Before We Say Goodbye (9 page)

“I feel he is dead,” she says to herself. She remains motionless and rigid in the chair as the blood begins to drain from her limbs.

How long she stays like that she doesn’t know. Then, slowly, she begins to dial old Sara’s number.

And already, from the bloodless voice with which Sara answers, she understands.

Shoshi hears the wailing of sirens in the street below and says to herself, Oh God, Myriam will be at the supermarket now. She looks at the TV but doesn’t turn it on. She slips on a jacket but forgets she’s still wearing her slippers. She runs to the supermarket. The entrance is in chaos, and already a small group is yelling death to the Arabs, death to the Arabs. There is a security cordon all around the building, but she manages to make her way through and grab one of the stretcher bearers by the arm.

“I’m looking for my daughter,” she says to him, and it feels as if she is calm and in control, but her face is frightening, convulsed. The stretcher bearer grabs her to hold her up and to block her view. A few yards away, a man’s leg still needs to be picked up.

“No, madam, calm yourself. There are only two fatalities; your daughter isn’t here. The terrorist is dead, and unfortunately also a security guard. There are lots injured, but none struck me as serious. I have to get on now.”

“Where are they taking the injured?”

“To the Hadassah and Shaare Zedek hospitals for now.”

Myriam’s mother continues to grip his arm.

“I must go now, madam. You’ll find your daughter, you’ll see.”

Shoshi calls home, speaks to little Dan. Myriam hasn’t returned; Myriam hasn’t called. Nathan stayed on in town when she left him and isn’t answering his mobile. Shoshi calls Myriam’s father and asks him to come at once to Jerusalem and call round the hospitals with her.

“I don’t know if she’s injured. I’m not even sure she was there,” she tells him. She remembers the leg on the floor. Panic spreads through her body. Yet she remains rational.

The roar of the explosion carries as far as the building site. As does the wailing of the sirens, and the palpable feeling of pain, and the smell of fear. In the office inside the cabin Said switches on the television. Soon after, the others arrive. The news is still vague. There has been a suicide attack on a supermarket not far from where they are working. There is talk of one death: the security guard. A hero, who, according to the first reports, used his body to block the bomber, preventing her from entering the supermarket, and thus avoiding a massacre. And yes, it was a female terrorist: a woman. In fact a girl.

His workmates watch the television and call home at the same time. Their faces are bleak with a grief that makes them physically sick. Gabriel shakes his head and seems on the verge of tears. The crane operators couldn’t come down immediately, but now they arrive. The entire site is at a standstill. There is the silence of mourning broken only by a few disjointed comments. Another one. The supermarket. A woman. They say nothing else.

No one wants to embarrass Said, but no one can manage to look at him.

Oh Allah, how much longer must we atone for the sin of not dying before? Said prays in silence.

The TV camera shows the first few little groups that have assembled near the attack to call for vengeance. Said knows that today in one way or another he will pay. The journey home will be longer than usual, he will have to arm himself with patience. He tries to imagine where the terrorist may have come from and hopes she had nothing to do with Dheisheh. Otherwise a new curfew will prevent him from going to work the next day.

They all seem embarrassed by the fact that he is listening to the news too, so he leaves the room and lights up a cigarette. There are times when they have to stay apart.

*   *   *

Said is a man who can no longer bring himself to hate. But hatred is nonetheless something he understands. He understands the desperation of the young. He knows that their fathers – he as much as the others – continue to get it wrong. They teach their children important values such as honour above all, the dignity of the person, and – most importantly – respect for the head of the family and the elderly. But before the children’s eyes, ever since they were small, their fathers and grandfathers have been submitting to arbitrary checks, curt orders, humiliating searches. Without honour or dignity before the young soldiers. Without an army to join; without ever having been able to fight a real war for their future.

Now their children kill themselves, as long as they can kill their enemy. As long as they can return the terror that they themselves have grown up with. As long as they can square all the accounts with shame. As long as they can show that they are somebody. And their fathers have lost all authority over them. They have grown old before their time. They can no longer do anything to stop them.

