Let It Be Morning

by Sayed Kashua

  When we were little, every now and then a whole family would descend on the village. All of their children would talk with strange accents, and suddenly, in the middle of the year, a new boy or girl would join our school, and we, the students, never liked them, those kids who talked funny. The teachers didn’t like them very much either. In fourth grade we got this kid from Um el-Fahm. Everyone referred to him as Fahmawi. When we were in middle school, there was a girl from Lydda. We called her Lydduya. These kids always hung out together and almost never exchanged a word with anyone else at school.

  Everyone said it was the police that had brought them to the village. The Fahmawi, for instance, was said to be the son of a murderer, who’d killed someone in Um el-Fahm and was serving time. The police had moved the whole family because of the risk that someone would try to take revenge. When it came to the girl from Lydda they said her father was a drug dealer who had squealed to the police, so that people in Lydda were out to get him, and that was why the whole family had been moved to our village.

  We knew we ought to be careful when it came to people with strange last names. Even our teachers always said that the police had forced the school to accept those kids. Otherwise they’d never have been admitted. Once the history teacher really screamed at the Lydduya, said they should just have stayed where they were, to die in Lydda, instead of being brought here to ruin our own children. The teacher said she was like a rotten tomato in a barrel, spoiling all the others. The whole class stared at the Lydduya, who was sitting on her own in the last row, standard procedure for the nonlocals. She burst into tears and clutched her head with both hands, but nobody took pity on her, even though she was a good student and was never out of line in class.

  Farres the Ramlawi must be forty by now. He’s been in the village for over fifteen years but he still speaks with a Ramlawi accent. I was in my second year in middle school when I heard his name for the first time. My parents were discussing the fact that our neighbor Ibtissam was going to marry the Ramlawi. I remember my mother was actually pleased, because maybe someone might get Ibtissam to pipe down. Ibtissam was quite old by then, over twenty-five, and everyone was sure nobody would ever marry her. Everyone said she was a little bit mad. She was forever fighting with the neighbors. My parents didn’t really like her but they were always nice to her, to make sure she didn’t throw any garbage at us or chop down the trees in our yard like she did to the other neighbors. She must have had about seven siblings, and they were all married by then. She had stayed on with her elderly father, who was wheelchair-bound and spent his time cursing the kids playing soccer across from their house. And however old he was, he was really strong and knew how to move fast in his wheelchair. We did whatever we could to keep our balls from falling in his yard, because he always sat outdoors, cursing and waiting for the balls, and when one did fall in his yard, he’d spring like a snake, wheelchair and all, lunging at the ball, clutching it in his arms, cursing and laughing gleefully, then go into the house to get a knife, and come up close to us to make sure we saw him rip the ball to shreds before handing it back.

  Everyone hated him. He was the reason we weren’t allowed to play ball outdoors at all, because somehow, sooner or later, the ball would land in their yard. Once, Khalil, our neighbor’s son, tried to chase his ball after it fell into Ibtissam’s father’s yard. It was a new ball and Khalil said his father would kill him if he lost it. He ran as fast as he could, but no one could outrun the old man’s wheelchair. Khalil didn’t give up, despite the old man’s screams, and jumped on him, crying, and struggled to prize the ball out of his arms. The old man wouldn’t let go. He laughed in Khalil’s face and promised to slash the ball with a knife. Khalil pulled at the ball with all his strength, and the old man fell out of his wheelchair and landed on the ground. Khalil, who had salvaged his ball, ran home. None of us dared approach the old man, who was crying uncontrollably, because we were afraid he’d beat us or stab us with his knife. He stayed there, on the ground, next to his overturned wheelchair, until Ibtissam got home and lifted him up. That day, she cursed everyone, and after her father told her it was Khalil who was to blame, she spent the next few hours swearing at him and his parents, then shattered their windows with big stones and promised to kill them unless they gave her father the ball. All of the neighbors tried to intervene and to get Ibtissam to let it go, but it was no use. In the end, Khalil’s parents brought Ibtissam’s father the ball. Khalil wept like a baby and promised that someday he would kill the bitch Ibtissam and her father, who ought to be dead anyway.

