Part 2 (2/2)

Apart from trying to keep me in line, no one helped our family while my father was in prison. With his arrest, we lost the extra income he earned teaching at the Christian school. The school promised to hold his job for him until his release, but in the meantime, we did not have enough money to buy what we needed.

My father was the only one in our family with a driver's license, so we couldn't use our car. My mother had to walk long distances to go to the market, and I often went along to help her carry the parcels. I think the shame was worse than the want. As we went through the market, I crawled under the carts to pick up broken, rotting produce that had fallen on the ground. My mother negotiated a lower price for these unappetizing vegetables n.o.body else wanted, telling the vendors we were buying them to feed livestock. She still has to negotiate for everything to this day because my father has been in prison thirteen times-more times than any other Hamas leader. (He is in prison as I write this.) I think maybe no one helped us because everybody believed that our family had plenty of money. After all, my father was a prominent religious and political leader. And people undoubtedly trusted that our extended family would help us. Surely Allah would provide. But our uncles ignored us. Allah did nothing. So my mother took care of her seven children alone (our little brother Mohammad had arrived in 1987).

Finally, when things got really desperate, my mom asked a friend of my father's for a loan-not so she could go shopping and buy clothes and cosmetics for herself, but so she could feed her children at least one meal a day. But he refused her. And instead of helping us, he told his Muslim friends that my mother had come to him begging for money.

”She has a salary from the Jordanian government,” they said, judging her. ”Why is she asking for more? Is this woman taking advantage of her husband's imprisonment to become rich?”

She never asked for help again.

”Mosab,” she said to me one day, ”what if I make some baklava and other homemade sweets and you go and sell them to the workers in the industrial area?” I said I would be glad to do anything to help our family. So every day after school, I changed my clothes, filled a tray with my mother's pastries, and went out to sell as many as I could. I was shy at first, but eventually I went boldly to every worker and asked him to buy from me.

One winter day, I left as usual to sell my pastries. But when I got to the area, I found that it was empty. No one had come to work that day because it was so cold. My hands were freezing, and it had started to rain. Holding the plastic-covered tray over my head as an umbrella, I noticed a car containing several people parked on the side of the street. The driver spotted me, opened his window, and leaned out.

”Hey, kid, what have you got?”

”I have some baklava,” I said, walking over to the car.

Looking inside, I was shocked to see my uncle Ibrahim. His friends were shocked to see Ibrahim's nephew all but begging on a cold, rainy day, and I was ashamed to be an embarra.s.sment to my uncle. I didn't know what to say. They didn't either.

My uncle bought all the baklava, told me to go home, and said he would see me later. When he arrived at our house, he was furious with my mother. I couldn't hear what he said to her, but after he left, she was crying. The next day after school, I changed and told my mom I was ready to go back out to sell pastries.

”I don't want you to sell baklava anymore,” she said.

”But I'm getting better every day! I am good at it. Just trust me.”

Tears came into her eyes. And I never went out again.

I was angry. I didn't understand why our neighbors and family wouldn't help us. And on top of that, they had the nerve to judge us for trying to help ourselves. I wondered if the real reason they would not lend a hand to our family was that they were afraid of getting into trouble themselves if the Israelis thought they were helping terrorists. But we weren't terrorists. Neither was my father. Sadly, that would change too.

Chapter Six

A Hero's Return1990.

When my father was finally released, our family was suddenly treated like royalty after being shunned for a year and a half. The hero had returned. No longer the black sheep, I became the heir apparent. My brothers were princes, my sisters princesses, and my mother was the queen. No one dared to judge us anymore.

My father got his job back at the Christian school, in addition to his position at the mosque. Now that he was home, my father tried to help my mom around the house as much as possible. This eased the workload we kids had been carrying. We certainly weren't rich, but we had enough money to buy decent food and even an occasional prize for the winner of Stars. And we were rich in honor and respect. Best of all, my father was with us. We didn't need anything else.

Everything quickly returned to normal. Of course, normal normal is a relative term. We still lived under Israeli occupation with daily killing in the streets. Our house was just down the road from a cemetery gorged with b.l.o.o.d.y corpses. Our father had horrifying memories of the Israeli prison where he had been incarcerated for eighteen months as a suspected terrorist. And the occupied territories were degenerating into little more than a lawless jungle. is a relative term. We still lived under Israeli occupation with daily killing in the streets. Our house was just down the road from a cemetery gorged with b.l.o.o.d.y corpses. Our father had horrifying memories of the Israeli prison where he had been incarcerated for eighteen months as a suspected terrorist. And the occupied territories were degenerating into little more than a lawless jungle.

The only law respected by Muslims is Islamic law, defined by fatwas fatwas, or religious rulings on a particular topic. Fatwas are intended to guide Muslims as they apply the Qur'an to daily living, but because there is no central unifying rule maker, different sheikhs often issue different fatwas about the same matter. As a result, everyone is living by a different set of rules, some much more strict than others.

