The Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Injustice

I was incensed.

We had bypassed the Hebron Souk.

This was THE place that I wanted to visit.

"I'll be back." I thought to myself as the bus carted us to our appointment with the Mayor.

Five days later, with the learning delegation completed, I made good on my commitment: I returned to the Hebron Souk.

Words cannot adequately describe the remnant of the Souk.  It's inhabited by men and women who are tying to eek out an existence under the worst imaginable circumstances.  You see, built on top of the Hebron Souk is the Beit HaShalom Settlement.  High-rise apartments filled with Jewish settlers reach toward the sky and overlook the narrow Souk below.

This is the place where I learned what hatred, racism, occupation, and violence look, smell, and sound like.

Their vantage point gives settlers the ideal location to terrorize both the shop-owners and the shoppers of the Souk.  From their elevated apartment complexes, settlers began dropping rocks, and then bricks, and then boulders the size of the human head down on the Palestinians below.  From two to eight stories, rocks are designed to irritate and, if big enough, cause discomfort.

Bricks and boulders are intended to kill.

The shop owners initiated a non-violent response.  Together, they fastened chain-linked fencing together and fixed it just above their shops.  While this creates a caged in feel from the street level, it is preventing the death of owners and shoppers and the remnant is able to survive another day.

Jamal is a shop owner who sells specialized Palestinian embroidery.  Following in his father's footsteps he has chosen to remain in the Souk even though it would be far more lucrative for he and his family to go elsewhere.  Jamal endures unspeakable injustice to keep his father's shop open.

A friend had told me to find Jamal so, equipped with a mental picture, I searched high and low.  As I was beginning to wonder at the likelihood of finding him, I saw him...he stood at the entryway of his shop and was looking at me with an inviting smile.

"You must be Jamal!" I said, extending my hand.  "Your goods and your company come with the highest of international recommendation."

Hand over heart, he responded, "You are too kind.  Please.  Sit."

As I took in the size of his tiny shop, I noticed that the interior seemed recently repainted.

"What an inviting shop!" I began, "and I've never seen your work rivaled."  As a matter of fact, I'd never seen anything like Jamal's work.

He went on to explain to me the uniqueness of the work that he did.  As he talked, I felt myself so drawn into his passion that I momentarily forgot the size of the rocks and bricks and the colors of the glass bottles that rested on the cage directly above his shop.

Eventually, I asked him about the cage, the rocks, the bricks, and the bottles.

"Oh yes." he began.  "Don't forget the chlorine, the chemicals, the petrol, the human waste, and the egg....  The cage catches most of the solid material but can do nothing to contain the liquid.  Please.  Come with me."

He led me out of his shop to a rack of beautiful shawls and scarves.

"Have a look." he invited as his hand disappeared into the spectrum of colorful folds.

"Stunning!" I began to say until I saw what it was that Jamal wanted me to see.

While beautiful from a distance, every shawl had been ruined by toxic liquid cocktails poured from above.

What could I say?

Knowing that he would never sell these shawls, I offered to buy them and was shocked by his response.

"You cannot buy these.  I will never sell these shawls.  They tell a story that I cannot."

Sensing that I was struggling, he reached out and took my hand: "Jer.  Do you know what you can do?  Go home and tell the story of what you have experienced here."

As we walked back into his shop, a small platoon of heavily armed Israeli soldiers made their way through the Souk.  As they went, the muzzles of their rifles knocked goods from tables and shawls from racks.  I stood as they walked by Jamal's shop and looked to the left and to the right.  The platoon had a left a wake of shop owners scrambling to pick up their goods before they could be trampled by shoppers.

Returning my attention to Jamal, I complimented the paint job on the ceiling.  He smiled and said, "Thank you."

I sensed something behind his smile so I got curious.  The story that unfolded further undid me.

It had been a relatively recent and necessary remodel as, not long before, settlers had drilled into his ceiling from above and had poured gallons of human waste into his attic.

It wasn't the last nor the worst story that I heard that day.  At the final bend of the Souk, I met someone my age: a Palestinian daddy of two boys.  After we talked for a while, he invited me into his home for tea.  Naturally, I accepted and, entering into his home, sat in a room with windows welded shut.

"This is my eldest son's room." he beamed.  "It used to be the brightest room in the house."

"Used to be?"  I asked.

"Yes.  Not long ago, we were able to open all of our windows."

Although I feared what I would hear, I asked, "Why can you no longer open your windows?"

"Because the settlers kept throwing fire at my son."

I looked on the floor.  Sure enough, there were charred marks all over the artisan rug.

Later, I asked to meet his eldest. 

"I can show you only a picture." he said, leaving to retrieve his favorite picture of his boy.  "He's in Jordan recovering from a surgery."

"What kind of surgery?" I asked, innocently.

"They dumped chlorine in his eyes from above.  It blinded him.  I guess they finally got him."