“We do know the things you know. We just interpret them di erently. Or we see their feelings as natural, and temporary. Or irrelevant to ending the occupation.”
“Irrelevant! No, no, you don’t know. You don’t know and I can’t tel you, and it’s too bad. Because if you knew …you wouldn’t do the work you do. You would know that the things they say are not what they real y think. They’re lying to you when they say they want to live in peace with us. They don’t. They want to destroy us. If you saw the things they write.”
in peace with us. They don’t. They want to destroy us. If you saw the things they write.”
“Maybe they’re lying when they write. Why do you think you’re the one who knows what’s real and what isn’t?”
“Why! Because I see the consequences! I see the plans and I see them carried out!”
“You don’t know what would happen if we stopped tormenting them.”
“I do know. I do know, and I wish I could tel you.”
“It’s not that simple. You simplify things. It’s dangerous to simplify, it’s the basis of every war. Simplification.”
“You aren’t realistic.”
“I’m just more optimistic than you are, that’s al . I trust the Palestinians—they’re exactly like us. Just people. People without a home or anything else, and if we were in their situation we’d be just as desperate, and some of us would be just as militant as some of them are.”
He sighed. “Maybe the next generation wil be able to do something. It’s too late for this generation, there’s too much hatred. Nothing wil change for the next thirty years.”
“People who were slaughtering each other in Lebanon are now drinking co ee together. One of my Palestinian friends told me that. ‘That’s the Middle East, my friend,’ she said. I agree with her. It can happen, people don’t stay angry once they get what they need.”
“Why aren’t you married, by the way? Why don’t you have a family?”
“I am married, but my husband is in hiding. I’m waiting for him to come back. He thinks I won’t like him, because he was burned.”
“Burned?”
“Yes, his face and arms and parts of his body. He tried to help a soldier who was on re, and he caught re too. He’s alive, but he lives in hiding somewhere.”
“You don’t know where?”
“No. He won’t let me or anyone else see him. It wouldn’t bother me, what he looks like, but he thinks it would.”
“What a story!”
“Yes. I miss him.”
“Maybe you should forget him.”
“No, I’m not going to forget him.”
“Such a devoted wife …and he gave you up. Stil , I can sort of understand it.”
“I can’t.”
“How did the two of them catch fire?”
“Just a stupid accident. My husband was delivering laundry. That’s what he did in the army, laundry.”
“Laundry! Did he have a low profile?”
“No, he just hated the army. He wanted to do something as unrelated to combat as possible.”
“Yeah, okay. Laundry!” He shook his head incredulously. It was hard for him to grasp. “So what happened?”
“He was delivering laundry somewhere, and there was a young conscript there who was fooling around with a smoke grenade. His sleeve caught re and someone next to him doused him with the contents of a jerrican he thought was ful of water, one of those black plastic jerricans, you know the kind. But the can didn’t have water in it, it had gasoline. Everyone ran away except my husband. He tried to wrap the guy up in a blanket, but there was gasoline on the floor too.”
“What sort of idiot puts gasoline in a black plastic jerrican!” he said. He was furious, as though he’d been there and had witnessed the disaster himself.
“It was a mistake,” I said.
“A mistake,” he guf awed. “Yeah. I’l bet. Some joker, some joker who should be rot ing in prison for several centuries.”
“I don’t want to think it was on purpose. It could have been an absentminded mistake.”
“Yes, to mistake black plastic for metal, that would take a special kind of talent. Wel , did your husband save the guy’s life?”
“No, he died. It was al for nothing.”
“Not real y for nothing. He tried.”
“No, it was for nothing. A complete waste. He got a citation, but I had to go receive it. He’d vanished by then.”
