by Asmar Gondal
*
The first thing Samuel noticed when he drew near was the police officers’ luminous jackets glowing in the quickly darkening afternoon. It looked like they had blocked off the side street. Then he heard the protestors from behind them, the whistles and chanting. Samuel decided against cycling across the road and towards the front gate of the synagogue. Sitting on his saddle from the other side of the street he was able to get a full view of the scene.
Mordechai stood beautiful, even if a large oak tree and hedge shielded its full splendour. Its bright white walls were still palpable despite the thickening dark blue from above. All the inside lights were on, but outside, what could have been no more than thirty people had managed to acquire almost twenty square yards for themselves, police officers at each corner.
Most of them had placards; ‘End Israel’s Attacks on Gaza’. Perhaps this was more organised than Samuel had thought. Most of them were young women and students. Some appeared not to be Muslims. A few looked European and leading the charge, blowing furiously on her whistle, chanting the loudest, was a young white woman with a nose piercing and bright purple wellington boots.
Just as a police officer caught Samuel’s eye, he got off his bike and crossed the busy road. ‘Free Free Palestine’, he could now hear them shouting. He slowed as he neared the gate, and this time noticed some men, perhaps from the Middle East, possibly postgraduate students. One in his fifties, grey stubble, jacket and trousers, open-collared, was on the phone, shouting.
‘Yes, yes, we are here now’, his accent suggested Pakistani origin. ‘You can hear us! Come, please come, the police have blocked off the road for us.’ It was a call to the media, Samuel had no doubt, but he didn’t have time to contemplate this as the officer who had been watching from across the road turned to him.
‘Sir, if you’re going in, you’re going in, but I can’t just let you stand there,’
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Samuel. As soon as he walked in he saw the back of another officer, and Mrs Marshall peered her head from behind his broad shoulders at the sound of the door. Being inside made him realise just how dripping with sweat he was.
‘OK, Chief Inspector,’ she said. ‘But perhaps you could explain this to Samuel, he normally heads up security here.’ Her eyes were fixed on Samuel now, as he struggled to take off his helmet. He could sense her anger and disappointment; she had wanted him here earlier. She was watching him closely as he walked forward and the Chief Inspector introduced himself. Her recruit was now being put to the test.
The officer was explaining the road block outside. Chief Inspector Marple insisted there was no choice but to close the small road, citing public safety. There were too many people gathered, he claimed.
‘You had no right to do that,’ said Samuel, his tone measured but his demeanour serious. ‘They didn’t make contact with you beforehand, and now you’ve given them the whole street.’
‘I’m afraid the numbers were too high’, said Chief Inspector Marple.
‘And now they’ll be higher! They’re inviting the media, did you know that?’
Through the slightest shifting of her feet, Samuel could tell Mrs Marshall was siding with him. As the officer said he would speak to his Superintendent to pass on their ‘concerns’, Samuel could feel a split second glance from the woman next to him. Now, he was in the room.
Men like Khalil understood that feeling safe was as good as being safe for those around them. Mrs Marshall was reassured there was someone getting to grips with the situation who was only interested in the side of the gate she stood on. Samuel was doing his job.
But there was more to be done; there was the likelihood of the demonstration spilling over into something worse than it already was. He would be at the eye of the storm, long after the batons and blue lights retreated, congratulating each other on a job well done back at base.
As Marple went back outside, Mrs Marshall went into the main room. She returned moments later, this time with a dozen children, no older than ten, standing close in line behind her. Further behind there were four women.
‘Would it be safe for the kids to go home?’ Mrs Marshall asked. ‘Those whose parents are still at work normally get dropped off by someone else. That’s what we do for every Wednesday After School Club.’
‘Why don’t I go with them too?’ Samuel suggested.
‘Don’t you have to stay here?’
‘I’ll definitely be spending the night here, but for now it’s fine. There’s plenty of officers out there.’
It was completely dark outside now, and Samuel walked out in front. Still wearing his fluorescent waistcoat, he stood by a police officer and marshalled the herd of mothers and children. He watched the young faces as they walked past the deafening mob. They looked into the crowd, looked away, looked up to the adults, and carried on walking. They would never forget this, Samuel thought, as he assessed the circle of noise, wondering whether the protestors had the right to taint innocence in this way, wondering what the hell any of them really knew about the suffering they were campaigning against.
As he walked at the back of the glum line heading home, a bespectacled boy next to him looked up and asked. ‘Do those people hate us?’
Samuel considered the question and laughed for the first time that evening. He patted the boy on the head. ‘Very few people know what hatred really means.’
The boy started to kick away autumn leaves, and with the panic seemingly over, Samuel thought about his words. Of all of the places he had learnt of hatred, these quiet streets were not even on the radar. In his mind, only those who had seen for themselves the mess surrounding Israel could begin to understand.
He considered his small part in it almost twenty years before - as he and his battalion were forced to retreat from Ramallah; a feat brought on by Arafat, the old crook. It had to be hatred in its truest form if walking away was the most terrifying thing to do. In the years that followed, Samuel patrolled the border and with every bus bombed on Israeli soil he would wonder whether the streets they had just left were where the killing had been planned. He would look across the landscape and let fear and suspicion take hold; all borne from his own shocking experiences of watching lives bleed away.
But much as Samuel’s perspective helped him answer the boy’s question, this minor interference with a weekly suburban routine said a lot about the vain hope for peace in the world’s permanent war. A group of people had unified and agreed to go to the trouble of seeking out a Jewish landmark. Their message was partly true; innocent people in Gaza were dying at the hands of Israel, but what could Mrs Marshall do about that? Making a racket outside the embassy in London might be understandable but this was a plan at best not properly thought out, at worst proof of something altogether more depressing.
The protestors wanted to make Samuel’s community uncomfortable about what was happening in Gaza; they wanted to poison Jews with guilt. And while it was his job to make them feel safe, Samuel suspected these children would benefit from this experience in the long run. Much as their families tried to protect them with nice houses and big gardens, they would inevitably have to consider the bigger questions lurking with greater purpose than the vast oak trees that lined their neighbourhoods. They would be hounded, intimidated. Their parents would, in turn, give them a narrative that would prepare them and give them identity, but the justification would only increase the lines of division. Reputations and points of view. Debates, in Britain, the United States and the Arab world; it all mattered, Samuel had to concede. It all counted towards the net result.
It was a weary walk back to the synagogue. Samuel had found himself doing a circle, so was walking up the same stretch of Bury New Road he had cycled along barely an hour before. As he reached the final row of shops, he spotted a minicab - a black E-Class Mercedes, a posh car for a taxi. Two Asian men were sitting inside; the driver was powerfully built and grey at the sides, his passenger barely half his age, a scrawny young man with thick-rimmed g
lasses and a trendy haircut.
The younger man caught his eye and looked away too quickly for Samuel not to get suspicious, although he didn’t break his stride as he passed the car. Moments later it started up and did a U-turn. As it drove by both men looked across at Samuel, then pulled up barely twenty yards in front of him. He saw the open-collared man who had been on the phone to the media look both ways as he walked swiftly across the street and got in the back of the car.
As the Mercedes glided away, its red lights shining brightly in the crisp night, Samuel became aware the noise had intensified and a camera crew had arrived. Whatever he had just seen, there was no way the police, still busy with the crowd, had noticed anything. He would keep this to himself.
But for now Samuel allowed himself a slower walk alongside the protestors. Very few people know what hatred really means, he repeated in his head, trying to study the faces in front of him, thinking a sharp exit in a taxi suggested wanting to stir shit more than save Palestine.