Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. Colm Toibin

       SAMI

       RAJA SHEHADEH

      EVERY CONFLICT HAS ITS UNSUNG HEROES. IN PALESTINE THEY’RE the taxi drivers. After living for half a century under occupation, my nerves are strained. I can no longer endure the anxiety of what might appear on the road, whether it is angry drivers converging into long bottlenecks as they jostle to get in place at the more than five hundred checkpoints scattered in the small area of the West Bank, or the pathetic boys who throw themselves at your car pretending to clean the windshield, asking for money. Every time I see a scrawny kid clinging to the car, I am torn between giving him a few coins and encouraging begging, or driving on and possibly injuring him. The plight of these boys invariably makes me hate myself, forcing me to confront the extent to which my society has failed.

      Then there is the indignity of having to wait on the whim of a teenage soldier to motion me to pass or to prevent me from passing and ordering me to “get out of your car, leave the keys in, and stand against the wall,” or whatever other insult pops into his or her head.

      But perhaps the main reason why I stopped driving out of Ramallah is that the roads Israel built to link the Jewish settlements with Israel have replaced the familiar old roads, making the whole network so complicated and confusing that I often get lost. And this is the greatest indignity of all, getting lost in your own country.

      This is why I began asking Sami to drive me in his taxi. Patient, considerate, well tempered and kind, he also possesses the other signal virtue of punctuality. I’m just amazed at how he manages always to arrive on time when there are so many imponderables. Short, well built with cropped hair, he looks sturdy but unthreatening, with a pleasant smile that rarely leaves his face. I never cease to wonder how he can remain so even tempered despite the tragedies his family has endured and the difficulties he experiences on the road. Besides, gentle Sami, with his slight lisp, is such a good storyteller.

      I realized how truly outstanding he is when he sent a colleague of his, Abed, in his stead. That day Sami could not drive me, because his wife was going to see an Israeli doctor and he needed to be with her to act as an interpreter. I could immediately see how different Sami with his calm manner was from Abed, who, perturbed and anxious, kept thanking God every time we passed through a checkpoint. Abed managed to arrive at my house on time, but he immediately announced that he had had a hard time getting from Jerusalem to Ramallah.

      “It’s easier to go to Tel Aviv than to come to Ramallah,” he said in an aggrieved fashion. “I went to Qalandiya and it was totally clogged so I risked going to al-Jeeb. Yesterday a friend of mine used that checkpoint. After he went through he found that the soldiers had placed another barrier some distance away. So he was stuck. He could neither go forward into Ramallah nor back to Jerusalem. But today, thank God, it was open and I made it on time.

      “Which road should I take now?” Abed asked me forlornly.

      “No idea,” I said. “It’s up to you.”

      Abed breathed deeply. “I’ll try Qalandiya. It’s Monday, you know. That’s the worst day. Schools are open and everyone’s at work. Then we have to pass through the bridge at Sheikh Jarrah and this tends to be clogged. I don’t know how long it will take me to get to Jerusalem.”

      Fortunately, last Thursday, it was Sami and not Abed who had driven me to the airport.

      I was going to London for only a week and my flight was at five in the afternoon. The drive from Ramallah to the airport used to take fifty minutes. With so many checkpoints on the way, I left the house at noon, five hours before the flight.

      I held my breath when we passed the first checkpoint. Sami does not lie: not only is he kind and considerate, but he is also honest, perhaps far too honest for our situation. Unlike other drivers I’ve used to get to the airport, Sami’s honesty extends to telling the truth even to soldiers. Though he’s fluent in Hebrew and could easily pass for a Jew, he never lies and says he lives in one of the East Jerusalem neighborhoods that are really Jewish settlements. Nor does he ever place a Hebrew newspaper on the dashboard or play Israeli music so that the soldiers will wave him through, thinking he’s one of them.

      The spring weather was pleasant and refreshing as we drove through the Palestinian village of Ayn Arik, which sits in a valley famed for its pomegranate trees. The village has a mixed Christian and Muslim population. The hills on both sides of the road were covered with olive trees. In the course of his long experience of driving in the country, Sami had witnessed the extensive transformation of the landscape and was often able to correct my misconceptions about the basis of Israeli planning. We were heading to Bethlehem, driving through the beautiful hills south of Jerusalem. It was not possible to use the road that connects the two cities, which are only seven kilometers apart, because Israel does not allow taxis through the Bethlehem checkpoint. We had to circle around, go through the tunnels to Beit Jala and from there to Bethlehem.

      My eyes wandered from the Palestinian villages spread out on the hills to the fortresslike Jewish settlements on top. I noticed that there was no separation wall here. It seemed to me anyone could cross over by walking down the hill. But when I suggested this to Sami, he said the guards at the settlement on top of the hill would immediately spot someone. He was right, of course. I could see they plan the settlements to act as buffers that allow for the surveillance of the entire valley.

      As we drove through Jerusalem, we had to stop for the recently built light rail to pass. Sami said: “If Israel had built a line connecting Ramallah to Jerusalem, how different it would have been between us.”

      From the valley of the pomegranate trees we drove up a steep and dangerous road, passing through the village of Deir Ibzi, then descended again into another valley only to climb up another hill. It was like riding the waves of a turbulent sea. Or was it my troubled mind that made me think of this image for these familiar hills?

      On one solitary hill stood the Jewish settlement of Dolev, a mere nine kilometers away from where I live in Ramallah. But the road from Ramallah to Dolev has long been closed to Palestinian traffic. Our detour took about forty-five minutes. We continued driving down a winding, single-lane road to get to the motorway linking the settlements together. But as soon as we got to the crossroads we found that the Israeli army had placed concrete barrier blocks there, preventing Palestinian access to this road. Israel planned this new road network three decades ago, to enable the military to block Palestinian traffic on a whim, without affecting Israeli settlement traffic.

      As we stood there wondering what to do, we could see the settlers’ cars and buses zooming by along the double-lane, well-designed road, unaware of our miserable fate. Sami muttered: “Just when we find a possible road to the airport, the army closes it.” He then picked up his mobile phone and began calling a colleague to find out how it was at the Qalandiya crossing, at least an hour away.

      “It’s very bad,” he was told. His friend said he had been held up for two hours. “Don’t come here. It’s a trap,” the friend said. Sami was also informed that the checkpoint we were heading to, near the village of Ni’leen, had also been closed to nonsettler traffic.

      He now turned to me with a look of desperation and said: “We have no other choice but to try going through the Rantis checkpoint.” The only problem is that only Israeli citizens are allowed through and neither Sami nor I is an Israeli citizen. “If we’re stopped I could get in trouble for attempting to smuggle you through, and you might end up being detained. Or, if they want to be kind, they might simply send us back. But then there would be no possibility that you’ll make it in time for your flight. What do you say? Shall we risk it?”

      “Not much choice,” I said calmly and with as much confidence as I could muster, though I was feeling utterly nervous and uncertain. “We’ve already spent forty-five minutes and I must be at the airport three hours before my flight or they will not let me fly.”

      “I know,” said Sami, “I’ll do what I can to get