It was four in the morning, and the line of Palestinian construction workers in front of the Hebron checkpoint curled further than I could see. There were hundreds of them, waiting for me and the other transitions unit soldiers to open the rotating metal doors and let them through. There was still an hour to go before we would be allowed to do that. The rules said that we opened at five. We closed at noon. It was not our decision.
It was just my luck that the first and only year of my service in the transitions unit was one of those years the government closed the sky for Filipino and Indian temporary workers, and so Israel started needing the Palestinian construction workers again. We needed them, but we were also a little afraid they’d kill us or, even worse, stay forever. These were both things the Palestinians were sometimes into doing. That’s why I existed. I was responsible for checking to see that the workers owned a permit that assured they weren’t the type likely to stay in Israel forever or try to kill us. The permit said they were only allowed to stay for the daytime. Then they had to leave Israel and go back to the territories. They got to see us every day, if they did what was right. And we got to see them too.
I also had to make sure they weren’t carrying weapons or about to explode their bodies. We were there to notice what the government wanted us to, dangers, but I would still only notice what I happened to notice. This was because I couldn’t realize I was a soldier. I thought I was still a person.
Fadi, the person I first noticed that day, was very close to the front of the line of workers. I noticed him because even though I could not see his face, even though they were all too far away to have faces, I could tell he was looking at me as though I had made a decision. A decision of horror. A future thing I had not yet done wrong yet nevertheless I could not undo. His curved chin was held up, as if destined never to budge, and pointing right at me, as if it were an eye. From that distance I must not have had much of a face for him to see, but I swear I knew he had already chosen me then.
On the asphalt road by the checkpoint, cars were lining up.
It was not my decision to be there, wearing that blue beret. I didn’t want this. I said no.
I DIDN’T know this before I joined the army, but there were three general types of checkpoints, and mine was the dumbest. Some checkpoints were placed in the middle of a Palestinian village or on a main road, like Route 433, that linked one Palestinian town to another; those soldiers checked them while they were inside their land. This may sound crazy, but these were the places most bombs and guns were found. Others checked people for medical permits, people who could only get the treatment they needed in our hospitals. Even if an ambulance came howling and the sick person was howling too, they checked, because of that one pregnant woman from when I was in fourth grade. The one who had a nine-month-old fetus in her stomach and a bomb with a diameter of thirty centimeters under her gurney. Both these types of checkpoints showed that we would not let our lives be cheap, but my checkpoint only showed that we wanted our homes to be cheap, and that the Palestinians’ anger could be bought, that very same anger that was so deep it sometimes killed us.
Most days there were workers in line who didn’t make it through, and the Israeli contractors who waited for their workers at the other end of the checkpoint would curse at us soldiers. And the Palestinian workers would curse at us soldiers. I was usually called a Russian whore, except for one time when someone called me a German bitch. That made me smile, but only for a minute.
THE WEEK before the day I first saw Fadi, one of the Israeli contractors followed me behind the sand dunes where I had just finished peeing and asked me why there were only five soldiers checking people but ten soldiers checking cars. He said that every time one of us went to pee the line slowed and that this was no way for something professional to operate, that a businessman like him didn’t need to be subjected to the mercy of the bladder of a teenager. He didn’t catch me with my pants down, but the fluid that had soaked into the sand stood between us. I had no answer.
“I don’t work for you,” I told the contractor. I thought he would curse me, but instead he asked another question, which was worse.
“Who do you work for?”
When I lowered my eyes and stood without words, I saw that fruit flies swarmed over the wetness.
IT WAS getting close to when we would have to start passing the Palestinian men through into Israel. I heard Hebron’s muezzin through the speakers singing the call of prayer and looked at the first rays of sun spreading like dots of ink. I was so tired I had to slap my face so that I would not fall asleep standing up.
I hated so much and mostly myself when I was this tired. There was sour sloshing in my stomach and up my throat, and I could smell the stench of my own breath mixing with the smell of the toothpaste on my yellow teeth. I hated how disheveled I looked, like a child drowning in a green uniform, playing make-believe. I hated that even though I was wearing a bulletproof vest, and even though I looked like a kid holding a gun, my breasts were so large that I knew they showed through all I was wearing. I hated so many things I said—a long time ago, some lies I told when I was drunk at a high school party, a party I should have stopped but didn’t when I was a senior. But mainly I hated the dumb chatter I exchanged with the Ethiopian and Moroccan girls in my unit outside our caravans on all nights while we smoked our lives away into the smallness of the night. They were worse than the girls in high school.
Waking up every morning was a tragedy, like killing your own mother, or losing your virginity to a guy who will only sleep with you once, and realizing what you have done just as you are forced to open your eyes. The walls pounded my eyes and head and neck like I was waking up inside a white, shiny boom box. And I never liked music. I would give so much, everything, for sleep, or so I thought. The problem was that every evening I would forget just how much, and I became scared of that bed where tragedy took place every morning. I went to sleep only when I couldn’t help falling asleep.
