How could I leave my brother in a place like that? What if the phosphorus burned him? The pain would be unbearable. I remembered the horrible burn my son Amir had suffered when a pot of scalding soup fell on his arm. How minor that would be compared to a white phosphorus burn. I thought about Abbas lying in a coma in the hospital bed all those years ago and how helpless I had felt.
I worked around the clock trying to contact Abbas, but with no success. Then, a week after the ceasefire, my luck changed. I received a mysterious phone call from a woman. ‘If you want to see your brother Abbas, come to Gaza.’
I’d go to Gaza and try to save him.
‘Are you alright?’ Yasmine stood in the doorway of my study in her bathrobe. ‘I heard the phone ring. Who was it?’
The tree outside our window reminded me of how Abbas and I used to climb the almond tree to watch the Jews through my telescope. ‘I have to go to Gaza,’ I said.
Yasmine’s eyes widened. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Abbas is in danger. I need to talk to him.’
‘You’ll be in danger.’
‘He’s my brother.’
‘You can’t go.’ She took the time to articulate each word.
‘This is my chance to atone.’ I thought of Baba handcuffed to the gurney. Of Abbas, sprawled out on the ground, blood pooling under his head. ‘I want to offer him the chance he never had.’
She crossed her arms. ‘Why you? Why can’t you pay someone to go?’
‘It has to be me.’
‘You have a wife; two sons; a career. Gaza is dangerous. What if Israel wages war on Gaza again while you’re there? What about our families in Israel? What if they retaliate against them? Are you willing to risk everything for your brother?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Finally, I felt like I was doing what I needed to do.
Yasmine took a deep breath. She knew I’d made up my mind. ‘I’m going with you.’
And I knew she had made up hers as well.
***
Fadi picked Yasmine and me up at the airport and drove us back to my parents’ home. We didn’t talk about Abbas in the car out of fear that it was bugged. After the first broadcast no one had known who Abbas was, but within days he had been identified as Abbas Hamid, a former Arab Israeli. It was then revealed that Abbas worked in intelligence for the Al-Qassam Brigades, and had been underground, along with the rest of the members, until the death of Dr Nizar Rayan.
Fadi kept looking in the rear-view mirror. Whenever we switched lanes, the military Jeep behind us did the same. It was practically riding our bumper. We drove through Tel Aviv; maybe Fadi thought he could lose the soldiers that way. I couldn’t believe all the new glass and steel skyscrapers, condos and office buildings, and the new four-lane boulevards and expressways with landscaped avenues and highways. We drove by the sandy beach fringed by elegant cafés, bars and shops, and down palm-filled avenues. A lot of money had been invested in this city. We drove across the new superhighway, Kvish 6, with its elaborate bridges and tunnels. In record time, we were in the village with the Jeep still on our tail. It followed us up to the top of our hill.
Two soldiers were stationed outside our house. This time Fadi didn’t blare the horn when we approached, and no family or friends waited outside to greet us.
‘Baba.’ I went to embrace him, but he didn’t move from the loveseat in the living room, where his attention was glued to the TV news. He looked up with bloodshot eyes. Slowly, he rose and embraced us. It seemed he had aged a hundred years. ‘What are we going to do?’ he whispered in my ear.
‘Yasmine and I are going to Gaza. We’ll bring him back to America with us,’ I whispered back. We remained in the middle of the room, Yasmine next to me.
‘It’s too dangerous there,’ Baba said into my ear. ‘I can’t let you go.’
‘Good things make choosing difficult. Bad things leave no choice,’ I whispered. ‘How’s Mama holding up?’
Baba shook his head. ‘She’s unbelievable.’ He pulled me closer. ‘She’s actually proud of Abbas.’
How could she be proud of him for belonging to a party that believed violence was necessary for liberation? She had been so against my studies, and now this.
‘Where is she?’ She wasn’t educated, I told myself.
Baba headed for the kitchen. Mama was in there, chopping parsley and humming a tune. Two soldiers watched her work through the window. Mama waved to them and laughed.
