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We have been living under occupation for 50 years, and during these years we witnessed and suffered many cruel atrocities that took many forms: killing, imprisonment, destroying houses and trees, and collective punishment. Every house in Palestine has witnessed at least one of these cruel actions. Fear is death. Time is death.
Monday April 8, 2002 My father-in-law went up the street to investigate and returned with news: the telephone cables and electricity poles had been cut and crushed by the tank last night, the tarmac was ruined by its heavy chains, and the wall around our neighbor’s house had been damaged. The huge bulldozer was still working and widening the street for the tanks, digging,
uprooting trees and carrying away everything in its path. The news on the radio said that the military occupation forces were sending more tanks and reinforcement to the city. We believed that our street might be used in addition to the main one. At breakfast, the kids were quiet. All looked sad, tired and depressed. They had no appetite for food and no appetite for
play. They complained of lack of sleep and headaches. I felt that my head was about to explode, and that my ears ached from inside since I kept hearing that ugly noisy buzz of the unmanned spy plane and the sounds of the rockets coming from the Apache, and most frighteningly and shatteringly, the stun grenades. The situation was so complicated for my children to
comprehend. How could I explain what was going on when I felt so helpless and unable to understand it myself? Children at their age all over the world are interested in play, TV and video games. They like to watch action and war movies, but don't like to live the conditions of war. And television is an essential part of their life; to be prevented from watching TV is unjustifiable. To be prevented from acting and behaving as children is a crime, and getting children
involved in real war is a crime. But how could we act normally, or hide what was happening just outside our house? How could we ignore all the shooting and bombing and behave as if nothing was going on? How could we lie to them that things were ok when we hardly thought so ourselves? The kids wanted to busy themselves with something; I suggested chess. They played
chess for some time followed by a game ‘Chutes and Ladders’. They were making a lot of noise and were starting to get on our nerves, especially since we were trying to hear what was going on outside. I got angry and shouted at them to keep quiet. Nammor picked up the radio, started to switch channels and stopped at a popular song. He turned up the volume and I got angry again and yelled at him to turn it down. He said he was fed up with news and wanted to hear
songs for a change, but I told him it wasn’t appropriate to listen to music with all this tragedy going on around us. “Well, then, let the soldiers know we don’t care, no matter what they do to us.” "All these people, Nammor," I patiently tried to explain, though
inside I felt as frustrated as he. "All of these people who've been killed, injured or evacuated from their homes, we should feel for them, show our sympathy even if we don’t know them. That is the least we can do." He did not seem convinced, but turned off the radio and pouted, “OK, I don’t like the news. I can't listen to music. I can’t go to play and I am bored.
There's nothing to do. I want to go out and play with my friends”. His father, who had been listening quietly, now jumped in and yelled at him: “Do you want to get killed? Even if you're only lightly wounded, you’ll die because there won't be any ambulances to get you to hospital.”
Nammor, afraid now asked tentatively, “I am a child, why would they kill me?” To which his grandfather pointed out, “Don’t forget that they shot at me and I am 80-years old. Their bullets won’t distinguish between an old man and a child”. “When things are over, you’ll be able to go out to school and do whatever you want," I tried to reassure him, murmuring to myself: “There has always been rain after long droughts.” He got angry and shouted: “But when, when?”
My husband and I said simultaneously: “Only God knows!” The way I felt towards my children was killing me. It was a mixture of sadness, pity and fear. I felt sorry for Nammor and his sisters, but then I felt sorry for every one of us. For almost one week, we had been completely isolated from the outside world and it was so boring. Anything
at all could happen and we had almost no options. It was a state of insecurity, chaos and insanity. We stopped thinking about our work, or our kids’ schools, or our future. What counts is today. Actually, what counts is what is happening at this specific moment. Are we going to survive? Are we going to lose a member of our family? Are we all going to die? So many questions crowded and collided inside my head. As I was writing, my son came nearer and asked: “What are you writing, Mom?” “It’s nothing, just thoughts.” I replied. Then with the curiosity and conviction often known only in childhood, he added
decisively, “I know. It’s your diary and you are writing about the secrets and the stories of your life.” “Well,” I responded slowly. “It’s the story of our life, which is not a secret. It is about what is happening to us; our thoughts and feelings, our actions and reactions.”
