Where the Streets Had a Name (16 page)

We're at the mercy of their moods. The waiting isn't nearly as frustrating as being ignored.

An old man on board a service directly in front of us suddenly disembarks. His tall, thin frame is supported by a walking stick.

‘That's it,' David roars. ‘Molly, come on, get the camera out. They can't touch
us
.'

Some people cheer as David and Molly climb down and walk towards the soldiers, their cameras visible around their necks. I look at Samy, who's following David and Molly's every step. There's a confused expression on his face.

The old man walks purposefully towards the huddle of soldiers standing at a distance from the blindfolded men. David and Molly follow. We all watch nervously. Those few passengers who are able lean their heads out of the open windows to listen.

A young soldier turns towards the man and orders him back into the minibus. The old man stops, fixes the soldier with a stare and, to our astonishment, refuses.

‘Is he senile?'

‘Somebody talk to him!'

‘David and Molly must do something!'

‘Wait! Look!'

The soldier appears startled. The two other soldiers look on in confusion. The old man demands that the passengers be granted permission to disembark. The soldier again orders the old man to return to the service, this time in a gentle tone. The old man stands defiantly and refuses. The tension is palpable. David and Molly step in, raising their cameras at the soldiers. The soldiers look uncomfortable and appear to be demanding that David and Molly put their cameras away. David and Molly stand firm. It's like watching a mime. Although we can't understand their words, we're nonetheless able to interpret what's going on.

After a few tense moments, the soldier relents. He sends the old man away with a dismissive wave. The old man seems unperturbed by this indignity. I look on in disbelief as he makes his way back to the service and motions for those on board to disembark. The door is flung open and the passengers pour out. The three soldiers run over yelling: ‘Only women and children!' The men stay on and David and Molly snap away with their cameras. The old man ignores the orders and stands leaning against the service. The soldiers don't approach him. One of them glares at David and Molly.

Our driver opens the door of our minibus and Raghib motions for me to step out. I follow after Grace, Molly and four other women, feeling guilty that the men are forced to remain inside. Samy seems unsure whether he should stay with the men or disembark with the women. But the prospect of fresh air is too tempting and he steps down and joins me.

‘Is the jar still in one piece?' he asks.

I open my bag, retrieving it and displaying it to him. ‘Not a scratch,' I boast. ‘If it had been with you it would have probably smashed. Boys are always rough.'

Samy gives me a look of mock indignation and grabs the jar out of my hand, crouching on the ground and scooping soil into it with his bare hands. ‘I have an idea,' he says as he proceeds to fill the jar. I crouch down next to him.

‘We'll fill a jar for each part of the journey. This is the jar of the soil at Container checkpoint. We'll find some more jars and then fill one with the soil of the checkpoint into Jerusalem. Then a jar of the soil of your grandmother's village. She can put them all beside each other on her mantelpiece.

Samy tightens the lid on the filled jar and, as we stand up, the soldier whose order was disobeyed by the old man approaches, demanding to see all our papers.

He examines people's cards and papers dexterously, using his walkie-talkie to cross-check certain names with the border police. His eyes eventually focus on me and I hand him my birth certificate. I look up into his eyes.
Cough and he'll break out in a rash and do cartwheels around the checkpoint
, I say to myself. I cough. He doesn't cartwheel. Or break out in a rash. I cough again and he asks me why I'm travelling alone. I explain that I'm visiting family in Abo Dees and cough some more. He hands my papers back to me and moves on to Samy.

It's just the way it is with Samy. He infuriates adults even without saying a word. His very presence seems a deliberate insolence. The cocky tilt of his head, the nonchalant, sometimes contemptuous way he looks through them instead of at them. Samy stands, pigeon-chested, staring at the soldier as his papers are scrutinised. The soldier reads through Samy's birth certificate and then looks down to find Samy's stare has not broken. He announces Samy's name into the walkie-talkie and Samy stares on.

‘And why you travelling alone and not with parents?' the soldier demands while he waits for a response from the other end of the walkie-talkie. He has an irritated look on his face. The kind our teachers often have when dealing with Samy.

