Look for Me (22 page)

I sat with Rafi by the side of the road. We waved at the Palestinians in the distance but we couldn’t see whether they were waving back. They were too far away.

We waited for three hours. We were very hot, and nearly all of us had run out of water. Rafi passed around the extra bottles he’d brought. Some of the women had to pee, and they wandered away from the road in small groups. There were no boulders
or trees to hide behind, so they either took turns sheltering each other or else relied on the courtesy of averted eyes.

The rabbis had to leave; they wouldn’t be able to have a joint prayer session with the Muslims after all. I phoned Beatrice on my mobile phone and left a message. I told her we were delayed, and that I’d be too tired for a visit tonight.

Finally the army announced that the area had been declared a closed military zone. The lawyers argued that this was a government road: it couldn’t be declared a closed military zone. If there was no choice, they said, we would just disobey and start walking.

But the army was adamant. So everyone locked arms and we began to walk past the army trucks and police vehicles. The police had been called in, just in case, and now they went to work. They were furious. They hit the marchers at the edge of the procession and pushed them to the ground. One officer knocked down Farid, a heavy man in his fifties, and knelt on his chest. A group of demonstrators pulled him off Farid, and the officer turned on them, but Farid was able to get back to his feet.

I lost sight of Rafi for a moment; he’d gone to help Shadi, who had been dragged into one of the police vans. Then he came back into view. He was trying to enter the van too, but a police officer pulled him by the collar, slammed him forward against the front hood of a police car, and twisted his arm behind him. With one hand the officer held Rafi’s head down on the hood, with the other he twisted Rafi’s arm. I saw Rafi’s face contract with pain, but I couldn’t reach him, there were too many people between us. I couldn’t photograph him either, because a wave of nausea came over me, and I thought I would vomit. And then abruptly the violence ended. The army announced that they would allow us to proceed through the mountains and bypass the people from Elisha. But Shadi would have to remain behind; he was under arrest.

Several demonstrators lay down on the ground around the
police van in which Shadi was being held. As soon as the police dragged one person away, another moved in. Finally they agreed to release Shadi, though he was given a summons. He stepped out of the van, the summons in his hand, his thin red kaffiyeh wrapped stylishly around his neck. He was young and fearless, and his eyes glowed with amused pride. I took a photograph of him emerging from the van, and I wondered whether he was a heartbreaker.

I heard two officers talking. Now that the struggle was over they were relaxed and gregarious. They didn’t care one way or another about the convoy. One of them shook his head and said, “All this for some blankets … couldn’t they just mail them?”

We each took a blanket or bag of clothes, and we began climbing the hill. The ground was dotted with flat white rocks that looked like the roofs of underground houses. Dark green bramble grew between the rocks, and the earth was hard and dry under our feet. The mountains stretched out on all sides; they looked resigned and mournful under the soft gold of dusk. A large area had been expropriated by the military and was cordoned off by barbed wire and spotlights. We had to walk four kilometers to circumnavigate the enclosure. A few soldiers accompanied us.

Rafi walked next to me. He wasn’t carrying a blanket. With his left hand he held his right arm against his midriff. We didn’t speak.

It took us nearly an hour to reach the other end of the restricted road. But some of the settler children from Elisha, along with three or four men, had moved down the road in anticipation of our descent from the hills, and they were there now, waiting for us. The women and most of the men had returned to the little hamlet with the burgundy roofs to prepare for the Friday night meal. In an hour the sun would set
and they’d all be gone. But the Palestinians waiting for us couldn’t travel through the mountains at night. If we didn’t get there soon, they’d be forced to disperse.

A teenage girl wearing a long navy skirt and a loose white blouse held a sign that said,
The Left is insane, support bin Laden.

“Why should I support bin Laden, I don’t understand,” a bald man standing next to me joked. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame.

Next to the girl stood a little boy with earlocks. He’d forgotten all about his sign; he was too busy staring at us as we came down from the hills, and he seemed transfixed by our appearance. I felt he was drawn to us on some level, and I wondered whether he would dream about us tonight, two hundred Jews and a few Arab citizens, bare arms hugging gray-blue and salmon pink blankets, shoes covered with dust, descending in haphazard formation from the hills. Then he remembered his sign, and held it up.
Us here, the Palestinians there: transfer.