Nana, who was listening, smiled and asked: “Who's gonna read it, Mom?” “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Probably nobody”. In my mind I wondered if anyone would be interested in reading it. We went to bed early that night since it was relatively quiet between 9:00 and midnight. Periods of sleep were alternating with periods of restlessness. At about 2 am, we heard a tank come to our street. We could now tell a tank from a bulldozer, which has a distinctive siren that keeps on as long as its engine works. It wasn’t a military vehicle, either, since they are lighter and faster than tanks.
The tank was a large one, and moving slowly and its doors and windows were all moving. It was followed by another vehicle of some sort, and. we could hear an Apache hovering nearby. The flashlights of the tanks moved eerily over the walls like sun chasing reflection through the prism of crystal. Soon the light stopped, perhaps to adjust to the curves of our narrow street. This told us the tank's width matched that of our street. The tank and the vehicle stopped right in
front of my house. There was noise in the street and we could hear heavy and strong hammering for a while. It sounded like blows on a metallic surface. We tried to look through the windows, but it was so dark nothing could be seen. Three loud explosions came from a distance and blended with the sounds of the hammering. The Apache flew away. I thought that the soldiers had been trying to force open some of the shops in an attempt to steal their contents since similar
things had happened in Ramallah the previous week. The hammering went on for about an hour and then we heard a loud noise that sounded like the clatter of falling metal. We kept awake until morning, listening in terror and anticipation to more hammering and explosions. Part 2: My Home, Occupied
Tuesday April 9, 2002 At 6:00 am, my father-in-law went outside to look around and returned five minutes later surprised and afraid. During the night the noises we assumed to be looting, these noises in fact narrated the forcible opening of our doors, cutting of the iron bars guarding our windows
and the invasion of our home. Soldiers now occupied my home. Shocked we rushed outside and looked up. Soldiers stood above our heads, languishing from my bedroom windows, now with neither iron bars nor glass. We could see sandbags in one corner of the window and part of a machine gun in the other. Nammor's window also visible from where we were standing; it too had
sandbags and a second machine gun. A gun in my child's room, this was something I never thought I'd see. We dare not look any further as the snipers now assumed their positions. Our home, a large two story represented the culmination of seven years hard work. On the first floor a living room, kitchen, guest room, and a bathroom. Upstairs were three bedrooms, two
bathrooms and a sitting room. On the roof, we had built a small laundry room and separate closet housing the furnace and other home utilities. From what we saw, upon first glance it appeared three soldiers now occupied our home, but we did not have time to confirm this. One noticed us looking at them and shouted menacingly, “Go home!” Ironically, this order we could
not follow. He was in our home! After a few seconds he opened fire with the machine gun. We rushed inside my in-law's home and closed the door. I cried bitterly trying to comprehend the meaning of strangers, enemy soldiers inside my house. We spent seven long years building our home, our furniture all brand-new. My mind anguished over images of soldiers destroying
all we worked so hard to achieve. Everything my husband and I built together, the physical notations of our lives, the security of home for our children now rested at the mercy of people who hated us, hated us without knowing us. I felt immobilized, couldn't eat and my throat ached when I tried to swallow aspirin. An hour later weak from worry, my whole body hot and physically aching from the stress and exhaustion, I curled up in bed attempting to sleep. Perhaps if I
close my eyes… perhaps I can escape my thoughts and fears through sleep. But I could not sleep. Time stood still. Throughout the day, tanks and armored personnel carriers prowled our residential neighborhood and once quiet street, destroying at will. Each arrival announced with heavy shooting, shouting and bombardment, the entrance to my home a turnstile of sorts,
soldiers came and soldiers left. By now the children increasingly voiced frustration. We wouldn't let them open the door and watch. Tension and worry permeated the increasingly stale air of my in-law's home and in a vain attempt to find gratitude, my mother-in-law comforted her son, “Thank God you weren't inside when they came. What really matters is that you and your family are all safe."
