Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation

by Michael Chabon

  “During the celebration for the forty-ninth anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem,” Sami went on, “the police closed the roads leading to many parts of East Jerusalem where Palestinians live by placing a bus sideways blocking the road. I had to get the children from their school near the American Colony Hotel. I had to follow a long, roundabout route, park my car at the Ambassador Hotel, walk down to get them, and then go all around the new settlements to al-Zaim village and up from behind to El Tor. Some people had to abandon their cars and walk. The police take no account of what might happen in case of a medical emergency. They just shut the place up for the Arabs, and this on the day when they were celebrating the unification of Jerusalem. People call this Jerusalem Day our red day.”

  How so? I asked.

  “In East Jerusalem the police use red ribbon to close off streets. There were so many streets closed off with red ribbon that we began calling this our red day. This is why my sons like to take every opportunity to escape to the Kufr Aqab house.

  “Last night the constant hum of helicopters kept me from sleeping,” Sami announced. “The army had come to arrest someone, and the young men began throwing stones at them. So they used tear gas. We had to close all the shutters to keep the gas from seeping into the house. The helicopters help the army a lot,” he mused. “They see everything from above.

  “During our last feast, the Israeli police prevented worshipers from reaching al-Aqsa mosque. Then they dumped sewage onto the streets so we would not be able to pray in them. They know that Muslims can only pray on clean ground. The police used to be different. We went to them to complain and expected to get relief. Not anymore. These days if you approach a policeman you run the risk of being shot at. Now they are racist.”

  I detected an uncharacteristically bitter tone in these words of Sami’s. “Yesterday,” he said, “a man flagged my taxi down. A policeman let me stop, then another officer came over to the Jewish American tourist and warned him in English (thinking I would not understand), ‘He is not one of us.’”

  In a somber tone Sami said, “I’m so tired of Jerusalem. All its people are bad and don’t deserve this great city. The whole lot should all be evacuated and the city handed over to an international power. Then whoever wants to visit to pray there could use the houses of the former inhabitants, now turned into hotels.”

  Sami now fell silent. We drove on in uneasy silence, moving closer to the uncertain checkpoint, which would determine whether or not I was going to make it to the airport in time for my flight. The hills here looked decapitated, their tops flattened to accommodate settlements. They were lower than those we had passed earlier, with more open expanses of land between them.

  As we began to approach the Rantis checkpoint, I saw that the land on both sides of the road was cultivated with old olive trees. The whole area was once owned by Palestinians. The slanting afternoon rays lit the limestone, and a glow bathed the olive branches, highlighting their silvery sheen. In the midst of the field beyond were spiny broom shrubs that shone with the sun like lanterns. How the settlers could argue that there was no one living in these lands before their arrival is truly bewildering.

  Then Sami broke the silence.

  “And yet some of these soldiers manning the checkpoints have a heart. One soldier noticed me coming to a checkpoint, getting checked, leaving and returning again and again in the same day. He finally asked me whether I ever get tired of all this. I could tell that he genuinely felt for me.”

  “And what did you say to him?”

  “I didn’t want him to pity me, so I turned it back on him, saying that if I didn’t keep on going back and forth he would be out of work.”

  We were almost there. The time had passed with Sami moving from one story to another. We were now close to the Palestinian village of Rantis and the checkpoint—a beautiful area with low, undulating hills. My fear and nervousness were at their highest. Sami struck a lighter tone.

  “Did I tell you what also happened on the last Jerusalem Day? It was an amazing sight. The municipality decided to construct a lift higher than a crane on the Mount of Olives. It had a sort of basket in which about ten people could fit. They were lifted so high up that they could see all of Jerusalem from on high. We watched this amazing spectacle as we were confined in our houses.”

  As I heard this, I smiled to myself. In one of my talks I had stated that Israel in this period was riding high. I was not aware how accurate this was. For a moment I considered telling this story in my upcoming talk in England. But then I realized I would not be telling any audience anything next week, because the soldiers manning this checkpoint were not going to let me through and I was going to miss my flight.

