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| Checkpoint: A short story by Tariq Shadid |
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| sabri |
| 03/31/02 at 10:19:44 |
[slm] "Come here, you dog!" ... My instincts told me to walk towards the soldier immediately. It is the instinct of every creature on this earth to avoid death or injury, and even a person of sound mind tends to follow these instincts immediately, like a Pavlov reaction, unless they are kept in check by a conscious suppression.. I was at an Israeli checkpoint, just outside of Nablus, and an Israeli army soldier was summoning me to come over and stand in front of him, most probably in order to humiliate me, and to deny me permission to cross over to the other side. In fact, the roadblock was on the road to Tulkarem. I had to get to the hospital there as soon as possible. Getting through these checkpoints, stationed by Israeli forces all over the Palestinian lands under their occupation, is both risky and uncertain. This time, I had urgent reasons to cross that roadblock. With difficulty, I had arranged for a friend of mine, who is a taxi driver, to await me on the other side. When, he had asked me, will you be there? Indeed, when? The real question was: will I even succeed in getting there at all? I had to go see my sister. Nadia, who lived in a village near Tulkarem, because she had married a man who lived there and owned some orange plantations in that region, had suffered a terrible ordeal. She was pregnant of her second child, when her water broke prematurely, at a pregnancy duration of about 7 months. Realizing how difficult it would be to get medical help, she and her husband had waited for a short while, unable to decide what to do. But then Nadia had noticed something was terribly wrong. She could not explain it clearly, but she was suffering terrible pains and felt that her situation was going in the wrong direction. Indeed, she and Ali feared for the life of their unborn child, whose chances of making it alive were slim, to say the least, without proper medical care. They decided to rush to a hospital in the city, driving their car from checkpoint to checkpoint. At the first checkpoint, the one near the village, the soldiers had said to her that it was better if the child didn’t live, because it would be another less terrorist to worry about. But they, at least, had let her through. At the second checkpoint, the one near Tulkarem, the soldiers had stopped them and said they could not pass. Ali, my sisters husband, had got out of the car, and had gone mad at one of the soldiers, because the soldier kept telling his wife: "Go home and die with your kid." One of the soldiers had said, jokingly: "We won’t let you through because we don’t want to be accused of aiding terrorists". Ali had told him : "You have to let us through. Please, look at my wife. She is dying and so is her baby. She’s seven months pregnant. If we go home, the situation will be dangerous for her and my child." The soldiers would not let them through. One of them, the same one who made the first joke, had said, after walking up to the car and sticking his head through the window on Nadia’s side: "Don’t worry. It will be over soon. Soon we will have our baby, sweetie. I really enjoyed making it with you." Ali, at this point, had boiled over with anger, both fearing for his loved ones and unable to endure their humiliation any longer. He had jumped at the soldier’s throat, and struck him to the floor, immediately being attacked by the other four soldiers. Courageous as it was outrageous, this situation proved to have been a case of bad judgment by Ali. He was shot in the leg in the scuffle, and the four soldiers had beat him down with their rifle butts. Then, he had been handcuffed and taken away, leaving Nadia behind in the car, who was screaming loudly, but was barely able to move from pain and fear. Two soldiers had dragged him into a nearby truck, in a condition where he was apparently unable to resist, since his body lay limp in the arms of the Israelis as they hauled him up into the back of their truck.. When he had disappeared, Nadia had burst into tears. Desolate. Was Ali dead? How am I going to get to the hospital? Am I going to live? Is my child going to live? The two remaining soldiers, obviously in their late teens, were standing with their backs turned to her windshield. The setting sun lit the words written on the backpack of the Israeli soldier: "Born to kill". Born to Kill? Kill the unborn? Is that what you’re doing in my country waving your guns at me? She was crying, and yelling at them all the time, but to no avail. The two soldiers stood in front of her car, at only a few feet of distance, and totally ignored her. She was physically unable to get out of the