Дана Жетеева

Отрывок из перевода “War Will Tell the Further Plan”

“You are asking what grief made me leave Gaza willed by Allah and move to your cold Germany? So, Gamal, listen. I used to live in Shudjaia, it’s a suburb of Gaza, I prayed to Allah, worked at school, taught English to children. They say, here in Germany, they forbid hitting children with a whip. And believe it or not, for the twelve years that I have worked at school, I have never hit anybody. I was even summoned to the principal’s office once — he said that the discipline in my class suffered and that I was too liberal with those bastards.”

“People say,” Gamal, who was dozing all that time, interrupted, opening one eye. “It’s better to make a child cry than cry later about him.” And do you have a wife?”

“I had one,” Hamid replied. “She was beautiful… her name was Aya.”

“Just one?”

“But I don’t need the second one. And we had three sons — Mamduh, Ahdaf and Muhammad. No, we did not have our own house. Well, the last nine years we had a siege, it was not possible to find building materials, everything goes to building bunkers and tunnels, and even if you find something, then it costs crazy money. Guess we were possessed when we chose that Hamas for ourselves!”

“You were probably voting for it at the election?”

“Of course, for it! But everyone was voting for it! It seemed so easy: Fatah was full of thieves, and Hamas were honest faithful people who were, by the way, gathering a lot of donations for the poor; Fatah lost intifada and Hamas won. Jewish army enters Ramallah and Shkhem where Abbas rules as if they come home, where they shoot and arrest anyone they want, and they extract the army and forcefully ban settlers from Gaza where the Hamas warriors shoot “Qassam rockets”. With my head, I understood that there was nothing to be joyful about, that we did not see anything bad from the Jewish greenhouses in their settlements, and from the construction in the settlements themselves, we did not see anything bad, only workplaces and it was with our widespread unemployment. And the main thing — it was clear to me, that occupation is definitely bad but bandits in the government like ours, as in Ramallah were even worse.

And I did understand that but when there was exultation in the streets when pupils ran with sherbet and muhallebi, and congratulated you, and when your wife came home from work beaming with happiness, then like it or not, you became infected with this mood and your feet started dancing by themselves. And then, there were elections coming up. And then, when the euphoria cleared away, we realized whom we had chosen, but not at once. Besides, with time, we understood something more — those black days of occupation when one could speak whatever he wanted, have passed, and now we needed to keep our mouths tightly shut if we didn’t want to utterly disappear like Ali Suef who expressed his regret that back in two thousand and three, Israeli people only wounded Ismail Haniyeh when they shot him from the air.

But life went on. Sons were being born, and pupils were growing up, there appeared grey hairs, people whom Aya treated were getting well. Unfortunately, the day when Hamas soldiers were shooting from the territory of the hospital where Aya worked, there came Mamduh to see his mum. And he did. Then I saw their scorched corpses — they were lying at the fence of the hospital garden. They were struck by the response hit from Israel… Do you know what it is to bury your child? Do you know what it is to turn away, biting your lip, when your children ask: “Daddy, will mum and Mamduh return?”

Day after day, Jews attacked Shudjaia. Day after day, Hamas’s people shot from the yards, schools, from the houses, and Jews were complacently responding to them, destroying the abandoned by the bandits, missile launching sites, and at the same time peaceful people, whom Hamas used as a live shield. I was astounded by both parties. Why would the Jews set themselves up? Couldn’t they make up something else, not to be on the bit of the scoundrels? And I was surprised by the Hamas too. Alright, those indifferent reporters, who were just listing how many missiles fell on the territory of Israel like a tongue twister, focused their cameras on the ruins from which pieces of rusty carcasses stuck out, on the gory bodies, and at the children with tied-up stumps of their arms and legs. “I mean, there should be a journalist,” I thought. “Who, like Ulenspiegel, would admit the ashes of Shudjaia into his heart?” Wh-what? Ah, who Ulenspiegel is? Well, it’s the main character of the novel of one Belgian writer, who… ah, well, it doesn’t matter.

What’s important is that sooner or later, there would appear such a journalist, and he would shout out to the entire world that the king is naked and would tell the whole world who the genuine perpetrator of our pain, our blood, and our ashes is. But the journalist did not appear, and the houses kept on being destroyed… And then, one day, I received an SMS where the Israeli were warning me that my house was in the engagement area, and they requested to leave immediately. Muhammad, Ahdaf, and I, as we were, jumped into our jalopy “Fiat” and went over the hills and far away. Ah, if only we have chosen the hills in the other direction, maybe, my children could have been alive. And we did not get too far away — a couple of blocks or maybe three that we passed and then… the street was blocked there. They dragged us out of the car, drew up into that four-story house, and made us go upstairs. And then, there was the roof.”

