This Is Not A Border

by Ahdaf Soueif

  This left one other person. On my way to Lifta she called to say there were clashes in East Jerusalem so she couldn’t join me. This is common in Palestinian life. There is no easy way to explain. The restrictions on freedom and movement are interminable and they’re all down to Israeli law: checkpoints, the Green Line, Areas A, B and C and whatever identity card or passport people hold. Gazans aren’t permitted into the West Bank or anywhere. West Bank residents can’t go to the 1948 territories unless given a special permit, and those are rare. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship can’t live in the West Bank, and Palestinians in the diaspora are refugees and can’t live in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza. And Jerusalem blue-card holders are under constant threat of losing their residency. Wherever Palestinians are dispersed in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, in refugee camps in the Arab world, or displaced worldwide, they are confined to the particularities of whatever boundaries – national or physical, psychological or emotional – they were dealt after 1948. Can writers create in such a ceaseless twister of interruptions, barricades and heartaches? For nearly seven decades Palestinian writers’ oeuvres have contributed to Palestinian, Arabic and other literatures; they have left notable and cherished poetry collections, novels, plays and memoirs. But I can’t help imagining how much more they could have created.

  I don’t actually make it to Lifta until the following year, when I hike the steep slopes with my friend from Jerusalem. We allow the stones, like cascades of stars, to guide us. We stay silent. What could be said amid such beauty, such horror, such grief, such love. The wild flowers speak to us. The jasmine and lavender speak to us. The empty old stone houses, gems of our heritage, our identity, speak to us. The olive trees speak to us. The mill speaks to us. The ancient spring speaks to us. The ghosts roaming the village speak to us. The bride and the groom from 1947, who haven’t aged a day, speak to us. And we listen. We mostly listen. What we hear: although there is nothing more to lose, no power has ever been able to steal memory.

  Writers safeguard memories. We spot a Palestinian sunbird. It has orange tufts at the sides of its breast. My friend tells me as a child she would look for them, and that this one is a male sunbird because its black feathers are lustrous blue in the sunlight. A blue so electric it mystifies us like a poem does when it appears on the page. We sit under one of the arches of the old houses; we lean on the stones, cooling. The village is a perfect symphony of mystical green. The dry patches in between like sheets of hay, rough and songful. And the girl on the bus comes to guide me as I memorise Lifta.

  My mind veers. I think of the expropriated Jerusalem houses not far away in the neighbourhoods of Talbiyah, Qatamon and Musrara, the ones that my sister so painfully researched and powerfully unfurled in her interactive web documentary art, ‘Dream Homes Property Consultants’.

  Then I stop. Beauty is a scar. History is a room. Longing is a gale.

  Five o’clock. Summer 2015. A year has passed since the fifty-day hammering of Gaza and Israel’s annexation, only a few days after the Gaza ceasefire, of nearly 1,000 acres of West Bank land in a Jewish settlement bloc near Bethlehem, which the international press called ‘the biggest land grab in a generation’. The telephone rings; the voice says, ‘Look outside your window.’ I do. ‘Look down,’ he adds. It could have been a Romeo and Juliet scene except the tired lines on his face tell me he can’t entertain even the illusion of our hearts. Who can, when seven miles is a long-distance journey? The once sister cities Bethlehem and Jerusalem are now separated by a wall, and love needs a permit issued by an occupying power.

  We manage to smile and drive through the old city before it wakes. We pass through my mother’s quarter, Harat Al-Tarajmeh. I see my grandmother’s school, the former ateliers of the mother-of-pearl artisans and the stone houses of close and extended families. This is where I understand myself best, amid these limestones, these slender streets, in these courtyards, in these hundred stairs of the old city, under these arches, with Jerusalem before me and this person beside me.

  We end up as we often do, having a conversation by the Nativity Church. Casa Nova, to be precise. Not long afterwards we exit our hearts as we exit our bodies. We never reach our wounds nor get to our words on time. I memorise his hand instead of saying goodbye.

