Shaheed

november 7th, 2010

“why do people have to shoot people in the mouth? like why not somewhere else? why in the mouth” i asked my roommate exasperated, frustrated and disgustingly bewildered.  “well what happens is when you do that you make sure...” she caught the look on my face and paused to switch gears to ask “ wait was that a rhetorical question or did you actually want to know?”  i didnt actually want to know, i was just not dealing with it, it being what i had heard a mere hour before on a car ride back home. i figured, ah what the heck “yeah ok tell me”

“what happens is, you blow out the back part right here, which controls your breathing and functioning, so you make sure that the person is dead, like if you shoot someone in the brain you know you could fuck them up, you could kill them but you could also have a chance where they dont die theyre just fucked up in the brain, but putting a gun in your mouth, you are dead”

ghassan’s uncle's blown out brain was splattered on the staircase after the IDF had stuck a gun in his mouth.

I was and am still frozen.  I feel like i can’t function? why? i’m not sure.  ‘im not thinking.  im just frozen.  the only thing i’m thinking is, ok maybe it makes sense to document what i’m feeling right now, this doesnt feel right, this feels unnatural, is this real? this actually happened to them.  this actually happened to them.

i feel slightly immobile.  maybe it was ghassan’s mom’s stoic face, her sweet and calm voice as she was telling me this horrendous story as we were driving back in the car, and the warmth of this family and the jovial childishness of his grandfather that makes this unbearable. maybe it was their gracious welcome into thier family farm, their family house, and into their village, and the delicious family dinner, and sleeping on the floor with the kids sprawled all over me after an exhausting day, that makes me feel this way.  my heart is heavy and restless.  

Its restless because conflict, war, weapons, death, violence, guns, soliders, settlements, suicide bombing, murders, checkpoints, restrictions, and resistence, these are not concepts to me anymore, and anyone who has not experienced these in their own reality, only deals with these notions as concepts, not a reality. when it permeates into your sense of self, life perspective and your external world, and when it affects people you know, and even worse care about, these concepts turn into an ugly reality that you wish never existed.  
the juxtaposition of ghassan’s 8 year old free and strong spirit running around side by side with his grandfater in his village, and the shaheed pictures and portraits of his uncle hanging on the walls of practically every room was another testament to something that I feel like I've felt too many times in Palestine: witnessing the pureness and the innocence of humanity side by side, simultaneously, with the pure evil and worst of humanity.  

we were on our way home from Kufur Thalth to Ramallah and we passed a graveyard. Ghassan's mom wanted to stop for a little bit and asked all her kids to pray and recite Surah Fatiha in their duas. She told me that her brother was buried there and every time they pass by the graveyard they pay their respects. The only thing I knew about this brother was what she told me every time she mentioned him "my brother. the Israeli people killed him". 

I knew that he was in prison for 5 years, for being too 'outspoken' in college. "He was really shy and quiet. But he spoke up against a lot of things". and they would take him to jail, for indefinite amounts of time, and then let him go and come back after him again and again. I asked Ghassan's mom "wait why do they take people to prison?" it was a rhetorical question. with my time here so far and talking to people, i know that there are no good reasons why people are taken to prison. if the Israeli soldiers feel like putting you into prison, they'll put you in prison.  

He was only 20 years old, with a really artistic spirit. Through his 5 years in jail, he made art in prison. The living rooms which carried the portraits on the walls, also had his artwork placed on all the shelves. like incredible art. he took cardboard he found around prison and made replicas of the Dome of the Rock, and built sculptors and frames, out of things here and there. 

Artwork : made entirely of cardboard and thread

I couldn't believe this man had made all this in prison. He also taught himself Hebrew during his time and the last time he was in prison and then taken to court he demanded that he would defend himself. There was no evidence, or any reason for him to be locked up, and the judge let him go. After they let him go, he changed his identity. He moved to Nablus, changed his name, changed his looks, and started a new life and had disconnected himself from his family. They had no idea where he was for three years. He just did not want to go back to prison. So one day, jeeps showed up outside the family's house where he was staying, and they called him by his real name, announcing that they knew where he was and that they wanted him. The building was evacuated. He hid on the roof of the bathroom. When they raided the building, they found him, and at the staircase, they put a gun to is mouth and blew out his brain.

The mom found out watching the news, her son's face on the screen, who was now dead who she hadn't heard from in 3 years. She went crazy.

I kept on thinking about the locket that hangs around her neck, with her son's picture, framed in gold, that I noticed everytime she came over to sit next to me or talk to me.

Ghassan's mom at that time was in Gaza, and she couldn't get out. She heard about her brother, from her husband who heard from another family friend. She was only able to visit the grave, after their house was blown up in Gaza in 2008, they were able to get out, and start a new life in Ramallah and move to the West Bank under special sanctions.

When the dead body was given to the family in Nablus, the family took the body and wanted to bring it to the village Kufur Thalth to bury it there. At they checkpoint, the soldiers stopped the mourning family and told them that they could go, but the dead body could not go. Because the dead body is obviously a threat.

After hassles and chaos, the other brothers carried the corpse into the village.

Several months later, the soldiers showed up at their house again. This time wanting to take the other brothers into prison. "One is already under the ground. We have to show you people what you are playing with" This is how they would come to the house and interrogate the brothers, the ones that are alive.

I'm listening to this story, and my entire perception of my weekend changes. I am in utter shock hearing what I"m hearing and I'm replaying over and over again every single family member that I had met, and trying to imagine what they had to go through. A village turns into a battleground. And an innocent weekend turns into something else, I can't even explain.

I failed to realize how heavily their story impacted me until I realized that I was sort of shutting down, because there are some things and some feelings you just can't explain. And it's a slow process. Sometimes you go through feelings and you feel like you are in a mind warp where things just don't make sense. Or you feel anger when you realize how blind and deaf the world chooses to be.

I was telling my best friend that, I KNOW this happens, I KNOW what a Shaheed means, I know this happens in Palestine, I KNOW this place is under occupation. But then after experiences like this, I realize I don't know anything at all. It's different when it's real and not just a story. The reality becomes so shocking sometimes that you perceive it as a stranger and you feel foreign to it.