My son Ibrahim was twelve-and-a-half.
CHAPTER 29
Escape
When I see how we treat one another; the war, the crime, the inhumanity…I wonder a million years ago whether we crawled out of the slime or were asked to leave.
-MILT ABEL
“All men and boys over twelve must report to the bottom of the road. Anyone not following orders will be shot.” My fourteen-year-old niece, Manar, was with me in the dark kitchen, straining to understand the announcement, which was garbled by the night wind, percussion grenades, and the speaker’s accent.
“…Anyone not following orders will be shot.”
It was the last part of the order that took me so long to understand. Finally, with a sharp pain that passed from my forehead to my gut, the words sank in. Manar must have come to the understanding at the same moment because her voice rose to a high-pitched shriek. “Oh, my God, Jenny! They’re going to take Ibrahim!”
Trying hard not to panic, I rested my head against the window frame, franticly thinking over my options. I peered again over the window’s casement. Several Israeli Army Jeeps and armored personnel carriers cruised slowly up the road, their spinning yellow lights casting long shadows behind men walking the back orchard.
There was no way I was sending my son down there.
Ibrahim was twelve, but could easily pass for fifteen or older. God, why did he have to be so cursedly tall?! For the first time, I actually wished my son was small for his age, like his cousins. Their moms were probably keeping them home, safe where they belonged. I can hide him…maybe behind the big boiler on the roof. But Ibrahim couldn’t even keep himself quiet for a game of hide and seek with his sister. Besides, I couldn’t bear the thought of him crouching up there, all alone. In my mind’s eye I saw boots thumping up the stairs. All it would take was one noise, one spooked soldier with a nervous trigger finger, and that would be it.
No, it was far too risky. But then again, so was handing him over to the soldiers. Bat Ayin was arguably the most radical settlement in the entire West Bank. They believed that whoever had killed the child in their settlement came from Safa, and they had already taken steps to punish us.
“Blame the killer that you don’t have milk for your children,” one soldier said.
What’s more, since Bat Ayin was infamous for its motto, “For every one of us injured, three of them dead,” I couldn’t count on them having scruples against hurting or killing one of our kids. True, the army was supposed to hold themselves to a different standard—but then again, if they were willing to cut off our access to food and milk for the village kids and babies, would they protect our boys from the settlers, or would they simply hand them over?
I’d seen the army back the settlers too many times, so I made my decision: we were going to make a run for it.
Hurrying downstairs, Manar woke the kids and helped them change out of their pajamas. She gave them a quick explanation about needing to get away from tear gas and percussion grenades, which were increasing, though still distant. I knew there was no way the kids had heard or understood the order from the Israeli soldiers, and decided it was better to keep it that way—especially for Ibrahim’s sake.
I moved quickly, grabbing our passports, some money, and a credit card. I had no idea where we would go, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was getting Ibrahim out of Safa.
Within five minutes I was backing the car out of the garage and down the dark driveway. Although the windows were closed, I could still feel the telltale burn of tear gas in the back of my throat, and I realized I’d forgotten to close the vents in the car. I quickly did so and silently prayed the wind would blow most of the gas past the car on our way out of the village.
The kids were uncharacteristically quiet as I turned the car onto the unpaved road in front of the house. They were silenced by the sudden flash-boom! of the grenades and the eerie sight of the army’s spotlights, shooting through the fog like fat laser beams. Only Karim spoke—all wide-eyed in his car seat—exclaiming, “Scare my belly!” with each new explosion we heard.
The short road was so rocky and rutted that it took more than ten minutes at a bouncing crawl to finally reach the paved road that led to Beit Ommar. Once there, I slowly continued the remaining fifty feet to the crest of the small hill that unofficially marked the boundary of the village. Seeing nothing on the other side, I turned to Manar in the passenger seat, and smiled. We’d made it!
As we coasted down the hill and away from Safa, I started to think about where to go next, entertaining visions of a cozy, safe hotel room in nearby Bethlehem. Rounding the corner, however, I faced a sight so terrifying that I slammed on my breaks, forgetting the clutch, and stopped in a shuddering stall that marked the end of my reverie.
You don’t just leave town in the middle of a siege. An earthen barrier had been bulldozed across the road, completely eliminating any possibility of escape. Worse, though, were the four armored personnel carriers sitting directly in front of us—the only car on the road—their spotlights trained on my windshield.
Waqif! “Halt!” Even with the windows up, I could hear the order. I steadied my hand enough to roll down the window a crack, terrified I would miss some crucial command. I was afraid to restart the car, afraid to approach further, and just as afraid to try turning around. So I sat motionless, cursing my impulsive decision to leave.
I waited, hoping my yellow plates would reassure them enough not to shoot at us—or at least give them pause. Finally a flashlight signaled us to approach the long earthen berm in front of the vehicles, and I restarted the car, slowly creeping forward to where a lone soldier had emerged onto the road.
Although I was accustomed to having guns pointed my way at the omnipresent checkpoints dotting the West Bank, there was something about the way this soldier paused, pointing his gun at each one of us, individually, that made my skin prickle. The look on his face was so utterly devoid of emotion, yet robotically fierce at the same time, it was the scariest encounter I’d ever had with another human being.