‘Mama,’ I called, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Your face looks like you just bit into a lemon.’ She chuckled. ‘When did you get here? Give me a hug.’ She squeezed me, and then Yasmine. ‘I’m so proud of your brother,’ she whispered. ‘Can you believe what he’s accomplished? And to think, they almost killed him.’
Fadi walked in with his wife and two sons.
‘How’s Rome?’ I asked Abdullah, Fadi’s oldest. He was in his third year of medical school, studying in Italy at the same university that his father had attended.
He hugged me tightly. ‘Thanks Uncle Ichmad,’ he said. ‘The car is awesome!’
‘You’re a Hamid!’ I said. ‘You need to travel in style. Do you like the apartment?’
‘Thank you so much, again,’ he said.
‘How’s Paris?’ I asked Fadi’s other son, Hamza.
‘An artist’s dream.’
‘Been able to teach your grandfather anything?’ I smiled over at Baba.
‘He’s long surpassed me,’ Baba said.
Nadia, who lived down the street from my parents now, was in the States visiting Hani. I’d gladly offered to pay for her ten children and seven stepchildren to go to university. Only two of my nieces had married straight out of high school. Among the graduates were two heart surgeons, an orthopaedic surgeon, a radiologist, a mechanical engineer, an architect, a creative writing teacher, a human rights lawyer, an elementary school teacher, two nurses and a librarian. Of my remaining siblings, only Abbas and Nadia never finished school.
Hani had moved to California with his wife. They’d met at the Hebrew University. After he’d finished his doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies and she her BA in the same subject, they had gone to California, Hani having been appointed a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at UCLA.
In the morning, Yasmine and I drove to the American Embassy in Jerusalem to apply for permission from Israel to visit Gaza.
When it was our turn, the clerk was less than receptive. ‘Don’t you know it’s a war zone there?’ The woman looked at Yasmine and me as if I’d just revealed plans to kill ourselves.
‘My brother’s there,’ I said. ‘I need to see him.’
‘I’ll be frank with you,’ she said. ‘You’re wasting your time. Israel doesn’t grant permission.
‘It’s an emergency,’ I said.
‘Go back to America. That’s my advice to you.’ She looked past us. ‘Next.’ The line was long and she was the only one there.
‘Can we submit our application, at least?’ Yasmine asked.
‘No can do,’ she said. ‘It’s contrary to our government’s travel advice.’
Disappointed, but still determined, Yasmine and I flew back to the States.
CHAPTER 47
Yasmine placed a tray of kallaj on the table.
‘I’ve never seen this one before.’ Menachem transferred one to his plate.
‘It’s our special this week,’ Justice said. ‘We can’t make them fast enough.’
Ten years earlier, Justice and Yasmine had opened a Middle Eastern bakery called ‘Pastries for Peace’. Now, they had twenty-three throughout the United States. They donated all the proceeds to a programme they’d developed that granted micro-loans to Palestinian women interested in starting businesses.
I stared at Abbas in the portrait Baba had given me before I left for America: the one without my dead siblings.
‘As you know, my younger brother, Abbas, is with Hamas,’ I said. ‘He’s had a hard life. An Israeli pushed him off
a scaffold when he was only eleven. He broke his back. He’s been crippled ever since. My father was in prison. We lived in a tent. Can you help me?’ It hadn’t come out at all like I had practised it in my head.
Justice’s eyes opened wider with every word, but Menachem’s face remained the same.
I pushed my glasses up and pressed my fingers to my eyes. Yasmine passed the coffee, sat next to me and squeezed my other hand. I had to pull myself together. This was for Abbas. I was ready to beg if necessary.
Menachem was silent for a moment. Then he looked at me as if he appreciated what I had said. ‘What can I do?’
I got up and went to the window. Thrusting my hands into my pockets, I turned to face him. ‘Do you know anyone? Yasmine and I need to go to Gaza.’
‘You could die there,’ he said.
I shrugged.
I was sixty-two years old, but Abbas was still my little brother.
