Barbs

The man with the shekels sat on a folding chair, a line of Palestinians stretched away from him.

Some from the diaspora, some not the American thought. He handed the USD to the man with the shekels and walked some meters away to stand looking lost in a memory. It would all be a memory. The man with the shekels had a thick and groomed mustache with gray amusement in the eyes. The American pocketed the shekels in a wad. He’d fit it more comfortably when he got back to the Movement’s headquarters.

$100 for 367 shekels. How long would it last him? Food was cheap in Palestine. 

He remembered the West Bank contained the main aquifer for fresh water. To the American that seemed a problem, thinking about Israeli imperialist notions. How to break an empire. 

He thought about a checkpoint only a few years old set up around the curve of a hill just a couple kilometers away from a Palestinian town. There were dozens of Palestinian men of all ages—and the internationals: a Brit, a Spaniard, a Parisian woman, an American. 

The man sat across from The American glaring thoughtfully for a time, then announced, “You are with ISIS.” 

The American was surprised and smiled, “What?” 

“He’s ISIS,” pointing to a man next to him. “He’s ISIS.” And to another. “We’re all ISIS.” 

The American, embarrassed nodded his head, “Mhm, right.” Hoping the irony was noted. 

“It was… how you say? Funny,” said the man. 

The American affirmed, “Ah, maskhara.” 

The old Palestinian beamed. “Ah, maskhara!” 

Fifty-or-so people exited the small building of shops and walked towards the checkpoint those few kilometers around the large hill. The dissenters entered the section of town that had been forcibly evacuated. Shuttered homes and businesses, and empty buildings—a pretextual buffer zone for the checkpoint around the hill. Three years ago the Israeli Army designated it was a military zone. The American couldn’t believe that only three years ago people had lived and operated in the frames of the empty windows, now a ghost section of town already graying hollow—the weather was horrendous. Rain, dark clouds, the threatening funnel of an undecided tornado all compounded the graying. 

The local and international activists occupied the evacuated portion and eventually some scouts, including the American, went ahead down the road. It occurred to him that they should repave this road destroyed by whatever imperial machinery. It could be done at night armed with cement and slabs. Today all they had were bodies and flags and rocks. The internationals were dissuaded from throwing rocks—thrown always by al-shabab that is to say the youth. 

Al-shabab scaled the hill that led to the checkpoint, armed with rocks and slings. Opposite the hill was the funnel cloud, and down a slope th American found himself on the splintered asphalt of road toward the same end. The American told the Brit the funnel cloud was too close yet it was many kilometers away. They joined with other Palestinian activists to progress further down the road. A snarling and starving mother dog snapped from an unseen hovel biting at the ankles of an unsuspecting Palestinian who whooped and skipped impressively away from the mother and her pups.

Two Israeli soldiers came around the curve with guns pointed. The American froze at a barrier of wall. The Brit was nowhere to be seen. The American crouched behind the wall as rocks were slung, flying over his head at the two approaching soldiers. 

They passed the American without so much as looking at him in pursuit of the Palestinian boys. The soldiers entered the shuttered portion of town to find it empty. More soldiers appeared at the top of the hill as rising shadows. The shuttered portion of town became occupied by gunmen filling empty window frames, abandoned patios and balconies. 

The activists looked back as they walked away from the shadows of gunmen standing in those dark crevices as if suspended an inch from the ground looking superimposed and not true and suspended on a backdrop of hills, things scattered ubiquitously with outcroppings like stone barbs. How to break an empire, they all wondered in much the same way. 

The American finally rolled the shekels into a tight and coherent fold. He was on his sleeping bag in the bedroom he shared with the Spaniard. The Parisian woman shared a platonic bed with a Palestinian woman. They had stopped on the way to HQ in the evening before going out for dinner. 

There were two Americans: one American from Kentucky named Stefan; the other from California and his name was James. Stefan came out of the third bedroom that overlooked the city. He wore large headphones and had a DSLR camera around his neck and asked what they’d done today. 

The Brit and the American told Stefan about the demonstration and skirmish in the town. 

Was Stefan hungry and would he eat with the rest of the group? Not tonight, as he had to finish editing a video report. Also, he said, there was another settler attack, this in a recreational area outside Ramallah. 

The boonies, the American unwittingly thought. But the neighbors here were far worse than any neighbors James had ever met in such provincial boonies. 

Would they come with Stefan tomorrow to investigate and report the attack? The Brit and the American agreed. Then the Spaniard. The Palestinian said she would visit her family tomorrow and be back later that night and the Parisian would go with her. 

Together they walked the vibrant night streets of Ramallah. The demonstrations inside the city were directed at the wholly unpopular Palestinian Authority and other Palestinian leaders. It seemed to the internationals that the population saw the PA as a functionary of Israel or empire. And outside the Palestinian cities were the protests against the imperial agents themselves, soldiers and settlers alike. Settlers were more churlish and soldiers more deadly. 

Other provincial boonies like Mazra’a al-Qiblya where the next day Stefan and the other internationals rode service or servees. 

