by Sayed Kashua
Where does he get the courage to be outside now? How can he stay so calm? His speech is unchanged, while I do my best to control the quiver in my voice. “Your mother was worried about you, so I came to check. Your brother is fine too. I knocked on their door before. His wife was crying and the boy, poor thing, couldn’t stop crying and shaking. I told them to come be with us. You too. Our house is the safest, though it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any more shooting. Looks like they stopped. In any case, just come over if you’re scared. It’ll soon be morning anyway.”
My father’s visit does reassure me. The very thought that you can walk around outside, that they’re not shooting at everything within sight of their night-vision binoculars, is comforting. They really aren’t interested in ordinary citizens like us. They’re looking for specific people. A soldier is a human being, after all, I tell myself, and a human being can’t shoot at someone else just like that. There’s no chance they’ll shoot at random. Nobody wants to kill people for no apparent reason.
My wife would rather we didn’t go out at this hour. She wants us to stay home for now. We’ll come out of the bathroom, but we’ll stay on the bottom floor. I get two blankets from the bedroom. We put the baby on the sofa and cover her. She’s fallen back asleep. I sit down beside my wife. Every noise makes us turn to look. I feel her body, which is still shaking, and cover her with a blanket. “That’s it, it’s over. Stop trembling, I’m telling you, the worst is over. The whole thing is over. Finished.”
“You were right. We really did need to look at the whole thing differently. You were right. We really did need to expect the worst.”
“There’s no point in waiting any longer. I’m telling you, we’re through with all that. You’ll see, tomorrow we’ll have water again, and electricity and the telephone lines will work, and on the news they’ll tell the whole story behind this. We’ll go back to work, and everything will be okay.”
She leans her head on my shoulder. Her warm cheeks make me shiver, and it feels good. For the first time I can feel her seeking reassurance from me, seeing me as a haven for her emotions. For the first time I feel her turning to me for protection. I hold my arm around her shoulder and, like a doting mother, tuck in her blanket. I kiss her tear-stained cheeks. She falls asleep with her head on my shoulder and I stay beside her, feeling the warmth of her body and her breathing on my neck.
The darkness changes shades and turns pale, but there’s still no light outside. Very slowly I loosen my hold on my wife’s shoulder. Gently I move away and let the sofa take the place of the shoulder on which her head was resting. I look for the pack of cigarettes that I left on the dresser. I light one and stand by the window. Apart from the sound of engines in the background, it seems like the dawning of a particularly mild summer’s day.
I go into my office on the lower floor and turn on the radio, keeping the volume down, to listen to the six A.M. news. It begins with an item saying that Israeli Arabs from our village had attacked IDF soldiers. It’s the first time Israeli Arabs are referred to as terrorists. According to the news, people in our village opened fire on an IDF patrol in the area. “There were no casualties to IDF forces. The soldiers returned fire at those who had fired from within the village.”
It’s becoming pretty clear to me now that this business is not over. On the contrary, according to the reports, it’s getting worse. I find it hard to believe anyone shot at the soldiers. Who in this village could do such a thing? There’s nothing organized here, no Hamas, no Jihad, no front of any kind. Maybe soldiers heard an explosion and decided someone was shooting at them, but it’s much likelier that the army has concocted this story of a shooting as a good excuse to retaliate. And what about the military patrol they mentioned on the news? And what about the closure? They must have been instructed to use the word patrol. Otherwise what would they say? How could they suddenly start talking about roadblocks and closures?
The news reports keep on referring to things being completely peaceful in the cities of the West Bank and Gaza, and to intensive meetings between Israelis and Palestinians. It occurs to me that maybe this lull and those meetings they keep talking about are yet another kind of media double-talk for something altogether different. And why wouldn’t they lie about what’s happening there if they completely ignore the new reality of our village, and perhaps this applies to all the other Arab villages inside Israel as well? But the few Arab radio stations that I manage to pick up, like Voice of Cairo and Jordanian Radio, also speak of meetings and of calm in the territories. Why would I expect an Arab radio station or an international one to discuss Israeli Arabs? Who are they anyhow?
PART FIVE
The Procession of Armed Men
1
My wife and daughter are still asleep. I decide to make breakfast for my little girl. I’ll let my wife sleep it off. There’s plenty of powdered milk, I tell myself, enough for a whole week more. I push the cup right under the faucet in the kitchen sink so as not to lose a single drop. I turn it, but all I get is a few drips. Though I’d figured we still had another half tank of water on the roof, there’s no water. I climb upstairs, out to the roof and look out over the horizon. The military tanks are still there, surrounded by small figures in green uniforms. I glance at the water tank and discover that the lid has been removed and thrown to the side. I look inside. It’s completely empty. Someone has stolen our water. I put my hands to my head. My breathing quickens. From my roof, I can see my brother’s and I can tell that the tank on his roof is uncovered too. Those bastards, I’ll kill them, those SOBs. Why the hell didn’t I think of it? How could I be so careless when things were like this, how could I be such an asshole? There’s nothing easier, after all, than climbing up on the roof and stealing water, but who’s the SOB who would do such a thing? A strong pain darts through my head. I try to take deep breaths, to get my breathing back to normal, but to no avail. I feel a strong urge to scream as loud as I can. I grit my teeth and, without stopping to think about what’s happening to me, I clench my fist and start bashing the empty tank, which responds with a powerful echo.
