The Lady from Tel Aviv

by Raba'i al-Madhoun

  Unable to reply, I sigh. As I breathe in the distant past, my lungs begin to ache.

  ‘Listen, it’s only going to take two hours. I’ll take you to Asdud and give you a quick tour, then we come right back. You want to see your hometown, don’t you?’

  ‘I wish it was on our way. We’d go there and I’d even pay good money for us to look at history together. But Asdud is too far away, Abu Fares. And my mother’s waiting for me. She’s been waiting for thirty-eight years for me to come home, and she doesn’t have that much longer to live. I better go to see her first. Asdud can wait, my mother cannot. She’s waiting to have breakfast with me, and I don’t want to be late. She can’t wait to see me.’

  ‘OK, whatever’s easiest.’

  The car passes the exit for Asqalan and speeds through the barriers of my longing. Sderot begins to appear. From far off, it looks like a Swiss village, its red-tile roof houses carefully arranged behind thick green copses. Behind rows of trees, many of the houses look out over the main highway.

  As soon as we cross into the city limits, the mirage begins to shed its splendour. The houses begin to fade, and the trees shed their leaves, as if getting ready to die. The soil loses all traces of verdure, and the grass turns barren and brown. Every distinctive feature of the place suddenly vanishes.

  Abu Fares’ car continues speeding down the highway, kicking up lifeless dirt and dust. This is how you know you are approaching Palestinian territory.

  ‘We’re here, Abu Fadi. That’s the Beit Hanoun crossing over there.’

  ‘Where?’ I gasp.

  ‘Up there, just ahead.’

  Abu Fares parks the car and gets out. I get out too. Together, we pull the suitcase from the trunk.

  I pull out my wallet, ‘How much is it, Abu Fares? Name your price.’

  ‘For you, I’m only charging one hundred and twenty dollars.’

  I give Abu Fares the amount he asks for. He insists on hugging me. He gets into his car and races off towards Israel.

  Suddenly, I am struck by the realization that Abu Fares charged me at least double the real fare. Bitterly, I shake my head. Abu Fares is not a bad guy. He’s a decent guy, no doubt. But he did trick me. He loves money more than his fellow countrymen. Foreign currency in particular, the distinctive smell of green dollars most of all.

  6

  I get to the main entrance at about 9. The sky is clean and bright, washed by the early morning light. The sun hides behind a half-finished building, casting half-finished shadows across a quiet, dusty plaza littered with concrete blocks, rocks and gravel.

  I stand there, staring at the inert scene before me. I am nervous and doubtful—and begin to wonder if Abu Fares took my one hundred and twenty dollars and dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. I take a few steps forward, pulling my suitcase behind me. Faint whispers sound in my ear and I wheel around, trying to find where the voices are coming from. My eyes spot three boys smoking cigarettes nearby. They are sitting on a long marble bench under a makeshift sunshade of asbestos pieces. Behind them, concrete encloses the awning from one side. The wall stretches off toward the west where it finally disappears into a small grove.

  I walk up to the boys and say hello. I ask where I should go to cross. Two of them are only concerned with blowing clouds of smoke into the air. They go on talking to each other as if I was not there. The other one turns to me and nods: ‘Over there, man.’ He points to a square kiosk that sits between two car lanes. Double wooden guard gates block each lane. My eyes follow his finger and I now see two Israeli soldiers walking in front of the gates, American-made M-16 rifles strapped across their backs. There is a rectangular opening on the façade of the kiosk, like a small window. The torso of a young female soldier fills most of it. I will go over there right now. I will present myself to the upper half of the Israeli soldier, or to one of the other soldiers.

  I grab my suitcase and start walking toward them. One of the boys shouts at me, ‘Where you going, man? The crossing is closed!’

  He is obviously right. I probably got here too early. I guess I will wait until it opens. I will have to trust these guys—they obviously know. ‘When does it open?’

