They stood still, absorbing every little detail of their house. They could not tell, despite Salem first being uncertain about his father’s plan, if it was seeing their home again after three years that gave them both goosebumps.
The house was on a little hill overlooking olive and lemon groves that stretched westward, like a hand-woven green carpet extending endlessly and attached to the clear sky of the dawn with nothing but reddish threads of the early day. Their house was finally in front of them. These last steps leading to it, they realized, would be the most perilous, even deadly. Hope of return was their only motive, their only sustainer. Abu Salem hoped to get to his house; his son hoped they won’t get shot at or, worse, arrested. Abu Salem carried a small, brown bag nearly the same color as his jacket. He refused to let his son carry it, despite his son’s insistence.
The closer he got to the house, the more he sped up his pace, as if he were magnetically being pulled by the house. The two-story building still had the tent on the roof like it did three years ago. Abu Salem erected the tent soon after he moved to the house, lest he should forget the days his family spent in a tent in the Qalandia refugee camp. Forgetting, he believed, was a scandal, like surrendering to the enemy while you had plenty of ammunition; it was out of the question. Longing for that time when the only authority he had over him was that of his father, or that of his grandfather, became a daily ritual.
After what seemed like three hours of walking and crouching and hiding, they finally made it to their house. The last few hundred meters were the most difficult, though. The house was so close, yet so far away. As they neared the unfinished part of the Wall, they crawled, lay still for several minutes, and had to deal with several passing military patrol jeeps and stray dogs.
Abu Salem was a sixty-one-year-old refugee who taught English at his local village of Ni’lin in the West Bank. His oldest son, Salem, was accompanying him to go back to their house, which the occupation forcibly took exactly three years ago. As he aged under occupation, Abu Salem grew more and more obstinate. The occupation had taught him that. Teaching taught him to talk and to argue a lot. The occupation, his father, and his father’s job as a teacher, all trained Salem to talk less and obey more.
Looking back, Salem felt sad he let his father go in the first place, though he had no choice but to obey his father this time, too. The idea of going back was absurd, even surreal. It bothered Salem sometimes how his father spoke about going back to their home, like when normal people under normal circumstances say they are going home from work or school. His father, Salem insisted, was oblivious to the facts on the ground: they simply can’t go back—not now, not this way, not with all the security measures and the gigantic Wall snaking its way through their lives. Salem, of course was always careful to mention those reasons in those exact words. But so far, his father was right: their journey back was impossible because their thinking made it so. Once they were there, it would be possible. It was possible, but danger, for Salem, could be looming anywhere.
“How?” Salem had asked when his father first told him he was going back and that he wanted Salem to come with him. But after all those years, he got used to his father’s futile endeavors: his attempts to block the bulldozer that razed parts of his field, spending a lot of money on a lawsuit he filed to stop the confiscation of his house, his desperate search for someone to take his emotional missive to the Jewish family who might take the house in order to win their hearts, and now the trek up and down the mountainous fields to go back to have a final look at the house. All he wanted, he kept repeating to Salem, was one last look at the house he built himself and now could not even see because of the Wall.
“I already spoke to your mother about it, and she is fine as long as I take you with me,” came the answer.
“How?” repeated Salem, through clenched teeth.
It was clear Abu Salem was reluctant to share the details with his son, but once he started to describe his plan, it was obvious he rehearsed the answer in his mind many times, as if he were preparing a difficult lesson plan.
Abu Salem explained how the last morning strolls he took were to check the best and least dangerous way and time, to familiarize himself with the geography of the road to be taken, and to talk to local shepherds for advice. He came to the conclusion that dawn was the best time. Salem was not sure it was a smile he saw drawn on his father’s face soon after he revealed his plan, but Salem could swear his father’s eyes twinkled. They only did that when Abu Salem’s heart and mind were set on something.
“So we head towards the unfinished part of the Wall after midnight. We will reach before dawn. It will still be dark, and the patrol guards will be sleepy or too tired to be on the lookout.” The words spilling out matter-of-factly, Abu Salem continued trying to avoid his son’s quizzical looks.
“Are you going to hire a tracker?” Salem asked.
“I know how to go to my house. I do not need silly trackers,” snapped Abu Salem.
“We are close,” mumbled Abu Salem as they approached their house, talking to himself rather than assuring Salem.
“Close to what? Dad, between us and our house stands death! These few hundred meters are always watched by the soldiers. I say we go back now before it is too late,” argued Salem, finally finding some courage to voice his concerns when he realized that the situation was much worse than he expected.
“If you want to go back, just go. At least I will die trying,” said the father decisively, hoping Salem would not go. Salem did not.
