LETTER FROM BETHLEHEM (30)

Toine van Teeffelen

July 6, 2002

Perhaps ‘crocodile’ is not the right word to describe the big machine which roams our streets, as I did in the previous letter. It looks, and sounds, more like a dragon. During curfew, it happens during late afternoons, when the weather cools off somewhat, that the university road fills itself with some dozens of children. If you would not know better, a lovely sight. The empty street with the children playing on it, reminds somehow of the autoloze zondag [carless Sunday] instituted in Holland in 1973 when the country ran out of oil supplies, and when the highways were ostentatiously occupied by bikers taking pleasure in the freedom they then enjoyed. Some of our neighbours lean relaxed against the sidewalls while the kids are playing. A week ago, Janet gave Jara a scooter which she proudly demonstrates it to the other children of the street whom she all knows and whom she tries to lead with a voice which seem to become more voluminous each week: “Marwan, Marwaaaan’, ‘Diiiiima’, she shouts to attract the attention of her friends and, I think, of anybody else as well. Last week she moved from one neighbour to the other, and didn’t stay home at all. But at one point the dragon observed the kids playing from a distance, and it wasn’t satisfied. Climbing with its thunderous and screeching sound towards the top of the university hill, it threw out a shot to warn the families. Not to leave doubt about its intentions, it came back several times. Like the ebb and flow of the sea, the kids withdrew - from the street to the space behind a gate, or if the noise was too scary, back to the garden, or, as a last retreat, into the home itself – but always to return when the tank had disappeared out of sight.

Next day, Mary saw that the tank stopped in the middle of the road, put off its engine, circled its barrel, and poured out a benzine smell and apparently also a lot of dust. She said that she even had to close the windows. I imagine the angry beast in the movies, swinging its long neck from left to right, exhaling fire and smoke. Afterwards, Mary warned me not to take my daily route to our own house through the gardens anymore as soldiers might find that suspicious. Intimidated, Jara asked Mary the other day to be guided back to the street. Although afraid she also longed for that new flat, slightly sloping playground that she can use so well for her scooter. Sternly told that she should immediately leave the street as soon as a tank approached, Jara answered that we should not be too concerned about her, “because you always still have Tamer.” That remark stung. We became angry. Did she say this because she was jealous for all the attention we now give to Tamer, or because death had somehow become a normal part of our life? I myself was caught lately talking in an apparently careless tone about somebody who was assassinated. “Do you realize what you are saying,” I stood corrected.

The most annoying, almost unlivable aspect of the present curfews is its complete unpredictability. One day opening hours are from one to five, another day we first think it is from ten to two, but no, it turns out to be from ten to six. What everybody hopes for is that Israel in its mercy will decide for a curfew that would stretch from seven to seven, a time span which now seems enormous to us. That would allow people and institutions to function somehow normally. Yet today and yesterday we had a 24-hour curfew. Another problems is that the lifting of the curfew is announced only at the last moment. Everybody is ready to go out to work but is continuously frustrated. All kinds of theory float about the reasons behind the length of a particular curfew: yesterday’s attack in Gaza, the suspicion that a suicide bombing mission is prepared from the Bethlehem area (“For sure they think we conspire in the Church of Nativity”, comments a university lecturer), or the curfew as a preventive measure against disturbances expected during the Friday when many Moslem believers go to the mosque. As if subject to a psychological experiment that measures the limits of coping with frustration, we, as rats in the box, are gradually treated to slightly higher doses of uncertainty. According to reports in Haaretz, the Israeli army warned Sharon that it curfews would remain in place for too long people would riot at checkpoints and many would be killed. One interpretation of what is going on is that the army decides to lift curfews a little so that people have some breathing space, and will not riot with all the ensuing negative publicity; however, as soon as journalists turn their heads away the curfews are reinstalled in force. The interpretation brought forword by the Israeli army is that when people remain calm they ‘earn’ longer opening hours.

“They are mad,” says Mary, “and we become mad.” During the single day that she was able go to the university after her pregnancy leave, she observed how several of her colleagues turned inwards, did’t give articulate responses to questions, were less concentrated. Today, if the curfew was lifted, there would have been several masses in the Nativity Church; two for the dead, and several more to commemorate the third or the 40^th day after the decease of a loved one. Like many others, Mary’s cousin delayed her wedding in the church “till the curfew is over.”

* * *

This period is particularly frustrating for tawjihi [matriculation] students. Elias, whose son Faady is in the tawjihi, told me a week ago that an exam was announced the next day although nobody knew what would happen. As it turned out, there was curfew. Like others, Elias took the risk and brought his son by car to the exam in Beit Jala. Just at that moment, soldiers were in the area of his house apparently in search for somebody whom they thought was hiding. According to Elias’ family, who observed the soldiers’ behaviour through the window, they used screwdrivers to prick the face and back of people who tresspassed the curfew. The soldiers also entered Elias’ house while he en his son were out. They noticed in the ID of Elias’ wife, Judith, that she was married and had a son of tawjihi age. So they stayed in the house to wait until Elias was back. Judith was however able to warn him by mobile not to come. After the exam, Elias and Faady waited outside in Beit Jala until Judith informed them that the area was free. However, not for long; the soldiers re-entered the house but after seeing that the son was not the one they wanted, they left. One soldier said that he himself, too, bore the “beautiful” name Faady, and that this was his motive to allow Elias’ son to go free. Like anybody else, Faady is barely able to concentrate for his exams.

* * *

During a day with opening hours, I queue with others in front of the main Bethlehem checkpoint to leave for Jerusalem. We are waiting about twenty meters before the soldiers’ shed in a narrow iron corridor suitable for cattle. Some waiters are impatient and encourage a university student to go forword but the soldiers turn her back. With each waiting minute the queuers move a little forword to win some meters. There is a female relative of the soldiers present who emotionally supports them. This seems to be a new army guideline or practice. But who needs counseling?

* * *

Jara goes to a summer camp in Bethlehem which includes a lot of swimming. Each day she asks whether she can go out and swim, but until now she could leave only once. When we tell her that we plan a summer vacation in Cyprus, she is not convinced and says that she is happy to play in the garden and in the big plastic bowl there that can be filled with water. But after she sees the photos of the swimming pool in the hotel she wants to go too. “Is that Al-Quds [Jerusalem]?” she asks.

Each day she tends to a little dog which was hit by a sudden car.