  As we approached the Rantis checkpoint, I saw it all in my mind. With a few words or even just the movement of his hand, the young soldier would point his finger to me and order Sami: “Take him back. You should feel lucky that I’m not charging you. Just take him back.” It would be so simple, and I would have to write to so many people to cancel all the planned events. So much effort and expense, gone for nothing. Sweat was trickling in rivulets down my back. I could feel that my undershirt was drenched. I looked at Sami, who remained calm and composed. There was no perceptible difference in his bearing as we approached the checkpoint. My admiration for him only rose.

  Sami had saved the best and most engaging story for the end. He began, breaking through my line of thinking, saying: “Shall I tell you of the only time I lost my car keys and couldn’t get back in my car?” I didn’t answer. I was much too perturbed and preferred to remain silent. He continued: “I was driving near Jabaa. I had left my car to save people from a burning bus . . .”

  He didn’t have time to finish this one, though he kept on talking as if we were engaged in the most natural conversation and did not care at all about being stopped.

  But I was not listening to Sami. Neither did I care anymore how the soldiers would perceive us and whether or not they would allow us to pass. My mind was now concentrated on the sign posted by the checkpoint. At first I thought I was hallucinating. I put on my glasses to make sure I was reading it right. It read: this crossing is reserved only for those entitled under the law of return of 1950. Had it come to this, that passage through a checkpoint was reserved only for Jews, who were the only ones entitled under this discriminatory law? Many of those I saw passing unhindered indeed immigrated to Israel under this law reserved only for Jews, and made their home in the West Bank. Their government wants to deny me the right to pass because I do not qualify. Confronted with such injustice, what am I to do?

  The spell was broken. I faced a much larger question than whether or not I would be allowed to pass through the checkpoint. What was the point of traveling all the way to London to tell others about injustice when I was so enmeshed in the logic of occupation that the possibility that I might be stopped at a checkpoint sent me into such panic? Was this what I had been reduced to after fifty years of occupation?

  I looked at Sami. The sheen of perspiration was now visible on his brow. He too had been anxious, but he persevered. We drove through the checkpoint in companionable silence. He endured and will endure as he has for the past twenty years. I too cannot afford to abandon the struggle and must do what I can to end this occupation before it succeeds in utterly destroying us all.

  Occupied Words

  Lars Saabye Christensen

  Prologue

  Occupation is queue. Queuing is hell. Hell is reruns: every morning, more of the same. All kinds of delay, pain, and humiliation are gathered in these heavily guarded assemblies at the checkpoints around Jerusalem, where the lost faces lose face yet again.

  Occupied Words

  At Ben Gurion Airport my suitcase is lost. It didn’t arrive with the flight. It disappeared during transfer in Brussels, maybe already in Oslo. I know for certain that I carried it to the taxi in Anne Maries vei where I live, on the edge of the city, near the brook running down from the lakes of Nordmarka,
the nature reserve surrounding the capital of Norway. It’s not the end of the world. I can live without the suitcase. After all, everything I put in it can be bought again: socks, shoes, underwear, pencils, notebooks, clocks and watches, hat, phone charger, and a newspaper I didn’t get to read before I left. And as I watch one last suitcase which doesn’t belong to me glide past on the conveyor belt, which now looks like a dried-out riverbed, it strikes me: I’m a man without luggage. Everything in my possession can be replaced. My luggage is old news. This makes me agitated, even furious. I have to find someone to vent my anger on. It’s obvious: the man behind the baggage service counter. I go over there to complain. I pour out my complaint. First I have to fill out a form: who I am. In addition, I’m repeatedly asked if I’ve really looked for it properly. So I haven’t looked for it properly? Does the manager of the baggage service imagine that I don’t recognise my own Norwegian suitcase, which I also packed myself? He has to check the ticket again. So he disappears for quite a while. There’s another passenger missing his suitcase. He is even more agitated. It’s the second time in a row it’s happened. He’s going to sue the airline, maybe even Israel, he is truly agitated. He gives me his business card. He travels around the world selling medical equipment. We can sue them together. Then we’ll have a stronger case. But in airports aloneness reigns. Every passenger has his own case. Everyone is on his or her own. When the man I’m waiting for finally returns, I have to fill in yet another form: what my suitcase looks like. Suddenly I don’t remember. It’s embarrassing. It’s like forgetting the colour of your loved one’s eyes. I think it’s blue. Yes, definitely blue, blue with a zipper and wheels. But these are vague memories, as if everything was long ago and not this morning, not today, not right now. Losing is laborious. The moment it slips away is short, but the time it takes is long. Losing increases the distances in you. You become a stranger no matter where you stand or position yourself. I sign at the bottom: Lars Saabye Christensen, author, blue eyed, 4 June 2016. June 2017 will be fifty years since the Six-Day War of 1967. The occupation of the Palestinian territories has lasted just as long. And that’s the reason I’m here. To write about my impressions. Before departure, I got this bit of advice: you can tell airport security whatever you want, but don’t lie. Anyway, I’ve no intention of lying. Telling the truth is good advice in most circumstances, except in obituaries. Hence I have to confess—and I use that exact word, confession, since I’ve noticed that my views, my attitude, are almost taken for granted, that a European writer isn’t supposed to have a different opinion: Israel is the root of all evil. So I confess: I am a friend of Israel. I am willing to go far to be Israel’s friend. It implies that I quite simply recognise Israel’s obvious right to exist, today, in the future. It implies Israel’s duty to defend itself. It does not imply the right to torment people. There is no such right. No one has the right to do wrong.