CHAPTER 48
Six months later, Yasmine and I sat in the back seat of a taxi headed from Jerusalem to Gaza. We passed olive groves, almond trees and then the orange groves. When I saw the wheat fields, my stomach tightened.
We had spent the last three weeks trying to get through the gate into Gaza. Each day we wasted hours at the Erez Crossing trying to persuade the Israeli officials to allow us in. It didn’t matter that Menachem had moved heaven and earth to get us permission from Israel. Every day we pleaded our case with the Israeli border officials, and every day they told us we needed a different piece of paper. Each morning we rose at five to begin our journey again with new papers.
I brought letters from Menachem and two Jewish Nobel Prize winners who worked with me at MIT. Yasmine and I both wrote personal letters accepting responsibility – we wouldn’t hold the Israeli Government liable for what happened to us in Gaza, which we recognised was a war zone. None of it worked. Each day, the answer from the gatekeepers was the same: ‘Come back tomorrow with a different piece of paper.’
Our Arab driver smoked incessantly with the windows rolled up, creating a toxic fog. Despite the closed windows, my thick sweater and heavy raincoat, it was freezing in the car. Yasmine was visibly shivering. I was used to winter weather, but this damp cold was completely different.
‘Can you put the heat on?’ I asked the driver.
‘It’s broken.’ He turned and looked at me. ‘They want a thousand shekels to fix it. Who has that kind of money?’
I reached into my pocket and counted out a thousand shekels. ‘For you,’ I said and handed him the money.
‘What do you want?’ He squinted at me. ‘I’ve been to prison four times already. I’m not going again.’
‘All we need you to do is get us to the Erez Crossing.’
‘Why are you going to Gaza?’
‘To see my brother.’
‘Good luck.’ He took a puff on his cigarette, then released the smoke over the back seat into my face. ‘The Israelis will never let you in. When they left in 2005, they locked the people in Gaza and threw away the key. Do you know how many times I’ve driven people down to the Erez Crossing? Not one of them has ever got in. What makes you different?’
‘We have the right papers,’ Yasmine said. She always liked to be positive.
‘Before Israel blockaded Gaza, Palestinian workers poured across the Erez Crossing to jobs here. Israel turned Gaza into a source of cheap labour. What choice did the Gazans have? They weren’t allowed to develop their own economy.’ He took a long drag of his cigarette. ‘And once they were completely dependent, Israel goes and cuts them off.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I understand.’ I could barely breathe. The last thing I wanted to do was talk politics.
Yasmine and I got out of the taxi in front of a gleaming, shiny building. The Erez Crossing was a fortress. When it was finally our turn, we approached the Israeli soldier in the pillbox and handed him our papers. I was old enough to be his grandfather. He looked at our permits.
‘Wait for me to call you.’ He motioned for us to move aside.
‘Over here,’ a man called to Yasmine and me. He was huddled together with another man. ‘Jake Crawford. I’m with CRS. And this is my colleague, Ron King.’
‘Ichmad Hamid,’ I said, ‘and this is my wife Yasmine.’
The rain pounded us. The cold penetrated our bones.
‘Don’t look so glum,’ Jake said. ‘It could be worse. We could be at the Karni Crossing.’
‘What happens there?’ I asked.
‘A huge traffic jam,’ Jake said. ‘Another colleague has been trying to get a truck filled with water through for months.’
‘People are getting sick.’ Ron shook his head. ‘The water and sanitation systems are collapsing. Israel isn’t allowing the parts needed to repair them to be brought in. The Gazans can’t drink their water, and the Israelis won’t let him in with clean water.’
‘You should see all the trucks backed up there.’ Jake sighed. ‘Many of them have been trying to get into Gaza for months.
***
Hours passed before we were informed that our paperwork was ready. We handed it to the Israeli through a bank-teller window. We were searched and our bag was taken apart and every pocket and article inside scrutinised. The next stop was the gleaming stainless steel building that looked like a mix between a prison and an airline terminal. It must have cost a billion dollars with all its x-ray machines, video cameras, monitoring equipment and other devices. There were seven booths, but only one was manned. We passed through the maze of gates, holding areas and turnstiles. Getting into the Dror Detention Centre was nothing compared to this. Menachem’s phone call to the Israeli Chief of Staff last night must have finally worked.
