by Assaf Gavron
Tommy turned to me. ‘To sum up,’ he said, ‘what do you have to say to our people? Is there anything we should be doing? How do we respond to terrorism?’ ‘We need to be strong, not to be cowed,’ I said, and I saw a glint of vindication behind Dikla’s glasses. ‘Everyone should get on with their lives. Get on buses. Drive on roads. Drink coffee! Because if we don’t have a normal life, what do we have left? We have to remain human beings. That’s the most important thing. That’s the only thing, I suppose. Because what are we if we’re not human beings? If we lose ourselves, then…well, we’ve lost.’ A second of silence and then Tommy leaned over and shook my hand, and the audience exploded in a wave of aggressive-sounding applause. I was dripping sweat. People I didn’t know shook my hand. My chest was frighteningly constricted. I went to the toilet and I don’t want to describe what came out there. I had nausea. I didn’t understand why I’d come or what I’d said. I went out to get some air and once outside I didn’t see any point in going back so I went home, and kept sweating and trembling and checking over my shoulder the whole time to make sure I was on my own, the audience’s violent and hysterical applause ringing in my ears all night long.
24
Why no music, Svet? Play me one of my tapes…
‘Good, movement of the eyes…Dr Hartom will be happy to hear…’
My brain must be stuck.
‘And now it’s time for your wash…’
A never-ending dream, and always the same.
‘Oh, Fahmi, you wouldn’t believe it. You know the guys with the signs? One of them got in here last night. Security managed to pick him up just in time. Took three of them to get him out, screaming about the Croc…’
Yeah, the Croc…in his little green car, and me with my apple…
The first time I saw him, watching Noah’s Ark from under my blanket in the darkened room, lit only by the blue of the TV and the two orange bars of the heater–long before we met, before we drove in the car together–I liked the Croc. What had happened to him really was an amazing coincidence, as Tommy Musari said.
‘We have to take this Croc out.’
‘What?’
‘An “Israeli symbol”. The “man who said no, thanks”. What a bunch of fucking morons.’
‘Look at them,’ I said. ‘They’re already terrified. They’re shaking in their shoes. They can’t talk about anything but us.’ In my heart, I thought: my brother is never satisfied.
‘This Croc has to die,’ Bilahl said again.
‘I’d kill that dark girl without thinking twice.’
‘No, the Croc. He’s the one we want.’
The noise of the bulldozers had become a constant background hum. Children went out to throw stones at them: from time to time you’d hear the shots and shouts. One day a tank crew accidentally shot another patrol. In a fury they destroyed the house next door, because it had obstructed the tank crew’s field of vision. In the operations apartment, Bilahl and his friends came and went according to the curfew and in the evening sat and smoked and talked (Jews, Americans, humiliations, asymmetrical warfare, jihad, armaments, Jenin, Gaza, Hebron…) until my brain hurt. At night they slept on the sesame matting with their guns; during the day they went to the mosque or college or into town–always remembering to pray. When they relaxed the curfew and I finally went out, I saw that the camp was covered with fresh graffiti about Halil and posters of Mahmuzi taken from the video I had shot.
Strange days. A feeling of great power, of triumph, mixed with the continual humiliation of an army lurching clumsily around our camp doing what it pleased. And, out of nowhere, a terrible yearning for Father and Lulu and, like a sharp pain underlying everything, for Rana: her smell, her skin.
From our window we saw two columns of soldiers in helmets and bulletproof vests creeping behind an armoured personnel carrier. On their backs military packs, on their shoulders straps to support the rifles they held in both hands. Right hand on the trigger guard, thumb caressing the safety catch, forefinger squeezing the trigger to its locking point. Left hand on the stock, under the plastic shield. A brief command, a few movements of the fingers, and so much would cease to exist. When they took off their helmets, their faces–their eyes, their haircuts and goatee beards–fascinated me.
‘Look at them all,’ said Bilahl, ‘shivering with fear.’
