On the walls hang photos of the martyred – shaheeds : children,
adolescents and young men who have been murdered by the various Israeli
occupation forces time and again over the years. Some have thrown
stones, some have merely looked through the window to see what was going
on outside, some
on their way to work or the mosque.
On our way we entered the home of F. and A. F. is Abu Mohammad’s
sister-in-law.
It was the middle of the night, when the familiar sound of a broken-in
door was heard. Immediately soldiers of the occupation army, along with
their dogs, broke into F.’s house in order to arrest her young son, J.,
20-years old. F. Was asleep in her bed when it happened. She told me how
she awoke from the noise seconds before she was horrified to feel a
large unmuzzled dog over her. It ripped her shirt sleeve, bit and
scratched her in the neck and arm and she screamed. A young occupation
soldier entered immediately, pointing his rifle at her. She hurried to
cover her head with a scarf and shut her eyes. The soldier called the
dog who responded and they both left the room.
Within minutes J., her son, was found, dragged out of his bed with yells
in Hebrew that she did not understand, and in Arabic. “Undress and come
out naked” they yelled at him in Arabic. And he replied, “You’ll have to
kill me first” and they laughed. They laughed and laughed, the parents
told me. But they gave up, A. added. They only shackled him with plastic
restraints, the father continued, blindfolded him and took him to the
door. Afterwards, they went through all the rooms in the house, throwing
glassware on the floor, breaking into smithereens, and only then the
soldiers left with their son.
It’s the younger son, F. added. The small one, who just got out of jail.
He’d been in jail for three years and only just got out.
For a moment we were silent. All the while Abu Mohammad sat there, his
head down.
Come see his photograph, F. said all of a sudden. It was standing on the
small chest next to her. I said “Sure, yes. Thank you.”
She showed me the photo. So young, I thought. Almost a child.
His eyes, have you noticed his eyes? she said… and began to cry. After a
while she collected herself and put the photo back in its place.
He was picked up and they did not have a chance to say goodbye. To
speak. His parents added, and said in a hushed voice: only from outside
could they still hear the soldiers laughing.
Why are you laughing at them? asked H. This is my nephew! A. explained.
Why?... Then the soldiers hit him with a rifle butt and he fell down.
And only then they left.
More than everything else, F. recalls the dog standing over her, and the
soldiers laughing.
Abu Mohammad hints that we should leave, perhaps he could tell this was
getting too much for them, perhaps he wanted me to visit his family
already. But I found it hard to get up and leave. These two
no-longer-young people looked so stricken and lost, and especially so
alone. It seemed to me they didn’t want me to leave. The mother gripped
my hand, as if seeking something more to grip my attention, and I
thought that perhaps it is because I come from a different place, and
especially because I am outside this destiny that is not only their own
private one, that nothing of all these routine horrors out there in the
camp actually threatens my own life. Especially because of this, it was
as though for a moment I had brought him, their son, all the more to
center stage.
We took our leave and emerged again into the camp’s alleys, climbing
towards Abu Mohammad’s home. In fact we could already see it not too far
ahead.
Let’s go in here for a moment, Abu Mohammad suddenly said, and stopped.
Come… this is S., they took him the night they took my son Khaleel. It’s
his buddy.
Abu Mohammad made the introductions: S.’s mother, her sister, and her
two teenage children – son and daughter. I sat down. The girl went off
to bring refreshments and the boy sat down next to me and immediately
began to tell me, his child’s eyes shining bright, how earlier the
soldiers were throwing small, strange rockets that broke everything made
of glass. It’s a new weapon, he explained, and even showed me two things
made of iron the likes of which I’ve never seen before (not that this
proves anything in my case…). He also reminded me, with a both touching
and tragic child’s pride, how at the age of less than fifteen, he was
accused to burning a mountain. More precisely, the stolen slopes of
Kochav Ya’acov, a Jewish settlement close to this neighborhood. The
child back then had told the occupation forces that he did not start the
fire, and that the mountain didn’t really burn, but this made no
difference and he did several months’ time in jail.
Naturally I remembered this, and he was glad that I knew his story.
What happened there was similar to what happens in all these homes. They
have special machines to break down the door, the boy told me. Which I
also knew. And then dogs and soldiers burst in, and found my brother, S.
and dragged him out of bed and took him away.
In the meantime, the girl, too, sat down beside me and showed me
photographs of her brother, who looked so young, not much older than
they were. And we spoke some more. Especially the boy and the girl and
I. And we asked each other to be friends on Facebook. And I drank some,
and everything was so strange. The small rockets on a plate. And the
burnt, broken-down door leaning against the wall. And the wide-open
doorway with a temporary curtain. And the son, taken away, gone, and
that all this was real.
