“No, I trust you,” I told him. I purchased a couple of Gustafs and a handgun from the man. I hid them in the door of my car, sprinkling black pepper over them to throw off any Israeli dogs that might be sniffing for weapons at the checkpoints.
As I drove back to Ramallah, I called Ibrahim on the way.
“Hey, I got the stuff!”
“Really?”
“Really.”
We knew better than to use words like guns or weapons because there was a good chance that the Israelis were listening to everything we said. We set up a time for Ibrahim to pick up his “things” and quickly said good night.
It was the spring of 1996. I had just turned eighteen, and I was armed.
One night, Ibrahim called me, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was really angry.
“The guns don’t work!” he shouted into the phone.
“What are you talking about?” I shot back, hoping no one was listening to our conversation.
“The guns don’t work,” he repeated. “We were cheated!”
“I can’t talk now,” I told him.
“Okay, but I want to see you tonight.”
When he arrived at my house, I immediately lit into him.
“Are you crazy, talking like that on the phone?” I said.
“I know, but the guns aren’t working. The handgun is okay, but the submachine guns won’t shoot.”
“Okay, they’re not working. Are you sure you know how to use them?”
He assured me that he knew what he was doing, so I told him I would deal with it. With my final exams just two weeks away, I didn’t really have time for any of this, but I went ahead and made the arrangements to take the malfunctioning guns back to Yousef.
“This is a disaster,” I told him when I saw him. “The handgun works, but the machine guns don’t. Call your friends in Nablus so we can at least get our money back.” He promised to try.
The next day my brother Sohayb gave me some sobering news. “Israeli security forces came to the house last night, looking for you,” he told me with a worried strain in his voice.
My first thought was, We didn’t even kill anyone yet! I was scared, but I also felt a bit important, as though I was becoming dangerous to Israel. The next time I visited my father, he had already heard that the Israelis were looking for me.
“What’s going on?” he asked sternly. I told him the truth, and he became very angry. Through his anger, however, it was clear to me that he was mostly disappointed and worried.
“This is very serious,” he warned me. “Why did you get yourself into this? You need to be taking care of your mother and brothers and sisters, not running from the Israelis. Don’t you understand that they will shoot you?”
I went home, threw together some clothes and my schoolbooks, and asked some Muslim Brotherhood students to hide me until I could take my exams and finish school.
Ibrahim clearly didn’t understand the seriousness of my situation. He continued to call me, often on my father’s cell phone.
“What’s going on? What is happening with you? I gave you all that money. I need it back.”
I told him about the security forces that had been to my house, and he started to shout and say careless things on the phone. I quickly hung up before he could implicate himself or me any further. But the next day, the IDF showed up at his place, searched it, and found the handgun. They arrested him immediately.
I felt lost. I had trusted someone I shouldn’t have. My father was in prison, and he was disappointed in me. My mother was worried sick about me. I had exams to study for. And I was wanted by the Israelis.
How could things possibly get any worse?
Chapter Ten
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE
1996
Although I had tried to take precautions, the Israeli security forces caught up with me. They had listened in on my conversations with Ibrahim, and now here I was, handcuffed and blindfolded, stuffed in the back of a military jeep, trying to dodge rifle butts as best I could.
The jeep rolled to a stop. We had been driving for what seemed like hours. The handcuffs cut deeply into my wrists as the soldiers lifted me by my arms and pulled me up a set of stairs. I could no longer feel my hands. All around me, I heard the sounds of people moving and shouting in Hebrew.
I was taken into a small room where my blindfold and handcuffs were removed. Squinting in the light, I tried to get my bearings. With the exception of a small desk in the corner, the room was empty. I wondered what the soldiers had in store for me next. Interrogation? More beatings? Torture? I didn’t have to wonder for long. After just a few minutes, a young soldier opened the door. He wore a ring in his nose, and I recognized his Russian accent. He was one of the soldiers who had beaten me in the back of the jeep. Taking me by the arm, he led me down a series of long, winding corridors and into another small room. A blood-pressure cuff and monitor, a computer, and a small TV sat atop an old desk. An overpowering stench filled my nostrils as I entered. I gagged, sure I was about to throw up again.
A man wearing a doctor’s jacket entered behind us, looking tired and unhappy. He seemed surprised to see my battered face and eye, which had now swollen to twice its original size. But if he was concerned about my well-being, he certainly didn’t show it. I had seen veterinarians who were kinder to their animals than this doctor was as he examined me.
A guard wearing a police uniform came in. He turned me around, put the handcuffs back on, and pulled a dark green hood over my head. I had found the source of the stench. The hood smelled like it had never been washed. It reeked of the unbrushed teeth and foul breath of a hundred prisoners. I retched and tried to hold my breath. But every time I gasped, I sucked the filthy cloth into my mouth. I panicked and felt like I would suffocate if I couldn’t get away from the bag.
The guard searched me, taking everything, including my belt and bootlaces. He grabbed me by the hood and dragged me through the corridors. A right turn. A left. Another left. Right. Right again. I didn’t know where I was or where he was taking me.
Eventually we stopped, and I heard him fumble for a key. He opened a door that sounded thick and heavy. “Steps,” he said. And I felt my way down several treads. Through the hood I could see some sort of flashing light, the kind you see on top of a police car.
The guard pulled off the hood, and I realized I was standing in front of a set of curtains. To my right I saw a basket of hoods. We waited a few minutes until a voice from the other side of the curtain gave us permission to enter. The guard locked manacles onto my ankles and stuffed my head into another bag. Then he grabbed the front of it and pulled me through the curtains.
Cold air poured out of the vents, and music blasted from somewhere in the distance. I must have been walking along a very narrow corridor because I kept bumping into the walls on either side. I felt dizzy and exhausted. Finally, we stopped again. The soldier opened a door and shoved me inside. Then he removed the hood and left, locking the heavy door behind him.
I looked around me, once again surveying my surroundings. The cell was about six feet square—just enough room for a small mattress and two blankets. Whoever had occupied the cell before me had rolled one of them into a pillow. I sat down on the mattress; it felt sticky and the blankets smelled like the hood. I covered my nose with the collar of my shirt, but my clothes reeked of vomit. One weak lightbulb hung from the ceiling, but I couldn’t find the switch to turn it on or off. A small opening in the door was the only window in the room. The air was clammy, the floor wet, the concrete covered with mold. Bugs swarmed everywhere. Everything was foul and rotting and ugly.