  I go through customs without being stopped. I have nothing superfluous. On the other side, my host, my employer, is waiting for me. He thinks I travel light. It’s the other way around. An empty-handed man travels with a heavy load. We drive to Jerusalem. Since it’s Saturday, one part of the city, the western, is silent and closed, while the shops in the east are open. We go to the main street and find a clothes shop. A young man is sitting on his knees in prayer. The shirts on the racks are garish, they remind me of the seventies or B movies. The young man continues his prayers, unperturbed between the till and the changing room. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of shopping, he’s apparently found peace. Maybe his prayers are being heard. When I’m finally in the Ambassador Hotel, room 222, standing in front of the mirror before dinner, I see a strange man in a stiff, light yellow shirt with big lapels. He could be a restaurant musician, a bookmaker, a seller of Hoover bags. I try to make the words of the Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer my own: I am not empty, I am open.

  A story, or rather an image, has haunted me all my life and therefore also left its mark on most of my writing. My mother, born in 1923, used to tell: she had a friend in the apartment building where she grew up, in Oslo. Her name was Rakel Feinstein. Rakel was Jewish. In October 1942 she knocks on the kitchen door, my mother opens, it’s early. Rakel just wants to say that she’s leaving now, but she’ll be back soon. She doesn’t come back. No one comes back. The Feinstein family is sent on the transport ship Donau to Stettin, Poland, and from there to Auschwitz. My mother always ended like this: I can still hear her footsteps down the stairs. When my mother died in 2009, I took over her story. Her memories became mine. Now it’s my turn to hear these same footsteps that never turn back.

  What’s the use of a story like this, frozen in an acoustic image?

  You shall not forget. You shall pass it on.

  In the drawer of the bedside table there’s a red circle with an arrow inside: direction mecca. I am woken by the minarets, or maybe that’s just something I’m dreaming. In any case it’s strange. Being a stranger, in a strange land, does something to your thoughts. They seek an origin, a ground. That’s what your thoughts long for. The thought longs for a direction to bend towards.

