by Rula Jebreal
The other boys called out to him: they needed a hand to extract Yassir’s body from the rubble. Khaldun looked at Miral, and a moment before he left her his face lit up in a smile that struck her with wonder. How could anyone be capable of smiling in a place like this? One thought remained fixed in her mind: “I must save this boy.”
2
On afternoons after visiting the camp, Miral would meet with other young activists in Ramallah or Jerusalem. It was 1987, and the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, had begun. It started after four workers in Gaza were run over by a military convoy. The whole Arab population in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Occupied Territories, incensed by this event and years of military occupation, took to the streets in a protest that became a violent struggle, rocks and Molotov cocktails against tanks. This created a revolutionary solidarity among the young population.
Occasionally, she would ask one of her Dar El-Tifel schoolmates to take her place for the children’s English lesson so that she could participate in an important demonstration. In her first year of high school, when the intifada began, only she and two other girls from her class took part. Two years later, the intifada was still going on, and by then a total of seven Dar El-Tifel girls were participating.
On several occasions, she and her comrades circumvented Hind’s prohibitions and left the school grounds clandestinely, mingling with the day students who went home to their families every afternoon. Most of the time, the custodian was reading a newspaper and failed to notice them or pretended not to. When they returned, the girls would climb over the surrounding wall at its lowest point, in the rear of the school grounds, just opposite the American Colony Hotel. Miral would help the more hesitant girls, and then would nimbly pull herself to the top of the wall and jump down on the other side. After making sure that no one was about, the girls would dash to the dormitory, generally arriving a few minutes before dinnertime. One evening one of the senior girls, who was running in the dark with her head down, collided with the mathematics teacher and, as punishment, was confined to the school grounds for a month. But she won her comrades’ esteem by refusing to give up the names of the other girls who had also participated in that day’s demonstration.
The demonstrations, organized on a daily basis so as not to alert the Israeli authorities, would begin with the singing of patriotic songs and chanting of slogans against the military occupation, which slowly but surely drowned out the clamor of the souks and squares of various cities in the West Bank. The young demonstrators would wave the Palestinian flag, which was strictly forbidden, as they faced the charging Israeli army, fancying themselves fedayeen in the Jordanian forests. When the police and soldiers began throwing tear gas grenades or firing rubber bullets, the demonstrators, in turn, would throw rocks, taking cover in narrow streets. Some protesters used Dumpsters to improvise barricades and slow the advance of the army; others launched stones with slingshots or lit Molotov cocktails and hurled them in the direction of the Israeli jeeps and armored vehicles.
Often some of the bravest boys, the ones who got within a few meters of the tanks, were cut down by machine-gun fire or got their brains blown out by snipers posted atop the highest buildings. The most intrepid were usually—and unfortunately—the youngest, kids whose school day had ended just a few hours before and whose schoolbags were still on their backs as they lay in pools of their own blood.
The inhabitants of neighborhoods where the guerrilla skirmishes broke out, along with shopkeepers, craftsmen, and street vendors, did their best to help the protesters, hiding them in their houses, giving the wounded first aid, showing them escape routes, and inventing ways to hinder the soldiers from arresting the young demonstrators, many of whom defied the asphyxiating tear gas with uncovered faces, fueled by adrenaline, their eyes burning with hatred.
Some Israeli soldiers were troubled and embarrassed at the idea of pointing their weapons at such young targets, aware that their victims were more or less the same age as their own children or, in some cases, their own comrades. Others, however, squeezed their triggers without a second thought, carrying out their orders and squelching any scruples with the conviction that the saying mors tua, vita mia, “your death is my life,” was the best philosophy, particularly in the Occupied Territories, where the laws of the Israeli state were not accorded the slightest consideration.
After running down a narrow street, Miral and some other girls from Dar El-Tifel stopped in a quiet little square. The sound of gunfire steadily receded. “My God,” she said to her comrades, all of whom were younger and less experienced than she. “It’s getting harder and harder to avoid getting hit by a club or a bullet, especially when you’re in a cloud of tear gas. Those madmen are becoming more violent to stop us from protesting! But they don’t understand that our people’s anger is fueled by injustice, by marginalization. It’s as though they’re deaf and blind; they don’t want to hear, and they don’t want to see.”
Miral paused for a moment, then added a warning. “Running through the streets isn’t easy, but staying on your feet if you’re in a crowd is even harder. Never stand in the center of the demonstration, and stay close to one another. Don’t trust anybody else, and as soon as the police arrive, be the first to run away.”
That afternoon, before starting her homework, Miral stopped in a café to get a glass of water and saw on a television screen images that would not leave her mind.
Rage deformed the faces of two Israeli soldiers while they broke a young boy’s arms as naturally as if they were oiling their rifles. One soldier had three English words on his helmet: “Born to Kill.” The bones of Palestinian teenagers, stone throwers, creaked and broke under sharp blows delivered by soldiers just a few years older than they. In the instant before the victims began to scream, two dreams were shattered: that of a peaceful state, which had been yearned for and dreamed of for two thousand years, and that of a people who had seen its future prospects destroyed.
