Letters from Palestine (16 page)

And now, I am really tired of being up all
night from the noise the soldiers made. My friends, these are my
people. This is how they live, and this is how they treat life,
with a new tear every night but with a smile on their faces and a
laugh that comes from the depths of their suffering.

Did you hear it on CNN? Fox News? Nowhere
but the Voice of Palestine!

Day 4

Hello everyone,

Today I was so happy. I saw a friend of my
dad’s friends. He came to see me. This man, I love him so much and
admire him so much. He helped my mom raise me while my dad was in
prison. He came to visit me today and to say hi. My friends, this
man was in jail for six years. Why? Well, because he was active and
wanted to free his country.

He has six daughters and one son. Though he
loves his daughters no less, he was waiting for the son to come.
And when the son was born to this world, our good man got arrested,
and his son kept growing without even seeing his father. Well, he
saw his pictures and hugged them and said, yes, I do have a
dad.

I asked him, “How was prison?” Laughter.

He said, “Well, I had my own TV, my own
room, and my own DVD.” Laughter.

Then he looked at me and asked, “What do you
think? Look at me, and you will know the answer.”

Our good man is a skinny man; he is
forty-four years old but looks ninety. His eyes! If you look at
them you will see tears covering them. He is a little man, tired
and sick. And all of that from jail. He has no back teeth because
the soldiers were hitting him really badly on his face, so he lost
his teeth. He has some problems in his stomach from the food and
often cannot sleep from having nightmares and remembering the
torture that the soldiers had inflicted on him: hanging him in the
cold, putting him in a closet for hours and hours till he could not
breathe.

Don’t say, wow, that’s bad. And don’t say,
wow, that’s too much, because that’s still nothing compared to what
they do every day.

Then he said, “Manar, you are grown.”

I smiled because I felt that he sent me a
message by that, which is not to give up and stay strong. I
will.

My friends, this story is in every house in
the camp and other places in Palestine.

While we were sitting, drinking coffee, one
of my dad’s friends called and said that the soldiers are
surrounding guys in the Jenin camp.

The soldiers entered one of the houses in
Jenin and arrested the father! When do you think his kids are going
to see him again? Do you want to wait and see, or try to change it
now?

My friends, did you hear about Jenin camp in
your news today? Or did you hear about what happened in it during
the second Intifada? Please search for it, and see what happened
over there.

My friends, my letters to you might not be
as strong as they should be, but with you sending them to others
and thinking of ways to support the people over here, we can make a
difference. Therefore, please let the voice of our suffering reach
everyone’s ears.

Wake Up! Wake Up!

Day 5

Happy Day in the Camp Today . . .

Dear friends,

Yesterday was a happy day for the camp.
After two months, Khalid Bata, seventeen years old, came back from
the hospital.

He came back! The people thought he would be
dead after the Israeli soldier shot him directly in the head.

Two months ago, our young man was throwing
stones with his friends at Israeli tanks because they invaded the
camp and took many of the young children to jail. The kids showed
their anger by throwing stones at the soldiers.

Our young man had been shot and thrown on
the streets in front of the Deheisheh camp. The tanks wanted to
come and run over his body, but the people hurried up and took his
body to the hospital in Hebron. And that happened after having
trouble getting him to a good hospital in Jerusalem due to the
soldiers at the checkpoints.

The soldiers did not allow the people to
take him anywhere. They wanted him dead. Our people took him to
Hebron, hoping and praying that he would get well soon.

“Thank God he is back. Thank God!” his mom
said, while the tears were coming out of her brown eyes.

The young hero has brown eyes and a skinny
body, but so much faith in the struggle. I could not talk to him.
He was tired and needed to sleep.

But I promise you, my friends, that I will
talk to him or I will let you read his experience

The camp was happy yesterday. Very
happy.

But wait, my friends, until I write you the
next letter about today. A wedding day in Palestine!

Day 6

Hello my friends,

Were you invited to a wedding for your
relatives or friends recently? How was it? Well, as for me, read
this:

Today was my cousin’s wedding. All of my
family and some other people in the camp were happy for her and
wanted to be with her on this day.

She lives with my auntie and her family in a
village called Wad Foukeen, which is six kilometers from the camp,
so we needed fifteen to twenty minutes to travel there. The wedding
was at 5:00 pm, but we wanted to leave earlier in case there was a
checkpoint.

We prepared ourselves and took a bus full of
people from the camp to share this day with the bride. We left at
2:00 p.m. We took a small drummer with us, and we were singing our
traditional wedding songs until we reached the checkpoint at 2:19
p.m.

The soldiers were stopping many cars and
people before us. Some of them the soldiers would let pass, but
others not. Why? Well, it depends on their mood.

The time was passing too slowly, so we
decided to start singing again. The soldiers heard us singing, and
they came to us, shouted, and ordered us to keep silent. They also
took the drum from us.

4:00 p.m. Nothing still. Just waiting.

5:00 p.m. Still waiting. The kids started to
cry. It was a very hot day.

6:00 p.m. The driver asked us if we wanted
to go back, but we said no. Let’s wait and see.

At 6:30, the soldiers ordered us to get off
the bus so they could look at our IDs and search the bus. The
soldiers looked at our IDs and were talking in Hebrew in a silly
way. Later, some of the people who understand Hebrew told me that
they were making fun of us. They took almost an hour to search the
bus. They were not actually searching; they were just making us
suffer. This is what they wanted.

At 7:40, they told us to get in the bus and
leave—go back to the camp. We started to argue with them. “It is a
wedding, and we have been waiting since 2:00 p.m. Let us pass!” we
said.

No. This is what they said, but not with
words: they said it with their weapons. They threatened us and
ordered us to get on the bus and leave.