But apparently, Abu Salem’s plan worked fine. The area was very quiet; they smoothly crossed to the other side of the Wall. And just when they felt relaxed, the acceleration of a passing army jeep brought them down to their knees.
They hid for a while behind a little pile of rubbish. Just before the jeep was out of sight, Abu Salem grabbed a branch, dragged it behind him, and sprinted towards the road to make use of the dust that lingered behind the jeep, beckoning to Salem, who could not figure out why his father did what he did, especially with the jeep still in the distance.
“Why didn’t you grab a branch?” asked his father when Salem joined him, both clearly irritated.
“Why did you?” asked Salem.
“You should have dragged a branch to cover your footprints,” Abu Salem snapped.
“Let’s hope the dust and the wind will cover them up,” replied Salem.
Their house and their trees gave them more safety now that they were a few meters away. Abu Salem spent the next five minutes examining the house and its surroundings. His facial expressions told there was something wrong. Salem was partly watching his father, partly looking at the house, and partly making sure no one else was nearby.
“Occupation is rude and thoughtless. But I have never heard of any occupation more inconsiderate and tactless than this. Unless they’re doing this on purpose to torture us, there is something seriously wrong with their minds. Sick!” Abu Salem burst out.
Looking at his Dad, Salem was unable to determine the cause of the outburst. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“What’s wrong? Nothing is wrong! That’s what’s wrong!”
Salem, who was not in the mood for another of his father’s temper tantrums, opened his mouth to ask again, but no words came out.
“The only thing that kept me from coming back here all these years is the fear I might not recognize my own house. But there is no sign of obliteration. The house stands there just like it did three years ago. They just come to your house or farm and kick you out. And it’s theirs. Look at those olive groves. They let the farmers toil all year long, and then they come heavily armed at the end of the year and pick—steal!—the olives. It’s like they’re no more depending solely on their total military superiority, but they also love to slap us and to humiliate us. It’s like they’re saying, ‘We take what belongs to you. So what? What can you do about it?’” Abu Salem stopped to take a breath. “Today I swear I’ll show them what we are capable of,” he added. “If they’re mocking us, today I’ll make fun of their pride, their security.”
Salem never thought of the issue that way. His father always came up with subtle interpretations to things people do or say, that Salem developed the habit of doubting what those people really meant. But this time, it was his father’s promise to “show them” that mesmerized him.
“I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.” Abu Salem instructed his son to wait outside and be on the lookout, and squeezed himself through the hole the army made the night his house was raided.
Salem spent the next ten minutes fretting, his father’s oath eating him up. And then against his father’s advice, he too squeezed himself in. What Salem saw was something he would not have imagined, not even in his wildest dreams.
There were wires—lots of them—small tubes, a timer, and two small mobile phones. Apparently those were the contents of the bag. “Dad! What is this?!” he exclaimed.
“It’s a bomb,” replied his father, as if replying to someone asking for the time.
“Is that what you carried all the way in your bag? I don’t understand! What do you want to do?” asked Salem.
“I want to destroy the house,” replied his father. “If I can’t have it, no one else should.”
“You’re going to kill us! This is suicide! Madness! Destroy the house?! Your own house?! What will people say? That you destroyed your own house?” Salem started firing questions, not sure which will make his father change his mind.
“Yes,” answered Abu Salem—maybe the toughest “yes” he had ever uttered.
“But, Dad, it is your house no matter who has it. It is temporary. Sooner or later it will be yours again,” argued Salem forcefully.
“Listen, son, it depends on how you word it for people. I am destroying what was taken from me, by force, without my consent. And I am doing this when all other means failed. Perhaps I was wrong from the beginning. I should’ve destroyed the house the first day Israel decided to confiscate it. All these courts, lawsuits, and hearings allowed by the occupation are fake formalities. Now I can’t just simply let them take it away, can I?” argued the father, caring very little whether that made much sense.
“But it’s your house. Your own house! How could you do that?” Salem asked entirely bewildered.
“Salem, my ability to make sound judgment has been compromised, I know. Having choices under occupation has long become a thing worse, much worse, than being deprived of choices altogether. They oblige us to choose between two good options or two bad ones. In both cases, we are to suffer and to sacrifice. We then have to live with the nightmares of choosing one over the other. We hate the occupation for that more than we hate it for occupying us, and then we hate our incapability of having other choices or of changing our destiny. Tell me, should I just let those Jewish settlers take over my house and live with that all my life? I can’t. I simply can’t.” Abu Salem stopped to rethink what he said. He never thought of the conflict that way. The flashes of inspirations this mission had brought him amazed him probably more than they amazed his son.
