After the funeral, all the men in the family gathered at our house and talked about revenge. The relatives from the West Bank said they would do anything, but there was nobody to kill. The three druggie brothers had been arrested, and the police had moved the rest of their family to a different village. Most of the adults in our family stayed put, while a few of the younger ones huddled in the corner, whispering. My father was older, but he joined them. It was obvious they were planning something. Aunt Fahten walked over to the mourners’ tent where the men were seated. She was allowed in there, because she was a widow. She’s a strong woman, and wise. She stood in the middle and shouted, “There won’t be a single man among you unless you find a way of consoling Ali’s mother! Unless you do something that will comfort her!”

The stream of callers didn’t let up. From time to time, I switched places with my older brother. He poured the coffee and I washed the dishes. My father was busy the whole time. He never just sat in the tent. He kept going in and out of the house through the back door. He took a few bus trips, car trips too. Around 8 P.M. he came down to the shed, and a few seconds after he sat down we heard a loud boom. Father had a proud look in his eyes. Soon a young guy came in and whispered something to him. Father left the shed again, took the car, and came back within five minutes with two doctors who were relatives of ours. They came with their bags. Someone had been injured out there, but taking him to the hospital was not an option.

I went indoors now too. I didn’t know the person who’d been hurt, but I saw he was wearing my father’s sneakers. He had a gash in his leg from jumping out the window, but he’d be all right. The callers whispered to one another, trying to figure out what had happened. Soon they realized that the murderers’ home had been blown up using the containers of cooking gas.

I come back with the paper. My father’s in bed. When he sees me, he sits up and is about to get to his feet. Suddenly he looks at me with big bulging eyes — frightened, imploring eyes. All at once his forehead is covered in perspiration, and the monitor starts beeping nervously.

I scream to one of the nurses, “My father! My father!” and within seconds there’s a whole team around his bed. They hook him up to oxygen and pull his bed out toward Intensive Care. I follow them, trying to see his face, but I can’t. I can’t get into the elevator with them. I run down the stairs and get to Intensive Care before they do. I’m convinced he’s dead by now. That’s it. There’s no hope. He won’t make it. I start crying. I head for the phone booths next to the elevators. If he doesn’t die now, I’ll stay with him right here in the hospital till the next heart attack kills him.

Half the family arrives, my aunts and their children. My mother is wearing a head scarf. Her eyes are swollen from crying. She heads straight for Intensive Care, and there’s no stopping her. A few of the men want to talk to a doctor, and they ask for someone to come out and tell them what’s happening. They’ve left their shops, their classrooms, and their businesses to come here. That’s all we need now, another tragedy in the family.

The doctor says Father will be okay, but I don’t believe it. I saw him perspiring. I saw his eyes telling me he won’t be back, he’s somewhere else already. They’re allowing me in too now. He’s still alive, but I know it won’t last. They’ve hooked him up to lots more instruments. The doctor says it wasn’t a heart attack, just chest pains. To be on the safe side, they’re leaving him in Intensive Care till they run some more tests. I look at him, and he still looks scared, baffled by what he’s been through. He looks at me, then at Mother, and I know it’s all because of me.

Arabs Called Me a Settler

Arabs called me a settler, their label for anyone who moved into a room that already had two tenants. A third roommate. A squatter. In the Hebrew University dorms, settlers were a big and legitimate group. The rent would be divided three ways, and almost every Arab student welcomed the arrangement. There were just a few city types, mostly from Nazareth, who came to the university in their own cars and didn’t want any settlers in their rooms.

The settlers were usually students who’d been late signing up for the dorms or who’d dragged out their studies for too many years and were no longer eligible for a dorm room. There were only two beds in each room, and when both of them were occupied, the settler would bed down on a mattress. I was the only settler who wasn’t a student. To get into the dorms, which were closely guarded by security guards — some Jewish, some Druze — you had to produce a student ID. Adel gave me his. He told the administration he’d lost it, and I paid the fine for him and gave him the money for a passport photo.

I found a job within a week. It wasn’t hard. In Jerusalem, there are lots of institutions for people with special needs, and they’re always short of attendants. The Jews preferred Arabs who had a blue ID card and could get to work even when there were roadblocks, curfews, or war; not like the Arabs from the West Bank with their orange IDs. This was toward the end of the first Intifada, and the orange ones missed many days of work.

I started working at an institution for the retarded. On my shift, I was responsible for six children, some with Down syndrome and others with different conditions. The retarded kids didn’t like me, and I didn’t like them either. I took them to the bathroom, scrubbed them with a brush, and made sure they were clean. When the girls had their period, I sprayed water on them from a distance. I took them to the dining room, to the occupational workshops, and to the depressing playground. Sometimes, I simply took them on walks through the long buildings. The smell there was terrible, but somehow I got used to it.

I worked every day, and on weekends I’d do a double shift. The pay was very low, and you couldn’t really make a decent salary without the overtime and the extra pay on Saturdays. I didn’t have much to do anyway. I didn’t know anyone except Adel, and I didn’t see much of him either, because he was deep in his law studies and I was stuck at work.

Sometimes, when both of us had a free evening, we’d go down to the grocery store, buy some of the cheapest wine with the highest alcohol content, and drink it in the parking lot of the dorms. He always wanted me to tell him what it was like to fuck, and he kept talking about girls. In the end, we’d both throw up and go back to the room, and if one of the legal occupants was out, we’d share the bed.

Sometimes, when I didn’t want to go back to the dorms, I’d go to the university, look for the psych department, and wait outside for Naomi. I had tried to talk to her at first, to tell her I had a job, and money, and might invite her to a restaurant sometime. But she was always busy. Sometimes I followed her from a distance and tried to find out whether she had a new boyfriend yet. I wanted to know if she was as unhappy as I was. Maybe she still loved me and missed me; maybe it was only because of her mother that we’d split up. But she almost always looked happy, and she was surrounded by friends as she went to the cafeteria or the library.

I had a bus pass from my job, and I would travel around for hours on the buses, listening to my Walkman and staring at the people, the shop windows, the cars. I got on and off whenever I felt like it. I made a point not to keep taking the same bus, because I didn’t want the drivers or the regular passengers to notice me. Sometimes I’d be lost in thought or else I’d fall asleep, and the driver would wake me with a shout when we reached the end of the line.

I knew all the bus routes. I knew where each bus went, and which streets it went through. I studied every way of getting from the dorms to work. I knew the timetables by heart too, and all the drivers’ faces. I started avoiding eye contact when I got on the bus, because I was beginning to feel as if I knew them a bit too well. I knew where there would be traffic jams, where the old people would get on, or the children, or the religious people, and which routes were used by Arabs. Sometimes I tried to guess where the passengers were going. To work? To school? To the souk? To the hospital? Sometimes I wanted to know where one of the passengers lived, and I’d get off with him and follow him from a distance with my Walkman on. Sometimes I’d go as far as my school and head right back.