They’re chuckling and their tone of voice is different. Everyone is smiling, and I hear how enormously relieved they are. I’m actually enjoying the noise that sounded so strong and surprising at first — the familiar droning of the refrigerator and the air conditioner and the incessant hum of the TV at my parents’ house. My dad walks over to the air conditioner, puts his face up close and talks to it: “Welcome back, ahalan u-sahalan. How we missed you.”

This is it, I tell myself, it’s all over now. My mother tries to turn on the faucet in the kitchen sink. The water isn’t flowing yet, but there’s the sound of water pressure building up, the sound you always hear after it’s been off for a while. My father says it’s the sound of air and that we’ll have water too pretty soon. It’ll take time, but the sound proves that the water system is working. “It’s a matter of a few hours, or even less,” Father says, and lights a cigarette, then turns on the TV, where nothing has changed. It’s almost two A.M. and there is nothing on Israel TV. On the Arab cable networks everything looks the same — Lebanese singers go on singing love songs, wiry dancers in alluring clothes sway seductively. The Saudi channels are teaching little children how to read the Koran, and the Egyptian channels are showing reruns of familiar series. My wife comes out with the baby, smiling, rocking her gently. You can tell she’s happy. She looks at one of the series and says, “There’s Nour el-Sharif, everything’s okay.” She and my older brother’s wife are laughing.

I pick up the telephone receiver and hear a dial tone. I report this to everyone, reinforcing their collective sense of victory. I heave a sigh of relief. Tomorrow morning I’ll try to phone the paper. Maybe they’ll want me to do a write-up after all. Too bad it will only be for the following day. Tomorrow’s paper closed at midnight. My father opens the locked door and goes out. We all follow. The entire village is lit up. Instead of turning off the extra lights, we join in the improvised “electricity party” that reassures us it’s no illusion. It looks like the entire village has come alive. There are lights on in every house, and everybody’s up, like just before a holiday. The familiar sounds of summer evenings are back. Sounds of happiness, of TV sets, of children playing and of parents trying to get them to settle down. Some of our neighbors are out on their balconies, smiling broadly. The neighbor who was assailing our house earlier today, spurred on by the crowd, is smiling at us now and yelling, “The electricity’s working, the electricity’s working,” as if nothing has changed, as if she’s forgotten what she did to us and what we did to her. Even the grocery store owner is shouting to us, laughing, overjoyed. “We can have a shower at last,” my father says, and reminds us that we can remove the lump of gypsum from the sewage pipe. “I’ll get it out,” I say gleefully.

I go back inside. Everyone else is still outdoors. I look for the water bottle and gulp down almost all of it. The Egyptian singer is still singing love songs on TV. I look out the kitchen window in the direction of my house and my brother’s. They are lit up too. I’ll go over there.

My older brother joins me, and my younger brother decides to come along too. The rest of the family stays with my parents. It’s best that way. The front door of my house is broken, but not too badly, and I can still lock it. I just need to replace one of the handles. There are lights on everywhere. The house itself is filthy. The doors to the kitchen cabinets are open wide and all of the shelves are bare. They didn’t leave a thing in the refrigerator either. It’s wide open, and there’s a light on inside. My brothers and I close all the doors. There’s nothing missing except food. In the storeroom I discover they took the olive oil too and all of the containers of olives. Never mind. The faucets give off the same sound of air pressure, and the occasional spurt.

“It’s okay. Just a little dirt, that’s all,” my younger brother says, and asks for a pack of cigarettes and the lighter. I go upstairs. The bedroom is just the way it was before, as if my wife and I are getting up to another ordinary morning, another day of work. I turn off the bedroom light, then check the baby’s room and take a look at all her toys. We’ll go back to playing with her in here. I turn out that light too and walk up the stairs leading to the roof. First I bend a little to catch sight of the tanks to the north. I can hear them, but not as loudly as before. The sound of the return to normal in the village overrides the sound of the tanks which I kept hearing so loudly these past few nights. I look up slowly and see their headlights. They’re moving, they’re in motion, they’re on their way out of here, leaving a trail of dust behind. Now I really know it’s all over.

My younger brother follows me up. “They’re leaving,” I tell him. He smiles and looks in the direction of the tanks and the jeeps as they move away from the boundaries of the village. “What was it all about?” he asks.

“We’ll know that tomorrow,” I reply, and walk toward the water tank on the roof. “I suppose things will be much better now.” I bend over and look inside. It’s beginning to fill up with water. “I’m telling you, things will be much better than they were. You’ll see.” My younger brother waves at the family downstairs. “Everything okay?” he asks, and I can hear my older brother answer from below. “Sure, no big deal. They hardly took anything. How about you?”

“Same here,” my younger brother answers. “I’m watching the military tanks. They’re leaving. Salamat.” He says to me, “Give me another cigarette. Let’s celebrate a little before I go back home.”

3

It’s almost four A.M. I go into the bathroom and stand completely still under the stream of water. I lower my head and let the water land on my scalp and drip down over my whole body. A brown puddle forms at my feet. Slowly the brownness fades, but the layer of dirt clings fast to my body. I rub my head with a generous dollop of shampoo. My hair has never felt this way before — tangled and bristly. One rinse isn’t enough to soften it, and I squeeze out some more shampoo, working it into my hair and across my scalp. But even though it’s no longer dirty, my hair refuses to go back to its former state. I wash my face with soap. My wounds burn at the touch of the lather. I ignore the burning sensation and try to be more gentle. I can’t shave my beard off yet. I have to wait for the sores to heal first. It won’t take long, maybe two or three days. I use a brush to clean my hands, my stomach, my back and my legs. After every part of my body that I clean, I rest a little, lift up my head and let the water run down my face and over my closed eyes. I open my mouth and let the water in.

I won’t go to work tomorrow, but I can’t wait till morning to pick up the phone to one of the editors and find out if they’re interested in a story. If they are, I’ll write it from home and send it in by e-mail. Enough is enough, I’m not going to make a fool of myself anymore. I’m not going to go into the office just to sit around doing nothing, not after what I’ve been through this week, not with these sores. If I go in tomorrow, I’ll look like a beggar.

From now on, I won’t go in unless they ask me to, the bastards, and if they don’t want this story from me, I guess it means they don’t want to see me anymore at all. Normally the papers have a field day if a reporter of theirs experiences anything even remotely as incredible as what I’ve been through. Reporters who were involved in a car accident and emerged with a scratch have been given front-page coverage damn it, and headlines about what it’s like: “Look Death in the Eye — Our Reporter Was Involved in a Traffic Accident and Miraculously Survived.” If they don’t want my story, I’ll try to sell it to a different paper. I’ll tell them so. Maybe it will scare them a little, but then again, maybe they won’t give a damn. We’ll see tomorrow. Only over the phone — I’m not going down there.