Even martyrs don’t grow up that fast

“No, you couldn’t possibly have grown up this much.”

. . .

“Are you telling me that when martyrs die, they turn into children again?”

. . .

“Did I tell you that? I don’t think so! I told you that little children turn into birds in heaven. As for martyrs, they’re the beautiful birds of this world. You know why? Because of all people, they’re the ones who love freedom the most. They hear it calling, and they go after it. And because it loves them, it goes on playing tag with them. It soars high and swoops low, and they go soaring and swooping after it. They look for it everywhere, not knowing that it’s hidden inside their own bodies.

“But the soldiers know it. That’s right. The soldiers at checkpoints, in helicopters, and inside tanks, they all know the secret. So do the snipers stationed in their towers. It’s that simple. They don’t aim at us to kill us. No, they aim at us to kill the freedom that’s hidden inside us, the freedom that we keep chasing all our lives. You get me?”

. . .

“Saleh! Saleh! Uff, he’s gone back to sleep again! Lord, do I have to keep shouting in their ears to get them to wake up?”

. . .

“Saleh!”

. . .

“What are you saying, Jamal? How can I let him go on sleeping? We’ve got a million things to do. Do you realize what it means to have a wedding? It means getting everything ready down to the last detail so that people won’t think badly of you. Saleh has to get up so that we can go buy him a suit. It’s got to fit him just right, and I can’t take his measurements when he’s lying down. Do you remember what happened when I did that last month so that I could get him a pair of pajamas? I went and bought them, and by the time I got back, he was taller than he had been when I left the house! And that’s in spite of the fact that the one I bought that day was more than twice the size of the one I’d gotten him the time before that. You told me I just hadn’t taken his measurements right. But when I exchanged it for a bigger one, the one I exchanged it for was too small, too.”

. . .

“No, no, I can’t do that. By the time I get back, the boy will have gotten taller and broader, I swear to God. I’m not complaining, of course. Thank goodness he’s growing so well! But I’m not going to spend all day running back and forth between here and all the clothing stores in town.

“The storekeeper said to me, ‘This is the largest size we’ve got, Ma’am.’ ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘don’t you have any men’s pajamas?’ And he told me that was the only kind they sold in the first place. I went all over Gaza City that day, and every pair of pajamas I brought home was way too small. I put up with that situation, but I won’t be able to handle it if it happens with a wedding suit.

“Saleh!”

. . .

“Mustafa, you’re the groom’s maternal uncle, and you’ll have to go with the other men of the family to ask for the girl’s hand.”

. . .

“What’s happened to you? You’ve never left me on my own before, and now you’re telling me to go by myself? It used to be that all I had to do was whisper, and you’d be right there. In fact, sometimes you’d be right there even before I whispered. I know you’re tired. You’ve been tired all your life! But that’s no reason to play possum on me.”

. . .

“You’re all I’ve got, Mustafa. You’re the groom’s uncle, and he’s crazy about you. Get up, now, and tell him to get up, too. I’ve got to take him with me to buy the suit. Getting married is no joke. And then there’s the wedding dress. Oh Lord, how could I have forgotten? Where’s my head? I’m so busy thinking about a suit for my son that I forget all about the dress for the bride who’s going to be my daughter!”

“I won’t be gone long, you hear? Fifteen minutes to half an hour, max. I’ve got to consult Randa. She might have an opinion on the matter, and she can ask Lamis, too. Maybe she’s got a certain kind of wedding dress in mind. After all, she’s been waiting for this day for a long time now. So rather than me going around looking for one, not knowing what she’d like and what she wouldn’t, we can go buy one together.

“I had to go looking for my wedding dress all by myself, since you were somewhere else, Jamal, and we were separated by a million checkpoints and patrols, and the various areas of Palestine were zoned off from each other.”

. . .

“Of course, none of that is any different now. The only thing that’s changed is that I got pregnant and had a baby, then I got pregnant again and had another baby, so that now I’ve got Saleh and Nadia!”

. . .

“People were saying we couldn’t have a wedding if the bride and groom were in two different places, especially with all those soldiers stationed in between. I said, ‘I’ve seen brides cross checkpoints while soldiers watched them from behind sandbags and from inside tanks. And I’m going to do what they did.’ Well, I tried. I put on my white gown and went out there, but they sent me back. An Israeli soldier yelled at me in broken Arabic, ‘Weddings no allowed!’

