Gaza Writes Back

by Refaat Alareer

  “Occupation is rude and thoughtless. But I have never heard of any occupation more inconsiderate and tactless than this. Unless they’re doing this on purpose to torture us, there is something seriously wrong with their minds. Sick!” Abu Salem burst out.

  Looking at his Dad, Salem was unable to determine the cause of the outburst. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “What’s wrong? Nothing is wrong! That’s what’s wrong!”

  Salem, who was not in the mood for another of his father’s temper tantrums, opened his mouth to ask again, but no words came out.

  “The only thing that kept me from coming back here all these years is the fear I might not recognize my own house. But there is no sign of obliteration. The house stands there just like it did three years ago. They just come to your house or farm and kick you out. And it’s theirs. Look at those olive groves. They let the farmers toil all year long, and then they come heavily armed at the end of the year and pick—steal!—the olives. It’s like they’re no more depending solely on their total military superiority, but they also love to slap us and to humiliate us. It’s like they’re saying, ‘We take what belongs to you. So what? What can you do about it?’” Abu Salem stopped to take a breath. “Today I swear I’ll show them what we are capable of,” he added. “If they’re mocking us, today I’ll make fun of their pride, their security.”

  Salem never thought of the issue that way. His father always came up with subtle interpretations to things people do or say, that Salem developed the habit of doubting what those people really meant. But this time, it was his father’s promise to “show them” that mesmerized him.

  “I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.” Abu Salem instructed his son to wait outside and be on the lookout, and squeezed himself through the hole the army made the night his house was raided.

  Salem spent the next ten minutes fretting, his father’s oath eating him up. And then against his father’s advice, he too squeezed himself in. What Salem saw was something he would not have imagined, not even in his wildest dreams.

  There were wires—lots of them—small tubes, a timer, and two small mobile phones. Apparently those were the contents of the bag. “Dad! What is this?!” he exclaimed.

  “It’s a bomb,” replied his father, as if replying to someone asking for the time.

  “Is that what you carried all the way in your bag? I don’t understand! What do you want to do?” asked Salem.

  “I want to destroy the house,” replied his father. “If I can’t have it, no one else should.”

  “You’re going to kill us! This is suicide! Madness! Destroy the house?! Your own house?! What will people say? That you destroyed your own house?” Salem started firing questions, not sure which will make his father change his mind.

  “Yes,” answered Abu Salem—maybe the toughest “yes” he had ever uttered.

  “But, Dad, it is your house no matter who has it. It is temporary. Sooner or later it will be yours again,” argued Salem forcefully.

  “Listen, son, it depends on how you word it for people. I am destroying what was taken from me, by force, without my consent. And I am doing this when all other means failed. Perhaps I was wrong from the beginning. I should’ve destroyed the house the first day Israel decided to confiscate it. All these courts, lawsuits, and hearings allowed by the occupation are fake formalities. Now I can’t just simply let them take it away, can I?” argued the father, caring very little whether that made much sense.

  “But it’s your house. Your own house! How could you do that?” Salem asked entirely bewildered.

  “Salem, my ability to make sound judgment has been compromised, I know. Having choices under occupation has long become a thing worse, much worse, than being deprived of choices altogether. They oblige us to choose between two good options or two bad ones. In both cases, we are to suffer and to sacrifice. We then have to live with the nightmares of choosing one over the other. We hate the occupation for that more than we hate it for occupying us, and then we hate our incapability of having other choices or of changing our destiny. Tell me, should I just let those Jewish settlers take over my house and live with that all my life? I can’t. I simply can’t.” Abu Salem stopped to rethink what he said. He never thought of the conflict that way. The flashes of inspirations this mission had brought him amazed him probably more than they amazed his son.

  Only distant sounds of early birds and barking dogs could be heard. Salem was unable to make up his mind, and he was also sure that making his father change his mind is impossible. For a moment, he thought of dragging him out of the house. Instead, he sat down near his father and watched him as he skillfully grouped the parts in a particular order.