* * *

   The most curious thing was that there was no panic on the roof at all. On the contrary, it seemed that calm prevailed there. And it was not that apathetic tranquility of people who had resigned themselves to violence, and who had nothing else to do other than wait for their destiny, it was live calmness mixed with interest. The attic door opened and a hulk in a balaclava and a Hamas ribbon on his forehead pushed into the roof a young guy with short hair. He was holding a crying baby in his arms, apparently his brother. It was clear that these ones, like Muhammad and Ahdaf and himself, were brought here involuntarily. But right after them, a flock of merrily laughing boys of about fourteen years old ran into the roof too; obviously, nobody dragged them there. Moreover, they immediately started dividing twenty-shekel notes arguing animatedly, which they were clearly paid for participating in this action. To the right of them stood a tall ginger-haired guy whispering something inaudibly looking in the direction of the Israeli border. His cheek muscles were visibly flexing.

“Dad, are we going to die?” ten-year-old Muhammad asked suddenly.

Hamid did not manage to answer his son when the red-haired guy started speaking instead.

“We will die, but THESE…” he waved towards the direction where the V-shaped drone hovering over their blocks came from, “THESE should know — we are not afraid of them!”

“We’ll die, but our death will contribute to the liberation of Palestine,” someone’s voice was heard in the sudden silence. “The more of us die, the more support we will get from all around the world!”

“And that would make the Jews retreat sooner,” someone added.

“Dad, let’s not die, let’s go away!” Muhammad whispered ardently squeezing his father’s hand, and little Ahdaf all cringed, became sad and gave a sob. The response to that was a cry from the other side of the roof made by the child that was brought there by his older brother, who in his turn, was urged there being poked in his back.

At that moment, the door opened once again, and a few more people in overalls and balaclavas appeared on the roof. They were dragging plastic pipes, the ones that were usually used for a water pipeline or canalization. They started attaching the three pipes to each other with the insulating tape.

“Jump down their throats! Hinder them! Don’t let them do it!” Hamid whispered to himself almost out loud. He did not jump. He did not hinder. He let them. Some weakness immobilized him. And they quietly, even at a leisurely pace, finished what they were doing and returned to the attic door. This was all happening in the complete silence that was interfered only with the hum of the Israeli combat drone. Let it hum. As far as it hums, it looks like the Jews will not shoot. The drone is their eyes.

“Jump down their throats! Hinder them! Kill them! Die yourself but save your children! And those children that are standing on that roof, not even suspecting what destiny prepares for them! And those that are brainwashed and whisper curses towards Israel and are so desperate to die.”

The Hamas guys were already at the door when he made himself dash to them with the cry: “Wait! Where are you going? Let us go!”

And then something strange happened. The man, who was obviously in command of others suddenly stopped, turned around and took off his mask. He had a round face that was rimmed with an accurately trimmed black beard.

“You say, let you go? Wait, soldiers, this one here wants us to let him go.”

These words sounded deceptively soft that gave him the power to shout:

“Let everyone, everyone go!”

“Everyone, you say? Hm, I don’t know about everyone, but we’ll let you go, I think.”

“With children…”

His voice that was so determined a second ago, now turned into pleading. It seemed as though something incredible was going to happen! That mercy would awake in the hearts of those hellhounds, those monsters, those Hamas people, and they would let go now, maybe not everyone, but at least his children – Ahdaf and Muhammad!

“Ahdaf, Muhammad!” he shouted stretching his arms towards his sons.

“No-no, we did not agree on that,” the owner of that short beard claimed and punched his face hard with a swing. The pain from the punch now mixed with the pain from realization that he was being torn away from his children and then from understanding that they were doomed. And it was all intertwined with Muhammad’s cry: “Papa!” and Ahdaf’s sobbing.

Then everything disappeared somewhere — there were only stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs.

Having belted down the stair flight and wiping blood from his face, he made an attempt to get up. “The short beard” lightly ran down the stairs, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dealt him a slap in the face, and Hamid fell further down the stairs. Further and further. And every time Hamid stopped at the next stair landing, someone’s boot sent him to the further journey down again. And this happened until those goons did not throw him outside.

That’s when it happened. With a nonchalant gesture, “the short beard” took out a remote control that could be suitable for a TV or an air conditioner from his pocket. He pressed the button. There was a noise that sounded like a jet plane when it flew right above one’s head. Hamid looked up in the sky. That intertwined white thread cutting through the July azure, the thread that was stretched to nowhere, though no, not nowhere, but to the east, was saying silently: “The response will fly back, a terrifying response! The response will fly back, a terrifying response! The response will fly back, a terrifying response!” Hamid dashed back to the entrance. Quick, upstairs, up! Of course, they locked the door to the roof, but he would break it down, bash it in!…

Some of the security guards tripped him up, and he stretched on the ground, accompanied by their guffawing. Turning to his back, he helplessly observed how the rocket exhaust was becoming wider and wider and wider… in the ultramarine sky…

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