Chapter 1: Arish's Life Changes Forever

Arish was, by all measures, a happy child.  Although born dirt poor on a small farm outside Tripoli, Libya’s capital, he was blessed with a loving and supportive family. His father had always told Arish to welcome the hard work, and he treasured the time spent working the fields alongside him. "Growing vegetables feeds the stomach and the soul," his father would say. Their hard work and long days provided the family with fresh milk, meat, and vegetables – which most of Arish's friends and neighbors did not enjoy.

Arish was a diminutive boy of nine years, but he attacked his daily work with the diligence of someone much older. Having lost his father to a tragic accident two years ago, the time he spent toiling in the fields and tending the animals was therapeutic. While Arish missed his father every day, he truly treasured the simple life he shared with his mother, teenage sister, and aunt.  

Each day began with a simple breakfast of coffee, bread, and an occasional piece of fresh fruit.

As the house came to life each morning, Arish's corner of the room filled with the hypnotic smell of fresh coffee and baked bread. Although stuffed with coarse straw and horsehair, his burlap-covered bed was comfortable with a soft blanket of silk his mother made for him shortly after he was born. On his sixth birthday, his father had fashioned a private space for him by hanging some blankets that cut a cozy corner triangle of space – all his own. Arish was a deep sleeper, so his father's makeshift wall allowed him to sleep soundly and dream for a bit longer into the morning, even as his mother and sister worked by candlelight to start a fire and bring water from the well for the morning meal. 

Arish's dreams were always extraordinary adventures. The dreams would be so vivid that he often found himself having difficulty sorting out his nighttime adventures from his actual memories. Arish's mother was an excellent storyteller, and each day, she used their time together at lunch to entertain him with some of her best tales.

These stories were also carefully chosen to teach Arish moments, and they brought the world beyond North Africa to their little farm. Each night, Arish's dreams were peppered with people and places from his mother's most enchanting stories. They would consume him so profoundly that he found himself transported into great moments in history. Specially chosen tales of great men that have left their mark on the world – Louis the Sixteenth, Alexander the Great, and Michelangelo were some of her favorites.   Each night, Arish's dreams would place him at history's crossroads. In his dreams, Arish would usually face significant challenges and do the great things his father had planned for him. 

Arish’s dreams were not only a place to learn about great men and their accomplishments but to become those great men for a night.  He could do those amazing things and fight the great fights – at least for as long as the night would last.

His mother sought out stories that showed not only great bravery and challenges but also the internal strength a man needed to live and die a good death.  One of his mother’s teaching moments was Louis' long ride from the Bastille to the guillotine and the honor he showed in facing his executioner with dignity.  Most history ignores the way Louis died bravely and stoically;  it was chronicled by the priest that rode the 30 miles from the bastille with him. Arish’s mother lionized Louis, and her accounts of this piece of history had a life-long impact on him.  She took special care to teach Arish that how a man died was equally as important as how he lived.  These are qualities Arish now had buried deep inside him, and his dreams would reinforce them throughout his life.

Columbus was another favorite of his mother.  Finding the courage and conviction to burn his ships in the New World was a recurring teaching moment. Those who accomplished great things often relied on their convictions when the great moment was usually lost on average men.  Could Arish someday hope to have and display such conviction in his life? Absolutely. Because his dreams said he could.

Lastly, she looked for stories of complete dedication to one’s goals.  Michelangelo's many agonizing years on his back for the glory of artistic perfection?  Indeed, how few men there are in the world with such dedication!

These great men were Arish's mentors now that his father was gone.  Every night, Arish became these distinguished and accomplished men from history. As his dreams would launch him on another adventure, he could weave his mother's lunchtime stories into great escapes and powerful victories.  Dreams that could sweep him from the dirt floor of his farm to places he was destined for.

With the desert dawn still some time away, Arish was lying in his little bed, half-asleep.   His eyes were closed tight as he tried to hold on to today’s dream and its exhilarating moments.

His tiny hands were tracing the edges of one of the bright flowers his mother had sewn onto his blanket.  He struggled to identify the flower to try to summon up its bright splashes of color.  Somehow, he sensed he should hurry. His mother would be calling him to breakfast at any moment.  

As he finally woke each morning, Arish's dreams were abruptly placed on hold as his mother pulled back his wall of blankets.  She greeted him with a mixture of a mother's love and the firmness needed for waking children up from their warm and cozy beds… but not today.