Only distant sounds of early birds and barking dogs could be heard. Salem was unable to make up his mind, and he was also sure that making his father change his mind is impossible. For a moment, he thought of dragging him out of the house. Instead, he sat down near his father and watched him as he skillfully grouped the parts in a particular order.
“Are you sure, Dad?” asked Salem one last time.
“I am,” interrupted his father, trying hard to control his shaky hands.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” repeated Salem, expecting the explosives to go off at any time.
“I have never been more certain in my life. Now just please leave me alone for a few minutes and keep watch outside,” his father commanded.
“Ok, you be careful. The sun has started to rise,” urged Salem.
“Funny that we fear the light. Funny that the dawn has become scary. You see, son, this is what I always tell you. They took my house—my history, my roots, and my land. And now, look at me, I am destroying it. This can’t go on forever, and I can’t rely on bastard politicians. Just go,” insisted Abu Salem.
Salem did not like when talks with his father to turned to politics and politicians. Salem, though he sometimes admitted his father’s insight, did not usually like his comments on political issues, let alone talking politics while piecing together a bomb. He lingered for a few seconds, unable to decide what to do next. Finally, Salem muttered something that sounded like “take care,” and left.
After about fifteen minutes, his father squeezed himself out and signaled to Salem to move. He was carrying a mobile phone in his left hand and the brown bag, which obviously was empty, was on his back. Abu Salem stopped there for a little while to have a last look at the house and the area. The greenery extended as far as his eyes could see. In an instant, they both, dragging small branches of olive trees, made their way carefully but quickly back to where they came from.
“Dad, why didn’t you leave the bag there?” inquired Salem sheepishly after ten minutes of trotting in silence at the first light of the day.
“I cannot leave it behind. If someone saw me carrying the bag on my way here and does not see it on my way back, he might become suspicious,” replied Abu Salem in a manner that told he had given it a lot of thinking, which impressed Salem beyond imagination.
“Is it timed or remotely controlled?” asked Salem. “We need to be as far from our house as possible,” he commented in an afterthought, expecting to hear an explosion any minute.
“Do not worry. We will make it just in time,” said Abu Salem.
“How big do you think the explosion will be? Will we be able to hear it from here?” asked Salem, with concern clear in his voice.
Abu Salem, sensing the anxiety in his son’s voice, decided finally to reveal what he actually did inside the house. “There will be no explosion….”
“What? No explosion! Why? Wasn’t that a bomb you put? Answer me, Dad. You have put us and the whole family through this perilous quest of yours and we achieve nothing?”
“No, no. Not that. I put explosives. I just crammed the parts without connecting the wires.”
“What?”
“You are right; it is mad to destroy the house. But I decided to keep the bomb there. I want them to fear. To live in fear. They have to feel that we are breathing down their necks. I want the Israelis to start asking questions,” he said gesturing towards the Wall.
“Dad, they won’t,” commented Salem, trying hard to hide his relief, but amazed at his father’s profundity of thinking and quick wit. “We could have been killed,” he said.
“Listen, son, the worst thing about occupation is that they do not deal with intentions. That’s why occupations are evil. Had they caught me with those explosives, I would have been shot dead—we would have been shot dead. They would not check on our intentions and if they did, they would not believe us. Occupation is evil. Yes, it steals and damages, but it also teaches people hate and, even worse, distrust. That’s why leaving the bomb behind is a message: I can destroy the house but do not want to. Because I want people to start asking questions about the morality of their position towards us,” he elaborated.
“You’re my son and the closest to me,” said Abu Salem. He stopped to take a breath, but Salem realized his father was rather seeking confirmation, and he quickly nodded eagerly in response, leaning his head a little to the right. “You’re my son and the closest to me, and still you could not figure out what I really wanted to do. Perhaps you judged me. You thought I was crazy.” This time Abu Salem did not take a breath to wait for confirmation. Salem shook his head anyway. “This doubt and mistrust will go on and on until people start asking questions, and when they do, answers will follow.”
Salem saw his father smile all the way back home. Was it the way he worded his philosophy in life and resistance? Did he feel he had the upper hand over the occupation? Was it that he finally went back to his house even for a little while? Or was it that he took revenge in his own way?
The next day, Israeli headlines were all about what Abu Salem did.
IDF FOILS A MAJOR TERROR ATTACK
JERUSALEM—Israeli Defense Forces dismantled on Saturday morning a remote-control bomb they found in a house in the settlement of Nili. No injuries reported.
The bomb was so huge it could have destroyed the whole house, army sources confirmed.