‘Because you killed one and imprisoned the other,' Samy replies.

The soldier blinks violently. I cough and cough but to no avail. With cool detachment, Samy stares up into the soldier's eyes.

A voice floats out of the walkie-talkie and the soldier raises an eyebrow. ‘So you the son of a prisoner?' he asks in a tone that doesn't invite a response. ‘And where you going?'

‘Abo Dees,' Samy says after a long pause. He just can't manage the humble tone. His voice oozes contempt, like when our teacher asks him a question and he takes his time answering, as though he's deciding whether to grace the teacher with his attention.

‘Not thinking of being terrorist like your father, I hope.'

‘He's a hero,' Samy shoots back.

The soldier suddenly grabs the jar from Samy's hand and raises it close to his face to examine it.

‘And what is this?'

‘My land.'

The soldier bobs down to Samy's eye level. Samy's eyes are impenetrable as he maintains his stony stare. But then I notice his hands by his side. They're trembling.

The soldier rises, glances at Samy and then smashes the jar onto the ground. Samy's trembling hands clench into tight fists.

‘If you think you are man,' the soldier says calmly, ‘you welcome join men inside service. Otherwise, you stay out here with the women and children. I leave to you choose.'

He smiles gloatingly and turns his back, moving on to the next person. Samy looks at the broken pieces of glass on the ground before him. He looks up at the steps of the service, then at the women and children crowded outside. Suddenly his shoulders slump and that hard, defiant expression collapses into defeat and shame.

I walk up beside him. ‘Samy, we're in Palestine,' I say, feigning a light tone. ‘There are hummus jars everywhere, remember?'

He grunts and turns away from me.

 

 

Some of us are eventually allowed through, Samy and I included. Others are not.

Those allowed to continue take their seats on the service. With some passengers turned away, there's more room. Our driver runs the engine, fidgeting impatiently in his seat. We approach the iron gate slowly. A soldier activates it and simply flicks her finger to signal that we can pass.

We've been at the Container checkpoint for just over two and a half hours.

My bladder starts to throb again. It screams at me, threatens to humiliate me, pleads with me that the occupation is none of its business. I beg it to understand but it refuses to stop throbbing.

I'm now worried about whether I'll make it to a toilet. Not to mention the overall delay. We'll be expected home from school soon and our absence will raise an alarm. As the service's last stop is the town of Abo Dees, I decide that when we arrive I'll find a toilet and then telephone home. I'm anxious to find out how Sitti Zeynab is doing.

It's odd. In reality we're less than six miles away from home. For those with blue cards, a car ride of minutes. And yet I feel as though we've journeyed to another country.

We drive through the village of Al-Sawahreh. My bladder is giving me last-minute ultimatums and I cry out for the driver to stop the service and allow me to disembark. One glance at my face, beaded with sweat and pinched with agony, and he agrees. I sprint to the nearest shop, a convenience store, enter and run to the desk. I plead with the owner to allow me to use the toilet. She does. The relief is overwhelming.

I reboard the minibus and we continue on to the town of Abo Dees, under the Mount of Olives. The driver makes a sharp U-turn, narrowly missing a taxi, a boy selling safety pins and a sleepy-looking grocer. Having been through Wadi Al-Nar, I don't even flinch.

‘Al Quds,' I whisper under my breath, pressing my nose up against the window. My stomach winds itself into tight knots as I take in a panoramic view of the holy city of Jerusalem and the surrounding green rolling hills filled with olive trees. I suddenly understand that there is dignity in being able to claim heritage, in being able to derive identity from an olive tree, a rocky hill, a winding mountain road. Sitti Zeynab's village has never stopped calling her, beckoning her to return home. Her soul is stamped into these hills and I feel her presence as strongly as if she were standing on the peak of one of the mountains.

‘I went to a wedding in Abo Dees,' Sitti Zeynab once told me. ‘Back in the day when travel was not so difficult. Your mother will be very angry with me for telling you this story but that's what grandmothers are for. The groom's name was Husni but some weeks after the wedding he was called Abo Ades, Father of Lentils, and nobody ever called him Husni again.