car, due to the pains she was in because of her pregnancy. She was also stiffened with fear and anxiety, having seen her husband shot and dragged away from the car in front of her. She had cried a lot, and almost yelled her lungs out, to scream out the hopelessness of her situation, the pain and anguish, the fear of death and physical torture. But their ignoring her had an interesting effect on her. Instead of it feeding her fury, as one would expect her to react, their extreme coldness proved to be infectious. She felt a deep calm come over her, suppressing her pain, and draining energy from the resources of mental power one keeps stored for emergency situations. She thought of God, and how she would always still have Him, even if she lost everything else. And this gave her that extra boost she needed, enough strength and courage to climb over to the drivers seat, sit straight and honk the horn of the car loudly, suddenly and unexpectedly. The soldiers nearly fell over as they jerked away from the car. When they recovered, they were stupefied for a few seconds. "Look at that Palestinian *censored*!" one yelled at the other. She was looking both of them straight in the eye, one by one. They sensed her strength and determination, which seemed to puzzle them. Still highly strung and slightly bent over, they were standing there as if they were expecting a sudden attack. "You think the *censored* is gonna try and run us over?" "You gotta be kidding me man!" They sounded purely American, judging by their accents. Apparently, they were American Jews, serving their military duties in order to obtain the attached privileges of having served in the Israeli army, before settling in Israel or in one of the settlements. "Well I got one answer to that." He pointed his gun at the front of the car and fired five times into the car’s front. No bullets hit the windshield, because he was aiming lower, but Nadia did hear the thump of a bullet that had run through the hood of the vehicle and had found its way into the space behind the dashboard. Nadia had faced them unmoving as well as unmoved, fearless because she had felt that he was not going to shoot her. Not because he didn’t have the guts to do it, or because he would feel bad about killing a pregnant woman. Nadia, in her ultimate struggle to save herself and her baby, felt that her self-assuredness was the main reason for the soldier’s behaviour, because it frustrated them.. She believed he was merely trying to impress her by firing his gun, only to prove to himself and to her that he could damage things, and that he could easily kill her. But he wouldn’t, because she was in control, and forbidding him to do it. "Do you want to kill a pregnant woman?" Nadia had yelled, stopping between sentences to regain her breath, as the excruciating pains were ripping her body apart. "Don’t you think that would make your government look bad? Let me through! I am starting the car, and if you want to shoot, shoot, but I am going to the nearest hospital! The hospital in Tulkarem is my only chance!" She started the car. The soldiers seemed to jerk a little in surprise. "She’s gonna go through, Chaim". "She isn’t going anywhere if I kill her." "Come on, man. This is becoming kind of like one of those ‘incidents’. Calm down, Chaim. This is exactly the type of story they blow up in the newspapers." "Trouble? What the hell are you talking about, man." As if his friend had forgotten that even the guy who shot 11-year old Muhammed Al Durra, a murder which was aired across every network in the world for days in a row, barely suffered any trouble from his superiors, let alone any punishment worth mentioning. "Trouble? If we want to shoot the *censored*, we shoot the *censored*. It’s as simple as that." She pressed the pedals and made the motor roar loudly, as if warning them that they should move away from the front of the car, or risk being hit by it. She felt a tough, painful jerk cut through her body. My baby! She hit the gas. The soldiers jumped aside, both surprised and frustrated. As the tires screeched and the car bolted away, and made its passage wildly around the barricades in a slalom kind of movement, with clouds of dust being whipped up in its tracks, they both just stood there in apathy, still wondering whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that they had lost control of the situation. The other two soldiers, who had jumped out of the truck where they kept Ali, ran towards the barricades. One of them shouted: "Hey, what are you guys doing. She’s getting away!" The other, clearly a highly trained soldier, judging by his cat-like moves and swift, stealthy action, made straight for the barricades to get a closer aim, and fired two shots at the car. The rear window was instantly shattered, but it was