Spring Team 05 Report: "Someday We Will Be Free"

Spring Team 05 Report: "Someday We Will Be Free"

April 12, 2005
by Mary

- It's early evening in Ramalah, and Ahmed (not real name for security
reasons) & I are sitting on the tiny balcony of the apartment building the
International Solidarity Movement (ISM). He lights up a cigarette from his
pack of Marlboros and smiles as he tells me in his think accent that he has
cut down to only a pack of cigarettes a day. Nearly all the men I've met in
Palestine smoke heavily, and I wonder at how fervently this universal habit
from calming nerves has taken hold here. Ahmed draws deeply on his cigarette, and as he slowly pushes the smoke back out of his lungs he comments on the beauty of the evening: he is looking skyward as fingers of sunlight pull themselves away from the last of the day. "I used to enjoy hunting on a day like this - - deer & small birds", he muses. It was good to be outside, and if we maintained our gaze skyward, it felt peaceful and relaxing. Eventually, though, my eyes are drawn downward to the narrow street below. Two old men argue in front of their shops - - neither leaves his post, but gesture wildly as they speak, and eventaully it becomes clear to me that they're not really battling with each other, but a common unseen aggressor.
Ahmed turns to me - perhaps in response to the discussion below held in a
language that he (but not I) understands - and says "Everyone in Palestine has
their stories. You cannot live here and not have your stories. And some of
them are funny stories. Those are the ones that keep us alive. My brother was
being held by the soldiers, eh....They had him on the ground like this" (and he
demonstrates handcuffed hands and ankles tied together from behind) "and they
were kicking him and yelling at him and he did not know what he had done, but
they had kept him like that for three days with no food, and the water they
poured over him, and he was losing a lot of strength. And then they threw
another prisoner into the cell with him, and because he was tied up like my
brother, they could not see each other. My brother said to the man "Who is my
new neighbor?", so the soldier him with a baton for speaking. But the new
prisoner recognized my brother's voice and whispered, "Someone who has news for you! - - Your wife has had your baby. It came yesterday." And my brother was filled with joy and began to move as best he could, struggling all around, and the soldiers beat him and ask "What are you doing?" My brother said, "I am
dancing, for there is a new life, a life that will take my place." "You see",
Abdellah confides to me, "They can never win as long as there is one of us
alive. And as long as one of us lives, we know that there is hope for us - -
that someday we will again be free".
He finishes his cigarette and retreats into the darkness of the apartment just
as a neighbor child climbs out onto her own nearby balcony. She is beautiful
and fearless, a radiant smiling face wreated in dark curls. She silently plays
peek-a-boo with me for awhile, pleased that I understand the game without our
having to exchange a word. She pulls herself up onto the railing to get a
closer look at me - so very obviously a foreigner - and I warn her to be
careful even though I'm aware she knows no English, and when she steps back
down from the rail I gratefully breathe one of the few Arabic words I've
learned: "Shukran" - "Thank you". She giggles and then scampers into her own
apartment at the sound of what could only be her mother's beckoning voice. For
a short while, this little street in Ramalah is quiet, save the sounds of birds
on the wire and the background clatter of an evening meal being prepared.
Then, as the sun sets, the melodic call to prayer reverberates through the
street. A lone voice crys out to the people of Ramalah to remember their God
who loves them, and will lift them up from their struggles. And I remember
that the God of Mohammad is also the God of Abraham and Moses, and wonder at the absurdity of the political system that would try to divide a family,
separate one child from another, and expect to be successful, or revered, or
even tolerated.