David Grossman - Sleeping on a Wire - Conversations with Palestinians in Israel

“Me, my dream is to make money and then study philosophy. But you can’t study philosophy because you won’t make any money. On the other hand, philosophy is thinking. That’s the freedom you have, that you can think what you want. And in life — okay, you can also think, just don’t say everything out loud.”

“I’ll go to Germany for five years. I applied to Munich, to study theater. That’s been my hobby for a long time. An Arab here can say something out loud in the theater. I once heard that someone said, Give me theater and I will give you revolution. When you see an Arab actor standing on the stage, it’s an outlet for what you feel. Even if he’s playing a Jew, even if he plays an occupying officer, he shows the Jews, underneath his role, what an officer should be.”

“But here in Israel only the theater is open to us. We don’t make it in anything else.”

“For instance, I would like to be a police investigator. An important one, like Columbo, let’s say. But to be accepted into something like that I need to get more than 600 points out of 800 on the standardized test, and I can’t get that here.”

“The standardized test — we go there, and it’s all very abrupt for us. New. The method, the kind of thinking, the type of test, the time limits on the questions. Like, how are you supposed to divide your time? Lots of questions and a short time.”

“They should have taught us test-taking in school.”

“During the test you have to manage a lot of things at once. Like a pilot. Quick thinking. Maybe we have a little of that, but it has to be developed.”

“For example, they give you a question in general knowledge: Who is Arik Einstein? You know who Albert Einstein is, but you don’t know that Arik is an Israeli singer. Or they ask you in history about the Jews, who you don’t know anything about. Everyone knows that those tests fit the Jewish way of thinking, not ours.”

“Or logic. They think it’s logic, but it’s written in such antique Arabic that no one understands. You need a B.A. in Arabic to understand it! I have an Arab friend who did the test in Hebrew and in Arabic. In Arabic he got a 420, and in Hebrew a 580.”

“And today they give more weight to the test than to your high-school exam scores, because they saw that Arabs fail the standardized test more than Jews.”

“They just didn’t prepare us for that in school.”

“I know that there are Jewish schools where they teach drama, where they teach art. We always asked the teachers, but we also asked for computers, and for more classrooms in the school, a gym, sports equipment, English enrichment, and we didn’t get anything.”

“In the end we collected money among ourselves and we bought a computer and printer.”

“And the teachers, there are some of them who’ve been teaching the same thing for years. That’s an educator? He comes at the beginning of the class, opens the book, doesn’t look at you. There aren’t any new methods. He explains the hard words and that’s all. The lesson is over. A teacher who never encourages original thinking.”

“Guys who finished ten years ago tell us that today we’re studying the same thing they learned then. Sometimes the teacher repeats the same joke for ten years!”

Anwar: “I’ve got Jewish friends, too. From work. From going out. Though I make friends with Arabs easier.”

Suleiman: “Jews — it’s hard to change their opinion of us. They don’t think straight about us.”

“The Jews say about themselves that they’re open, but that’s a joke. They’re always hiding themselves.”

“If you want to be friends with a Jewish guy, it takes a long time.”

“We say what we think. Sometimes we talk too much. You think a Jewish guy is your friend, you tell him everything, and then he acts like he doesn’t know you.”

“I express everything I have inside,” Anwar Shadfani says. He’s a nice-looking boy with a styled haircut and green eyes.

Suleiman: “I lived in the dorms at the Technion. If an Arab and a Jew live in the same room, the Jewish guy will go to the dorm office and ask for it to be changed.”

“But we actually want to be friends with them. If I were friends with a Jewish girl, she’d change her mind about Arabs, and I think she’d like me a lot.”

“It’s easier to convince a girl than a guy…”

“But you need time, and she doesn’t give you the time, as soon as she hears that you’re—”

“But a Jewish girl can love you; the power of love will persuade her.”

“In the end it’s impossible, however, because the word ‘Arab’ still means something to her. She says ‘Arab’ and puts together the Arab from the West Bank and me, and then there’s already something bad between us.”

“Someone who would just give me the time, I’d convince her in the end.”

“Yes, if she just knew him, she’d love him.”

“I’d say to her, ‘How long will we fight like this?’ I’d be willing to marry her, too. If there’s love, it’s okay. My uncle is married to a Jewish woman. Not an Ashkenazi. A Moroccan. I always actually dreamed of convincing an Ashkenazi. From Tel Aviv. And if I succeed in that — I’ve really got something.”

Anwar: “Sure we’re jealous of the Jewish guys who go into the army.”

Suleiman: “Every boy dreams of being a soldier.”

“To hold an Uzi, for instance. You bet I’d like to. I watch Stallone films. I want to do that, too. But you know how it is. Even if they forced me to go, I wouldn’t. But I dream. Imagine myself like that. Rambo.”

“If we just did training, that would be okay. But not fight.”

“If there is a war between us and Syria, should I have to shoot at Arabs?”

“But you didn’t ask the main thing: What army do I want to serve in? That’s what you should have asked first!”

Suleiman Zuabi: “But we give them a lot of support in our minds.”

Anwar: “If you support them a little too much, you’re a PLO agent and a racist. That’s what Jews think of you. You have to give the Jews a good impression. That’s what we’re working on. So they’ll like us. Then they’ll give us rights. It’s also kind of like theater. Living in a play.”

Suleiman: “But I’ve also got thoughts inside. You can’t tell everyone what you think of him.”

“So we hide things.”

“I’ve learned things from Jews. Where there are a lot of Jews, I can’t go overboard in supporting the Palestinians, for instance. I have to lie a little. But the whole world behaves like that! Everywhere people act the way I do. In America, for instance, they don’t like black people. But the Secretary of the Interior there can’t come out and say he’s against the blacks. In other words, he lies. You say that’s a lie? That’s politics. We’re already here, what kind of choice do we have?”

Later that same day, in Iksal, I met Ahmed Musa, seventy-two, who wears glasses and a robe of pure white. He told of his life with the Jews. For twenty years he was the village’s mukhtar ; afterward he was mayor. Today, retired, he arranges when necessary a sulha , a meeting of reconciliation, between two clans, generally after a member of one has murdered a member of the other. He is full of praise for Israel and can tell many stories from the good old days. “Once, it was in ’52, the police chief, Segev, told me to bring six horses to Daburia, because we had visitors there. I went. We waited a little. I saw the old man, Ben-Gurion, coming with the chief and with his whole party. B.G. said, ‘In ’40 I climbed Mount Tabor on a mule, and today I am riding the noble mare of Ahmed Musa!’ Okay. We went up to the monastery there, and B.G. was to eat at 1:30. That was his habit. I brought food from home for him. That’s what the police told me, to bring a turkey and a sheep. I told him, Enjoy! He said, No, only if you eat my food. He gave us his sandwiches, and he ate our food.