  Everyone was pleased to hear that Ibtissam was getting married. The women had begun calling her the Old Worm who would never find a husband, and suddenly there was her man, coming from Ramla. They were sure that once she was married she would leave the neighbors alone. I remember that I went to her wedding too. I’d never seen Ibtissam happy before, but on that day she was dancing away in her white dress, with her father in his wheelchair, and kissing everyone. That was when I realized Ibtissam was actually a nice woman.

  Farres the Ramlawi seemed like a good man, and the neighborhood rejoiced. They said he wasn’t like the other strangers, he hadn’t killed anyone, or if he had, it was his brother or his cousin who’d been involved in a murder in Ramla, and that Farres himself was a good person who’d once been a successful car mechanic before the police forced them to leave their home and move to our village.

  My mother said that who knows, maybe someday there would be a sulha truce between the two families and then Farres and Ibtissam would move to Ramla for good, and that it would all be for the best. How much longer did the old man have anyway? My mother always said he was counting the days.

  In fact, Ibtissam never left our neighborhood. One week after her wedding she came back home with Farres, and all the neighbors stood around looking at them as they entered their home with their luggage and a few pieces of furniture. Farres kept smiling and Ibtissam seemed very happy too. Later everyone said they must have made a deal: he would marry her and she would let him live in the house with her and her father. Her father died one month after she and her husband came back home, but she went on looking happy, as if his death hadn’t really fazed her. She didn’t get rid of the wheelchair. Just left it in the yard, and every now and then she’d sit in it and chase after our soccer balls.

  It wasn’t long before everyone hated the Ramlawi, and said that the old man had been an angel by comparison. My mother wouldn’t let us talk to him, even if he called us. Initially he would invite all of the neighbors’ children over to their house and he’d give us the ball and shout at Ibtissam if she tried to hold on to it. He seemed like a nice guy who liked children. Children would come to the house all the time. Some of them were older and some were in middle school, kids I knew. They would go into the house in groups of three or four, and Farres would always lock the door behind them.

  My brothers and I never talked with Farres or Ibtissam. My father said he was a pervert, but we didn’t know what that meant. Farres would stay home all day and never went to work. The groups of boys who came to see him kept growing larger. Sometimes they would knock on the door and Farres would open up and ask them to wait awhile, and they’d hang out in the yard until the previous group had left and Farres would invite the new group to come inside. He was always very nice, hugging them all and smiling at them: “Ahalan u-sahalan.”

  Once when we were playing soccer, Khalil told us that some of the kids in his class were going to Farres’s place very frequently, that Farres would show them sex videos and let them smoke cigarettes and drink beer. Khalil said it cost five shekels to watch a film and another five for the beer and two cigarettes.

  One day, Khalil’s father, who was a teacher in the middle school, got really pissed off and started yelling at his students as they approached Farres’s home, warning them not to go inside. “I’ll tell your parents,” he yelled. “I know you. Just wait and see what I do when you get to school tomorrow.” The kids got out of
there as fast as they could, and Farres kept coming out onto the balcony, smiling and taunting Khalil’s father. “You’re interfering with my work.” And Khalil’s father yelled back, “Is this what you call work? You should be ashamed of yourself.” And Farres said it was a shame that Khalil’s father didn’t show more respect to a cinema professional like himself.

