I bend down on my knees. ‘Good afternoon, ma’am.’
‘And to you, son.’
The way she pronounces ‘son’—with a wide open ‘o’ sound — makes my heart open wide in turn, like the sails of a small boat when a sweet breeze hits them. ‘Have you been sitting in this scorching heat for a long time, ma’am?’
‘More than two hours, son. What am I supposed to do? Yesterday, I had a bypass operation in Ramallah, and today I’m trying to get home. I’ve been going through checkpoint after checkpoint all day since early this morning. Sometimes the traffic moves, most times it doesn’t. And here I am, sitting and waiting until God frees us from this misery.’
‘Where are you headed to, ma’am?’
‘I’m trying to get back to Absan. Do you know where Absan is, son? You don’t look like you’re from around here.’
‘Do I know where Absan is? Of course I do — I know both Absans. I also know Khazaa!’
‘You speak like us, but you’ve got an accent from God knows where. You’re not from Absan are you?’
I sit down next to her. ‘When I was young, ma’am — when I was seventeen, I worked as a foreman for a contractor by the name of Abu Nabih Hejazi. We built the water tower in Absan and the one in Khazaa too.’
‘You haven’t been back in a while, have you?’
‘Not in thirty-eight years.’
‘Your poor mother. If I were her, I would have torn my hair out in grief. Is she still alive, son?’
‘Thankfully, yes. She’s been waiting for me to arrive since early this morning.’
‘God save us from this scorching sun. I wish God would throw them all into hell!’
This poor woman — what can I do? Stand over her and give her shade? Give her my suitcase to sit on?
Damn my awkwardness — it is only there to remind me how powerless we are. Suddenly, I get an idea. I open my backpack and take out a pair of Reeboks. I put them down next to the woman’s feet.
‘What’s this, son?’
‘Put them on your feet, ma’am. It is like walking on hot coals out here.’
‘I’m used to it, my boy. These look expensive.’
I lean over and help put them on. She tries to bat away my hands as she mumbles, ‘Please don’t. Really!’ Her embarrassment is as advanced as she is.
I pay no attention to her protests. ‘Don’t be so shy, consider me like your son, ma’am.’ I finish tying her shoes then stand up and go back to the pole. The old woman sits there throughout, calling out prayers in a voice so loud it fills the plaza. I lean up against the pole, lending the old woman some shade. I stand there as the minutes go by and the sadness of the scene finally gets to me. As tears begin to roll down my cheeks, I wipe them away. I wipe away my sadness too.
A skinny, tall soldier begins to shout at the crowd in an agitated voice: ‘Everybody needs to step back!’ And he begins to push people away from the guard booth.
A young man comes out of the crowd and begins to yell back at him. He does not bother to conceal his frustration. ‘You want me to leave this elderly man standing in the sun? That’s not right.’ He points to an old man bent over a cane. The cane trembles in the old man’s hands, as if he were just learning how to use it. The old man begins to drag his feet away from the guard booth.
‘Everybody has to step back, like everybody else. Young and old, no exceptions. Go on, get back!’ The soldier goes on yelling as if we were deaf.
Finally, everyone steps back. An officer standing there grabs a small wooden chair at the wall and gives it to the old man. He then turns to the soldier and tells him not to worry about the old man. The soldier gathers up his spite and begins to hurl it doubly hard at everyone else. ‘Get the hell away from here! Get the hell back!’
The same young man walks up to the old man and helps him sit down in the chair in the shade by the wall. The old man puts his cane between his knees and rests his chin on it. I begin to study him more closely. The wrinkles on his face look like they were drawn by an artist wanting to depict a difficult and tired life. An entire life leaning on a cane at a border crossing. He reminds me of Ismail Shammout’s iconic painting, We Will Return. I imagine him walking straight into the picture and taking the place of the old man there. Did Shammout know that the Nakba would reproduce, generation after generation — and that with each new Nakba we would look again at his painting and reconsider the words, We Will Return? Did he know that we would read those words over and over again throughout the years, even though we never did return?
‘Everybody back, I said!’ The soldier starts up again — as if he was a screaming machine. ‘We’re not collecting IDs right now. Get in line. We’ll do it one by one. You know the rules.’
You son of a bitch — if there were any real rules, we would not be sitting here all day in the hot sun waiting to walk one hundred metres across a piece of land that belongs to us in the first place.
The crowd begins to rush toward the kiosk, ignoring the man’s shouts. Sheepishly, I go along with everyone else. I am not at all accustomed to this kind of chaos — how it drives you on and changes how you act. It turns us into mayhem professionals who hate rules because we do not know what they look like.
The soldier begins collecting another batch of identity cards and permits from people who have just arrived. Then he stops abruptly, leaving dozens of hands hanging in mid-air, and dozens of voices pleading and wishing him all sorts of good things. ‘God bless you, sir!’ This man, for whom you wish nothing but a quick death, is suddenly the beneficiary of multiple prayers for a long, happy life. But this loud outpouring of well-wishing saves no one from his cruelty. He disappears, taking with him the new IDs and permits.
A couple of soldiers come forward and begin to push people away with their hands. I stand there, too timid to do anything, as if the soldier’s words were what planted me in my place. Then the crowd, like a wave crashing on the beach, plucks me up and tosses me behind the guardrail.
The officer now turns to the old man and begins to shout. ‘You’ve got to go too, old man. Come on, get up!’
‘Shame on you! He’s an elderly man. Don’t you have a father?’
Now a young woman holding a child joins in: ‘Don’t you have family?’
For a moment, the officer ignores her, then he wheels round and shouts at her: ‘You — you get back right now. Everybody back. No exceptions.’
The old man leans on his cane to stand up. He walks away with slow, heavy steps. He exits this little painting and returns to the real-life tableau of hundreds of Palestinians trying to get through the crossing. The old man steps aside, leans over and then sits down on the ground. The hot stones beneath him are like those in a bread oven.
From afar, I begin to study the officer. A stock character, straight out of central casting — the heroic guard standing at the gate, protecting the borders against the assaults of barbaric goyim. He comes back home at the end of each month and tells stories about how he could handle crowds of angry Palestinians all by himself. Bragging about how he deserves a promotion for so effectively abusing elderly Palestinian men. About how this checkpoint would break others who were not up to the task of working in the elite ranks of the Givati Brigade, the pride of the entire IDF.
I begin to shout at the soldier and the sound of my voice rips my insides apart and returns me to reality. In that very moment, I gather up my old self and push forward like everyone else around me — a refugee stranded at the threshold of his homeland.
‘You there — get out! Get away!’ The officer yells at me, and I find myself stripped down to nothing, nothing but the capacity to be yelled at and shooed away. I retreat with the crowd now trickling back toward the shade. I drag my suitcase and my disappointment behind me as I walk back. I cannot get the scene or the officer out of my mind.