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Abu Wajih answered, “I swear to God, if the Resurrection comes and I go to paradise, I’ll find no rest. If there’s land to be ploughed in paradise, the Almighty will say, ‘Arise, Abu Wajih, and plough it.’ You think He’s going to ask Abdel Halim Hafez?”
Mahmoud doesn’t look worried. In fact, he looks as confident and calm as if the Greek gods were his first cousins.
In just a few minutes, a giant yellow crane appears from among the trees on the other side of the trench, glistening under the drizzle. In it are two thin, poorly dressed youths, one of whom gestures to Mahmoud to prepare for the rescue.
Later, years after this incident, I will cross a similar trench at the Surda checkpoint on foot in the company of a group of foreign writers who are our guests and whose program includes a visit to Birzeit University. Our cars leave Ramallah in convoy and halt at the Surda checkpoint, halfway to the university. The Israeli army has previously destroyed the mountain road by making a kind of trench in it about 500 meters long that can be crossed only on foot, and with difficulty at that. On a hilltop next to the road stands a large house belonging to a Palestinian family that the army has occupied after throwing out the residents and has converted into both a military post monitoring everything that moves and an operations room where the decision to close the road can be taken at any time. The entire front of the building is covered with green camouflage material pierced with holes and through these can be seen the barrels of machine guns pointed at the people going through the checkpoint. The cars that have brought us from Ramallah stop and we get out to cross the trench on foot. I keep up my conversation about theater with Wole Soyinka and we try to avoid stumbling. Around us the others are continuing their discussions on literature and politics, their bodies approaching and separating according to the uneve
After crossing the trench, we will climb up to the highway and get into different cars, sent by the Birzeit administration to wait for us on the other side so that we can finish our journey to the university.
This morning, however, things are quite different.
We are now in front of a trench similar to the one at Surda but we’re in a taxi carrying large, medium, and small suitcases on its roof and with seven passengers inside, and it is this car and no other that has to get us to the other side. It is this car and no other that has to take us to Jericho; there is no alternative in this remote stretch of country. There is no way back and there are no taxis waiting on the other side of this fissure in the earth.
It occurs to Mahmoud that he ought to secure the suitcases with rope to prevent all or some of them from falling off during the rescue operation. He fetches a long rope, ties one end to the luggage rack, throws it over to the other side, tugs on it, and then repeats the procedure, helped by the sad young man, who comes quickly to his assistance. He doesn’t stop tying till he’s completely satisfied. He orders us to return to our seats inside the car so that the two rescuers can start their work. We sit and wait.
Mahmoud issues his instructions: “Fasten your seat belts. Don’t panic. We’re going for a ride on the swings!”
He laughs, to encourage us and himself.
He takes his place behind the wheel, first making sure that the doors are properly closed.
A moment of total silence envelops us all. A moment as silent as a candle burning. A moment as silent as a letter being passed under a door.
Then the rumbling begins.
Dumbstruck, I watch what’s happening.
The huge long arm of the crane rises gradually into space until it reaches what its drivers judge to be the correct height. Its metal joints rub and chitter against one another and from time to time it groans as they lower the arm slowly toward us, tilting it a little to the left, then a little to the right, and finally, with extreme care, bringing it down till it is almost touching the car. Next, it takes the car in the grip of its terrible iron fingers, which wrap themselves around its body like the fingers of a hand around a pomegranate, and with careful slowness lifts it, and us, into the air. We are now between earth and sky.
The suspended bubble of air in which we seven are swinging is now our place of exile from this earth. It is our disabled will and our attempt, in a mixture of courage and fear, to impose our will through wit and cu
We stare downward out of the windows of the car. Yes, downward! Our dream now, Grandmother, is at the level of our feet. We stare at the abyss and the abyss stares at us. The screeching of the crane and the groaning of its metal joints rise and fall as we move away from the edge behind us and closer to the hoped-for edge on the other side.
The crane backs up a little.
Its flying arm, carrying us through the fog of the valley, tries to transfer us, with care, from one edge to another. The crane backs up again and stops.