All of my calculations are off now. But things will be okay, I tell myself. If need be, we’ll steal water. The question is where we’ll steal it from. Who has any water left? I bet those scumbags climbed up on the roof and could hardly believe their eyes when they saw so much water, the SOBs. They took it all, didn’t leave us so much as a drop. I go back down, trying to calm myself, thinking how we can manage with the bottles I bought and hid in the pantry. I count them again. There are five bottles of water and seven of Coke. My parents must have a few more, and I need to find out how many my brother has. This could last us no more than three days. We’ll use them for nothing but drinking. The water will be for the children—my brother’s and mine. I convince myself that a three-day supply is all we need. If it lasts longer than three more days, other people will starve to death before we do, and it’s inconceivable that any army or any country in the world would let people collapse that way, let little children die of thirst and hunger before their very eyes. The commanders must know what things are like in this village, down to the last detail. They know perfectly well that nobody has died of malnutrition yet. They’re undoubtedly eyeing the village through their binoculars all the time, and I bet they have their people on the inside, reporting to them about everything that happens. Bastards. I’m sure it’s those collaborators who stole our water. They ought to be killed.
I take another bottle of water out of the pantry and pour some of it into the baby’s bottle. I won’t have any myself. Suddenly I feel a twinge of shame about how I skimped on water but never gave any thought to theft. How could I have overlooked the possibility of theft damn it? Don’t I remember where I am? Had I known the water would be stolen, I would at least have had a shower first. I’ve never been so filthy and smelly in my life.
The baby’s bottle is ready. I leave it on the counter and have another cigarette by the window. It’s still ear
ly in the morning, and people are in no hurry to leave their homes. You can hear the crying of babies in the homes nearby. My parents must be awake by now, but I’ll wait till my wife and daughter wake up and then we’ll join them. The baby is the first to wake up. I lift her off the sofa, hug her, say good morning in the tone that she’s grown used to. I wonder if she’s aware of what’s going on around her. I put the bottle to her lips and she clasps it tightly and starts drinking. Ever since she was born, I’ve been worrying. In the early months I worried about crib death, about unexpected reactions to inoculations, about road accidents, about childhood illnesses. Sometimes I’d wake up in a panic and go check if she was still breathing. It never occurred to me that I’d actually have to worry about her having enough to eat. I never imagined a moment when I’d picture my little girl starving to death or lying on her bed bleeding after a bullet hit her. Scenes of children killed in the Intifada run through my mind. I think of the funerals and the posters of Palestinian babies who’d had half their skulls shot off, or photographs taken at hospitals, of babies with blood-soaked diapers, babies who had died and looked as if they were just asleep. Israeli TV doesn’t actually show pictures of dead Jewish babies. They make do with pictures of the child when he or she was still alive. I hold my daughter tight, clutching her. The sound of her sucking on her bottle intensifies my fears. It’s the first time I feel hopeless. Because until now, despite all we’ve been through, I knew I’d manage somehow and one way or another I’d figure out a way for my loved ones and myself to survive.
My wife wakes up and turns her head nervously till she sees me and the baby. “What happened?” she asks, concerned. “Everything’s okay,” I quickly reassure her. I move closer and finger her hair, hoping she still wants my support. She bows her head, trying to sort out what has happened to her during the night and to figure out how much of it was reality and how much a dream. She takes the baby from me, with the bottle still in her mouth, places her in her lap and asks, “Was there any more shooting after I fell asleep? Have they left?” I shrug. “No, they didn’t shoot any more after that. I don’t know if they’ve left,” I lie. “I haven’t gone outdoors yet. We’ll go over to my parents’ soon and find out what’s going on. But I don’t think there’s going to be any school today.”
2
There is nobody in the streets except the Palestinian workers. The mayor and villagers have ordered them to collect the garbage and dispose of it in the soccer field at the outskirts of the village. People are in no hurry to leave their homes this morning. They’re suspicious, still unable to figure out what exactly was happening during the night and what the shooting was all about. The Palestinians are the only ones still working. Some of them see us making our way to our parents’ home and make a sign for food by putting their hands to their mouths. I ignore their gestures, not because I don’t care but because I don’t want to give the impression that we have any food left. I shrug as if to indicate I wished I had some. My parents’ house looks dirtier than usual. There are spots on the floor despite my mother’s attempts to get rid of them with a dry rag. The fact that their tank would run dry before ours was to be expected. Their home has always been the place where everyone congregated and where everything happened, a kind of extended-family living room. We ate most of our meals there even before all this began, and Mother was never one to skimp on food or water. But my calculations were off and in fact somehow the faucets in my parents’ home remain the last ones from which we can still squeeze a few glasses of water.
