The young man, whose name was Ibrahim, drove his shovel through the hard, stony soil. It was a hot day in Ramallah, as most days were at that time of year, and it was no day to be digging, but it was the very fact of the heat that meant the digging had to be done. As the man dug, he thought about his family.
His family was not an exceptional one. Like most Palestinian Arabs, they were Muslims, and devout, but they were not especially religious. The man and his father attended the prayer sessions each day at the mosque, and bowed down to pray, facing southeast towards Mecca. The father was a builder, or had been before the intifadeh. Now, his family were slowly starving on what they could scavenge. His sister was only fifteen, and small for her age at that, yet she was the most zealously religious of the whole family. She wanted to be a martyr, or had done, at least, but Ibrahim would not allow it.
'Why can't a woman be a martyr?' she would cry plaintively.
'Because that is not the place of a woman,' he would reply. 'Allah commands women to be humble and submissive, not to fight like men. If there must be martyrs, let them be men. If our women die, who will raise our children?'
'But I don't want children! I want to die for my people!'
'You will not! I will not let my sister blow herself up before she is even old enough to be married!'
'Oh? So when I am married and have children, then I can blow myself up?'
Ibrahim had no answer for this sort of response. He dearly loved his sister, even though she had developed this horrific violent streak in recent months, which grew with every story of Israeli brutality. She believed these stories unconditionally, even the stories of public mutilation and dismemberment, which were not believed even by the people who told them. Ibrahim prayed that she never heard of the sixteen-year-old girl who had blown herself up near a Jewish supermarket, killing two Israelis. His best efforts to keep her safe might be futile if she heard of that.
His mother kept the family alive. It was not so much the food that she found, though she had a gift for finding it where everyone - or no one - had looked. Like so many mothers, it was the force of her personality that kept the family from falling apart. She was not small - she never had been. Yet she appeared bony now, and her clothes hung from her in a strangely wrinkled way. His father's face had been wrinkled for some years, but over the twelve months of the intifadeh the wrinkles had become creases, ever-deepening lines that seemed to cut into his face. On the outside, he appeared as devout as he had always been, but sometimes his doubt showed itself in the questions in his eyes.
'Father, do you think the Israelis will withdraw soon?' Ibrahim asked eagerly on the way home from the mosque one day.
'Insh'allah, God willing, we will prevail,' the old man replied sincerely.
'But do you think it will happen soon, father?' he insisted.
'It will be as God wills, son,' his father said neutrally. His lack of conviction was almost crushing.
Ibrahim himself, as young men often do, still held strong. He was confident that Allah and Islam would prevail over the unbelievers, but he did not believe, like many of his friends, that guns and bombs and martyrs were the way to victory. Attacking Israel would do nothing but bring the might of the Israeli Defence Force down on them, a battle that Palestine, no matter how much devotion and how many suicide attacks, could never win. Ibrahim's friends refused to see that attacking Israeli civilians only made enraged the beast that was the Israeli Defence Force. They were convinced that with the sacrifice of a few devoted martyrs, Israel's resistance would crumble, and Israeli attacks, such as the one that was just beginning, would drive the world to stand against Israel and rally to their cause. They didn't understand that all it did was drive the hate.
Earlier that day, the family had been sheltering from the heat in their one-room house. The family had had no water to drink all day, and they were becoming desperately thirsty. Ibrahim's mother asked him, could he please go and find some water? Water, good, drinkable water, was hard to find, much of it being very dirty. He was tired, but he knew that for his mother to be even asking him to do it meant that she was absolutely exhausted, so he got up and began walking northward down the deserted street.
He had walked perhaps a hundred metres from the house when, without warning, men began running down the street toward him. 'The Israelis are coming! The Israelis are coming!' one man shouted, waving a rifle. All throughout the town, Arabs were running, waving rifles, yelling at each other, taking up ambush positions. He didn't want to fight. He knew that it would be dangerous anyway, simply being in Ramallah, without giving the Israelis a reason to shoot him.
