Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani

Abu Qais rested on the damp ground, and the earth began to throb under him with tired heartbeats, which trembled through the grains of sand and penetrated the cells of his body. Every time he threw himself down with his chest to the ground he sensed that throbbing, as though the heart of the earth had been pushing its difficult way towards the light from the utmost depths of hell, ever since the first time he had lain there. Once when he said that to his neighbor, with whom he shared the field in the land he left ten years ago, the man answered mockingly:

"It's the sound of your own heart. You can hear it when you lay your chest close to the ground. "

What wicked nonsense! And the smell, then? The smell that, when he sniffed it, surged into his head and then poured down into his veins. Every time he breathed the scent of the earth, as he lay on it, he imagined that he was sniffing his wife's hair when she had just walked out of the bathroom, after washing with cold water. The very same smell, the smell of a woman who had washed with cold water and covered his face with her hair while it was still damp. The same throbbing, like carrying a small bird tenderly in your hands.

The damp earth, he thought, was no doubt the remains of yesterday's rain. No, yesterday it had not rained. The sky now could rain nothing but scorching heat and dust. Have you forgotten where you are? Have you forgotten?

He turned himself over and lay on his back, cradling his head in his hands. He started to stare at the sky. It was blazing white, and there was one black bird circling high up, alone and aimless. He did not know why, but he was suddenly filled with a bitter feeling of being a stranger, and for a moment he thought he was on the point of weeping. No, yesterday it didn't rain. We are in August now. Have you forgotten? Those miles of road speeding through a void, like black eternity. Have you forgotten it? The bird was still circling around alone like a black spot in that blaze spread out above him. We are in August. Then why this dampness in the ground? It's the Shatt. Can't you see it stretching out beside you as far as the eye can see?

"When the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, meet, they form one river called the Shatt al-Arab, which extends from just above Basra to."

Ustaz Selim, a thin, gray-haired old man, said it a dozen times in his loud voice to a small child standing beside the blackboard, when he was walking past the school in his village. So he stood on a stone and began to eavesdrop through the window. Ustaz Selim was standing in front of the young pupil, shouting at the top of his voice as he shook his thin stick:

"When the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, meet. "

The child was trembling with anxiety, while the laughter of the other children in the class could be heard. Abu Qais stretched out his arm and tapped a child on the head. The child raised his eyes to him as he was eavesdropping by the window.

"What's going on?"

The child laughed and replied in a whisper:

"Idiot! "

He drew back, got down off the stone and went on his way, still followed by the voice of Ustaz Selim repeating: "When the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, meet."

That night he saw Ustaz Selim sitting in the headman's reception room, smoking his gurgling water pipe. Ustaz Selim had been sent to their village from Jaffa to teach the boys, and he had spent so much of his life teaching that the title "Ustaz" had become an inseparable part of his name. That night in the reception room someone asked him:

". and you will lead the prayers on Friday, won't you? "

"No, I'm a teacher, not an imam. I can't lead the prayers."

The headman said to him:

"What's the difference? Our teacher was an imam. "

"He was a teacher in a Quran school, but I teach in a secular school."

The headman repeated his question, insistently: