “It’s Aziz,” she’d say. “No. His name’s Ayyoub,” they’d say.

Umm Hassan said Aziz cleaned the mosque every day. The Israeli settlement that had been built on the edge of al-Ghabsiyyeh used the mosque as a cow pen. Ayyoub would get up every day and start cleaning the mosque first thing, picking up the dung with his hands and throwing it into the fields. Then he’d sprinkle water and pray.

Umm Hassan said that at first the people thought he was Jewish, for he resembled the Iraqi Jews who were common in the area and had set up the settlement of Netiv ha-Shayyara. They thought he was the guard for the cow pen. Then they discovered the truth because whenever more than three women gathered around the lotus tree, he’d climb the minaret and give the call to prayer. Many, both men and women, had attempted to talk to him, but he wouldn’t speak. He seemed to be from another world, a spirit, with his eyes sunken in his oval face and his shoulders that drooped as though his body were no longer capable of holding them up.

“That’s Aziz Ayyoub,” said Umm Hassan, and she told them his wife and children lived in the Burj al-Shamali camp near Tyre, and that she’d seen his son, who’d grown into a fine man and worked as a broker for the lemon growers in Tyre.

The people of al-Jdeideh couldn’t believe that their Ayyoub was this Aziz Ayyoub.

Their Ayyoub was a phantom; our Aziz was a man.

Their Ayyoub was a saint; our Aziz died when the young Yasin left him and fled into the valley.

Ayyoub, or Aziz Ayyoub, lived his life a solitary phantom in a village inhabited by ghosts. He lived alone close to the tree and the mosque, sleeping in the mosque with the cows and eating plants that grew on the land and the remains of provisions that had been left behind in the abandoned houses. They’d see him walking through the fields or sitting under the lotus tree or praying in the mosque or giving the call to prayer. His clothes were a brilliant white, as though all the muck that surrounded him left no mark.

People called him White Ayyoub.

After lighting their candles under the tree, they’d approach him hoping for a blessing, but he’d walk away. No one could touch him. Umm Hassan didn’t know how they knew his name. “He didn’t speak to anyone, he didn’t respond, so how did they know? This, my son, I’m not able to tell you. They said he was as pure as an angel, that he’d clean out the mosque and become even more immaculate.”

Umm Hassan says she thinks a good number the stories circulating about Ayyoub are just fantasies. The mosque wasn’t used continuously as a cow pen, most likely the Jews kept their cattle there during the winter. She didn’t think they’d leave their cows with Ayyoub.

“Ayyoub went mad,” said Umm Hassan. “How could anybody live alone among those ruins and not lose his mind? If he hadn’t lost his mind, he’d have left al-Ghabsiyyeh and gone to live in another village, any other village, among people.”

“But that’s not the point of the story, Son,” said Umm Hassan. “The point is that Aziz Ayyoub became a saint after he died.”

One day a woman came to the lotus tree to fulfil a vow, and she saw him. She threw down her candles and ran to al-Jdeideh, and everyone came. Ayyoub was dead beneath the holy tree, his neck tied to a rope, the rope on the ground, as though the man had fallen from a branch of the tree. At one end of the rope was Ayyoub’s neck, which had turned thin and black, and at the other end was a branch of the lotus tree that had been torn from its mother and had fallen to the ground.

“No one touch him,” someone said. “The man committed suicide, and suicide is an impure act.”

The people backed away from the body of White Ayyoub, whispering in strangled voices. One woman left the throng, went over to the corpse, took off her headscarf, and covered the face of the dead man. Then she knelt bareheaded and started to weep.

“They killed him,” said the kneeling woman. “They killed the guardian of the lotus tree. It’s a sign.”

Sheikh Abd al-Ahad, imam of the Jdeideh mosque, said that Ayyoub hadn’t committed suicide. “Ayyoub is a martyr, my friends.”

The sheikh gave orders to take the body into the mosque, where it was washed and wrapped in a shroud. The burial took place beside the lotus tree, where they built Ayyoub a tomb.

“Now, Son, when you go to al-Ghabsiyyeh, you’ll see cacti everywhere. Only the cactus bears witness to our endurance. And there next to the tree, you’ll see the tomb of Ayyoub. The tree is lush and beautiful and green. Ah, how beautiful lotus trees are! Have you ever seen a lotus tree in your life? Of course you haven’t. Your generation hasn’t seen anything. There, Son, sleeps Aziz Ayyoub, Saint Ayyoub. People visit his tomb and leave him gifts and votive offerings, and he answers their prayers. I saw the tomb. A small tomb with a window. I leaned my head down and shouted, ‘Aziz! Can you hear me? Dear beloved one, you truly have earned your name! ^*You rose above an entire people. You ended your life on the tree you guarded. Aziz, Dear Saint, Beloved of God!’ That’s how the people invoke him, Son. They come from all around; they put their heads near the window and call, ‘Ayyoub!’”