‘Take me with you,’ she pleaded. ‘I’ll try harder, I promise.’
Hassan found it very difficult to resist Farida’s pleas, but he knew well the consequences if their parents found out, if they were captured by soldiers, or worse. ‘Farida it is dangerous, you know that.’ Hassan tried to be strong, but he had always found it difficult to resist his younger sister when she looked at him that way. Those beautiful big brown eyes so much like their mother’s that could speak of gentleness one minute and darkest storm clouds the next.
‘You know the soldiers are always prepared for the Ni’lin protest’, she fired. ‘Maybe you and your friends should not be so stupid and surprise the Occupiers occasionally’, she said. Her whole body was tense, and she knew that convincing her brother to let her go with him was not going to be easy. Hassan replied gently, ‘What if mother and father return and find you are not here?’ Hassan shrugged, ‘what then, eh?’
‘They will think I am at Jida’s preparing food, that’s what I do on Fridays remember?’ Farida rolled her eyes and gave her brother a pitying look. Hassan chose to ignore the taunt and she continued. ‘Besides, they will be held up at the checkpoint for hours. Mother will miss her appointment at the hospital again. They will still need to go there to make another appointment again. They will not be home before dark.’
Farida was right, the soldiers were expecting the weekly protest, but the foreign activists and media always knew when and where the regular protests were. Without that support the world would not know what their people suffered under Israeli Occupation or the impact The Separation Wall has on their village. Yes, she was right, that was another reason not to allow her to accompany him. Farida carried fire within her, fire that could get them killed. He knew there was no point in demanding she stay behind, he had to find a way to convince her with reason, she had never been one to conform to rules, not those of their culture or their father.
‘Farida listen to me.’ Hassan stood to look out of the kitchen window toward the eight-metre-high wall that surrounded their town and cast a shadow over his heart. He knew he had to tread carefully, not even hint at the fact of her gender forbidding her taking part. She was as sharp as a tack and she wasn’t going let this be easy for him. He turned to look at her and decided to take a different path that he hoped led to somewhere other than her anger. ‘Farida, our brother was killed just for throwing a stone at an Israeli tank, cousin Olan is just twelve years old and sits in gaol, no-one knows why and for how long. What if the bullet hits you this time, and how could I protect you when I don’t know where you are until I hear you yelling at the soldiers?’
‘Hassan my legs will move faster than my mouth this time, I promise. Besides, didn’t our brother die fighting for our freedom, if even you deny me freedom to protest the Occupation then he has died in vain’.
Janine Hartley 