17/8/97

Our Arabs

    You'd expect them to be hurling rotten tomatoes at each other -- at best. At worst, stones, fists, venomous invective. 
    Mahane Yehuda, the warren of onions, pickles and arch-Jewish sentiment, the bastion of hot-tempered nationalist passion, is no place for an Arab. Not ever, but certainly not days after the slaughter, when the smell of charred human flesh still mingles with the hovering aroma of raw animal flesh. 
    It's utterly senseless: not the war -- the peace. The Arabs who work here are not afraid of Jews, but of other Arabs; the Jews who work here don't think of "their" Arabs as Arabs.
    "Go basta-basta (stall to stall), you see Arabs working everywhere here," says Dan, purveyor of cukes, tomatoes, potatoes. "Yeah, of course I got an Arab. He's a good worker. Yalla, Mohammed, come!"
    Mohammed, a round little 15-year-old, has at least one thing in common with Jewish teenagers, pimples. He also has a plate in his head, which Ilan, the stall-owner next door, playfully whaps every few minutes, I suppose to make the thing rattle. Mohammed helps support his family in the Old City -- Dad and his four wives and 24 children. 
    "Arab workers here are free. The shuk is like our home. We're not afraid. My father's afraid, but not me." 
    Moments after the double bombing, police ordered Mohammed to go home. He stayed away for a week. 
    "I missed him," Dan says. "We eat together. Y'know, people don't understand what we're like here in the shuk. We're not racist. No one who works here is racist."
    "Anyone who likes Arabs is not a Jew," Ilan retorts, provoking Mohammed. The lad chuckles happily: he enjoys the teasing, he seems not take the barbs as hatred.  
    And maybe it's not. Street language has its own inflections. On these streets, Dan doesn't consider Ilan racist, Ilan doesn't think of Mohammed as an Arab, Mohammed likes Ilan. Who can judge?
    At the fishmonger nearby, glowering, bearded Mahmud wields a fearful-looking butcher's knife. "Shoppers are afraid of me. You think I care?" 
    Unlike shy little Mohammed, Mahmud is forthright, even aggressive. "But people who work here, they know me. What, you think they shout bad things to me? They say 'Mahmud, how are you today?'" He attacks a pile of fish, aware but unconcerned that he's splashing fish guts on my shirt. "Yeah, all Arabs are guilty!" And finally, he smiles. 
    His employer, Avner, has the look of a stunned mullet. It's easy to understand why: he stares straight ahead, but out the corner of each eye he can see the carnage inflicted by both bombs. "I was a sandwich," he says.  
    His friends and neighbors dead and maimed, and he, blessedly lucky to be standing here selling fish: well, Avner, what do you think of the Arabs now?
    "You must understand, we don't hate our Arabs."
    In better days, 16-year-old Mohammed would have been luring shoppers with a singsong "eggs, yalla, eggs, yalla, eggs!" But those familiarly lusty, jocund shouts have stilled. The rhythmic clamor that makes the shuk what it is -- "Three for a shekel, I must be crazy!" -- is decidedly inappropriate these days. So Mohammed, the egg kid, sits, waits. His ears still ring from the blast, across the alley: he happened to duck at the right time. 
    "There is peace here. Arabs and Jews, you know, we all helped each other."
    Mohammed is a startlingly handsome youth, with big, soft brown eyes, dimples, alluring smile. His brother owns this stall, one of the few Arab-owned bastas in Mahane Yehuda.
    "Sometimes," he says, "people say things against Arabs, and it hurts me to hear it. But the people who work here, they're OK. We're brothers."
    He hasn't been working here long enough to be recognized -- only two months -- but he was unafraid. He took up his position behind the stacks of eggs the next day.  
    Next door, Eliyahu sits stone-still behind pretty, pastel-colored mounds of spices. He seems on the verge of bursting into tears, but he speaks without a trace of passion. 
    "When you work with people, you don't ask about their politics, their opinions. Arabs, Jews ... we know each other as people, just people. 
    "Even when we shout 'Arabs out!', they understand we don't mean them, we're not shouting at them."
    A lady stops at his display and asks if the paprika's fresh. "It's fresh. You can be sure, lady, everything is fresh: our entire stock was thrown out after the bomb."
    Daoud, a strapping, handsome 23-year-old who's worked here for the past decade, is sufficiently confident in this environment that he speaks Arabic, loudly. "Afraid? I stayed. People shouted, 'Daoud, go home!' But this is our place too, so I stayed." He fingered his beans absentmindedly. "Nobody here is against Arabs."
    What's strange is that, even where there is hate, it's an almost hateless hate. 
    Johnny says he hates Arabs. "I am extremist. I'm more extreme than Kahane, much more extreme. I believe Arabs should be killed as soon as they're born. We mustn't show we're afraid of them, we can't show fear. I'm not ashamed to say I'm an extremist, that we should kill all the Arabs."
    Adel doesn't bat an eyelash. His boss is saying that he, his family, his friends, and all of his people should be piled up like the dead chickens filling their shop, but Adel understands. He smiles.
    It's a smile utterly puzzling -- placidly demure, maddeningly naive -- as if Johnny had just said what a fine boy was he. 
    Adel, eager, bright and friendly, has been working for Johnny for 10 years, since he was 13. And yes, he's allowed to work with the frightfully sharp knife that could slice the throat of not just a bird but a fulminating hater. 
    I wasn't sure I heard Johnny correctly, or that Adel had, or perhaps he was joking. But we had, and he wasn't.
    Adel was arrested after the bombing; but he's not angry. He says some Arabs were beaten; he's a bit afraid, but not enough to stay away. He says that "the people who did this are heartless"; but he doesn't hate them. He says he knows how Johnny feels about his people; but he doesn't hate him either. 
    "I love him. I love everyone."