by Colum McCann
He keeps the craft steady, guides it closer to the road, opens fire with a Kalashnikov on the passing truck, a salvo of bullets, killing the driver and wounding the passenger. He flies on two hundred more meters under the whirl of his single propeller. He tops the camp fence and hurls down several grenades at the camp sentry. The sentry panics and runs away. The flying man flings another series of grenades down toward the canvas tents and he sprays the ground with bullets from his AK-47, killing five soldiers and wounding seven. One of the seven—the camp cook—catches a bullet in the leg but manages to take down the hang glider with a couple of shots from his service revolver.
The machine crashes. The lawn-mower engine coughs. A small fire breaks out. Then, silence.
In Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, great celebrations take place when the news spreads. The martyrs are sung about in cafés. Boys fly paper hang-gliders off roofs.
In Israel there is consternation about their defenses being so easily breached: lawn-mower engines with sailcloths, Russian-made rifles, Czech grenades.
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Or it just might be that an Israeli truck collides with a civilian truck in the streets of Gaza, in the Jabalia refugee camp, at two in the afternoon, not stopping, just plowing through, killing four Palestinians and wounding several others.
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Or it just might be that an Israeli salesman is stabbed to death at the same junction in Jabalia two days beforehand, the knife plunged precisely between his shoulder blades.
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Or it just might be that Jewish militants wanted to take over the Haram al-Sharif, or the Temple Mount, in East Jerusalem.
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Or it just might be that it was bound to happen no matter what.
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The flight of colored stones through the air.
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He stays to the back of the crowd. His limp makes him slower. The crowd swells around him. Smoke on his tongue, in his throat, in his chest. A dusty hum in his ears. He takes the onion, wraps it in the keffiyeh around his mouth, inhales, moves on again. In his waistband he keeps a brand-new slingshot: Czech-made with a black elastic band and a reinforced leather pouch. In his pocket, several small stones. He is swept along. The flags ripple above his head. The smoke hangs from the underside of the balconies. Older men in keffiyehs, their faces lit by flame. Boys his age and older surging forward. Girls too. A length of limbs and flapping sleeves. The air whistling and concussed. The bloodrush of a dozen shouts. The body heat. He passes a plundered car squatting flat on its axle. A voice erupts over a loudspeaker. Several loud pops sound out. The crowd parts. Four men, their arms entwined to make a chair, carry another boy backwards through the crowd.
The boy stares straight ahead and then, for just an instant, catches eyes with Bassam.
A patch of blood blooms at the boy’s groin.
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To make a proper Molotov cocktail it is important to shake the bottle so that the gasoline or flammable liquid is soaked up by the rag before launching it through the air.
Experienced rioters carry black electrical tape to secure the tongue of the rag to the mouth of the bottle—taping it with a quick circular twist—so the flame doesn’t separate mid-flight.
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During the Winter War of 1939 the Soviet Union dropped hundreds of incendiary bombs over Finland. The bombs—a cluster of loaded devices inside a giant container—were lethal, but the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, claimed they were not bombs at all, but food for starving Finns.
The bombs became known, tongue in cheek, as Molotov’s bread baskets.
The Finns, in response, said they wanted a drink to go along with the food, so they then invented the Molotov cocktail to wash the Russian bread down.
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All the way through the First Intifada, the Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, kept a picture of Philippe Petit on his desk, the bird of peace fluttering just above the wire-walker’s head.
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For years afterwards Petit wondered exactly why the pigeon would not fly.
Wrapped in the red silk handkerchief and slipped headfirst into his pocket, the bird had stayed upside down while he prepared for the walk, and it remained upside down as he stepped across the wire.
Maybe he had kept it too long in his pocket. Or perhaps the bird had developed a disorientation of the blood, the mind, the body. Then again, its wings might have been clipped by the shop owner in the market—it was known to happen if the birds were to be kept as pets. Or maybe, he thought, the bird had simply never known how to fly at all.
Anything was possible: he would never finally know.