I was playing indoors with my friends one afternoon when we heard screaming outside. Yelling and fighting were nothing new in our world, but when we ran outside, we saw our neighbor, Abu Saleem, waving a big knife around. He was trying to kill his cousin, who was doing his best to avoid the s.h.i.+ny blade as it slashed through the air. The entire neighborhood tried to stop Abu Saleem, but this man was huge. He was a butcher by trade, and I once watched him slaughter a bull in his backyard, which left him covered from head to foot in sticky, steaming blood. I couldn't help but think about what he had done to that animal as I watched him running after hiscousin.

Yes, I thought to myself, I thought to myself, we are truly living in a jungle. we are truly living in a jungle.

There were no police to call, no one in authority. What could we do but watch? Fortunately, his cousin ran away and did not return.

When my father came home that night, we told him what had happened. My father is only five foot seven and not what you would call athletic. But he went next door and said, ”Abu Saleem, what's going on? I heard there was a fight today.” And Abu Saleem went on and on about wanting to kill his cousin.

”You know that we are under occupation,” my father said, ”and you know that we don't have time for this foolishness. You've got to sit down and apologize to your cousin, and he has to apologize to you. I don't want any more problems like this.”

Like everyone else, Abu Saleem respected my father. He trusted in his wisdom, even in matters such as this. He agreed to work things out with his cousin, and then he joined my father in a meeting with the other men in the neighborhood.

”Here is the situation,” my father said quietly. ”We don't have a government here, and things are getting completely out of control. We can't keep fighting each other, shedding the blood of our own people. We are fighting in the streets, fighting in our homes, fighting in the mosques. Enough is enough. We are going to have to sit down at least once every week and try to solve our problems like men. We don't have police, and we don't have room for anybody to kill anybody. We have bigger problems to deal with. I want your unity. Iwant you to help each other. We need to be more like a family.”

The men agreed that what my father was proposing made sense. They decided to meet together every Thursday night to discuss local issues and resolve any conflicts they might be having with one another.

As imam of the mosque, it was my father's job to give people hope and help them resolve their problems. He was also the closest thing they had to a government. He had become just like his father. But now he also spoke with the authority of Hamas-with the authority of a sheikh. A sheikh has more authority than an imam and is more like a general than a priest.

Since my father had come home three months before, I had tried to spend as much time as I could with him. I was now president of the Islamic student movement in our school, and I wanted to know all I could about Islam and the study of the Qur'an. One Thursday evening, I asked if I could join him at the weekly neighborhood meeting. I was nearly a man, I explained, and I wanted to be treated as such.

”No,” he said, ”you stay here. This is for men. I will tell you later what went on.”

I was disappointed, but I understood. None of my friends were allowed to attend the weekly meetings either. At least I would be privy to what happened at the meeting once my father returned home.

So he left for a couple of hours. While my mother prepared a delicious fish dinner, somebody knocked at the back door. I opened the door just wide enough to peek through and saw Captain Shai, the same man who had arrested my father nearly two years earlier.

”Abuk mawjood?”

”No, he's not here.”

”Then open the door.”

I didn't know what else to do, so I opened the door. Captain Shai was polite, just as he had been the first time he came for my father, but I could tell he didn't believe me. He asked if he could look around, and I knew I didn't have a choice but to let him. As the soldier began to search our house, moving from room to room, looking in closets and behind doors, I wished that somehow I could keep my father from coming home. We didn't have a cell phone back then, so I couldn't warn him. But the more I thought about it, I realized that it wouldn't have mattered if we had. He would have come home anyway.

”Okay, everybody stay quiet,” Captain Shai said to a group of soldiers who had been stationed outside. They all ducked down behind bushes and buildings, waiting for my dad. Feeling helpless, I sat down at the table and listened. After a while, a loud voice shouted, ”Stop right there!” Then came the sound of movement and men talking. We knew this couldn't be good. Would my father have to go back to prison?

Within minutes, he slipped back inside, shaking his head and smiling apologetically at each of us.

”They are taking me back,” he said, kissing my mother and then each one of us. ”I don't know how long I will be gone. Be good. Take care of one another.”

Then he put on his jacket and left as his fried fish grew cold on his plate.

Once again we were treated like refugees, even by the men in the neighborhood he had tried to protect from themselves and others. Some people would ask about my father with feigned concern, but it was clear to me they really didn't care.

Although we knew my father was being held in an Israeli prison, no one would tell us which one. We spent three months looking for him in every prison, until we finally heard that he was being held in a special facility where they interrogate only the most dangerous people. Why? Why? I wondered. Hamas had made no terrorist attacks. It wasn't even armed. I wondered. Hamas had made no terrorist attacks. It wasn't even armed.

Once we found out where my father was being held, the Israeli officials allowed us to visit him once a month for thirty minutes. Only two visitors could go in at once, so we took turns going with our mother. The first time I saw him, I was surprised to see that he had let his beard grow long, and he looked exhausted. But it was so good to see him, even like that. He never complained. He only wanted to know how everything was for us, asking us to tell him all the little details of our lives.

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