“Never mind. It’s al over now, I’m going to see him, the nightmare’s over.”
“How did you find out?”
“Just by fluke.”
“It shows you how cut o we are, that no one found out about Daniel. We’re worlds apart, even though in half an hour we’re going to be at the border.”
“I’ve been to other checkpoints, but never to Selah. This is the first time in years that I’ve gone somewhere like this without my camera.”
“I’d be interested in seeing your photos sometime.”
“Usual y I take pictures of people, but at the checkpoints I mostly photograph objects, because they tel you a lot. Once the army sent the border guards some breakfast in a cardboard container, but it was just apples and yogurt, and the guards were so disgusted they kicked the container. I took a photo of the smashed apples and the yogurt spil ing out. The container stayed there al day, in the middle of the road, cars drove over it, and it kept get ing messier and messier. No one cares. Sometimes I get the feeling the guards are high.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Wel , I don’t know for sure, but I’ve never seen people behaving that way without drugs. Laughing hysterical y, hugging each other, I’d guess it’s E. Just once or twice, I got that impression. The worst things I’ve seen, I’ve seen at checkpoints. Wel , I don’t have to tel you, you see it every day.”
see it every day.”
“There’s always some new craziness.”
“How come you were up al night?”
“Someone had a problem …” she said vaguely.
“Wil you write about it?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s Daniel’s life like? Does he speak Arabic?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Yes, you said he was a teacher. He’d have to anyhow, to get by. It’s so hard to imagine, though … is he happy?”
“I don’t know, Dana. How can I know something like that?”
“What does he look like? Is he very dif erent?”
“You’l see for yourself.”
“But he teaches kids.”
“Everyone’s used to him in the community. He’s wel liked.”
“I can’t picture him as a teacher. He’s so goofy. How often do you see him? How often do you talk to him?”
“I go over once a month,” she said and there was something in the way she said it that gave me a jolt. I wondered if what I’d heard in her voice was the memory of sex. She must have sensed my suspicion, because she added a lit le too quickly, as if to cover her tracks, “I bring him his check and things he wants from the city—books, music.”
But I refused to be distracted. “Do you fuck?” I asked, and my cal ousness surprised me. I’d never spoken to anyone that way.
Her phone rang, and when the conversation was over, we both pretended I hadn’t asked her the question, or that she hadn’t heard me.
“We’re here,” she said, slowing down.
We had reached Selah, the checkpoint at the northern end of the Coastal Strip. The only other vehicles were carrying people to and from the set lements. We were waved through; they didn’t even ask to see my permit.
Seeing the Coastal Strip brought back a ood of memories: the beach, the smel of sea salt and falafel, Palestinian families having picnics on the sand, the bossy young men, the daring women who went into the water with their skirts hitched up. Once a man slapped his wife and al the women on the beach surrounded him with shouts and accusations, while he stood there helplessly; it was only with the greatest e ort that I restrained myself from photographing them. There was hope back then, even though it turned out to be an il usion.
Then I remembered that I was going to see Daniel very soon, and my heart began pounding hard and fast.
Almost immediately after Selah, we hit another checkpoint. This one was very chaotic.
We joined a very long queue of cars, taxis, transits, and pedestrians. Young, old, male, female, children, families, students. One young woman, slender and dressed in black slacks and a pale blue blouse, was carrying an infant in her arms. The child looked unwel , and the woman, who could have been a university student, was furious. I had never seen such seething rage. The woman wasn’t carrying anything else, only the child; not even a bot le for the child. Whatever she had, money or her ID, must have been in the pockets of her slacks. The baby was asleep, and appeared to be feverish. She made her way through the crowd, pushing ahead of the queue, and no one dared to stop her. I wondered whether her fierce desperation would get her through the checkpoint.
The line crawled forward, inch by inch. There was a smal white car ahead of us, with two men inside. Final y the white car reached the barrier. The driver handed the border guard his ID but the two other men in the car didn’t have theirs. They began to explain, but the soldier wasn’t interested. He motioned to his three friends to come over. The guards dragged out the two men and took them to a wal at the side of the road. They cu ed the men’s hands behind their backs, blindfolded them, turned them toward the wal and pushed them down to the ground, because