Unaccustomed to ending his dreams voluntarily, Arish restlessly rolled around in his bed, fully expecting at any moment for his mother to poke her head through the blanket and gently nuzzle him awake as only a mother could. The fog of slumber was clearing, but he was still half asleep. Arish stretched and wiggled under the covers as if making a snow angel. He glided his tiny arms and legs along the cool, smooth silk for a bit, and then finally, grudgingly, he consented to the morning light.  His dreams were again on hold until nightfall.

He pulled on the colorful silk cover to open a tiny crack in the horsehair blanket. The course feel of the rough blanket was another signal that he was leaving the magic of his silk-lined bed. Additionally, across the room, the warm orange light of the fire pried open his eyes a bit more.

As flickering shafts of light displaced the darkness, Arish’s tiny hands rubbed his face and eyes. With his right hand still pawing his face, he looked down at the fingers of his left.  He wanted to confirm he had indeed been tracing his favorite flower – a bright emerald green patch of cloth that so much reminded him of his mother's brilliant green eyes. Suddenly, Arish was fully awake. "A little breakfast, and then quickly to work," he muttered. "The sooner we begin, the sooner we are finished." On hearing his muffled words, he restrained an involuntary smile as he summoned his father's face from memory. He paused almost reverently for a moment and then blinked, saying, "Good Morning, Baba." Finally, Arish rolled out of bed and popped to his feet.  Fully rested and always excited to begin the day, he scanned the room for his family.  He was fully charged by a good night's sleep and ready for anything. Unfortunately, this day would bring challenges well beyond this nine-year-old’s reach, and Arish would spend the rest of his life trying to forget absolutely everything about this day.

Now sitting on the edge of his tiny bed, and with the coarse burlap blanket scratching his bare shoulders, he scanned the Spartan space and, at once, saw he was all alone. The overstuffed room was packed to the ceiling with the necessities of its’ four inhabitants, but their complete absence made the room seem eerily empty. His teenage sister and aunt might be busy outside attending to the morning's many tasks, but surely his mother would be greeting him with a fresh, warm piece of bread from their small brick oven.  To ignore this unforgivable slight by his otherwise doting mother was a formidable challenge. 

Arish grumbled, but he could only summon  love for his precious mother.  He wanted nothing more than to see her beautiful face.  She was the office manager for an Italian shipping company and would sometimes need to be at work very early. On these days, Arish would have to start the day without her hugs and kisses. However, on those rare occasions, Aunt Azaria, his father's sister, would grudgingly fill the void.  Straining his head to examine each corner and nook of the room, he could not find any evidence of Azaria either. Some days, his aunt was often occupied at the local mosque, so he also brushed that disappointment aside.  

On a more practical note, Arish pushed aside the mystery of the missing mother. His belly was growling so loudly he rubbed it vigorously with both hands.  This attempt to satisfy his hunger failed miserably.

Scanning the room again, the stillness and quiet of the room only highlighted the lack of the familiar smells of morning.  There was no bread in the oven and no refreshing aroma of fresh coffee either.  A small bag of wheat was visible on the shelf alongside a well-worn coffee maker. 

It appears there would be no hot breakfast today.  Only a single piece of yesterday's bread remained on the table, and he found his empty tin cup occupying the small wooden table next to the fire. This was a disaster!

Arish could easily feel slighted by the empty house and lack of a warm breakfast, but years of working alongside his tireless father had taught him to forge ahead through any such indignities.  “Complaining about your circumstances was a waste of time”, was another tenant of his father.  Hungry as he was, he would get to the day's chores willingly and with a spring in his step, just as he knew his father would. 

Arish often worked in the fields alone when his sister was occupied with other errands, but he had never woken to a completely empty house before. Still feeling snubbed that everyone had left the house without even a word being spoken, he scooped up the chunk of hard, dry bread and rolled it back and forth in his hands.  He was hoping it might somehow transform into a heartier breakfast.

In the searing heat of North Africa, the cooler mornings were when people chose to work. Even working in absolute darkness was preferred to the scorching heat that the midday sun brought. Arish felt a little lost this morning as he tried to figure out exactly how he should begin the day. As some time passed, he noticed that the hearth fire was now scattering only dim rays of amber light throughout the room. Just a single candle lit up one of the room’s two small windows. Sitting quietly on the edge of his wooden bed, busy putting on his shoes, Arish suddenly caught a glimpse of the family’s prized cow through the lit window. Her giant head was bobbing up and down as she moved her massive frame toward the house. All farmers are well aware that cows do not mind being milked. In fact, most cows start to get uncomfortable if not milked on a regular schedule. Consequently, it was evident that this cow was getting impatient.