unclear whether the second bullet hit a target at all, because the car just kept on driving and disappeared out of sight. Apparently, not one of the soldiers felt like getting into a jeep or truck and going after her. They just shrugged their shoulders and walked towards the truck, their arms over each others shoulders, like a football team heading for the locker rooms after the game. _ I had to get to Tulkarem today. This had all happened yesterday evening, and I had only heard about it today. My friend here in Nablus has a portable phone, and my family call me on his phone whenever they need me for something urgent. They had called this morning, and I had been busy finding a driver to take me to Tulkarem ever since. "Come over here, you dog!" Like I said, I had followed my instincts, and I hade made three steps towards the soldier already. My main objective was to see Nadia. Reportedly, she was alive, but things were unsure about the baby. They said she had arrived at the hospital with a bullet wound to the shoulder, and that the baby was delivered by a caesarean section, but no news was available about the condition of my new little nephew or niece. Walk over? Or not? These thoughts were suddenly going through my mind, as I had approached him only a few meters. Who is calling who a dog here? The dog that barks the loudest when you as much as scratch it? I stopped. I felt strangely calm and self-assured. "Are you the one I am supposed to be talking to? Or should I talk to one of your superiors?" I was surprised to hear these words coming from my mouth, because I had not realized that I had been thinking out loud, directing my anger directly at the soldier who was calling me his dog. If this man didn’t polish up his act, he would get a taste of Palestinian fury. No one would stop me from seeing my sister, and I meant to see her that very same day. I resumed walking, slowly, towards the Israeli soldier, looking him straight in the eye. "The only thing that matters, is that I am your superior", the soldier said. He had a grim face, he looked like a veteran, in his forties. He had greyish hair curling down from under his beret, and grim and carved features, like a man who has been through a lot in his life. He had said it in a natural way, like words that one has used repeatedly, almost in the automated way one uses punch-lines, or popular sayings. How many Palestinians before me had he been telling that to? [wlm] |
| Checkpoint: A short story by Tariq Shadid |
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| sabri |
| 03/31/02 at 10:20:49 |
| [slm] I was near him now, and spoke, my blood boiling. "I am not your dog. I am Maher Atiyyeh, and I am requesting to pass through these barricades to see my sister, who is in the hospital in Tulkarem." The man stood in front of me, a few inches taller than myself. He was staring at me with piercing blue-grey eyes, trying to dominate me with his function and his appearance. He was in full attire, hung with all kinds of weapons and ammunition, and he held his Uzi machinegun constantly pointed in my direction. ‘Here is my ID-card. I have no record of problems, now please let me through so I can see my sister. It’s urgent." The man took my card, and looked at it, comparing the photograph to the man in front of him. All he was looking at was a picture of me, in plain clothes, dressed like the average student of Al Najah university. He said: "What’s wrong with your sister? Why do you need to see her? Did she blow herself up in the middle of a shopping mall? Not much left of her to see, I would think." He seemed very amused with his joke, judging from the self-satisfied grin that accompanied his words. I chose to ignore his ignorance. "She has had a baby, under very difficult circumstances". "Well that’s good news then. You mean another filthy Arab has been delivered into this beautiful world ?" He spat on the floor, only inches away from my feet. As his spit hit the tarmac, that was covered with loose grains of sand, a few spats of juice and dust landed on my shoes. He chuckled, then drew his face back into that grim expression he needed to put on when trying to be authoritative. "No need to hurry over there, you can go tomorrow or the day after tomorrow to congratulate her. No need to disturb the peace over this. Go home." I had kept my cool so far, not showing any emotion, let alone reacting to his insults. But the fact that he had obviously made up his mind to humiliate me, was making it hard to restrain my anger. I ended up hissing my words rather than shouting them out: "You aren’t serious, are you? My sister is in the hospital, man, and I don’t even know if her baby is alive or not. How do I know if it’s good news or not? I have to go see her." For a second it seemed as if the soldier