the exile within

I find myself in a terrace flat on the top floor of a small building just off Gaza Road in West Jerusalem. The company includes myself, my flatmate, a couple of her Photography student friends and a Business student living there. We’re smoking hash, the “Russian way”, which means that, I am shown, you pass on the joint quickly and don’t exhale until it does the whole round to reach you again. Most hash in Israel apparently comes from Egypt and the West Bank. You’d think this kind of thing wouldn’t be happening, especially in areas so plagued by “military zones”, but then you’d be underestimating the Jewish lifeline in the West Bank, namely the settlements. Someone has to make sure that Jews have access to other Jews, so as long as your car displays the yellow Israeli license plates and you don’t look very Arab, you can enter and use most roads in the West Bank without any kind of supervision. This is what allows young Israeli activists to drive into Palestinian villages and trade in small quantities of organic produce that would otherwise rot. The military bureaucracy usually means that going through the official channels simply goes to waste, as trucks with vegetables or flowers are often refused passage arbitrarily, even if somehow you do manage to get the right documents in order. I am far from used to smoking and it soon tips me out of balance. As I contemplate whether it is a sensation I can enjoy or not, sirens begin wailing outside the window.  ”Something happened”, says the Business student. I prick my ears up: 

  ”Why, it only sounds like 3 or 4 sirens. They sound pretty far.” 

  ”No, that’s a lot more than 3. I think it’s a bombing. I can feel it in the air today, there’s this mood for a bombing.” 

  ”Should we switch on the TV in a few minutes?”, says one of the photography students.  

  ”No, no,” says my flatmate, and I silently agree. What difference is it going to make as long as we stay seated on these sofas? I help myself to a little more cake.  

  ”Jerusalem is not a good place to live in. It’s like it shoves everything I don’t like about Israeli society right in your face”, she continues.  

  ”Yes, but what can you do,” says her friend, “this is where you live. You cannot get away from it.” 

  The business student joins him: “believe me, I tried to run away from it, to live without it. It’s a very hard thing to do. Somehow, sooner or later, it catches up with you. There was a time when there were a lot of bombings, when we didn’t even go out anymore. It was too scary to even go out.” 

  ”Hey, if my ex said yes we would both be in Italy right now…” my flatmate says. 
  ”Yes, well some of us have too much here. Some people are really connected to this piece of land, they cannot live anywhere else.” 

  ”Are you kidding, of course. I have my whole family here.” 

  ”Me”, says our host, “I think the next World War will start when someone blows up Temple Mount.” At this, a small chocolate brownie is spared extinction by way of my digestive system. “And it will be an Arab doing it. You’ll see.” 

  ”What?!”, replies the Business student. “Why would an Arab do that?”  

  ”Look at Al-Quaeda. This is what they want, to start the third World War that way, they don’t care.” 

  This shoots me back to lunch that same day when I was watching the South Park episode where they parody the 9/11 conspiracy theories by suggesting that the Bush administration actually invented them itself to convince people that the government is all-powerful and capable of orchestrating such a spectacle.  

  ”No, you don’t understand, that is not how Arabs work. They would never do it undercover like that because they need the recognition. That is why they do it in the first place.”  

  Maybe I should have stayed focused on the brownie. Are they being serious? Me and my flatmate are starting to exchange nervous glances, but both of us remain silent, too stoned to perhaps articulate any kind of objection. Even then I knew this was no excuse, as I do now, writing this.  

  ”Look”, the other photography student interferes, “ever since biblical times war has always been about territory. People fight for land, and security. Always. It’s inevitable.” 

  ”Yes, but now wars are about religion. That’s what they say about the third World War, it will be about religion.” 

  ”That’s right.” 

  ”I think, it’s either that, beginning with a bomb in Temple Mount, or the Iranians nuking us at one point or another.” 

  I leave with my flatmate, slightly shaken. What does it take? What does it take for people to live like this? To think like this? How can you even go on living with so much fear and so little hope? I find myself caught in this heady mix of trepidation and awe. You cannot help respecting that which is powerful, no matter how dark. In this case, it is our collective consciousness that is making an impression on me. Every day, people round the world get up in the morning and get on with their lives. War is not a natural state of being - it is the exception to the rule, temporary and unnatural. Inevitable? Perhaps. But why be so busy anticipating your own annihilation? Why make war the cornerstone of your philosophy, of your being? Why make it not only your last resort but also your only option, your only license to exist? Why uphold a world-view so little-based on your own experience of the world (I don’t suppose you would hear such a crude and sweeping statement like “how Arabs work” from someone who has actually had personal and trusting relations with members of the Arab world, or any other world outside her own for that matter) that it absolves you from any kind of rational and moral investigation and leaves you reiterating slogans from the evening news? Why is it so easy to shake off responsibility and just watch as your worst prophecies of doom come true before your eyes? Then it occurs to me. It is easy, because being the victim is. If I am the victim, then the world is always happening to me, and never the other way around. Zoom out. The married couple. The family. The community. The state. Same thing. If we are the victims, then nothing we ever did could have possibly helped to create the mess we are in. Just like nothing we do now could possibly get us out of it. So why bother? Why ask questions? We’re too busy planning our own funeral. And from what I can gather, we’re wholly bent on taking a few more down with us. Who attacks first becomes completely irrelevant as long as the guns are loaded and the mouths are shut.   

  As we arrive home, my flatmate’s mobile rings. It turns out that something did happen in town, but there was no bombing, it was only a dummy someone planted. False alarm.