  December. Every year Christians worldwide celebrate Christmas. Some will come to Bethlehem. They will be told not to buy anything in the birthplace of Jesus because the natives are dangerous and untrustworthy – even best to leave their wallets with their Israeli tour guide. While the faithful pray, the natives of Palestine will apply for permits to enter religious sites. Few visitors will discover what UNOCHA reports: that ‘more than 85 per cent of Bethlehem governorate is designated as Area C, the vast majority of which is off limits for Palestinian development, including almost 38 per cent declared as “firing zones”, 34 per cent designated as “nature reserves”, and nearly 12 per cent allocated for settlement development’. That Bethlehem, along with Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, is surrounded on three sides by the segregation wall. That ‘farmers in at least twenty-two communities across the governorate require visitor permits or prior coordination to access their privately owned land located behind the Barrier or in the vicinity of settlements’. That ‘over 100,000 Israeli settlers reside in 19 settlements and settlement outposts across the governorate, including in those parts de facto annexed by Israel to the Jerusalem municipality’. While they pray the systematic and discriminatory policy of revoking the residency of Palestinians in Jerusalem will continue. While they pray writers will warn. Hearts will hurt. Rivers will be ruins. Words will be wounds. While they pray love will ask the Song of Songs for love. While they pray the daily, painful execution will continue. While they pray.

  PAKISTAN/PALESTINE

  Mohammed Hanif

  MOHAMMED IN JERUSALEM

  I met the only Jewish Pakistani in Israel by accident. It turned out he had also ended up there through a historic misunderstanding. I wasn’t looking for him. He wasn’t expecting me. In the last days of the last millennium, just before the millennium bug was predicted to wipe out all our computer memory, there were reliable rumours of peace between Israel and Palestine.

  The proof of this impending peace was in my passport. I was given a reporting visa by the Israeli embassy in London on a Pakistani passport. They were understanding enough not to stamp the visa on the passport. I had grown up with a green passport which said in bold letters, ‘Valid for travel to all countries of the world except Cuba and Israel.’ I was convinced that peace was about to break out when I reported to the Directorate of Censors in Jerusalem and discovered all its staff was on strike. Having lived under various forms of censorship in Pakistan (from midnight knocks to what your uncle will think of what you are writing), I found it exhilarating: when your directorate of censorship goes on strike, who is there to fear?

  Hours later, trying to score a drink, I was terrified. Like a naive tourist who believes that the best way to get to know a city is to get lost in the city, I tried to walk into random shops and cafes and bars. When I tried this in the upmarket district of West Jerusalem I was pounced upon at the doors. Your name? Your ID? And as I presented my passport with the hope of hearing, Oh where is Pakistan? What brings you to our country? I was told, We don’t allow. I almost wanted to say ‘But I am not Palestinian’ but I realised it all probably sounded the same.

  I retreated to the safety of the Jerusalem Hotel, where a tour operator with three mobile phones gave weary directions to lost souls like me. I decided to stick to East Jerusalem and observe peace from safe quarters. Here, the American Colony hotel could host an Iftar and put up Christmas decorations without being pelted by folks who don’t approve of Iftar or Christmas. Al-Kasaba theatre could host rehearsals for an absurdist play and the actors could dream of taking their plays to international absurdist theatre festivals.

  On Shabbat Israeli kids drove to Ramallah to have ice cream and drove back without killing anyone.

  I we
nt to late-night concerts in Ramallah. I had ice cream. I heard stories about the Palestinian Authority’s corruption. When people start complaining about dug-out roads and traffic jams, you know that progress is on the march.

  PAKISTAN IN RAMLA

  After a few days of wandering around I decided to visit Ramla, where I had heard lots of Indians lived. This seemed like a story I could sell – a hey, look, Indian people living in the promised land type of story. I arrived in a synagogue on the evening of Hanukkah celebrations. There was a group of journalists from India on an official visit who arrived at the same time I entered the synagogue. Ramla seemed like one of those Gulf towns where men from the subcontinent go to live in semi-slavery so that their families can have WCs and LCD televisions. Inside the synagogue it seemed like a small-town Indian wedding. Or Pakistani wedding. You can never tell. Families dressed in shiny clothes, Indian sweets, incense.