When the First Intifada broke out, the Israeli soldiers found themselves unprepared to deal with a popular revolt. As a general rule, during the various wars conducted by the State of Israel, the armies were never seen on the streets, but now, in its effort to quell the protests, the Israeli government, caught by surprise, had its army play the role of the police. As the months passed and the protests, instead of fading away, progressively intensified, the authorities began to react more harshly, dispersing crowds of demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets. The rock barrages moved from the open squares to the narrowest streets, where residents often opened their front doors to boys running at full speed and then let them slip out a rear exit and vanish into the courtyards.
The first time she was pursued, Miral, in the panic of her flight, got lost. Not finding any better possibility, she threw herself into a full Dumpster and remained there, buried in garbage, for several hours, until the shots, the cries, and the sirens became distant and finally faded into silence.
The next time, she wasn’t so lucky. She ran into an Israeli soldier, who seized her arm in a powerful grip and dragged her to the vegetable souk, where they awaited the arrival of the jeep that would take her to the police station. But the women of the souk abandoned their stalls—their displays of mint, carrots, and tomatoes—and approached Miral and the soldier. In a few moments, they surrounded him and pushed Miral out of the circle. Stunned and unexpectedly free, her heart in her throat, she began to run toward Dar El-Tifel. Only then, as she ran, did she fully grasp what being arrested would have meant for her, and she felt shaken but relieved. She had barely passed through the gate and onto the school grounds when she saw her sister, Rania, coming toward her, her eyes swollen with tears. One of her classmates had told her that she had seen a soldier capture Miral and lead her away. Rania hugged Miral in a desperate embrace. Having already lost her mother, she was afraid that Miral, too, would be taken away from her. After a little hesitation, Rania declared that she would tell their father everything
if Miral didn’t stop taking part in the demonstrations.
3
The arrival of spring in Jerusalem was magical. The hills became covered in green, the trees were in bloom, and fragrances of wild herbs and exotic fruits wafted from the markets. Arabs compare the spring to a bride, dressed in green and pink garments, who has awakened from her wintry torpor and rides into the city. When Miral returned to school after a weekend at home, she would always bring something for her friends. In the first days of spring, she brought sweet almonds and cherries, and during recess she distributed them among a group of students sitting on a bench in the sun. One of them, Hadil, a diminutive girl with soft, pretty features and a smile punctured by dimples, Miral had known since they were both six years old. They often swapped novels and made fun of some of their teachers. Hadil was especially good at imitating the mathematics teacher, with her French r’s and her continual sneezing.
Miral signaled to Hadil to move to a more private spot, where they could talk alone. A student demonstration was planned for that afternoon, and Miral was eager to participate in it. She asked Hadil to join her, having already made arrangements with some twenty other girls from the school. They would leave one by one, so as not to draw attention to themselves, and then, around three o’clock, they were to meet at the Damascus Gate. But ever since one of the girls from Dar El-Tifel had been arrested—at the first demonstration she’d ever attended—the girls’ comings and goings had become subject to much stricter controls. Miral knew that many teachers suspected her of being one of the instigators within the school, but they had never obtained any proof. Not even her classmate Nissrin, when she was arrested, had revealed Miral’s name.
They had gone to a demonstration together, but then Miral lost sight of her. Later she learned that Nissrin had met a boy during the march. With friendly smiles and a knowing manner, he had persuaded her to follow him, in spite of Miral’s earlier warnings that she should have nothing to do with anyone she didn’t know. With the excuse that he was bringing her to a safe place, the boy had taken Nissrin by the hand and led her to a police van. He was, it turned out, one of the secret police. His fluent, accent-free Arabic was as false as his smile. They put Nissrin in the van and handcuffed her, and then the van drove away. She tried to remain still, even when the jolts and bounces became heavier and harder, probably because they were getting increasingly farther away from the city streets. After about twenty minutes, which seemed like an eternity to Nissrin, the vehicle stopped. She could tell that they were in open country, but they didn’t let her out. Instead, the driver of the van got in the back, and now there were six men sitting in front of her.
The interrogation began. Who was she? Was she a student? If so, where? What was she doing at the demonstration? With whom had she come? And above all, who was the leader of her group?
Nissrin was afraid. Fear clenched her stomach, made her go weak in the legs, and set off a buzzing in her head that made it impossible to think. She started to reply in an uncertain voice, giving her personal details and declaring that she was a student at Dar El-Tifel school in Jerusalem. At that point, the five men looked inquiringly at one another, and the young man who had trapped her met the oldest man’s eyes and made a brief sign of mysterious complicity.
When she saw this, Nissrin wondered what exactly they wanted from her. There had been so many girls at the demonstration—why was she the one they had chosen? It had been a coincidence, but she was overcome by a profound sense of anxiety and paranoia. Her heart kept pounding, and as she vomited up the entire contents of her stomach, one thought was humming in her head: They had brought her out there for a reason, there in the middle of nowhere. If she didn’t talk, she told herself, she would probably never go back home. Nissrin was committed to dying right there and she wouldn’t give any information about the other girls. Maybe it was the mention of Dar El-Tifel, but something guided that van back to Jerusalem, even though Nissrin would spend three months in jail.