Sometimes the window frames would begin to shudder, then the floor would start, then you’d feel it in your body, and only then would you hear it: a bulldozer approaching. They used one to destroy Mahmuzi’s family’s house and to widen a few roads that an armoured personnel carrier couldn’t get through. I wondered what Grandfather Fahmi would have said. First they threw him out of his village. Then he lived for eight years in a tent. Then, very slowly, he built himself a temporary home out of nothing. Some sheets of tin and a little dried mud; later, breeze blocks, mortar, cement for floors. Building his temporary home very slowly as the years pass, and his neighbours building their temporary homes very slowly. A whole neighbourhood being built, very slowly. A refugee camp turning into a town. And then the makers of refugees come, the displacers themselves, and the width of the roads in the camp is not to their taste. They flatten fences and walls, flip cars over, knock down poles that took ingenuity and sweat to find and erect–the poles that carry the wires which bring us electricity and telephone calls–so that an armoured personnel carrier can go where it pleases.
Air stale from the curfew, overturned cars like turtles on their backs, the clattering of rifle butts on iron doors…
Low-flying fighter jets scratched white trails in the sky. Helicopters rattled overhead. Soldiers broke into houses and slept on beds with mud-caked boots. They emptied closets, shattered windows, stank up toilets, tore posters from children’s walls, hammered holes in dividing walls to scurry from house to house. They dropped clementine peels, sweet wrappers, chewed gum, used tissues behind them as they patrolled, like a wake of contempt. They destroyed all the equipment in the camp’s clinic and looted the medicines. They shot a woman who was hanging up her washing. They shot a kid who had painted his face green and was playing the fool in front of them. A yellowish cloud of dust raised by their boots hung over the camp. I thought: let the Croc come and see this cloud.
I wanted a soldier to come into the flat and overturn things, break our furniture, mock and threaten me. I imagined head-butting his nose, the sound the breaking bone would make, his scream, the smears of blood on my forehead. As I pictured him on the floor, crying in pain and pleading for his life, my jaw would tighten and I’d find my mouth full of saliva and realise I was actually drooling for vengeance.
They wouldn’t let her have a glass of water. A dirt ramp went up one week and came down the next, and no one knows why it went up or why it came down or who gave the order.
Who’s here? Who’s touching my face? Stroking my hair? Talk to me. Please, say something.
I can smell that it’s you…Say your name.
I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I didn’t come back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Bilahl got away right under their noses and went to Gaza, and she came to me from Murair. I don’t know how, through the cat’s cradle of patrols and jeeps and bulldozers in the middle of the curfew, but she did. Bilahl never liked her. Bilahl thought she was…well, you can guess what Bilahl thought. I touched her hair, and she didn’t stop me. My heart was jumping into my throat. I couldn’t stop touching her hair. I smelled it. I was entranced by her hair; how it was separate from her, not quite her, but also her. Not her but hers. I stroked it for several minutes and we didn’t look at each other or speak. She lowered her head, hugged her knees to her. Eventually she got up and looked at me.
‘Why didn’t you come?’
I thought, Why am I denying myself what I want? What she wants? Bilahl is in Gaza… How easy it is to justify the things you really want! Rana stood in front of me and I leaned back on the sofa and looked back at her.
It was as I dreamed it. Through
that winter I liked to get really close to the electric heater. I’d let the glowing bars heat my trousers or my sweater to burning point and then I’d press my clothes against my skin to feel the almost unbearable heat die down into a pleasant afterglow. I moved closer to the heater and, when the trousers began to burn my skin, I peeled them off quickly and pulled her on to the sofa.
Who’s here? Who’s touching my face?
Say something, Rana!
Please, Rana!
The curfew was relaxed for a couple of hours for Halil Abu-Zeid’s funeral in Ramallah. The walls on the way there were almost invisible beneath new posters and graffiti. A huge crowd was marching and milling around with yellow Fatah flags and green Hamas flags: ‘To Jerusalem we march, a million shuhada,’ they were chanting. I tried to get close enough to kiss the body, but the pushing and shoving were too much to struggle against. Soldiers of the resistance covered their faces with keffiyehs to avoid being photographed by the army helicopter circling low above us. A fighter jet shot past, shaking the houses. Someone fired into the air, but the Jewish troops kept their distance. If only they’d dare, I heard people say.
On the brink of the grave, watching the earth and sand being shovelled on to the coffin, stood the driver, Halil’s cousin, her lips moving unceasingly, unthinkingly, her head shaking from left to right, again and again, grief stricken, heartbroken, mad with rage.