  ‘God only knows!’ One of them shrugs, as if the opening and closing of the crossing was a fact of life he was used to. Then he points at the two soldiers, whose marching brings them to a halt in front of the guard gates. They exchange a few words, then turn and head off in opposite directions. As the boy’s friends kick at the gravel under the bench, he adds: ‘Those are the ones who know.’ He points at them again.

  I stand there like a piece of wood, unable to ask any more questions. One of the other boys finally notices me and calls out in a tired voice: ‘Listen, man. We got here a little while ago, and it was already closed. Why it’s closed is anybody’s guess.’

  ‘He’s not from here,’ the other one says, looking me over. He studies me like I was an artifact, then asks bluntly, ‘Where’re you from?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘If you’ve got a British passport, you won’t have any problems. Foreigners have it easy. You can go through the VIP entrance as soon as they open.’

  The way he pronounces ‘VIP’ makes it sound like a magic word. I am relieved to hear that I will be getting the kind of special treatment reserved for only the Very Important. When the crossing opens, I will not have to walk over to the soldiers to explain myself. I will not have to beg from the torso of the woman in the kiosk. Only now does it begin to dawn on me how important I truly am. I have an official stamp that attests to my special status, and it will command respect. I rank among the top of the topmost—foreigners who enjoy the privileges granted by the Oslo Accords only to PA ministers and employees of foreign NGOs. We have an importance that no ordinary Palestinian could ever hope to attain—and according to the terms of the Accords, ordinary Palestinians are simply ordinary, which is to say, neither important nor very important. I admit that it is embarrassing to be considered so important, but I am also pleased—and the pleasure is audible in my voice. ‘So that means I’ll get in, right?’

  ‘If they open the crossing,’ says the first boy, as if he was the official spokesman for the group. This ‘if’ hangs in the air—the only tangible fact waiting for me in the plaza. I notice that already the half-finished shadows have begun to inch their way back to the foot of the half-finished structure.

  ‘When will they open it?’

  ‘Anyone’s guess.’ Another one of them lets out a sarcastic laugh and crosses his legs like we are all sitting around at a pavement café. ‘Listen, man—those Jews over there, they’ll open their crossing whenever they want to. And they’ll close it again whenever they want.’

  The only thing for me to do is to study the place until I figure out how it works. One of the things I had not taken into account in planning my trip was that I would arrive to find the crossing was shut. Today is not a Jewish holiday, which means the crossing is not closed, on the pretext of preventing a Palestinian attack. And the Egyptian-sponsored truce between Israel and the factions had held steady since March. There have been no suicide attacks or bombings, even though Israel continued its assassination campaign against Palestinian leaders and activists. In fact, I had taken all these things into account and would not have attempted to come to Gaza had I thought there might be fighting. And as much as my mother would like to see me, she did not want me delivered to her doorstep in a coffin.

  Why did they close it? No answer. Everything had been going pretty well until now. Things were not as bad as I had imagined they would be—not on the plane, not at the airport. My luck was too good to hold for ever.

  In a daze, I stand near the three boys, too paralysed to do anything. For these guys, this was a routine part of a normal day—but it is hard for me to be nonchalant about it. Should I leave? Should I go back the way I came? Where would I go if I did? Should I stay here, waiting? How long? As my questions expand, my estimated time of arrival begins to change too—everyth
ing about my trip seems to need rethinking. My trip did not begin the moment I boarded the plane at Heathrow. It did not begin when I met the Israeli actress. It did not begin with those farfetched stories she told me to break the ice. No, my journey home begins right now—in this half-abandoned plaza, standing before these gates.

  I study the crossing and everything in it. A vast building situated between two worlds. They sit there, these gates of hell, on a long rise about fifty metres from where I am. In front of it stand three massive concrete pedestrian barriers. To the left, a squat single-storey structure. Male and female soldiers come in and out, their weapons clanking loudly enough to tell the world how ready they are to be used. To the right, there is a thicket of cypress and willow. Their leafy branches completely screen the western side of the building.

