Read The Orange Grove for Free Online Page B

away abruptly.
    â€œWhat are you doing, Amed?”
    â€œNothing. Get up, it’s late.”
    Â 
    The cruel death of his parents had not changed Zahed’s routine. On the contrary, he worked with even more determination. In his eyes, the orange grove had increased in value. It was now the sanctuary where the bodies of his parents lay. He went over every tree, removed rotten branches, irrigated the soil, all with the sense of performing sacred gestures. The perfume that rose from the earth comforted him, helped him believe that the future still had meaning. He felt safe among his trees, as if no bomb could breach the armor of their greenery. His heart knew it: these fields of oranges were his only friends.
    Leaning back against a tree, Zahed had nevertheless let his tears flow that day. He thought of his father. What would he have done? Would he have chosen Amed or Aziz? Sitting beneath thefoliage of an orange tree he had just pruned, he waited for a sign from his dead father. All morning Zahed pondered what he would say to Amed.
    â€œIn any case,” he said to himself at last, “there’s no point in sending one to his death, knowing death has already touched the other one with his invisible hand. But what else to do?”
    He dried his tears and left the orange grove. Near the house, he saw his sons playing in the garden. They had just left their mother and her improvised class in the kitchen. Hesitant, he approached them. Amed and Aziz felt his presence and went to meet him, astonished that their father was not working at this hour. Zahed looked on his two sons in silence, as if he were seeing them for the first time, or the last. He didn’t quite know what to call the emotions that were constricting his throat. He took Amed by the hand and led him away, leaving Aziz confused.
    â€œWhere are you taking me?”
    But Amed knew what his father had in mind. Zahed maintained his silence, gripping his son’s hand more tightly. They walked to the toolshed. His father gave him a key and asked him to openthe big iron padlock. Amed obeyed. Then Zahed pushed open the heavy wooden door. When they went into the shed, two birds escaped through an open skylight above their heads. For a moment Amed was afraid. The door closed behind them. A ray of sun shone down from the roof, millions of dust motes dancing in the long blade of light. It smelled of oil and wet earth. “This is where I’ve stored it,” murmured Zahed. He went into a corner and lifted up an old tarpaulin. He came back to his son with the canvas bag Soulayed had brought. He crouched down and had Amed sit near him.
    â€œYou have to shut the dead into the ground,” he said, as if every word he articulated was itself rising from the earth’s depths. “Because that’s how . . . that’s how the dead enter heaven. By being shut into the ground. That’s how I buried my parents. You saw me, I took my old shovel and I dug a hole. You saw the worms arriving to celebrate the burial. The hardest thing wasn’t throwing earth into the hole to cover it up. You saw me, I covered the hole completely. The hardest part was searching through the debris. My mother, I saw her head cracked open. I could nolonger see the goodness of her face. Blood, there was blood on the broken walls, on the shattered plates. With my bare hands I scooped up what was left of my father. There was no end. I asked you, your brother and yourself, not to come near. I asked it also of your mother. No one ought to have to do that. No one, not even the guiltiest of men, ought to have to recover what’s left of their parents in the ruins of their house. I dug the hole that splits the sky in two, as our ancestors said. And I heard the deadly boring buzz of flies, as our ancestors also said. My son, one must not fear death.”
    From sentence to sentence, Zahed’s voice softened in the semidarkness of the shed. Amed found it unsettling and