The drives on dirt country roads were perilous infrastructure and wild driving hearts of the taxi drivers didn’t help.

Before furthering out to Baasim’s property the investigators stopped by the al-Zaitounah municipal building, home to the local Mayor’s Office. Their driver and guide and friend to Baasim entered the limestone building first, then Stefan and the other internationals. 

The mayor met them outside his office by the desk of the receptionist standing polite and bemused at the hodgepodge of faces behind the Palestinian’s. 

“The attack on Khirbet Na’alan, we’re meeting Baasim.” 

The mayor asked, “Are they with the United Nations?” 

“No, no, the protest movement. Internationals.” 

The mayor sighed and stared at a corner across the office and his face slowly darkened and sought counsel from ghosts only limestone and a streak of sunlight. 

“Next time just stay in the car because now you’ve implicated me.” 

“Sorry about that sir,” said the Palestinian. 

Against the mayor’s better judgement he spoke English and conferred with the internationals, told them a story: 

This top of a hill at Khirbet Na’alan is a seemingly quaint picnic area but has been a flashpoint of struggle since the Summer, true. Because since the Summer settlers have found a sudden urge to pray there. Are they allowed to pray there? According to the Oslo Accords that’s up to the Palestinian Authority who has civil control over the area. Yet Israel has control of security over the area. Praying in a place—any place—should arguably fall under the jurisdiction of civil control. 

But 50 settlers were accompanied by a cohort of the Israeli army and Border Police and they walked across the rock-barbed land like pilgrims who’d just exited their spacecraft to a strange planet. The shadows of sparse clouds were like sharp stains on the land that followed the gunmen and the prayerful, some of whom also had guns. So, considering all the guns, it has suddenly fallen under the purview of security—too true. 

The beginning of this pilgrimage gathered at the chain-link fence of Kerem Re’im, a Zionist outpost made of mobile homes and other nonpermanent things—embryo of a settlement. The shadowy gathering of these gunmen ominous at the edge of penumbrae did not escape the eyes of villagers, and so hundreds were there to meet them when the occupying forces arrived to pray at Khirbet Na’alan. 

Many Palestinian villagers observed and made their mark in the fight by simply being there, holding the hill. Young boys armed with face coverings and slings hurled stones at the Zionist cohort. Security was at issue so the Zionists shot bullets. The Israeli vehicles armed with teargas cannons bloomed with white streams made gray superimposed on the Mediterranean landscape. Al-shabab hurled back some of the teargas canisters from their slings as they did the stones. When they did that, more gunfire erupted from the Zionists and all the villagers ducked and casually moved for their lives in different directions at the sound of whizzing bullets. 

Thankfully not live rounds, or they didn’t think so. 

Most of the settlers turned back. The villagers cheered the victory and some yelled fuck your mothers! 

Al-shabab, four of them, chased after the retreating gunmen, hurling more rocks of an unlimited supply of ammunition from the land. 

Suddenly 20 shots fired from nearby whizzed past the villagers, live rounds. 

Border Police had stayed behind or come back after the Zionists’ initial retreat—where had they come from? It couldn’t have been the road up the hill, so they must’ve scaled the hill from the other side! Then two agents, breathing hard and sweaty, unloaded their Glock pistols into the defending villagers and nine were hit and two were killed. 

Baasim had not seen his brother, frantically helping the wounded. 

There’s an injury here! 

One in the chest! 

Another, another! Dear God, in the head! They shot him in the head! 

Baasim’s brother was shot in the thigh but at the time he’d not known. Minutes after the smoke and ensuing chaos of the mass shooting he saw his brother lying unconscious, seemingly uninjured, but unconscious all the same. Baasim wasn’t sure he screamed, only tried his brother’s pulse. Was it his own racing heart in the way? 

Sometime after being transferred between hospitals Baasim considered his brother might be dead. The doctors knew and didn’t want to tell Baasim right away. Baasim thought it was because they were afraid he’d collapse or become enraged and he assured the doctors that he’d be neither, that he was ready for the truth. They told Baasim his brother was dead. 

“But what’s far worse,” the mayor said, “are those Zionist hoodlums sneaking into town. They’re vandalizing cars, smashing windows, cutting tires—they sprayed the Star of David and death to Arabs on walls and cars! They entered Mazra’a al-Qiblyalike ghouls in the night!” 

That’s what the mayor said—like ghouls in the night. The internationals were stunned. The night would’ve agreed. 

Stefan asked, “This was after the clashes?” 

“No,” the mayor said, “months before.” 

“So these were provocations?” James said. 

The mayor rumpled his face and said “Nothing is provoking anything—this is what they do.” 

Then he said that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah had informed him and other municipalities that the international solidarity movement was a thorn in their side, thus a thorn in his side. 

“The problem with protest movements is that they create more protests—which the Palestinians do well enough without the Movement’s help,” he informed them. 

Then he sent them on their way to Khirbet Na’alan. 