“‘So what is allowed, then?’ I yelled back. ‘You even forbid funerals when you get the chance! You don’t want to let us have processions anywhere, whether in our weddings or our funerals!’

“I waved to you on the other side of the checkpoint, you waved back, and we were separated. I cried for three days straight. Then you sent word to me saying, ‘You stay where you are. I’m coming to you.’

“‘No, please!’ I begged. ‘Anything but that! Do you want them to kill you? You remember Umm Muhammad, the lady I told you about? I’d gone to her house to congratulate her because her son was getting married that day. When she came to the door she was trilling and singing. Then she started to cry, and I thought to myself: those don’t seem like tears of joy to me. As if she’d heard what I was thinking, the woman standing next to me explained, ‘Her son was martyred a couple of hours ago.’ Two hours before his wedding—imagine! Couldn’t they have waited a little longer? I mean, what would have happened if they’d killed just one person less that day? Would that have wiped out the killing fields they’ve been watering with bullets and bombs and guarding with war planes for the last fifty years and more? Would they have felt so guilty that they couldn’t sleep right because they hadn’t murdered as many people as they were supposed to?

“So I told you I didn’t want you to come. People tried to reassure me. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said. ‘We’ll bring him in an ambulance.’

“And how was that supposed to keep me from worrying? Don’t they search ambulances, too? Don’t they fire at them, too?

“‘We’ll find a way,’ they told me.

“I remember how close you were to the checkpoint, Jamal, and but for the mercy of God, you would have met the same fate as that other groom did, and I would have been a widow even before I got married.

“One day we were talking over the phone, and all of a sudden you got quiet on the other end. ‘Hello? Hello?’ I said, about to panic. Then, after what felt like an eternity, you said, ‘Now why hadn’t I thought of that before? Would you be willing to marry a martyr?’

“‘Are you crazy?’ I shouted. ‘I want you alive! Alive, you hear?’

“‘Well, martyrs are alive, too, aren’t they?’ you replied.

“‘Well, yeah,’ I conceded, ‘but I want you alive the way you are right now. Not “alive” the way a martyr is.’

“‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not going to let them make you wait any longer. By tomorrow evening we’ll be together. Put your dress on, your white dress, and wait for me.’

“I told my brother Mustafa what had happened, and all he could say was, ‘Has your fiancé lost his mind? They’ll kill him!’

“Well, anyway, I waited, and I waited, but no you. Then finally somebody came and told me you were in the hospital, in Gaza Central Hospital. So I went in to take off the wedding dress, and he said to me, ‘He wants you to come the way you are.’

“I started to cry and cry, as if I’d lost you. When I got to the hospital, I wrapped my arms around you and my dress got all bloody, but for some strange reason you were smiling as though nothing had happened.

“What in God’s name are you smiling about? I wondered. Damn it all! I mean, is this the time to be grinning?

“That’s when you told me I’d inspired you with the idea of coming inside a coffin. Everybody had been standing around you at the checkpoint and crying. Of course, they weren’t crying out of grief, but because they were so scared for you!

“The soldiers weren’t buying it, of course, and wanted to see what was inside the coffin. When they were told this wouldn’t be possible, they said, ‘All right, then, everybody step back.’ Then a soldier came up to the coffin, unsheathed his bayonet, and rammed it between the cracks in the wood until it sank into your flesh. When he didn’t hear a scream, he stepped away. But then something brought him back again. He thrust the bayonet into the coffin again, only in a different spot this time, making sure it had gone in as far as it would go before pulling it out.

“When he came away the second time, he plunged the bayonet into a sandbag. Everyone came to the horrified realization of what had happened, and their horror intensified when, in the dim light, they saw traces of blood on the bag.

“Did the soldier see it, too? Did he realize that his bayonet had sunk into the flesh of a living being? Or had that never occurred to him? Had he taken pleasure in tormenting a dead man in his coffin the way he might take pleasure in tormenting a pregnant woman by forcing her to deliver her baby at a checkpoint?

“Either way, you didn’t scream. And instead of bringing you to me where I’d been waiting for you, they came and brought me to you in the hospital, where you’d been waiting for me.

“Tell me now—how many grooms would be able to bear something like that for their bride? And you ask me why I love you so much, or why I can’t bear to be apart from you.”

. . .

“Saleh!”

. . .

“For goodness’ sake!”

. . .

“Well, then, I’m out of here. I’m going to buy a suit, even if it’s nothing but a pair of shorts with a short-sleeved jacket!”