Let It Be Morning

by Sayed Kashua

  “Yes,” I lie, and quickly pour the formula into the bottle and shake it.

  I smile at the baby, who’s coming downstairs in her mother’s arms. “Good morning,” I say to her, and approach with the bottle in my hand, but first I kiss her on the cheek. My wife will give the baby her bottle now, and I’ll go upstairs, with my coffee in my hand, take a few sips, light a cigarette and take a few puffs, put it out under the faucet and throw it in the garbage, sit on the toilet, and when I’m through I’ll look and check the result. Then I’ll quickly brush my teeth, wash my face, change and come downstairs. I’ll talk to my daughter again and try to smile at her. I’ll say good morning all over again, and she’ll smile back—or not. I’ll take my briefcase from the study on the bottom floor and check how much cash I have in my wallet to see if it’s enough.

  I’m ready now. I pick up the baby. According to the weather report at the end of last night’s evening news, it’s going to be warmer than usual today. My wife sighs. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t really matter. First we’ll stop at the nursery where we’ve begun leaving the baby. Every morning when we hand her over she cries, and we’re both kind of sad because of it, but we have no choice. My wife has to go to work, and for now at least, so do I. Then I’ll take my wife to the elementary school where she teaches. We’ll say good-bye, she’ll ask when I’m coming home and I’ll say I can’t tell because it depends on what happens today. Sometimes, when there’s a terrorist attack or a major military operation, I stay out longer and walk around because it’s only logical that a deputy news editor would be busy on days like that. I hope nothing out of the ordinary happens today. Sometimes those aimless amblings in the city streets are extremely awkward. I try not to walk the same streets twice, to keep changing locations. It isn’t only my family and the people in the village that I’m ashamed of facing because I’ve lost my job, but strangers too—kiosk owners or people in the café that I’ve never even met. So I try not to pass by them too often, because I don’t want them to think of me as a loafer.

  I turn on the car radio and decide I’ve got to put an end to it, to the disgrace of it. Things can’t go on this way. If another week goes by without my finding a new job, I’ll have no choice but to go to the Unemployment Office and apply for benefits. Nobody needs to know yet. I could go on leaving the village every morning. I’ll go to an office far away where they don’t have any Arabs at all.

  2

  Something’s wrong. At this hour, the cars are all supposed to be heading out of the village to work, but they’re driving in, and some of the drivers coming toward me are flashing their brights. Right away, I check if my seat belt’s fastened. Flashing brights mean there’s a police roadblock at the exit.

  The closer I get to the main road out of the village, in the direction of the nearby Jewish moshavim and kibbutzim and, beyond them, the cities, the heavier the traffic. Drivers are honking nervously, trying to turn around and creating a traffic jam. I manage to find a spot to park the car on the shoulder, get out and quickly march toward the exit, where hundreds of people have gathered. “Is it true?” asks a young man who’s also hurrying in the same direction.

  “Is what true?”

  “That they’ve sealed off the village?”

  I don’t know how to react. I try not to laugh in his face, try not to seem like a know-it-all. “We’ll find out soon enough,” I say, and add, “Allah yustur,” to make sure I sound like I belong. With every second that goes by, the crowd at the exit just keeps growing. Mostly they look disgruntled, and worried about the day’s wages they’re about to lose. I recognize many of the faces and realize that some of them are people I know personally.

  “What’s happening?” some of the people I know ask, turning to me. I’m the journalist in this village, after all, and they’re hoping I might have some idea of what’s going on. I shrug. Inching my way to the front of the crowd, I make out remarks like, “All the exits are blocked,” “Some people tried to make it by the dirt roads, the ones the tractors use, but they couldn’t get through,” and a story about one of the workers who tried to approach the soldiers and took a bullet. They say the bullet was shot with intent to kill, because his arm was right above his chest when he was hit. As I get closer, I notice that two tanks are blocking the road about five hundred feet away from the crowd, and aiming their enormous barrels at the people below. Everyone turns in the direction of the tanks, the jeeps and the soldiers, except for the mayor, who stands there with his back to the soldiers, facing the villagers and begging them to stay back. The mayor keeps explaining that he found out about the blockade only that morning and he has already called the people in charge, who promised to get back to him and to take care of it at once. He goes on to say that there must have been some mistake, urges the crowd to be patient, to wait a while till it all blows over. “You’ll make it to work today,” he promises. “Just give me a chance to find out what’s happening.”

