*
The train reached Lydda station and stopped. We were now running about half an hour late. After wasting another five minutes looking for the exit, we left the station and found ourselves beside a taxi rank, where a group of drivers were already waiting, smoking and arguing among themselves so noisily that all one could make out was a jumble of colorful expressions.
I asked the nearest of the disputants about the possibility of taking us to Jaffa. This reduced the sound level of the conversation, and he pointed to the right, to a kiosk with a rectangular window, from which a man in his fifties with a religious appearance was looking out; he shouted to his other colleagues to let my enquiry get through to him. When he had grasped what I was saying, he asked for eighty Israeli shekels and the address we wanted to go to, then pointed to a driver of medium height, with a light brown complexion and North African features, who took us to an old, worn-out car, which looked like it had spent most of the years of its life in a garage for special care. As a result, the ride cost us a delay of another ten minutes, for the car didn’t manage the road well, and we were unable to communicate with the driver, who only spoke Hebrew. Repair work to the drains in the area added a further five minutes, and we ourselves took another five minutes to get to the café by a roundabout route once we’d been dropped off, so by the time we arrived we owed Jinin an apology for a delay of around forty minutes.
When we reached her, on the agreed-upon street corner, we were met by the sound of a digger sinking its teeth into the body of the road.
7
Jerusalem
There were four of them, hovering in hopes of finding a passenger who’d finished his visit to the museum. They were chattering in Arabic. As I approached them, I became their prey, their hoped-for passenger, despite the fact that I’d come from the opposite direction—the direction of people making their way to the museum. Two of them got up from their plastic chairs and greeted me with a single question, preceded by two smiles designed to ensnare me:
“Wanting a taxi, Hajj?”
I ignored the question, and asked them, “Excuse me, where’s Deir Yassin?”
My question disappointed them. One of them muttered in a disinterested tone, which I heard, “This guy looks like he’s just run away from Deir Yassin, and yet he’s come to ask about it!”
The same man then addressed me directly. “My friend, you can’t see anything of it from here. The fact is, there’s nothing left of it except for a few stones. If you like, I can take you to Giv’at Shaul B, just by the Hospital for Psychiatric Disorders—the loony bin, that is, if you’ll pardon the expression—which is very near to it.”
When he received no reply from me, he continued like someone retracting his offer. “Anyway, Deir Yassin is in that direction.” He pointed to the south wing of the museum. “Go past the building. Look to your right, though you won’t see anything. The village is more than three kilometers away.”
Okay, I said to myself, if it’s like that, I’ll postpone the sightseeing I dreamed about, and wander around for a bit inside the Yad Vashem Museum. That was part of my trip, anyway.
Once again, I wondered about the value of a visit like this. Had I been truthful when I’d told Salman that I wanted to explore how the victims I’d be honoring stood in relation to their own victims? Did bombing Gaza help to keep the memory of the Nazi destruction alive, for example? And what was the difference between being burned in gas ovens and being burned by Apache rockets? Then again, what would I gain by counting the names of Jews on whom the most hideous crimes had been committed?
At the entrance, my speculations fell away from me and I paid them no more attention. I passed a small glass office, where a young man in civilian clothes was sitting, reading a newspaper. He didn’t ask me anything and hardly registered my presence as I walked past him. I entered the museum through a long covered corridor and into halls designed in the most beautiful and artistic way. I passed through most of these rooms, both big and small, and stopped in front of several tables providing information, either in the form of pamphlets or else on computer screens. The Hall of Names made me pause and captured my feelings. I studied the names, and examined the features of the victims—who continued to scrutinize me as I looked at their faces—and tried to gauge their feelings at the moment the pictures had been taken. Moments that would no longer be there for people who had been reduced to skeletons or whose corpses had disappeared entirely. I lifted my head to follow the names upward until my gaze reached the hall’s circular extremity, open to the sky. At that moment, I felt like the faces of thousands of Palestinians—some of whom I knew, but most of whom I did not—gazed down on me. They were pushing and shoving, as if they wanted to come down into the halls of the museum, spread through them, and take their places as victims. I felt sorrow for those from both groups, and I cried for those who were crowded together in the sky, looking for
