We have nothing to do with what’s happening. Under the heavy downpour the dirt can no longer evade its destiny of becoming mud. The surface of the soil shimmers as the rain kicks up brown droplets that are spit out in all directions each time the tires inch toward the side of the road, making way for other cars to pass. Some of these droplets splat on the windshield, flecking small ovoid splotches onto the glass that last only until the windshield wipers swish over and remove most of them. But the wipers aren’t able to erase the condensation left on the inside of the glass by the breath of two passengers, which has turned the besieged, muddy plots of land on either side of the road, the saturated fields and plains, the dark green hills and their wet trees, into a colorful blur made ever more obscure by the pouring rain.

It is very cold outside, though less so inside the car, it seems, with the kufiyya lying across the dashboard, forming a coiled snake ready to strike. From time to time, the driver’s hand extends to pick it up and wipe the inside of the window as far as it can reach. A small part of the windshield remains shrouded in mist, which has slithered its way in front of the one in the passenger seat, whose eyes chase the confused horizon line beyond the fields and plains and hills as they dissolve into one another.

Indifferent to the passenger’s gaze, these fields and plains and hills thirst for this flood of rain, after a dry spell that’s lasted since the previous winter, except for one or two rainstorms in the spring and another in midautumn. Nobody knows for certain why the rain stops, and the lack of it often stirs up their anxiety. The earth is depleted, its surface cracked, its soil hardened, having offered all the moisture it contained over the year to the wide variety of trees and plants that grow upon it. It is mostly almond and olive trees that blanket the plains and hills. After their winter slumber, the brown almond branches onto which rain now falls begin to sprout thin dark green leaves, following flowers that start out pink and quickly turn white, until a powerful wind gusts through, tears the petals from the calyxes to which they cling, and twirls them down to the ground, concealing the earth directly beneath the tree with pale whiteness. On the tree, inside the calyxes from which the white petals have just fallen, there appear small, velvety, slightly purple drupes that gradually turn green as they grow to the size of small stones that could be thrown to keep a certain kind of harm at bay. At the start of summer, the exterior husks begin to turn yellow, become brittle, and split open, revealing almond shells. As summer proceeds and it gets warmer, the almonds are ready to fall on their own, which can happen faster if the branches are shaken. The leaves also begin to dry out and flutter, some falling to the ground before an autumnal breeze comes along and sweeps them all away, leaving behind lonesome branches. This is the typical cycle of the almond tree. In comparison, olive trees go through all four seasons with hardly any noticeable changes. They don’t shed their leaves, which continue to color the scrubby hills a green closer to blue all year round. Among these leaves, hardly discernible, are the green olives that grow slowly over the course of months, some turning black by the end of fall, most remaining hidden. Sometimes the arid orchards are pockmarked with holes where trees have been uprooted.

Across the plains that are now all muddy and brown, what is grown can change from year to year, decade to decade, or century to century, to allow the soil some rest from a particular type of plant that has depleted its resources, or due to the situation that has been deteriorating day after day, often accompanied by changes in landownership. With the arrival of spring, different shapes and different shades of greenery start to appear, some lasting until summer, from the soft green of undulating wheat to the irrepressible dark green of bean plants with folds that harbor small white blossoms, or the scandalous yellow discs of sunflowers floating above thin legs of a fading green, even the crisp green of the little cotton plant leaves, perforated by the pale yellow of tiny flowers, which lasts only a day or two before turning darker, and the next day red, then purple, until the petals become desiccated and fall and around two months later are replaced by the familiar fluffy white of cotton, bunched around brown stems turned brittle once summer comes to an end. This is the range of colors that dominates the fields for months on end, only sometimes infiltrated by different shades or shapes that might belong to a perennial tree, an oak or a carob, or to a plant that might have been cultivated right there the year before and begun to grow back although nobody sowed it, or to the wild plants that line the boundaries of those fields. By fall, after the harvesting is done and the plants have been stripped, the plains turn yellow, covered in stubble, before the plots are tilled into tiny hard mounds of earth with dry, exposed roots, and rain comes down, as it does now, dislodging the roots and dissolving the soil.

Suddenly the driver says something to the passenger beside him that she cannot hear. She turns away from the blurred outside, and the clarity with which she sees him sends a momentary flash of terror across her eyes. She asks him to repeat what he just said. He says she needs to bring down the kufiyya. She asks him again, only now in a tone laced with confusion, about what he has said. The driver tells her again to bring down the kufiyya. It is difficult for her to understand what is being requested, so she asks him why. He asks her again, now with brevity and irritation, to bring down the kufiyya, and that’s that. But why?