  “The soldiers must have confused us with Tul-Karm,” someone blurts out, and manages to elicit some laughter. Many rolls of barbed wire are blocking the road. I look in either direction and discover that they stretch as far as the eye can see. Someone in the crowd swears that the wire runs around the entire village, and wonders just when the soldiers had a chance to roll out so much. In the distance we see that besides the tanks blocking the road there are others scattered in the fields, evenly spaced on either side of the road. The tanks are still, but their engines are running, giving off billows of smoke every now and then as the roar of the engines grows louder.

  3

  What’s going on here damn it? We’ve had roadblocks at the entrance and exit of the village almost every morning, but this is something altogether different. This new turn of events scares me at first, then makes me happy for a few minutes. I’ll finally have a good story, I think. When’s the last time they used tanks against Arab citizens? A story like that even has a chance of being printed on the front page and, who knows, maybe it will lead to my being invited for a radio interview, like in the good days. I’m right on the spot, after all, in the heart of the story—a journalist and a resident of the besieged village. I might even get asked to appear on TV. I’ve been on a few current-events programs, to the delight of my family and friends, even my in-laws. I’ve always enjoyed it when one of the research assistants asked me to come to the studio. I enjoyed how they’d send a cab to pick me up, I enjoyed dressing nicely and getting made up. It was usually just one of the morning or late-night shows, but still, my TV moments were the best I’d known. Maybe these tanks would bring them back.

  I work my way back out through the front rows of the crowd, trying to move away so I can update one of my editors about what’s going on. The way back into the village is becoming more and more jammed. All those who’d tried to get to work through the side roads are making their way back now that they’ve realized all the roads are subject to the same fate. There’s no doubt about it now: the village is blocked off on all sides.

  I left my mobile in my briefcase in the car. I glance at my watch and see it’s almost eight. I step up my pace so I can catch the morning news on my car radio before phoning the news desk at the paper. There’s no more honking or bottlenecks now. Apparently the news has spread. People have parked in the middle of the road. Where can they go anyway?

  The news makes no mention of what’s happening in the village. They talk about cities on the West Bank, cabinet meetings, the rising exchange rate of the dollar, but nothing to do with Israeli Arabs. Maybe it’s a mistake after all, as the mayor said, I think as I dial the paper. But luckily for me, even a mistake like that is still a story, for the back page, maybe, where they put the most amusing items.

  The switchboard operator is nice as she takes my call. She says good morning, asks how the baby’s doing and only then lets me know that the editor-in-chief hasn’t arrived yet. I decide to phone him on his mobile. I was one of the paper’s senior writers until not long ago, after all, and t
he events in this village are an emergency situation. The editor answers from his car. He sounds surprised at what I tell him, and tries to see if I’m not pulling his leg. “Tanks? Bulldozers? Are you kidding?” he says with a laugh.

  “I’m telling you they’ve shot someone already. I mean, I have to check it out first, but it’s a closure, and it’s worse than anything I saw in Ramallah or Nablus or Jenin. It’s more like Gaza. They’ve sealed off one hundred percent of the village,” I tell him.

  4

  The call to my editor is cut off. “Hello…Hello…” I’m not even sure he heard my last sentence. For a moment I think maybe he cut me off deliberately, but he wouldn’t pull such a thing on me. It’s not as though I call him all the time, and he knows I wouldn’t dare call him unless it was important. I try calling again, and get a recorded message: “Thank you for using Cellcom. The subscriber you have called is temporarily unavailable.”