Bilahl had returned from Gaza with money and approval for an operation, the ‘mother of all operations’, and we walked back from the funeral together. At the entrance to the camp we ran up against a new checkpoint and a young soldier stopped us. I saw the look in Bilahl’s eyes and whispered, ‘Don’t be stupid,’ but he wasn’t listening. ‘You know who I am? How dare you ask me for ID? You’re telling me whether or not I can go home. You’re telling me when I’m allowed to walk around? You’re doing me a favour by relaxing your curfew for two hours?’ The soldier didn’t have a clue what he was saying. ‘Shu?’ he said, his eyes giving away his fear. He glanced over his shoulder and shouted, probably to someone who could speak Arabic, but I explained in Hebrew that we just wanted to go through. I smiled, and Bilahl looked at me with a scorn I’d never seen before. The soldier returned our ID cards. ‘Ahalan Wasahalan,’ he said, which was probably all the Arabic he had. Be welcome. We walked on without talking and after a few paces I ducked down to pick up a wrapped sweet from the dust–almost certainly dropped by the soldiers. I unwrapped it, and put it in my mouth. Sour-sweet, tasty, soft centred. Bilahl watched me and spat furiously.
Maybe I should have said something to my brother, who hated even a Jewish sweet. Maybe if I’d stood up to my big brother and said something I could have knocked a little sense into his proud head.
25
I visited the support group every Wednesday for the next thirteen weeks. At 7.30 every Wednesday I would go to the room on the fourth floor of the Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital, four floors below where Shuli lay in a coma.
Wednesday became the day that held me together. The other days of the week were like a rollercoaster that had skipped the rails, with no direction or control; time distended like stretched gum. Some days sank slowly into a swamp of zombified routine, brushing teeth, sitting in front of the computer, Channel 2, takeaways, arguments with Duchi (‘Who the hell is this Shuli you were talking about on Rafi Reshef?’) and wondering where the time had gone…The rest of the time, frankly, I was just a confused insomnia-dazed mess. Wednesdays were my bulwark against it all, something solid and stable at the week’s midpoint. Wednesdays were a point of orientation, a reminder that something had changed, a focus for the rest of the week. They stopped me escaping to the past of Before, stopped my attempts to block out the present of After. They took me back to Jerusalem and nailed me to the cross of reality. They stilled time.
Every Wednesday at 2 p.m. I would drop everything else and take a Little No. 5 to Tel Aviv’s central station. From there, a No. 405 to the central station in Jerusalem and then a No. 27 to Hadassah Ein-Kerem. It was Ilan the group leader’s suggestion–Duchi wanted me to take the Polo–and I was happy to give it a shot. But the first time I set foot on the minibus I threw up. People were very nice about it: some of them recognised me as the Croc. I threw up again. Duchi argued for the Polo again. But Ilan convinced her, and she convinced me, and after that first time I didn’t throw up. More than that. As the nausea subsided, I began to enjoy it.
My days at the hospital began with a Twix from the machine on the ground level and a visit to Shuli. Then a check-up with the doctor, who measured the gradual reduction of the bump on my forehead, told bad jokes–‘I gotta take your head for a test, can you manage without it for a couple of hours?’–and gave me my medication. After the group had finished, around 9.30, I’d take the No. 27 back to the station, have an egg sandwich in the Café Europa there (Ilan’s idea–to have what I’d had on the day of the bombing) or some falafel (my idea) and then No. 480 to the Tel Aviv North train station, where Duchi would be waiting to pick me up because, as she put it, ‘Enough is enough!’
Ilan was losing his hair and wore it long at the back. Not quite long enough for a ponytail, thank God, just a balding man’s compensatory mullet. He also had a goatee, and was rather short and chubby. There was no denying the fact that Ilan was extremely ugly, and I’m not just saying that because of what happened later. His impressive blue eyes stood out, but only in the way the Taj Mahal stands out from the squalor and cow shit of Agra.
