Mahdi came back afterward and convinced you to leave al-Birwa and hand it over to the ALA. And you let him persuade you! You abandoned al-Birwa only for it to be surrendered to the Jews twenty-four hours later without a fight. And Dandan stands up and says, “An Arab doesn’t kill another Arab!” Poor people! Say you agreed with Mahdi because it was impossible to stay, because you were exhausted, and the village was surrounded on all sides; so you abandoned it before the ALA did the same.

After al-Birwa fell, you only had Sha’ab.

And Sha’ab didn’t survive either.

On July 21, 1948, the shelling of Sha’ab began, from the direction of al-Birwa. Then an infantry unit advanced from Mi’ar and swept through the village. The first shelling was intermittent but accurate. Ten minutes after the first shell fell on the threshing floors, the second one fell on the houses of Ali Mousa and Rashid al-Hajj Hassan, destroying them. The villagers started fleeing in all directions. In the midst of the chaos, everyone found themselves on the outside of the village except for a small group of fighters concentrated in al-Abbasiyyeh on the eastern side of the village.

On July 21, Sha’ab fell for the first time, without a fight!

The ALA, concentrated in al al-Layyat, Majd al-Kuroum, and al-Ramah, didn’t intervene. It seems the Israeli attack took everyone by surprise. War was everywhere, and it took you by surprise!

The village collapsed before its defenders fired a single shot, and the Jews came in.

You said you lived those six days in the fields and could see Sha’ab from a distance. It was as though the village had fallen into the valley. Sha’ab is hemmed in by hills on all sides, and had become a valley of death. After the fall of al-Birwa and Mi’ar, Sha’ab was under fire, and the only way to protect it was by concerted military action. Abu Is’af tried to organize the fighters. He divided them into four detachments and assigned each one the task of protecting one of the village borders, but he didn’t leave a central force capable of responding to emergencies.

Practically speaking, there was no battle.

The shelling and screaming caused terrible confusion among the peasants and the fighters, and the battle ended before it had begun.

In the fields, the Sha’ab fighters discovered they were impotent. Attempts at surveillance and infiltration were useless. “We can’t attack,” said Abu Is’af, “without preparatory shelling, and we don’t have any artillery.” He assigned the task of contacting the ALA to assure artillery support to Yunes.

Yunes went to al al-Layyat and entered into impossible negotiations with Mahdi and Jasem. Every plan he proposed was rejected on the grounds that it would cause huge losses to both peasants and fighters.

“I suggested an attack from al al-Layyat, and they said the artillery at Mi’ar would wipe us out. I suggested an attack from the fields to the east, and they said they’d discover us and wipe us out before we arrived. I suggested that the ALA unit move, to give the impression that the attack would come from their positions while we attacked from the east, and they said they had no order to move. All my plans were refused, and their suggestion was to reflect and wait. I told them, ‘You’re the army. You propose something and we’ll carry it out.’ They said, ‘Of course, but we’re waiting for orders.’ I said we couldn’t stand around waiting. They said, ‘In war, you have to obey orders.’

“I said, they said. .

“My mission ended in failure. I went back to the field where everyone was waiting for me. Everybody thought I’d returned with the order to liberate Sha’ab in my pocket. When I told them, their faces darkened but they made no comment, as though I were telling them about some other village.”

The table for breaking the fast was set at sunset. They were starving, miserable, yet nevertheless keeping the fast.

When I ask you about the meal, you’ll tell me you were tired but not hungry. You’ll tell me you never used to feel real hunger unless you were with her, after you’d made love to her in the cave of Bab al-Shams. On ordinary days you didn’t feel hungry, you ate just to fill your stomach. On that day, however, you did try to eat from that meager table. There was almost nothing — greens and weeds. There wasn’t even any bread.

Perhaps that was the reason.

Why didn’t you tell me the Jews attacked Sha’ab precisely at sunset in the month of Ramadan, as the villagers were all around their tables, breaking the fast? The shelling started, your defenses collapsed, and you were defeated. Hungry, you fled to the fields in that terrible chaos; then, as you were fleeing, you saw the flames springing up in the middle of the village. You thought they were burning the village, and this added to your panic and drove you out into the neighboring fields.

When Yunes got back, he found everyone eating. He was hungry, but he didn’t eat. He put his hand out, and before the food reached his mouth, he threw it down and said, “We’ll attack on our own.” There followed a long, noisy, involved discussion about military plans, but there was no plan. Only Yunes’ blind father said, “There’s no hope. Everything’s lost.” People saw the tears falling from his closed eyes while the gathering broke up without a decision. That night everyone slept like the dead, even those who’d taken it upon themselves to act as guards; in the face of the despair, the fear, and the hunger, only the door of sleep remained open.

In the morning, the two women were struck by something resembling madness.

They were discussing ways of getting water from the spring, when suddenly a hubbub arose and everyone saw Nahilah and Reem leaving.

Nahilah said she couldn’t take it any longer.

Reem said death would be more honorable.

The women set off behind them. Abu Is’af and Khalil Suleiman Abd al-Mu’ti tried to stop them, but they were like a torrent sweeping everything in its path.

“At the outskirts of the village, we started to fire. We attacked without a plan. We were running and firing at random. It wasn’t a battle, it was like a Bedouin brawl, and we found ourselves in the village with the Jews gone. A few of our people were dead, first among them, Reem’s Hassan. I can’t describe the battle because it wasn’t a battle, it was a charge. We were back into the village in less than an hour. Afterward we found out that Dandan’s group of Yemeni and Iraqi volunteers in the ALA had mutinied against their commander when we started our attack and opened fire from their positions at Tal al-Layyat, deluding the Jews into thinking there was a coordinated attack. Then Dandan and his men came to join us, after they’d been thrown out of the army.”

Yunes said that when he met Abu Is’af more than twenty years later, he was astonished to hear the Sha’ab garrison leader’s version of the story.

“Abu Is’af is more than a brother to me. Being comrades in arms is something time can’t erase, as you know well. Your comrade in arms can turn up, after twenty years, and you discover he still has his place in your heart. Abu Is’af came and we sat and drank tea, and the conversation took us back to ’48.

“He said the Israelis threw white powder into the square at Sha’ab as they withdrew, that they set fire to it to frighten us. When he saw the fire, feeling that he couldn’t bear one more retreat, he threw himself into it and discovered that it was just flames.

“I remember things differently — the fire started when they occupied the village, not when they withdrew. But that’s not important.

“Abu Is’af knew very well that I was the military official in charge of the whole South Lebanon sector, but he still treated me as though I were a junior officer, raising his hand and expecting me to be silent, like in ’48.

“I was silent so as not to upset him. After all, Abu Is’af is truly dedicated to the struggle, and I respect him immensely. When we disagreed over the flame powder, and he started to get upset, I lied and claimed he was right. I recounted how I had followed him, how I, too, had thrown myself into the flames. I let him tell whatever stories he liked in front of his sister and grandchildren — how he caught on fire himself and how all the other fighters did the same, and this terrified the Jews.”