Somehow, something that had once been considered a betrayal became perfectly legitimate in the eighties and nineties. Those were the years when the Arab citizens not only resigned themselves to being citizens of Israel, they even grew to like their citizenship and were worried that it might be taken away from them. They no longer dreamed of being part of the big Arab world stretching “from the ocean to the Gulf” the way they used to. On the contrary, the idea of becoming part of the Arab world even began to frighten them. They truly believed the Israeli politicians who claimed that “relative to the Arab states, the situation of the Israeli Arabs is amazing,” a sentence that always shut people up when they started talking about discrimination. People were afraid they wouldn’t get their National Insurance allowances anymore, or that a day would come when they’d find themselves in a country without medical insurance, welfare, pensions for widows or single parents or the next of kin, allowances for the elderly and the disabled, unemployment benefits or subsidies.
As soon as the Oslo Accords were signed, my father could take pride in the fact that he’d belonged to the party that had recognized the PLO and was ready to establish a state for the Palestinians. Actually, there was no real difference between the loudmouths who voted for an Arab party and those who supported the left-wing Zionists. Both adopted similar slogans, all about “peace and equality,” so what was the problem exactly?
I know some people thought my father had a lot of money, that he’d received huge sums from the state or from his party, especially when Labor was in power, but it isn’t true. My father worked hard his whole life, and that’s something I know for a fact. He did everything he could to make sure we got a university education, and to be able to build each of us a home someday. I remember how he used to come home from his Ministry of Education job in the afternoon, rest awhile, and then go to work at another job. For years he moonlighted at a frozen-meat factory. In the afternoons he’d head for one of the kibbutzim nearby. Then they’d give him a pickup with a large refrigeration compartment in back, and a freezer full of poultry and sausages and hamburger, all of it frozen. Father would distribute the meat in the Arab villages in the area. He was too embarrassed to work in our own village. I figured it out right away. He never told anybody about that job. Only we, the family, knew about it. Actually, I’m not sure my brothers knew either. I’d insist on doing the rounds with him. At first he refused. “You just see to your studies, and the rest will take care of itself,” he always said. Only when he came to accept that it wouldn’t hurt my schoolwork — that I’d finished my homework even before he got home from work at his day job — did he agree. “I know,” he said, “your teachers are always telling me how well you are doing and that you really should have skipped a grade.” That’s how I began joining my father every afternoon. I’d watch him put on his big green jacket and walk into the refrigeration room. He’d pull out boxes and pile them up in the back of the pickup, which had a big winking chicken painted over its side. I’d help my father carry the boxes. I was in ninth grade by then, and pretty strong. I loved working with him. It didn’t take too long either. Usually we finished making the rounds of all the grocery stores in two to three hours. I soon came to know all the grocery owners in the area. After a while I started carrying the boxes myself. I wouldn’t let my father touch them. All he had to do was settle accounts with the grocers while I unloaded the goods. It wasn’t hard, not at all.
My father was very happy. In every grocery store he’d tell the owner or whoever was around, “That’s my son, the best student in the class, the best student in the whole school.” He always smiled as he said it. So my father was no traitor and no collaborator.
Ever since he retired, he’s stopped being active in the party. All he does is vote for it in the Knesset elections. After the outbreak of the second Intifada and the events of October 2000, he even stopped trying to persuade us to vote for Labor. Mother voted like him, because she always does whatever he does. I don’t know who my older brother voted for, maybe the Islamic Movement, but I boycotted the elections. It was my own decision, not because the Arab parties said that was what we should do. Sometimes I even hate them and their way of thinking.
My older brother says he’ll buy some things at the grocery store now, and he’ll finish his chores when he gets home from work. Mother tells Father we have nothing to lose. Whatever food we have we’ll eat, and she’ll send my brother to the store right away with some money and a shopping list.
4
I go back home. My wife is feeding the baby. “What happened?” she asks.
“Nothing. Some idiot tried to run the roadblock.”
“The roadblock? It’s still there? You mean you won’t be going to work today either?”
“You’d better stay home too.”
“What do you mean? I can’t. But I only have five classes today. I’ll be home early. What will you do all day? How about cleaning up a bit?”
“Yeah, we’ll see. But I’d like the baby to stay with me today.”
“Great. She’ll love it. Won’t you, sweetheart? Won’t you? You’ll stay with Daddy.”
In a way I’m happy they’ve continued the roadblock today too. It sort of saves me from the useless trip to the paper and from aimlessly roaming the streets. On the other hand, what the hell is going on here?
The baby smiles and finishes the whole bottle. My wife hands her over to me and goes to the bathroom. I’m so sorry I have a little girl. What a fool I was to decide to bring a child into the world in a situation like this. It wasn’t just the roadblock and yesterday’s events, but generally it seemed to me really inhumane to bring children into a world like ours in a region like ours. The problem is that my wife got pregnant before the present Intifada broke out. Everything seemed different then, and my own way of thinking was different too. I can even say I was optimistic. My career was going well and relations between Arabs and Jews were beginning to improve. Sometimes I think it all happened because of the baby, as a kind of retribution. Religious people would say God was testing us. I try to smile at the baby, as if to convince her that everything’s fine, that she’s living in surroundings that are just the way I’d planned for her. When I think about how quickly things deteriorated, it’s mind-blowing.
I’d rather the three of us stayed together today. That’s how I am when I have a sense that things are dangerous — I like to see all the people that I worry about sticking together, but I don’t have the strength to explain to her about how frightened I am and to persuade her to stay home.
We’re walking together and she says good-bye to the baby, I tell her to take care of herself, follow her with my eyes till she’s out of sight and go into my parents’ home with the baby in my arms.
5
My parents are getting dressed to pay a condolence call. My father pays condolence calls every time anyone in the village dies. He and two other adults in the family are regarded as the official condolence callers, and for decades the three of them have paid these calls on the second day of the mourning, after evening prayers. When the death isn’t natural, or when the deceased is someone important, or when a friend or someone young dies in his prime, the three relatives modify their standard procedure and don’t wait for the second day but try to make it to the funeral as well. My mother wears a kerchief and attends too. When they reach the road, they split up — Mother joins the women and Father walks along with the men. Many men and women are walking toward the house, trying to keep quiet, speaking in a whisper, the men walking on the right side of the road and the women on the left. I feel kind of sorry that I can’t join the funeral procession, which is bound to set out from the homes of the parents — the contractor’s and the workers’—toward the mosque, and from there to the cemetery. Too bad I offered to take the baby, because it could certainly have added some human interest to the story I’ll write for the paper. I’m still convinced I’ll be covering the whole chain of events once the roadblock is removed. If the closure is lifted tomorrow, I may still get the story written in time for this weekend’s supplement.