Eilon, May 28, 2004

Hello Peter

I greatly appreciate your family web page. I just wrote this story about Hafez and his son Muhammad Swedan. I am sure that you remember them. -Barry

*Bedouin in Red Sox*

Hafez,  the elder son of Ali had six children. The first, a son named Muhammad, the others all women. For years Hafez and his two brothers, Qriam and Zotam quietly labored in the building trade, employed by the construction department of the kibbutz federation. On the side the family engaged in agriculture to supplement their income. Hafez kept a flock of sheep and Qriam was skilled at grafting shoots onto olive rootstocks.

The entire family lived in Khirbet Idmith; a village consisting of wooden shanties strewn amidst the stone ruins of previous civilizations. Located on a promontory, it overlooked a dell that harbored an apple orchard. In the afternoon, the children would gather on the hillside to view the activities within the orchard. More than likely, when none of the farmers were present, the orchard became an attractively huge playground. I would often discover that the sprinklers and pipe risers were smashed, and the plastic plates that stabilized the sprinklers, tossed like frisbees across the orchard aisles.

The "khirbeh" had been the private domain of Ibrahim Mamluke, a wealthy landowner who had extracted his revenue from the meager earnings of his Bedouin tenants, and had sometimes subjected them to the humiliations that his wealth and prestige conferred upon him. Despite this, he had set up home on the crest of Irbin, below its Byzantine ruins and the wreath of styrax trees that enveloped them. A nephew of his had even married Fauzia, of the Swedan clan, and as such a permanent stone residence has persisted, [although locked and abandoned] to this day.

During the course of the 1948 war Ibrahim, who was unpopular amongst the Jews in the nearby kibbutzim, absconded to Lebanon, where he lived out his days. The Bedouin continued to live in the Khirbeh, on "ownerless" property, with no infrastructure or modern municipal organization. After a road had been hewn up the plateau and Adamit established, the Land Authority attempted to tempt or coerce the Bedouin to move to Mazra'a, the expanding settlement across from Irbin. It prevented the construction of permanent housing and refused to invest in infrastructure. It looked the other way after Adamit came into existence and its irrigation system water was siphoned up the promontory to the Khirbeh. Despite this, there was no future there and the government offered an ambitious plan to erect and organize a town with modern facilities in Mazra'a.

Hafez and his family were amongst the first to move to Mazra'a in the mid 1970s, building their modern homes adjacent the road. Their parents, Ali and Aisha, content to live in their one room yellow shack, from where on warm days Ali, donning his white kaffiya, a shoddy dark sport jacket, sat quietly smoking the tobacco that had been planted a few meters from his house, fingered his rosary, drank cardamom laced coffee and jasmine tea with his many guests, and was content to survey the tumblings in the yard of his rambling grandchildren, with chickens pecking at their bare feet.

Mohammad sometimes wandered with his father's flock of sheep. Because of Hafez's cunning and connections in Adamit, he was always able to wrangle the use of part of the enclosed nearby orchard of Irbin for pasture. He achieved this by smiling, feigning great interest in the social project of the collective and mollifying key personalities by dousing them with huge doses of Turkish coffee. The community got nothing for its favors but additional headaches, because competition for available grazing was intense amongst  shepherds. Grazing in an orchard meadow, or even between the trees ensured that the flock, often untended, was easily located within an enclosure and a saving on fodder for the shepherd.

I recall a time when Mohammad, all but eight years old, was left to attend sheep in the paddock adjacent the grand terebinth tree, or his father standing in an army parka,  obscured by sudden slashing snow that vented itself from the northeastern Manara hill; an angular image of the loneliest figure, wrapped and absorbed within its cowl, with the sheep huddling for shelter.

When Mohammad had reached the age of eighteen an opportunity came for him to travel to Boston. He was hosted by a former member of Adamit. Attending an English program for foreign students at Harvard, he discovered that another former Adamit member administered that program. One day while riding the local bus he found himself sitting next to Shlomi. Shlomi had just completed his army service, passed while residing in Adamit. Shlomi came to us as an adequate oboe player.At the time, Ted Cooper, the blues, country and rock musician was living in Adamit. Ted organized a band out of minimum resources. Peter was a teenage kid who could bang on the drums, and Ya'ir, who dreamily played acoustic guitar and once serenaded Maghi's bemused flock of sheep in the avocado orchard [It is said that the sheep, crowded into Maghi's coral while he busied himself stirring the coffee] were captivated by his performance. In this instance Ted had taught Ya'ir a few basic bass lines for the various blues and country pieces that he had conjured out of his repertoire. Ya'ir would stand, often inscrutable,sometimes dolefully fingering compact notes to hot music, dreamily transported on stage into the persona of the Who's John Entwistle Then Shlomi would play an alto sax that no one had previously heard. As the song says, "he beeped when he should have bopped" but more often he screeched, and none of that playing bore any resemblance to the polite oboist in the army orchestra. Still, his qualifications were such that he gained admission to the prestigious Berklee School of Music. When he returned to Israel he was an accomplished jazz altoist who formed a band, often with expatriates, made a few recordings, and established a name for himself and his music.

Sometime before Mohammad's departure for Boston his father and two uncles left the building trade and enlisted in the army where all three of them served for nearly two decades. They were prompted by the generous pension plan that enabled them to virtually retire at a relatively early age.

Mohammad studied civil engineering at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, edited a school newspaper, ran the Boston Marathon and sent me a copy of the 1986 World Series program between the Red Sox and Mets, replete with an inscription in Arabic. After Boston he continued his studies in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Away from home for years, his father had begun erecting an imposing two story house for his son on the corner of his property; a building that is partially concealed behind the foliage of an olive grove. For years the building stood empty as his parents, Hafez and Fatmeh, fretted awaiting their son's arrival. At the same time, Mohammad's mail began arriving in Adamit; subscriptions to Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. Eventually Mohammad did arrive, ready to speak about the curse of the Bambino as well as oversee the construction of the King Hussein Ibn Tlal mosque that was being built in the village.

Over the years I have not kept up with the coming and going of Mohammad. The word is that he is at once fabulously successful, having worked for a reputable Haifa firm and engaged himself in a civil project in Jordan.At the same time, with nearly all the daughters married [perhaps the most independent, and the oldest of them, Farial, had remained mysteriously single], Mohammad had also alluded matrimony. Then he was engaged to a Haifa woman employed by Israel's Arabic service radio, /Sawt Isra'il/. Our friend in Boston, invited to the festive occasion, arrived in the country only to learn that the wedding was inexplicably postponed or canceled. Mohammad would travel to the US, ostensibly to continue studies [at Brown where he became involved with an American girl]. Only within the past few years did he actually marry an Israeli Arab woman but now the imposing house on the corner of Hafez's property is empty again as Mohammad has been off  to America on a sabbatical, somewhere in Texas, but this time with his wife and young son.

Hafez, whom I last saw about eight months ago, keeps himself busy gardening. He had contracted out for a few building projects but has since retired. Qriam opened a grocery store in the neighborhood. I think he does this to keep himself busy and if you stop by his shop he is likely to have one of his grandchildren fetch some coffee from his nearby home for you, or if he has the time, will sit in the shade in front of the shop, passing the time while sharing a soft drink with you. I don't know what Zotam, the younger brother is doing.-Barry 


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