Pages: 1 2

Fishing Season in Gaza

Sonia Saikaley

(An Excerpt)

On his way from the airport to his parents’ home, Benjamin crossed a busy intersection, Mercedes zooming swiftly around him, his breath steady and calm.  He was used to the crazy drivers who swirled dirt onto his clothes and onto the whitish-grey stucco of adjacent buildings, cracked with bomb scars that climbed up the surface like vines.  He turned down another street lined with a chain link fence, where green leaves grew on the steel, and he remembered the stuffed grape leaves his mother had always made for him: the parsley, crushed tomatoes, garlic, green onions and chick peas mixed with rice and wrapped in a thin leaf bathed in olive oil and lemon.  Pausing in front of the fence, he wondered if he should pick a few leaves for her, but he decided to continue on his way.  A loud noise suddenly thundered in the air, making him startle and briefly cover his ears.  When he turned another corner, he saw smoke and reddish-orange flames shooting into the pale blue sky.  With his shoulders hunched, he wandered further down the road.  In the twenty-one years of his life in Gaza, before he left for Canada, he’d witnessed many bombs.  But having lived in Montreal for the last two years, he’d almost forgotten the sounds of gunshots, bombs and rockets.  Sometimes he still had nightmares which forced him out of bed, but, for the most part, the memories of war were secondary to his daily life in Montreal: the language barrier, the loneliness, the homesickness for his mother’s cooking, the money worries preoccupied his mind.  Now he slowly approached the carnage and when the smell of burnt flesh and diesel assaulted his nose, he quickly covered it with the end of his shirt.  Taking short, quick breaths, he hurried past the burning car and treaded carefully around the crumbling buildings. Glass shards splattered on the pavement and the faces of people who raced past him, hands pressed on cheeks, blood dripping through fingers.  He looked away and quickened his pace.  Another car bomb.  Taken aback, tremors rose up his legs to his chest when he realized he could’ve been one of these victims if he’d arrived earlier than he had, but he could thank the Montreal thunderstorm that had plummeted hailstones while the airplane sped down the runway.  Eventually, the aircraft had to slow down and wait for takeoff until the storm passed.  Gripping the strap of his backpack, he began to walk down the street a little faster, but a numbness weakened his stride as he spotted a hill of broken stones with a severed hand on top of it, the fingers small, the fingernails badly bitten.  Hesitantly, he moved towards hill and noted the dismembered part was a child’s hand with  zealous stains of green magic marker on the knuckles. Stepping back, he lost his balance and twisted his ankle on a crumpled piece of metal.  He felt something under his worn leather shoes, but he didn’t glance down right away. Instead  he looked across at the rising cloud of dust and the rescuers now arriving on the scene, tumbling out of police cars and military tanks.  The officers and soldiers scrambled around the debris, searching for survivors while fire fighters untangled a hose between their hands and passed it along until the flaccid plastic hardened with water, a mist suddenly showering Benjamin’s face. He tilted his head back and let the cool spray soothe his sweaty cheeks.  The sun had no sympathy, he thought, as its rays poured through the dust.  Moving his foot, he still felt something underneath it and, at first, he thought he was standing on pebbles but there was also a softness to the surface.  Finally looking down, he nearly collapsed when he saw what it was: a tiny belly covered with a T-shirt.  Bent over the body, Benjamin wiped away the stones and gravel.  The blueness of the Cookie Monster appeared to him almost instantaneously.  Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street, he found himself humming but then stopped and wiped some more dirt from the child’s head.  The boy looked like he was about six; he had dark thick hair, falling around his oval face, and his mouth was distorted as if he had been sucking on a gumball.  The small fist of his left hand was clenched against his body.  Benjamin looked away sadly.  He knew the severed hand he’d seen earlier belonged to this boy because his right wrist was spurting blood; a cascade flowed into the sand making crimson mud.  There were also green magic marker lines on the fist that pressed up against the child’s ribcage.  Benjamin couldn’t tell if the youngster was Palestinian or Israeli.  