It was dark by the time we followed the signs to Gaza, through a long barren concrete tunnel which reminded me of the cattle race at the slaughterhouse. We had to carry our bags over approximately a mile of rock, dirt, dust and gravel that led to the Gaza side of the border. Desperate taxi drivers descended like crows on a carcass when we emerged.
‘Let me take you!’ they all screamed at the same time.
Soaking wet and shivering, we sat on the ripped upholstery of the back seat of a taxi.
A few barriers were set up in the road.
‘A Hamas checkpoint,’ the driver said. ‘Just a formality.’
‘Good evening,’ the Hamas official said. We handed him our passports, he looked them over and gave them back. ‘Welcome to Gaza.’ He smiled.
It was too late to look for Abbas. We headed straight for the hotel.
We drove past unpainted cinderblock structures with giant gaping holes. Plastic covered most of the windows. Out in the rain, the streets were packed with wet people of all ages, dilapidated vehicles and donkey-pulled carts. Broken TVs, water heaters, cables and bent iron rods protruded from more piles of rubble. Apartment buildings rendered uninhabitable lined the narrow roads. Abandoned sniper towers were on every corner. Barefoot children sloshed in mud. Rubbish was piled everywhere. There were rows upon rows of tents. From what I could see, everyone in Gaza was in need. Yasmine’s eyes were wide with horror.
‘Why aren’t there any trees?’ I asked the driver. Baba had repeatedly told me of how the abundance of orange groves in Gaza infused the air with a sweet scent. Our oranges couldn’t compete with the juicy, almost seedless oranges of Gaza. He’d described Gaza as a seaside resort where commerce thrived because of its strategic location.
‘Israel uprooted the trees in this area,’ the driver said. ‘You can imagine what a threat to their security the trees must have posed: an orange must have dropped onto one of their tanks.’
We turned the corner into a neighbourhood full of concrete and stone apartment blocks and houses which, for the most part, were still intact, with the occasional building marred here and there by impossibly torqued beams. The driver turned again and drove down a paved road towards a white palace with arches.
The doorman greeted us with a warm welcome. This place had been b
uilt for visiting dignitaries and journalists, and exuded an air of privilege, even now. Inside were high vaulted ceilings and domes from which iron chandeliers hung. The lobby was white, clean and spacious, and I was grateful for the luxurious accommodation. Our room was filled with arches and black-and-white photos of Gaza in better times. From the window, Yasmine and I listened to the waves crash. A light sea breeze mingled with the hotel’s sandalwood scent.
‘Hear how angry those waves are,’ Yasmine said. ‘Even you wouldn’t want to swim in them.’
I’d learned to swim in the Mediterranean, when I’d attended a physics conference in Barcelona; it was summer vacation and Yasmine and the boys had accompanied me. When the conference was over, we went to the Costa Brava and stayed in a hotel on the seashore. Mahmud was nine and Amir wasn’t even eight. We used to get up early to swim on our own private beach.
‘They’re not like the waves in the Hamptons, that’s for sure,’ I said. My sons had taught me how to bodysurf there when we lived in New York City.
‘This water’s poisoned,’ Yasmine said.
CHAPTER 49
As we sat alone in the dining room, sipping fresh strawberry juice, a man in a pinstriped suit made his way to our table. ‘Welcome. Welcome,’ he said. ‘I’m Sayeed El-Sayeed, the owner of the hotel.’
‘Please’ – I motioned to the chair across from me – ‘join us. I’m Ichmad Hamid and this is my wife Yasmine. You have a beautiful hotel.’
‘I had great hopes for it.’ He shook his head. ‘I worked as an architect in Saudi Arabia for twenty years. With all the money I saved, I came back to Gaza and built the hotel.’
The Almond Tree Page 24