“There, where?” the bald man said, to no one in particular. “Antarctica?”

“Don’t move,” the soldiers told us. They ordered the settlers to go home, but the settlers refused, and when one of the officers tried to herd them along, a puffy-faced teenage boy kicked him fiercely in the shin. The officer swore.

We couldn’t wait any longer. We began walking alongside the road, trying to avoid the settlers. Luckily, they didn’t follow us or try to block our way. A soldier beside me stopped to urinate. I took a photograph of him, urinating casually in the midst of the turmoil, reduced for a few seconds to an ordinary human who needed to pee. Tomorrow he could be dead.

He saw me photographing him.

“Hope you don’t mind,” I said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what you guys are doing here,” he said, walking next to me. He lit a cigarette.

“I’m here to take pictures. I believe in the cause, though.”

“You’re a photographer?”

“I take photos of the conflict.”

“How? You can’t predict where or when there’s going to be shooting.”

“Well, I don’t photograph combat, of course. I just go wherever I can. Checkpoints, demonstrations, all sorts of activities. The closest I came to combat was Dar al-Damar. I managed to get in a day after the battle ended—there were still some bodies lying in the alleys, covered in sheets, waiting to be buried … I have thousands of photographs.”

“Aren’t you afraid of your name ending up in the obituaries?”

“Aren’t you afraid of your name ending up in the obituaries?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I’m afraid. Sort of.”

“Then refuse to come here.”

“What’s this, a lesson in politics?”

“Refuse.”

“I can’t, I need the money. I don’t get a salary in jail.”

“Say you have a bad back.”

“Any more advice?”

“Why risk your life?”

“Look who’s talking! Miss War Photographer …”

“I go with groups. The Palestinians usually know who we are.”

“Usually
might be the operative word there.”

“It’s not dangerous. We’re careful, everything is arranged in advance. We coordinate our activities with the Palestinians.”

He guffawed. “An entire family was killed thirty meters from here last week. Don’t you read the papers? You look too smart to be so stupid.”

“You look too nice to be killed for nothing,” I said.

“It isn’t for nothing. It’s to protect idiots like you.”

“It’s to keep control of land that doesn’t belong to us. It’s to protect those losers from Elisha.”

“Talk to the government, not to me.”

“Fine, as long as you’re dying for something!”

All at once, his body tensed and he was no longer with me: something was happening, and he felt the entire burden of it. The transformation was astonishing; one moment he was smoking and talking easily to me, the next he was afraid, alert, aiming his weapon and ready to shoot. But it turned out to be nothing: five soldiers were running wildly through the crowd, not because of Palestinians, but because of two little boys from Elisha who had decided to sneak up and attack us. I took a photograph of the ludicrous sight: five armed men chasing two little boys, their earlocks bobbing as they ran, wide mischievous grins on their faces. The soldiers caught up with them. “Stop!” an officer ordered, and his voice was so stern that the boys froze. “Home!” he barked at them, and they obediently turned back.

A few minutes later we reached the turnoff. Palestinians with tractors and wagons were waiting for us. “You made it! You made it! Our good friends!” they exclaimed, laughing happily.

We piled the blankets on the wagons and started up a narrow trail toward one of the caves. The trail curled around the hills and the tractor’s wheels as it churned along were so precariously close to the edges that I couldn’t bear to look. The light was fading, and it was nearly dark by the time we arrived at a small clearing. A group of twenty cave dwellers stood huddled next to three sturdy tents and a donkey. Most had had to leave, but this small group had stayed to greet us.

A boy of five or six came up to us, his arm outstretched.
“Ahlan wa-sahlan,”
he said. Rafi and I shook his tiny brown hand. The cave-dwellers were very small; the adults were not much taller than the ten-year-olds. Two women offered us coffee, and an old man wearing a robe made a speech. “I hope one day we will have real peace,” he said, “and not a mock peace. And we will eat together and pray together.”

