All this had happened only yesterday, and, seeing her arrive today with a determined gait, dressed in Western clothes and with her face uncovered, Ghassan told himself that he would run every operation this quickly from now on.
He got out of the van and looked around: no one. He opened the door and Dima climbed in. He closed the door again. There was still no one around. Without saying a word, Ghassan started the engine and made his way down an unpaved side street. Deserted. He stopped once more at the side of the road and said, “This is the bag.”
He took it out from under the seat and showed it to her. Dima said nothing. Ghassan opened it.
“Look,” he said. “The button is inside this strap. When you find yourself among lots of people, press it.”
Dima nodded.
“I can’t take you there,” he added. “You’ll have to walk through some fields. You’ll have a good view of the whole road from there. Cut across the hill to avoid the checkpoint. We’ll meet up again in front of the marble cutter’s – a friend will be waiting for us there.”
Dima took the bag, got out of the van and set off.
As Ghassan watched her leave, he felt enormously calm.
SHOSHI AND NATHAN LOSE TRACK OF TIME
“When we arrived in this land, Nathan, we arrived too tired. We arrived after more than two thousand years of persecution, after the Shoah, which killed one in two of us. The Shoah, which, apart from the suffering, the bitterness – an atrocious bitterness – and the terror, left us with a sense of shame. The shame of not having been able to defend ourselves, of having allowed ourselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter. Of not having protected the million children led to the slaughter with us. One million, Nathan!”
As Shoshi spoke she stared at a crumb on the table. Nathan said nothing. Around them people came in one after another to sit down at other tables; they ordered, ate, then went away again. Their day continued, while that of Shoshi and Nathan had suddenly become suspended. Shoshi’s voice was heavy. She spoke slowly, lost in the immense effort of tying up loose ends.
“Perhaps it’s in our DNA by now – fear, rejection. Destruction. Who do you think came to populate the land of Israel? Idealists … the traumatized … dreamers … fanatics… Men who thought to build themselves up by working the land, something they had never done, to rediscover strengths that had perhaps been lost. And we are their children, Nathan.”
Shoshi’s voice was both a whisper and a lament. She stared into the distance. Nathan looked at her. And as he saw her gradually immerse herself in this suffering, he felt himself re-emerging from it.
“We swore it would never happen again; you know how we say: no more Masadas. Never again, Nathan. We came here from all over the world; we practically invented a language with which to talk to one another. But we already understood one another, because a destiny like ours is a bond stronger than any nation.”
She fell silent once more, but she didn’t expect her son to reply. Then she shook herself, and said slowly, but in a high, clear voice, “We have an obligation towards our past and towards the future. We need land, space, to feel safe. You can’t feel safe in a strip of land you can drive across in three or four hours, and which is surrounded by people who hate you.”
Nathan looked at her again, then he asked, “How long have you felt like this?”
Shoshi shrugged and returned his look. “It’s not easy to say, you know. It’s not easy.”
1 P.M.
DIMA WALKS ACROSS THE FIELDS
Dima took the track through the fields. She was wearing jeans and her long hair hung free; a breath of dusty wind rose up to caress her temples and slowly slipped in among the smooth black hair. She was beautiful, with those big bright eyes that had stopped asking questions yet drunk in all that was offered them, until it hurt too badly and they became like glass.
The ground had breathed out the last of the damp and was once more dry and dusty. As she walked over the barren hill, Dima could see the houses of Jerusalem still and waiting. She lengthened her stride. As she walked, her body became charged, grew harder, like a suit of armour. The soles of her feet grew tougher too, tougher than the rocks that protruded from the red earth. Her brain was hardened and vigilant, like a wild beast ready to spring. Her lungs hardened. Her breath became short, dense, the breath of the desert. Blood mingled with shovelfuls of desert soil.
An emptiness engulfed her; as she moved forward, she felt as if she were advancing into a void. Nothing could reach her. Finally nothing could reach her any longer. Her body was so charged, it could sweep away everything around it. She was charged with an inexpressible power.
Her fist on the strap, she clutched the bag slung over her shoulder.
A red van was waiting on the other side of the Bethlehem checkpoint. From her vantage point she could already see it.
MYRIAM CELEBRATES HER SHABBAT
Nothing was as important as this land, despite its being so confused, with its uncertain boundaries and hard-won identity. Once more Myriam felt the trunk pressed hard against her back, while all the surrounding trees, weary of running amok in her mind, slowly began to return to their places.
When a baby was born in Israel, she recalled, the father would often plant a tree and give it the child’s name, and the child would grow up with the photograph of the tree on the wall beside the bed. She realized her hands were still plunged firmly into the earth, and she thrust her fingers in even deeper. Now she was breathing directly through her hands, from the earth. And she felt that this land was their land, just as their fathers had promised. The sky looked down on her.
Yes, this land was beneath them, in this part of the world that was their home. Somewhere in this land the roots of her tree clung deeply to the earth. And each of the trees around her was someone’s tree, a tree that had put down roots here and here rose up towards the sun.
