This is where he wants to go—the largest camp in the Gaza Strip, the birthplace of the intifada, the uprising. He has no idea how to get there, or if he can even enter the place, only that it is north. Knowing that the sea is a mile away and to the west, he begins to walk through the city, keeping, as best he can, the sea to his left.
He hasn’t been walking long before a voice, in his language, stops him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I want to go to Jabaliya,” he says, mispronouncing the word.
The young man corrects his pronunciation.
“My name is Fayez. That is where I live.”
Several hours later the two of them are walking up School Street and the American is gazing at the expanse of cement block houses. Children get close and Fayez tells them that the man is an American.
“Go away,” Fayez says to the children. They scatter for a second or two, but are back, appearing from everywhere, out of nowhere.
“It’s okay,” the American says, removing his backpack and playing with the children.
And this is how it is the entire way up School Street. Women poke their heads out of colorful doors, men sitting along the cement wall nod to the stranger.
Nearing the house, the American asks:
“Why is it that you are bringing me to your family?”
Fayez watches the American shaking hands with the children and he smiles and says: “I trust your eyes.”
As of late, in the coastal village of al-Jiyya, there has been an increase in the sightings of the talking jackals. Ghassan, a fishing boat repairman, has lived his twenty-four years in a cave, just outside this village, which is equal distance from the two ancient coastal cities. He calls the cave The Finger of Allah, imagining that Allah, one day, poked his finger into the side of the mountain and created it. The cave has a beautiful view of the Sea and in it, on this late September day in 1948, is Ghassan’s wife, eight months pregnant. From the entrance of the cave, standing at its far-right side and on her toes, Ghassan’s wife can see the top of her husband’s work hut down along the beach. It has been a while since she has done so because being anywhere near the bright sunlight sends flashes of pain into her head. Most of her days are spent at the rear of the cave, where only the final minutes of sunset can cast their auburn glow.
On this particular evening, as Ghassan is about halfway up the hill leading to his home, two jackals stand blocking the path. Ghassan continues walking toward them, and when he is fifteen feet away, one of the jackals speaks.
“I hear that your wife will soon have her first child.”
“Yes, that is so.”
“How wonderful for the both of you,” the jackal says.
“Thank you. Now, could you let me pass? I must go and attend to my wife.”
“We have just visited her and she looks very tired. Before we allow you to pass, there is something you must agree to help us with.”
“What is it you want?” asks Ghassan.
The smallest of the jackals hands Ghassan a scroll of paper.
“We hear you are good with the brush and we need those names painted on signs for us. One name per sign.”
Ghassan unrolls the scroll and looks at the long list of names.
“There must be over one hundred and fifty names here.”
“Your mind is very quick. There are one hundred and seventy-six.”
“It is in the script of the jackals. This will take weeks to do.”
“No, they must be finished before your wife gives birth. If they are not completed by that time, your wife will give birth to a goat.”
Ghassan looks at the jackals and can’t believe what he is hearing.
“Where will I get all the wood for the signs?”
“It is all waiting for you by your home.”
“And the paints?”
“So too are the paints.”
“And how am I to learn this script?”
“Get practicing.”
They step aside in order that Ghassan can pass. He quickly walks by and before he has made it around the bend, one of the jackals shouts, “You should hurry! It looks as though your wife may give birth early!”
Ghassan sees the hill of blank wooden signs in front of his home. There are two stacks, both taller than he. Next to the stack of signs is a barrel of paint. Simple white. He takes one of the signs and rubs his hand over its smooth surface. Each sign is a yard long. Ghassan does a quick calculation; four signs an hour, twenty signs each night. That would be more than a week, nine days to be exact, to complete them all.
He enters the cave and goes to the back where his wife is on her side, rubbing her stomach. She has told him how she can feel the hiccups of the baby and Ghassan finds this both miraculous and frightening. Only once has he even touched her stomach and it reminded him of an inflated balloon and how it cracks and becomes perilously taut when you paint it. Her eyes are open and she is looking at Ghassan. He thinks of asking her about the jackals, but decides against it. Stress, he has heard from the midwife, can cause a woman to go into labor early.
“How is your headache?”
“It is not bad today. For some reason the sunlight is not so strong. Is it cloudy?”
“Not a cloud,” Ghassan catches himself, thinking of the stacks of wood and how they are probably blocking much of the bright sunlight. “Not a cloud this morning, but as the day passed, more clouds began appearing.”
“Have you anything for dinner?”
“I brought home some sardines and I will cook them and make bread as well.”
Ghassan goes to the front of the cave and does what he has told his wife he would do. Soon there is dinner, which his wife only picks at.
“You must eat more.”
“I have little appetite. I think the baby will come soon.”
Ghassan gags on the fish bone of his wife’s words.
“Eat some bread,” his wife tells him.
He does as she says, although he knows there is no bone in his throat. He finishes his dinner and hurries outside and stirs the paint, looks at the long list of names on the sheet. He begins;