  On the other side of this gate live one-and-a-half million Palestinians. The people who live there—and the settlements around them—form another world, whose doors shut tight on this spot. Here is the syphon where, early each morning, long lines of Gazan workers drain into Israel, and where, when night falls, they are flushed back out, exhausted by their twelve- or fifteen-hour shifts. Youths born between the two Intifadas burn up their lives travelling this short span. Filling the construction industry, factories, building the walls of Jewish settlements. They probably even built this huge processing plant itself that churns and crushes the people twice a day, first as they exit Gaza and then again as they re-enter.

  I put my suitcase down to the side, then sit on a shaded piece of concrete near to where the three boys still sit—chatting, laughing, and smoking up a storm.

  A little after 9 am groups of people start to get dropped off in front of the main gate. There are men and women of all ages, and children too. They begin to take their places here and there around the plaza as if they were permanent refugees. They fill the place with the same question I had been asking—and over and over again, they receive the same old answer: ‘God only knows.’

  A large bus enters the plaza and parks not too far away. The driver points the front of the bus toward the crossing so he can watch for things happening there. He backs up the bus until it is almost pissing against the cement wall.

  The driver does not get out. He does not start asking people the same old question, and he does not wait to hear that the only one who knows anything here is God. Most likely, he has already heard it all before.

  Within an hour, the shaded areas fill up with crowds of people and the plaza has turned into a vast open-air waiting room. Under the beating sun, the soldiers shout louder and louder at the crowds to remind them that they alone hold the keys to the gate.

  A sky-blue Opel enters the plaza and parks near the bus. When the rock under my butt gets tired of complaining, I give it a rest. I start walking back and forth, dragging my suitcase behind me from one spot to another. I listen in to the conversations between the newcomers and the others around the plaza. Some of them find a place to sit under the sunshade. Others make a spot for themselves on the ground in the shade of the long wall just behind it. Others sit in the shadow of the Opel. Three women get out of the bus and sit in its shade while their children play under the sun.

  A young man in overalls comes up. Another man runs over to him and they exchange some words before the first man disappears again. The second one comes back and begins to make an announcement to everyone: ‘That man works here—and he told me that the soldiers found a bomb in a paper bag.’

  A chunky man in his thirties walks up and asks, ‘What are you saying? Really?’

  ‘God only knows—but that’s what that guy I was talking to just told me.’

  My whole trip, exploded by a briefcase. If it’s true, they’re not going to open up the gate for me or anyone else today.

  From behind the Opel, a voice calls out: ‘Don’t believe it, folks. There was nothing but tomatoes in the briefcase. Four big tomatoes. One of the workers accidentally left it at the main gate.’ No one can see who says this.

  A woman in a hijab yells out, ‘Fuck them! They shut down the entire border crossing on account of four goddamn tomatoes?’

  ‘They made one of the Palestinians who works there pick up the case and empty it out. And then they made the poor guy take apart each tomato, picking out the seeds one by one! I can’t help thinking that those tomato bombs would have been perfect with okra.’

  I laugh at the kitchen explosive, and at the rumours that fly around faster than facts could ever do. I laugh at everyone standing around. One of them blurts out: ‘Since the bomb was just some tomatoes, they’ll have to open up and let us through now.’

  ‘If only every bomb were a tomato—and not the precious blood of our children,’ comments an old woman. She sounds like she has lost someone. A small waking dream begins to stir in my mind—small, no bigger than a tomato seed.

  But the crossing remains as closed as it was before, even as the crowds of arrivals grow and grow, and the flow of conversation returns to its usual channels.

  Behind the guard gates and the kiosk, a small truck enters the plaza and comes to a stop in front of the concrete barriers by the main building. Soldiers run into the plaza behind the guard booth, in a way that makes everyone nervous. A military jeep surges from behind the thicket of trees and parks close to the barriers. Two soldiers jump out and disappear behind the truck. Two men and a woman in uniform walk into the plaza. One of them is carrying a video camera on his shoulder. A young man who had been sitting by the wall stands up and walks over to me. A transistor radio dangles from his hand. In a trembling voice he says: ‘Israeli radio just reported that they caught a girl from Jabalia Camp wearing an explosives belt.’

