Maree Makom

Map
When they were finally released af ter six joy ful
days, the children discovered that the walls of the
third floor in the façade of the building in
Tshernichovsk y Street were pierced with bullet
holes. Amplifying the dark and solemn adventure
in the crowded shelter were also the paper birds
that someone, in those long and strange and
excited days, had taught them how to fold so that
the wings would flap with the pull of a tail; and the
mystery of the sacks of sand below the ladder
leading from Y.’s garden to the window; sacks
which will rot there many years later, turning brown
from cat piss, from oil and humidity and from the
grains of sand that would burst through the
crumbling cloth. Inside, on the rickety armchairs
and the heap of mattresses laid out hurriedly on
the dusty floor, gathered all the neighbors except
for the one who has just been recruited. Their
faces worried and animated, they clustered around
V.’s portable radio which still divided the world, in
absolute innocence, into them and us, ours and
theirs. And all the death that will enter that home,
and the entropy, the bushes withering, the grass
spotted with dandelions that will wilt and dry; the
childish writing etched on a back drawer in a
wooden wardrobe that will crack with time and
eventually be replaced (“mine. secret. pliz do not
open”); the dread of the sting of a creature fluttering
in the sun, and of a thick voice rising from private
depths, paralyzing, and stifling thought; the warm
loaf of bread the inside of which, doughy and
moist, was hollowed out in rushed forbidden
plucks, the crispy crust shoved hurriedly into a
shabby leather school bag; the proud insult from a
cruel prank, and an everlasting friendship sealed
in blood on a piece of paper buried deep in a bottle
behind the thorny bush in the backyard, to the left
of the rusty structure for hanging laundry, from
which kids also dangled when grown-ups weren’t
watching. All that innocence, into which year after
year the truths nibbled, stealthily creeping, or
suddenly bursting in: a motorbike accident, a
divorce, the death of a father and a mother’s
bereavement. And the slow, accruing knowledge
that we were wrong, that we had committed a
crime; and the heroic reverie that turned sour and
black. Did it all begin then?
Recalled Location
L.’s childhood apartment house on
Tshernichovsky Street, Jerusalem
Recalled Time
1967. The Six Day War
An armed conflict between Israel and the
Arab states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in
which the portion of Palestine known as the
“Occupied Territories” was conquered by the
Israeli Army
Characters
Y. – L.’s father
V. – A resident of the Tshernichovsky Street
apartment house. Close to twenty years after
the recalled scene, just prior to the first
Palestinian Intifada (Uprising), V. will be
stabbed to death by two Palestinian men
when walking to work through the Valley of
the Cross.
Young L.