Everyone at the bank is discussing today’s events. Nobody’s in a hurry to use terms like closure or curfew. They prefer to wonder what it all means and why soldiers would be surrounding the village. Nothing like this has happened since the beginning of military rule. We’ve had the occasional roadblock and cars are often checked, but never — not even in the days of the Gulf War or the first Intifada — was there a decision not to let the inhabitants out. The customers at the bank don’t seem too rattled. Looks like when all is said and done they accept the decision. They’re upset to be losing a day of work, but they don’t see the events as a blatant breach of normal relations between citizens and their country.
I try to look calm too as I answer the questions they and the clerks fling at me. “What do you think, must be a serious terrorist roaming around here, huh?”
“I suppose,” I say. And one customer protests, “Shame on you, calling them terrorists. Say istish’hadi, say fida’i. What’s become of us? Are we going to start calling them terrorists too?”
A clerk with rectangular glasses and an official black suit, complete with white kerchief, says, “As far as I’m concerned, they can blow up wherever they want, but what right do they have to hide out here? Don’t we have enough problems already? They should just leave us alone. We don’t need to take part in this war.” Another woman standing in the line that’s cordoned off with colored chains says, “The problem is the children. What’ll happen if he hides his explosives in the bushes, God forbid, and the children play there and touch them by accident? Those Daffawiyya West Bank residents have no shame.” The customers burst out laughing. Somehow it was enough for them to hear that word, Daffawiyya, to start laughing. Of course people around here felt sorry for them when we saw them on TV, being shot at or trying to stage a protest. That wasn’t it at all. Most of the locals identified with the Palestinians on TV, but it’s as if the ones on TV were completely different people, not the same as the ones around here who loiter, looking for work. Those weren’t Palestinians but just workers who make trouble. No chance any of them would ever be on TV. People in our village identify with pictures from far away, forgetting that those pictures were taken a two minutes’ drive away from here.
I don’t have the patience for their arguments anymore, I’m really not interested. I know the situation is bad enough even without a Palestinian Intifada or the Israeli occupation or some suicide bomber hiding out in our village. Things are bad in any case. For us, for the Palestinians, it doesn’t make any difference. We’ll always have wars in this godforsaken place. Take any six feet in this place and you’ll find too much damage, too much turmoil, too much chaos in every part of our lives, which means the wars will never end. The real wars in this village are the wars over honor, over power, over inheritances and over parking places. Actually I sometimes think it would be a good idea if war did break out, to distract the inhabitants from their cruel and never-ending little fights. To me it doesn’t matter anymore so long as they stay away from me, so long as nobody comes to me when the next disagreement breaks out.
I go into my brother’s office and close the door behind me. “So, have things calmed down?” my brother asks. I nod. “Yes, I think things are going to work out. I just overreacted, sorry I scared you.”
“No, it really is serious. But what could actually happen?”
“I don’t know.”
I was debating whether to tell him they’d brought our younger brother home from the dorms in the middle of the night, and not just him, but all of the Arab students at the university. I decide not to because he’s liable to tell the others, and we shouldn’t create panic for now. I ask my brother for a little money. “A few hundred shekels,” I say, “maybe even a thousand if I may.”
“You may,” my brother says. “There are no ATMs, everything’s being done manually, so nobody will know you’re overdrawn. Strange, your salary hasn’t come in this month.”
“I know,” I mutter. “There was a problem with the accounting because of this new job they gave me. It should have been in my account by now.”
“Lucky for you that you came now,” my older brother says. “All hell will break loose here today. The money hasn’t come in from the main branch. They wouldn’t let the armored car into the village, despite the security escort. And it’s Sunday, so the safe is almost empty. Mark my words, unless the money arrives, pretty soon we won’t have enough to give people.” He’s laughing now. “They’ll kill us. I told the manager I didn’t care. I was getting out of here. I don’t have what it takes to fight with these people.”
“Listen,” I tell him before leaving. “When you get off, come over to Mother and Father’s house. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“See you there.”
7
Now I know I’m overreacting. I get into the car and immediately turn on the radio. The news will be on in a minute. I drive around, deciding not to go back home yet. The news is all about red alerts coming from the Arab villages and towns. The announcer says that security sources are trying to persuade the government to declare a nationwide state of emergency. The tone is the usual one of the news reporters, and it sounds like something that would hardly be noticed in normal times. But today it’s different, it’s obvious something’s going on. Maybe Israel is planning another large-scale attack on the West Bank. Maybe they’ve decided to get rid of Arafat and they don’t want any clashes with the Arabs within Israel, some of whom are bound to take to the streets. They don’t want to have to deal with us on top of everything else. Maybe they’re just trying to take preventive measures. And maybe that’s really why they sent the Arab students home. Maybe the security people were worried about campus demonstrations and decided to make sure it didn’t happen, to prevent clashes between Arab and Jewish students. There are all those studies now about the Arab students, dubbed the “proud generation” because they have the audacity to stand there with flags on Naqbah Day or on Land Day. I try to convince myself that everything’s going to be okay, but it doesn’t work. They sent in the tanks damn it, so maybe it’s not going to blow over as soon as people think. Maybe something big really is happening in this area. It wouldn’t do me any harm to stock up on things, would it? I’ll tell my wife I had the day off and say I didn’t know what to do with the time on my hands, so I decided to do the shopping. I’ll say I had no idea what we had in the house, so I bought a bit of everything.
I’ll do my best not to arouse the suspicion of the salespeople. A shopping spree might create the wrong impression on a day like this. People might think that as a journalist I know something that shows we ought to be getting ready for something big. They might get the idea that I have some secret information about a war that’s about to break out in the region. I decide to make the rounds of the different grocery stores and to buy a little bit in each one. I’ll start with the ones in the more distant neighborhoods, where I don’t usually shop. I cruise the streets and stop at the entrance to the first one I see. There’s an older woman standing there, someone I’ve never seen. That’s good, because it must mean she doesn’t know me either. A bag of flour is the first thing that occurs to me. That’s what you buy when you’re stocking up, isn’t it?
I take one and pay for it, say thank you and proceed to the next grocery store. “Hello,” I say with a smile, trying to seem as natural as possible. I ask the salesman for another bag of flour. If he has one of the big ones, a fifty-kilo bag, that would be great. He does. I pay for it and move on to the next store. “Could I have a bag of rice, please?” I take it, say thank you and move on. All of the stores are running low on dairy products. The trucks from Tnuva Dairies and all the other dairies haven’t been able to make the morning delivery because of the roadblocks. I take a few liters of milk, two packages of cheese, some banana yogurt for the baby and a few bottles of my wife’s favorite soft drink. In the pharmacy, I take all but one of the cans of formula for one-year-olds. By the time I get to the stores in my own neighborhood, the trunk and both seats are piled high with groceries. I stop at the one nearest my home, smile, greet the owner, who is one of our neighbors, and ask for nothing but a pack of American cigarettes. He asks if they’ve removed the roadblocks yet, and I shrug as if it’s no concern of mine.