‘Get up,’ he shouted. When Abed did not move straight away he kicked him again. Abed’s fear was growing by the second. The blood lust was in their eyes and he could feel they wanted to kill.
The soldier helped Abed up by his hair and Abed lost control for one second, pushing the man’s hand away.The soldier could not believe the animal’s audacity and clenched his jaw as he raised the butt of his weapon to strike, but the officer grabbed the soldier’s webbing and pulled him back.
‘So, we have a spirited one . . . What’s your name?’
‘Abed Omar.’
‘You live in that house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who else is in the house?’
‘Only my mother.’
‘Let’s go and see if you’re telling the truth.’
‘I am telling the truth.’
‘I wouldn’t believe you if you told me it was night time,’ the officer said coldly. As he stepped towards the house, Abed was filled with dread. He could feel himself about to move and charge to protect his home and his mother even though it would probably be the last thing he ever did in this life.
Shots suddenly rang out nearby, followed by an explosion in the next street. The officer stopped and glanced in that direction, the activity reminding him he had work to get on with. He looked at Abed thoughtfully and then changed his mind. ‘Bring him along,’ he barked as he turned from the door and headed up the alleyway.
Abed was grabbed and held firmly between two soldiers as they marched him briskly behind the officer.
They turned a corner to where several soldiers stood outside a metal door that was the entrance to a breezeblock hut.The officer stopped to talk to them and after a brief discussion faced the door and banged on it loudly.
‘You have been ordered to open up. If you continue to refuse we will open the door ourselves,’ he shouted in Arabic.
He did not wait for a reply and barked an order to his men. Two of them hurried to the door and hung a small canvas pack the size of a brick on the handle. Wires were quickly led from the pack back up the street and all the soldiers except the officer and the two men holding Abed took cover.
‘You have fifteen seconds to open the door or we come in,’ the officer shouted then turned to the soldiers holding Abed and jutted his chin at them.
They moved tightly behind Abed, pressing one side of him against a wall while keeping him facing the door like a shield. Abed could still see part of the charge, the wires trailing from it along the ground and past his feet. Only then did it dawn on him that the soldiers intended to blow the door while he remained exposed. He tried to twist away but an arm reached around his throat and held him in a firm chokehold.
A woman’s voice called out from inside the house that she was coming.
‘Standby,’ the officer said.
The woman called out once again, oblivious to what was going on, her voice growing louder as she walked along her roofless hallway to the door.
If Abed could hear her then the soldiers could too but none of them responded.
‘Standby,’ the officer called out again.
Abed became frantic. This was madness. ‘She’s coming to the door,’ he tried to call out but his words were stifled by the arm about his neck.
‘Now!’ the officer shouted.
The explosion was deafening and the shock wave and bits of debris struck Abed’s body sending him back into the soldiers holding him. Something hit him in the face and stomach and burned for a few seconds, but he did not have time to think about any of it. He was quickly pushed forward towards the hut, the point man of a Roman wedge. The door had been blown completely off, and he was rushed into the hallway and along it, the soldiers remaining tightly behind him in case a desperado within fired upon them. He almost tripped on something on the dark floor. It was a body. But the soldiers held him up and pushed him on. When they reached the end of the narrow passage that opened out into a small yard, the soldiers in the rear rushed past him and quickly entered the rooms. A woman screamed and furniture was smashed, then two young girls were dragged crying from a room and thrown to the ground in the yard where they grabbed each other in utter terror.
Abed was released, his employment as a human shield over for the time being at least, and he looked back up the hallway to the entrance where the body lay beside the fallen door. It was the woman who had called out.The device must have exploded as she reached for the bolt. Her right arm had been blown off above the elbow and half of her face was missing. He knew her. She was the mother of the two girls on the floor holding each other. Her husband was a security guard in a petrol station on the edge of the town. He was probably there tonight. No one would go and tell him until morning when the soldiers had gone and it was safe. Abed was horrified and looked away.
The soldiers could find no one else in the house and after some terse commands from the officer,Abed was pulled back out into the street and held against a wall. He glared at the officer barking orders as the screaming girls were pulled out of the house and taken away. The majority of the soldiers moved on up the street to carry on with their search and the officer faced Abed who was staring back at him with hate-filled eyes. Blood trickled down his face from a cut on his forehead and ran over his nose and mouth, and he wanted nothing more than to tear the officer’s throat out with his teeth. The officer stood in front of Abed, slightly taller and looking down on him.
‘You look angry,’ the officer said calmly. ‘Have we upset you in some way?’
The anger welled uncontrollably inside of Abed and he jerked his head forward as he spat blood into the officer’s eyes. The soldier grabbed Abed by the hair and slammed his head into the wall. The officer wiped his eyes clean with his sleeve and then, taking his time to aim while the soldier held Abed, punched Abed in the stomach so hard it took every ounce of breath out of him as his knees gave way. The soldier did not let Abed fall and gripped his throat to keep him against the wall. Abed could barely recover the air he had lost as the officer wiped the rest of the bloody spittle from his face, took a pace backwards and brought the barrel of his M16 level with Abed’s heart. The soldier held Abed as far away as he could to avoid being splattered with blood. Abed believed his time had come and he calmed himself ready for the bullet.
The officer stared into Abed’s eyes, savouring the moment. He had every reason in the world to kill this Palestinian having lost three of his company in the last month: two to a landmine and one sniped in the back at a checkpoint.The pressure for revenge had come from his men, all conscripts, one of whom had recently lost a sister to a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. But he did not need encouragement. He loved this land more than anything, enough to die for it, and certainly enough to kill those who had promised not to rest until every Israeli was gone or dead.The officer removed the safety catch and curled his finger around the trigger.