  The next day is Jerusalem Day. And like most things in this region, this holiday is also ambiguous and full of contradictions. For some people it means liberation. For others, occupation. Settlers and their supporters will be marching from Damascus Gate straight through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. I’m standing on the Via Dolorosa, waiting for trouble to ensue. It’s five o’clock. Most of the shops are closed already. Last year they were damaged. A few peace activists, looking like peace activists all over the world, young, unassailable, and romantic, hand out roses. The message is old, the gesture likewise: the flower as a sign of good. There’s a flaw in the symbolism, however, a permanent gash in this goodness: the flower withers. It lives for a moment. Then it withers in your hands. The first group arrives. I’m surprised. There are only young boys, dressed the same in white shirts, holding the Israeli flag high, singing and rejoicing. The next group is similar. I had imagined something different, middle-aged men maybe, older men, dour, religious, stern. Now it looks more like the celebration of a sports victory, or that these young people are done with their exams and have their lives, their entire wonderful lives, ahead of them, an unfurnished sky, freedom. It strikes me that these boys are happy. Their unity, their cause, are the sources of this happiness. I can’t help but envy them. Then a peace activist gives a rose to one of the boys, virtually puts it in his hand, and all of a sudden this rose makes him vulnerable. And he reacts with a rage that in its force and precision almost resembles his joy. He smashes the flower against the stone step. He doesn’t throw it away. That’s too ordinary. Instead, he breaks the neck of the rose, and the dark red petals lie scattered along the cobblestones of the Via Dolorosa. Politics is dividing its own people. And this gesture is so violent that it certainly has a deeper cause than the evident, perhaps well-meaning, but at least well-mannered provocation the settler, the boy, is subjected to. And few things are worse than a well-mannered provocation. The rose threatens his very existence. There is nothing here which is neutral. Everything is loaded. Language is loaded. The language is armed and rearmed until the words are overloaded, until the words can’t keep their word anymore and become action. The rose is a language that can immediately be translated to humiliation. Thanks are rendered into vandalism and destruction. And naturally I understand both expressions: the pious advances of the one idealist, the equally pious distance of the other. But who wins this discussion? The flower girl does. She is the clear winner. But it is the settler who carries the day. He has power on his side.

  I remember another discussion, in the debating society of my high school in 1971. The radical youth movement was at the peak of its popularity. I’m referring to the Norwegian Marxist-Leninists, who during this short period shook hands with both Mao and Pol Pot, and if they could have woken Stalin from the dead, they would have taken both his hands too. The issue under debate was the Pale
stinians and the PLO. Could terror be justified in the struggle against oppression and imperialism? The answer was yes. If the cause was big and just enough and everything else had been tried, then aircraft hijackings were justifiable. In other words: war without limits, limitless war, not even civilians were to be spared. One of the participants actually said, I remember it verbatim: Terror isn’t relevant in Norway yet, since it won’t serve the cause. The cause? What cause? The word itself sounds unassuming, almost like an item on an overlong agenda. But the cause was greater than that. The cause was Utopia, the greatest thing of all, the classless society: the final exit, where Time encloses Justice like the shell encases the pearl. It was a cause that only had one side. Utopia is finite. Everything has already been achieved there. And these Norwegian utopians remind me of the boys marching on Jerusalem Day. They have zeal and unity in common. They have their sacred single-mindedness, their passion, in common. They have no doubts. Therefore, they are facing a disaster if it turns out that they’re wrong. Therefore, they’re able to murder a rose.

  “When a Palestinian walking across the field feels threatened, maybe by a snake, a predator, or a thief, he immediately picks up a stone from the ground to protect himself. It’s in our culture.”

  Those are the words of Bassem Tamimi, a well-known Palestinian activist. We’re sitting with him and his wife, Nariman Tamimi, in their house in Nabi Saleh, which Amnesty International has called “a tiny village with a big voice.” In the corner there’s a rickety, half-empty aquarium containing three goldfish. Hanging on the wall is an embroidery that also used to hang in Norwegian homes, but that’s a long time ago: god bless our home. Next to it there’s another saying: peace and justice. In the middle of the coffee table there’s a platter of something that at first looks like dried brown fruit, but which turns out to be empty tear gas canisters, cartridges, shells. They are Israeli mementos: windfalls of metal. Glued to the flat screen is a photo I recognise: a small Palestinian boy crying in fear and pain, with an assault rifle pressed to his face. It’s the couple’s son. It happened last year. Now he appears in the background, together with his sister. They look like ordinary teenagers; with stylish hair, jeans, and a smartphone in the back pocket, they’re busy, shy, and polite. I feel ashamed. Why shouldn’t they look like ordinary teenagers? Are you supposed to stop brushing your hair because you’re Palestinian? Are you supposed to stop dressing nicely because you are threatened?