Crescent Star

by Nicholas Maes

  The class started shouting when they heard these words. Shulamit whistled. When everyone shut up, she let Zohara continue.

  “Do you know what we’re up to in the West Bank and Gaza? Every day we smash people’s doors and rough them up and throw them in prison. If someone protests, we shoot him dead, not just adults but children too. And for added effect, we demolish their houses. Would any of you want to live in Gaza City? Can you imagine how much filth there is and poverty and sickness? So tell me how we’re different from Nazis?”

  “Do you really think we’re Nazis?” Shulamit asked. “Let’s not speak rhetorically. Yes, Aryeh.”

  “The comparison is disgusting,” Aryeh said. “It’s true we’ve sometimes overreacted but even at our worst, we’ve created nothing like Auschwitz. At Auschwitz a million Jews went up in smoke. As bad as Gaza is — and we all know there are problems — it doesn’t come close to an Auschwitz or Belzec.”

  “I agree that Gaza isn’t Auschwitz,” Nira spoke — her parents were members of Shalom Achshav, an organization dedicated to forging peace. “But Zohara is saying something important. For a population that was treated badly, we tend to use force a little too quickly. It has become a way of life with us.”

  “But we’re usually responding to Arab violence,” Ilan cried. “How else can we protect ourselves?”

  “If you starve a dog and lock it up, you shouldn’t be surprised if it snaps at you. We’ve created the culture of violence that we’re so afraid of.” Zohara was on her feet and practically shouting.

  “So you’re saying the problem lies with us? Every time there’s a terrorist attack — and they number in the hundreds and thousands — the fault is always ours? Do you remember Ma’alot, when children were murdered? We were to blame? And the pizza bombing on Yaffa Road? And last week’s attack in Tel Aviv? And what about the first Iraq War, when Saddam launched his missiles on us? Do you remember how the Arabs reacted? They were dancing on their roofs! They were dancing and singing! I could go on but my point is clear. When we resort to violence, we’re defending ourselves!” Ilan was standing and waving his arms.

  “That’s always our excuse!” Zohara sneered. “So tell me, how far should we go to safeguard our survival? Should we lock up everyone? Should we starve and shoot them? We know what it’s like to be pushed around. We have no right, in the name of self-defense, to humiliate and arrest and torture and kill. You say we’re not like Nazis? Tell that to an Arab whose dad has been shot for no good reason.”

  “Maybe daddy was a terrorist,” Ilan spoke.

  “If daddy wasn’t,” she spat back, “his son will be!”

  “But we’re still talking hundreds of victims,” Aryeh said. “And sometimes they were up to no good. In the case of the Germans, they killed us by the millions, and not because we threatened them, but only because we happened to be Jewish. You can argue we’re too rough at times, but to say we’re Nazis is total crap.”

  “And everything’s in the open,” Itamar spoke. His father was a journalist and wrote for Ha’Aretz, “If our troops are rough, it gets reported. My father writes about miscarriages of justice and no one tries to shut him up. Like you, he thinks we sometimes cross the line, but he appreciates the fact our system is so open. He also says the Arab countries don’t allow such freedom. Your parents work for B’Tselem? There’s no such organization in Arab countries. Remember this when you point your finger.”

  As the discussion rolled on Avi kept silent. The heated exchange was only fanning his fear. In three years he would be armed with a rifle and the decision to kill would be left up to him.

  He wasn’t ready. He would never be ready.

  He glanced at Zohara. He thought she was wrong, but her fearlessness was something. And when she smiled, it was dazzling.

  The teacher called for silence. The class would end in thirty seconds and she wanted to end on a decisive note. “All of you should know that we aren’t Nazis. Anyone who argues so knows nothing about Auschwitz and nothing about Israel.”

  Their teacher Ali was standing with his hands behind his back. The wails of the siren were fading at last as the students completed an exercise in Arabic. When the siren died, Ali opened the window and smiled as a breeze rushed into the room. The sounds of the nearby shuk intruded, together with the hum of traffic on the move.

  “Shall we discuss their tragedy?” he asked the class.