Nissrin was the daughter of a spice merchant. Her mother had died when she was ten, and her father had enrolled her in Hind Husseini’s school in accord with his wife’s last wishes. It couldn’t be said that Nissrin was Miral’s friend. Although they were the same age and attended the same classes, Miral had come to know her well only recently, since the day when Nissrin expressed her desire to participate in the student demonstrations.
There was a close bond among the girls of the orphanage school, who thought of themselves as sisters. Despite their minor disputes, Hind had managed to make them all feel like members of a family bound by something more than blood. Miral was one of the most active and admired girls, excelling both in her studies and in the organization of extracurricular activities, but beyond her dedication to the refugees in the camps it was her kind heart and political passion that made the other girls look upon her as a leader.
Although many of the girls sought her advice regarding their problems, Miral herself placed a high value on the opinions of Hadil, whose calmness and serenity made her Miral’s opposite. She was able to soothe and pacify Miral in her moments of anxiety and always found the right words to say, but otherwise she preferred to remain silent. Miral was very fond of Hadil and wanted her to get involved politically, so she persuaded Hadil to take part in the demonstration.
Normally, the protests started small and grew only gradually, as the protesters marched through various neighborhoods and people spontaneously joined them. But that day the police had learned about the gathering place in advance, since the demonstration had been organized expressly in memory of the intellectual Ghassan Kanafani. When the demonstration began, Israeli tanks surrounded al-Manara Square in Ramallah, where students from all the schools and universities in the West Bank had gathered.
Snipers had been posted on the roofs of the surrounding buildings, and at the first sight of the soldiers the young protesters started throwing rocks and chanting, “Free Palestine! Get out of our land!” Immediately, a cloud of tear gas enveloped everything; shouts, shrieks, shots ensued, and the protest turned into chaos. Miral instinctively began to run, dashing away so as not to be arrested, and at the same time trying to hold on to her friend Hadil’s hand. But after running some three hundred meters, she was knocked down by someone. She discovered that Hadil had fallen on her. Miral tried to lift her up, and she realized that her hands were covered with a dense liquid. She didn’t know where it was coming from or whether she or her friend was wounded, but then her hands came upon a hole in Hadil’s head. Miral tried to scream, but her voice wouldn’t come out; it was trapped in her throat, as in a nightmare. No one would ever know if Hadil was shot intentionally or struck by a stray bullet intended to eliminate one of the leaders of the intifada.
Hadil’s body was lying supine, her arms stretched out over her head as though in a desperate effort to escape the bullet that was so much faster than she.
Miral could hear the sirens of approaching ambulances and the soldiers’ footsteps as they combed the neighborhood streets, but she hadn’t the strength to move yet; she felt chained to that spot and to Hadil’s body. Death had made a violent entrance into Miral’s life, and her tears flowed without stopping, a mixture of desperation, rage, helplessness, and—especially—guilt.
A warm hand clasped her shoulder, and she felt no fear. Even if they should arrest her, she would offer no resistance. But the voice that spoke to her was not that of an Israeli soldier. And sure enough, when she turned around, she saw a man of about thirty, tall, athletic, and light skinned, with dark, intense, kind eyes. With a few decisive movements, he raised her to her feet, put his arm around her, and drew her away from the square. Miral tried to resist, but he told her that they had to get away from there at once, and that men from the Red Cross would see to recovering her friend’s body. But Miral still resisted: “Please, let me go, please! I can’t abandon her! Please let me stay here!”
“We have to get out of here. Come with me, you’ll be safe,” the man said convincingl
y. Miral recognized his Jerusalem accent and realized that she had no choice.
She could no longer feel her own body; it was as if she were paralyzed. The man held her close as they crossed the square and got into a car that took them directly to Jerusalem and dropped them off in the Old City, in front of the Jaffa Gate. The man, still holding her tightly, walked at a rapid pace, as if he knew by heart that mysterious sequence of steep narrow lanes. They must have entered the Armenian Quarter, because Miral, before she fainted, caught a glimpse of the Cathedral of Saint James.
When she regained consciousness, it was already dark, but a pinkish light was filtering through a little window. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see that there was another person in the room, a man, who sat reading a book in a low armchair.
“Where am I? Who are you?” she asked, trying to raise herself.
“You’re finally awake! Now, take it easy, you’re safe,” the man replied, putting down his book.
“Oh my God, it’s late. It’s almost night! I have to go back to the school. They’ll be furious at me! This time they’ll expel me for sure!” Miral complained, once again trying to get to her feet but immediately falling back onto the couch. She was still too weak.
At that instant, in the mirror across from her, she saw her purple face, her disheveled hair, and her dusty, bloodstained school uniform, and she immediately understood what had happened. Anguish and panic racked her as she recalled that she had been the one who persuaded Hadil to go to the demonstration. Now she would have to face them all: Hadil’s family and friends and the angry teachers at school. And so, weeping, overcome by desperation, and without even looking at the man, she said, “I have to go. I have to go now…. Oh my God, what have I done? Hadil! Hadil!”