From A Terrible Case of Beauty
Jawal
They call to each other across the camp, a series of distant wailings, growing gradually louder, until the one directly below him answers with an explosion of piercing shrieks. Jawal awakes in terror. One would think that after twenty-eight years of these midnight rousings, he would be used to them. But camp roosters foretell danger. They squawk at flares, or the grinding of a boot on gravel, or the approaching rumble of tanks.
Since the second Intifada began three years ago, there is, nearly every night, a good reason to heed the roosters.
Jawal lies on his bed and listens for disturbance. All he hears is the soft nasal whistle of his youngest brother Ahbed’s breathing. Twelve, thin, and prone to frequent colds, he likes to nurse the baby pigeons on the roof with eyedroppers of sweetened tea.Their sisters tease Ahbed that this means he is partly a girl.
The plastic window sheeting crackles, moving in a draft. In winter and hamsin seasons, the force of the wind can cause the plastic to shudder so loudly it sounds like an exploding tank shell.
Through the plastic, Jawal gazes at the murky dark sky, trying to judge the time. Maybe 3:00 a.m., maybe 5:00. Lately, the soldiers have come into the camp as early as midnight and stayed until first light. Jawal braces himself for gunfire, the thud of an explosion, yet another house being demolished. Any time he is awake, he braces.
There is only breathing, and the unease of anticipated trouble.
Jawal tries to fall asleep again but find himself thinking. When free, his mind naturally drifts backwards. Memory is more powerful than hope. He tries to resist dwelling on the past, with its own system of checkpoints and invasive searches in which beloved people, namely his brother Ibrahim, now dead, reappear to question him about who he was born to be, and who he is, and who he will be allowed to become. He has no answers, or only unsettling ones. He forces himself, instead, to think about the day ahead.
Jawal drives an ambulance for the Nablus area Palestinian Red Crescent society. Since the 24-hour lockdown has been unofficially eased—enforced mainly at night—he has been able to work steadily. Before everything got so bad, he used to work in Tel Aviv. He traveled there daily on public transportation along the wide, paved highways made for settlers. Back then, his work permit was enough to get him through the checkpoints on time every morning, and back home before the final call to prayer. In one week he’d made more money selling Italian and English men’s suits than he now makes in three months.
On the other hand, the job he has now is important. He has saved lives. Just last week, a woman gave birth to her first son on an emergency room gurney seconds after they got her to the hospital. The baby was in distress, the cord around his neck. He or his mother, or both, might have died otherwise. It had happened more times than he wanted to recall.
The work is hard and sad, filled with blood and death and the wails of grief. But he is helping his people. And he likes his ambulance mate, Taofhi. They work well together, joke around during down times. A difficult job under any conditions, it is made even more so by the soldiers who set up checkpoints anywhere, randomly and suddenly, forcing them to beg and argue, risking arrest each time they need permission through to the only hospital in Nablus. The soldiers open the ambulance, interrogate the patient, strip down the seats. It’s true that some shahids have used the ambulance to enact jihad, but that was once or twice, a long while ago. Now, every ambulance is considered a threat.
During these checks, Taofhi usually retreats and lets Jawal do the talking. He’s better at it. Jawal hopes that soon they will be riding with an international volunteer. The organizers from Haraat al-Salam U’Adil have promised him an ambulance rider to make checkpoint passage easier. Once the Jewish soldiers see such a white person with American or European passport riding along, they often allow them through.
Kobi
He never intended to become a career officer. It just happened. And here he is, sitting in a tank on the outskirts of Nablus, baking, bored, almost wishing someone would start trouble.
His captain, Doron, lights a cigarette next to him.
“Put that out,” Kobi says.
Doron obliges, shrugging. He’s a blondie with a buzz cut who changed his name from Dimitri when he immigrated. His eyes are watery blue.
“You can go up in a minute to smoke,” Kobi says. Doron grunts an assent. Kobi grabs binoculars and pops up for another look around.
It’s a blazing afternoon on Jerusalem Street. Even after sitting inside the sweltering tank, the hot afternoon air is not much of an improvement, as dry as chalk dust. The dull, sandy landscape is a backdrop for cinderblock apartment buildings with rooftop laundry drying under the relentless sun. Kobi thinks about his mother’s fancy new washing machine, a shining stackable unit that fits perfectly in the pantry off the kitchen.
Dried scrubby trees and bushes dot the hilly terrain. Kobe watches a pair of dogs mating near an enormous mound of garbage, a makeshift dump. A swarm of flies hovers like a shifting storm cloud..
Since the road is open, a continual flow of cars keeps his men busy enough. Children pass through on their way from school in Rajib village. Kobi had put Ari on backpack check because, with his easy smile and soft voice, he’s the least intimidating. Still, the children look scared. Kobi watches as a girl, in her blue and white uniform, puts her arm protectively around her little brother.
Kobi slips back down into the tank. Fucking hot. He looks at his watch. Fifteen minutes more before shift change.
If he had the money or the courage, Kobi would consider leaving. Go to America. Or England. But he can’t imagine it. He loves Israel. More than a country, more than a home. It’s family, a grandmother suffering from bouts of dementia. He can’t leave her just because she can’t always remember his name. Even as he has felt exasperated with her, her trust in him remains, and sometimes he feels like it’s beyond what he deserves.
Luma
Luma knows that man. He is a Balian. His family is famous in Nablus for the martyred brother, Ibrahim, assassinated by Israeli guns a few years ago. Ibrahim was handsome and well liked, known locally for leading the Balata camp team to soccer victories. The story goes that he and a friend were sitting in the cemetery, on a gravestone, one of the only peaceful places in the camp, doing nothing wrong, doing nothing at all, when Ibrahim was hit by sniper fire. His friend, whose name Luma doesn’t know, was not killed.
