Nothing to be done about it now. No point in turning home. He could kill some time staying on the highway a little longer. Or scoot around some of the back roads in the valleys. Find himself a little stretch where he can push the bike, instill a little torque in the day.
He clicks back into fourth, watches the red line of the revometer. He shoots past a long truck, then eases into fifth.
14
A rubber bullet, when shot from a metal tube on the end of an M-16, leaves the barrel of the gun at more than one hundred miles per hour.
The bullets are large enough to be seen but too fast to be avoided.
They were tested first in Northern Ireland, where the British called them knee-knockers: they were designed to be fired at the ground, then bounce up and hit the legs of rioters.
15
The bullet that killed Abir traveled fifteen meters through the air before it smashed into the back of her head, crushing the bones in her skull like those of a tiny ortolan.
She had gone to the grocery store to buy candy.
16
For two shekels Abir could have bought a bracelet with He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not imprinted along its rim. Instead she bought two iswarit mlabase: hard pills of pink, orange, yellow, and light blue candy braceleted together on a string.
She slipped the money across the counter into the palm of the shop owner, who fished the bracelets out of a deep glass jar.
As they made their way out towards the school gates, Abir gave the second bracelet to her sister Areen.
17
Every day since Abir was killed, Bassam has walked to the mosque in the hour before sunrise to join the optional pre-dawn prayers.
Forty-eight years old, he moves through the dark with a slight limp, a cigarette cupped in the well of his hand. He is thin, slim, fit. His limp imprints him into the world: otherwise he might slip through almost unnoticed. Still, an agility lurks underneath, a wiry surprise, as if he might burst away from the limp at any moment and leave it abandoned behind him.
He drops his cigarette on the path outside the mosque, scrunches it with his sneaker. In his isolation he smooths his white shirt with his palm, walks up the steps, removes his shoes, enters first with his right foot, kneels at the rear of the hall and bows himself before his limitless God.
He prays for his wife, his five children, the memory of Abir. Allah, save us from enormities whether open or hidden. One by one, the prayer beads drop slowly from his fingers to the other side of his hand.
As sunrise claws along the windows, a little splinter of shadow purls along the stone steps. Bassam sweeps the floor with a twig broom and rolls out the mats that stand cylindrical against the east wall.
The smell of charcoal and hemp drifts in from outside. The thrum of awakening traffic, the comfort of the muezzin, the barking of stray dogs.
Bassam works methodically down the length of the hall, covering the entire floor with mats, followed by skullcaps and rosaries for the first of the day’s prayers.
18
A town of neither here nor there, Anata appears like an odd urban archipelago—a Palestinian town, in the West Bank, under Israeli occupation, within the Jerusalem governate. It is surrounded almost totally by the Separation Wall.
A few fine homes stand perched on the upper hillsides—white stone, marble columns, tall arches, high windows—but they soon give way to a chaos below.
The descent is steep and sharp. Satellite dishes mushroom the roofs. Pigeons squawk from cages. Laundry flaps on washing lines strung between apartments. Bare-chested boys swerve their bikes between potholes. Downhill they go, among the overflowing dumpsters and the piles of rubbish.
The streets are all traffic without traffic lights. Everywhere is neon. Tire shops, bakeries, cellphone repair kiosks. Men feign nonchalance in the shadows. Clouds of cigarette smoke hover over them. Women hurry underneath their hijabs. Carcasses of lamb hang forlorn on steel hooks outside the butcher shops. Pop music slides out from the loudspeakers. Bits of rubble lie everywhere.
The town shoulders up against the Shu’fat refugee camp. Shu’fat builds itself upwards, apartment block upon apartment block. Nowhere else to go but the sky.
It is easy to get into the camp—just slide through the metal revolving gate at the checkpoint and walk down the road—but it is tougher to get out. To travel to Jerusalem an ID card or a permit is needed. To get to the rest of the West Bank—which, like Bassam, you must do if you own a green license plate—only a single potholed road allows escape.
19
The rim of a tightening lung.
20
Think of it like this: you are in Anata, in the rear of a taxi, cradling a young girl in your arms. She has just been rubber-bulleted in the back of the head. You are on your way to the hospital.
The taxi is stuck in traffic. The road through the checkpoint to Jerusalem is closed. At best you will be detained if you try to pass through illegally. At worst both you and the driver will be shot while carrying the shot child.
You glance down. The child is still breathing. The driver puts his hand to the car horn. The car behind blares its horn. The car in front joins in. The noise doubles and redoubles. You look out the window. Your car nudges past a mound of trash. Plastic bags whip in the wind. You go nowhere. The heat bears down. A bead of sweat drops from your chin onto the plastic seat.
The driver blares his horn again. The sky is blue with torn ribbons of cloud. When the car moves, its front wheel sinks into yet another pothole. The clouds, you think, are the fastest thing around. Then there is movement: two helicopters blading the blue.
A part of you wants to get out and carry the smashed-up child in your arms, but you have to keep her head cradled and try not to move while nothing else on the ground moves either.
21
The Biblical Jeremiah—known also as the Weeping Prophet, chosen by God to warn of impending disaster—is said to have been born in ancient Anata. His image can be found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, painted by Michelangelo in the early sixteenth century.
In the painting, which appears to the side of the high altar, near the front of the chapel, Jeremiah sits, bearded and brooding, in long salmon-colored robes, his finger extended across his mouth, his eyes cast downward.
22
To this day, Bassam is haunted by his daughter’s candy bracelet. In the hospital he was met by the taxi driver and the shopkeeper who had traveled in the back with Abir. Abir’s shoe had been slipped back on her foot, but the candy bracelet had disappeared: it was not in her hand, not on her wrist, not in her pockets.