  “Are you sure, Dad?” asked Salem one last time.

  “I am,” interrupted his father, trying hard to control his shaky hands.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” repeated Salem, expecting the explosives to go off at any time.

  “I have never been more certain in my life. Now just please leave me alone for a few minutes and keep watch outside,” his father commanded.

  “Ok, you be careful. The sun has started to rise,” urged Salem.

  “Funny that we fear the light. Funny that the dawn has become scary. You see, son, this is what I always tell you. They took my house—my history, my roots, and my land. And now, look at me, I am destroying it. This can’t go on forever, and I can’t rely on bastard politicians. Just go,” insisted Abu Salem.

  Salem did not like when talks with his father to turned to politics and politicians. Salem, though he sometimes admitted his father’s insight, did not usually like his comments on political issues, let alone talking politics while piecing together a bomb. He lingered for a few seconds, unable to decide what to do next. Finally, Salem muttered something that sounded like “take care,” and left.

  After about fifteen minutes, his father squeezed himself out and signaled to Salem to move. He was carrying a mobile phone in his left hand and the brown bag, which obviously was empty, was on his back. Abu Salem stopped there for a little while to have a last look at the house and the area. The greenery extended as far as his eyes could see. In an instant, they both, dragging small branches of olive trees, made their way carefully but quickly back to where they came from.

  “Dad, why didn’t you leave the bag there?” inquired Salem sheepishly after ten minutes of trotting in silence at the first light of the day.

  “I cannot leave it behind. If someone saw me carrying the bag on my way here and does not see it on my way back, he might become suspicious,” replied Abu Salem in a manner that told he had given it a lot of thinking, which impressed Salem beyond imagination.

  “Is it timed or remotely controlled?” asked Salem. “We need to be as far from our house as possible,” he commented in an afterthought, expecting to hear an explosion any minute.

  “Do not worry. We will make it just in time,” said Abu Salem.

  “How big do you think the explosion will be? Will we be able to hear it from here?” asked Salem, with concern clear in his voice.

  Abu Salem, sensing the anxiety in his son’s voice, decided finally to reveal what he actually did inside the house. “There will be no explosion….”

  “What? No explosion! Why? Wasn’t that a bomb you put? Answer me, Dad. You have put us and the whole family through this perilous quest of yours and we achieve nothing?”

  “No, no. Not that. I put explosives. I just crammed the parts without connecting the wires.”

  “What?”

  “You are right; it is mad to destroy the house. But I decided to keep the bomb there. I want them to fear. To live in fear. They have to feel that we are breathing down their necks. I want the Israelis to start asking questions,” he said gesturing towards the Wall.

  “Dad, they won’t,” commented Salem, trying hard to hide his relief, but amazed at his father’s profundity of thinking and quick wit. “We could have been killed,” he said.

  “
Listen, son, the worst thing about occupation is that they do not deal with intentions. That’s why occupations are evil. Had they caught me with those explosives, I would have been shot dead—we would have been shot dead. They would not check on our intentions and if they did, they would not believe us. Occupation is evil. Yes, it steals and damages, but it also teaches people hate and, even worse, distrust. That’s why leaving the bomb behind is a message: I can destroy the house but do not want to. Because I want people to start asking questions about the morality of their position towards us,” he elaborated.

  “You’re my son and the closest to me,” said Abu Salem. He stopped to take a breath, but Salem realized his father was rather seeking confirmation, and he quickly nodded eagerly in response, leaning his head a little to the right. “You’re my son and the closest to me, and still you could not figure out what I really wanted to do. Perhaps you judged me. You thought I was crazy.” This time Abu Salem did not take a breath to wait for confirmation. Salem shook his head anyway. “This doubt and mistrust will go on and on until people start asking questions, and when they do, answers will follow.”

