Sometimes I think of converting, and sometimes I think I ought to blow myself up or run over some soldiers at the Raanana intersection. I go back to Tira more often, in search of an answer, trying to find out what others like me, people with a blue ID card, have decided to do, trying to see if there’s any hope left. I start accepting invitations to the weddings of relatives, visiting new mothers, and paying condolence calls. I’ve got to go back. Mother says they’re liable to load each village onto a different truck, and we’ll wind up being taken from Beit Safafa to Jordan. The people of Tira will be taken to Lebanon. Mother says we’ve got to make sure that the whole family is on the same truck.

Mother says the worst that could happen would be to be taken to Egypt. Egypt is the worst. They just got back from Egypt last week. The trip left both of them depressed, especially my father, who’s lost faith in the Arab world. He says they’re too busy dealing with hunger and don’t have the energy to deal with Zionism, pan-Arabism, and war. It finally dawns on him that Nasser is dead and that there isn’t going to be another like him.

My father was stopped for two hours at the border, at Taba. Mother tells me about it in a whisper because Father won’t talk about it, and she doesn’t want him to hear her from the bedroom. Mother says the soldiers at the border crossing called up his name on the computer and screamed at him in the most disgusting way. She’s shaking, trying hard to contain the water that’s collecting in her eyes and to keep the tears from forming. They ordered him to sit on the side. Children screamed at him, “Shut up!” and took him to another room. Mother says Father wouldn’t have minded so much if it hadn’t been for the other people who saw it happen and felt sorry for him. They don’t understand he’s worth more than a thousand of them. Mother says my father is smarter and worth more than anything in the world.

Ever since the trip to Egypt, my father doesn’t want to fight anymore. He continues to stare at the world news, but he’s stopped providing answers and solutions or offering his running commentary. He doesn’t care anymore about the revolution or equality or land or a free country. My father’s given up. He says the Palestinians should give up too, and if he were a Palestinian leader, he’d order them to destroy the El Aqsa Mosque. First, they’d blow it up with dynamite, and then they’d bring in the bulldozers to clear away every vestige of Islam and Arabism. My father says that would be the Palestinian revenge for the silence of Islam and of the Arab world in the face of their suffering. And if the Saudis and the Iranians and the Syrians and the Egyptians and twenty-two Arab states — as the Zionists put it — want the El Aqsa Mosque and Mohammed’s El-Quds, let them come and protect it themselves. My father says he’s had it, he’s fed up; everyone had better just give up like us, like the Israeli Arabs.

My father says the best thing would be for our cousins in Tulkarm, Ramallah, Nablus, and Bakat el-Hatab to receive the same blue ID cards that we have. Let them become seventh-class citizens in the Zionist state. He says it’s better than being third-class citizens in an Arab state. My father hates Arabs. He says it’s better to be the slave of your enemy than to be the slave of a leader from within your own people.

Nadia (named for Nadia Comaneci), the wife of my older brother, Sam, has given birth to the family’s first male grandchild. My father doesn’t want the baby to be named for him. He says it would be a bad omen, and the baby doesn’t look like him at all. My older brother is searching for a meaningful name. They thought of calling him Beisan (now known as Beith-Shean). And Iz Adin, like the Iz-Adin Al Quassam Brigades. And Che Guevara, and Nelson Mandela, and Castro, and Nasser, and Sabra. They thought of calling him Wattan (homeland), which was what Father wanted to call me originally. They thought of Ard (land) and of Iyaar (May), because my brother Sam had been born on May Day and Mother had received a gift from the maternity hospital.

Eventually they opted for the name my younger brother Mahmoud suggested and called the baby Danny. Mahmoud said the name would save the kid lots of problems. Maybe he’d be laughed at in Tira, but he’d have it much easier at the university and at work and on the bus and in Tel Aviv. Danny was better.

Ever since my wife’s parents began the renovations to get the house ready for their son’s wedding, my wife and I and the baby sleep on mattresses in Grandma’s room. She can hardly see or hear, but she still gets up at dawn every day to pray, sitting down. I always open my eyes when Grandma wakes up. My wife and the baby go on sleeping. I watch Grandma crawling toward the toilets and her shower. I hear her throwing up. I get up quickly and go to her. She’s sitting on the floor, trying to reach the toilet bowl with her head, but she doesn’t make it. She throws up on herself. “What’s the matter, Grandma?” I ask.

“Go back to sleep, habibi. It’s nothing. It’s like this every day.”

I hug her and kiss her head, trying not to cry. She hides her eyes now behind her white scarf and says it isn’t death that makes her cry. Not at all. She’s tired already, and she doesn’t want to be a burden to Mother and Father anymore. She says the only reason she’s crying is that she used to think she’d be buried in her own land. “Do you remember where the key to the cupboard is?”

And we both cry together.