The Yellow Wind by David Grossman

Author:David Grossman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250116390
Publisher: Picador

10

The Other Barta’a

The “situation,” like a stage magician, draws another card, links another inseparable ring to the chain. This time it is Barta’a, and actually, the entire problem of the relations of the Arabs of Israel to the Arabs of the West Bank.

The village of Barta’a is situated about three kilometers east of the Wadi Ara valley, between the Israeli cities of Afula and Hadera, in the area called the Little Triangle. The village is built on the two slopes of a ravine called Wadi Elmia, and the huge Kabha clan, with a family tree reaching back to the eighteenth century and inscribed on deerskin, lives here.

The village received its name from Hawali (holy man) Sheikh Muhammad, buried on the mountain peak over the village. Sheikh Muhammad had been a scout in Saladin’s army and had participated in the wars against the Crusaders. When he returned from a victorious battle, he would jump with happiness, and they would say of him bart’a ash-Sheikh, which means “the Sheikh hopped with joy.”

The village was one until 1949. In that year the representatives of Israel and Jordan, meeting in Rhodes, decided that the border between them would run through the ravine that divides the village. It would seem that the drafters of the Green Line saw the ravine their maps indicated as a natural border. It may be that they didn’t realize what they were doing.

One morning, the village was divided. Members of the same family and friends and relatives were torn from each other. The village spring remained on the Israeli side, and the mosque in Jordan. Everything was split in two by the sure and powerful hands of maliciously indifferent giants.

During the first years there was no fence between the two countries or between the two villages, but Jordanian and Israeli soldiers prevented free passage of civilians. When the two armies began clashing in this contact area between them, a “proper” border was built. At the insistence of the villagers, a canal was dug to bring water from the spring in Israeli Barta’a to the center of Jordanian Barta’a. The Israelis drank by day and the Jordanians by night. The children in Israeli Barta’a would urinate in the water to taunt their friends on the other side of the border. The women would launch paper boats containing letters to their friends.

The villagers, suffering from longing and frustration, felt their existence split and their lives disconnected. The meanings of so many primal things seemed suddenly to be on the other side of the fence. The two parts of the village did all they could to maintain some sort of illusory fabric of cooperation. Smugglers would bring news from across the border. When Jordanian Barta’a celebrated a wedding, the residents of Israeli Barta’a would stand on the other side of the border and watch the celebration from afar, with binoculars. When a couple married on the Israeli side, the famous singer Abu Leil would arrive from Kufr Qar’a to entertain the guests, and

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