under a white sun bonnet, both girls smiling blissful y, as if to say, Can anything be more perfect than this? The father can only be seen from the back, a streak of dark fuzz running down his spine. Is he a Palestinian father or one of our fathers? I won’t tel .
Rafi said, “I didn’t know Palestinians swam with their clothes on. Your book made me realize that I don’t know the most basic things about them.”
“Some wear bathing suits.”
“Hard to believe there was a time you could go to the strip just like that, and take pictures at the beach,” Rafi said, shaking his head.
“I had so much fun. You can’t imagine how great it was. We got along real y wel —they were always inviting me to come home with them. I played with the kids, we built sand castles. People were in a good mood back then.”
“How did you communicate?”
“That was never a problem. Most of the men knew Hebrew, and some of the women spoke a lit le English. And there’s always sign language to fal back on. I should learn Arabic, but it’s such a hard language.”
“If you had it in school from first grade you wouldn’t find it hard.”
“Yes,” I said, “compulsory Arabic from first grade. Then we’l know the Messiah has arrived.”
“A few years ago we actual y had the il usion that things were get ing bet er. There was talk of making Arabic compulsory, and we real y believed it might happen.”
“I want a child,” I said, remembering the lit le bcobys I had held at the beach. “You’re lucky you have a daughter.”
“I can give you a child if you want, Dana. My wife wouldn’t object.”
“Two wives!”
“No, one wife. But I’d help you out as much as I could.”
“I feel I’m going to nd Daniel soon. I want his child. And I can’t believe Graciela wouldn’t mind, no mat er what she says. She’d mind a lot. Any woman would.”
There was an uncomfortable silence in the car. We’d brought up the forbidden topic. “Just an altruistic o er,” Ra joked, trying to break the tension.
“I’l keep it in mind. Free sperm. You’re right, you don’t get that kind of of er every day.”
But we were stil embarrassed. I wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but I looked out of the window instead.
At least eighty cars were already parked at the gas station near the border of the South Lifna Hil s. People were standing in smal groups and talking, or buying co ee and snacks at the lit le convenience store, or using the washroom. The gas station was on an isolated strip of road; you couldn’t see any towns or cities in the distance, only neat, alternating bands of green and taupe, and beyond them the indistinct mauve dunes of the desert. Near the station, scat ered randomly as though abandoned or misplaced, were the usual mystifying objects, the mauve dunes of the desert. Near the station, scat ered randomly as though abandoned or misplaced, were the usual mystifying objects, the exact nature of which no one could guess: some sort of steel tower; a cement cylinder; equipment and machines that appeared to have been designed for complicated engineering feats. I took a photograph of these unidenti ed bits of civilization; they captured the improvised feeling we al carried within us. We didn’t know where we were going and we wondered how we’d lasted this long on such imsy foundations and muddled e orts. The myths we grew up on tried to compensate us, but myths were slippery by nature. In fact we were lost, walking on air, inside air, fal ing.
The organizers handed out tape and yers in three languages: messages of peace printed in bold let ers on white sheets of paper. We taped them to our cars and then we taped numbers on our fenders. Ra ’s van was tenth. Then the organizers gave instructions, explained the mission. I didn’t listen careful y. The instructions didn’t vary much from activity to activity: no violence, no get ing into arguments with army or police or anyone else we encountered. Al interactions would be handled by trained negotiators. A lawyer spoke to the crowd; the cave dwel ers’ hearing had been postponed, which meant their eviction was on hold. It was good news, she said, relatively speaking.
I wandered away from the gathering and caught a glimpse of El a leaning against her blue car and staring out into the distance. She was holding a cup of co ee in one hand and tentatively touching her cropped hair with the other. The sign taped to her car window read: Everyone has a right to a home. I took a photograph of her with my zoom lens; she looked as homeless as any cave dwel er.
We didn’t leave until two o’clock because one of the lawyers who was involved in the South Lifna trials had been held up in court; he’d been trying to stop the deportation of foreign activists. When he nal y arrived, we returned to our cars and headed out across the invisible border between our country and the occupied territories. The landscape changed at once: green was replaced by gray and pale brown; there was no irrigation here. The hil s on both sides of the road rose and fel gently, as in a child’s drawing of mountains. As we neared South Lifna, we saw distant gures watching our procession from the mountains, tiny people against the pearl blue afternoon sky. They were not al owed on the road; this was a restricted highway, built for the set lers, and it was o -limits to Palestinians. Despite the distance between us, we felt their gratitude; you could tel they were happy we’d come from the way they stood there, their bodies very stil , as if they were afraid to break the spel of good luck that had brought us here.
The army had been trying for years to get rid of the cave dwel ers. They didn’t like the idea of Palestinians scat ered throughout the hil s, three or four families on one hil , ve on another. You couldn’t enclose them, it was hard to control their movements. And the government wanted the land.
The army tried expel ing them: they put them on trucks, blocked wel s, destroyed tents. Possibly they found it di cult to understand why anyone would want to live in caves and tents, in such di cult conditions. And at rst I wondered, too, when I spent the night in one of the caves the previous summer, in an e ort to stop the latest evictions. These were large natural caves, dark mouths on the sides of the hil s. I slept just outside the cave, because I couldn’t bear the damp and misery inside. I had never seen such poverty up close. I quickly understood that the cave dwel ers needed clothes and medical care and bet er food and more utensils and plastic sheets for the oor of their caves and waterproof mat resses and toys, but they loved their homes, and I could see why. The hil s were like huge friendly turtles, turtles you could love as intensely as you loved any human. The cave dwel ers had been on these hil s for over one hundred years. In court their lawyers explained that the caves were their homes,
