Let It Be Morning by Sayed Kashua

Author:Sayed Kashua [Kashua, Sayed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802170217
Amazon: 0802170218
Barnesnoble: 0802170218
Goodreads: 119929
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2004-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

8

Dinner is ready. There’s an enormous pot of cooked meat on the white plastic tablecloth outside, along with a big bowl of vegetable salad and a few other salads and spreads taken out of the fridge to be eaten before they spoil. We’re waiting for Father to get back from town hall. A car pulls up at the front of the house and he gets out. His face is grim as he walks toward us. He greets us and takes his place at the head of the table without another word. Mother takes his plate and heaps meat onto it. “You haven’t had anything to eat today, and the meat came out delicious.”

We start eating and wait to hear Father’s report on what transpired at the meeting. He doesn’t volunteer anything, and finally I have to ask him.

“They decided to hand over the Gazawiyya and the Daffawiyya,” the people from Gaza and the West Bank, Father says.

“They did?” my older brother asks. “Is that what the government got the mayor to do?”

“No,” Father says. “The mayor has no idea what they want, but he figures, like everyone else, that the main concern of the police is the Palestinian workers. He’s right.”

“So what are they doing? Just how are they going to hand them over?” I ask.

“If the electricity stays disconnected till tomorrow morning and the roadblock stays in place, they’ll hand over the illegal workers to the security forces. But only the adults, the ones over fourteen.”

There are hundreds of workers from Gaza and the West Bank in the village. Many of them work for contractors from the village and others work inside the village itself, in construction, sanitation or gardening. They generally sleep on straw mats at the building sites, and a few lucky ones get to spend the night in large groups in warehouses belonging to their employers. In the past they could work inside Israel, but ever since the first Intifada they can no longer work there unless their employer has Israeli citizenship. In fact, workers coming from the cities and villages have become one of the most important sources of income for people in our village. Anyone who ever did a day’s work as a construction worker has turned into a contractor, farming out work to people from Gaza or the West Bank, thanks to his Israeli citizenship. Besides the dozens of new “contractors” sprouting up in every Arab town and village inside Israel, many also transport workers to Tel Aviv, Netanya and other Israeli cities. Many of the drivers become their would-be sponsors. The workers clean, cook, work the assembly line, and the Israeli driver, the only person legally entitled to collect their salaries, distributes it after taking his fat cut. To a large extent, it is the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza are responsible for the prosperity of the village.

In other words, they are also responsible for the commercial boom. Once, before it all began, the Jews preferred to do their shopping

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