Free Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar Page B

in the layout of the vegetable plots; the purpose of the field crops, the fallow land, and the crop rotation became clear to us, it was all so evident (even if you could have planned something better suited to our tastes, and we had already started to do so, without realizing it, each of us in his own mind) and all that was needed was for them to come and carry on with what they were doing. Some plots were left fallow, and others were sown, by design, everything was carefully thought out, they had looked at the clouds and observed the wind, and they might also have foreseen drought, flooding, mildew, and even field mice; they had also calculated the implications of rising and falling prices, so that if you were beset by a loss in one sector you’d be saved by a gain in another, and if you lost on grain, the onions might come to the rescue, apart, of course, from the one calculation that they had failed to make, and that was the one that was stalking around, here and now, descending into their spacious fields in order to dispossess them.
    Since the paths were muddy, and because we had circled the extremities of the fields (no one had appeared, apart from one time on a hillock to the side, when we saw a few people, but a single shot scattered them as though they had been swallowed up by the earth), we returned to the big dirt track after a considerable delay, and when we drove up onto it, four big transport trucks were waiting there in a row, in front of a long pool of water, which had opted for idleness and fallen peacefully asleep in the middle of the road, without leaving any room to pass on either side, and on its shores the drivers and their assistants were standing around, roaring advice and warnings to the other side, and apart from some other expressions they also said they had had enough of sinking in—and from now on the hell with it. It wouldn’t—in their view—hurt any Ayrab in the world to stir his dainty feet and walk up here, and thank us for this too! Meanwhile, facing them was our lieutenant who roared at them from the other side, but it was clear that he wasn’t making any headway, and, in fact, he was losing ground, his claim that you didn’t sink to the bottom of standing water was not accepted by anyone, since they refused to believe in the existence of any bottom underneath the water. Then our jeep was chosen to be the guinea pig and they suggested that we should cross the water, both fast enough not to get stuck and slowly enough not to get stuck. Of course exactly in the middle of the puddle, for some reason, our engine stalled, and it hardly mattered that a moment later it started up again and the jeep crossed the pool as easily as anything, spewing turbid waves on either side, apart from a filthy jet that found its way to the last remaining dry spot on Yehuda’s clothing, and the poor wretch was so enraged that he could only maintain an ominous and ludicrous silence, but the matter was not settled and the drivers refused to listen and declared that they were turning round, in various maneuvers, on the spot, on the dirt track, and we should bring our Arabs up through a gap in the hedge, and we had wasted so much time for nothing, which was exactly what they had predicted at the outset. Then our lieutenant climbed back into the jeep and returned to the village, leaving us with instructions to widen the gap and prepare the way.
    Naturally none of us lifted a finger, apart from casually bashing two or three cactus leaves with our rifle butts, and instead we sat down to watch the struggles of the drivers with their clumsy vehicles in the narrow road, appraising each of their movements with professional knowledge, artistic insight, and cigarette smoke. But Yehuda went to the other side, the sunny one, and stood there casting disappointed glances at the sun and wondering at its power. In the midst of all this activity, we did not notice the sudden arrival of the first groups of