He had heard stories from his friends about the brutality of the Israelis in other attacks, and while he didn't believe everything they told him, it was obvious that the Jews would nearly shoot anything that moved. The man began running back to his family's house, but he saw Israeli tanks and troops advancing towards him. A pile of building rubbish, from a building project that had halted, lay in the street nearby, and he crouched behind it, watching the Israelis advance. Perhaps when they came close enough - but not too close - he could slowly emerge from hiding and surrender, before he could be shot. From his hiding place, he also had a good view of his family's house. The Israelis began spreading out through the town, and the man held his breath as a tank, shadowed by a dozen troops, approached, then passed by, his parents' house. Automatic gunfire suddenly erupted, sending the troops diving - or falling - to the ground. The tank stopped, and began swivelling its turret.
Ibrahim did not realise exactly where the gunfire had come from, or where the tank was aiming, until a moment before the tank fired. His scream of denial was denial was drowned out by the thunderous roar of the tank's main gun, firing with precision at the roof of his family's house, hitting from point-blank range the spot where the gunman had been hiding. A cloud of dust covered the house. The young man ran, tears of mingled grief and rage coursing down his cheeks, not caring now if the Israelis shot him.
Later, he returned to the wreckage of the house. He was armed now - he would never be unarmed again. The house had completely collapsed. With the help of a few others, the rubble was slowly cleared away. He began crying again, as the rubble of masonry gave way to the debris of a shattered home. The house had absorbed most of the energy of the tank round, and his family had not been killed so much by the explosion as the falling rubble. His mother looked nearly untouched. She did not look peaceful - there was nothing peaceful about the way she had died - but her body was not grossly torn or mutilated. It was not quite clear what had killed her. His father, it seemed, had not died straight away. His stomach had been crushed by a large stone, and there were signs that he had tried to dig himself out, despite what must have been agonising pain.
His sister - she had been beautiful once. Indeed, to the young man, she still had been beautiful, even when the starvation had eaten away at her life and strength. But now, her beautiful, dark, flowing hair framed a scene from a nightmare: something, perhaps shrapnel from the tank round, had hit her directly in the face. Strong men had turned away, revolted, when they saw her. The young man himself had gagged, then falling to his knees, weeping at the destruction of his family.
The hole was deep enough now, and the young man stood by, still crying in unreasoning grief. His knees buckled, and friends supported him as the covered bodies of his family were tenderly laid, side by side, in the trench. They were not the only bodies in the common grave, nor was he the only one crying his despair at the loss. As he saw the other bodies, including two small children, laid next to his family, he stopped crying. He was surprised at first, until the thought that had stopped his tears returned. He knew of a way to stop their tears. He could replace Palestinian tears with Israeli tears. He could replace Palestinian bodies with Israeli bodies. He smiled, then turned to look for his friends.
Even here, though, one could not get away from the atmosphere of tension that pervaded all of Israel these days. Especially here, in the heart of Jerusalem, the air of fear, of cringing anticipation, was strong. No Israeli would have admitted it, but deep down in the heart of every Jewish Israeli was the worry of where the next bomb would go off. Particularly now, in a restaurant, when so many of the bombers' targets had been restaurants and caf�s, it was hard to forget. But the soldier forced these thoughts out of his mind and focused on his fianc�e across the table.
In truth, he did not find it hard to forget the threat of bombs when he was looking at her. He did not find it hard to forget his own name when he looked at her. Simply keeping up with her sharp mind and witty sense of humour kept him on his toes, since he was one of her chief sources of amusement. She had an unfair advantage, too. When all else failed, she smiled at him. That smile ought to be banned, he thought wryly. She could make quite a diplomat, if she wanted to be one. She could have had Yasser Arafat signing over sovereignty of the Palestinian state to her personal control within five minutes, and have him think it a fair deal. When she smiled at him, he knew to be doubly on his guard, for what good it did him. It would likely be twice as bad when they were married. He could think of more terrifying fates than spending his life with this woman. He sighed.
'And why so great a sigh?' she asked, smiling again.
'I was just thinking-' he began.
'Thinking? The great tank commander must be exhausted from so great an effort. Quick, drink some more wine, before you faint,' she commanded mockingly.
