Felicia Langer | I am an Arab

    “Man, how proud the word rings!”  Maxim Gorky, “The Lower Depths”

I have often wondered about the mysteries of memory—about why it is so selective, and about its other trait: its tendency to preserve what is inscribed on its tablet. At times I try to erase from it something that troubles me, but to no avail. The dungeons of Gaza and Hebron, the severed legs of Ibrahim Gharaybeh, the eyes of Omar Salameh gripped by madness, the paralyzed limbs of Qatamish—they dwell within me permanently, in all their horror.

But there are memories that I truly love. They nourish my spirit in my darkest hours and satisfy my hunger for the beauty in people.

Such is my memory of Salman.

I met him under fairly ordinary circumstances. A well-educated, sensitive young man who loved art—a poet. “He’s a Druze,” they told me.

Our second and more significant meeting took place in prison, where he was being held for refusing to serve in the army. He spoke to me in a hushed voice. Prison hadn’t broken him, but I could sense how difficult it was for him. He hung on every word about what was happening outside—the struggles and events—and regretted that he couldn’t take part in them. Knowing military prisons as I did, I felt how important it was to get him out of there as quickly as possible.

A military trial awaited Salman. He was a deserter and a conscientious objector, and I knew the outcome would not be in his favor.

We met in a packed courtroom in Jaffa. His friends and his older brother were there. Salman himself, looking grotesque in his baggy khaki pants—which were too big for him because he was so skinny and he wore a hat that didn’t sit well on his head. He smiled at his friends. I saw the yellowish tinge on his face and thought to myself that prison had taken its toll on him.

Before us, the trials of other soldiers were heard. Simple human tragedies unfolded one after another. “Deserters” who periodically went AWOL to earn a few days’ wages for a needy family, desperate for every penny. Their explanations were emotional, and their distress and fear of the verdict were evident. There you have the other Israel. “The ‘not-so-nice ones,’” as Golda Meir put it—I thought, and the harsh sentences imposed on them reflected the judges’ attitude toward their painful problems.

It was our turn. Salman, the defendant, was summoned to stand at attention. The presiding judge read out his name and address, struggling greatly to pronounce the name of his village, Maghar, correctly, and noted: “Druze.” Then Salman said aloud—in a voice I didn’t think he possessed—“I am an Arab.” Silence fell over the courtroom. The judge looked at Salman in astonishment and said, “As far as I know, the defendant is a Druze”… Salman smiled slightly, stood up straight to his full height in his ridiculous uniform, and replied, “No, Your Honor, I am a member of the Druze community. But by nationality, I am an Arab.” The judge grumbled and muttered that Druze are not Arabs. But Salman stood his ground and repeated the short, provocative statement: “I am an Arab.”

The presiding judge showed impatience: Why doesn’t this eccentric understand the rules of the game that everyone has known for years? We, the authorities, need their blood, and in exchange for their blood we’re willing to grant them a favor— like saying that they aren’t Arabs. They’re much better than the Arabs, and that’s a significant statement considering what people think of Arabs and how hard it is to be an Arab here… Of course, they’re far from members of “the Chosen People.” They’re simply some kind of intermediate nationality, and no one will call them “dirty Arabs.”

And he, this wretched defendant, brazenly rejects the bribe. And not offhandedly but rather standing there before us in such a vulnerable position, with his entire fate in our hands—for punishment or for mercy—when his freedom means either liberty or a stinking cell teeming with rats, when every day has endless hours and every hour has endless minutes.

I am completely captivated by Salman’s face, by his large, black eyes, wide open. It seems as if he had been waiting for this moment and had cherished and caressed those words in his prison cell until he hurled them into the courtroom, as a challenge to his judges.

Something joyful and happy surges within me, in this crowded courtroom.

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