Ishmael's Oranges

Claire Hajaj

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781780744957
• Subtopic: Literature General

Shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2016

A finalist for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2015

It’s April 1948, and war hangs over Jaffa.

One minute seven-year-old Salim is dreaming of taking his first harvest from the family’s orange tree; the next he is swept away into a life of exile and rage. Seeking a new beginning in swinging-’60s London, Salim falls in love with Jude. The only problem? Jude is Jewish.

A captivating story about love and loss, Ishmael’s Oranges follows the story of two families spanning the crossroad events of modern times, and of the legacy of hatred their children inherit.

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‌Journeys

An ‘absentee’ is a Palestinian citizen [who] left his place of residence before 1 September 1948 for a place… held by forces seeking to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel… Every right an absentee had in any property shall pass automatically to the Custodian Council for Absentee Property.

Israel Absentees
Property Law, 1950

No doubt Jews aren’t a loveable people; I don’t care about them myself; but that is not sufficient to explain the pogrom.

Neville Chamberlain,
letter, 1938

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‌1948

‘Yallah, Salim! Farm-boy! The Jews are coming for you! They’re going to kick you out and break your skinny arse like a donkey.’

Two boys stood opposite each other on the dirt road between Jaffa’s orange groves and the sea.

One was older, burly and black haired. His chin, arms and belly rolled in chubby folds, like a lamb ready for the oven. Some day those folds would smooth into the coveted fat of the ay’an – one of the rich, the coffee drinkers with their white mansions and expensive wives. But today the excess weight was only good for bullying and sweating his way through the warm spring air.

The younger boy stood facing the darkening water with a football in his hand. He wore laced black school shoes and neat brown shorts. His white shirt was tucked carefully around his waist and buttoned up to the chin; his small, pale face was an open book, the Frères liked to tease, a page that anyone could write on.

‘Don’t call me a fellah,’ he said cautiously, turning the football around in his hands. It was never a good idea to argue with Mazen, who at nearly ten was brutishly heavy-handed.

‘Why not? You live on a farm. Your father makes you go and pick fruit, like the fellahin.’

An angry retort filled Salim’s mouth, but he swallowed it, suddenly uncertain. Hadn’t he begged to go to the groves last week? The harvest was ending, and his father’s labourers had picked the family farm – all fifteen full dunams of good orange land. Joining the harvest was supposed to be a birthday treat; he was seven now, and one day he would share the groves with Hassan and Rafan. Let me go, he’d asked, but his father said no, and to his shame Salim had wept.

‘My father pays fellahin to work, yours puts them in prison,’ he said, changing tack. Mazen’s father was one of Jaffa’s top judges, a qadi; Hassan said he stank of money. ‘If the Jews come and live in your house your father can help them lock us all up.’ Mazen grinned.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘If you ask nicely I’ll take care of you and your pretty mama. But that stupid Hassan will have to look after himself.’

He grabbed the football from Salim and turned down the path towards the sea. The younger boy followed him instinctively, empty arms swinging by his side in the falling sun.

‘The Jews aren’t coming, anyway, not while the British are here,’ Salim said, remembering suddenly what Frère Philippe had told him at St Joseph’s that morning. A scuffle broke out between two boys in the yard at playtime: one had called the other’s father a traitor for selling his dunams to the Jews. The other shouted that at least he hadn’t fled his home like a coward. They were dragged off by their ears, still hitting each other. Salim had stood by transfixed, while Mazen laughed and cheered them on. Afterwards, Frère Philippe had patted him gently on the face. ‘Don’t worry, habibi,’ he’d said over the wet thwack of the whip as the boys took their lashes. ‘All this talk of Jews and armies… not everyone is crazy for fighting, not while the British are still here and God watches over his flock.’

‘God helps those who help themselves,’ said one of the nearby Frères, darkly. ‘God better had,’ said another, ‘because the British surely won’t.’

‘You’re such a donkey, Salim,’ sneered Mazen, bringing him back to the present. ‘The British don’t care if we live or die. They want to slice this place up like an orange and give the Jews the biggest piece. But we’ll be ready for them, by God. Let them test the Najjada. I can’t wait to shoot a Jew.’

