Between the Grapevines

1. Wahid

The desert sun long remained more powerful than any other. It blinded every eye that entered its reach without the protection of an elevated hand or squinted lashes. It illuminated and heated every corner of the sandy terrain that stretched for kilometers between one town to the other. Even the narrowest of alleyways snaking behind high risen residential apartments was not spared from the touch of the desert sun.

Its unforgiving blaze could only be relieved by the Mediterranean wind that blew from the crashing waves of the distant seas. The cool rush carried sand from the rolling dunes as it crossed the expansive desert land before meeting the rising brick towers surrounding the city of Al-Khalil. They rose one alongside the other, only separated by narrow pathways that separated those living casually in their lives from the unforgiving torment of the heated desert. Some homes towered over the others by one, two, or even three stories, all built by those residing in them to accommodate the families growing within. Buildings remained uncolored by anything except the natural beige tones that came from the lined stone to kept them sturdy in their tall standing.

In the larger streets within the town's center and all along the large city, townsfolk bustled amongst each other on their paths to and from their livelihood. Children played in the streets with old white and black balls held together by multiple stitches carefully administered by their mothers. Others fell to their knees and brought their cheeks to the dirt as their fingers flicked against the light shades of the solid marbles that scurried along the bottoms of building walls and away from the dozens of feet kicking up sand and hurrying along the wider spaces in the street's center.

Women sat together on the freshly swept and mopped staircases in front of their homes. If they were young, they whispered and talked amongst each other of the latest gossip. The older women sat in their stores beside their expended baskets of colorful fruits, vegetables, breads, and chips. Dark brown bricks all marked with their weights in kilograms rested on rusted scales in front of them to measure the costs of bags filled by picky customers. The men of the town could be seen everywhere, drinking coffee in the cafés surrounded by chairs and tables spread across the streets or operating the buses that took townsfolk across the deserts to other towns.

Al-Khalil was one of the largest of their country. Previously, its streets were decorated with colorful lights and authentic graffiti of naturally rebelling youth caught in their need for inspiration affect. Now, Al-Khalil's colors were as plain as the surrounding's desert dunes and its streets emptied quickly after the sunset.

Once the sun set, the monsters crept from the corners of the town untouched by light and aimed the red lasers of their rifles at unsuspecting men, women, and children who cruised the streets of their own country. These monsters were as unique as the power of the desert sun. They wore green and black uniforms that covered the skin from the edges of their toes to the bridges of their nose and capped helmets on their heads that deflected the light raining on them from the desert sun. These monsters held military-grade weapons of destruction that delivered metal balls in crackles of murder or silences of the night.

The streets of Al-Khalil had grown accustomed to the presence of these monsters. The people of Al-Khalil no longer enjoyed their lives in the happy streets of their town but learned to run from death that sought them out even in the safest comfort of their livingrooms. Gunshots and blood-stained sand had become commonalities in the town of Al-Khalil in the past seventy years.

But the race from death that became the lives of the Khalilah people doubled as a sprint toward a future of freedom, resilience, and hope. Leading the sprint ever since the arrival of the oppressive Occupation was a group known as Al-Muqawma: The Resistance. Since the beginning, the Shabab—young men—of Al-Khalil and many other towns have come together in sealed agreements to deliberately defy the rule of the Occupation, resist their military actions, and protect their citizens against the military and non-military personnel of the Occupation. All the weapons the soldiers had stolen from their people as an end for their potential struggle for freedom, The Resistance stole back and used in opposition of the very soldiers that had inflicted pain and suffering on those before them.