We knew she was right and tried to console ourselves. However, we were not wholly successful. Over the news we heard that President Bush warned Israel for the third time to withdraw from the cities of the West Bank; Sharon as usual again refused. It had been one week since the invasion began and we were still under curfew, yet the
toughest consol lived inside my heart. Our home was no longer ours. So close it was, I could seemingly reach out and touch it, yet I dare not even look up. My home now belonged to a group of very young men who moved around freely inside it and laughed with raucous joy while I could not even be safe watching them. It was more than I could bear to think of them using
our bathrooms, or opening my drawers and searching and messing with our clothes or personal items, or sleeping in our beds, or sitting in our chairs in their dirty uniforms and muddy boots, or using my kitchen and leaving it filthy. Total strangers, they have access to all the rooms, and keys to all the doors and drawers; they help themselves to all of our belongings, they see themselves in our mirrors and use our sheets and towels. Nothing is private. I imagine them
looking into our photo albums or at our family pictures on the walls, and deeply resented that they now knew what each one of us looks like; could recognize us any time and any place, and we still didn't even know how many of them were up there. In a way, it was almost like being violated: our private lives and intimate secrets had been forcibly opened to strangers, and we were utterly helpless to do anything about it. When we first built our house, we had been glad that it was high, sunny and airy, commanding a wonderful view. Now, I wished it had been underground or in a basement somewhere. Nana cried when her sister told her that the soldiers were sleeping in her bed and messing with her school bag and personal stuff. That night was a long one. Every 10 or 15 minutes, a tank or two followed by a vehicle would
come, stop for a while and then leave. Wednesday April 10, 2002 In the morning, Nammor and Nana took a quick look to see if the soldiers had left. They came back disappointed. Nammor saw a soldier looking through his binoculars in the direction of the camp (Jenin). My mother-in-law told me that we were out of bread,
which meant we had to make some. Since bread making is not in my repertoire, all I did was watch my mother-in-law mix the flour with water and turn it into dough, then help her cover it to keep it warm while rising. Half an hour later, we checked it and to our surprise it had not expanded. There was a pretty good reason, though: we had forgotten to add the yeast! We could ill afford to throw it out, so we decided to just continue and hope for the best. It took us another
half an hour to cut the dough into round pieces and to make them flat. Half an hour later, we heated the oven and baked the first three loaves. Everyone was waiting for the bread; they all felt hungry and the aroma of fresh-baked bread drew them into the kitchen. To their disappointment, what emerged from the oven smelled like bread and tasted like bread but didn’t look like bread. It didn’t rise. It was flat and leveled. The kids complained mightily but we made them
understand that their choice at this point was flat bread, or starvation. Curfews are hard, suffocating like the feeling of a slow death. We were running out of water and food. I wished that we were living in a cave in the Stone Age, because then things like lighting fires, using candles, having a water shortage and other similar hardships would be more appropriate. We were
doing our best to manage under these circumstances and getting somewhat used to the difficulties surrounding us. The question was simply how long we could keep going. The telephone was out of service so we had no idea what was happening in our own neighborhood. Every now and then you could hear shooting, or explosions, or stun grenades thrown by the snipers in my house.
The news on the Israeli radio station claimed that the soldiers were shooting only in “self defense". But the soldiers in my house were shooting haphazardly and seemed almost moody, sometimes sending out one shot, and at other times raining down bullets and bombs. It was almost like maniacs or crazy people fighting and shooting at nothing. No one was firing at them. There were no armed men or terrorists in the streets shooting at them.
There were no signs of war at all, since everyone was huddled inside their houses too frightened to look out the windows, much less walk in the streets. And we were sure that the soldiers were sure that there were no armed men in the area: the sounds of firing and shooting all belonged to them. Everybody including children could distinguish types of bullets such as 500m or 800m, missiles or stun grenades or tear-gas bombs. NEXT
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