Michael too was somewhere, around here: and he had certainly come to the same conclusions. Michael had ended in this land. By now he could no longer leave.
Neither could she.
All was still now. The patch of trees barely trembled around her. It seemed to her that it was already Saturday, when time stops and you feel closer to eternity. Today was her own personal Shabbat, and she would celebrate it all the way.
She thought about when her father had still lived with them.
Her mother had stopped being religious a long time ago; and since her father had left home, little by little they had forgotten all the customs, even eating kosher. But when her father had been there, Shabbat had been untouchable. They would light the candles, recite the prayers and share the wine and the salted bread. No one did anything on that day, and it was nice just to spend time together and talk.
Come to think of it, her father’s words had been special.
“God is you,” he would tell her. “He is you when you read a poem in your room. He is you when you learn something new. He is you when you say no to arrogance, when you refuse to condone an injustice.”
These were the things her father would say to her on those Shabbat days.
It was now that she suddenly felt sweep over her all the grief she had never allowed herself to feel since he had left home. A knife began gradually to dissect her breast, her weeping heart. She surrendered herself to it.
Along the way she had lost many things that could have been hers, but when? Without even noticing, without even understanding. She missed her father. She missed him very much. He would have helped her – now that she understood his words better.
She rubbed away the tears that had fallen under her chin. I am God, she said to herself. If there was an energy that made the grass sprout from the earth, that same energy could also run through her and take her far. Although she didn’t understand how, she felt that something was changing.
Around her were only crows, cypresses, olive trees. But the answer was gradually making its way inside her.
DIMA WOULD LIKE TO STOP
Dima ha
d left Bethlehem and the checkpoint behind her; the hardest part was done. Now the path led downhill and entered a patch of bushes, concealing the red van from view. When she emerged from it, she would find the agreed place just behind her.
All of a sudden she felt tired, and she became aware that the bag was heavy and the strap was cutting into her shoulder. She was tempted to stop for a moment and carefully lay the bag on the ground so she could massage her aching shoulder and stiff arms. No one would see her if she stopped. She wanted to stop, she felt extremely tired, she could stop in the shade for a few minutes. Just like that, without thinking about anything.
But her feet carried on taking one step after another. With horror she realized she was no longer in control of her movements.
As the crows cawed at her and the view opened out again towards the marble cutter’s, she could no longer stop.
MYRIAM LOOKS UP AT THE SKY, THEN REMEMBERS THE SHOPPING
In a few days the celebrations would begin for Pesach, the Jewish Easter. Once again, at table with all her relatives on the first night, it would be her youngest cousin’s turn to say, “Why is this evening different from all the others?”
“Because on this day we were freed from slavery in Egypt,” would be the answer, repeated every year without variation. One year her father had added, “This evening we celebrate the fact that we are heading towards freedom, but to what extent are we really free?”
To what extent are we really free?
Myriam looked up at the sky. The last rain clouds had finished their journey westwards, leaving only blue.
What is freedom? Where is freedom? How can we exercise freedom?
Some minutes passed before she decided to check her watch. It was time to go. She thought about making it a long walk and returning home on foot instead of catching the bus. She had the time and the inclination. But along the way she remembered that today was her turn to do the shopping. So she only made it to the first stop, then she caught a bus straight to Kiryat Yovel.
DIMA IS IN THE VAN WITH ADUM
When she arrived at the marble cutter’s, Dima saw that there was a white car parked beside the red van. Ghassan and Adum stood waiting for her. As she walked towards them with the weight around her neck, she noted that the two men were looking at her with admiration and respect, as if they envied her, as if she were about to embark on a journey that was forbidden to them.
They had nothing to say to one another, and there were loads of soldiers near by. Dima saw Ghassan take the keys to Adum’s car and realized that Adum wouldn’t want to risk compromising himself by using it to take her to Jerusalem. Instead she and Adum got into Rizak’s red van, and left.
As they rolled along in the van, which was noisy, dirty, with torn upholstery, rickety seats and ancient clutter, Dima felt as if all her strings had been cut. Disconnected. She couldn’t even sense the air around her any more. She was sure that if she were to touch any part of her body at that moment, she wouldn’t be able to feel it, so dead and frozen was everything. The only thing she could feel was the tips of her fingers and toes; they were hurting, as if the blood had stopped there and refused to do its rounds. She sensed a scent of death all around her.
At one point Adum broke into her thoughts. “Roll down your window,” he told her. “Haven’t you noticed that awful stench?”
There was indeed an acrid odour in the van, that’s what it was. The stink of explosive had spread, the smell of a bomb.
Dima opened her window. “How much longer?” she asked.
“We’ll soon be there.”
“What’s the place? Will you show me where it is?” asked Dima.
“We’ll be there in five minutes,” he replied.
They said nothing for a while. The five minutes passed, but still they weren’t there.
Then Adum asked, “Where’s the button?”
“There’s a little pocket inside the strap,” replied Dima without moving her head, but bending down towards the bag.
