Ibrahim gathered the fighters and divided them in two, the first group in the area of al-Rayyis, two kilometers southwest of al-Kabri, and a group at the cemetery.
The first group blocked the road with rocks and stones while the second set up an ambush in the cemetery under the command of Saleh al-Jashi.
The Israeli convoy stopped where the road was blocked but didn’t retreat. The armored car pulled back and the bulldozer moved forward, followed by three armored cars, two trucks, and a bus.
Then all hell broke loose.
The battle began at noon. After the bulldozer succeeded in clearing a way, Saleh threw a hand grenade, but it didn’t explode. He threw another, and it made a terrible noise and produced a lot of dust, but the convoy continued to advance. Suddenly one of the armored cars turned and burst into flame. How did it catch fire? No one knows. Did a third grenade hit it or did it collide with the pile of rocks at the crossroads and catch fire?
Saleh didn’t know.
But he does know that the convoy halted in its tracks and the firing started. It was a bloodbath. The firing went on until dawn.
Sitting in his house among the mourners, Saleh described what happened:
“They began getting out of the armored cars and tried to spread out among the olive trees while we fired at them with our rifles. We had English rifles, some hand grenades, and one Sten gun. Not one of them got away. They couldn’t fight, and they didn’t raise a white flag. We fired and received occasional fire from the windows of the bus or from the perimeter of the ambush. The firing didn’t stop until we’d killed every last one of them.
“In the morning, the British came to remove the bodies. I stayed up the whole night in the cemetery with a few young men from al-Birwa and Sha’ab who’d come to lend their support. The rest gathered the arms of the Israelis and went home to sleep. General Ismail Safwat, chief of staff of the Arab Liberation Army, came, was photographed in front of the destroyed Israeli vehicles, before confiscating our stash of arms, from which he gave us back eleven rifles and seven boxes of ammunition.
“What kind of army was that? And what kind of liberation?”
Didn’t anyone ask him what they did after the battle?
Didn’t they expect a counterattack? Did they prepare for one?
But tell me, dear friend, what did Khalil Kallas do, commander of the group of thirty ALA men stationed near Fares Sarhan’s house in al-Kabri?
“Withdrew,” you’ll say.
“When?” I’ll ask.
“Three days before the village fell.”
“Why?”
“Because he knew.”
“And you? You all didn’t know?”
Abu Husam said they were taken by surprise by the attack on al-Kabri.
However, Fawziyyeh, the widow of Mohammed Ahmad Hassan and wife of Ali Kamel, knew, because she left the village the day that the ALA men left.
Fawziyyeh, whose husband died in the battle of Jeddin, didn’t remarry for twenty years, and Ali Kamel, her second husband, discovered that she was a virgin.
Her first husband died in the battle of Jeddin without taking part in it. He was a cameleer, transporting goods among the villages. On that day in March 1948, he was returning from Kafar Yasif to al-Kabri when he passed by the Israeli ambush pinned under the gunfire of the village militia. He was hit and died. The man fell, but the camel continued on its way to the village, ambling along in its own blood, until it reached its owner’s house, where it collapsed.
Fawziyyeh said the camel was hit in the hump and belly, and the militia men ate it to celebrate their victory. “No one paid any attention to my tragedy. I was seventeen years old and hadn’t been married more than a month. My husband died, and they slaughtered the camel and ate it. They invited me to eat with them. I won’t deny that I joined them, but I could taste death, and from that day I haven’t eaten meat, not even on feast days or holidays. When I see meat, I see the body of Mohammed Ahmad Hassan and feel faint. I didn’t touch meat again until I married Ali Kamel twenty years later. Poor thing, he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that I was a virgin. He was a widower, like me. When he took me, and he saw the blood, he went crazy — he kissed me and laughed and danced. I was frightened, I swear I was frightened. I mean, how could it be? It was as if I’d never been married and blood had never spotted the sheets in al-Kabri. He wanted to say a few things about Mohammed Ahmad Hassan, but no, I assure you, Mohammed was a real man, it was just that I had turned back into a virgin. My virginity came back when I saw them eating the camel and wiping the grease from their hands.
“Ali Kamel, poor Ali, couldn’t make sense of it. He went to the doctor and came back reassured. The doctor told him it meant I hadn’t had sex since the death of my first husband. But how could I have? I was living in a hovel with my father in Shatila, and he watched me like a hawk. He even stopped me from working in the embroidery workshop — he said he’d rather die of hunger than see his daughter go out to work. Then this widower with no teeth comes along and tells everyone he’s taken my maidenhood! But it’s not true; Mohammed was the one. Ali was like glue — he’d stick to my body and lick me like a piece of chocolate. Umm Hassan laughed at him when he told her he wanted a child. She explained that I wasn’t a virgin and that his seed was weak, but he didn’t get it. A man over sixty and a woman in her forties, and he wants children!”
Fawziyyeh was sitting apart from the others at the wake, and al-Kabri rose up before everyone’s eyes. Abu Husam spoke of his exploits while the village faded like an old photo.
“But we left the dead behind, and that was shameful,” said an elderly man as he got up to leave.
Umm Sa’ad Radi wasn’t at the wake to tell her story.
Amina Mohammed Mousa — Umm Sa’ad Radi — died a month before Husam was martyred. If she’d been there, she’d have told you; she would have stopped the flood of nostalgia and memories.
If Umm Sa’ad Radi had been there she’d have said: “My husband and I left al-Kabri the day before it fell. We were on the Kabri-Tarshiha road and they slaughtered us. I wasn’t able to dig a grave for my husband. I see him in my dreams, stretched out in the ground. He sits up and tries to speak, but he has no voice.
“We were on the road when darkness fell. My husband decided we should spend the night in the fields, and we slept under an olive tree. At dawn, as my husband was getting ready to say his prayers, our friend, Raja, passed and urged us to flee. He said the Jews were getting very close. My husband finished his prayers, and we kept going toward Tarshiha, where we ran into them. They were approaching al-Kabri from the north and the south. We were stopped, searched, and taken in an armored car to our village.
“They left us in the square; I could see the troops dancing and singing and eating. A Jewish officer came over to us, chewing on bread wrapped in brown paper and started asking us questions. He pointed his rifle at my husband’s neck and asked in good Arabic, ‘You’re from al-Kabri?’
“‘No,’ I answered. ‘We’re from al-Sheikh Dawoud.’
“‘I’m not asking you, I’m asking him,’ he said.
“‘We’re from al-Sheikh Dawoud,’ my husband repeated, his voice shaking.
“At that instant, a man with a sackcloth bag over his head came over. I recognized him — it was Ali Abd al-Aziz. The bag had two holes for his eyes, and one for his lips. Ali nodded; he was breathing through his mouth, the bag was stuck to his nose, and he was puffing as though he were about to choke. I knew him from his nose, from the way the bag clung to his face.
“The bastard nodded his head, and I recognized him.
“‘You’re from al-Kabri,’ said the officer after the man with the bag over his head had confirmed it for him.