I woke from my reverie and whispered to myself, as if someone was chiding or punishing me: “In the name of the people remembered here, the Israelis have lit in our country many fires, which may in the end themselves become a new holocaust.”
I fell silent.
I finally left the main building, preoccupied and dejected. I turned to the right and walked on in the direction the Palestinian driver had shown me. The semicircular path took me to the back of the building, where I found myself close to a tree-lined strip of ground, no more than a few meters wide, which ran parallel to the building and ended in woods, which stretched for a considerable distance—perhaps three kilometers, as the driver had surmised. The whole length of the tree-lined strip had been planted with small signboards. I went up to one of them, and saw that it contained the names of more Jews who had been among the victims of the Nazi slaughterers. Underneath each name had been written the date of death, though some were missing. There were boards that bore the names of Jewish families that had been exterminated in their entirety. The victims’ names were displayed in a different way further along: there was a small hut made of stones, with a twisted, roughly circular ceiling topped by a circular opening like a large hole. I stood for some minutes inside the hut, contemplating a work of art that aroused in me a mixture of emotions—admiration for the idea, and for the suffering that had inspired it. On the walls of the hut, which had no definite shape, identity cards and documents had been scattered. There were also scraps of paper of varying shapes and sizes, with phrases written on them like instructions, and the names of victims, some in handwriting, which grew closer to each other and more tightly packed the nearer they came to the ceiling. I found myself continuing to read them one by one with a strange curiosity, until finally I was gazing at a distant blue sky whose shape and size were defined by the opening in the ceiling. Artistically, the message had reached me. And as a human being, I understood it. I had to remember these victims, and their last, smuggled words. I asked God to have mercy on them twice: once as victims of the Nazis, and a second time as people used by those who traded on their tragedy.
I turned a little to the right. The scene revealed groups of people waiting in two small queues in front of two iron gates. I went up to a lady with an expression of worried anticipation on her face, and asked her in Hebrew, “Sliha, gvirti, excuse me, madam, why are these people gathering here?”
She looked at me, astonishment now written all over her face, making me feel that I had come from another age. Despite that, she answered me with cheerfulness: “They want to visit the other museum, on the other side over there.” And she pointed to an area in the distance, situated on some mountain slopes whose features were difficult to distinguish. I didn’t interrupt her as she explained to me what she meant. “Listen, sir, you’re a stranger—in fact, it looks as though you must be a complete stranger! These people are waiting their turn to visit the Zikhron ha-Filastinim museum, it’s a museum of Palestinian memories. It was built recently following the historic peace agreement that was signed just two years ago between the two peoples of the country, and which ended the bloody struggle that had lasted more than a hundred years. There are brand new electric cable cars like buses—you’ll see them when you get nearer, they call them the ‘tele-buses.’ They’re each large enough to hold twenty passengers, and take visitors to and fro along cables that stretch for three kilometers or more. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Before I could reply, her cellphone began to ring. She apologized to me and looked at the device, then started to mutter happily: “That’s my granddaughter Abigail, she’s apologizing, she was going to come with me on my visit to the other museum, but she’s changed her mind—she’s inside here, wandering around with some friends of hers. Perhaps she didn’t find the prospect of my company very attractive. She’s right, my company is never very amusing for young people like her, but it might appeal to you, mightn’t it?”
“Appeal to me?” I asked.
“Why not? Her electronic ticket’s already paid for, anyway . . .”
She interrupted herself to show me her cellphone, saying, “As you can see, there are two sets of numbers, each containing five digits. They open the entrance gate, and then you board the tele-bus. Then the numbers are wiped from the phone’s memory. Perhaps you’d like to accompany me, Mr.—?”
“Walid Dahman,” I said, quickly filling the gap, as I welcomed her invitation and thanked her for it.
“Tala. Tala Rabinovitch,” she responded.
We postponed any further conversation and headed for the assembly point, from where we arrived at one of the two doors. It was fitted with a small numerical screen. Tala looked at her phone, touched somewhere on the screen, and the entrance gate opened. I passed through the cross-shaped barrier, which closed behind me, and waited for Tala to pass through.
We found ourselves beside some doors that opened electronically just by approaching them. We went through, and soon found the tele-bus. A large number of other visitors had already boarded before us. In less than two minutes, the vehicle, which was like a cable car, had moved off.
The view from above was stunning and took the breath away. As the area opposite slowly drew closer to us, allowing us to see it more clearly, Tala explained to me, pointing to what I assumed was our destination, “Some years ago, that was the Giv’at Shaul B settlement. Now we call it ‘Ir shel Slihanut,’ which means ‘City of Tolerance.’ No