I knew, knew, that he would shoot us all if I made one wrong move, so I sat completely still; I’m not even sure I remembered to breathe.
A long pause later, the soldier backed stiffly away without a word. I slowly turned the car around and started back to Safa.
No. There would be no escape.
We waited until the garage door closed behind us before we felt it was safe to get out of the car. Since Karim had fallen asleep, I carried him back inside and lay him in his bed. I turned on the cartoon channel for Ibrahim and Amani, and called Manar into the bedroom to talk.
“This is what we’re going to do,” I said, giving her a look as confident as I could muster. “I’m taking Ibrahim outside to the drop-off point at the bottom of the street. I want you to stay here with Karim and Amani.”
The look on her face was one of defeat. I saw that she, too, knew we had no choices left.
“Everything’s going to be fine.” I continued. “I’ll just have to talk the soldiers out of keeping him. But listen, don’t say anything to Ibrahim, and don’t cry. I don’t want to scare him. Do you understand?”
Manar nodded and followed me back into the family room, where she sat on the couch next to Amani and Ibrahim, whose faces were illuminated by the flickering images of Tom and Jerry.
“Ibrahim, come here for a minute,” I said, motioning my son into the entryway. Why did he have to be so tall?
“Listen, honey. You and I are going to go down and talk to the soldiers for a few minutes, and I need you to be very brave, okay?”
“But why?” he asked, “Just us?”
I felt sick. I didn’t want to scare him, but I didn’t want to lie to him either. Still, I’d kept him in the dark about the announcement and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the full truth now. It was the only thing I could control, a meager protection I wanted to continue for as long as possible.
“You’re the man of the
house, Ibrahim,” I said. “And the soldiers want to talk to the leaders of each family. That’s you and me, right?”
“Oh, okay, Mom,” he said, clearly proud of his big boy role.
“Just be brave, do what they say, and everything will be fine.” I added, patting his back, hoping he didn’t notice the catch in my throat.
“I’m not scared, Mom.”
“Good, honey.” I turned away and grabbed him a sweatshirt from the closet, quickly wiping the tears from my eyes before they had a chance to fall.
“Let’s go.”
Hand in hand, we walked away from the house and then turned down the road toward the announced drop-off point. My unsuccessful escape plan had consumed so much time that we were noticeably late responding to the order. I didn’t want to startle anyone with our approach, so I joked with Ibrahim in an intentionally loud voice—hoping to put our foreign status on conspicuous display at the same time.
It wasn’t long before the sound of crackling walkie-talkies told me we were getting close, and as we neared the dark intersection I could barely make out an eerily silent mass of boys and men crouching with their hands on their heads by the side of the road. Aside from the broken, electronic bursts of Hebrew, the only other sound was the village’s power transformers above us, arcing in the fog as if in a cheap production of Frankenstein. Their tiny zigzags of light emanated with each buzzing pulse, as if the army had somehow conspired with the elements to make the moment as terrifying as possible.
As we approached, a flashlight shone in our faces and a voice barked in hard Arabic, “Leave the boy and go.”
Putting my arm around Ibrahim’s shoulders, I pulled him to me, answering the flashlight in clear, loud English. “I’m sorry, but I can’t leave him with you. He doesn’t speak Hebrew or Arabic, so he can’t stay here.”
A pause, and some murmuring in Hebrew, then the beam of the flashlight lowered. A tall soldier that I took for the unit commander stepped toward me out of the gloom.
“You’ll do what we tell you to do,” he said firmly
A hot flash of hate surged through me, and I forced my face into a fierce, rigid smile. I answered again in purposely obtuse English, trying to look stupid and authoritative at the same time. “Well, see, he’s only twelve. And you know you aren’t allowed to hold children. And like I said, he can’t understand Arabic. If you want to keep him, I’ll have to stay, too.”
“Give me your ID!” the man snapped. As I stepped forward to obey his order, Khalid emerged out of the crowd of prisoners, trying to intervene. As one, the entire unit raised their rifles, yelling at Khalid to get back. Next to me, I could feel Ibrahim starting to shake.
I knew Khalid was risking his life, and I also knew I might not win this. But once again, I plastered a smile on my face and repeated in English “American” as many times as possible, as much to distract the soldiers from Khalid as to support my case.
Obviously flustered, the commander stepped closer to me, flanked by two other soldiers who looked like they were still in high school. Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the commander snatched the passports out of my hand, flipping too quickly through the documents to actually read the information.
I’m sure I was the last thing he’d expected to see that night—a pesky foreigner in the middle of West Bank nowhere—witness to an illegal roundup that was probably his idea, and I was counting on the possibility that the commander might decide that keeping Ibrahim would be more trouble than it was worth. After all, I’d seen it before at checkpoints, a sudden change in behavior once the soldiers realized I wasn’t a Palestinian, a kind of frustrated embarrassment occasionally mixed with an honest streak of compassion.
A long moment passed while the commander considered what to do, stepping away to confer with his soldiers. We waited, Ibrahim focusing his attention fixed on his uncle, and me, trying to maintain a confident pose with my arm still clamped hard around my son’s shoulders.