And then at some point the aunt said to me: you know, after what we saw
happening in Gaza, after the massacre there, the bombed buildings
burying people alive, we can’t compare our lot... and are consoled...
(she said this to me in English, luckily, for I would not have gotten
all of this with my broken Arabic), nothing here is as horrifying as it
was there, that we are all alive. The boy they arrested, he’s alive. Not
dead. Just the fear. The fear… they have poured fear over us, she added.
She pointed gently towards her sister, the boy’s mother, who hardly said
a word. And all the while she just held on with near-supernatural force
to a small child, perhaps 3-years old, her younger son, who sat totally
huddled into her, as if wishing to disappear inside her, and she inside
him.
I took my leave of them, too, feeling I was walking in an inconceivable
world, wondering how I would tell all of this, how… How could I write
this beside everything else that I tell, how this is the routine turn of
events out there in Qalandiya, as regular as the ticking of a clock.
Arriving at Abu Mohammad’s home, I was astonished to notice the change
in his wife. I believe I hadn’t seen her for about two years. The last
time we met, I think, was at the wedding of Abu Mohammad’s nephew. I
wouldn’t have recognized her now.
Her body was totally crumped, from a well-rounded woman she had turned
into a skeletal one, her face pale, almost ashen. She sat cramped on the
sofa and for the whole time I was there, which was about two hours, she
never stopped trembling.
Abu Mohammad told me this change took place from one moment to the next
right after their two sons were arrested, just days ago.
There was a moment in which I simply took her to me and she remained,
without any will of her own.
His daughter who also sat with us kept breaking down and crying every
once in a while, although she smiled too, and recalled when we had met,
and asked – a bit disappointed – what about Tamar, for they had expected
her to come with me. And I forgot to tell them that she would not be
able to join me, and the daughter remembered the last time we met and
danced, probably at some wedding. And she brought out refreshments and
more soft drinks. And she cried, and smiled, and spoke. And it was
strange, beside all the rest.
They have an image in their minds of this situation with the soldiers,
Abu Mohammad explained to me – the violence, the dogs. They have been
sleeping with the light on ever since. But they cannot sleep. Neither
can I, he added, I can hardly sleep.
What happened, he said, is that he awoke a moment before the soldiers
broke in, for he heard them when they were still outside. And then he
heard the building door exploding and immediately ran to the apartment
door, so they wouldn’t blast it as well.
The soldiers were already near the door, they charged inside with masks
on their faces and pointed guns and a large muzzled dog who immediately
leapt at him and he froze. Some soldiers gripped him and began to yell
at him: give us your knife! Your knife! And he said, I’m an old man,
what knife? I can’t even slaughter a chicken… Right away they pushed him
away and he tripped and fell and the dog stood over him, drooling, black
and huge. That’s how he remembered it.
The soldiers, who didn’t search him for any knife, just said it for the
sake of saying it. And they keep blinding you with projectors so you
can’t see a thing, not even their faces.
During that time he heard his wife opening the bedroom door and coming
out, and immediately the soldiers pushed her back in and closed the
door. She was crying and yelling, he tells me, and so was I. But the dog
was sitting over me and I didn’t move, just shouted a little. And some
time passed, not much. Again she came out, fearing for her son. She’s a
mother, she can’t help it. What can she do? So the soldiers pushed her
to the ground too, their guns pointed at her, and she fell and a dog was
placed to guard her as well.
We’re old, he said. This is how you treat old people?
He continued, painfully telling me how they were both seated on the
ground, side by side, and over each of them stood a huge black dog, with
its terrible stench, drooling over them and the floor.
They knew where they had come, Abu Mohammad added. There was an
incriminator standing by the door, a fellow who had come with the
soldiers. It’s a collaborator, with a hood over his head, but he is also
unfortunate. Who knows how much they had beaten him for him to tell them
what they wanted to know… Perhaps they gave him money.
With them, a person will say anything he’s told to say.
So he told them who’s Khaleel and they took him, my son. And I said, let
him take some shoes with him, so they did. And then they took him and
stood at the door. He and the soldiers. Lots of soldiers. And then, I
don’t know how many of them walked around the house and threw stuff on
the floor and broke kitchen things. Just so… In all the rooms.
Why break things? I asked them. I said this to their officer too.
Just so, they said. Because we’ve come to break and ruin. This is what
the officer said. And they laughed at me. They laughed.
To laugh at such a thing?! he added. Even if that’s what they are
supposed to do?
You know, it didn’t use to be that way. See, in 2007, the first time
they came to pick up Murad, I told the officer I wanted to see what he
did. So he said sure. He turned things over and searched, and they did
throw stuff around a bit, but not like this. With their feet. Dishes and
glasses.
You buy stuff for years, and collect things, and these guys come in and
break it all to smithereens.