He rested his hand on the boy’s left shoulder and blinked his eyes rapidly.  Had an Israeli or Palestinian attack destroyed one of its own innocents?  He knew it didn’t matter because the entire assault was incomprehensible.  Glancing at the child’s closed eyelids, his long lashes appeared to move and, for a moment, Benjamin thought the boy was still alive but it was only the wind.  The more he studied the boy’s face, the more he realized that the child could’ve been either Palestinian or Israeli – the dark features were so similar.  Even though escalating shouts, racing footsteps and raging sirens surrounded him, Benjamin felt that he and the boy were the only two in this area.  He reached down and squeezed the boy’s remaining hand; it felt frigid but he kept embracing it, gazing tenderly at the boy’s upturned face, his lips slightly curled in a mischievous grin as if he were pretending to be dead and would suddenly sit up and slap his palms together and cheer, “I got you!”  But the boy remained still.  Benjamin held his hand a while longer until a soldier came by and said abruptly, “Don’t just sit there!  There are living people. Go find them.  Come on!” he yelled, gripping Benjamin by the collar and pulling him up.  Inches away from the man’s face, Benjamin could smell tobacco and sweat.  The soldier yelled louder, over the helicopters and sirens, “Why are you wasting your time with a dead person?” Benjamin noticed that the soldier didn’t let his gaze fall upon the boy when he blurted out these words.  Instead, he kept his broad shoulders stiff like a plank and tightened his hold on Benjamin’s collar before he shoved him forward, making Benjamin trip over some rocks and stumble to the ground.  Rather quickly, he raised himself up, his throat tightening, and marched back to the soldier, who looked to be about in his mid-twenties. The soldier had youthful eyes that, in spite of the toughness he was currently displaying, sparkled with the freshness of a young person who felt he could take on the world with his strong shoulders and new ideas.  Yet the stubble on his long face and cuts on his rough hands made him seem exhausted, as if he were a man on the brink of a mid-life crisis.  He was good-looking but not too good-looking, tall and lean.  Benjamin kept staring at his eyes; they were a piercing blue and unusual for a Middle-Eastern person.  With flushed cheeks, Benjamin opened his mouth and was about to argue with the soldier when the man drew back, bent down and gently lifted the dead boy in his arms. He carried the boy to an open space, where he pulled out a handkerchief from one of his pockets and held it up. The sky wept light rain.  He then patted the boy’s face clean and Benjamin saw how handsome the child was.  Full lips.  Big brown eyes, with those long lashes, and a strong forehead.  After a while, the soldier ceased washing the boy’s face and rested his hands on his thighs, rubbing the material of his camouflage military trousers.   Then he pulled something out of another pocket.  Benjamin squinted and saw a small blue figurine.  The soldier unclenched the boy’s fist, tucked the figure into his palm and wrapped his tiny fingers around it.  Sighing, Benjamin gave the soldier a sad nod as he stood beside him.  The soldier got up from his knees and said, his voice almost choking, “Come on.  We could use your help.”

It took a few hours for them to complete the search and rescue and afterwards, with the sky turning a deep indigo, they strolled to a restaurant.  The place was small but cozy with a few wooden tables and chairs.  Some men passed a long tube between them, taking short puffs on the hookah and drawing out a line of cherry-scented smoke.  A haze of tobacco clouded the area.  Benjamin covered his mouth as he coughed.  As the night progressed, he glanced at the men sitting at his table who lifted pints of beer and made a toast to another day; they seemed excited and happy.  Sitting back, Benjamin took a short sip of his drink and was amazed by how these men managed to shrug off the destruction they had just witnessed.  But he supposed this was part of their job and had become routine for them.  Daily routines could desensitize even the terrifying effects of bombs and wars, he thought.  Excusing himself, he found a pay phone and called his parents, telling them what had happened and that he’d be late.  When he returned to the table, most of the soldiers had dispersed but a few remained.  “Need to get home to the wife and kids,” one said, slapping Benjamin’s back.  “Thanks for your help, buddy.”

Pages: 1 2