  “What tragedy?” Suleiman declared, “My father says the Holocaust is a lot of crap. He says Jews control the media and they spread this lie to hide their crimes against the Arabs.”

  “My father says they didn’t lose six million,” Yasser added. “Maybe a few Jews died, but nothing like the numbers they claim.”

  Before the others could speak, Ali raised a hand. He was short and had a slender build but could control the class using just one finger.

  “Why begrudge them their suffering? I have seen the books and movies and pictures. Their Shoah did occur and many millions died. But what does that have to do with us? Mahmoud?”

  “Okay they suffered,” Mahmoud said, slamming his fist against his hand. “But that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to our land. Why didn’t the Europeans pay them off? They could have carved up Germany and let the Jews move there.” His family had lost their farm in ’48.

  “Mahmoud’s right,” Sami added. “We were never their problem. Their enemy was the Germans and their allies at the time. They should return to Europe and stop plaguing us here.” Sami had six brothers. Three were in jail.

  “Just because they suffered,” Anwar cried, “doesn’t mean they get to treat us like dirt. If anything, they should be refraining from violence.” Anwar’s dad was in the souvenir business. Most tourists had been chased off by the endless strife.

  “Not necessarily,” Hussein interrupted. “If they suffered in the past, they’ll protect themselves in future. In other words, they’ll hurt us if we try to rebel. Their Holocaust has made them very tough.”

  “So we will have to be tougher,” Amir said.

  Moussa listened as the debate raged on. The number six million was in his head. It was very large and hard to imagine when applied to human suffering. The largest crowd he’d seen had had two thousand people. At Eid-al-Fitr maybe 10,000 people used the old bus station, but that was over twelve full hours. Even pictures from the Hajj involved three million pilgrims and that was only half of six.

  He imagined a line of empty desks. Each desk was stationed one meter from the next. If there were a desk for each Jew who’d perished in the Shoah, that would mean six thousand kilometers of desks. The image haunted him, of an endless line of wooden tables, extending from Jerusalem to China, say….

  “Alright,” Ali said, cutting short the discussion, “I think we’re all agreed. The Jews suffered badly. And we’ll be sure to pity them, once they’ve given us our own state. Until then, they will only know our anger.”

  Moussa almost wilted here. When would he feel angry?

  Chapter Five

  “The brass section’s flat. And I can hear you’re slowing down when you play the eighth notes.”

  Avi shifted restlessly. He hated waiting for the group to catch up. He’d mastered his part of the Mozart Concerto — and his solos were the most difficult segments — so why hadn’t everyone mastered theirs? This was why he hated band: one weak player could ruin the whole ensemble. Like Rivka, their conductor, he could hear that Erez was out of tune, Ilana hadn’t practiced, and Zohara was off tempo….

  “Zohara! On the beat. Dah dah dah now…!”

  It was hot in the practice room. Avi’s shirt was damp and he was sweating freely. His mind was wandering — never a good sign. They had seen a film about the cell in his biology class. When the announcer had discussed the Golgi apparatus, a trumpet had started sounding in the background. When the film had turned to the mit
ochondria, a piano had been tinkling away. Why this choice of instruments, he mused? Why did the composer think the mitochondria were best captured by a piano’s sounds? And in movies why do violins and cellos reflect sad emotions better than a piccolo, say? And what instrument would capture Avi Greenbaum best?

  What instrument best reflected fear?

  “Ilana! You’ve stopped playing! What do you think? Some magical elf will play your oboe for you?”

  “But the police are here,” Ilana observed. She was sitting by the window and looking outside.

  “She’s right,” Erez said. He had stood up from his chair and joined her by the window. “It’s the chablan mishtara.”

  “The chablan mishtara?” several students said together. By now everyone was staring outside.

  “Let’s keep practising!” Rivka cried. When they paid no attention, she looked outside as well.

