According to Ashraf’s stories, some people from the Islamic Movement had tried to set fire to the Purple Butterfly a few times. In fact they actually did burn it down once, and the owner had insisted on rebuilding it. The pub is holding on, and continues to be the only place in the village where they sell alcohol — thanks to the protection of a gang that charges the owner a monthly fee, not to mention a free run of the bar for the gang members. “They deserve a place where they can have a drink too, don’t they?” Ashraf says, and laughs, the way he always does when he tells me those stories. “Something close to home that could get them through withdrawal without their having to go all the way to Tel Aviv for a swig of arrack.”
Apart from driving through the streets with radios blaring full blast, the favorite pastime of people around here is weddings. In summer, weddings are an alternative to discotheques. That’s where bachelors can fan their tails and do their mating dances, that’s where they can really let go and sweat, and stomp their feet for hours on end. The weddings provide another setting, another arena for the machismo match. Bachelors like Ashraf spend almost every summer evening at weddings. He told me that he and some of his friends used to go to Tel Aviv regularly and try their luck at the dance clubs they’d read about in the papers or heard about from the other students, except they never got past the bouncer and had to make do with spending yet another night at one of the dives that admitted just about anyone. “We’d go into places that you wouldn’t believe. You’d have the feeling a murder was just waiting to happen, someone was about to waste an enemy or something,” he chuckled. “There’s nothing like weddings. It’s the best bet. Trouble is that if you wind up at an Islamic wedding, you’re done for. Sure, everyone’s a Muslim, and everyone’s becoming religious lately, but I’m talking about the ones who decide that instead of a wedding with music and dancing they’ll invite a sheikh to read verses from the Koran and a religion teacher to lecture about the shocking behavior of today’s young people at the promiscuous weddings taking place right here in our own village. Lots of people are into that nowadays, and you can’t tell anymore what to expect. Sometimes we have to do three weddings in a single evening before we find one without a sheikh.”
True, there isn’t much to do around here, least of all for someone like me. I don’t go to the mosque, I try to stay away from weddings, I don’t play cards with men my father’s age and I have no desire to visit the only club in the village. But I’m not bored. I mean, I haven’t been particularly bored since I moved here. On the contrary, I suffered more before. I don’t even miss the nights when we’d go out to look for kicks. At least I’ve been spared those embarrassing moments, those moments of drunkenness when I could find no rest for my soul. I’ve been spared the mornings after the nights of drinking, when I felt miserable for not being able to keep my thoughts to myself the night before.
10
“Sh…sh…sh…” my father mutters. The main newscast on Israel TV is beginning. I hate watching the news on Israeli national television. Tanks appear on the screen, and planes and fire are everywhere, and in the background they’re playing a military march heralding a war that is about to break out any minute. Everyone is sitting around in silence. My younger brother interrupts his studying and comes out of his room to watch the news. He’s got an exam in two days.
They don’t mention the words closure or roadblocks. Instead, there’s talk of red alerts or of backup forces being brought into the area of the Arab villages in the Triangle area on the West Bank border. The West Bank has actually been peaceful today, and the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are continuing with their meetings in Jerusalem. The announcer starts with the economic crisis and the heat wave sweeping over the country, then moves on to the news in full.
Something’s wrong. They haven’t even shown any tanks or fences. All they talk about are alerts — and they’re talking so naturally, as if they’re something that’s been in the news for two years running. The chief of police for this region arrives in the studio and makes no mention of the new situation. He speaks of Israeli Arabs who have helped the Hamas. Again there’s talk of the security risk, and the growing extremism of Israeli Arabs. The finger is pointed toward the leadership, the Islamic Movement. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“Maybe it’s a secret operation,” my father says. And my younger brother answers, laughing, “How secret could it be when the whole village knows about it? If they’d wanted to surprise someone, they could have come in and arrested him quietly. Is this what you’d call secret?”
Father says they’re bound to enter the village tonight and arrest the ones they’re after. “’Cause there’s no way you can keep anything hidden in this village. Nobody gives a damn and everyone cooperates with the police and the security forces. It stopped being considered betrayal long ago. So if there’s anything going on, the General Security Service is bound to know all about it — where and when and how. I’m telling you, they’re about to send in one of their select units, and two jeeps, maybe, in the middle of the night. They’ll pull it off and leave as if nothing’s happened.”
“They’re just on our case,” my older brother says. “Could you imagine anyone in this village pulling off a suicide or joining one of the Palestinian organizations? It’s never happened, has it?”
Another senior security official appears on the screen, his face disguised to conceal his identity, to talk about the role of Israeli Arabs in terrorist attacks on Jews. He says they’re much more dangerous than the Palestinians themselves, because they’re more familiar with the Jewish cities and liable to cause greater damage. The same senior official notes that the agenda of today’s meeting with the minister of defense included a discussion of the need to announce a state of national emergency.
Just what do they mean?
Then they put on the water commissioner, who announces that the good rainfall of recent months has not eliminated the national water shortage. The Water Council is weighing the possibility of declaring a state of emergency in the water supply.
Something’s wrong. I can tell. I know the Israeli media. A closure on an Arab village, and according to my younger brother he’s not the only student who was sent home, all the Arab students were sent home from the university; so it stands to reason the Israelis have surrounded some other Arab villages too, if not all of them. I know it’s the kind of story the media wouldn’t pass up. I know the government must have issued a gag order.
My father says that every time there’s been a war, Israel has surrounded the Arab towns and villages within its borders and kept watch on them. But usually it was the Border Police and the regular police who did the job. They never used the army — or tanks damn it — the way they’re doing now. My father says maybe the Americans have thrown Israel some important information about an operation — in Syria, maybe — and Israel wants to make sure that life inside the country remains calm. As if anyone else is going to do anything. As if any one of us would ever do anything. Very soon, when they realize we haven’t done anything wrong, they’ll get out, the way they always do.
My daughter is already asleep. My younger brother goes back to his studies. He says he might as well study because the closure is going to continue and they’ll have to give the Arab students a special makeup exam. I carefully lift my daughter out of my mother’s arms, and she says that even though it’s warm I ought to cover her head on my way home because she’s perspiring and is liable to catch cold. My older brother gets up too and calls his son. We walk out of our parents’ house. The air outside is completely still. It’s stifling. Some guys continue driving up and down aimlessly, keeping their loudspeakers at full volume. Why are they doing it damn it? A series of loud explosions takes my breath away for a moment but I soon realize it’s just a wedding. I’ve got to get a grip.