Cry Palestine

Published in Spring issue of Monkey Puzzle

Saul screwed the camera onto the tripod, counting the bullet hole scars in the windows and walls. The family was seated on their couch, a sad tableau. The cushions were covered with multicolored afghans and white bed sheets. Saul adjusted the tripod, tested the sound. “Okay. You can begin. Just start talking about what happened. Try to forget the camera is here.”

The Palestinian man smoothed his generous moustache, looked at his wife and two children. He shook a cigarette from a pack of generics, took a big gulp of his thick, sugary coffee, and cleared his throat:

“When I hear the first shots I right away think of my father, who lives two streets over.” He pointed in the direction of the street. “My father has a weak heart, and I know it is bad for him to be alone if the Israelis started shooting. So when I hear the shots I go to his house to bring him here. When I get to my father’s house they have a bulldozer at the front door—they have been razing the houses to the ground all over the camp. I say, ‘What are you doing?’ They say, ‘There are militants here.’ I say, ‘There are no militants--that is my father. He is seventy-two years.’ They say, ‘Do you want to be arrested too?’ I say no. Then they grab me and hold me in front of them. They kick in the door to my father’s house with me in front. That night they go into house after house after house, using me as a shield. When my friends see me they know they cannot shoot, and so the Israelis come into their house.”

“What did you do?” Saul asked, picturing the street in front of their house, the martyr posters covering the crumbling buildings and dirt alleyways, new ones taped over old, fading ones.

“What can I do? I can’t do anything. Finally they ask me where I live. I don’t want to tell them because I am afraid. I am ready for them to shoot me instead of taking them to my house, but we are too close and that is when Yasmin sees me.”

The woman nervously took a sip of tea, smoothed her white hijab. Her eyes were rimmed with shadows. “I look outside because my husband has been gone for many hours now and I begin to fear the worst. Then I see him being held by soldiers and having guns pointed at him. So I scream—‘No, Wadi!’” She looked guiltily at her husband, as if they’d replayed this scene many times. “I was not thinking. I was just angry to see Wadi like that.”

Wadi looked at her softly, patted her hand. “So now the soldiers know where we live, so they come into the house. They put us all in one bedroom and lock the door. We can hear them making a lot of noise—I am afraid they are bulldozing the house. It isn’t until the next day that we see they have made a big hole in our wall.” He gestured towards the wall, which indeed had a hole big enough for several men. The remaining plaster around the hole was decorated with red and blue and green spray-painted Stars of David and a plethora of obscenities like “Die Arab Scum.”

“They want to make a passageway from one house to the next so that they can move around without being seen.” Wadi lit a cigarette, reached for the already-full ashtray. “I have heard of this happening before but I had never seen it for myself until that day. Then when the soldier guarding our room sees me looking he hits me in the head with the butt of his gun.” He parted his hair slightly to show the scar.

“How long did the soldiers stay?” Saul asked.

“Many weeks,” Yasmin interjected. “We still fear that any day soldiers will come back through the hole and hold us prisoner again. When they don’t find any guns they just destroy everything, take all our food, and take Wadi to jail.”

“How long were you in jail?” Saul asked Wadi, watching the two younger children fidget on the couch next to their parents. The older one, a girl, fingered a hole in her white tights and watched Saul with dark eyes right out of a Victor Hugo novel.

“I am in jail thirty-six days. Most of the time I have a bag on my head and my hands and feet are tied with a rope. It is hard to breathe and the bag smells of urine. I have to go to the bathroom in my pants, I try holding it the first day but finally I can not. I don’t know how many days I am like that, maybe a week or two, with barely any food or water.”

Saul shook his head. “You were tied with a bag over your head for a week?”

“Yes, and they give me only half a pita and some water every day, and I cannot use the bathroom. It is the Israeli way of torture. Then after many days I am moved. I am hoping that things are going to get better but they are not. They move me to a box where they tie me up but there is not room to sit down.”

“A box?”

“I don’t know what to call it—a closet?” Wadi and Yasmin exchanged some Arabic. “Yes, like a wardrobe or small place where you can stand but not sit down.”

“How long were you there?”

“I think another week, many days. By now I am very weak, I have a rash from having to go to the bathroom in my clothes, I am trying to lean against the wall to sleep but it is very hard. I just wanted to die,” he confessed. “I wanted them to come and shoot me.

“After many days they take me to a place where they take the bag off my head and give me cigarettes and water. They keep asking me, ‘Who is the leader of the resistance?’ I say I don’t know. They hit me. They ask me again. I don’t know, so they put me back in the first place, where I can sit. Many more days pass.”

Saul swallowed. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “So did you know?”

“Who is the leader of the resistance?” Wadi waved his hand and made a clicking sound. “Not in the way they are asking. I know many leaders, and many others that would be good leaders. We are all resistance, you see. Just to be Palestinian is to resist.”

Saul turned to Yasmin. “What happened in the house when your husband was in jail?”

“The soldiers stay,” she answered. “Not all of them, but some stay and they guard the hole and sometimes new soldiers come from inside the hole, that’s why we know it is a passageway for them to move among our houses. They steal all our money and they eat all the food. Even now I am scared that we are sitting here and a soldier comes into the house through the wall. Nijmeh is very scared all the time,” she said, putting her arm around the smaller of the two children hovering by her mother’s legs.

“When did they let you out of jail?” Saul asked.

“After they question me they take me back to the first place. I think it is the first place, I cannot see because I have a bag over my face but the sounds are the same and the light feels the same. I stay there again, same thing. They take me to be questioned three more times. Always the same. Finally they come to get me one night. They take all my clothes but keep the bag on my head and they put me in a truck. I can tell there are others in the truck, too. My feet are not tied but my hands are and I cannot see. Finally they unload us from the truck. It is very cold. Then the truck drives away. We are able to take the bags off our faces and see each other. We are in the dark, in the middle of a field. We do not know where we are. We stay there in the night, close together to stay warm. In the morning we walk until someone sees us. When I am finally home I see the hole and Yasmin says that I have been gone thirty-six days.”

Saul shut off the camera as the wife wiped her eyes. “Thank you both,” he said. “I hope we can get your story out.”

“InshaAllah,” the man said, smiling. “You tell George Bush, okay?” He laughed and shook his head.

Yasmin gathered empty cups and overflowing ashtrays and carried them to the bullet-scarred kitchen, returning with strong tea steeped with sage leaves. The two children climbed on Saul’s lap; they brought out their toys, their books, their plastic guns. The smaller girl held a doll in her hands and pointed it at Saul’s face: Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Her mother shooed her away, embarrassed. She continued: Bang Bang. An explosion answered her from outside the window. Yasmin made a clicking sound with her tongue. “They are just children but they are frustrated, too,” she said to Saul. “They grow up with this situation. They don’t remember before. This is normal for them. Throwing rocks at the soldiers is a game. There is not basketball, not video games. There is only playing ‘Hit the Israeli soldiers’.”
She paused to take a sip of tea. “Nothing hurts me more than the death of a child.”