What will this girl’s act have achieved? Nothing. What idiocy. A girl too: she must have been desperate. With this nothing will change, he thought; on the contrary, it will get worse. Now there will be another school of terror, another wave of repression, and, as a result, other troubled young people, in search of a new vengeance, hungering for martyrdom.

Said glances at his workmates motionless inside the office and realizes that the working day is over. He might as well close the site and each man off to his own home.

Shoshi and her ex-husband have done the rounds of the hospitals in Jerusalem. They have visited them all. Myriam is not there. They repeatedly ring home. Myriam has not called. Where is she? Maybe she’s in shock, wandering around the neighbourhood, and cannot find her way home. They will have to go back to the supermarket, and from there start asking and searching once more.

When they arrive at the supermarket they see that the black Chassidim are already there. The pious ones always turn up last; it’s the role they have allotted themselves: with a scraper they collect every scrap of skin stuck to the walls and the shelves, so that it will all have a burial.

And Myriam’s parents hear a piece of news that is circulating: there were two terrorists, two girls, perhaps sisters. They have found another one, dead, under a large pile of cardboard boxes.

Two terrorists.

Two sisters.

Two girls.

Two girls.

Shoshi’s heart swells unnaturally. It feels hard, almost as if it has stopped. Waiting.

Finally someone comes up to her.

A pain so strong it cannot be described. She doesn’t even feel Myriam’s father’s arm holding her up.

The camp is in turmoil; the soldiers have come. Many soldiers. Said quickens his step towards home, without hearing orders to stop. When he rounds the last corner, he sees a great many soldiers in front of his house. And the women and children of his family lined up outside.

Immediately he thinks of Amhad, his eldest son. He hopes he hasn’t been involved in anything. At that moment, he spots him coming down the stairs handcuffed among the soldiers. He meets his gaze. Amhad. The look his son gives him is so desperate that Said trembles.

Faris is on his way from Bethlehem, satisfied with his day. He is walking calmly, along the main road that skirts Dheisheh. He is lucky to still have job offers. Somehow or other things happen for him. Whereas almost all his friends are now unemployed, and even his father is finding it harder every day to get work.

But as soon as he enters the camp, he begins to feel uneasy. An eerie quiet is emanating from all around, a strange sense of emptiness. The streets are deserted, as if a great wind has swept through, but from a distance come cries and uproar. As he nears Dima’s house the sounds of the disturbance become clearer – and it’s also clear where the inhabitants of the camp have ended up.

First he sees Said, alone, his arms hanging loose, his shoulders bent, his eyes distant; and Faris thinks, He’s aged twenty years. Then he sees the house surrounded by soldiers, and the women terribly pale, clutching the smallest children in the middle of the street. And he sees the strange and elusive look of the crowd, a bit further off. Then he sees that none of Dima’s big brothers are there.

Amhad, he thinks. Amhad, by Allah, what mess have you got yourself into?

Finally he notices that Dima is not among the women. He takes a better look but he cannot see her. At his gaze the women burst into tears. He still cannot see Dima. He gives old Said a questioning look. Said is gasping. For a moment his lip trembles, as if he too wishes to burst into tears, but he doesn’t. He holds his arms out towards Faris as if to welcome him.

Faris thinks, I’m covered in mortar; I can’t touch him. Then, like poison, death slips into his bones and makes his teeth chatter.

When the soldiers leave, having turned everything upside down and taking Amhad and also Melthun away with them – and for Melthun it is the first time – the neighbours begin to empty Said’s house, before the bulldozer arrives.

They are all panting as they quickly carry down the stairs the television the coffee table the couch the mattresses the stove, but they are also keyed up with excitement. Only some are immobilized by terror, and they are the ones whose houses are next door to Said’s: if the soldiers’ bulldozer comes, as it always does, to destroy the martyr’s home, then the whole building will collapse, and their homes with it. A rumour begins to spread that there are foreigners, volunteers, who will sleep in Said’s empty house tonight, to offer passive resistance to the demolition. Perhaps one of these foreigners will also help them appeal to the Israeli High Court of Justice: they can hardly knock down the neighbours’ houses too.