For hours I helped my wife and daughter clean up after them. Where would
you hear of such a thing? In what country would you see this? If they
want to pick up someone, let them say it. He’ll show up. Why like this?
Why in front of my wife, and daughter? And the door. Such a door costs
3000 NIS. What shall we do now?
Meanwhile Mohammad has arrived, their eldest, and sat down with us. Some
time passed. We spoke of other things, and of the question whether there
is any professional psychological help in the camp for obviously it is
needed as well – and then I dared ask about Murad’s arrest. For
everything Abu Mohammad had described was of the night they came to pick
up Khaleel, his younger son whom they took first. Only day before
yesterday they picked up Murad as well, the middle son. And in fact I
didn’t know what happened then.
I also tried to recall when was the last time I had seen Murad. I am
almost certain it was at his own wedding, which was a bit after he had
been released from jail. And I remembered how happy he looked then. And
since then he’s had two little children whom I have not yet seen. A
4-year old and a 2-year old, I think.
Abu Mohammad wordlessly pointed to Mohammad. Let him tell. And Mohammad
told that he was also at home on the night that the soldier came for
Murad.
They were such garbage soldiers, he added. They cursed, bitch, son of a
bitch, stuff like that…
Obviously Mohammad was having a hard time repeating those words.
I told them in Arabic not to curse, for the guy spoke good Arabic. One
of them. Maybe he was an Arab. A Druze. But after I told them not to
swear, they hit me with that plastic shield they have which they use to
protect themselves from stones and from their own teargas. They hit me
in the back and in the head, and also with their rifles.
He went to the hospital that night, he added. Right after they left the
camp. And had his back and head X-rayed. But nothing dangerous happened,
he assured me, seeing my worried face. Now everything’s fine.
In the meantime Murad’s wife entered the room, too, and sat down,
Murad’s two children in her arms. She told us that one of them has
anxious reactions and will not move away from her for a second since
then. And the second child is angry. All the time. It’s hard, so hard,
she said… And she’s so young.
You know, son Mohammad continued, they also ordered Murad to strip
naked. Are these even humans?
My brother Murad told them, well, shoot me. I’m not stripping. But they
did nothing. Only laughed at him.
Abu Mohammad’s wife sat the whole time tucked in and between my hands,
her gaze folded inward. Not seeing a thing. Not hearing. Only listening,
so it seemed, to something deep inside her. Trembling unceasingly. Again
and again murmuring a single phrase. Two sons. Two sons. Again and again
like a prayer. Like a lament.
She’s diabetic. Her blood sugar has gone way up. Totally, Abu Mohammad
added. Giving her a pitying look. I didn’t know what to say, only
tightened my hold of her although I’m not sure she felt it or knew who I
was, or what was even going on around her.
Finally I left. I took my leave, thanked them for their hospitality, the
coffee and tea and juice and cookies, and especially their company,
their invitation, and for handing me their story.
Looking back, although the house was already straightened out after
those terrible nights, everything that had been broken was thrown away,
and what was smashed down had been re-gathered and replaced, the absence
of the broken things was present in the empty, outspoken spaces where
they had formerly stood and were now empty. But more than the present
absence of objects, what was present and endlessly visible was the
pealed soul of the family. With its terrible grief and insult.
The total sum of things that had overflow But the worst, the most difficult of all, was undoubtedly the voice of that mother, again and again and all day. Two sons, two sons. Murmuring and trembling, restless, cureless. Even as I climbed down the stairs to the alley I still heard her murmuring, two sons… Her ashen murmur. I stood in line at Qalandiya Checkpoint on my way back home to Jerusalem. There were not many people standing in line with me. But time lapsed as it always does. We stood there for at least half an hour and the electric barrier did not blink its light that would signal us to proceed. That whole time we could see the soldiers’ faces through their well-lit glass panes. Giggling, laughing about their business. Indifferent. Cruel. Or something in between. Time passed and the line grew longer and longer. But no one raised their voices. Nor shouted. Not protested to the soldiers. Did not demand a thing. They were all Palestinians from Jerusalem, I am rather certain. Otherwise their passage would be very unlikely, especially at such an evening hour without the few who still get issued a work or healthcare permit. Or other marks such as glasses and smartphones. But they did not protest either. They did not claim their right. Their time. For well they know that their relative rights are fragile, conditioned and not obvious. They know that only one thing determines the way the soldiers treat them, sets the soldiers’ violence and cruelty in place – the fact that they are Palestinian. This is their name. And this is their destiny. Only one man, obviously a disturbed mind, loudly said things against the situation, the State, the occupation and the waiting line. But even he did not dare to address the soldiers. Only the heavens and the universe. Who kept still. Aya Kaniuk, April 2015. Translated by Tal Haran |
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