Salim could not imagine shooting anyone. He had once seen a British policeman shoot a sick dog – a stray; the sad noise it made as the bullet went in had made Salim kneel on the ground and vomit. And then there was what happened last month – the blood that ran over the bricks onto his shoes – but he would not think about that.

‘You can’t join the Najjada,’ he said, pushing his hands into his pockets and squaring his shoulders. ‘You’re just a boy. Mama says they only take men.’ Boy scouts with guns, she’d called them at the parade last week; but Salim had stretched up on his toes behind Hassan’s back to see them standing to attention in Clock Tower Square. They had tall rifles and fine grey uniforms. He knew one; Mazen’s gang called him cat’s arse because he had a deep brown pimple in the middle of his chin. They’d teased him to crying about it, but that day his eyes were bright and proud. Hassan would have joined them too – but Mohammad Nimir al-Hawari accepted no boy under fifteen.

‘Your mama has a woman’s brains,’ Mazen scoffed. ‘Al-Hawari is a friend of my father’s. Anyway, why would I tell you if I joined? They don’t take little donkeys like you.’

‘I’m not a donkey,’ Salim whispered, as Mazen ran ahead. Sometimes, in his wildest moments of courage, Salim imagined knocking Mazen to the ground like a fat football. But with his big fists and blistering scorn, Mazen was more terrifying than even the Jews. I hope the Jews get Mazen when they come.

The Jews are coming. That’s what the Frères whispered to each other at school. The countryside was emptying as the fighting drew near, bringing refugees to Jaffa with their dirty bags and clinging children. Salim’s father had complained to the Mayor about them – but his mother had sent packages of food for the women with babies. Salim could not understand what would make people want to sleep in Jaffa’s mosques and churches instead of in their own homes.

But today, with the sun high and the air filled with salt and oranges, it was hard to feel afraid. They chased each other along the path, racing through the scrubland and yelling into the warm rush of sea air. The ball flew towards the sea and Salim streaked ahead, breathless and exultant, scooping it before the surf could claim it. Spinning around to cheer his victory, he suddenly realized he was alone. His cheeks turned red as he spotted Mazen, grinning down at him from the top of the embankment.

‘You always fall for that one,’ he laughed. Salim hung his head to hide the shaming flush. Why do you always let him trick you, stupid? the stones on the ground seemed to say.

‘Come on, fellah,’ Mazen said, pointing to Salim’s dirty knees and sweaty face. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s go to the souk.’

There were two ways to get from Al-Ajami to the souks of Jaffa’s Clock Tower Square.

The route from Salim’s house led straight through the silent inland. It passed the sun-bleached whiteness of the seaside villas, their walled gardens spilling glorious streams of red bougainvillea and the dusty tang of oranges. It turned left onto old Al-Ajami Street, where new motorcars whined past donkeys trundling loads of pomegranates and lemons. The door of Abulafia’s bakery was always open, even in the bracing winter months. Salim had waited there a hundred times, his senses scorched by the smell of pastries rising in clouds of cinnamon and allspice. His mother liked manquish, a flatbread sprinkled with thyme and sesame. He used to eat it from her hands, a little piece at a time, as they walked out into Jaffa’s old city, with its coffee shops and yellow plumes of nargile smoke.

The other way to the Square belonged to Jaffa’s boys; it was a rite of passage. As soon as a boy was old enough to walk, another would dare him to try it – crossing down over the wild beaches, braving the slippery rocks and then inching out step by step under the ancient port wall.

Today, the sun beat down on the great crescent of the Mediterranean; the water shone gold against the black land like a ring in an African ear. Salim and Mazen jumped across the tide pools, splashing the bare-armed boys fishing for crabs. They picked their way across the jagged rocks until the port of Jaffa emerged in white, sea-stained stone.

‘Jaffa’s harbour is as old as the sea,’ Frère Philippe had taught them. ‘It was here before the Arabs or the Jews. God Himself led Japhet here, Noah’s son, in the times before time. The bones of twenty-two armies rest here. The pagans of Thebes chained their maiden sacrifice just there,’ his wrinkled hand pointed and a dozen pairs of eyes followed it. ‘There, out on the rocks that we call Andromeda, waiting for the sea monster to devour them. The Crusader king, Richard the Lionheart,...

Table of contents

• 1 • Journeys
• 2 • Settlement
• 3 • Reckoning
• 4 • Homecoming