Said is stunned, motionless. They should let him see his daughter’s body. They have brought nothing to prove that it is Dima. They have offered him no justification for thinking it is her.

Where
is
Dima, though? They say that she left school before noon with an excuse, and since then no one has seen her. So Dima isn’t here; she hasn’t come back. Dima hasn’t come back.

His wife is now crying out in grief, surrounded by women from the camp who are trying in vain to calm her. The girls are weeping in one another’s arms; Amhad’s wife is clutching her youngest child to her neck; Melthun’s fiancée is looking desperately around her. The younger boys are not crying, because now that the soldiers have taken away Amhad and Melthun, they are the men of the house. All the inhabitants of the camp reassemble, and already they are firing shots into the air to celebrate, and sweets and chocolates appear, and the first rounds of applause and the first toasts begin.

Jihan tells everyone several times that he bumped into Dima that morning. Her schoolmates arrive, and say that over the last few days they found her distracted but affectionate with all of them. They are excited and full of admiration. They are brimming with life. Of all of them, notes Said, who without wanting to is photographing for ever in his mind every moment of this long afternoon, only Rim, Dima’s long-standing classmate, is crying. Only she has pity.

Pity,
pity
. Pity for my children, pity for my wife, pity for me, pity for Faris. Why don’t you have pity? Why are you celebrating Dima’s folly?

*   *   *

The word goes round that al-Arabiya is broadcasting the martyr’s video. They go to watch it at a nearby house. From now onwards the video will be continually aired by other Arab stations at ten-minute intervals.

Yes, it’s Dima. It’s Dima.

Dima?

“May Allah forgive her,” says Faris aloud, as all around people come running to congratulate the family. What worse betrayal than death can come from your betrothed, from the future mother of your children, from the consolation of your evenings, what worse betrayal than this?

“May Allah forgive her,” says Faris. From her he had expected every happiness. Since they were children he had been in love with her. He was proud of her; he accepted everything about her. Plans, projects, decisions: he knew Dima’s worth, and he listened to her.

And she had done this to him.

She hadn’t even given him the chance to argue, to defend, to save. She had completely excluded him from her life. She had gone her own way, as if he had been nobody, nothing. Only yesterday they had been talking about wedding plans…

Grief flares up along with resentment and outrage.

May Allah forgive her, says Faris to himself. I certainly won’t. She has killed my life along with her own, my future along with hers, all our hopes and dreams.

Meanwhile journalists arrive and ask questions. Someone leads Faris away by the arm to prevent him from talking. The hardliners stay with the journalists, and allow themselves to be filmed as they make toasts.

The TV cameras roll.

Held tightly by the arm by a stranger, Faris tries to run through his last visits to Dima. But at this moment he is unable to reconstruct anything, every now and then he glances at the screen where Dima plays her last part and he doesn’t understand.

How could she, his cousin, whom he thought he had known since birth? How could she have organized all this, and with whom, who was the coward who supplied her with explosives, and how could he, Faris, not have seen what was going on? He strives to think clearly, to delve into his memories to work out when it was that he had begun to lose Dima.

Suddenly he thinks that perhaps she was never his.

All around, other people arrive – people he has never met but who knew Dima – and they are celebrating too. They are eating sweets, shouting and making up songs of joy.

And what about this Dheisheh, which his mother has told him about so many times, the camp that “becomes your family, your home and everything in life”, as she so often repeats when recalling the years she lived there? Are these the inhabitants who according to his mother are all brothers, even though they come from forty-five different villages? What did their fathers leave behind in those villages, apart from the dream of an orderly life, even their souls? What has this degradation in which they live, generation after generation, brought them that they celebrate the suicide of one of their own? Had they all participated in a mass suicide it would have been better, may Allah forgive me, he adds quickly.