On the Hills of God Read Online Free Page A

tables laden with leather and brass goods, the boys followed the strangers all the way from the Sha’b Pharmacy right up to Karawan Travel Agency, the only travel agency in town. Arm in arm, the men and women looked like close friends.
    Yousif envied them. He bit his lip as he saw one of them hug the waist of the girl walking next to him. He wished he could put his arm around Salwa.
    Three blocks from the bus stop, two of the tourists stopped and bought multi-colored ice cream cones from a pushcart at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in town.
    “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Amin asked, rubbing his hands.
    “What are you thinking?” Yousif asked.
    “That we’re not trailing just boyfriends and girlfriends on a Sunday stroll?”
    Isaac looked at him and scratched his chin. “Who are we trailing then?”
    “Lovers,” Amin grinned. “Lovers intent on serious business.”
    “You’re crazy,” Isaac told him, disinterested.
    “You’ll see,” Amin said. “Before long they’re going to be on top of each other. And I’m going to be there watching. Yousif, what do you think?”
    All his life Yousif had heard that Jewish girls were promiscuous, and these women seemed even more loving than most. Were the stories he had always heard about them true? Was it true that the girls of Tel Aviv had seduced many an Arab man? Supposedly they would romance them for a weekend and leave them dry.
    Bearing this in mind, Yousif found it entirely possible that these attractive and healthy-looking men and women were lovers looking for a place to camp and make love, that they had come to consummate their passion in the seclusion of Ardallah’s wooded hills.
    “It’s hard to say what they are,” Yousif answered finally.
    “Look what they’re carrying,” Amin replied with conviction. “What do you think they have in those canvas bags on their backs?”
    “You tell us,” Yousif said.
    “It’s obvious,” Amin said, bumping into a pedestrian but not losing his thought. “They’re carrying blankets. That’s what they need for outdoor sex, isn’t it?”
    Isaac shook his head. “I think your parents had better find you a wife before you embarrass them.”
    They all laughed and continued walking, jostling others so as not to lose sight of those they were trailing.
    The strangers were heading toward Cinema Firyal. There was a chance Salwa might be attending the matinee. If she were, Yousif would try to convince his friends to go in, and while they watched the screen, he would content himself with watching Salwa, even from a distance. Damn it, he thought; why couldn’t Arab society allow those in love to walk or sit together in public?
    Because he was in love, Yousif suspected that the whole world was in love: either secretly or publicly, as in the case before him. He looked for a touch, a glance, a word and construed them as definite signs of an affair. To him, summer was the season for love, and Ardallah was the ideal place.
    Only Ramallah, a town fifteen miles to the east and a better-known resort, surpassed Ardallah in the number of vacationers who arrived every summer. They came to either town from every corner of Palestine, sometimes from as far as Egypt and Iraq. The affluent stayed at hotels, but most rented homes for the long duration. From the north they came from Acre; from the south from Gaza. They came to Ardallah from the seashores of Jaffa and Haifa, and from the fertile fields and orchards of Lydda and Ramleh. They came with their children and grandchildren. They came wealthy or simply well off. But they never came poor.
    Summer in Ardallah, Yousif knew, was meant for the elite who could afford it. It was meant for those who preferred it to Lebanon, or were not lucky enough to find a room in Ramallah, those who wanted to slip away for the weekend from the sweltering weather on the Mediterranean coast, or had not yet discovered Europe.
    Ardallah sat as a crown on seven hills from which