He came to the hill first, before he crossed onto the land. Heat soaked his shirt, and somewhere below him, a thin sound kept going through the afternoon.
It took a minute before he placed it.
Water
His grandfather had described the place once near the end when his stories had shrunk. He sometimes started one again before anyone had left the room. But his story was clear.
There was a hill to the east. A stream that ran through the driest years. Avraham had planted the date palms himself, the family said. Nobody alive could check. The olives predated the palms. When the wind caught their leaves, the effect was like silver flickering down the rows.
He rested his elbows on his knees and reminded himself that sentiment belonged to people who hadn’t lost anything.
His family had lost a farm two hundred and eleven years ago. Closer to three hundred, perhaps. An uncle could slip another century into the account between soup and meat without anyone objecting. He never did. They agreed about the farm. And the stream.
He carried one of those names. The name that occupy the space between his first name and a surname. On forms, when required. Elyakim. An ancestor who had walked north one day with nothing in his pockets. Nothing more than a decision to leave. Forced to walk north. There was no going back. Six generations ago, they told him. An uncle swore it was seven.
Below him was a sagging fence. Beyond that the date palms, and then two rows of olives. A boy, perhaps nine, dragged a hose across the dry ground and towards the trees.
There it was.
He knew it was there and for weeks afterwards, he doubted him seeing it. The boy wrestling the hose around that clod, the hill east of the farm, running water, and those trees. How many other places could fit an old man’s story that closely? He didn’t believe in omens, but he did believe in answers, even if it took two hundred years to arrive.
The war helped. He knew it.
He could try to stand on the farm in peacetime, rifle by his side, tell the story from his grandfather. but what would be the use? The men in suits want papers. Courts want deeds, dates, signatures. The family who took the land from his grandfather never saved the papers — why would they?
Now he can ignore the men in suits.
His people has fought for this land since before he was born. Since before the ancestors left, if you trace the grievance back far enough. The story of their land followed from that first grievance to today. Avraham heard that stream in his sleep until he died. Now the war gave his grandson a way to answer.
The family on this farm — he was certain they had a story of their own. He left them to it.
Everyone always has a grandfather they fight for. Point to a tree, a house, a spot on the ground. Tell the story of who drove whom out. Listen long enough and you would get comfortable. You won’t want to move. But you know the people who bore your burden. They told you the story back when you were a child. They expect him to not be comfortable. To act. Why lie to a child about the water and the date palms?
The dogs barked when he came that night. The farmer stepped outside, light spilling out into the darkness.
Later, he remembered his own calm more clearly than anything else. The rest returned in scraps. The farmer. His wife in the doorway behind him. The three children hiding behind her skirt. He looked away from the door.
He almost forgotten the goats.
A man can easily overlook livestock when planning something like this. If the goats stayed, they would bleating at strangers for weeks. Eventually someone would come to find out why.
He never used the word murder when he did it. His hands were too busy, for one thing, and then there was the doubt that he would have to recognize. No: the farmer had not stolen from him. But what was his was his, and no good man would take another man’s. Two hundred years ago, an ancestor of the farmer had seen fit to take what wasn't his, and that farmer now stood on the land, ate the food the trees provided. The trees his own ancestors had watered. How can such a man call himself innocent.
No. He would not dwell on what he did. He will focus on the debt. Why should an earlier man's theft spare this man the cost?
But. There were the children.
The next spring he planted more olive trees further down the slope. He dug every hole himself. In fifty years a new generation of trees will celebrate the land of his ancestors. As it would have been if his family were never forced to leave.
His wife asked how he got the land so cheaply; even with the war. It was family land, he told her. He simply got the land back at a price that was fair.
She believed him. He has never given her reason to doubt him. He has been a good husband. A good man. He could tell her about the history of his family on this land, their rightful claim, and his return.
He knew what they called men like him. On television they hurled that word across those desks, waved papers in the air, stabbed their fingers at each other, shouted at each other. Both sides did it. But he never saw himself in those words. He will leave them to their shouting.
He was standing on the hill where Elyakim stood. Listening to the sound of the water his grandfather told them in his stories.
A few kilometers at the fence’s end and another man could stop and think he was the better grandson. Another man who stepped from that bus and hear the water and see the beautiful silver trees. And see the story his grandfather told him.
He stopped before the thought could go any further.
To follow that thought he would have to look up to the hill and see that man. Hear him out. Just as he expected others to hear him out. Listen to the stories of his grandfather.
Instead he turns away.
For most evenings, that first year, until the cold came, he walked down to the stream beside the trail, then crouched beside it and put a hand into water. Let the water slip through his fingers. Avraham wanted this for him.
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