“Don’t touch it, otherwise we’ll be blown up,” said Adum.
“OK.”
“Keep the bag far from you, keep it far away from your hands and feet, if not we’ll be blown up,” he repeated.
“OK,” she said again.
They had arrived. Pulling up, Adum told her, “If you go straight on from here you’ll come to some steps. Go down them and you’ll find a supermarket on your left. You’ll see it; you can’t go wrong.”
He added, “Go into the supermarket and press the button.”
Dima got out of the van without a word and set off.
MYRIAM IS ON THE BUS
The bus was crowded at this time of the day, but Myriam managed to carve herself out a comfortable corner, leaning against the back. She glanced around her and saw only tense faces, so she turned back and looked out of the window. A taxi crawled along behind, driven by an Arab cabbie.
She wouldn’t take her sabbatical year, she decided, suddenly clear-headed: who could make her? Deep down her mother would be glad too; money had been scarce at home recently. Above all, she thought, she wouldn’t do her military service. It wasn’t unavoidable: she would plead conscientious objection, which was possible for girls; it would be enough to say that her religious beliefs forbade her to live and work with men.
Why not? It wasn’t unavoidable.
Funny she hadn’t thought of this before.
It would mean she could enrol at a graphic design school next year, right after her diploma. She liked the idea of graphics school, she had done for a good while. There were no subjects to be learned by memory, she believed, and the work would be fun. It was just that she had never really thought about it until now; this was the first time she had seen herself so close to it.
She would make new friends, maybe interesting ones. And she would soon find a job – why not? – maybe with a newspaper. It wouldn’t be bad. She would call her father every now and then, and occasionally go to visit him in Tel Aviv. What did she have to do with what had happened between him and her mother?
Sooner or later she would get over her grief for Michael.
She would grasp the sense of what was around her. She would learn to understand what was part of her. And what wasn’t.
That’s what Myriam was thinking on that bus journey; and suddenly America had disappeared from her future.
DIMA IS OUTSIDE THE SUPERMARKET
There was a guard in front of the supermarket, and when the sliding doors opened, Dima could see another one just inside. A double line of defence. She began to wander around the park opposite the supermarket. By now she no longer felt anything. She didn’t hear the birds calling to one another from the trees in the park, or even the heavy beating of her heart. She was simply ready. She concentrated on her task.
A double line of defence. But they didn’t necessarily open all the bags. Some people greeted the first guard with a smile as they entered. They must be regular customers, she thought. How to get past? Maybe by walking purposefully past the first guard, putting one foot forward to open the sliding doors. But how to get past the second guard and in among the crowd thronging the aisles and cash desks?
She had to blow herself up in the middle of a crowd. She had to blow up a crowd.
She wouldn’t be doing it if she weren’t sure she would kill lots of them. She would postpone it. Her life was not worth a few lives; it was worth a great many Jewish lives – at least a hundred. She would blow herself up and take a hundred people with her. A hundred Jewish families would have to suffer what they as Palestinians were suffering. And finally the camp would celebrate. The return of honour. Of a little justice. In the camp they would celebrate the hundred dead together with her martyrdom, which had made it possible.
She was claiming honour and justice, and she had more than a few injustices and humiliations to avenge. At least a thousand, suffered every day by each member of her family. She would avenge every one of them; at a single stroke she would make them remember every
one. And she would do it in such a way that the injustices would burn inside them for a lifetime.
At eighteen. Now. She would do it.
* * *
She sat down on a bench. No. If she couldn’t do it in the middle of a crowd she wouldn’t do it at all. Things should be done properly. Adum had brought her to the wrong place. She wouldn’t get past the double line of defence.
Perhaps she lacked courage? No, it wasn’t a question of courage. She couldn’t care less about dying; she had already decided that it was fine. Today was a good day to die. Too often she had been afraid of dying at the hands of the soldiers, especially when she was a little girl and they invaded the streets of the camp where they were playing and threatened them with their guns. Today she would do it, and it would be her decision to die, not theirs. What she was lacking right now wasn’t courage; it was meaning. If she was going to do it, it had to have meaning. She didn’t want to do it otherwise; she wouldn’t do it.
That was when she saw Myriam. Approaching from the opposite side of the park with a light step and a dreamy expression. Wearing jeans. Small, dark, her hair loose, her eyes gleaming. The first thought that leaped into Dima’s head was that she knew her. That girl looked familiar. She reminded her of someone. She couldn’t say whom, but someone she knew well. She was sure she had seen her somewhere before… But she was also sure that she was Jewish.
Dima felt irresistibly drawn to her.
* * *
But no one had predicted that those two Arab women would have their stand right there. Why had she only just noticed it? Dima turned towards them. This wasn’t in the plan, but it was only right that she should do it.
“Get away from here, now,” she said to them, and she said it in such a low voice and with such an imperious look that the two women slipped the loose change they were counting into the folds of their clothing and hastily began to collect up their things.
Before We Say Goodbye Page 6