Moving to the small window, Arish pressed his face and hands against the glass while wiggling about for a clearer view amidst the darkness. Suddenly, the cow’s giant eye filled the windowpane, causing Arish to flinch in surprise. However, he was amused by the way the cow was snooping. Arish had a special relationship with her. While she was being milked, he would engage her in long, one-sided conversations.

Arish quickly jolted back a few steps and made faces at the giant eye. His first effort was to make his favorite funny face -- the droopy eye-pull while grabbing the corners of his mouth with his pinkies. It was followed by some ear pulling accompanied by the biggest circle his little mouth could make. However, his antics failed to get any reaction from the cow. For a moment, as she turned to move away from the house, her massive head filled up the entire window. Suddenly, Arish realized daylight was coming in from outside; the sudden arrival of dawn raised a sense of panic in Arish, which meant that he was already too late for his chores.

Arish rubbed both eyes and slid his hands through his mop of jet-black hair in frustration.  Looking over his bare shoulder, he made one last look at the empty room. The kitchen fire had entirely gone out, saved for only a few orange embers remaining among the ashes. He walked up and popped the remaining stale piece of bread into his mouth. But with nothing to drink, he struggled to swallow it. Afterwards, he proceeded towards the front door and stepped out onto the cool, dusty earth. As he got outside, Arish was now eye-to-eye with the cow as she rocked her head from side to side in protest. He grabbed the tattered rope braid hanging from the cow’s giant neck and pulled himself closer so he could rub the long, broad space between her eyes.

The massive animal swung her head in the direction of her stall and walked herself towards the well-worn, three-legged milking stool. Arish quickly attended to the obviously frustrated bovine. After topping off two shiny metal containers with warm milk, his stomach gnawed at him more fiercely. As soon as he was done, he helped himself to a few belly-filling gulps of the warm, creamy liquid.

With the cow now tied to her shade tree and comfortable for at least another day, Arish turned his attention towards the neat, perfectly straight rows of radishes, carrots, and cabbages. As he moved diligently to the garden tools, Arish was sporting a serious grin of satisfaction, complemented by a bright white mustache of milk.

As he took hold of a gardening hoe hanging neatly on the side of the house, he inspected the edges of the blade and ran his hands over the handle. He couldn’t touch his father’s tools without feeling he was watching over him. Arish hesitated for a moment and then gave a slight wiggle to his shoulders, swiveled his head of jet-black hair, and mouthed a silent “good morning papa” as he prepared for his morning routine.

Somehow, he managed to put aside the obvious questions about everyone’s whereabouts and marched directly to the first row of green, leafy plants popping prominently from the dark soil. Tapping the hard earth gently near each plant, first on the left, then to the right, Arish quickly had a rhythm with his work that helped lighten the load.  He loosened the hard soil with sharp, precise taps and meticulously pushed an exact amount of soil against the stems of each young plant.

As he moved down each row of vegetables, he hummed a melody that had been his father’s favorite every then and now, resting momentarily on the hoe’s handle while bending over to pull the occasional weed. There was a certain routine casualness to his style as he popped his head up and intuitively looked side to side to inspect Jasmine’s work, then quickly dipped his head in frustration as he quickly remembered that he was going to be alone on the farm today. He looked skywards for some help from the gods, paused briefly, smiled a broad grin, shook his head, and returned to his work peacefully. Arish was, indeed, quite the little man, and nothing, no slight nor inconvenience, would distract him from his tasks.

After successfully attending to a few of the long rows of plants, he stopped to admire the fruits of his effort. He scanned the long row of bright green against the dark soil and counted the plants on his fingers. He was trying to estimate how much longer it would take to finish.  With Jasmine not here to help, Arish would have to double his efforts.  

Arish, the sole “man of the house,” was standing proudly with his hands on his hips.   He admired his fine work but, at the same time, shook his head in protest after being left alone without a word. It was simply a priceless theater. Even though Arish was a little more than half of Jasmine’s age, he was already fully in charge of all farming issues.

After his father died, he started keeping a watchful eye on her throughout the day, providing advice and encouragement just as his father had done for him. Over the last year, Jasmine and her little brother had developed quite a routine -- a rhythm -- to their daily work that made the time pass quickly. As siblings, they had an extremely close bond, as well as a healthy respect for each other. Their family roles were well-defined, and they depended on each other to bring life to the sun-scorched earth. Suddenly, Arish felt lightheaded and continued to wobble a bit as he leaned against the hoe. By now, he was tired and evermore lightheaded from lack of food. He was starting to get more concerned, not just irritated, by his sister's absence. The day felt awfully strange, and that, combined with the inescapable rumbling of his near-empty stomach, began to wear down the normally resilient boy.

