Yasmine by Eli Amir Page A

displayed on ceramic tiles in green, black and white, written in Arabic and English. I read them slowly, like a child. It occurred to me to check what the street name signs were like on our side. I’d never thought about it before.
    “Everything’s shut. Bastards. What’s the matter, we aren’t good enough for them?” asked the driver, lighting a cigarette.
    “It’s not them, it’s us. The military governor imposed a curfew,” I told him.
    “Pity, I wanted to buy some electrical goods, before they learn from us and put up the prices.” We continued driving through the empty alleys. Place names and concepts I’d learned from Professor Shadmi rose to the surface of my mind.
    A dead city, bands of soldiers patrolling, and suddenly the voice of my Minister in Charge came from the car radio, full of his trademark pathos: “Jerusalem, the reunified city, the capital of Israel for all eternity…”
    “It seems the bullshit’s starting already,” the driver grumbled and spat out of the window. “What eternity? One bark from Washington and we’ll crawl back into the cage, like we did in ’56.”
    “Where is Wadi Joz?” I asked.
    “You should have said,” he replied and drove towards the Rockefeller Museum and then turned left. We saw closed workshops, heaps of junk, broken vehicles and dead engines, rubbish-strewn plots, then suddenly – crash! A hail of stonesfell on the car. I crouched low. The driver cursed. We looked around and saw no one.
    “Sons of bitches, they aren’t scared!” he said and stopped.
    “Keep going, keep going,” I urged him. “ Ibad an al-shar wughanilo – avoid evil and sing for it!”
    “But what’s going on?” he protested. “We just finished smashing them in the war and already they’re raising their heads!”
    On the right were some wooden huts. Again, I thought of Ghadir, the pretty shepherd girl I had met on Mount Scopus nine years previosly. Perhaps she lived here?
    Rubbish on the roadsides, bits of paper flying, shops and businesses shut, even the hotels were closed. Curious eyes peered at us from the windows, around the curtains. I smiled at them, then stopped. I didn’t want them to interpret the smile either as triumphal or as a greeting.
    “Everything’s closed, damn their eyes. Let’s go to Salah a-Din Street, where their so-called fashionable shops are.”
    “It’s just a little shopping centre,” I said when we arrived, disappointed, as if I’d expected to meet a beautiful cousin who turned out to be nothing special.
    “Wait, wait, you haven’t seen anything yet. This isn’t the Old City.”
    “ Madinat as-salaam , the city of peace,” I intoned.
    “What kind of salaam is this?” he muttered and slowed down again. “Siege, encirclement, breakthrough and liberation – again, and again, for ever and ever.”

5
First Day in East Jerusalem
    Hundreds of Jerusalem Arabs crowded in front of the iron gate of the military governor’s HQ which had moved into the former Jordanian governor’s house on Salah a-Din Street. A woman covered from head to foot was crying “ Ibni, ibni – my son, my son!” – her eyes full of tears. I had seen the same tears in the eyes of the lovely Rashel, the wife of my Uncle Hizkel, and recalled how she had leaned, barely breathing, on my mother when they tore her husband from her arms and dragged him away to the dungeons of Iraq’s secret service. I took a deep breath and pushed my way through the crowd, then went up to the second floor, to the office of the General’s advisor.
    “You’re the General’s advisor?” I was amazed. Aharon Amitai, a former classmate, was sitting behind the desk.
    “ Ahlan wasahlan , Nuri,” he greeted me and stood up.
    “ Ahlan wasahlan to you,” I replied. “This is a surprise.” The room was richly furnished – massive leather armchairs, a conference corner, a huge dark desk, a bright carpet on the floor. On the wall hung an impressive photograph of the Old City as seen