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| Mike Hanini Odetalla's uncle Abu Ali and aunt on Palestine |
Abu Ali a true story by Mike Hanini Odetalla
A wooden one.
And the hands of the man who held it.
I think of my uncle—my aunt’s husband—Abu Ali, and of happier, simpler times.
Abu Ali could neither read nor write. Education was a luxury his family could not afford. He began working when he was very young after his father became chronically ill. As the oldest son, responsibility fell upon his shoulders early.
He married my aunt, my mother’s sister, while still a young man, and before long he was helping support not only his father’s family, but his own.
Abu Ali did many backbreaking and menial jobs, but his primary livelihood came from plowing the village orchards and fields. He was a haraath—a plowman.
Together with his ever-present and trusty mule, Abu Ali reached places that still boggle my mind when I think about them. Hillsides and terraces where I would have had trouble simply keeping my footing, he somehow managed to plow.
I remember him as a slim but incredibly strong man, dark from years beneath the Palestinian sun, his face turned leathery by its heat, yet almost always carrying a smile.
And his hands.
I remember those hands.
They were tougher than leather and coarse as sandpaper from holding a plow year after year. Part of his tremendous strength came simply from carrying that heavy plow everywhere he went.
When the spring rains finally subsided and the earth dried enough to be worked, Abu Ali's season began.
His day started at daybreak and didn't end until the sun disappeared behind the hills.
Every morning he carried a thermos of hot tea and a jug of water, used both for drinking and for making wudu before prayer. In a handkerchief he wrapped a tomato, an onion and some olives, along with a couple loaves of my aunt's hearth-baked bread.
That was his food for the day.
Dinner would be waiting when he finally returned home.
As a boy, seeing Abu Ali making his way toward the fields and orchards was strangely soothing and reassuring to me. His appearance meant something.
Spring had arrived.
Soon the entire village would begin coming back to life as people returned to their orchards.
I would climb the hills surrounding our village and look for him.
He wasn't difficult to find.
All I had to do was look for the long, straight lines of freshly turned earth cutting through the reddish-brown soil. Somewhere at the end of those lines would be Abu Ali and his mule, slowly working their way across another field.
Whenever it was time for him to plow my family's land, my mother would prepare lunch for him, and I would carry it out to the orchard.
My mother, may Allah have mercy on her soul, always fed anyone who worked on our land. To her, feeding someone who was hungry was among the simplest obligations one human being had toward another.
I loved those trips.
Abu Ali would stop working and sit beneath the shade of one of our olive trees. I would sit beside him while he ate, and he would enchant me with stories of years gone by—stories about our village, our people, our families and a world that existed long before I did.
To an eight-year-old boy, Abu Ali had the perfect life.
So perfect, in fact, that one day I informed my mother that I had made an important decision:
I was quitting school.
I had decided to become a haraath.
My mother was not nearly as impressed with my career plans as I was.
She scolded me and explained that plowing was brutally hard work and that, had Abu Ali been given the opportunity, he would have gone to school and gotten an education.
At eight years old, I wanted no part of what she was saying.
What did she know?
I knew something she apparently didn't: if I asked Abu Ali himself, surely he would be delighted to teach me.
So one day, as Abu Ali and I sat beneath a very ancient olive tree, I announced my decision.
I wanted to become a haraath.
Just like him.
To my delight, he seemed pleased.
He agreed to teach me.
I couldn't believe my good fortune.
My mother could say whatever she wanted. Abu Ali himself was going to teach me the trade.
And I was going to become the best haraath the world had ever known.
My apprenticeship began immediately.
First, Abu Ali taught me to feed the mule.
Easy enough.
Then he told me to clean the plow.
I managed that too, although I couldn't remember ever seeing him clean it.
After a while, he stood up and asked:
“Are you ready to learn the trade?”
“Of course!” I yelled.
Then came my first real lesson.
Abu Ali instructed me to find five small, pointed pebbles.
I didn't question my teacher.
I found five.
He told me to place the pebbles in my right hand and then grip the wooden handle of the plow with that same hand, keeping the stones pressed tightly between my palm and the handle.
That seemed a little strange.
But what did I know?
I was only an apprentice.
So off we went.
After only a few short passes, those pointed little stones were digging painfully into my palm.
I tried to keep going.
After all, I had a profession to learn.
But eventually the pain became more than I could bear.
I stopped and opened my hand.
My palm was red, raw—and bleeding slightly.
Suddenly, becoming the greatest haraath in Palestine didn't seem quite as appealing.
I looked at my uncle, bewildered.
Why, I asked him, did I have to hold rocks against the plow when I knew perfectly well that he didn't?
A wise smile appeared on Abu Ali's weathered face.
He gently explained that this was how a plowman toughened his hands so they could withstand the harsh conditions of the work.
Then he asked if I was ready to continue.
“Not really,” I said.
Apparently, I had reconsidered my career.
Abu Ali burst out laughing.
Then he told me to go home to my mother and tell her that Abu Ali had taught me everything I needed to know about plowing.
And so ended my career as a haraath.
It would be years before I understood what had really happened beneath that old olive tree.
My mother and Abu Ali had collaborated on the whole thing.
Neither lectured me.
Neither humiliated me.
Neither told the stubborn eight-year-old boy that he didn't know what he was talking about.
Instead, they allowed life itself to teach me.
Five little pebbles.
A wooden plow.
A mule.
And the rough, calloused hands of a man who understood something about hardship that I did not.
Abu Ali passed away about ten years ago.
With his passing, we lost much more than the man who plowed our land.
We lost one of the people who carried within him an entire way of life—a world of olive trees and stone terraces, freshly turned earth, bread wrapped in cloth, hot tea carried into the fields, stories told beneath ancient trees, and knowledge passed from one generation to another without ever being written in a book.
And perhaps that is why, whenever I see bulldozers tearing through Palestinian orchards, I don't simply see trees and dirt being destroyed.
I see people.
I see memory.
I see inheritance.
I see an eight-year-old boy sitting beneath an olive tree beside an old plowman with hands tougher than leather.
And I see Abu Ali smiling.
May Allah have mercy on his soul.
Mike Odetalla
March 2003
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