‘Abo Ades had decided to take on a second wife because he was bored with his first. He was a donkey, ya Hayaat, abusing religion like that, but that is life and the way of men with no brains.

‘His first wife, Lara, was thirty-nine, had long hair down to her waist and magnificent brown eyes. The new bride was Fatima from Nablus and she had blue eyes, fair hair and was eighteen years old. She was an orphan and had been raised by her great-aunt. Lara had not even a pumpkin seed's worth of pity. She was furious and vowed revenge. Lara insisted on attending the wedding. She didn't leave the dance floor and danced around the bride and groom, clapping vigorously, performing ululations, the
zaghareet
. She laughed and cheered and we all thought she had gone mad. That the donkey had finally turned her into a lunatic.

‘What I remember is her chewing down hard on a piece of gum the whole night. The louder she clapped, the more her jaw worked, as though all her anger was being channelled into gnawing that piece of chewing gum between her teeth. But a plan was swimming in her head, we later learned.

‘A week or so after the wedding she went into the kitchen in the middle of the night and cooked lentil soup. I know you do not like lentil soup but that is beside the point. For hours she let it boil and boil. Finally, it spewed over the edges of the pot, a horrible, rotting smell climbing out of it. Do you know that smell?'

I nodded, scrunching my nose up.

‘As the bride and groom lay asleep, Lara snuck into their room and poured a trail of the sticky brown lentil mess right under the bride's bottom. A little smudged on the bride's white satin nightgown and Lara paused to grin to herself.'

‘How do you know she paused to grin to herself?'

Sitti Zeynab frowned. ‘Lara has retold this story so many times we all feel we were in the room with her. Anyway, wouldn't you pause and grin to yourself if you were getting revenge on your donkey husband?'

‘I suppose. But I feel sorry for Fatima. It's not her fault.'

Sitti Zeynab shrugged. ‘That's life. Now let me continue. Lara left the sleeping couple and went to bed. She awoke some hours later to the sound of her husband and his new bride screeching with horror. She rushed to the room and was delighted with the scene that greeted her. Her husband stood pointing in disgust at the bride.

‘“The bride has soiled herself!” he exclaimed over and over again. And the poor bride looked behind and, apparently too intimidated – and stupid in my opinion – to accuse Lara, covered her face with shame.

‘The donkey divorced Fatima and she returned to Nablus, a divorcee with blue eyes and fair hair. From then on Lara apparently only had to say jump and her husband would ask how high. And that is the story of Abo Ades and you must now swear never to tell your mother you heard about it from me.'

The driver suddenly slams his foot on the brake, our path cut by a bored-looking pony lazily ambling its way across the road before it negotiates its large rear end down through the sloping backyard of a house.

David and Molly turn around in their seats to face Samy and me.

‘It's beautiful, isn't it?' David says, referring to the view of Jerusalem.

I nod shyly. Samy looks at David and then impolitely averts his eyes.

‘Where are you going?' Molly asks.

‘To Jerusalem,' I reply. ‘To my grandmother's village.' They want to hear more so I tell them about our plans, conveniently omitting the part about our families having no idea where we are.

Samy decides to provide further embellishment by adding that our families have ‘sent us'.

‘But do you have the papers to enter?' David asks.

‘
Bin kalb
to the papers,' Samy says coolly. ‘We
will
get in.'

I dig out a photograph of Sitti Zeynab from my bag. ‘It was taken the day I was born,' I explain, passing it to them. ‘That bundle she's holding, the one with the monkey face? That's me.' I smile.

Molly politely comments that Sitti Zeynab looks sweet, despite the fact that my grandmother stares stony-faced into the camera, as though not smiling will attach an air of dignity and status to her portrait.

‘If she met you she would damn you and your ancestors to hell,' I say, giggling.

They raise their eyebrows. ‘How flattering,' David says.

‘But she doesn't mean it. She told me so herself. She says we all laugh the same . . . Do you want to come with us? You said you were going to Jerusalem.'