'As I was saying,' he said heavily, but his smile belied his apparent exasperation.
'Yes?' she said in total innocence. Then she smiled, and he nearly forgot what he was going to say.
'What I was trying to say was-'
'What?' she cut in, looking more innocent than before.
'Deborah!' he said, pretending to be angry. It was a game they frequently played.
'I was going to say, I can think of worse things to do with my life than to spend it keeping you out of trouble, but I am thinking now that it may be beyond even my above-average capabilities. Honestly, woman, you could test the patience of Moses himself.'
She raised her eyebrows in mock woundedness. 'I am shocked, Captain. As all Israel knows, I am the most loveable of women.'
'Loveable, yes, but that doesn't mean you couldn't drive any man to the brink of insanity.' He sighed again.
'And what is it this time, my love? Having second thoughts?'
'I got past that the day I proposed to you. I'd be up to fiftieth thoughts by now and I still haven't changed my mind. No, I'm just tired. It was a - stressful - operation.'
She was serious now. 'I know. We had to deal with some of the casualties. They told us about the ambushes and booby traps. The Palestinians weren't as stupid as usual?'
'No. Whoever was commanding them knew what he was doing. And for some reason the Arabs were even more fanatical than normal. There was one madman who-' He stopped, shaking his head.
'What is it? You can tell me. You know very well I've seen nearly as much blood as you have.'
He exhaled loudly. 'I was taking my tank down a street, with a squad of infantry behind me, when some crazy man jumped out from behind a building and sprayed the troops with automatic gunfire. Every one of them was killed or wounded. He was gone before I could get my troop gun half-way around.'
She put her hand on his. 'You can't save everyone,' she said sympathetically.
'I know. But sometimes I wonder if these operations ever accomplish anything. We lost fifty men during that sweep, and there were two bombings before we even got back to base. Every time we kill a Palestinian civilian, three Arabs want to blow themselves up to avenge them. And I'm not sure I blame them. I mean, if someone killed my mother, I'd want to hit back at whoever did it. You know I'm not violent, but - I can understand why they would want revenge.' Deborah said nothing, but there was sympathy in her eyes.
The Israeli soldier picked himself up off the floor, now covered with shattered glass and other debris, as his reeling senses tried to comprehend the devastating blast that had thrown him across the room. In an instant, the peaceful scene of the restaurant seemed to be a hundred years ago, replaced by a nightmare of smoke, dust, and shredded metal. He stood, swaying, as the first of the sirens began wailing from a few streets away. Everywhere, people were running, some towards, some away from the scene. Police were vainly trying to organise the flow. A few feet away, an off-duty doctor was trying to stem the flow of blood from a horrible gash in an old lady's arm. Then, his insides froze, as he suddenly realised he could not see Deborah.
He searched frantically around him, calling her name and scanning for her face among those stumbling around. His foot brushed against something soft and yielding, and he looked down. The body at his feet was horribly mangled, its face unrecognisable, but he did not take special note of it until he saw her hair. He dropped to his knees, panic rising mingled with a realisation of irrevocable loss. He looked for some way to deny that it was her, but then he saw the brooch around her neck that he had given her, and the engagement ring on her finger, and grief overwhelmed him.
'Oh, Deborah,' he wept brokenly. Desperately, he tried to convince himself that this wasn't real, that it was some kind of nightmare, but brutal reality refused to be denied. This limp, broken body that he held in his arms was truly Deborah. If only he hadn't come to this restaurant, if only she hadn't been able to get leave, if only-
The grief and the denial slowly passed, and in its place, a cold, implacable rage grew. The next day, he returned to his base. His commander, seeing the grief and rage etched in his face, tried to convince him to stay on leave, but he refused, and the commander needed men too badly to turn him down. There was another operation about to begin, and the soldier desperately wanted to be part of it. Two days later, the commander realised his error. The brutality that had taken over this formerly peaceful man had shocked even hardened battle veterans, and he had been arrested, put in a military jail under war-crime charges. The man who used to be a soldier sat silently in the cold, lonely cell, and his rage would not die.
