By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source
Maybe it’s the season. At mid-summer, skies are bluer, filled with drifting clouds that seem to have lost their way—each one with a colorful pennant, like a brooch, identifying its watery contents or its sponsor. The days hang heavily in their humidity. More than once, the plateau’s southern escarpment is enshrouded in a morning’s gray-blue mist.
Lately people here have been falling like flies. A week does not go by when we find ourselves attending another funeral or visiting a bereaved family. Yesterday morning wasps rushed into the office with David’s early entrance. Outdoors, the skies were turning their pre-dawn gray. The wasps streaked toward the fluorescent lighting where they made easy targets for David’s steady aerosol spray. They, too, dropped like flies, and I fled unexpectedly early from the office.
Zuheir, who worked with us for more than 17 seasons, would be sent to work in the hillside orchard tending to an aisle of grafted trees, or perhaps scoring the Hass avocados by making an incision that penetrated the trees’ soft bark. Every so often he took a self-imposed break, indulging himself with yet another cigarette, when he was not disturbed by external phone calls and the consonances of its intricate business cycles. Zuheir and his brother Nabil operated their business accordingly. Zuheir established contacts and Nabil rumbled through the gates with his truck with two bewildered laborers from the Palestinian town of Barta, a pair of chain saws, and their accessories. Most of the work entailed heavy-duty pruning or uprooting orchards. This is how I first met Zuheir, who may have been moonlighting as a fork-lift operator at the Milopri packing house.
Yossi had been entrusted to make the economic assessment regarding Adamit apples’ future, the oldest plantings with the dozen cultivars that persisted in the dell west of the community. Zuheir provided a heavy-duty Volvo which dug deep and unearthed the 29-year-old trees. Gone were Ben Davis with its stripes, and the heavy yielding Winter Banana, the crimson Galia, or the nondescript Nonesuch. They were shoved into mounds and quickly carted away. Zuheir and his brother were in the charcoal-and-heating business, but they were among the first of the local entrepreneurs to uproot ancient olive trees and transplant them in municipal parks and roadside landscapes. They appeared at the end of a great agricultural cycle, and in some ways recycled aging timber because there was a traditional market for it.
No matter the potential for any conversation, with Zuheir it would soon devolve or make its airy descent into current market prices, especially that of fruits and vegetables. One could see Zuheir summing up his dissertation by rubbing the texture of this locally grown cucumber, al-baladi, or the firmness of that pinkish ripe tomato. In doing so, he pushed his pack of cigarettes with his large yellowing fingers across the table, or offered a slice of salami or some salty olives from among those that he had brought for his breakfast.
Married to Mary, whose family home was tucked inconspicuously behind a colonnade of cypress trees at the intersection between Lehman and Bezet, the Canaan family represented the chary remnants of the abandoned community of al-Bassa. You could drive past their home a thousand times without ever taking notice that a house actually occupied the premises, enclosed as it is by banana plantations and citrus groves. Mary gave birth to their two daughters before relinquishing her life to cancer.
Zuheir spent his Sundays with his daughters, and after a year married Marguerite, Mary’s sister. The daughters were then raised by their aunt, whom during difficult times had become accustomed to her care. Zuheir continued assessing the price of tomatoes and watermelons, and talked about buying a new tractor. He continued to offer cigarettes to his co-workers and evaded discussions about religion, history, culture, or politics. Sometimes he joked about his candidature for the town counsel, but he was baffled by any topic that eluded commodity prices. He screwed up his eyes and offered another cigarette, constantly conciliating in a spirit of amiable servility, assuaging any ruffled feelings with the prospect of useful commercial ties with an extra slice of salami or red peppers. Then a year ago he was unable to shake a persistent cough and fever. He died of cancer last Saturday morning at 53.
The main thoroughfare at Kfar Yasif consists of one lane in each direction. Traffic is steady, and there are few disruptions in its unfaltering flow. There are no traffic lights, traffic circles, or pedestrian crossings. When attempting its traversal, one musters considerable courage and an age-old moxie derived from childhood years dodging cars while playing stickball in Brooklyn’s streets. Along the length of this thoroughfare a considerable business section has emerged, and any imaginable shop—from automotive parts to banks, reception halls to the local grocer—jostle for its limited but dusty space. Parking is at a bare premium, and this has only added to the colossal jumble and unrelenting volume of its surging but snake-like traffic. One proceeds with caution, imperiled and nearly marooned, signaling mid-way across the road, that one intends to risk crossing it in the face of that hurtling vehicle that is intent on streaking by before the hope of crossing is actually fulfilled.
Nabil stands at the front of the Farah home, greeting the hundreds of men that pass beneath the mourning canopy. All of Zuheir’s Eilon associates are present; the faction from Sheikh Danun, the bevy of Bedouin from Arab al-Aramshe, his buddies from the bananas. Elias, the ex-Lebanese army officer, nods in greeting while sitting across from me clutching a cane. While sipping bitter Turkish coffee, Sharif confides that he is dissatisfied with his new Isuzu pick-up and would prefer a vehicle that is powered by alternative energy and charged by solar panels. With the sudden knelling of church bells, the priests rise followed by the guests that throng to the tolling at the nearby church.
The new church faces the Farah residence, and while we proceed slowly up its steps into the chapel, most of the men prefer to remain seated in and about the mourning canopy. It has been another hot and humid day, and the wide portal of the church offers some relief from the sun. The church, which has been under construction for at least decade, is unfinished and unfurnished and gives the impression that many years will pass before it can rightfully be said to be completed. Women sit on white plastic chairs on both sides of the aisle, and two flood lights beam down from the spare but unoccupied balconies. The sparse church is white with streaks of intermittent gray concrete. Exposed piping and electric wiring protrude from its walls. Bright westerly sunlight beams through the upper echelon of the basilica. The sometimes soaring orotund chants are amplified and reverberate through the sparse and hollow church. There are no icons or crucifixes.
The men gather in a gaggle in the center of the nave, before Zuheir’s casket that is placed in the apse surrounded by the five administering priests bedecked in their heavy vestments. The women, fanning themselves in the wilting heat, occasionally rise from their seats and cross themselves before resettling again. We are again sweltering in the mid-summer heat, immobile before the crucifix, as a priest strides through the nave, past the cluster, emitting incense amid the calming tintinnabulation of his gold-plated incense burner. As he approaches the portal, the crowd standing at the entrance acknowledges him and makes the sign, perhaps an act of consecration.
After the sermon, the casket leaves the church borne by members of the congregation. The liturgy is continually intoned from within the sanctuary. A layman carries a large crucifix, and the milling crowd of men on the street align themselves, slowly joining the procession like iron filings attracted to a transient magnet. The casket is surrounded by its ecclesiastic detail, with one priest dispersing incense. As we march silently up the street, past private homes and shops, wending our way up a built-up hillside and its motley of extemporaneous construction, four large TV satellite dishes are positioned on an empty fourth-floor roof of an unfinished building. The bells ring their plaintive toll for Zuheir, and in this silence are the muffled shuffling of hundreds of men’s feet and the distant whoosh of vanishing and ephemeral traffic. A visage of our world compresses itself and draws blankly into the silent vault of Zuheir’s eternal resting place.
Born in the United States, Barry Steinberg relocated to Israel in 1969. He lives and works as a farmer in Eilon, a kibbutz in northern Israel. His parents and brothers live in Bethlehem, Pa. His wife, Debby, is from Plainfield, N.J.
Zuheir, center, inspects blueberries at Ein Zevan-Golan
Heights in 2002.
Photo by Barry Steinberg
The new Greek Orthodox church of Kfar Yasif
Photo by Barry Steinberg
