14
The last time I saw Halil Abu-Zeid was when he came to Uncle Jalahl’s apartment. He and Bilahl talked while I watched Al-Jazeera. From the little I heard, I realised Bilahl was talking about the next attack. Abu-Zeid laughed and said something I didn’t understand. I also saw him taking a roll of notes out and giving some to Bilahl and Bilahl saying, ‘No. We need to hit now. We’re like a boxer in the ring. When a boxer’s got his opponent on the ropes, does he let him recover or does he finish him off?’
‘I knew you would say that.’ Abu-Zeid turned his big head to one side and shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘But we need to stay alive now.’
‘He goes in for the kill. He KO’s him,’ Bilahl was saying.
Next day the shahid Halil Abu-Zeid died and went to heaven and to Allah by way of the offices of the Islamic Charity Society in Al-Birah. He sat and talked there with Dr Hillel, a Hebrew University researcher, and another shahid I hadn’t heard of. Dr Hillel said the subject of the conversation was ‘life’. He left the building a few minutes before a Jewish helicopter of American manufacture arrived at the scene, hovered in the air above the building, and destroyed it with a Hellfire missile.
‘Who put these things into the heads of my sons? And especially you…you promised me!’
Father, please don’t start with the tears now. I had enough with Mother’s sisters coming in here and wailing…
‘Look at him! My good son lying here like a vegetable. The other one’s going to get four hundred years in jail…’
‘Stop talking like this, Father. Positive things, remember? That’s the way he stands more chance of getting better.’
‘What are you talking about? Getting better? Look at him! Two sons I had! Two sons!’
‘Stop it, Father. You promised you’d be positive with him.’
‘How could anyone be positive looking at this?’
‘The nurse says he had a good check-up.’
The body won’t move, and the eyes won’t open. I’m floating at sea. I can see Bilahl on the beach, and Croc, but I can’t get there.
‘Look at his eyes! Fahmi? Fahmi! My son!’
‘Blood. That’s what they understand. They’re playing a game. They sign peace treaties but you know they’ve no intention of sticking to them. The Palestinian delegations go there and the Jews sit and laugh in their faces. I don’t want to see anyone’s children die, but when I see a child on my street killed by a tank shell, or a house with a child in it destroyed by a missile, I have to retaliate. Watch Al-Manar and see what they’re doing to us! Killing children is part of their policy. With us, if a child gets hurt, it’s a mistake.
‘I’m not a murderer. I kill whoever comes to kill me. I do God’s will. My organisation tell the Istishadin to go to places where there’s at least one soldier. But every Jew is a soldier. Every Jew voted Sharon. Every Jew was in the army, or will be, or their sons or their uncles. Doesn’t matter if the Jew works in a bank, a bus, a shop, for the council, they’re all soldiers. They came to settle in my country from Russia, from Ethiopia, from America, talking about the Nazis. But the Nazis ended in 1945. Where exactly is Hitler? Every year they get a hundred thousand immigrants from Russia. So please tell me where exactly Hitler is in Russia right now, and then maybe I’ll listen to the immigrant who comes here at my expense to drive me out of my land with the excuse that Adolf Hitler made him do it. They are teaching us what is right and wrong? They talk about the Muslims, but who dropped two bombs on Japan and killed three hundred thousand?
‘And we–we have two options. Death or death. Which one am I going to choose? I choose the less painful option. To die killing the soldiers who murder my children instead of dying from starvation.’
This was one of the high points of my appearance on Noah’s Ark with Tommy Musari on Channel 2. I spent hours imagining myself giving this speech, over and over, improving it bit by bit, polishing it to perfection. The Tommy Musari in my head would nod away, fascinated, holding up his hand to stop the settler on the other side who’d be trying to interrupt. Eventually the settler would intervene to tell me that Moses had been here three thousand years ago. But we have nothing, I protested. Our life is worthless. It has no value. Curfew. No food. No work. No university. They kill us and all we do is try to stop them, and the settler said it was our fault and I said Israel bombed Gaza with an F-16 and killed the baby Iman Al-Hiju and what did she do, what was her crime, what was the crime of baby Fares Uda? The settler said that Moses was here three thousand years ago. Tommy Musari smiled and said, ‘Don’t you go away during these messages!’
After the break he began: ‘What does your mother say?’
I swivelled my chair to observe the audience, all of whom I had brought with me from the village. The whole of Murair was there. ‘My mother is dead, Tommy. But I know she’s proud of me and my brother. Of course she is: she’s like Alchnasa, the mother who sacrificed four sons in one day and then thanked God for giving her the honour of the shuhada.’
It never ends…
I’m hot, Svetlana. Where are you when I need you?
Svetlana. Come to me. Is there anybody here?
You could shine a torch in my eye, if you wanted to. Or give me a deep massage. Even do the ice. Come on and torment me.
Where are you?
I spent all morning soaking the sheets of the bed with my sweat. Bilahl told me about Abu-Zeid and ordered me to come to the mosque. But all my bones ached and I couldn’t stop shivering. The phone rang. ‘Fahmi? You OK?’ Rana: how I loved her voice. ‘I don’t know…a little sick, I think.’ ‘You’re not coming to Murair? You said you’d come back.’ ‘I said…I will come. Sometime. You know how tough it is to get through.’
I could hear, just from the way she was breathing, that she wanted to say more. To tell me that these people who called themselves my brothers were only fools. That they wanted to take us all back to the dark ages. But she didn’t say it this time. And Bilahl really was my brother. I reflected her silence with one of my own. In the end I said, ‘I’m not feeling too well, Rana,’ and she said, ‘OK,’ and Tommy Musari asked me if I had anything to say to the Jews.
‘Let me say this, Tommy. Islam is the religion of mercy; the religion of peace, love, brotherhood and mercy. The root of its name is salam, meaning “peace”. Now, your religion also says “Thou shall not kill” but every day you do. Every hour! Everything in this country must be yours; nothing can be ours! All my people are looking for is peace and freedom, that’s all. But when you blow up my house and kill my children, when you take five hundred men from their homes and make them stand all night in the street, or arrest them without giving a reason, you leave me no choice but to defend myself! You terrorise us with fire and steel and we cannot allow it. We’re not fighting because of money, or even religion, or for the sake of committing a crime. We’re not the Mafia. We have a better cause to live for, and to die for–and to kill for.’ I finished my speech and the audience rose to their feet and cheered me at length, and my imaginary Tommy Musari said, ‘What does your father say?’
My eyes filled with tears. My father would have killed me with his bare hands, but violence was never his way. My father is profoundly disappointed. I promised him I wouldn’t get into trouble. He only wanted to live peacefully. He thought Bilahl and his friends were throwbacks to the Middle Ages. He thought we were going to give him a heart attack. But I wanted my life to be worth something. I hadn’t done what he asked me. Tommy sat there waiting and I began to cry, and my head spun with thoughts of my disappointed father, my dead mother, my raging brother, and Rana’s soft, clear voice. I got up and shouted and threw the pillow at the wall, because all I saw, every day, all day long, was walls. Walls and the grey glass of the TV and blood: whole days went by without my seeing anything else.
I looked around the filthy little apartment, went to the bathroom, put my head in the sink and turned on the cold water tap. I badly needed to wake up.