Two Palestinian boys began to giggle. They were looking at the women demonstrators and nudging each other. I wanted to photograph them, but decided against it; they’d be embarrassed.

It took us a long time to get back to our cars. The road was clear now; the settlers had gone home for the Sabbath meal. I imagined the adults sitting around the table and explaining to their children what the word
traitor
meant: we were traitors to the faith, aspirations and dreams of our own people. We helped the enemy. God would punish us; we’d end up dead as dormice.

An army truck gave the organizers lifts to their cars, and the organizers returned to pick up more people. By the time we were all ready to go it had been dark for some time.

Rafi couldn’t drive, because of his arm, so I drove. Daniel had insisted I learn to drive when we married, but our car broke down shortly after he vanished and I never bothered getting a new one. Rafi laughed. “I think you may be the worst driver I’ve ever encountered,” he said.

“I’m out of practice.”

“Go into fourth,” he said.

“I am in fourth.”

“You’re in second.”

“Oh. Yes, that’s better. Should we drive to a hospital?”

“No, it’s just a sprain. Asshole.”

“That was hard to watch.”

He smiled. “Did you get a good shot?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Too chaotic?”

“No, I felt too sick.”

“Not very professional,” he teased.

I thought for a moment. “You’re right. I’m usually more detached. Not exactly detached …but in control. Otherwise
I wouldn’t be any use. When I first started, what most worried me was that the Palestinians would think it was callous of me to photograph their misery. But it’s exactly the opposite. As soon as they see my camera, they take me all over the place, show me what to photograph. They want people to see, to know.”

“Why don’t you publish your photographs? In newspapers, I mean.”

“I have no idea how to go about it.”

“Or post them on a website.”

“Ditto.”

“I can show you how to do that. We can do it together, I have equipment at home.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s very simple.”

“That would be great. I’d like that. But I don’t want to bother Graciela.”

“It’s my flat, too,” he said, a little offended.

“I didn’t mean that. I just meant if she’s at the piano …”

“It’s my flat, too,” he repeated, but he smiled this time. “I more than earn my keep.”

“Does your arm hurt?”

“I’ll live. Watch out!”

I had narrowly missed crashing into a car that had cut in ahead of me.

“No more talking,” I said. “I need to concentrate or we’ll never make it home.”

I parked outside my building and Rafi followed me into my flat. He called Graciela, but there was no answer, so he left a message. He told her he’d just come back from South Lifna and he was with me, he’d be home later.

“She’s going to hate me,” I said, putting on the kettle for coffee.

“No, she’s not like that. Her mind doesn’t work that way. I’ve never known her to be jealous, ever, of anyone. She’s too preoccupied. She’s too involved with her music, the rest is just peripheral.”

“I can’t imagine that. I would have died had I found out that Daniel was with someone else. I was very possessive, and he was too. But it never came up. Should you put your arm in a sling or something?”

“No, I’ll be fine. But I think I’ll lie down, if that’s okay. And if you have a couple of painkillers, that might help. Also, Dana, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m famished. I’m going to pass out if I don’t eat something.”

“I have bread and cheese.”

“That’s fine.”

“There’s a bottle of acetaminophen in the bathroom. You can lie down on the bed, it’s more comfortable than the sofa.”

I heard him rummaging around in the bathroom drawers. He took the pills and stretched out on the bed with a sigh of relief. “Asshole,” he repeated. “Fucking asshole. What did they take Shadi in for anyhow? He didn’t do a thing. He was walking like everyone else. Then they complain that Arab citizens aren’t devoted to the State. Idiots. Bastard idiots. How to make enemies and alienate people in five easy lessons. How to get people to want you dead in one easy lesson. I don’t know how much longer this madness can go on. I can’t imagine a more suicidal people than us. We love to suffer. And to take everyone else with us.”

I brought half a loaf of bread, a few slices of cheese, and a container of hummus to the bed. Eating on the bed with someone else reminded me of Daniel, and I felt happy.