Ghost Child?

(Long post today, but powerful.  Sorry that I have no picture.  I forgot the camera.)

He materialized alongside me as I walked along a busy Hebron street.  He is about 10 or 11, but small, and has the most amazing green, green eyes. His eyes stand out of a brown face with jet-black hair.  He is matching me stride for stride, and looking up into my eyes.  Oddly, we are dressed almost identically – black jeans, black jackets, and black stocking caps.

“Good morning,” I say in Arabic.

No response.  I mean none.  No traditional Palestinian response to my traditional Palestinian greeting.  Not even the slightest change in expression.  He just walks alongside me, studying my face with his green, green eyes.

“How are you?”

Nothing – except those green, green eyes.

“What’s your name?”

Nothing.

“Where do you live?”  All of this is in Arabic.

Nothing.

So we just walk side by side down the busy street, through the marketplace in the middle of the Old City of Hebron.  Ah yes, Hebron, one of the most conflicted cities in the region.  In fact, in Hebron, if you have eyes to see, you see the core of the conflict.  There are between 200 to 400 Jewish settlers living in Hebron among 140,000 Palestinian Muslims, and maybe six Palestinian Christians.  Around 2000 Israeli soldiers are there as well, guarding the settlers, or depending on your perspective, enabling the settlers to unsettle the entire city.  Hebron is a tense and intense place.

About a dozen members of Christian Peacemaking Team also live in Hebron.  They get in between the various factions. Their stated purpose is “preventing violence,” which they do, I think.  Mostly they are witnesses, and advocates for the Palestinians, who desperately need both.  Today, we are led by one of these CPTers, a feisty, intelligent nun named Kathy.  (I didn’t know she was a Franciscan nun until the end of the visit.)

We come to the place where the CPTers live, a rooftop apartment on the edge of the “no-man’s zone.”  Kathy invites us up on the roof.  I turn to my shadow-twin and say, “God be with you.”

Nothing.

We go up the stairs.  We listen to the stories of Hebron, sad stories, but some hopeful scenes in these stories as well.  We look around the tense city.  We go back down the stairs.  And there he is – the boy with the black jeans, black coat, black stocking cap, and green, green eyes.  He falls in alongside me and we trail behind the rest, a rather odd couple.

“Why aren’t you in school?”

Nothing.

“Do you have school on Saturdays?”

Nothing.

“How old are you?”

Nothing.

We get to a checkpoint area that is located at the end of a very narrow street.  This street opens up into the entrance of the Mosque of Abraham – the magnificent Muslim worship center located over what is the burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah.  (Rachel is buried in Bethlehem, and her bones are surrounded by those of the Separation Barrier.)  This Mosque is built inside walls built in the 1st Century BCE by Herod the Great.  Remember, this place, Hebron, was also David’s capital city for the seven and one-half years before Jerusalem was conquered.  This is an important place for Jewish people, and for Muslims and Christians too, as we all share a part of this story.

As we are literally squeezed through the turnstile of the Israeli Defense Force checkpoint, the boy stays right on my left side.  An older Palestinian man tries to push him back, but together we hold the old man off.  The boy and I go through the turnstile together.

“You alright?”

Nothing.  Dumb question though, I will confess.

Into the Mosque we go and he goes right with me.  The soldiers let him in.  Maybe they think he is connected to me in some way – related.  Maybe he is.  Maybe we are.  While in the Mosque, a man snaps his fingers at the boy, and kicks him out of the building.  I wave to him as he leaves.

Nothing.

Inside the Mosque we see the tombs of the matriarchs and patriarchs.  On the other side of a wide steel door – like a garage door almost – is a Jewish synagogue.  Jewish settlers are inside singing and chanting.  It is all very strange.  None of what I see or hear, looks or sounds or feels holy to me.  In fact, it is almost the opposite.  No, it is the opposite.  Nothing of this place seems holy to me.  If God is in the house, then God is hiding, at least from me.  Maybe God left the place along with the green-eyed little boy.  Maybe I should have too.

We exit the Mosque and guess what?  There he is.  I’m so glad to see him.

“I’m happy to see you,” I say.

Nothing.

We follow Kathy up a path that is called “Worshippers’ Way,” because the devoted of Judaism and Islam take this hilly walkway from their homes to their shrines.  It is Saturday, Shabbat, and Worshippers’ Way is lined with Israeli soldiers, present to be a presence.  You can tell that these young men would rather be anywhere else than here, but here they are.

As we come over the hilltop, we see a gathering of jeeps, soldiers, and young Jewish boys and girls.  They are in this valley, milling alongside this path that connects residential neighborhoods to the one another, to the Mosque and Synagogue, and to the Palestinian marketplace of Hebron.  Without going into unnecessary detail, I’ll just tell you that this little paved road is a major artery.  It is a bridge of sorts.

The scene before us is just plain sick.  I don’t know what else to say about it than that – it is sick.  The young settlers are a surly, vicious group of angry teens.  Why their parents allow them to be here, on Shabbat of all days, is beyond my understanding.  In fact, I know that their parents sent them here, which only adds to the offense.  We watch as an older Palestinian woman, along with her young son or grandson – can’t tell – make their way across the valley.  They do not even walk on the road, but beside it with the road between them and the Jewish youth.  Suddenly, two of the Jewish boys run toward the woman and boy, and try to attack them.  The soldiers get between them, and force them back on the road.  There is a scuffle.  One of the boys falls, gets up in a rage, thrashing and clawing at the soldiers who restrain him.  The woman and boy walk on. The woman has this defiant and determined look on her face, and in her stride.  I don’t know about the boy.  He just looks scared.  Now several of the Jewish girls rush the woman, grabbing for her hijab, trying to pull it from her head.  Again the soldiers intervene.  The young girls are spitting on the woman and shouting curses.

I look down by my side, and the boy is impassibly watching.  He looks up at me with those green, green eyes.  I shake my head.

Nothing.

I lift my head to watch the angry scene being played out in front of us.  The woman is safely away now, and the Jewish boys go back to milling around a pile of rocks, and the girls talk with the soldiers.  Out of the corner of their eyes, however, each of them is watching and waiting – maybe even hoping – for the next Palestinian to dare cross the valley.  If it were not so serious, it would seem silly to me, so juvenile and foolish.

I look down to my shadow-twin, and he is gone.  I look all around, but he is gone.  Just like that, he is gone.

Who is he?  A ghost of all the innocent dead haunting this place – dead on all sides?  An angel sent by God to accompany me on this walk?

No, he is no ghost.  He is no angel.  He is a little boy of flesh and blood, with green, green eyes.  A little boy who has seen so much with those green, green eyes that he has nothing to say.  And in this place there are thousands like him, and in this world, millions more.  Today, for me, this little boy was a silent witness to the childishness of this kind of madness, the immaturity of this occupation.  He has no time for idle chitchat, small talk, friendly give-and-take.  He didn’t want me to be distracted by him, but drawn by him to see this for the evil that it is, and to be saddened, and sickened, and outraged by what this evil is doing to children like him.

And I did see.  And I am outraged.

You?