Erella Dunayevsky’s stories evoke the dailiness of Palestinians’ lives under occupation. They take place over many years but, as Dunayevsky’s has written, “the essence of the stories is identical, whether they took place during the nineties of the previous century or are happening right now.” This next story comes very close to our time…
The Za’atar
October 16, 2019
Dear friends, greetings!
Even on Wednesday, October 16, 2019, Jaber smiled at us, an engaging smile. A smile that has something simultaneously open and mysterious and bitter-sweet. In my heart arose a hushed yearning to hold on to some invisible scarlet thread and follow it into the depths of his soul reflected in his smile.
We’d met him two months earlier, several days after they demolished the home of his older brother, Mohammad, who lived close by ointhe outskirts of their village, Khalat A-Dab’a (place of the hyena).
Khalat A-Dab’a is situated alone on a high hill, which slopes down into a long wadi that winds from the cave dwellers’ village, Tuba, all the way to Jinba village. The wadi and the hills sloping down into it are called Massafer Yatta by the Palestinian inhabitants of the South Hebron Hills and “firing zone 918″ by the Israeli occupation authorities. The villagers of Khalat A-Dab’a, like the rest of Massafer’s inhabitants, are living there on probation until their fate is decided by the Supreme Court of the State of Israel.
Khalat A-Dab’a is a village that dwells alone. There are no neighboring Palestinian villages, there are no adjacent settlements and not even the Israeli army frequents it.
Yet, quite suddenly, without prior notice, the army demolished the home of Jaber’s brother. Two days later we came to visit. Jaber smiled.
Then they demolished his home. We came to him a day later, and he smiled. Then he rebuilt it.
Visiting him yesterday, after they’d demolished it yet again, that unique smile was spread across his face this time too.
It was an autumn day, the sky stood grey above us and rain soon began to drizzle. Jaber opened the flaps of the tiny tent he had put up after the demolition to sit inside with his guests—the family is temporarily living in a cave—and he invited us in.
For a long time, he unfolds his feelings, conjectures, the painful musings about his demolished home and the destroyed trees he had planted. With how much compassion his hands caressed the pomegranates that withered after three weeks away from mother earth.
We took our leave. Jaber walked us out. While we were still staggering uphill amidst the rubble from the demolition, on our way to the vehicle we had left on the main dirt road, Jaber suddenly stops, bends down, points at the tiniest green shoot making its way through the debris of stones and dirt, and says: “This tiny sprout is za’atar that insists on living.”
I looked straight into his eyes and asked if I could pose a question.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“What holds you together from within, what keeps you safe from rage and hatred?”
“I tell myself that this is how things are with occupation”, he answered and smiled his modest smile kept for those who know…
This is Jaber. Jaber refuses to play the dangerous game of perpetrator and victim. In this game, where he has no control over the perpetrator, he has control over how not to become a victim. “I will not fall into their trap. They want me to be so miserable that I won’t care about hating and taking revenge. That gift, I will not give them.” This is what he told me on one of my recent visits, three days after a settler broke his nose with brass knuckles, while he was held on the ground by two soldiers of the most moral army in the world.
On May 4, 2022, the Supreme Court of the State of Israel published its decision to carry out the evacuation of the Palestinian inhabitants of Massafer Yatta from their homes and their land. It was the eve of the Jewish State’s 74th Independence Day.
Even before Independence Day when there was still a sliver of possibility that the scales of justice at the Supreme Court of Justice would lean towards the welfare of the Massafer Yatta villagers, Jaber’s wife was carrying new life in her womb. After three sons—9, 7, and 3-years-old—the couple were hoping for a daughter. Ten days later, she had twins. Boys.
In my last visit, I asked what I could bring as a gift. I wanted to bring them something practical and necessary. Jaber smiled his gentle smile and said that I couldn’t bring him what he really needed. I insisted he tell me what this was. “Space”, he said.
We went down to the cave where they live. In a space no larger than a few square meters, half of it serving as kitchen and tub-shower, live five people. When the mother returns from the hospital with her twins after undergoing a Caesarian-section, they will be seven. Surreal.
Jaber has built a home for himself and his family five times. The occupation forces have demolished their home five times. Jaber won’t build another home as long as the sword of eviction swings above his head, but he has begun to excavate another cave next to the existing one. He has worked alone, but has to rent the jackhammer and pay for its fuel out of the pittance he manages to save from occasional work. And money is running out.
“How much money is needed to finish digging the second cave?” I asked. Jaber said it was not a sum that I and the members of our little group could muster up. “Still?” I asked again. “Because, sometimes, when many donate a little, you end up with a lot”, I added.
Jaber named the sum, I shared, Friends gave, and the excavated cave has given the whole family a little more relief.