softened up a little, but he quickly regained his previous attitude. "Go home, you damn goy. You’re not going to see your sister today. Damn you, you stupid Arab, do you have a permit from the local checkpoint, the soldiers that are posted near the city, to make this trip?" What in the world was he talking about? Where did he come up with this one from? Had he just sucked that out of his little finger, to get rid of me? "What document is that? I have never heard of it." "Of course you haven’t, wise guy. Look at me, calling you a wise guy, you Palestinian pig. You don’t know shit, and you don’t know about the permits cause they were just issued yesterday. Starting yesterday, and for an unknown term, you have to get a permit from them to cross this checkpoint. This measure is a present from your terrorists, the ones you are so proud of when they kill Jews. They brought this upon you, go home and say thank you to them for this. And I won’t let you through without the permit, and that’s final." Blaming our people for their atrocious collective punishments? Incredible how resilient they are in trying to make us blame each other, preferably stirring up a civil war, believing it will actually work, someday. One thing was for sure: it wasn’t working now, not a chance, you Nazi. The racism in that soldier’s attitude, his utter disrespect for anyone who was not Jewish, the Jewish supremacist visions of Zionism, were all acted out through his attitude. Incredible how people can be taught to see a whole world full of other people around them, and by definition consider them not fully human, since they, in their view, are not the ones who were chosen by God. I was looking at the soldier’s face unbelievingly. How intractable it is, incomprehensible, that you actually believe you are any different from me, more human, or belonging to a higher species of homo sapiens. Incredible. I was running out of patience with the soldier, who was looking at me in the same way a cat looks at a mouse it has clutched between its paws, and is trying to decide whether to enjoy the game a little longer, or just kill it right away. But I did not feel like I was a mouse. Humiliation can indeed be, and often is in this harsh world, exercised on a human being. If the difference in power is obvious and overwhelming, it will probably unwillingly be accepted by that human being. But it is an illusion to expect, that enduring this and many other humiliations, that have been going on for fifty years, will last for ever. In the end, when there is little energy left, a human being will eventually break free, and invest his last bit of energy into battle, a battle of all or nothing. Anything but keeping up the wait, a humiliating wait full of anguish, pain and loss of life, that has come to the point of consuming more energy than resistance does. And that is not a matter of patience: it is a matter of hope. Resistance. Now. Here. "You will let me through." The soldier sneered. "Not a chance. Go home and relax. Your sister will be fine." Will be fine? He doesn’t even know what the situation is. He doesn’t even care that he doesn’t know, either. He is willing to pass judgment on another human being without questioning that human being, with utter disregard of that person’s humanity. It would mean nothing to him to let me through, and his not letting me through is merely an expression of the fact that he feels like showing off who’s in control. I saw, through the heaps of sand and chunks of concrete that made the roadblock , the white car of my friend Kamel appear into view. Two soldiers approached his car. "Look, there is my friend Kamel. Ask him why he is here. He is here to pick me up. He will tell you about my sister and everything, and you will see why this is so urgent." The grey soldier looked at me unbelievingly. "Do you think I give a shit about your little petty affairs and businesses? What I care about, is that I am the law around here, and I decide what happens to you, to Kamel and to anybody of your low-life people that I choose to. Understand? Now once you understand that, namely that I am the law here, then maybe, maybe we can communicate." I looked at him defiantly, unwilling to accept this subjugation. "You are just a human being, and so am I. What have we done to deserve being treated like this? Why can’t my sister have a baby in a hospital, and why is it a problem if I want to see her?" The man smiled, and then burst into laughter. "Look here, kid. The bottom line is: I decide what happens. And the simple reason for that is that you are just another Palestinian. No one in the world cares what happens to you. I could kill you, your brother, your father, your sister, and no world media would make any fuss of it. My authorities would not punish me. Therefore, what you