  Salem saw his father smile all the way back home. Was it the way he worded his philosophy in life and resistance? Did he feel he had the upper hand over the occupation? Was it that he finally went back to his house even for a little while? Or was it that he took revenge in his own way?

  The next day, Israeli headlines were all about what Abu Salem did.

  IDF FOILS A MAJOR TERROR ATTACK

  JERUSALEM—Israeli Defense Forces dismantled on Saturday morning a remote-control bomb they found in a house in the settlement of Nili. No injuries reported.

  The bomb was so huge it could have destroyed the whole house, army sources confirmed.

  Neverland

  by Tasnim Hamouda

  Dealing with serious cases had long become part of her life. And death had become a normality, an everyday experience. Her hard work and dearest wishes had not helped. Getting attached to cases had not helped either. She decided to give up on names, but not on hope and certainly not on hard work. Names create memories. Names form attachment. And she definitely did not want that. Not again. But she simply couldn’t detach herself from those little passing clouds. She could not just leave them and move to another section of the hospital that treats less serious cases, cases with hope of survival. All she knew is that she was now attached to death in mysterious ways. She believed she was destined to deal with death, to look it in the eye every day, and to conquer it every day. And every time she failed—and failed miserably.

  Sooner than anyone expects, faster than it takes to memorize their names, death would perch on the ward, extend its wings right and left, and claim them all. A week, two weeks—a month maximum—and new faces would replace the previous ones. Similar faces with different names all would share the same fate.

  There were seven in each ward, all of whom she called “little boy” or “little girl.” At nine o’clock every night, she would check them in turn. “It’s your injection time, little boy,” she said, asking him to stretch out his arm, which she barely touched. She had learned how to distract herself when giving the children their shots. Sometimes she gazed at the ceiling or looked at the door that stood far from the six nearby beds she still needed to examine.

  Every time she reached the last bed, there was the same little boy who would welcome her with a smile, maybe the mightiest thing he could do. “It’s your injection time, little boy.” He hid a book under his pillow, got his injection, and was left to sleep afterward. She would linger there awkwardly, trying to catch a glimpse of the book. He pushed the book further under the pillow. For two months, she had done the same thing. It pained her that this little one had to see all those faces come and go. It pained her that he had to change friends three or four times—not that he had a choice. Once she was done with him, she would rush out of the ward. Her mission for the night had been accomplished.

  The next morning, she appeared again on an emergency call as another “little one” was moved to her ward. There are eight now, she thought. At nine, again, it was injection time. Bruised arms were stretched. Eyes, half closed, fixed on the ceiling. And one last bed to check.

  By the time she reached him, the book this time lying open on his chest, his hairless head leaning on the edge of the pillow, he didn’t smile. She sat, almost motionlessly, next to him and picked up the book. It was Peter Pan, the tale of the boy who never grows up and spends his never-ending childhood on the small island of Neverland where forgotten boys live.

  She put the book back in his little, cold hands, wishing he was able to finish the story. “Sleep tight, little b…little Peter Pan,” she murmured.

  Lost at Once

  by Elham Hilles

  He never felt how my soul leaped and how my heartbeat turned into the loudest discordant drums whenever I heard his voice. Contradicting thoughts filled my head whenever his image appeared. I was captured by every detail of his manliness—so witty, so sharp, such a charming man who philosophizes everything he says or hears. “Dear me, what a happy girl I am!” I always exclaimed after hanging up my cell phone with him. “This is the exact type of guy I’ve always dreamed of.” I couldn’t ask for more, though I had never even thought of asking him where he lived. Why should I bother myself to ask? I always supposed—or to tell the truth, I was programmed to expect—that everybody I met in my city was originally Gazan.

  “Oh, girl….” I got to know that these were the words he often used whenever he shocked me with a real detail about himself. “Eman, if you just knew where exactly I live, you wouldn’t be stupidly in love with everything related to me.” Hosam kept upsetting my soul and driving me crazy by repeating these annoying words. It was something I couldn’t figure out in that stage of my immaturity—or, maybe, my innocence.