  The phone is out of order. At least it wasn’t the editor who cut off the call. Must be a technical problem. They’ll fix it right away. Sometimes when you’re under a power line or something like that, there’s no reception. I’ll wait a few minutes, and then I’ll dial again. But the phone is still dead. I get out of the car and turn to one of the people walking toward the crowd. “Excuse me,” I say with a very appreciative expression. “Excuse me, would you happen to have a phone? Mine’s dead.”

  The guy nods and pulls a phone out of a leather pouch attached to his pants. He hands it to me and asks, “What’s going on in the village?” without seriously expecting an answer, just trying to make conversation. “I don’t know,” I say, and turn on his phone, but I get the same announcement. “Your line’s dead too,” I say, smiling. “Must be a technical hitch at the company.” The guy tries for himself. “Wallah, that’s strange, first time it’s ever happened.”

  It could still be a technical problem. Maybe the lines are jammed or maybe there’s been some catastrophe. On days when there’s a terrorist attack, cellular exchanges crash. It happens all over the country. I’ll go back home and call from there, I think. Except that my car is stuck in the middle of the road among dozens of others and it will take an hour for them to move now. Everyone is waiting for the roadblock to be removed so they can get to wherever they were going outside the village.

  I’ll call from the bank, I think. My older brother’s the manager of one of the departments there. I’ll go into his office and phone. They’ve got to send a photographer in right away, before those damn tanks pull out. Without a good picture, I can forget about a cover story. The bank is very close by, a few minutes’ walk from the edge of the village. The commotion and the traffic jam just keep getting worse. People are pacing back and forth without the slightest idea what they’re doing or what’s happening. They talk among themselves, registering surprise and some concern and mainly agitation and impatience.

  “What’s happening?” my brother asks as I enter the bank.

  “I heard there’s a roadblock at the exit from the village. Anything wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him, and follow him toward his little office with the metal blinds. His office is empty, and the bank is pretty empty too. It’s still early in the morning, and except for two older women leaning on the teller’s counter there are no customers yet. My brother has hung a picture of himself with the deputy manager of his bank, not of the branch, but of the entire bank. My brother, in a white hospital gown, lying in bed, an IV in his left arm and his right hand shaking the deputy manager’s, with both of them smiling at the camera.

  The deputy manager had come to visit after my brother was shot. The bank has been robbed countless times, but he was only shot at once. One of the robbers got edgy because there wasn’t enough money in the till and he took a shot at my brother, who was standing behind the counter. He was lucky, everyone said, just one broken rib. The bullet missed his heart by a few millimeters. Usually they shoot in the air or spray the windows with bullets. My brother was in the hospital for a few days, had some operations and recovered. A miracle, everyone said, a miracle from God. After that, he changed a lot. He became more religious, started fasting on Ramadan, praying at home and then going to the mosque too, and not just on Fridays. His wife also started praying. To tell the truth, she started before he did, on the day he was shot, in fact. The first time it was in the hospital, in the lobby outside the intensive care unit where my brother was. He joined her only after he left the hospital. But they’re not completely religious. I mean, he does pray, but he can also go swimming in a bathing suit, and his wife doesn’t wear the veil, or even cover her head with a colored scarf. But that’s only because she’s still young. Someday she’ll start wearing a veil too, like her mother, like my mother.

  “My mobile phone’s gone dead,” I tell my brother. “Can I use yours?”

  “We don’t have a connection either,” my brother says, and presses the speaker. The busy tone echoes through his office.

  5

  I check my phone again, and it announces that the line is still disconnected. I breathe heavily as I march back from the bank toward my parents’ home. I’m beginning to feel the stress. To think, I finally have a juicy story, and now I can’t even make contact with the paper. And what kind of a story is this anyhow? If it were all a mistake, they would have fixed it by now. Besides, what kind of a mistake could cause the army to send such large forces in and to seal off the village?