If I could I would burn the blue beret on my head. But it was on my head.
More men. More men. More men.
I wanted to say that day that there was only one of me and demand to go back to my shabby dreams, but my shift was starting. The gates opened, and the metal rotated, and the men went through the machine that lit up green or red, then they stood across from the cement barricade that protected me and the four other soldiers checking IDs and bags.
MY OLDER sister Sarit told me that if I insisted enough, the sorting officer would cave. That all I had to do was say, “I won’t go, I won’t go, I won’t go.” She even specifically warned me that the worst thing that could happen was that they would place me in a military police unit and make me wear a dreadful blue beret. No other soldier would ever want to talk to me, because they would all see my blue beret and fear that I had the authority to write them up and report them for having a red hair tie instead of a black or an olive green one, or for wearing their everyday uniform coat over their official uniform, or for listening to headphones while crossing the road, or whatever stupid shit military police soldiers were responsible for writing other soldiers up for.
I told her to stop talking. So my sister said anyone that got placed in military police was an idiot. She said there were other army positions to be careful of, and that of course the best was what she was, a paratroopers’ instructor, and I told her to stop talking.
“They might tell you that they’ll put you in jail. That no one will ever hire you after that. That Mom and Dad will disown you. That you will never find love. That you will become a homeless person. Whatever it is they tell you, just say, ‘I won’t go, I won’t go, I won’t go,’ and eventually they’ll assign you somewhere else, and—”
“Stop. Talking!” I said.
In the sorting officer’s office the day I was drafted, the sorting officer spoke before I sat down.
“Military police,” she told me. Of course that was what she said. Naturally. “It is the only boot camp I have open th
is week.”
“I won’t go,” I said.
“Everyone says that,” the officer said, and crossed her arms. She was smiling.
“I won’t go. I am smart. I got good grades. I can translate things.”
“I don’t have any intel spots. All I have is the spots they give me, and all I have left is military police. Besides, they are trying to diversify the unit, make it more socioeconomically diverse or something, and you have great grades.”
“You mean that everyone there can’t read. I won’t go. I am not about to spend two years of my life handing out reports in some bus station to soldiers who are wearing yellow socks,” I said. I was afraid, shy about how confident I was. This was my first day as a soldier. I was eighteen and spiteful. After graduation, when there were no more girls to be bitchy to, I read a lot and followed sophisticated American TV shows: The West Wing, Sex and the City. It was just my luck that I was randomly drafted last.
“Look, if you physically resist going, I’ll have to throw you in jail for a few weeks that won’t count toward your mandatory service time, and then when you come out I’ll still place you in military police.”
“I won’t go. I won’t go.”
“There is more to military police than the proper-appearance write-ups. It is actually a really important role. Different soldiers do different things. You’ll like it, I swear.”
“But I won’t go,” I said. I believed it when I said it.
“Oh, but you will,” the officer said.
“No.”
“Your parents will never speak to you again.”
“No.”
“No one will hire you.”
“No.”
“You’ll have regrets.”
“But I won’t go.”
In the end I went, because the officer knew even before I did that I’d go. That I was always going to go.
THERE WAS actually nothing special about Fadi, the man I noticed that day, or so I thought until I looked, and stopped, and thought hard. It had been a few months since I had thought hard, so I wasn’t used to doing it.
He was one of the first men to show me his ID that morning. He passed through the machine with a lowered head and put his ID on the cement barricade. It was a green ID. It said his name was Fadi. Inside the ID was the white permit. It was stained brown, but it was the right permit, the construction-work permit that was the only permit we were allowed to accept at that checkpoint, other than a medical permit. I pointed to his plastic bag.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“What is in there? What could be in there? Food. Pita,” Fadi answered. His voice exploded at the vowels.
“Can I see it?” I asked. I signaled with my hand. I didn’t always check all the bags. I was supposed to check them at random, so I usually checked every third or fifth one, but suddenly I didn’t want this man to leave me. There was something about him. His outfit was standard—a cheap old button-down shirt that was meant to garnish him with dignity but only intensified his sadness, its collar mocking his drained, barely shaven face.
He had murky rims under his eyes and hairs in his nose. He smelled of sweat and aftershave. He was like the rest of them, but he stood with urgency. He did not want to be there. He was almost not there, but he was. He was clasping his plastic bag and he was almost not there but he was and I could feel my eyes jolt.
“Can I see it?” I asked again. I was crying, but it was a physical cry, one brought on by exhaustion and the wind hitting my face. I cried all the time, but only physically. The man, Fadi, still would not let go of his bag, and I knew, I decided, that I would sleep that night and think of him. There was something about him, and that something would help me sleep.
Fadi flipped the plastic bag and shook it, and pitas fell to the sand like leaves. This was not the first time one of the men in my line had done that, but there was something different about how he did it, how injured he was by my request. It was more than a gesture. Behind him I could see Yaniv sticking his head inside the car of one of the Palestinians and making small talk. Talking very small, I was sure.
