The heat
permeates everything, turns muscle into melting modeling clay.
Bodies droop over chairs, eyes hooded and heavy, lids fluttering
at the gates of sleep. Fever creeps up through my limbs, my cheeks
are flush. I feel sickness in every cell, and I fight to stay
awake. I don't want to be sick again. I came here to work, not
sweat in silence in the stale blank apartment. "I'm not contagious."
I tell myself. "It's just the water," and with that
bit of self convincing I trudge to the Red Crescent, my poor Arabic
morning greetings more slurred than usual.
A newborn
has been left by the roadside. We ride to the hospital to claim
him, and bring him to an orphanage in a surrounding town. This
sort of abandonment is rare here. Mothers delight in their families,
and towns are close knit, but Jenin is devastated. The economy
is hard struck, the water lines cut, the sounds of gunfire and
bombing have become background noise, the muzak of the occupation.
Even the most hopeful voices carry a ring of fatality in them.
The nurses
have named him Abdullah. He has charcoal gray eyes, and a headful
of dusty black hair. I cradle him in my arms, kissing his forehead
with ridiculous desperation. A Jewish woman with a Palestinian
baby in her arms, trying to transfer some sense of love and belonging
to this little one.
I carry
Abdullah into the ambulance, fussing with his blankets. The radio
crackles, the driver answers. I have been ordered to go back to
the dispatch center. They say the Israeli soldiers won't let internationals
go with ambulances outside of the city. I try to protest, but
I am suddenly washed with a feeling of despair. All at once I
feel useless. This stupid American woman condescending enough
to come into this town, and think that I could help. The problems
here are complex, and weighted with issues I have never had to
organize around before. My naivete is heavy about me. I cannot
work anymore today. I am physically ill, and mentally pained.
I know I cannot show my sorrow or my rage to my Palestinian friends.
I haven't earned it. I have only touched the skin of their suffering,
what lies beneath I cannot even imagine.
I am
dizzy walking backing to the flat. Homesick, and heartsick and
embarrassed. In bed I listen to my walkman. Ani sings me an activists
lullabye: "I'm no heroine .Least not last time I checked.
I'm too easy to roll over, and I'm to easy to wreck. I just write
about what I should have done, and sing what I wish I could say,
and I hope somewhere some woman hears my music and it helps her
through her day."
We paid
for this occupation, sitting in our air-conditioned houses, never
questioning where our tax dollars are sucked away to. My big woman's
ego has been leveled, and I am just a little girl with a fever
struggling to make sense in the rubble, in the heat of Jenin.