  I’m beginning to feel like a jerk. I’ve got to calm down. Nothing’s happened. I’m jumping to conclusions again. My fears are getting the better of me and sapping my common sense. What am I so worried about? It’s just a fucking roadblock, that’s all, and maybe it’s nothing more than a drill, or maybe they’ve had warnings of a Palestinian terrorist cell hiding in the village? Why a cell? I bet it’s just a single person. Maybe they have information about a serious operation and the soldiers can’t take any chances. And maybe the whole thing is over by now and people are already on their way to work, the way the mayor promised. When am I going to stop acting like a child? I hope I didn’t overdo it with my older brother.

  I’ll go home now. There’s no point going back to the car, because everything’s blocked and there’s no way I’ll be able to get the car out till the others start moving. It’s the first time I’ve walked such a distance within the village since I came back. I hardly go anywhere on foot. The only walk I take is from our house to my parents’ house next door. I hardly leave that area if I can help it, not even to go to the grocery store. I try to get my wife to go instead. Sometimes I have no choice and I do find myself in the center of the village, on Baghdad Street next to Saladin Square. They’ve started naming the streets and squares here lately. Sometimes I go to the pharmacy or buy a falafel or some cookies or fruit.

  In the evenings, the village center is packed with cars and people and there are dozens of youngsters on the town hall steps, smoking and cracking sunflower seeds. From a distance, it looks as if they’re not even talking to one another, just staring at the cars going by. The cars in the center move slowly, aimlessly. People just cruise around in their cars and greet one another, roaming about and studying the passersby. I hate being visible, because I know how they stare at me. Who is this guy anyway? Does he live in this village?

  This is no place for strangers. Not that I’m a stranger; I was born here and spent eighteen years of my life here. But still, there are rules. Initially, when I’d bump into people, I’d try to look away, to pretend I hadn’t seen them, but lately I’ve started studying them, looking at them the way they look at me, and sometimes I spot a familiar face or find myself smiling at someone peering at me from a passing vehicle, remembering that we’d been in school together, and I wave automatically. I’ve taken to greeting every familiar face with salam aleikum too, regardless of whether I can place the person or remember his name and what relationship we had, if any. Even though I don’t leave the house much, I realize that from week to week, from day to day, I
recognize more and more faces. I know that the number of times I say salam aleikum is growing by the day. These things happen and I have no control over them.

  It hasn’t been long since we moved back here, but I can go into stores in the village center without being questioned, as if I’ve been shopping there all along. People are less suspicious. Some of the salespeople recognize me by now and greet me when I walk in. The first time I went to buy a falafel, for instance, the vendor didn’t ask me a thing. He just looked at me, studied me and decided I was a stranger. I tried to be polite, the way a stranger ought to be. The second time he felt he could ask me whether I was a local. When I said I was, he wanted to know whose son, what I did for a living, whether I knew so-and-so, who my wife was, whose daughter she was, what she did. The third time, he felt he could inquire how much I made at the paper and how much my wife made as a teacher. I lied. The figures I gave were much too high. Twice the highest salary I ever made at the paper when I was on the editorial board. I could afford to lie, about journalism at least. Nobody has a clue how much a journalist makes. When it comes to teachers, on the other hand, everyone knows the answer.

  I don’t like being questioned this way by salespeople, some of whom are half my age. I’ve never asked anyone how much he or she makes a month, it’s been more than ten years since I’ve discussed my personal life with a salesperson and I’ve almost forgotten how it goes here. Other salespeople or just people who happened to be waiting in line at the bank or the pharmacy or the infirmary, as soon as they find out who I am, also want to know what I’ve been doing all these years, what it was like to live in a Jewish city. Did I have any male children? Almost invariably, the people who interrogated me declared that coming back to the village was a smart move. They found it hard to understand how anyone could live anywhere else. They looked at me as if I were an alien and congratulated me on my decision to return. “Is there anything better than living among your own? With your family?” was something I heard over and over again.