  I was taken for one of the Indian journalists’ delegation and garlanded. Indians, I thought, can’t help themselves; even if you arrive as a stranger in the middle of a Jewish shanty town, they will put garlands around your neck and expect you to make speeches. Indian delegates stood up one by one and lectured their audience about how lucky they were to have left Indian poverty and caste-ism behind, how they must stay faithful to Israel and the idea of Israel.

  I was also asked to make a speech. I tried to clarify that I wasn’t actually part of the delegation but I was glad to be here, thanks for the garland, thanks for the sweets; I was here to listen to their stories. And by the way I am not from India, I am from Karachi. I don’t know why, but I didn’t use the word Pakistan, as if that would make me sound like the enemy. As I uttered the word Karachi someone sobbed loudly in the audience. After the speeches a middle-aged man approached me. He was Daniel from Karachi. He was full of memories about places that didn’t exist any more. That Irani restaurant? Gone. Minerva cinema? Demolished. He kept referring to his synagogue in Karachi as ‘our mosque in Karachi’. He had nice things to say about the late dictator General Ayub Khan. He was very optimistic about our then current dictator, General Pervez Musharraf. He was pleased with his own leader, Ariel Sharon. ‘Our nation needs strong man.’ I assumed by ‘nation’ he meant the people of Karachi. His family had moved here in the late 60s. ‘There was no trouble but our family moved because of better economic prospect.’ I asked him if his family had done well. He took me aside and gave me a short lecture about the inner politics of Ramla. ‘You see we are the only Pakistani family here. Rest are all Indians. Even my in-laws are Indian. But you know these Indians, they never accept us Pakistanis as their equals. They can never see us do well. So that’s a big problem.’ I was pleasantly surprised to see the Jewish diaspora divided along Indian–Pakistani lines. Some of us might go to the promised land but we are bringing our enemies with us.

  PEACE IS COMING

  I had seen the occupation only from a distance; in poetry, newspapers and very occasionally on TV. It was hard to imagine how you could have peace and occupation. I went to meet al-Aqsa’s grand mufti and found some Israeli police officers sitting in his office. They were drinking tea and talking. Were they talking peace? I pestered my host for translation. He told me half-heartedly they were talking about archaeology. An archaeologist came in with a map and waved his hands in despair. My host told me that Ariel Sharon wanted to visit. And that would not be good for peace. The archaeologist kept pointing to the map and issuing warnings, the Israeli policemen kept having tea, the mufti kept smiling a benign smile.

  Sharon wouldn’t visit for a while and the illusion of peace would last a bit longer. You want proof? Count the number of new cafes coming up in the areas under Palestinian authority. You don’t build cafes if you are expecting a war. He would come the following year, and all the peace-mongers would shut up.

  In Bethlehem, right across from the Church of the Nativity, a Palestinian family was busy building the future. They had just migrated back from the United States and they had set up a posh restaurant. They opened days before Jesus Christ’s 2000th birthday. It was a charming family enterprise; the owner and his teenage sons and daughters worked alongside other waiters. As young boys and girls balanced their plates amid the tourists who had flocked to this new establishment, I could imagine generations living off it. Peace means prosperity, I thought. When divinity meets commerce, everyone wins. Who would ever mess with Bethlehem? With the Church of the Nativity? They can mess with Palestinians but not with Bethlehem. It belongs to billions of Christians around the world. With so much optimism in the air my meal tasted divine.

  Only about a year later, sitting at my desk far away, I saw the Church of the Nativity being shelled by Israeli forces. I didn’t worry about the birthplace of Jesus, but I was heartbroken when I saw the restaurants and shops around it being reduced to rubble. Billions of Christians around the world couldn’t save a little establishment that promised fine food for pilgrims.

