I am so different than I was this morning.
The curfew lifted for the second day in a row from 9am to 3pm.
Such is the state of oppression that to be permitted outdoors
within a few square kilometer area during daylight feels like
freedom. I remember saying that it feels like they might loosen
things up, that maybe they will let us out a period each day.
Others agreed. I needed a little release. As doors closed once
again in the late afternoon, I did not go visiting friends or
photographing. I stayed in my room, in want of some quiet. I put
my Walkman on and ignored the tanks as they rolled in front of
the camp. They will come again, I thought as I debated whether
or not I should be videotaping or sound recording. I would love
a day off. It is so stressful here.
I listened to a dance mix tape that I bought
when I ran errands in Bethlehem. I bought several tapes for the
kids. The sound of shooting broke through the dance beat. I watched
smoke rise above the camp. Curfew as usual. I turned to stretch,
to dance, and to move. My body aches from confinement in small
spaces without the distance to go. As I turned back toward the
window, I witnessed something I had not seen so closely before:
I saw soldiers taking two blindfolded men into a tank. Several
soldiers ran back into the camp, guns pointed. I decided to watch
from the top floor. As I got to a prime lookout window, I saw
a group of soldiers coming down a pathway directly toward the
Ibdaa center. They had two more captives, both blindfolded. As
I peeked out a window, a soldier saw me. He pointed his gun right
at me. I pulled inside. I went to another floor and tried to look
out again. He saw me again, and pointed his gun. I went to my
room. During the last curfew, they shot into the center with 50
foreigners staying here.
With some final blasts, I knew they sent
tear gas spraying everywhere to mark their departure. Like the
kids in the camp, I am able to identify some types of shooting
and bullets. Three small kids brought handfuls of dirt to quell
the waning tear gas canister in the middle of the road. I looked
out my window to see a mother carrying her small boy into the
UN clinic next door. The boy was 5 years old. He was lying on
the doctor's table crying. There was a bloody circle the size
of a quarter in his forearm, near the bend. He was shot. Yassir
is the UN ambulance driver for Dheisheh camp. "Yalla, Smith,”
he said to me. Let's go. I got into the ambulance with the mother
and child and headed to the Beit Jala hospital.
When
the doctor showed me the x-ray, I thought the image of the article
lodged in the boy's bones was somehow enhanced in size to help
them see it better. I thought that an object that large could
not have gotten into this small boy. It looked as if half of a
cork was in his elbow. When the boy was on the operating table,
two doctors worked on him and one assistant held his legs down.
His mother held him and stroked his other arm and his face. He
was pleading that they should stop. After dressing the wound,
one of the doctors dove into his open flesh with what looked like
scissors, but with ends with which to grab. It seemed to take
so long. The child was screaming with all his might. I was crying
as I videotaped the event. I could not bear to witness his pain.
At some point, one of them noticed I was crying and reached back
to put his hand on my shoulder. They could not get the bullet
out without difficulty. I could see the doctor re-angling and
probing the instrument deeper and deeper. It seemed impossible
that so much of the metal could disappear into the boy's arm.
Finally, accompanied by the child's wild, fevered scream, out
popped the bullet. The 'bullet' was the size
and shape of ¾ of a wine cork. This is the 'rubber
bullet' the Israelis deem 'safe' to use. I realized that
the x-ray did not lie. The bullet is impossibly big. It is sharp
on the edges. I thought of the speed with which it must have traveled
to get so deep under his skin, and to lodge into his bones. The
operation was not over. The child's wailing subsided until he
learned that his arm must be sewn back up. With the first stitch,
his screaming began again. He begged his mother to let the wound
stay open. The worse was over. The mother carried her son to a
recovery area. I was told that he would stay overnight.
"Yalla, Smith.' Yassir called. "To
Dheisheh." Driving back a call came over the radio. Another
bullet wound. We went straight to the clinic where a slightly
older boy, maybe 12, was lying on his stomach on the table. Family
members watched from the hallway. He was quiet. I believe in shock.
He was hit in both his lower leg and his upper back, where there
was considerable swelling and a large bump. He was put onto a
stretcher and put into the ambulance.
Back at the hospital, I walked alongside
the stretcher. Once inside, Yassir called me to an area behind
a closed curtain. How to describe with honor to the injured the
horror that I saw? On the table lay a 16-year-old boy. His head
was bandaged and bloody, his eyes swollen purple. Blood was coming
from beneath the bandages and had puddled on the floor. He had
many tubes already going into his body. He was still breathing.
I watched as four doctors worked quickly to hold together his
shattered head. "His brains are outside," Yassir told
me, pointing to a large obtrusion under the blood soaked bandages.
Someone was mopping the floor of blood as the nurses kept rolling
the bandages around him. A news team arrived. "Hallas,"
the head doctor said to all of us with cameras. 'Enough.' I went
outside the curtain and watched many doctors and assistants come
and go with bandages, instruments, bottles, and towels. "There
is nothing they can do for this one," Yassir said as the
doctors wheeled him into the operating room and closed the door.
Over the radio came another call and we
headed back to Dheisheh. Rather than take the straight main road
between Dheisheh camp and the hospital, just a few miles apart,
we took back roads to avoid confrontation with the tanks. Entering
the camp is no easy feat. The streets are narrow, barely enough
for a vehicle. People step to the side and jump into doorways
when vehicles pass. We stopped at an intersection. Yassir received
a call saying that the soldiers had entered the front of the camp.
We waited for a clearance signal. Three middle-aged women came
to Yassir. One was crying, the other two shouted. He said something
to them and they left, comforting the one who was crying. "It's
the boy's mother," he said, gesturing to his head to imply
which boy. "She wants to go to the hospital to see him, but
I don't think she should. What good will it do to see him? He
is dead. I received the call that he is dead." There were
five injuries worthy of hospital attention from Dheisheh camp
today. There will be one funeral tomorrow.
