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I was feeling tired and decided to take a shower. It was my first decent shower in more than two weeks. I combed my hair and used the hair dryer. For the first time in two weeks, I put some lipstick on, but then, wiped it off for I thought that it was not appropriate. We placed the beds on the floor and covered them with the sheets and blankets that I had washed. Before I put off the light I asked my husband whether he had closed the
door. He smiled and said: “What door?” I remembered then that the door couldn’t be locked. I did what Veno told me to do, pushing the door closed and securing it with pile of plastic chairs. Veno had said, “If someone tries to open the door from outside, then they will have to push it. The chairs will fall over, thus making enough noise to wake you up.” It was a good idea, I thought. We were not afraid of thieves, because even thieves wouldn’t dare wander in curfews.
We were afraid the soldiers would come back.
As I went to bed, my husband got closer and hugged me very tightly. I needed that hug. When he got closer and wanted to kiss me, we unconsciously parted and jumped as we heard shooting. The shooting was so intense and distinct that we thought it was in our street. We feared that the soldiers would come back to our house. We
looked from the window and saw nothing in the street. As we listened, we could hear the tanks and military vehicles move into the city on the main streets. These were the same ones that had left before the curfew was lifted, and now they were back. The shooting lasted for over 30 minutes. We could hear the echo of the shooting. Then, each one of us turned his back to the other and tried to sleep. We both lost interest and the desire to resume our normal life as wife
and husband. Friday April 19, 2002 Today was a busy day. I cleaned the furniture. I was surprised to find salt on the sofas. I still don’t understand why someone would spray salt on the sofas. I cleaned the chairs and the walls, which the soldiers had been hitting with their hands making them dirty. There were food spots and even marks of snot. I wore gloves as some areas were really dirty and
needed scrubbing. Nammor was collecting bullets from the house. He collected around 15, most of them were spent, and the others were not. He intended to show them to his friends when the curfew was over. We had fried potatoes for lunch. I prepared a huge amount since it was the main dish, not the starter. We listened to the B.B.C news about the possibility of an
Israeli withdrawal from Nablus on Sunday 22nd. The withdrawal would be from the center of the city to the surrounding areas of the city. However, it was not to be a permanent withdrawal but only conditional. The soldiers might return anytime. The curfew was to be imposed for another two days. Veno told me that she kept imagining that the soldiers had left explosives in hidden places in their bedroom, and that a soldier might be hiding somewhere in the house,
and that they might have left cameras and microphones in secret places. That was an adequate excuse to convince her brother and sisters not to sleep in their house. This time, only the little one stayed with us and the others went to their grandparents’ house. We kept on searching for news from one station to another and finally went to bed at around 12. Before going to bed, my husband had asked me about his shaving razor that he had found its empty box. I told him
that it had been stolen. Saturday April 20, 2002 It was 8 o’clock when Nadeen who was sleeping between her father and me pushed me gently and whispered in my ear that the tank was back. I jumped from my bed and went to the window. She was right. There was a loud sound of heavy vehicles on the street. Then, a huge tank, a bulldozer and another military vehicle stopped right in front our home. My heart
began to beat quickly and my husband woke up at the noise. We were afraid that they were coming back to our house. I began to sweat and I could smell my sweat, which was ugly. I prayed to God to make them go blind and not to see our house. Then the vehicles advanced slowly along the street and after about 10 or 15 meters they stopped again. The soldiers (about 15)
were on the street. It was strange since it was the first time that I saw soldiers out of their tanks in the street. We didn’t know what was happening. The soldiers walked around the curve of the street and disappeared. There were three soldiers left to guard the vehicles. After 10 minutes, they came back and the vehicles started to turn back. It took the huge tank and the bulldozer a long time to reverse due to their huge size. Then they moved past our house and
disappeared. It turned out that the soldiers decided to turn back because the mud and water that were coming out the main water pipes that the bulldozer broke and damaged two weeks ago had virtually formed a lake. We felt relaxed. My day was busy. I used the washing machine 5 times, one after the other, washing blankets and clothes. It was cold and rainy, so I decided
to leave the carpets on the roof to get soaked with rainwater. The children were busy watching T.V at their grandparents’ house, which gave me time to do lots of things without having them around. As I was arranging and putting things to order, I found things that I had been looking for. For example, I found a bed sheet on the top of my wardrobe, a towel on top of the bookcase, the computer mouse in one of the pockets of a jacket, a copy of our holy book, the Qu'ran,
torn to pieces in the attic, a tea cup inside one of the drawers among socks, two cooking pots burnt and placed under the sink. I made bread and my husband baked it. For lunch, we had dried beans cooked with tomato sauce. For a change, the kids welcomed the food. In the afternoon I tried to take a nap, then woke up, very bored and depressed. I gathered the computer
pieces since all the parts; the hard disk, the keyboard, the screen, the two speakers were separated and placed in different places. I switched on the computer but it didn’t work. There was something wrong. On T.V the news, was all about the massacre and the horrible humanitarian situation in Jenin; people were still digging under the ruins of their houses looking for
the dead bodies of their beloved ones. About 350 were slaughtered, we heard. There were also similar reports on Nablus and painful pictures of the funerals of the dead, whose bodies were badly decomposed. A brave Israeli woman talked about how horribly the Israeli government had acted in Jenin by preventing humanitarian aid and the Red Cross rescue operations from doing their duty. “What our government was hiding in Jenin was criminal and unjust”, she added. She also
criticized her government for saying that when there was an earthquake in Turkey, in less than five hours, it was the first to send food, tents, medical aid and trained dogs to search for people still alive under the ruins. Why did we do it in Turkey and not in Jenin, which was less than one hour away from Israel? I believe that the Israeli government is clever. At the same time that they are very cruel and mean to the Palestinians, they try to give a beautiful and
bright picture of the Israelis by extending help to other people in crisis. In the evening, there was heavy shooting somewhere. My husband told me that he felt very sad and depressed. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. He kept on smoking incessantly. I managed to convince the kids to sleep in their beds. They were reluctant, but then agreed. I told them that the sheets were clean,
and I gave them clean blankets. They wanted the lights on all through the night. After we spread our beds on the floor in our room, Nammor pulled his bed and pushed it next to our beds. He was afraid to sleep in his room, so we let him sleep in our room. At about 2 o’clock after midnight, there was heavy shooting and the kids woke up and came rushing to our room. We calmed them down and all 6 of us shared 3 beds. The rest of the night was difficult due to lack of
space, sleeplessness and worry. NEXT
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