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On the day of judgment, in Muslim tradition, it is said that a fine wire rope will be strung from the top of the Haram al-Sharif wall on the west to the summit of the Mount of Olives in the east where Christ and Muhammad will both sit in judgment.
The righteous will be preserved by angels and they will cross quickly, but the wicked will fall headlong into the valley.
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The Separation Wall. Also known as the Separation Barrier. Also known as the Separation Fence. Also known as the Security Wall, the Security Barrier, the Security Fence. Also known as the Apartheid Wall, the Peace Wall, the Isolation Wall, the Shame Wall, the West Bank Wall, the Administration Wall, the Annexation Wall, the Seam-Zone Wall, the Terrorist Wall, the Infiltrator Wall, the Saboteurs’ Wall, the Obstacle Wall, the Demographic Wall, the Territories Wall, the Colonization Wall, the Unification Wall, the Racist Wall, the Sanctuary Wall, the Noose Wall, the Curse Wall, the Reconciliation Wall, the Fear Wall. Also known as the Pen, the Coop, the Trap, the Noose, the Protector and the Cage.
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Most of the 440-mile barrier is not concrete at all, but a series of ditches, mounds, patrol roads, sand strips, exclusion zones, movement sensors and razor wire coils.
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When drawing the ceasefire line on a map in 1949—the Green Line that became, until 1967, the boundary—the commanders, Abdullah el-Tell and Moshe Dayan, used thick colored pencils, leaning over, smudging the lines, often not knowing that the border went right through the middle of villages, splitting streets, houses, gardens.
It was possible that a woman might love her husband in Palestine before midnight, and roll across the bed to find herself in Israel for the rest of her life.
In several small villages—separated by a ravine or a creek or a line of soldiers—a trade was set up among pigeon carriers to bring notes back and forth: contracts, land deeds, notices of birth, ownership disputes, and, more often than people were willing to admit, love letters.
Little shots of grey crossed back and forth over the heads of the Jordanian soldiers who patrolled the line and, on occasion, blasted the birds out of the sky.
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In the beginning of Jerzy Kosiński’s Holocaust novel, The Painted Bird, he describes a sport practiced by hunters to trap and disguise birds with paint. The hunters release the painted birds into the air as the rest of the flock—unable to recognize their fellow—begin to attack and brutalize the supposed intruder from all angles.
The book was lauded by critics and published in dozens of languages. Kosiński originally suggested that the novel was based on his own boyhood experiences in Poland, but once it was published he refrained from the claim, and later still was accused of plagiarism.
The book was banned in Poland until 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Shortly afterwards an artist in Warsaw created several paper birds from the book’s pages and released them, in various disguises and colors, from the rooftop of the Palace of Culture and Science, where they were filmed soaring on the wind.
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NOW THAT HELL HAS FROZEN OVER ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. CONTROL + ALT + DELETE. HANDALA LIVES. ONE HAND CLAPPING. This ain’t no green
line. FUCK BIBI. (Uh, no thanks.) JESUS DIED FOR HER SINS. NIETZSCHE GETS THE LAST WORD. ARRIGONI IS ALIVE! ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER. JESUS WAS A WATER SKIER. By the time you read this I’ll be gone. UNITY. PEACE NOW! ARAFAT. JAMES MILLER, RIP. HOW LIKE AN ACTUAL PERSON YOU ARE. REMEMBER ’48. BERLIN WAS ONLY THIS TALL. Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity: General George S. Patton. MAKE HUMMUS NOT WALLS. Patriae quis exsul se quoque fugit? TIME IS PAIN, BROTHER. GOD WAS AN ISRAELI—NIETZSCHE. This Wall Doesn’t Care. Another JANCFU. ICH BIN EIN BERLINER. RESOLUTION 194. ERADICATE CENSORSHIP! CHE SERA, SERA. