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

“So where is all the talk about our pride, about our heroism? Listen to a heroic story: Once there was a protest rally in the Communists’ Friendship House in Nazareth, and the police surrounded the building. The next day the headline in the Communist newspaper was THE SECOND SIEGE OF BEIRUT! Do you understand? They surrounded the Friendship House in Nazareth! When it comes down to it, the Arabs of Israel, with the exception of the six who fell on Land Day *in 1976, didn’t pay much. In other words, it’s impossible, it’s disgraceful to compare them to the Arabs in the territories. You should see it there; when someone gives a speech, he is the spokesman for an entire history. There are symbols, there’s rhetoric, pathos, spark. On our side you hear half a sentence and feel that where we are everything is empty. Our history is cut off.”

When he came to our meeting, Bishara was upset. A short while before he had been with his sister in a restaurant in East Jerusalem. His sister is a doctor and lives in Beit Jalla, near Bethlehem. Her Citroën has the blue license plates that show it is from the territories. But there was a little sticker with the word DOCTORin Hebrew on the windshield. That was enough to get the car torched. “And imagine,” he snorted, “there I was helping the guys from the Border Guard put out the fire; it was very embarrassing!”

He was nevertheless able to laugh at the circumstances there, and at himself. So I did not restrain myself from saying to him, “Here they gave you the spark you were looking for.” Afterward I asked him whether he was angry at the arsonists.

“On the contrary,” he said immediately, “I was pleased that they are so good at spotting Israeli cars.”

I already knew, after about a month of visits and conversations, that I would almost always get an unexpected response. That the status of the Arab who lives in Israel is so tangled and twisted that I had to stop trying to anticipate, and only listen, to open myself to the complexity, to try to make room for it. Make room for them within us. How does one do that? It is precisely the thing that we, the majority, forbid them with such deft determination.

And here, something like a nervous security guard began running around inside me, reorganizing the broken ranks. It seems to me that the words “make room for them” are what set him off. He is part of me, I’ve encountered him several times in the past month. Right now he demands to know exactly what I meant — just how much room to make for them? And at whose expense? And is it necessary to open the discussion just now, while the peace talks are in progress? And when the country is trying, with its remaining strength, to absorb a huge wave of immigration? He speaks, and something unpleasant is slowly revealed to me: that when, for example, Azmi Bishara says he wants to march a black crowd through Tel Aviv, something in me recoils. Contorts. And suddenly I am the one facing the test. How real and sincere is my desire for “coexistence” with the Palestinians in Israel? Do I stand wholeheartedly behind the words “make room for them among us”? Do I actually understand the meaning of Jewish-Arab coexistence? And what does it demand of me, as a Jew in Israel? How much room am I really willing to make for “them” in the Jewish state? Have I ever imagined, down to the smallest living detail, a truly democratic, pluralistic, and egalitarian way of life in Israel? These questions race at me, and caught me unprepared — an abstract, perhaps simplistic picture of life with the Arabs was impressed on me from the start, and because of it, apparently, I set out on this journey. I certainly wanted to persuade others it was an imperative, and here, the outer layer of these abstract declarations was quickly torn away, and from within its contents burst forth — demanding, threatening, enticing, shaking the defenses—

Unfolding below the balcony of Tagrid and Abed Yunes’s attractive house in the village of Arara are olive groves and fields of wheat. Beyond them is the Wadi Ara road — or, officially, in Hebrew, the Nahal Iron road — and after it low hills, golden in the afternoon sunlight. A burgeoning grapevine stretches over the trellis at the threshold, and inside the house Majd and Sumu—“splendor” and “glory,” he two years old, she one — waddle about in their Pampers, whooping at me Hebrew words they have learned —b’seder, kadima (“okay,” “get going”) — and climbing all over Mommy Tagrid. Impossible to have a conversation this way — who will take the children to Grandma? Tagrid will.

“I met Tagrid at her house.” Abed recounts their history as we relax on the balcony, looking out over the fields. “I had seen her once before, and I heard good things about her, but introductions — only at her parents’ house. I came with a friend who mediated. We went and sat with her father. Her mother, at most, brought refreshments. It was fine. It’s a liberal, open family. My family — let’s say there’s a difference.

“Two days later she went overseas with a delegation, and every week I would visit them, ask what was new with Tagrid, if she had written, if she had called, had expressed any interest.

“When she finally came back, I drove to the airport to greet her. She didn’t understand what I was doing there. I thought she would drive back with me, in my car, to the village, but she sent her suitcases with me instead.

“The next morning I let her sleep until eleven and then I called her: How are you, Tagrid? How did you sleep? How was it over there? May I come visit you?

“I came over and we sat alone together. What does alone mean? Every two minutes someone came to take something, to arrange something, and all the doors were open.

“So we began talking. She made inquiries about me in the village, asked if I would permit her to continue her studies. She wanted me to be an electrical engineer, but I didn’t want to — being a technician was enough for me. But I promised her she wouldn’t have to stop her studies. Even then I saw that her independence was very, very important to her.”

“What have you been saying about me?” Tagrid returns, pours juice, brings fruit. Her laughter rings through the house. Her face is sharply outlined and illuminated by a whole range of expressions. Energetic and impetuous. Abed, in contrast, is very careful — part of the hidden tug-of-war of marriage — to keep to a single expression, sober and deliberate. But it is hard to be that way faced with her charm and her bustle, so there is always the shadow of a smile on his lips.

“She didn’t stop talking to me about her independence and her freedom, and I promised. Of course.” He nods to her, and she to him. “And when I married her, it was a little hard for me. You know, from the very beginning she wanted to do things that I’d never even thought of—‘Come on, Abed, let’s have breakfast together.’ Breakfast together?! And she would say, ‘Just stand beside me, Abed, be with me.’ And I, when I was still living at home, I would get up in the morning and my mother would have prepared everything. I would come home in the middle of the night with friends, at one in the morning, and wake up Mom: We’re hungry, and she would get up and cook a meal for everyone.”

“Those days are gone.” Tagrid laughs. “I explained to Abed what marriage meant for me; it’s for emotional support, so that you have a partner like yourself, right?”

“Okay, little by little I began to understand her. Today it’s enough for me to stand beside her, and that’s help for her. I stand. Talk with her while she cooks. I’ve gotten used to it,” he says heavily, as if reciting to himself, “because we’re both working people. We’re both teachers. Fairness tells me that this is my wife, and it won’t help me if I’m rude and I say that I don’t want to help. She’s tired, too. I don’t know how to cook, but I can help. Straighten things up a little.”