  All my hopes of them opening the crossing go up in smoke. The news tears my dreams to shreds, and I start to envy Adel El-Bashity for how easy he had it. No matter the lengths to which a narrator goes in order to imagine something, he will never reach the shore of truth. If your understanding of an Israeli border crossing is limited to what you hear or try to imagine in your mind, you will only ever glimpse the outlines of a shadow—which could be shorter or longer depending on how much light you cast on it. But the truth itself: that is a bitch on the imagination and on anyone who wants to tell a story.

  It is now 11:30. The June sun has begun to shed its morning gentleness to announce the pending arrival of a scorching afternoon. The shady spots have disappeared. There is not even enough shade now for a quarter of the people standing there.

  I begin to look for a shady spot, one for myself and one for my shadow, which has shrunk so small that were I to lend it out, it would not cover a soul. I head toward the bus and shyly lean up against it, by the front door. Just as the years of my youth now lean upon my old age, I rest my head on the side of the door.

  The driver sits calmly behind the steering wheel, like a feudal lord who owns vast orchards of shade. He is engrossed in conversation with a young man sitting in a seat directly behind him.

  The driver suddenly turns to me and, with a note of pity in his voice, says, ‘Why are you standing outside, sir? Come on in and have a seat. The sun out there will roast your brains. It looks like you’ve already come a long way just to get to here.’

  I do not hesitate to accept his invitation. In fact, since resting my head against the door, I had been hoping he might say that. This is my chance to take a break from the strain of standing and pacing back and forth all morning. I might even join their conversation and kill some time—and maybe kill this wait that has been killing my every hope of crossing sometime soon.

  I climb into the bus and take my place in the first seat to the right of the driver, just behind the door itself. To break the ice, I ask: ‘Where’d you all come from today?’

  ‘Jerusalem.’

  ‘The bus is empty—is that usual?’

  ‘We’re a company that provides services for the UN. We work by contract. We take people to visit family members in prison. On Friday I go to Gaza to pick up families who’re goi
ng to visit people in Beersheba prison. But if the crossing doesn’t open in a couple of hours, we won’t be able to do it. What a waste of my time and theirs. And those poor people—they’ve been waiting so long for this trip. Now they’ll have to go through the same rigmarole just to get another permit.’

  The driver’s mobile phone rings, he answers it with his left hand. His keeps his right on the steering wheel, ready to go at any moment. ‘No, we’re still at the checkpoint. I’m sitting here in the bus with these good folks. We’re still waiting for them to open up so we can go through. They’re saying there was an attempt. Tell him to go back to the West Bank. Tell Abu Khalil to go to Qalqilia and bring everyone. No, no—if they don’t open up in one hour, two maximum, I’m going back. What else can I do? Goodbye. No, don’t worry—I’ll bring them with me from Jerusalem. Salaam.’

  He hangs up. A short, dark-skinned young man walks up to the door. He sticks his head in and comments nervously: ‘If there really was a bombing attempt like they say, then the crossing is going to stay shut all day long. It might not even re-open until after tomorrow.’

  ‘What a disaster,’ I mutter. ‘Where should I go?’

  The younger man turns to me. ‘Where are you coming from, sir?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘Yes.’ Despite myself, I begin to wonder aloud. ‘Where should I go? I can’t get through and I can’t go back into Israel. If I go to Israel, where would I spend the night? I didn’t anticipate this at all.’

  ‘No problem!’ The man interrupts me. ‘As long as we’re here, you can stay in the West Bank. You’re our guest! What do you say? Come with us and we’ll take good care of you, sir!’

  I decide to jump at his offer before he rescinds it. ‘If the crossing doesn’t re-open, where will you go?’

  ‘We’re going back to Hebron, and you’ll come with us. I’ve got a car. That blue Opel over there.’ He points to the car, then to a woman who is walking up to him right at that moment. Then to a boy and girl who begin to chase each other. He introduces them to me, ‘This is my family. My wife. These kids you see jumping around—they’re mine.’