  Two vans were parked in front of the school. They were marked with the Israel Bomb Squad logo and each was fitted with a machine gun turret. Four men in fatigues had blocked off the sidewalks. A fifth man was dressed in an absurdly padded suit and a large, round helmet with a fortified visor. He was using a set of controls to guide some kind of robot. The robot was mounted on caterpillar tracks and equipped with camera lenses, an X-ray sensor, and a metal arm roughly a meter in length. It was drawing near a briefcase that was lying by a tree on the far side of the road.

  “It’s not a bomb,” Rivka grumbled, “but an abandoned bag, that’s all.

  “I’ve seen this before, but it’s always exciting,” Sarah said, glad for the interruption.

  “My uncle’s in the Chablan in Netanya.” They had heard Ilan tell this story this a hundred times before. “Last month he and his crew defused a large bomb in the midrachov. Can you guess how much damage it might have caused?”

  “We should move from the windows,” Rivka warned. “If that briefcase is a bomb, the windows could shatter.” Avi had been thinking the same, but he hadn’t wanted to reveal his fear.

  “They would warn us if we were in danger,” Erez said. As if he’d been eavesdropping, a soldier glanced up at them and waved them back. They retreated together. Zohara stepped on Avi’s foot. He smiled and she smiled back. Seconds later, they had all drifted back to the window. While some of his classmates thought it was one big joke, Avi could picture the entire street in flames.

  The robot was by the briefcase and active with its sensors. Its arm was maneuvering to open the latches but either it lacked the dexterity or the briefcase was locked. A voice on a loudspeaker was warning people to keep back. The agents looked surprisingly bored, as if they handled a million such cases before. And most of them had. Every day there were a hundred calls in the city, when bags or parcels were left unattended. Most of the time it came to nothing, but every so often a true threat would arise, with awful results if it weren’t properly handled. But the team felt this briefcase was a false alarm.

  Again a soldier motioned them back; again they retreated, only to return.

  “I’m thinking of joining them when I’m drafted,” Ilan said. “Although my dad would prefer I join a fighting unit.”

  “I’m driving a tank,” Itamar said.

  “I’m considering the navy,” Erez volunteered. “Or intelligence maybe.”

  “You would have to be intelligent for that!” Ilan joked.

  “I’m thinking of intelligence too,” Sarah said. “If that doesn’t work, I’d join a combat unit.”

  “A combat unit?” Ilan scoffed. “You can’t. You’re a girl.”

  “You’re wrong,” Rivka answered. “There are several mixed combat units, Karakel for example. My sister is a sniper….”

  Avi tried to ignore this conversation. It amazed him they could talk so freely about Tzahal, without considering the many dangers involved. It wouldn’t bother them at all to jump from a plane? To rush into battle? To raid Hezbollah? They couldn’t see themselves with broken bones, with blood streaming from a bullet wound, or as a corpse in some barren field, their torso at one end of it, their legs at another? How could they be so lackadaisical? What was the trick…?

  An explosion erupted and almost made him jump. The robot had attached two cables to the briefcase and, having backed off a distance, sparked the detonation. There was a burst of smoke and the briefcase shuddered. Its latches burst and the bag caught fire. Charred paper filled the air. The soldiers were disgusted.

  A voice on the loudspeaker gave the all clear. Lines of people started moving again as the sappers packed their equipment up. The one with the robot was out of his suit and mopping his brow and gulping water down. For a fleeting second he glanced at Avi. “I just do what men do,” he seemed to say, shrugging matter-of-factly.

  The students were returning to their music when they heard someone shouting. Glancing outside, they saw a man come running up — the briefcase owner. He looked angry and was gesturing to the ashes on the sidewalk. He was yelling at the soldiers, that he was an important lawyer and they had burned some crucial documents. After letting him rant for all of a minute, an officer swiftly cut him short. Telling the man to shut his mouth, he asked him how he dared complain when, through his own neglect, he had inconvenienced people. The whole class chuckled as the guy slunk off.

  They sat and took their instruments in hand. Outside traffic was moving again, people were walking and the “bomb” was forgotten. Everything was back to normal, just like that.

  The pictures inside Avi’s head were a different story altogether.

