by Moriel Rothman-ZecherNovember 23, 201512:33

On the blood just spilled near my favorite banana stand

I have nothing new to say about violence and nations. Nothing new to say about this place. About this city. Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing. Just the thought of red blood next to yellow bananas in a gray city under yellow sun.

There is nothing new about today’s violence. Just that it took place next to my favorite banana stand in the shuk. Near what I think is the fourth best falafel place in West Jerusalem. Stabbing, they say. With scissors, they say. 27 year-old man, then say, and an 80 year-old. Two women, they say. One shot dead. Really young.

I know what Kayla, my partner, would say. She grew up in Jerusalem, during the Time When Buses and Cafes Might Be Blown to Pieces.

“Were you there?”

“No.”

“Ok. So you weren’t there.”

This is probably how she’d help me calm down. But we haven’t talked yet today. She’s in Tel Aviv, so all good, there. I WhatsApped our family WhatsApp group, so I’m good. I have nothing new to say. And I know she’s right. I know that’s probably the only way to keep sane in this bloodplace. But I still can’t help but.

Every morning, I wake up around 6:00AM. I usually finish writing around 10:00AM. Then I’ll read the news for a bit, have another cup of coffee. Maybe go to the shuk, for some groceries, around 11:00. Yesterday, I got these bananas there. They’re still not ripe.

It feels like we are all just pawns.

It’s an absurd thing, this being human, this notion that somehow we are, each of us, the center of the world, the most important thing in it, that our lives are the most valuable, that our friends are the most important friends, that our families are the most precious families. I get it. We’re wired like this. But still. I don’t get it.

Perhaps the attackers were two young people who were convinced by others or convinced themselves that this was the way to liberation. Or were taking revenge. Or maybe wanted to die, or to kill, for reasons, because of. Or were just confused. They were apparently really, really young. I don’t know if there was a way to stop them without killing one of them. I do not that other cases here have indicated that doing so – avoiding killing – is a non-priority. It’s feels awful. It all does. I don’t know. I know the Political Headlines. I know the Sociological Explanations. They just start to feel hollow, echoey at some point. How often can you repeat the same thing? Things.

There are so many people dying and being killed here. I know. Not so many, compared to some places, but so many compared to how it should be. A young girl, Hadar Buchris, killed in the Gush Etzion junction, who might have been a friend of mine, if we’d met. She also majored in theatre in high school. Or the 24 people killed in the Hebron district, who might have offered me coffee, might have noted that my Arabic was good, might have marched near me in the demonstration to open Shuhada street. One of them, Mahdi al-Muhtaseb worked in two separate sweet-pastry bakeries, was just about to get married.

I don’t want to force any parallels, or pretend to be some impartial observer. I know that I am a party to this conflict. I am an Israeli Jew. I recognize that the Israeli Jews killed often feel more similar to me, like they’ve shared more life experiences. I also recognize that my political opinions influence my mourning. That I see the Palestinians who are killed as coming from the oppressed side, and so. I also know that many more Palestinians are being killed. I also think that the circumstances around the Jewish Israelis being killed are usually less murky, and its usually more clear, in the micro sense, who the aggressor was. But maybe that’s just cause of the news I read. The people around me. I know that some may call me a terrorist sympathizer. Others will call me a faux-enlightened colonialist. I don’t think I’m either of those things. But of course I don’t, because I’m me, because some wiring in my head tells me that my opinions are righter than others’. I don’t actually know much at all.

I’m mostly stuck on the image of blood near the banana stand. It’s probably and trite and banal thing to say, but I hate this, all of it.

10Comments

Add yours

1

“Why does no one ask the Israeli Army about its nonviolence?” | The Leftern Wall on November 24, 2015 at 20:49

[…] of the family, also joined the conversation, and mentioned the young girls who carried out the stabbing with a pair of scissors yesterday in the shuk, the ones who might have tried to stab me, if […]
2

Andrea Taglio on November 24, 2015 at 16:26

Argh Sir, your post really moved me: I live in a quiet zone, very few killings, but still your reports scare me so much, because I would rather not face this kind of fear and sadness, and loss.

and I want to compliment with you, that can still feel and think as a real human being under this stress.
Keep it up, please: I think the better world we all long for needs people like you, with empathy and good sense.

