Qalandiya

With an open back door out of which a rifle barrel and a soldier’s shout “Get lost!” are thrust towards a boy crossing the road, an army jeep exited the checkpoint compound proceeded several dozen meters and backed up. Perhaps the armed soldiers had an objective, and perhaps they lost their way and were scared.

“It’s very dangerous in Qalandiya” they always say. And I always answer that it’s dangerous for those who come there in uniforms and carrying rifles.

*

The army has acted as a demolitions contractor yet again, and destroyed Abed’s snack stand to the ground.

40,000 shekels invested in building and equipment went down the drain. The area by the road was razed and exposed.

The snack stand is gone, nor is Abed here, but people’s need certainly is, so they moved an old abandoned structure, made openings, cleaned up a bit, bought some equipment placed it on old tires and created a kind of substitute – an improvised kiosk.

“It’s that son-of-a-bitch officer Shai who did this,” said a young man and added the story of his brother, caught in Jerusalem, who is now in prison for five months.

That brother in prison who is now twenty-two-and–a half, I remember him as a fourteen year old, led into the Ofer military court dressed in prison garb and dragging his leg chains, such a lonely sad boy, apparently detached from everything around him.