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. I>R>A. We will remember you forever, Jimmy Sands! ESCAPE HATCH. Wiser Than Violence! NOT EVEN MY SENTENCES HAVE A RIGHT TO RETURN. Speak the truth, Sister. STOP SPRAYING SHIT—SKUNK SUCKS. Raed Zeiter Crosses Here. RACHEL CORRIE, RIP. This IS Rachel’s Tomb. BOYCOTT DIVESTMENT (and/or) SANCTIONS. (Certainly not.) Art The Shit Outa This People! NUDE BATHING PROHIBITED: PALESTINIANS HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH. THE ANC LIVES! WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT PEACE LOVE AND UNDERSTANDIN’? . RIP Trayvon. PARKOUR THIS BITCH. . Visual Pollution. SAID THE JOKER TO THE THIEF. I am, because of You, Ubuntu. What Rough Beast. Wagah, Wagah, Wagah. ELVIS PRESLEY, RIP. . IGNORE FEAR. And the Wall of the City Will Fall Down Flat. Abu Ammar lives. REMEMBER THE GLIDERS, 6–1. Sameh Will Make It Seven. Maraabah scores! Get Your Ramadan (Sobhi) On. You are Not in Disneyland Anymore. Existence is Resistance. The Plough is Slow but the Earth is Patient. STOP AND LET US WEEP FOR THE BELOVED AND THE HOME. Kiss my Diaspora. IS THERE LIFE BEFORE DEATH? Be Realistic—Demand the Impossible. LEILA KHALED WE LOVE YOU. FREE MARWAN BARGHOUTI! (with every pack of Cornflakes). WE (in)SHALL(ah) BI(BI) RELEASED. IF BATMAN KNEW ABOUT THIS YOU WOULD BE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE.
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Rami’s favorite: END THE PREOCCUPATION.
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One afternoon when driving back through Bethlehem with a Welsh reporter from the Daily Mail, Rami thought he saw Abir’s face painted high on the Palestinian side of the Wall. A shrapnel of cold sprayed through him. The girl in the portrait wore a tight hijab but her face was identical to Abir’s. It was as if someone had taken Bassam’s daughter’s photograph and copied it exactly: the eyes, the round cheeks, the sweet oboe of the mouth. Rami’s heart jabbed in the otherwise silence.
He swung around from the passenger seat to look again, but the road turned quickly, and they followed the Wall, past Rachel’s Tomb, near Checkpoint 300, where the Welshman was interested in seeing a piece of Banksy’s graffiti.
Rami didn’t say anything to anyone, even lying next to Nurit that night. He felt as if he had a roof over his head but no floor beneath him. If he got out of bed, he would simply disappear. He harbored a feeling of living on the lip of silence: there was a meaning here he could not quite utter. If Abir had not gone, she would not need to be remembered. Her absence, then, was her presence.
He didn’t sleep, he couldn’t. Salt taste of sorrow in his mouth. He remembered, suddenly, the weight of Smadar’s wrist when she was a very young child sleeping upon his chest.
Something sounded out in the small hours of morning. He rose. He took his flashlight, stepped onto the wooden deck at the back of the house. He trained the light along the trees. He saw a glint, perhaps even of eyes, random in the night. They quickly disappeared. Animal or human, he did not know.
Rami knew full well that they might watch him from time to time. His phone was probably tapped. He didn’t care anymore. He had lost so much more than they could monitor.
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He rode his motorbike out from Jerusalem later the next day. The graffiti was still there, high on the Wall. It was, he now realized, the image of a different Palestinian girl, about ten years old, yes, and similar in so many ways to Abir, but not, when he stood looking at her for a long time, exactly her: the eyes were a little bigger, the cheekbones a little too angular, a dimple in the chin shadowed too deeply.
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On one side of the Wall the Cinnyris osea has long been known as the Palestinian sunbird, the national bird of Palestine. On the other side—in more recent years—it has begun to be called the Israeli sunbird.
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In his first-century B.C. treatise De Architectura, Vitruvius Pollio said that all walls which require a deep foundation—from barriers to huge wooden defense towers—should be joined together with charred olive ties.
