Music Credit : Kama Vardi – Under The Sun
This text is the transcript of the podcast
Introduction Jaffa
The story takes place in September 2000, on the eve of the second Palestinian Intifada. Ajami, Jaffa, Israel, Middle East, Asia.
We are in a large shared house on the Mediterranean coast.
The air is warm, humid, carrying with it the unfinished promises of a summer that has passed.
I’m not sure what I’m about to tell. Maybe it was a dream. But I remember that for a few years, life seemed peaceful there. The neighborhood was poor, sure; there were no streetlights, no fully functioning sewage system. But we shared the building with three Muslim families, one of whom had kids the same age as us. We spent the summer playing with our neighbors, Lana, who was my sister’s age, and Aiyman, who was my age. And we would go, like the thousands of stray cats in the neighborhood, looking for food at the fish restaurant “The Old Man and the Sea” Cats meowing. Lana, Iyman, Hagar my sister, and I had survived the turn of the millennium; we had nothing left to feel in life. The hardest part was over. My family, well, we’re Jewish—not that we do anything special except Shabbat dinners, but we’re Jewish. My grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. I don’t exactly know what the Holocaust is yet, but I know it keeps me from sleeping alone at night.
Our neighborhood of Ajami is mixed, run-down, and predominantly Arab. The house we live in is beautiful, facing the sea, adorned with high ceilings, arches, and frescoes. I distort this beauty into fear. Every night, I hear voices echoing through the house.
I can’t sleep alone in my bed. I’m afraid. I hear the ghosts of a Palestinian family. Just as I hear the unknown voice of my Polish great-grandmother, the one who was sent, under the eyes of my teenage grandfather, to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
In the middle of the night, every night, I stumble in tears and run to seek refuge in my parents’ bed.
School
Today is the first day of primary school. I am all excited, both happy and anxious. So yes, I’m 5 years old, a very little girl with big brown eyes and blond curls who doesn’t speak much. At the school entrance, I struggle to let go of my father’s hand.
In class, I sit next to the teacher; I am the smallest and the youngest. Unlike the other children, I am the only one with dark circles that tell of sleepless nights. The teacher explains to the students that the children have the right to take a break.
The children rush out. All except me, cautious. The teacher orders me to go outside and play. I walk down the stairs to the school garden where children are playing together.
I sit on a bench just under the classroom window, behind me, a large pink bush is in bloom.
Suddenly, a rubber ball is tossed out the window and lands on my head. Surprised and scared, I look up to see who threw it.
Through the window, I see Rimi laughing and waving. Confused, I throw the ball back, and Rimi returns it. Gradually, we start playing together, me in the garden, and Rimi from the window, until the ball gets lost in the bush.
I go looking for it, losing myself in the bush as if I were in a jungle.
Amidst the branches and leaves, I see my adult life: far from here and now.
When I come out, my t-shirt is torn, and pink flower petals are stuck in my hair: Rimi is no longer at the window.
I go back up the stairs and in the class, I look for my friend.
Rimi is drawing. I try to approach her, but the children block my way.
Without looking at me, Rimi hands me a drawing: a large pink tree with a skull symbol.
She says loudly, “Everyone knows the tree is toxic; you’re going to die tonight, and everything you touch until then will be contaminated.”
I rush to the bathroom to wash my hands. I scrub them so hard that I start to bleed. I hurry to a phone booth in the school and call my father to come pick me up quickly, unable to say more.
My father comes to pick me up on his bicycle.
The Road, the Limbo
I feel relieved, but I realize my father isn’t well either; he also has torn clothes, and his forehead is bleeding.
I am the one asking him questions about his condition. I sense he’s not himself.
I ask what happened to him; he says, without looking at me, that he fell off his bike. While my father is riding, I sit quietly but don’t dare touch him for fear of contaminating him, hiding my hands.
During the ride, through the dilapidated alleys and the calm edge of the Mediterranean, I ask him about death. I want to know what time it is on the other side of the world and if there’s a place where one could live without ever facing the night.
As we pedal quickly through the dirty streets of the city that begins to ignite, he tells me about Iceland, with its endless days. We pass by Ajami’s large mosque where the neighbors are all gathered; something is brewing.
The Last Night Before
Night falls, I am alone in my bed, observing my hands, afraid to fall asleep. My eyes start to close slowly, but I resist sleep. I hear the muezzin, firecrackers, neighbors’ cries in Arabic, my parents talking to each other, worried. Car horns and their headlights cast shadows of children in the room. Trembling, I stare at the window across from my bed. Suddenly, a stone shatters the window, passes through, and falls on my bed, right next to my head. I let out a piercing scream echoing through the house. H I start walking like a possessed person over the pieces of glass, crackling underfoot, my feet bloodied, but I resist leaving the room. Dawn begins to fade, and I realize I am not dead.
My parents arrive, running; my mother picks me up in her arms, stained with my blood. In my mother’s arms, I fall from exhaustion. The sun appears fully.
Explosion. I am here.
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