“Here, here you go. I don’t need food. You have it and be happy,” Fadi said, and then took his ID from the cement barricade and walked away, flailing his arms.
AT NIGHT I could hear the Ethiopian and Moroccan girls talking and smoking in the wooden pergola outside our caravan. They were talking about what’s better, to tell a friend if someone is gossiping about her or not to tell a friend. They were stupid. Their problems were all outside of their heads. Everyone in the transitions unit was stupid. It was a unit designed for stupid poor people. People the army thought could do little except check IDs. We were stationed in places just as dangerous as the exalted infantry units, but when an infantry soldier passed through our checkpoint with his green or red or brown beret, he pointed, and then he laughed. He was a hero and we were not heroes; we were just the police.
I buried myself under the wool blanket of my field bed and thought of Fadi. After boot camp, when I was first stationed, I used other things to make me sleep. At first I thought about my boyfriend, about when we slept together, one of the dads of the girls I hated in my class, all the best times and times that never happened as I imagined but now I could imagine. In my thoughts my boyfriend was much stronger than I ever let him be in real life, and he would always start by pushing me against a wall, and I would always be surprised. In life, my boyfriend said that I should stop crying every time after it was all finished, because he would break up with me if I didn’t stop, because it freaked him out. Also because he worried that if I kept doing it, then one day he would not be able to tell the difference between when I was sad and when I wanted sex. In the end he broke up with me, and he was also right. I would always cry when I remembered the sex, and so I stopped thinking about that at night in my field bed because I assumed I cried too much during the day already.
For a week I thought about Dawson’s Creek and Ally McBeal when I tried to fall asleep. Shows that were popular before I had a boyfriend. I remembered every episode. I remembered the punch lines and the way the light fell on the water. But everything that seemed so wonderful to me then, the things I imagined myself doing if I were a part of the show, the characters I thought I could be or meet—none of it seemed interesting anymore. I knew I would never enjoy watching those shows again.
Then I thought about the games I used to play with Yael. The time we pretended we were reporters, the time we pretended an elevator was a spaceship, the times we let Avishag join and play Exquisite Corpse with us. All the stories we made up. But after a while I realized I was inventing most of those memories. I stared at the bulletproof vest on the floor and realized I did not truly remember what it felt like to play games. And I knew if I invented any more memories of games it would only remind me of the memories I had lost, so I stopped.
This is how small my life was: after the games, after my third idea, there was nothing more I could think of.
The evening I began thinking about Fadi, he became my new idea. I imagined him talking with his wife, Nur, as they smoked a hookah stuffed with apple-flavored tobacco on their sun porch. I imagined that must have been the evening Nur put her foot down. On the specific evening I was imagining, an evening from the past, Nur asked Fadi to get a job in construction in Israel. Fadi did not want to go. He did not want to take money from the Israelis. He did not want to be torn from his dreams only to stand in line for hours and wait for a girl half his age to bark orders at him. He did not want to go. He wouldn’t.
“I won’t go,” Fadi said.
“But we have five children,” Nur said. “We need money for Nadia’s university. We need better formula for the baby.”
“I won’t go.”
“But you haven’t worked in months. You won’t find a job in Hebron.”
“I won’t go.”
“But I will leave you if you don’t. I will leave you and no one in the family would blame me for it and you will die alo
ne.”
“I won’t go.”
“Oh, but you will,” his wife said and looked out to the lights coming from a neighbor’s home, and because she knew that he would surrender, he did surrender and he did go.
I felt sleep touching me then leaving, touching me then almost staying. It was hard to breathe under the blanket. Outside, I could hear the girls talking and smell their cigarettes and shampoos. They said “calories” many times, and also
“That’s what’s really bad.”
I tried to think of what Fadi could be doing right then, rather than in the past, and decided that he must be arguing with Nur. That he was yelling at her as she made him his pita sandwiches filled with okra and hummus for the next morning. That he was still saying he wouldn’t go. That Nur, beautiful Nur, was not even looking at him, but that when he said she was the devil she threw his sandwiches in the trash and then walked behind the kitchen counter and passed him and that all Fadi wanted was for her to touch his shoulder for one second, but Nur walked right by him and into their bedroom and Fadi fell asleep on the floor in the kitchen, his head resting on Nur’s coat that he pulled from the coat hanger by the door, by the door, the closed door, that door that is closed—
When I woke up the next morning, I was tired, but less.
The ride to the checkpoint was usually all the torture that is inherent in movement. Breaths and moans and the webs of sleepy eyes of all of us jumbled. I was yanked from slumber and immediately boarded the bulletproof green van, with its miniature barred windows and thick metal skin. My head bobbed and smashed and hurt as the van glided along the territories we occupied. When the movement halted, all I arrived at was men, a line of men, all these men, waiting for me, raging through stillness.
The ride the morning in which I was less tired, the morning after I first thought of Fadi, was almost just a regular nice ride, though. Almost, I swear.
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid Page 6