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Aspects of Israel: The Dark Aristocrats
- Abstract
All day the sharkeea blew from Arabia and whipped stinging sand into our skin. Sharp maize stalks, dried to needles, pierced our hands, and the hot wind tore like a demon at the scratches. Bits of marble plinth carved with Roman laurel lay in the tractor path. I picked cobs with Saadya, who had the physique of a fourteen-year-old. Yemenites before they begin to raise a family look younger than they really are. Later they turn wizened, metallic, ageless. The Yemenite boys can work better than a grown man when they have a spurt of energy. Suddenly they run a race, or as suddenly, like spent elastic, they drag mournfully. Saadya pulled a row of cobs, yanking the heavy sack with dogged joy. Then his huge calf-eyes mooned, and he asked the time although he knew no one had a watch. His friends wandered moodily up the furrow, kicking cobs. They chanted a plaintive high-pitched song: “A young girl begs her lover, do not fear me that I am dark.”
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