  Dusk was settling over the shuk. The crowds from the day were no longer as dense and the noises too had tapered off: a dove’s cooing could be heard in the background. The vendors who were open had turned on their lights and were surrounded by incandescent shells; some were drinking tea and playing shesh besh with their neighbours. The smell of falafel hung in the air, as well as shislik and a thousand different spices.

  Moussa ran his eyes across the stall. Dozens of burlap sacks gaped open and disclosed ground powders of dazzling colour, greens and reds and browns and yellows. Large bags of flour, rice, beans, chick peas, lentils, and other produce were lined up at the back of the stall, within Ahmed’s reach so he could process orders swiftly. Bins with nuts stood directly in front and above them hung a scale with a large zinc pan, visible to customers so they could see the weight of goods they’d ordered. The sight was comforting. Not only did this food suggest the family would never suffer from want; the space was one he’d known all his days and was the one steady constant that he could rely on. Ahmed sat behind the counter, his nose buried in a book.

  “Are you going to read all evening?” he asked Ahmed.

  “We’ll lock up soon. And the book is great. It only cost me fifty shekels.”

  “The World’s Most Famous Buildings Close Up,” Moussa read in English. “Aren’t you tired of books on architecture?”

  “This one has buildings I’ve never seen. If I can’t visit them in person, the next best thing is to study them in pictures.”

  “But one building’s like another,” Moussa said, to tease his brother. “Four walls, a roof, some stairs, a few windows. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Look at this,” he opened the book to a photo of the Chrysler Building. “This building is three hundred meters tall, has well over a million bricks and girders, yet it floats on air.”

  “But it is still just walls and a roof,” Moussa said.

  “There’s more to it than that,” Ahmed insisted. “Buildings are so much a part of being human. They reflect our habits and shape our view of the world. Most of us live maybe seventy years and then we vanish; but buildings last forever, the best ones at least.”

  “Even the largest aren’t that strong,” Moussa said. He had turned to a snapshot of the World Trade Center.

  “Ya’Allah,” Ahmed cried,
with a fleeting look of pain. “That was a terrible day, when these buildings fell. Men who destroy such structures are the enemies of progress.”

  “Not everyone agrees,” Moussa said. “Sayed once said the attackers were heroic.”

  “That sounds like Sayed,” Ahmed didn’t bother concealing his scorn. “His anger will get him into trouble one day.”

  “His anger?” Moussa asked, his interest piqued. “He shouldn’t be angry?”

  “There are two sorts of anger,” Ahmed said. “There is Sayed’s kind, that knows only destruction and brought about the evils of 9/11. There is also righteous indignation, which is a natural reaction to unjust dealings. The anger you feel defines the person you are.”

  Moussa’s mouth was open. He was going to ask what Ahmed thought about people who were empty of anger. Before he could he saw two figures approaching. Their details were obscured in shadow but their outlines betrayed them. Ahmed quickly closed his book. He straightened his posture and his face drew closed. Seconds later, the soldiers walked up to the stall.

  They were loaded down with equipment. Both were wearing bullet proof vests and blue fatigues with bulging pockets. Each of their belts was strung with a nightstick, revolver, flashlight, handcuffs, and various gadgets. Each brandished a rifle as well, casually slung over a shoulder. They were in their early twenties and looked far from friendly. Their cheeks were clean-shaven, their hair was bristly, and their skin was flawless, as smooth as chrome. Given their equipment and machine-like gestures, they seemed more like robots than flesh and blood humans. One was fair and had bright blue eyes, while his friend was dark and could have passed for an Arab. The fair one was holding a walkie-talkie, from which streamed a voice that was feeding them instructions.

  Since their father’s arrest two years ago, the cops had often “dropped in” on the Shakirs, along with Shin Bet operatives. Their bags of produce would be thoroughly searched and they were warned that the authorities were always watching, that their every move was being watched. One time the soldiers had caused an awful mess, ripping bags and mixing produce together. When Ahmed had asked if they couldn’t be more careful, the officer in charge had told him to be quiet. “If everything had gone according to plan, your father would have killed many people,” he’d said. “Just count yourselves lucky we haven’t closed your business.”