  “But why the hell should I care where you live? Aren’t you from Gaza? That is quite enough to keep my hope alive.”

  I was too naïve to go deeper into any other details.

  “Look, Hosam,” I said. “All I want is a mind and a tongue—a powerful mind to appreciate me, and an expressive, eloquent tongue, to say it.”

  “Well, I doubt it. What should a woman do with a man’s mind and tongue if they got married? Did you forget that I’m a lawyer? It’s the core of my profession to talk and manipulate things,” he said, teasingly.

  “Ok, let’s not think about it now…I don’t care where you live, and that’s it.” I added, looking at my watch, which said 4:25 in the afternoon, “Oh my God! I have to leave the library right away.” I hung up my cell phone and rushed outside.

  “Al-Mina—to the seaport, please,” I told the taxi driver in a hurry.

  He drove his car and stopped after a few meters for some university students who were heading to Al-Nasr Street.

  “Don’t be angry. I’ll drive as fast as I can to drop them off, and then I’ll take you wherever you wish,” the old, bigmouthed driver said.

  “But Al-Nasr is not my way. Why did you take me in the first place?” I asked furiously. And then, to stop the dispute, I added despairingly, “It’s okay. Just drive.”

  Praying that my father would not be home when I got back, I just kept looking outside the window, thinking of excuses for my delay. I thought of how careless I was in doing the same thing every day, spending two or three hours in the central library, looking for Ghada Al-Samman, Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, Nazik Al-Mala’ika, and other Arab poets and writers whom I recently became extremely fond of. I never expected to reach that point: not attending my lectures and sitting alone in the back when I attend, alienating myself between the pages of Gibran Khalil Gibran, Khalil Mutran, Michael Naimeh, and all those sorts of writers. That was the biggest sin, yet the most precious favor, any man has ever done for me. Hosam’s talks about these writers always made me envious and in quest of more and more reading. I fell in love with everything he liked.

  I woke up from my deep thoughts quite a
bruptly to find myself in a very remote area which I’d never been to.

  “What is this place? You said you were going to take the girls to Al-Nasr Street, right? Where am I?” I questioned in a panic. “I’m sorry, but I was obliged to go further. The car is running out of fuel, and the petroleum station is here. I’ll be back soon.” Getting out of the car, he added, “Do you want me to turn on some music? I have several songs for Mustafa Kamel; he is very good, you know. Do you want me to change the song? Tell me, what is your favorite song of his?”

  I kept silent and didn’t utter a word, lest he should go further. Anxious and scared of staying in the car, I looked outside to make sure that the man was busy. I ran out of the taxi, and then went on walking in streets I had never passed before.

  “O my goodness! It’s nearly five o’clock. How can I find another taxi in these narrow streets?” I nearly cried. I wondered how I got lost in this little space.

  I went on walking, heading toward the west. A group of school boys fighting attracted my attention. I could not help stopping and asking them.

  “What is the name of this place, little boys?”

  “Mo’askaaar Al-Shati. Mesh ’arfaah?”–Al-Shati Refugee Camp. Don’t you know it?—shouted the chubby boy.

  “Okay, why are you angry?”

  “Hada al-kalb,” pointing at another boy, “sarag nossi!”–Because this dog stole my half shekel—he yelled.

  “It’s mine. Ummy—my mother—gave it to me,” replied the smaller one.

  Their accent brought a smile on my face. For me it is “Mama,” always “Mama.”

  “Here’s a shekel instead,” I said to the angry boy. “Just don’t fight, okay?” I added, trying to imitate his tone. I failed.

  “Hehehe! Shayef jazat elli bysrig? Hay shekel badal alnos!”—See how God punishes those who steal? I have a shekel now instead of a half one!—the boy teased his friend, laughing out loud, not believing that he got a whole shekel.