  PART FOUR

  Sewage

  1

  In the evening, several hundred young men are recruited to get the job done as quickly as possible. All those who’d spent the morning waving green flags and red flags and Palestinian flags have volunteered to round up the illegal workers. In vans, cars and trucks, they’re doing whatever they can. The noise of the engines fills the dark village streets, with nothing showing except headlights. The operation began late at night, but still, many people are awake, peeping out of their windows, staring from their balconies, sitting in their yards and looking on. Some are even cracking sunflower seeds. The whole family has congregated in my parents’ home again. The two children—mine and my brother’s—are sleeping in my parents’ bed. My younger brother is trying to study by candlelight, straining to prepare for the exam the following morning, but finally he gives up. From time to time we hear the wail of a siren or the sound of someone screaming, probably egging the workers on. Why the hell can’t they at least go about it less callously?

  The car radios in the vehicles driven by the village youth are playing loud music, and the drivers are honking rhythmically to signal they’re transporting workers. They’re rounding them all up in the yard of my wife’s school, not far from our home. Every now and then my mother, who’s feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing, curses the Jews. My wife says the villagers are behaving like animals. She says they are animals, and always have been. Why did they have to choose the most repulsive people for the job? Couldn’t they have done it quietly, by persuasion? Couldn’t they at least say they were sorry? Luckily, being Arabs, they’re not drafted into the Border Police or the army. They’d make the most brutal soldiers in the world.

  My heart is beating hard, and my head is about to burst. We stay at my parents’ home until late at night. Finally the noise of the cars stops and it seems like the job has been completed. The only remaining noise is coming from the schoolyard nearby. Occasionally we hear one of the workers shout, “Haram aleikum,” but someone soon snaps at him to shut up. My father has never looked so defeated. You can see him in the candlelight, sitting in his white plastic chair with tears streaming down his face.

  We leave our daughter with my parents. My wife falls asleep right away, right after her shower. I don’t have the heart to shout at her, even though it really was irresponsible of her. How the hell could she sleep so well? I try to fall asleep too but it’s no use. I pace the house for hours. From time to time I lie down on the bed, shut my eyes and then get up again, go up on the roof and look at the blue headlights of the jeeps. I light a cigarette and listen to the engines running, much louder than before. I wonder if the workers at the school have been able to sleep at all.

  2

  Three buses, belonging to the company that used to transport the workers to work and back belong to one of the richest men in the area, are lined up at the gate of the schoolyard at daybreak. I can see them from our rooftop, loading up the workers—more than one hundred in all. A few armed thugs get on each bus to keep an eye on them. I get the car and head toward the road that leads out of the village. To my surprise, thousands are waiting, dressed for work, they’re convinced that once we hand over the workers they’ll be free to leave. The mayor, the village council members and a few of the village dignitaries are standing at the exit, also waiting for the buses.

  The workers get out, their heads down, and march in the direction the villagers point to. From time to time, one of them sobs and begs for pity. The mayor orders his men to line up the workers. More and more troops join the two tanks standing six hundred feet away, and the soldiers get into position and point their weapons. The mayor waves a white flag and shouts as loud as he can that they’re handing over the illegal workers. A council member takes a bullhorn, the one they used the night before to shout anti-Israel slogans, and yells out their intentions. The soldiers don’t respond. The mayor orders the workers to put their hands up and tells the first one to hold up the white flag in his right hand. Two young men place planks across the barbed wire so the workers can walk across. The first worker, tall and thin, climbs up onto the plank. He is shaking, and he starts staggering across. As he approaches the other side, he takes a bullet, lets out a half shout and drops to the ground. He’s been hit in the heart. The workers all duck, and some get down on the ground. The workers start yelling and crying, and try to escape to the rear, but they’re blocked by the villagers. The mayor shouts into the bullhorn that nobody will be allowed to leave. The workers sob and plead for their lives. I stand to the side, at a distance, bent over, breathing hard and making sure to stay out of range. I see Mohammed, the harelip. He looks the least concerned of any of them. The mayor and his aides decide to try again, apparently convincing themselves that the soldiers had only shot because they thought one of the workers was hiding explosives under his clothing. The mayor gives his orders and the sobbing workers are stripped brutally by thugs and by others who’ve always hated them. The workers who try to resist are kicked hard in the ribs. They curse the whole time, are slapped and clubbed and are made to line up again, wearing nothing but underpants.

