Israel, East Jerusalem, March 14th.
They did not huff. They did not puff. The Israelis simply tore the house down. The Palestinians did huff and puff, threw a rock and some words, but they were no match for the police carrying our M-16’s.
From the neighbor’s rooftop I watched the destruction below. An Arab man cried next to me. Across the valley was the opposite: construction, of Israeli settlements. They say there should be a road where we stand, and where the house once stood, and where 17 more should fall. Though there is already a road on each side.
In yet another house I had coffee, a hospitality in every Palestinian home. I am wired after so many visits, the walls buzzing, shaking in fear. I am always welcome, the children offer me candy. The TV was on when I entered, Bush was talking, but there was no sound. They clicked it off.
Palestinian living rooms have a fondness for silk and plastic flowers. Unnatural colors, brilliant, florescent, like ones you find at grave sites left by a devout but busy family.
Their order has come. They tremble the paper at me, it is written only in Hebrew. They have less than a month to leave the house. The flowers will survive, they survive anything, that is the nature of plastic. They house will not. Maybe they can be laid on top after the walls become jagged tombstones of their former selves.
A child, one of three in this house smiles at me, I smile back. Her nose is stained a strawberry-red color, I figure she had been eating some. I looked at her dad. “She fell,” he said. Some wounds you need only to wipe the blood away, one more wash and she will be clean again. It will only remain hurting somewhere in her memory. She will discover that other wounds take longer to heal. And sadly, that some wounds never heal.
The destruction crew, in an odd display of care, stretches red caution banner tape around the fresh rubble next door. It flutters angrily in the wind after the last soldier has left.
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