Finally, the commander handed our passports to one of the young soldiers. The soldier stepped forward, returned the documents to me, and with a wave of his hand dismissed us with a quick, clipped, “Take him and go!”
We walked away, leaving Khalid and the rest of the village’s boys and men to fade back into the dark, squatting with their hands on their heads just as we found them. It wasn’t the first time I felt guilty for using my American “privilege,” but it was by far the worst. I couldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—risk my child to make a point, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about the other children, watching us walk away by virtue of that one magic word: American.
When the soldiers came to search the house that night, I’d already been watching from the top of the front tower, bundled up in a blanket and perched on a plastic chair for more than two hours. I watched them approach, banging their rifle butts on the garage door. Iftah al Bab! “Open the door!”
By the time I made it all the way down the three flights of stairs, the kids were awake, startled by the loud banging. I opened the garage and five soldiers entered, blinking in the sudden light and ordering us to leave the house while they searched.
This was the last straw in an already too long night for Karim, who started crying (loudly) as I carried him out into the night air. It was a weird feeling, knowing that soldiers were inside my bedroom, going through my drawers, bathroom, toys. However, as long as I had the kids safely by my side, nothing else mattered.
When the soldiers emerged from the house, one of them paused to pick up a toy gun from the garage floor. He started to laugh as he walked over to Karim, patted him on the back, and said, “Don’t cry, little man!” The soldier then handed the gun to Ibrahim, turned and wished us a “pleasant night” before disappearing into the darkness.
Morning came with news that Safa’s prisoners had been freed, with only a few taken away for questioning—thankfully, none of them children. The army was still at the crossroads, as well as at a half-dozen other locations inside the village, but we were free to move between the houses.
Safa remained closed, however. The only access was a single road that snaked through the settlement. We all watched as a black, shiny Suburban that belonged to one of the few embedded news crews crept slowly down the hill from the settlement. The SUV stood out in contrast to the military vehicles and Safa’s few dusty, dilapidated cars. Once it entered Safa, someone in the Suburban rolled down the black-tinted (probably, bulletproof) windows just long enough to say they were looking for an English-speaking person to interview. Of course, the village kids, who took to running alongside the beautiful foreigner’s car, quickly directed them to the only American in Safa—me.
I don’t know, maybe it was the stress of the previous night finally catching up to me, but that reporter, all spiffy and beautiful, emerging from the car and typing on her Blackberry, rubbed me the wrong way. Or maybe last night had nothing to do with it. Maybe she irked me because, as she placed the phone in her back pocket, she walked down my drive and passed right by me, obviously looking for someone more “American” to talk to. Oh, and did I mention that she was flanked by three huge bodyguards in mirrored sunglasses?
“Can I help you with something?” I asked the woman.
“Oh!” She seemed startled by my English as she tossed her hair. “Yes, can you tell me what’s been happening here?”
“Well, that depends…” I answered, eyeing the three men standing a few feet behind her, hands clasped and feet apart in that universally recognized, tough guy pose. “Who are you?”
“I am with an American news organization,” she said. “We want to hear about what’s going on here.”
“Which news organization?” I asked.
Let’s just say that when I heard her answer, delivered with an obvious pride that defied all explanation, I shooed her biased, embedded ass and her “protection” off my property like a redneck with a shotgun. I admit, I might have exuded more than a smidge of misplaced aggression, but a few choice words and the summ
oning of the neighbors was all it took to send that shiny Suburban away in a hail of dust and gravel, ostensibly to find someone far more fair, and definitely more balanced to interview.
By late afternoon, the military was completely gone, leaving the village in a strangely calm state. Word passed between the families that nobody in Safa had been arrested, and we began to doubt that the killer came from our tiny village at all.
CHAPTER 30
Safety in Numbers
Fear can make a donkey attack a lion.
-ARAB PROVERB
Over the next few days, things seemed to calm down enough that I began to think life in Safa might return to normal. Although I’d begun to seriously consider leaving early, there wasn’t anything I could do quickly because the village remained closed. In spite of this, I felt almost relaxed, somehow, as if the fear and relief I had felt the night of the raid had lulled me into a feeling that the worst was over—and honestly, I felt a little numb after the experience. Still, I was about to come around real quick.
It was a beautiful, sunny April day on the morning of the attack, and I awoke to loud pounding on the garage doors. Still in my pajamas, I ran to the garage, thinking it was Manar or my mother-in-law, but as soon as I saw the number of feet that appeared behind the rising door, I knew something was horribly wrong. Reflexively running for my prayer scarf to cover my pajamas, I heard the first group of people come in the house, talking in tones tinged with hysteria. When I came back from my room, I saw that more people, some of whom I’d never met, were coming in with their young children, asking to take shelter in our safety room, which was specially outfitted with thick concrete walls, steel window covers and a bulletproof door.
That was when the next-door mosque’s loudspeaker crackled to life, sending out a young boy’s voice through the village air, suddenly laced with whistles, the universal Palestinian warning that meant soldiers are coming…
All Roads Lead to Jerusalem Page 17
