CITIZENS IS FORBIDDEN
The engine scoffs slightly as he turns the handle on the throttle. He will circle around and take the back road this morning, past the yellow gates and beyond. No nerves, no fear. He is well used to it: he makes the trip to Beit Jala at least twice a week.
All morning he has driven fast, but he likes the moments when things slow down to a near-halt and he can feel the space around him, everything held in suspension like in a photograph where he is the only moving thing.
It never ceases to astound him what a difference a border can make: the arbitrary line, drawn here, drawn there, redrawn further along.
No soldiers in sight, no border guards, nothing.
The road rises in a steep ascent. He knows the area well, the barbed-wire fence, the rusting cars, the dusty windshields, the low houses, the hanging flowerpots of fuchsias, the gardens, the wind chimes made out of tear gas canisters, the black water tanks on the roofs of apartment blocks.
Once, long ago, these roads were so much easier to travel. Even in the bad times. No bypasses, no permits, no walls, no unapproved paths, no sudden barricades. You came and you went. Or you didn’t. Now it is a tangle of asphalt, concrete, light pole. Walls. Roadblocks. Barricades. Gates. Strobe lights. Motion activation. Electronic locks.
He is not surprised by the three dark-haired Palestinian boys who seem to appear straight out of the ground. The first hops a section of broken concrete and puts one foot on a roadside tire as if to trampoline off it. The boy is lean and jaunty. The others are older, slower, wary, keeping to the side of the road. Fifty yards, forty yards, twenty, ten, until Rami is almost level with the lead boy. He lets off the throttle and edges the bike closer, beeps the horn in tandem with the slap of sandals.
Dark feet, white soles. A long scar on the back of his calf. A blue-and-white striped shirt. Smadar’s age. Younger even.
The boy’s legs piston. His chest strains against the small swoosh on his T-shirt. The muscles in his neck tighten. The boy grins, an expanse of white teeth. The road rises further. Just beneath a grey light pole—the yellow bulb still shining in the morning—the boy lets out a high yell and then stops abruptly, throws his arms in the air, turns, vaults over a concrete barricade.
In the rearview mirrors, the other two boys meld into the roadside ruin.
Rami can’t quite tell if it was the exertion of the run, the yellow license plate, or the sight of the bumper sticker on the front left of the bike——that makes the boy stop so quickly.
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It will not be over until we talk.
66
He clicks back to third to accommodate the rising road.
Further up the hill is the bird-ringing station at Talitha Kumi, the steep streets, the stone walls, the center of town, the Christian churches, the careful iconography, the tin roofs, the high limestone houses looking out over the lush valley, the hospital, the monastery, the small countries of light and dark rushing across the vineyard, all the atoms of the approaching day stretching out in front of him.
Today, like most days, just another day: a meeting with an international group—seven or eight of them, he has heard—in the Cremisan monastery.
He turns the corner at the top of Manger Street.
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In the distance, over Jerusalem, the blimp rises.
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He followed the blimp one Sunday, a year ago, for a couple of hours, surveilling it, surveilling him, wondering if he could find a pattern to its movement.
He went corner to corner, street sign to street sign, out into the countryside, then parked his bike at the overlook at Mount Scopus, sat on the low stone wall, shaded his eyes and stared upwards, watching the blimp drift in the blue. He had heard from a friend that it was a weather machine, gauging moisture levels and checking air quality. There was always a backup for the truth. And, in truth, how many sensors? How many cameras? How many eyes in the sky looking down?
Rami often felt that there were nine or ten Israelis inside him, fighting. The conflicted one. The shamed one. The enamored one. The bereaved one. The one who marveled at the blimp’s invention. The one who knew the blimp was watching. The one watching back. The one who wanted to be watched. The anarchist. The protester. The one sick and tired of all the seeing.
It made him dizzy to carry such complications, to be so many people all at once. What to say to his boys when they went off to military service? What to say to Nurit when she showed him the textbooks? What to say to Bassam when he got stopped at the checkpoints? What to feel every time he opened a newspaper? What to think when the sirens sounded on Memorial Day? What to wonder when he passed a man in a kaffiyeh? What to feel when his sons had to board a bus? What to think when a taxi driver had an accent? What to worry about when the news clicked on? What fresh atrocity lay on the horizon? What sort of retribution was coming down the line? What to say to Smadari? What is it like being dead, Princess? Can you tell me? Would I like it?
Below him, on the slope, young boys lazed on the hillside on the backs of thin Arabian horses. The boys wore immaculate white jeans. Their horses muscled beneath them. Rami wished he could somehow reach out to them, approach them, say a word. But they knew already who he was from his license plate, what he was, just from the way he carried himself. They would know from his accent too, even if he spoke to them in Arabic. An older man on a motorbike. His pale white skin. His open face. The hidden fear. I should go and tell them. I should stride across and look them directly in the eye. Her name was Smadar. Grape of the vine. A swimmer. A dancer too. She was this tall. She had just cut her hair. Her teeth were slightly crooked. It was the start of the school year. She was out shopping for books. I was driving to the airport when I got the news. She was missing. We knew. My wife and I. We knew. We went from hospital to police station, back again. You cannot imagine what that is like. One door after another. Then the morgue. The smell of antiseptic. It was unspeakable. They slid her out on a metal tray. A cold metal tray. She lay there. Your age. No more. No less. Let’s be honest here, guys. You would have been delighted by the news. You would have celebrated. Cheered. And I would once have cheered for yours too. And your father’s. And your father’s father. Listen to me. I admit it. No denial. Once, long ago. What do you think of that? What sort of world are we living in? Look up. It’s watching us, all of us. Look. Look. Up there.
After a while the blimp began to press down further upon him, like a light hand upon his chest, the pressure growing firmer, until all Rami wanted to do was find a place where he could not be seen. It was so often like this. The desire to vanish. To have all of it gone in a single smooth motion. To wipe it all clean. Tabula rasa. Not my war. Not my Israel.