The neighbors go on standing in the road, trying to find somewhere not covered with sewage, and follow the procession till it disappears out of sight. They name the gang members they’ve recognized. Some of them think the idea of turning into mujahideen overnight laughable, others are all in favor and say that maybe this way the army will withdraw. They go on to discuss events of the previous night, the enormous panic caused by the shooting, how they thought we were being overrun by tanks and helicopters.
“Let’s just hope they don’t shoot again tonight. I want the children to get some sleep,” one of them says.
“First you’ll have to persuade the new fighters not to shoot. Who is their leader anyway?”
“Why shouldn’t they shoot? At least to hit them, to make them suffer a little. What they’re doing to us is bad enough. We have nothing left to feed the children. Just stale bread, and no water at all. How much longer are we going to put up with it?”
“It’s the mayor’s responsibility. I bet his house is packed with food.”
“What do they want anyway? If they don’t reconnect the water today and let in some food, we’re going to starve to death. What’s going on here? Where are our members of the Knesset? Where are the left-wingers? This is the fourth day, and nobody is saying a thing. What are they trying to do, kill us by dehydration? Even on the West Bank they never did that.”
“But if armed people are shooting at the soldiers, it’s only going to make things more complicated. And if they were planning to stop this thing today, it’s going to take a few more days now.”
“What do you mean, a few more days? We don’t have a few more days. Half the village will starve to death by then. What, are they crazy? What do you mean, a few more days?”
4
The armed procession develops into a riot. The children and teens who haven’t joined hang around, and soon all hell breaks loose. They’ve begun to act like anything goes, as if the law, which had remained a deterrent even when the law enforcers had stopped entering the village, no longer exists. Groups of residents, especially the younger ones, break into the bank — not that there is any money left, according to my brother — destroy equipment and set fire to everything. The same thing happens at the post office. At all of the government-run institutions in the village, in fact. They even set fire to the health-fund clinic, though it’s no longer in operation. Once they ran out of medication, it closed down. The doctors see their patients at home, asking to be paid in food, mostly, or else demanding exorbitant sums of money or valuable jewelry. Stories are already circulating about the parents who handed over a gold ring in return for a suppository to get their baby’s fever down. The thugs vent their rage at the large shops too. There is no food left, but they take off with appliances, toilet paper and cosmetics. It seems like there’s no chance things will ever return to normal. True, these are small groups, by no means the whole population, but that’s all it takes to create an atmosphere of utter chaos which will be difficult to eliminate even when the whole business is over and done with.
The soldiers aren’t reacting at all, and the villagers themselves seem to forget about the possibility of being shot at. The soldiers who have weapons feel free to brandish them as if they’re shooting on the village. If it does happen again, it will only be at night, as if there are rules to separate things that are done in broad daylight from things that are done behind a veil of darkness. It stands to reason that if the thugs decide to push their luck again and start to provoke the soldiers, it will only happen in the darkness, and they won’t risk shooting while they are so exposed.
Every now and then I go outside and look at the sections of the village that stretch across from my parents’ home as far as I can see. There is black smoke rising in a few places, and lots of people roaming about aimlessly, undeterred by the filth, the rivulets of sewage and the endless swarms of flies.
My father and two brothers decide to go into the town, to check things out, or so they say. I consider joining them but my wife looks at me, her expression a plea not to leave her on her own. “I want us to go to my parents’, to see how they’re doing,” she says, looking exhausted and drawn. “I’d like you to drive me there, please.”
We get into the car. She doesn’t fasten the baby’s seat belt the way she always does but holds her in her lap and sits next to me in the front seat. Suddenly the car seems like a bubble from another world. I turn on the air conditioner and the radio too, looking for a station that plays music, and the whole car, with a pleasant fragrance lingering inside it, becomes an island of sanity, giving both of us, my wife and myself, a whiff of our lives before the current situation. The trip in the air-conditioned car makes us forget our sorrow over the present reality and gives me some hope. It reminds me that my life normally looks very different from what it has looked like over the past few days. I learn to appreciate it now and hope it goes back to what it was very soon. For a few minutes there’s also the hope, which I’d already begun to consider a delusion, that everything will blow over soon and things will go back to the way they were. I try to convince myself to treat all the events of the past few days like a story, a major spread that will win me back my position at the paper and put me in my rightful place on the front pages. “What are you so worried about?” I ask my wife, and even manage a smile. “Things will be okay. Listen to the radio. They’re playing music. Everything’s fine.”
“Now I’m the one who’s worried and you’re the one who’s calm. How do you explain that? Earlier, when you were panicking, everyone thought you were crazy, and now, when everyone’s on edge, you behave as if nothing’s wrong?”
“What could be wrong? They’re not out to destroy us, or else they could have done that within hours. I promise you the gag order will be lifted soon and we’ll find out what made them do it. I’m sure it’s something really trivial and we’ll all wind up laughing about it.”
“My gut feeling is that things are going to be bad, nothing is going to be the way it was before.”
I know, I think, nothing is going to be the way it was. That’s for sure. But what’s the point of adding to my wife’s worries now? She looks at the kids roaming the streets, watching the last traces of the fires outside the public buildings and the stores. The eyes of the children don’t seem to reflect any fear, which is more than I can say about the adults. They’re bound to be hungry and thirsty, but I guess that children like these, who spend most of their time in the streets, see any new situation as cause for celebration. It’s as if their current setting is better suited to them than the seemingly peaceful lives they led in the village until recently. You can see them deep in conversation or having an argument, trying to outdo one another in the number of fires they’d seen or the number of spent shells they’d found from soldiers and criminals. They show off their collections and take special pride in the larger specimens, those from the soldiers. Some of the kids are riding their bikes barefoot, trying to keep up with the car, holding on to the handlebars with one hand and displaying their bullets in the other. Smiling, they let me and every passerby see their loot. Who knows, maybe they’re the ones who stole the water from our tank.
Getting to my wife’s parents’ home isn’t easy. The main road is blocked. People in this stinking village prefer to keep driving to the last drop of gas. They couldn’t care less that they’ll wind up leaving their car in the middle of the road, blocking it. As far as they’re concerned, if they can’t go anywhere, then neither should anyone else. Then again, a few of the drivers who have run out of gas have gone to the trouble of pushing their cars to the side of the road, and the side street leading to my wife’s parents’ home isn’t blocked. Ever so slowly I manage to wend my way between the cars scattered along the road. It’s incredible how inconsiderate people can be sometimes.