The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks [28]
What did you think was behind the Israeli ruse?
Here’s what I thought: The Zionists have just been driven out of the occupied territories, they say they left voluntarily, just like Lebanon, and most recently the Gaza Strip, but really, just like before, we knew we’d driven them out. They know that the next and final blow would destroy that illegal atrocity they call a country, and to prepare for that final blow, they’re attempting to recruit both foreign Jews as cannon fodder and … and—I thought I was so clever for figuring this part out—kidnapping as many Palestinians as they could to act as human shields! I had all the answers. Who doesn’t at seventeen?
My father wasn’t quite convinced of my ingenious geopolitical insights. He was a janitor at Amiri Hospital. He’d been on duty the night it had its first major African rabies outbreak. He hadn’t personally seen the bodies rise from their slabs or the carnage of panicked patients and security guards, but he’d witnessed enough of the aftermath to convince him that staying in Kuwait was suicidal. He’d made up his mind to leave the same day Israel made their declaration.
That must have been difficult to hear.
It was blasphemy! I tried to make him see reason, to convince him with my adolescent logic. I’d show the images from Al Jazeera, the images coming out of the new West Bank state of Palestine; the celebrations, the demonstrations. Anyone with eyes could see total liberation was at hand. The Israelis had withdrawn from all the occupied territory and were actually preparing to evacuate Al Quds, what they call Jerusalem! All the factional fighting, the violence between our various resistance organizations, I knew that would die down once we unified for the final blow against the Jews. Couldn’t my father see this? Couldn’t he understand that, in a few years, a few months, we would be returning to our homeland, this time as liberators, not as refugees.
How was your argument resolved?
“Resolved,” what a pleasant euphemism. It was “resolved” after the second outbreak, the larger one at Al Jahrah. My father had just quit his job, cleared out our bank account, such as it was … our bags were packed … our e-tickets confirmed. The TV was blaring in the background, riot police storming the front entrance of a house. You couldn’t see what they were shooting at inside. The official report blamed the violence on “pro-Western extremists.” My father and I were arguing, as always. He tried to convince me of what he’d seen at the hospital, that by the time our leaders acknowledged the danger, it would be too late for any of us.
I, of course, scoffed at his timid ignorance, at his willingness to abandon “The Struggle.” What else could I expect from a man who’d spent his whole life scrubbing toilets in a country that treated our people only slightly better than its Filipino guest workers. He’d lost his perspective, his self-respect. The Zionists were offering the hollow promise of a better life, and he was jumping at it like a dog with scraps.
My father tried, with all the patience he could muster, to make me see that he had no more love for Israel than the most militant Al Aqsa martyr, but they seemed to be the only country actively preparing for the coming storm, certainly the only one that would so freely shelter and protect our family.
I laughed in his face. Then I dropped the bomb: I told him that I’d already found a website for the Children of Yassin1 and was waiting for an e-mail from a recruiter supposedly operating right in Kuwait City. I told my father to go and be the yehud’s whore if he wanted, but the next time we’d meet was when I would be rescuing him from an internment camp. I was quite proud of those words, I thought they sounded very heroic. I glared