  The mayor chooses one of them, who may look a little older than the rest, and orders him to go to the head of the line. The worker pleads, bends over, sobs, asks for pity in the name of God, and the mayor explains there’s no choice. “It’s all because of people like you,” one of the local young men shouts at him. “You wanted al-Aqsa, didn’t you? Well, you’re on your own. Just look what a mess you’ve made for us.”

  Trembling all over, practically naked, the first worker climbs up onto the planks, carrying a flag in his hand. He tries to cross over, step by step, slowly, getting down on all fours and inching his way forward over the body of the first worker who was shot. Another shot is heard. The second worker doesn’t move. He’s lying on top of the first one. A great cry cuts through the air. The workers begin shouting with all their might, heart-rending cries, weeping and sobbing. Many of the villagers are shouting too. “Haram, enough, they don’t want them.” More and more people arrive at the scene. Women too. The older women, who are supposed to wear a white kerchief, rush toward the roadblock, crying and begging for the workers to be allowed to leave, protecting them with their own bodies. They shout at the mayor and his men and swear that God should make them burn in hell. They grab the planks that have been laid across the barbed wire and try to use them to pull away the two bodies. The body of the second worker, the one in underpants, falls over to the other side. The women succeed in pulling in the first one. The men all move away. Only the women and children remain. The workers, weeping, gather up their clothing. Nobody speaks to them.

  The commotion at the entrance is over. Just a few children remain, patrolling near the roadblock on their bikes and watching the soldiers and the tanks. I walk back, passing by the fountain that the mayor had dedicated with much pomp and circumstance, which was supposed to welcome the Saturday shoppers into the village. The fountain isn’t working. There’s no electricity. The water seems dirtier than ever. Cans and cigarette butts and other trash thrown in by the thousands who have huddled at the village entrance over the past two days are floating on the water.

  Shopkeepers are standing in the doorways of their stores watching the crowd and waiting to find out what’s going to happen. The shops aren’t exactly open for business. Almost all of them make do with a small opening, by lifting the metal barrier only partway. That way the shopkeepers will be able to lock up in a hurry if the mayhem starts again. They’re here out of habit, but they came knowing perfectly well that they won’t be selling any furniture or appliances today. One of them,
tall and fat, about fifty years old, is standing in the doorway of his grocery store holding a cup of coffee. I walk toward him, and when he sees me he asks from a distance, “What are you looking for?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  “Don’t have any,” he says, and rubs his hands together to indicate there’s almost nothing left.

  The green garbage pails bearing the signature of the local council are fuller than ever. Their lids have been removed and the residents can pile up pyramids of garbage. There are heaps of garbage all around. There’s no more fuel for the garbage trucks. The farther you go up the street leading into the village, the higher the garbage, and the stench grows stronger with every step you take. Big bags of meat and dairy products that have gone bad have been thrown in the garbage or placed nearby. Swarms of flies, as well as cats and dogs, are fighting over the new treasures, more bountiful than anything they’d dared to expect in this village.

  3

  I soon discover how badly I miscalculated when I decided to take a shortcut home by cutting through the village center. There’s no escaping the putrid smell coming from the piles of garbage that almost block off the little alleyways winding between the old homes in the village center, many of them a hundred years old or more. I try not to breathe through my nose and to take quick little breaths, holding the air in my lungs for as long as possible. What’s happened to these people? The garbage isn’t collected for one day and the village turns into one big dump? Never mind the ones who put out their garbage the day before, thinking it would be collected as usual. The real problem began with those big, ugly women with their heads covered in a kerchief, who just go on putting out their garbage and piling it higher and higher in the doorways. They must think of themselves as people with good hygiene. Why don’t the neighbors take some initiative and clean the neighborhood? Why don’t they move the garbage farther away to the outskirts of the village, for heaven’s sake? What are they thinking?