Children were scared; they were hiding
behind their mother’s backs, which made me remember when I was a
kid and the soldiers came to my house to arrest my father and hit
my mother.

We called the bride and wished her a happy
wedding. She cried. No words!

The people were very tired and silent, like
they were carrying a big mountain on their shoulders, and still
are.

Silence in the bus, No words!

Does the news make you more determined to
struggle?

Free, free Palestine!

Manar

Day 7

Maybe it will be the highest thing on earth!
The Wall
.

Hello my friends,

Did you hear about the wall? Maybe not! Your
media did not mention it, did it? Let our media mention it
then.

I went with my uncle for a ride in his car.
We went to Bethlehem and Alkhadir and Biet Jala. All of them are
next to each other. Then my uncle asked me if I wanted to see the
wall. I said, “Yeah, I do!” Why not?

I went there. There were no soldiers over
there. It was 7:00 p.m., but everyone was at home because the
soldiers might appear any minute and start arresting and killing
people. It was like a curfew.

We stood there looking at this wall.

“The wall is one thousand kilometers long,
eight meters high, with a round watchtower every two hundred
meters. Visions of a stalag come to mind, of a huge prison camp.
Such an entity cannot exist, surely, without international
condemnation echoing in the halls of the good and the great
throughout the world,” my uncle said.

“Nowhere to go. If I want to smoke, I start
the cigarette in the camp, and I finish it in Alkhader,” my uncle
said. Which means we cannot go anywhere; we go out of the camp and
come back in less than fifteen minutes. The wall is a big jail.

The children over here painted the wall.
They draw some wonderful pictures such as a sea, garden, flowers,
sky, sun, and children flying. And the pictures on the wall send
the message of what the children and all the people want.

My friends, things seem to be worse than the
last summer when I came here. I saw the wall was not done, and I
had, and still have, a hope that this wall will disappear.

This is what Bush said about the wall: “I
think the wall is a problem . . . It is very difficult to develop
confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking
through the West Bank.”

By the way, most of the money that was used
in building the wall is with the support and the help of the U.S.
government.

And by the way, as the USA can invade Iran
and Iraq, and nobody can say no to stop it, it can also stop Israel
from what it is doing. but! You can see how hypocritical the
government is, and how much it is supporting Israel and helping
them.

Actions speak louder than words!

Free, free Palestineeeeee,

Manar

Day 8

Our Hero for Today!

Hello my friends,

Today. my friends, I did as I promised you:
I made an interview with Khaled Bata, the guy who was shot by an
Israeli soldier in front of Dheisheh camp.

I made an appointment to sit with him and
hear the real story, to give it to you, because I heard many things
about what happened, but I really wanted to know the truth from
him.

He came at 4:00 pm to Ibdaa’a Culture Center
in Dheisheh. (This is where I go most of the time, and where my
dancing group is.)

He looked at me with a smile and said, “You
just came from the U.S., did you not?” I said yes.

Then we sat down. He seemed fine, but
skinny, very skinny. His brown eyes were looking at me, waiting for
the first question.

First I explained to him why I’m
interviewing him. He said, “I know that you are not spying on me.”
Laughter.

“Where were you, Khaled, when the soldier
shot you?”

He looked at me and said, “There is no place
to go to, Manar. My favorite place is where my friends and I can
collect stones and go on with our struggle. We threw them at the
soldiers, and that was in front of the camp on the main
street.”

“When did that happen exactly?”

“It was Friday, May 1. I was at home at
5:45. I was very bored because all my friends are in jail, so I
decided to go and have fun and chat on the Internet. A small child
came to me and told me that there are soldiers in the camp. So I
signed out from the Internet and went in front of the camp where
the soldiers had theirs jeeps and tanks. It was 6:55.

“How did the soldier shoot at you? Describe
what happened.”

“The soldiers were pointing at me, so I was
hiding behind a taxi. Then, I saw the soldier come and shoot me. I
saw his eyes. I cannot forget them. I saw the death inside
them.

The bullet was so strong that I did not even
feel that I was shot until I noticed that I didn’t have my hat on
my head. I noticed that I had been shot in my head. Then, someone
from the camp—God bless him—came and took me to the hospital, but I
don’t know where and when because after I saw the man I lost
consciousness.”

“How do you feel after what happened?”

“I feel that I’m a hero. I’m not scared of
anything. This is my land, and this is my right. I will struggle
until the end. I’m not better than the ones who were killed and
wounded before me. I’m a hero.

“Also, nothing made me change my mind about
being scared after what happened because the occupation is still
the occupation. And me, I’m still Khaled, the refugee who wants his
rights.”

“What about your mom and dad? Your brothers
and sisters?”

“I have four brothers and two sisters. They
told me that they were scared to lose me. My father did not believe
what happened, even through what happened to me is happening every
day to many of us, but my father said that it was a nightmare.
About my mother, of course, everyone knows how it would be for the
mother to lose her son; the mother’s feelings are something you
cannot explain or describe.”

At this moment, my friends, I saw the tears
appearing in his brown eyes.

“What are your hobbies, Khaled?”

He looked at me with a strange look. He
raised an eyebrow and asked, “What? What are my hobbies? This is a
really hard question. I don’t really know what exactly my hobbies
are because we do not have the chance to express them. I don’t know
really, but my dreams are like any Palestinian who wants to be free
and live in freedom.”

“What do you think of these words:
camp?”

“The camp is a jail. But we will leave it
soon to return.”

“Occupation?”

“This is an ugly word. I hate to hear
it.”

“Friends?”

“Friends are what I love most. They are in
jail, that’s true, but they will remain my friends, even I do not
have the chance to see them again.”

“Freedom?”

“Anyone who is living like us wants to know
the meaning of this word.”