November 4, 2011 at 2:16am
...and I remember another time in Jerusalem, a month later. a group of Israeli soldiers stopped a Palestinian youth of 12 or 13...
The soldiers took cover under an awning and they made the boy remove his kaffiyeh and pointed to where he should stand - in the rain...
Perhaps for the boy it was one of dozens of humiliations, bad enough in his personal scheme of things, but no worse than others he'd experienced... I don't know...
and I'd come for the occupation and I'd found what I came to find, and here it was again, and something else, too...
The boy stood there and answered their questions, and what choice did he have? But what was he thinking?
Was it, one day it will be a better world and these soldiers and I will greet each other as neighbors? or was it simply, 'one day - one day!'
and beyond the particular abuses of this time and place, beyond the really big questions - the status of Jerusalem, the future of the settlements, the return of the refugees, etc. - which much be raised and then hurdled if there is ever to be peace here, is something else-
a boy standing in the rain, and what is he thinking? and if I'd guessed before I got here, and found with little astonishment once I'd arrived,
what can happen to someone who thinks he has all the power, what of this-
what becomes of someone when he believes he has none?
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