Olive wood does not decay even if buried in the earth or placed deep in water.
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In 2006 an order was issued within the Israeli government to complete the Wall through the heart of the Cremisan vineyard, dividing the monastery from the nuns’ convent.
The convent would be on the Palestinian side of the Wall, the monastery on the Israeli side. The nuns would need permits to meet with the monks.
Six years later, when the order was reissued, Sister Lucretia, a Brazilian nun, gave an interview outside the convent gates: God gave us a lot of things, she said, but unfortunately not grappling hooks.
The following day a large FedEx package arrived at the convent addressed specifically to her.
Sister Lucretia decided not to open it. She scrawled a note on it—Use If/When Needed—and brought the package down to Checkpoint 300, deposited it at the foot of the Wall.
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The watchtowers of Checkpoint 300 are air-conditioned. Soldiers sit at the top of a spiral staircase in a rotating chair—pneumatic and padded—with a 360-degree view over the landscape of Bethlehem, the Seam Zone, all the way back to Jerusalem. The barrels of their guns stick out through shooting holes.
The ceiling has an armored exit in case the soldiers need to be helicoptered off. Inside, they have a folding ladder to allow them to reach the roof of the tower.
The soldiers can fire live rounds or rubber bullets or send out directions to the ground units, or to the water cannons, or to the Skunk trucks, directing them to a series of special trapdoors built into the Wall.
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The Humanitarian lane at Qalandia checkpoint—for women, children, the elderly and the sick—is a prefab hut with a bathroom and a watercooler.
At one end of the hut there is a fold-out wooden table on which to change babies, and over it a sign in English, Hebrew and Arabic: The Hope of Us All. On the opposite wall is a photograph of the Old City of Jerusalem, the rim of the walls covered in snow.
The gate is open for forty-five minutes a day.
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So many of Rami’s acquaintances had never been to the West Bank. They refused even to go to Area B for fear they might be kidnapped, imprisoned, beaten up.
But the Wall, he knew now, was easy to get beyond. Just about any Israeli could make it into Bethlehem. All they had to do was drive to Area B, park the car at the Mount Everest Hotel, get a cab down to the markets in Bethlehem. Dress sensibly. Pass for a tourist. Keep your mouth shut. Or speak English. Say you’re Danish. Walk around. Go to the churches. Breathe it in. Dismantle the fear.
They could even drive their own cars through: there were enough yellow plates around Bethlehem to get by.
Getting home was just as easy. Simply drive to a settlement, roll down the window, flash the I.D. card, riff in Hebrew, drive back on the empty road.
It was all in the branding, Rami told them. Everything was built on fear. Operation Security, he called it. Operation Spoonfeed. Operation Hoodwink.
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Bassam had seen them simply climb over in the places where the Wall was lower, hoisting themselves by hand and foot. Others used ladders of wood, steel, hemp. Others dug secret crawl holes and tunnels or chiseled out spaces in the Wall where they passed items through. He had heard of boys using rock-climbing gear and one young acrobat in Bethlehem who was known for her stilts: when she got to the top of the Wall, she hoisted the wooden stilts over using rope, then hid them in a nearby warehouse while she went to work in a falafel joint on the Hebron Road.
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Rise up, little girl, rise up.
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Abir’s face was soft, tender, dark. Her cheekbones arched. Her eyes were large and sloe-colored. She parted her hair in the middle of her forehead and drew it back some of the time in a ponytail. Her eyebrows were thin and straight. She wore a smile that looked like she was in the middle of a permanent question.
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Smadar inhabited any camera that was pointed in her direction. She had the manner of a girl who was in control of what could be seen, her brown eyes flitting about, charged through with a petitioning electricity.
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On the night before Abir was shot, several prefabricated sections of the Wall arrived on articulated trucks from the Akerstein factory in the Negev. The fortified pieces were delivered to the rear of the schoolyard. The huge concrete slabs were eased off by cranes, swung through the air, stacked on the ground.