The road away from Mazra’a al-Qiblya saw hills riddled with stones, settlements like the stones themselves, only stranger, and other remnants dotting the green and brown and gray. All of it streaked like cirrus clouds or struck by something creating much the same thing, struck by events, flight, violence and so on. The overcrowded sedan of five was mostly silent save the moment our American asked in barely intelligible Arabic: “What are those in Arabic?” Pointing at the streaked settlements. 

The driver, Baasim’s friend, said, “Mustawtana.” 

Baasim was waiting for them on the foretold hill. 

Three of his cousins were with him, two of them teenagers and the other a young man. At first the shadows of picnic tables and humans reminded the internationals it was a place of recreation. But when they exited the car and were shown around they remembered they were here because of an act of vandalism only last night. The violence hadn’t lulled since summer. 

Stefan would film and edit the video report and James would write about it. Log it for the record. It was history. It was important to document crimes for the eyes of the future. Holes in the water tank, crude Molotov cocktails, burn marks on the tables and trailer, satellite dish destroyed. 

Baasim tipped the tank over and water poured out the stab marks onto the ground, much to James’ dismay from presumptions of austerity—but it was proof. 

Baasim led the men around the grounds and spoke Arabic. He brought them into the trailer that served as a clubhouse. And there was Baasim’s brother, blue eyes and blonde curly hair, pale skin—seemingly unlike Baasim whose eyes were also blue and who the internationals thought swarthier in a synapse that came and went. But the resemblance was there after other unheard thoughts. His name was Mohammed Shreiteh. Baasim Shreiteh pointed to the poster with his brother’s face. 

“My brother.” 

The one who died of a shot to the thigh, they all knew. The internationals simply stood and looked. Stefan filmed. 

The Brit offered, “He’s very … He looks…” 

Baasim smiled and remembrance clouded his eyes, “He was the handsome one.” And Baasim was the active one, running the village youth center and volunteer paramedic team. Two pieces of one angelic body, unseen like the spirit, made to come apart, shot in the thigh and spilling arterial blood. Baasim wondered when he would see his brother again. 

Outside the clubhouse-trailer they stood at the ridge of Khirbet Na’alan and saw the settlement-outpost Kerem Re’im striking the hill a kilometer away. The hill behind it was larger, taller. Overshadowing the streak was the well-established settlement of Neria, 300 families. From here Neria simply looked like good real estate on the top of a hill and reminded the other American of houses he’d seen atop the hills of Calabasas. 

In Arabic it was, “Go fuck your mother you dog!” 

All the internationals turned and Baasim was the first to throw rocks. 

“Get the fuck out of here! Get out!” 

The settler rode a burro. He was watching them from nearby, just meters away from a ridge sloping down to the road which the settler had taken from Kerem Re’im. The eyes that look cut both ways. The rocks flew and the settler brandished his pistol. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” said Stefan. 

“Don’t shoot, I’m an American!” said James. 

“Bro, they don’t give fuck!” said Stefan. 

The first shot popped the air in a muffled spurt. The Palestinians and the internationals ducked their heads and moved. Baasim and his cousins threw more rocks that moved the settler back to the road. Another gunshot. 

The settler slowly circled Khirbet Na’alan. Another gunshot. The Brit and the Spaniard were strangely aloof and kept their distance and watched. Both Americans were filming now. Another gunshot. The bullet whizzed by the American’s head and he heard it and froze.… Stefan was ahead of him. The Brit was ahead of Stefan. He didn’t know where the Spaniard was. 

“Bro…” is all the American had to say at first. “The bullet just went by my head! Bro, back up!” 

The Brit was standing like all of this was too curious to be real. “No, I’m not in his line of sight—he can’t see me,”

Another gunshot. The bullet cut the air for all of them. The death whistle. It ricocheted. 

“You see!?” 

The Brit moved. 

The settler came up the road and he and the burro stood as one creature superimposed on the hills and structures. Like it all existed in only one dimension, the forgotten dimension where they all happened to be caught. The American stared at the creature with nowhere to go. Yet the American felt invisible to the creature, as though its essential nature were myopia. A bloom of white smoke in the air. Another gunshot. The bullet went up to the sky. 

Baasim was down by the picnic tables where a semblance of cover could be found and he was on his phone calling with a nerve that was being tested, raising his voice, yet far from broken. He is a strong and good man, James thought in a daze. He whipped his head, forgetting the settler like they’d entered the dimension where he didn’t exist. The settler was no longer there superimposed against the backdrop of Palestinian hills and settlement streaks. Was he gone? 

Another gunshot. Crack the air. The creature’s exit down the familiar road, out of sight. 

Later a small cohort of others arrived in a small and antique Jeep displaying the UN logo. How much later? Five minutes, an hour? A certain erasure of time took place where all paused before the UN Jeep arrived with the others. Like all were sitting or standing in silence, as if their minds were hanging in the olive trees looking down at their own waiting bodies in the shade. 

The newly-arrived spoke Arabic together with Baasim, who gave them a report of the day’s happenings.