were serene. Above all, Antoine was struck by how off guard the young soldiers seemed, how unsettled and at a loss, grasping their hats beside their guns. Nestled in that request for information, he fancied he heard a yearning for comfort rather more general; comfort of the kind men usually sought in a holy woman and the folds of her habit. And in that, naturally, he recognised a spectre of his younger self. It pained him, thinking of Sister Louise, and he receded with a glow of anguish and his usual facility at disappearing into an inconspicuous corner of the dining room.
This room. It was at this table, around which the soldiers were drawing out chairs, that Antoine had confessed to Louise he was tempted to inform for the British. Why it never occurred to him, then or afterwards, that she might have already taken the opposite stance, he didn’t know. But then, why had she never told him? Perhaps she knew about his decision and kept her secret accordingly—he bowed his head—yes, that did seem likely. One could not, in the end, fault her for that.
Sister Marian was pulling a sympathetic face. As capable as Sister Louise had been, Marian was, if possible, an even more perfect performer. She supplied some platitudes about the nature of the Arabs while pouring coffee into seven tiny cups.
When at last the soldiers departed, Antoine mounted the stairs without a word. Beyond his bedroom window a goatherd was coaxing a sluggish flock along the alley, and behind his closed door the sisters whispered in the hall. He wondered if he had mistaken them, if their Order was propelled by French interest after all, and intent on undermining English rule. That did not seem plausible.
He pressed his fingers against his mouth and faced the thought he had been avoiding. At root there must exist some profounder alliance between the sisters and the Arabs. Louise saw something in them he had not seen. With a cold rush he cast his eyes up at the Virgin propped above the window, cloaked in her painted rays of yellow light, and wondered whether, had he known the truth earlier, he might have felt differently about Nablus. How strange all this was! He covered his stinging face with his hands. That his opinion of an entire people could in the end be so mutable, so subject to the opinions of his peers. No, not his peers: Louise.
The funeral for Qassam was held the following day at the mosque on Haifa’s docklands. Antoine and the sisters read about the thousands who trooped towards Haifa from all over the country, delaying the ceremony by over an hour.
“A sign of what is to come,” said Sister Celine, squeaking against the wicker of her chair.
The French-language broadsheets were spread over the dining table. Now that he was in their confidence, the sisters held back nothing. Antoine marvelled at Sister Celine’s prophesy. A sign of what is to come?
“What was he like?”
“Qassam?” said Sister Marian. “Quite intelligent. Frightening. Charismatic, obviously.”
“You know,” he said, “the Palestine Oriental Society have been rather foolish. I have often heard them claim the Arabs have no public opinion. They picture them as a crowd of morons ruled by their elites.” He pointed at the aerial photograph. “And now look. The inert multitudes have organised of their own accord.”
But his grimace belied his frame of mind. He listened with perplexed clarity to several memories of himself reciting adages that bore a painful affinity to those opinions he was now claiming to disdain. This Muslim city, “lost in the mountains.” “Divided”—the remembered words moved again on his lips—“from the great movement of the world.”
Sister Celine was correct. Over the course of that winter it became clear the Brits had accidentally made this Qassam into a martyr, and now their object, a population of biblical peasantry and Levantine crooks, diseased with desire for a nation, stirred uncannily into life. In January 1936, local politicians met in a Nablus soap factory to discuss a general strike. Qassam-inspired armed bands continued to roam the countryside. Attacks on Jewish civilians were followed by retaliations against Arabs. In April, the Arabs set up strike committees across the country, agreeing on a list of demands and aims—proportional representation, a stop to Jewish immigration—and embarked on a countrywide refusal to pay taxes or to trade. In the hills, violence heaved against soldiers and Jewish settlers.
The British possessed neither sufficient manpower nor adequate knowledge of the terrain. As winter