Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa Read Free Book Online

Moshe snatched the child, tucked it in his army sack, and kept moving without looking back. He heard the woman yell, “Ibni! Ibni!” and that made him believe that she had seen him take her baby.
    But she had not. The crowd pushed on, more gunshots rang out, and the woman was shoved along.
    The baby cried. Moshe could feel little kicks inside his sack as he made for the jeep, away from the eyes of his comrades. The Arabs had already moved on from the center of town. He had the idea to pacify the child with alcohol the soldiers had stashed to celebrate their imminent victory that evening in Ein Hod. Dripping gin into the baby’s mouth, Moshe noticed the scar on his face. It was still red and his eye was still swollen.
    “The Arabs are gone!” shouted a soldier.
    The inhabitants of Ein Hod were removed from the land. It was now time to celebrate and that was Moshe’s opportunity to get the baby out of sight.
    “I left the liquor. I’ll be back,” Moshe yelled.
    He secured the intoxicated child in the sack rustling about in the backseat of an army jeep as he sped toward the kibbutz where Jolanta was likely sleeping. Moshe thought she slept too much. Ate too little. Rarely smiled anymore.
    Young life to care for will bring her back .
    The young life was Ismael, son of Dalia and Hasan, fellaheen from the Palestinian village of Ein Hod. Moshe did not know their names, nor would he or Jolanta, ever. The Arab woman’s face, and her scream of “Ibni, ibni,” would haunt Moshe’s years and the awful things he had done would give him no peace until the end. But for now, Moshe was propelled by love to steal a child. To chase people from their homes, he had been commissioned by an omnipotent edict. A land without a people, for a people without a land . He said it until he could have believed it, but for that Arab woman.
    But for Dalia.

    Jolanta’s face opened like a spring blossom. Her nurturing instincts overtook her depression, her ghosts, her misery. She held the precious child, half-drugged, dirty, and maimed. She enfolded him with her deepest yearnings, caring not that he was an Arab. That day she learned the first thing she ever knew about Arabs: that they circumcise their boys.
    Jolanta fell in love. “He’s beautiful, Moshe.” She trembled with delight.
    “He . . . the baby . . . his parents . . .” Moshe was not sure what he was starting to say and was grateful when Jolanta interrupted him.
    “Stop. I don’t want to know anything. Just tell me, is he our son, Moshe?”
    “Yes, my love. He needs a mother.”
    “Then his name is David, in memory of my father,” Jolanta decided, and Moshe returned to Ein Hod with the liquor, happy. He felt complete.
    First the British, then the Arabs .
    And now Jolanta had a child.

    As the people of Ein Hod were marched into dispossession, Moshe and his comrades guarded and looted the newly emptied village. While Dalia lay heartbroken, delirious with the loss of Ismael, Jolanta rocked David to sleep. While Hasan tended to his family’s survival, Moshe sang in drunken revelry with his fellow soldiers. And while Yehya and the others moved in anguished steps away from their land, the usurpers sang “Hatikva” and shouted, “Long live Israel!”

SIX

    Yehya’s Return

    1948–1953

    WHILE A FOREIGN MINORITY went about building a new state in 1948, expelling Palestinians and looting their homes and banks, the five major powers—the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, China, and the United States— appointed a UN mediator to recommend a solution to the conflict.
    “He’s Swedish,” Yehya said to a group of men who gathered each morning near his tent for the latest news. “Who is Swedish?” asked a passerby. “Shut up. Hasan is reading the newspaper to us,” someone snapped. Yehya nodded to Hasan. “Continue, son.” Hasan read:
Serving his commission, the Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, stated, “It would be an offense against the principles of