should understand, kid, is that your life is very, very cheap in my eyes. So get on your knees, and kiss my shoes, and maybe I will let you through. But the first thing I want to see, is the right attitude. Behave like you should, dog." The reality of his words, about how much power he had over me, was having its effect, but there was no way I could kneel down and kiss this soldier’s shoes. There was just no way. Not even to see my sister. I considered many things at that moment. I considered attacking the soldier and making a run to Kamel’s car, but that would have meant our death. They would have emptied their guns on us. Then the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN headlines would have read something like "Israeli Army Has Foiled a Terrorist Operation and Killed Two Militants." Somehow, it seemed like a solution. The death of a martyr, the pride of my people. The only problem would be, that the ones happiest to see me die, where the heavily armed soldiers at this checkpoint. Perhaps none of them had killed a Palestinian yet, and perhaps one of them would feel that this was his time for his initiation into the ranks of the proud Israeli soldiers who had been able to add notches to their rifles. Surviving, and making it, even a tiny success at anything at all, would hurt them more. "Let me through. Let me through, I have to see my sister." I walked slowly closer to the soldier, staring him straight into his eyes. "Let me through". "Kiss my shoes, I told you". His voice sounded more like a bark when he said this. "Forget it." The tension was building up, and I felt it slowly evolving into physical aggression. Suddenly I felt something heavy hit the right side of my head, and a sharp pain shot through my face. I had been hit with the butt of his gun, and I fell down, seeing stars and flashes, and barely anything else. I crawled up, dizzy and recovering from the blow. Apparently some sharp edge of the gun had scarred the right side of my neck, because I felt warm blood running down from that side of my body. I fell down again, and flipped around on my back as I hit the ground. I still could barely see anything, and the world around me slowly faded away. I squeezed my eyelids. Seeing only darkness, I was squeezing them to see if that would somehow change the view. Then slowly, colours appeared in the dark, that shaped into images, and I slowly became aware of where I was. White. Lots of white, although undoubtedly not as white as it once had been. People wearing white, too. Lots of people around me. Lots of noise, pounding in my ear, every sound resounding like the echoes in the hills around Nablus, but now hurting the head and deafening the ear. Then, I saw a face overlooking me. Gradually, the features became recognizable, and I realized I was looking at Nadia, my sister, and that I was in a hospital. She was calling my name. "Yes I am here. I just can’t see very well, but it’s improving. Are you alright?" My sister hugged me, and a new, sharp pain made me aware of the scar I had, six inches long, from right behind the rim of my jaw, down across my collarbone. The rifle butt had obviously lacerated my jugular vein. "Alhamdulillah you are OK. I was so worried about you when they told me you were going to come. But I never expected them to do this to you." Her eyes went moist when she said this, feeling a part of my pain, as I was again feeling a part of her pain in the dreadful things she had suffered. "Tell me, I have to know." "I’m ok , my shoulders hurts a little, but since the operation it is feeling slightly better. And the other operation …" She burst into tears again. "Tell me, Nadia, tell me please. Did the baby live?" She couldn’t stop crying, but as she cried, being unable to speak, she was shaking her head slowly. I understood what she meant, and I cried with her, which sent a painful reminder of the fact that I had a cerebral concussion, burning through my head. "I need to know one thing more, Nadia, and then I’m going to have to rest, cause even keeping my eyes open hurts my head." "You mean Ali," she said through her tears. I nodded, afraid to ask. I had always appreciated Ali though I did not see him often, because he was an honest, hard-working man, and I knew he looked after my sister well. She totally adored him, and he was worthy of it. "Nobody knows." Tears were pouring down her cheeks. "He was alive when I last saw him. I think." http://palestinechronicle.com [wlm] |
| Re: Checkpoint: A short story by Tariq Shadid |
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| humble_muslim |
| 04/01/02 at 08:36:50 |
| AA Only one things surprises me after hearing stories like this... that not every Palestinian is willing to do suicide missions. |
| NS |
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