“Do you believe it? They’ve stolen our water,” my brother greets me. “They climbed up on my roof and yours and stole the water.” He tells me this as if it were new to me. For him it is yet another thing to tell, and he is very agitated as he says it—more agitated to be standing there and telling me such things than he is at the implications of his report. I nod and look at my wife, who is becoming even more anxious. “It isn’t so terrible,” I reply at once, but I’m actually thinking of my wife as I say it. “I bought a few bottles of drinks that should last us quite a while. I promise you that even though they’ve stolen our water, we’ll be the last ones in the village to run out. By then everything will be okay.”
My response has a mildly calming effect on them all, though I’ve allowed myself a deliberate overstatement. I explain that from now on, water will be used for nothing but drinking, and it should be for the children only. We’ll manage on fruit juice or carbonated drinks. “No more cooking with water,” I tell my mother. “And let’s not even think of tea or coffee. One thing’s for sure: we’ve got to guard whatever food and water we have left against thieves. I suggest we bring everything we have and put it here, at Mother and Father’s house, the only place that always has people in it. The safest place for the important things is right here.”
My two brothers join me. We begin at my house. I get a few large plastic garbage bags to use for moving the food. “We don’t want anyone to see what we’re moving,” I say. At first they laugh at the quantities of food I’ve bought, the bags of rice and flour and the canned goods. There isn’t much we can do with the rice and flour without water anyway, so we only take the drinks, the baby food and the cans. There was less than I’d expected in my older brother’s house. He had no drinks left at all. Mostly he had potatoes, wafers and candy bars.
3
There’s the sound of heavy shooting again, but not the same as last night, and there’s lots of noise in the next street. As we all duck and the women start screaming, Father goes outside, unperturbed, to see what’s going on. “It’s just shooting,” he says. “Some local guys shooting in the air. Come see for yourselves.” My brother and I go out, and the women and children stay indoors. A large group, several dozen men, their faces covered in blue-and-red checkered kaffiyehs, are making their way down the road with their weapons held high. Every once in a while one of the men presses the trigger, letting loose a round of shots. A group of children are following them along, some dragging their bikes, trying to get close enough to inspect the weapons. Every time one of the guys shoots, the children cheer.
The next-door neighbors come out too and stand in their doorways to watch the show, a first for us. They gather around, and we join them. Some of them already know that the young men from the village have shot at the soldiers. A few of the neighbors are saying the guys actually managed to kill some soldiers at the roadblock and that this accounted for all the shooting during the previous night. They hit a few houses, but nobody in the village was killed. The younger children say they’ve already seen the houses that were hit, that the bullets were enormous and made holes through the walls of the buildings they hurt, and that it’s a miracle nobody was hit.
A few of the older women shout with joy at the sight of the armed men, as if they were warriors about to liberate the village from a siege. The young men’s face coverings are not enough to conceal their identities. On the contrary—they are all well known and are recognized in no time. All of them have a criminal record, they are members of a gang that steals cars and pushes drugs, the kind of gang that have become an inseparable part of the local scene. Now the women are shouting and treating them like war heroes. Their attempt at imitating well-known Palestinian scenes is pathetic. What can they be thinking? And just what organization do they belong to? The pitiful scene of drug dealers and thieves roaming the village streets like some kind of new heroes can only mean bad news. They are being joined by more and more people ostensibly wanting to be part of the victory march, following them, showing support and cheering. The villagers seem to have decided on a new form of leadership, headed by criminals who acquired their weapons for illegal purposes, definitely not nationalistic ones. What exactly does the nationalist consciousness of those people consist of? Not that this matters anymore. They’ve got their weapons, they’ve got a hold on the village and now everyone is supposed to cheer and salute them.
The neighbors go on standing in the road, trying to find somewhere not covered with
sewage, and follow the procession till it disappears out of sight. They name the gang members they’ve recognized. Some of them think the idea of turning into mujahideen overnight laughable, others are all in favor and say that maybe this way the army will withdraw. They go on to discuss events of the previous night, the enormous panic caused by the shooting, how they thought we were being overrun by tanks and helicopters.
“Let’s just hope they don’t shoot again tonight. I want the children to get some sleep,” one of them says.
“First you’ll have to persuade the new fighters not to shoot. Who is their leader anyway?”
“Why shouldn’t they shoot? At least to hit them, to make them suffer a little. What they’re doing to us is bad enough. We have nothing left to feed the children. Just stale bread, and no water at all. How much longer are we going to put up with it?”
“It’s the mayor’s responsibility. I bet his house is packed with food.”
“What do they want anyway? If they don’t reconnect the water today and let in some food, we’re going to starve to death. What’s going on here? Where are our members of the Knesset? Where are the left-wingers? This is the fourth day, and nobody is saying a thing. What are they trying to do, kill us by dehydration? Even on the West Bank they never did that.”