  And why stop at Jesus’ birthplace when you can go and do the same with the last resting place of the grandpa of all prophets?

  HOW TO EXILE THE PROPHET OF PROPHETS

  A fact universally acknowledged, at least by those who believe in one god, is that Abraham was an uber-prophet. I am sure there is a religious sect somewhere which believes that he wasn’t such a big deal, but for all Muslims, Christians and people of Jewish faith, he was the cuddly grandad loved by all. In 1999 I went to Hebron. As compared to the battle-hardened worshippers at al-Aqsa or the frenzy in front of the Wailing Wall, Hebron seemed like a large village festival.

  There was an iron grille running through Abraham’s last resting place though, neatly partitioning this grandest of graves. The massacre of the Cave of the Patriarch had happened and ostensibly to protect Abraham’s grandchildren from each other the Israeli government had taken its favourite administrative measure: put in a partition so that Jews on the one hand, and Muslims and people of other faiths on the other, could come and pay their respects without having to stand in the same queue. A partitioned grave was a grim sign, but outside it was a non-stop shopping festival. Here shopkeepers didn’t bother with your religion or ethnicity. I was reassured that despite having many children and spawning many religions the patriarch had united us in the pursuit of commerce. My faith was restored in the healing powers of haggling for cheap trinkets. For thousands of years people of all three faiths had been coming to his last resting place. It was one of those blessed places where a mausoleum is the centre of the economy. All you need to do is get a little shack, stuff it with vaguely religious stuff and wait for the suckers to come. In these shops you could find ivory crosses, figurines of the Son of God in a dozen poses, little phials of holy water, little phials of holy earth, daggers, swords, freshly antiquated urns, and for some vague reason those jingly belts that belly dancers wear.

  With such a grand variety of merchandise and a spectrum of potential buyers that covers two thirds of the world’s population, Hebron would never go out of business.

  Ten years later I visited Hebron with PalFest. Not only had it gone out of business, but for the first time I saw a proper ghost town. Once a living, throbbing centre of spirituality and commerce, Hebron was completely locked down. The mosque and the partitioned grave were locked up. The area around the mosque was completely locked up. Most of the residents of the area evicted. All the glorious little shops shut down. God’s own economy in a meltdown.

  This was all to calm down a few hundred Jewish settlers who had descended from the United States and Canada. Israeli kid soldiers patrolled the streets in full battle gear. They trained their guns at any visitor who managed to come near the mosque. These kids had come to wage a battle against their long-dead grandpa and predictably won. I have never seen a more scary bunch of teenagers.

  A COUNTRY RUN BY TEENAGERS

  The irrepressible urge to slap an Israeli teenager in uniform waving a gun at your head is only repressed by seeing his or her finger on the trigger. I had encountered t
hem at every border crossing, at every checkpoint. The first thing you want to ask them is why aren’t they in school. But then you look at their baby fat and their automatic weapons and keep your inquiries to yourself.

  One of them, who was not even wearing a uniform, made me sit on a bench at the Jordan River crossing under a blazing sun. He took away my sunglasses. There was nothing to look at so I looked at him while he looked at me. He kept his sunglasses on. I focused on his gun. He had an extra magazine taped to the original magazine on his gun. I had seen some Karachi gangsters do that to their guns, presumably for extra firepower. Why else do you tape an extra magazine to your gun? How does that extra magazine even work?

  ‘What do you do?’ another teenager later asked me at immigration.

  I am a writer.

  What do you write?

  Stories.

  What kind of stories?

  Love stories, I said, hoping to have my exit expedited.

  What kind of love stories? And it went on and on till I realised I was creating a whole fictional character about myself, someone who believes that Israeli kids are actually literary critics who need to be engaged in the nature of fiction. And then you are passed on to a second and third interrogator till you completely submit to the tyranny of teenagers.

  PALESTINE’S PAKISTAN PROBLEM