Thank you for sharing and for upholding values of civility
3

Marilyn Paul on November 23, 2015 at 20:36

Beautiful. Moving. I’m in tears, again, at the non-stopness and the inexorable hatred and the helpless what-can-I-do? Which is close to nothing.

I’m glad you are still with us and that it wasn’t you attacked by a girl with scissors.

Thanking of all of you.
4

Michelle on November 23, 2015 at 20:18

Thank you for this post. I am so glad you wrote it and posted it, decided not to worry about the “politics” of what it says or doesn’t say. To state the truth of your heart at this moment. (I live in Los Angeles, am Jewish — whatever that means — has meant different things to me through my 60+ years, is still part of me) … Yes. Yes, the political analyses and sociological explanations have their place, and yes, absolutely, “No Justice No Peace,” we cannot smooth over injustice with words and feelings alone … and yet, too: what you write here is not trite or banal. What you write, what I have read — what I have sought out — from others across the spectrum of experience (I’m not talking alone Israel-Palestine, though that included): a need to speak simple human words, of human reality, human realities, so that there is a chance for us to find our way to each other there. Did you see the posting and now video by Antoine Leiris, who lost his wife Helene in the Bataclan theatre in Paris — powerful, beautiful, human energy in the face of grief: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34862437

As it happens, this morning I came across (from a very different direction) the following poem by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva (b.1892, committed suicide 1941). It reminds me of the Rumi lines, “Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense any more.”

She wrote this in 1915, during WWI:

I Know the Truth
by Marina Tsvetayeva

I know the truth – forget all other truths!
No need for anyone on earth to struggle.
Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what will you say, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep beneath the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

Trans. by Elaine Feinstein
5

Yonit on November 23, 2015 at 17:00

Thank you, Mori. This is so wise and compassionate. Sending love from many miles away.
6

totohanthala on November 23, 2015 at 16:40

Ah, we’re just specks of fleeting dust on a insignificant pale blue dot in the vastness of a infinity. How can you, or i compare to that? Yet each speck that comprises this greatness and what you are. consists of particles billions of years old that will continue billions of years into the future and their must be some solace in that.
Yet each of us, within this mental institution of the galaxy have to live out a day starting on a bleary-eyed am and attempt not to go mad(even though that point has been passed quite some time ago)and attempt to spend the next 24- hours or so becoming relative,viable and worthwhile.
No, virginian, we are not here to arrogantly change the world, we are here to merely do the best we can, live a life that affects positively all that is around us and not become what we despise. To live a life guided by only one thing as true as possible; By Conscience..
Will we be remembered beyond your family and friends? Will those memories fade and dissipate once we are gone and they are? What of our struggles here and now? Probability says what we are is simply a play acted out by our descendants so ergo; this is meaningless. But if not? Live your day guided by your conscience and let the rest lie where it lies…
7

Moriel Rothman-Zecher on November 23, 2015 at 15:07

Thanks, Bluth. I’m home, right now. Maybe coming into to town soon. Will text you if so. Thanks for reading and writing.
8

Rachel Rosenbluth on November 23, 2015 at 14:25

Most relatable writings I’ve read in a long time.

Thanks for sharing.

Sendin love.

If you are at a cafe doing stuff for the next few hours let me know maybe I’ll join. I’m sitting in a garden thinking and procrastinating heading home (since home is by that banana stand).

Bluth another human bean
9

Moriel Rothman-Zecher on November 23, 2015 at 12:46

But fine. But not. Precisely.
10

Inbar on November 23, 2015 at 12:45

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I empathize with it. My first thought was, I wanted my husband to go by there and pick up something today. I forgot to ask him. He wasn’t there. I felt a little better. And then those others, the injured and dead, Israeli, Palestinian. Both have pieces of my heart. Yet my heart’s okay because my family is okay. And yet I’m disturbed. But fine. But not.