After a minute or two, Arish returned to diligently loosening and piling the black earth.  Glancing skyward after finishing each plant, he kept an eye on the sun above him.  With each glance upward, he marked the sun’s progress as it moved across the sky. He could easily calculate that it would soon be directly overhead, and that would signal his mother’s mid-day return to the farm.  

The hope that his mother might suddenly appear at the edge of the road helped Arish remain hopeful.  That hope was the only thing that kept him going as the day’s heat began to peak. His mother’s daily ritual of coming home for a long lunch with her children was at the very heart of their daily routine.

Exhausted and weak from hunger, Arish was now fully frustrated with his solitude.  He told himself that only the timely arrival of his mother would make things right again. “Lunch, where is my lunch,” he muttered to himself.  

The midday meal of fruit, bread, hummus, and a fresh story from his beautiful mother was sacred to Arish.  Every day, she dutifully returned home from her office in Tripoli, and the family would meet under the vine-covered trellis that his father built next to the house. They would share a simple lunch while his mother told an exciting story of the outside world beyond their village. Arish would quickly gobble up his warm, spicy bread and humus and turn pensively to his mother for the story of the day. But today was to be a very different day – one that the nine-year-old Arish simply could not be prepared for.  

Without Jasmine at home to organize lunch, Arish’s frustration was past tolerance. Would his mother be bringing food from the market? Should he try his hand in their modest kitchen? Probably not. Soon, he was to discover that his mother didn’t go to work today, and by day’s end, Arish’s little family would never be the same.

As lunchtime approached, he could only wait patiently for one or both of them to appear.  His mother was an educated woman, a rare occurrence in the modern Muslim world but virtually unheard of in early 20th-century North Africa. The Italian occupation was in full control of Libya now, and the Italians were purging radical Muslims and their traditions. With the Italian Military taking hands-on control of day-to-day life for all Libyans, her fluency in Italian made her invaluable as a translator. Arish’s active imagination was engaged for a brief moment, and he wondered aloud if she had been called to some special duty for the government. She was, after all, a brilliant woman.

Arish didn’t know any other Muslim family in Tripoli who spoke such fluent Italian, and this was a special point of pride for him. Well aware of the Italian plans to fully colonize Libya, his mother had taught her children Italian from a very young age, hoping their fluency would offer them greater opportunities as they grew older. On rare occasions, when he had the chance to go to Tripoli with his mother, Arish would sit on the shore and watch the loading of ships bound for Palermo.

He could easily follow the conversation of Italian sailors; it made him feel particularly intelligent. Sometimes, he would hear the sailor’s strange Sicilian dialects and try to “translate” them into Italian and Arabic. These moments on North Africa’s Mediterranean shore were special for Arish, and he developed a genuine love of the sea and a deep appreciation for the men that sailed out into its mysterious, deep blue waters.

Eventually, the lunch hour passed with no sign of his mother or sister. Arish tried frantically to keep himself busy while he waited, but he was becoming visibly weaker. His mother had been late a few times before, but never THIS late. Another hour passed, and then another. Arish went into the house to seek relief from the heat. Once inside, he looked sheepishly at the empty table. He furiously shook his tiny fist as if the table was somehow at fault for not having his lunch ready. Jasmine should have prepared the warm hummus hours ago, and the smell of fresh bread and spices would be filling the house by now.

Alone in the house, Arish noticed every detail of Jasmine’s absence. The well-worn bread pan was sitting untouched on the shelf next to the brick oven. Plates and cups were neatly arranged in their place, save for his tiny cup, still lying empty on the table. Sitting and slumping over the table with his head in his hands, busy wringing his hair curls, he paused briefly to peek through his fingers at the open door, still desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of his missing family. Finally, with a deep, loud, and fully pronounced “Harrumph,” he jumped up from the empty table and stomped back into the rocky yard in front of the house.

The midday sun had finally passed. A cool sea breeze from the Mediterranean replaced its scorching heat. With his work done and still no food in the house, Arish decided that walking toward the nearby town was his only option.  Besides, if his mother was on her way home, they would have to meet each other on the road.

 If he were to make it all the way to the town without seeing her, at least he could likely scavenge for food at the farm market. Pacing back and forth in front of their tiny house, at first slowly, then a bit manic, he thought more about whether venturing to the town alone was a good idea. After a few more turns, his anxiety gave way to sheer determination. He walked to the edge of their farm and ceremoniously placed a foot on the dirt road leading to town.  He started walking, with Arish moving more deliberately now.  He put any thoughts of returning to the farm out of his mind. Tired, confused, and hungry aside, Arish was now moving briskly along the dusty road.