Maybe the Taj Mahal’s on my mind because of Naama, the prettiest girl in the group, who’d been to India a number of times. I found it hard to take my eyes off her at the first meeting. Fortunately she talked a lot–she talked all the time–and it got on my nerves after a while, but at first I just wanted her to keep talking, so I could keep looking at her. She’d been in an attack in Jerusalem five years earlier. Her two best friends had been killed right next to her. Since then she hadn’t travelled on buses, didn’t sit in cafés or restaurants and kept away from the city centre. When she walked down the street she avoided bus stops and other places which she’d marked down on a map. Every time there was an attack in Jerusalem she added its location to her map. She had a theory she repeated every week, which explained in almost credible scientific detail why it was her destiny to die in an attack. She’d become accustomed to living with the fear. Her radar was permanently on: every five minutes she was compulsively checking out what was behind her.
‘But where’s the logic?’ I asked her in my first meeting. ‘They never bomb the same place twice. They know the security will be tighter and so on.’ It reminded me of the argument with Duchi the day after the Little No. 5 attack. But Naama wasn’t Duchi and didn’t yell back, only dropped her charming long lashes over her eyes and hung her head. ‘Let’s listen to our friends’ stories, Croc, and not interrupt,’ Ilan said. ‘You should recognise that logic is not always what determines our lives. There are other forces in action.’ I swallowed, pulled my head back into my shell and apologised.
‘They bombed the No. 18 twice in two weeks,’ said Naama.
‘You’ve got a point,’ I said.
Uzi Bracha was a welder who was called out to fix a broken traffic light one morning. He went up on the cherry picker to weld the pole. He hadn’t been told that it had been broken in an attack. Or that there would be pieces of skin and what he was sure was an eye still on it. Uzi Bracha went home that day and called a locksmith who installed eight locks on his door. After that he went to a gun shop on the Jaffa Road and bought a pistol. He came home and sat with his pistol cocked on the armrest of his chair opposite a door that was locked eight times over. I liked Uzi. He didn’t speak much and looked genuinely frightened: I liked the sincerity of his fear.
I told them about Giora Guetta, Humi and Shuli, still lying in a coma above our heads. I described the shattered rear window, the boot hitting my head. I said, ‘I don’t think I’m a shock victim.’ They asked me, ‘Do you check over your shoulder sometim
es?’ Sometimes. ‘Does your heart suddenly accelerate?’ Nought to sixty in five seconds. ‘Do you get nauseous?’ All the time. ‘Does the sound of an ambulance make you break out in a cold sweat?’ So that’s what a cold sweat is. ‘Do you cry?’ No, but my eyes can suddenly fill with tears. ‘The theme tune to the news?’ Yeah, that’ll do it. ‘Classic shock victim,’ Uzi concluded. ‘Allow me to make the diagnoses, eh, Uzi?’ said Ilan. ‘Look, Croc, the danger of damage to the body is signalled by the body’s own alarm system–fear. Fear is a crucial biological defence mechanism. It’s healthy.’
Yulia cried constantly. At first I hated it but after a few meetings it became a background hum. She’d been in Café Europa. My sister-in-arms! Yulia remembered all the faces, including mine and Shuli’s. She’d been brought to the emergency room in what Ilan called a dissociative state and suffering from severe sleep problems. Daniela, or Dani as she insisted we call her, was with her sister and her sister’s two-year-old daughter at a wedding in Bet-Shemesh. Her sister and niece were both killed. Dani was severely injured but managed to drag herself out of the rubble. She was in hospital for three months, and it took her much longer than that to learn to walk again. But her physical condition didn’t interest her. Dani couldn’t stop trying to reconstruct what had happened to her sister and niece. Where exactly had they been when the bomber blew himself up? How exactly were they killed? The explosion itself or the collapsing building? She was tormented by guilt about surviving. Did she limp past her sister and the baby, ignoring their moans of pain? ‘A little child, always talking, babbling away…’ ‘The worst thing,’ pretty Naama added, ‘is that a child doesn’t know, can’t understand. That’s what’s so unnatural. I mean, an adult knows the risks, knows there are terrorist attacks, that there’s the possibility he’ll be next, but what did she know? Though at least she went with her mother and not alone–I mean, imagine if…’ She liked to talk, Naama. And there was the guy who’d had seventeen different operations; the girl who’d stopped eating; the guy with a huge burn on his forehead and hearing in only one ear; and an older woman who arrived every week with a different son, daughter, granddaughter or grandson and who never, we noticed, ran so low on relatives that she ever had to bring the same one twice.