“Do you see him?” Luma asks Soheil. Her friend has been talking about her aunt and refusing to listen to any advice Luma has to offer.
“Who?” Soheil says. “You mean that maniac who just nearly hit us?”
“No,” Luma says. “The man standing over there at the ambulance.” She tries not to look his way.
“Why should I notice him?”
“He is a Balian.”
“So? You think he’s handsome?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You do.”
Luma says nothing.
***
They fall in love over whispered snippets of their lives, shared secretly, in public places. In the university cafeteria. The library. At the zoo. Over displays of onions and cauliflower in the vegetable market of the Old City. Always there is a third, a woman, with them, for appearances. Usually it is Soheil, whom Luma trusts like a sister.
If only they could meet in private. Maybe there is a way? She is always scheming. Making plans, trying to sneak around the rules.
***
Dina opens the door to their bedroom. Luma sees her, eyes widen and shine the color of mischief, as if she thinks that the only reason one might be sitting alone is if they are hiding. And if they are hiding, Luma’s sister thinks, there must be something they don’t want anyone to see. And having discovered Luma hiding, Dina wants to know her secret.
“What are you doing?” Dina asks.
“See for yourself. Nothing,” Luma says.
“You are dreaming.”
“So?”
“About what?”
“None of your business.”
“Jawal, I’ll bet.”
“Shush.”
Dina sits down on her own mattress across from Luma. She tugs at a thread from the cuff of her jeans, having tossed off her school uniform. She twirls the thread between thumb and finger. “I’ll bet you are dreaming up a plan to escape from America and return here so you can marry Jawal and have his children.”
“Those are your dreams.”
“Or maybe,” Dina’s eyes widen, “you are not planning to go to America at all. Maybe you and Jawal will run away together!” She clasps her hands to her heart.
“Dina,” Luma says, “you are ridiculous.”
“Don’t you want to marry Jawal? Have his children?”
“And what if I do? It doesn’t matter. Or maybe you haven’t heard. News flash from Palestine: women can’t choose! Anything! Wake up and smell the thyme. I’m being sent away. So there. End of discussion.”
Dina looks at Luma a moment, then shakes her head. “I wouldn’t let anyone tell me what to do.”
Luma laughs. “Oh, I see. You are so very different from the rest of us.” Dina thrusts her chin out, a defiant sulk. “So what is your big plan, if I may ask?”
“I,” Dina says, “am going to be important.”
“The first woman Prime Minister of Palestine, I’ll bet,” Luma says.
“Better than that.”
“And what do you think could be better than that?” Luma says.
“Being a martyr.”
Dov
When he was growing up, being Jewish meant Hebrew school twice a week, Shabbat dinner and Saturday services, a kosher house, fasting on Yom Kippur, matzo on Passover, Bar Mitzvah, confirmation. In its less ceremonial forms, it meant fulfilling his parents’ expectations that he make good grades and read more books than watch sitcoms; it meant a bent towards liberal politics and a reverence for the trauma of the Holocaust. Most of all, it meant a fierce loyalty towards Israel.
**
“Alla yil’anak!” A gruff, angry voice jolts Dov awake. There are soft moans from the passengers, grumbles of disgust. Did they blow a tire? Dov wonders. Is the taxi overheating? Dov cranes his neck to see what the trouble is. The driver has slowed to a crawl. Just ahead on the road, an array of army vehicles is stopped in the middle of the road. Two green-uniformed soldiers stand in front of the taxi, submachine guns at their sides. They signal them to stop.
The driver puts the taxi in park, leaving engine on. One soldier approaches from the left, another from the right. They peer into the taxi, their helmets halfway down their foreheads. Sprouting facial hair. Some acne. Younger than Dov.
“ID’s!” they demand.
Amidst silent tension, the passengers fish into pockets and handbags. Dov has a moment of panic. Where is his passport? He finds it in the front pocket of his backpack.
“Get out,” the soldier on driver’s side demands in Hebrew. The people in the taxi seem frozen. “Get out, get out, get out!” he barks at them. Doors pop open. The passengers slide out, one by one, handing over their IDs. Dov climbs out, standing taller than all of them, a target with his pale complexion and shaggy hair and long sideburns. The soldiers see him. Holding everyone’s IDs, they saunter over.
“Where you are from?” One of the soldiers speaks to him in accented English.
“America.” Dov hands him his passport. The soldier opens it. Dov tries to seem relaxed. Casual.
“Dov Schlessinger? You are Jewish?”
Yes.”
“Why are you riding in this taxi?”
“I’m going to Nablus.”
“Why you are going to Nablus?”
“To study.” This is what he had been told to say. The soldier scowls. “I’m an anthropology student. I’m studying biblical history.” Dov recites the memorized script. He hopes the organizers haven’t given every volunteer the same fake profession. He hopes he isn’t asked for proof.
“Do you know these people?” the soldier points with the tip of his Uzi.
“No.”
Without another word, the soldier walks away with everyone’s IDs. Dov and the others stand squinting, sweating under the searing sun. Dov is nauseous, his legs feel like cooked spaghetti. He searches for some sign of allegiance or even reassurance in the faces of his fellow passengers, some of whom speak quietly to one another. Nobody looks at him. Dov tries to track where the soldiers have gone. They have disappeared inside the armored vehicle.
After a long while—long enough to watch an entire episode of “Frasier”— the soldier with acne returns. One by one, he calls names, and the passengers step forward to take their IDs. “Get out of here,” he barks at them. They hurry back to the taxi.
Dov is left standing. He sees the soldier holding his passport. “You come here, why? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? These people do not like Jews.”
“Can I have my passport, please?” Dov says.
“I could arrest you,” the soldier says.
“For what?” Dov says.
“For your own safety.”