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.The wooden poles and frames, mattresses,footlockers all went up in flames.The wind spread the fire to the DFLP/PFLP and Fatahtents, and ten seconds later, they, too, were swallowed by the inferno.The raging fire was moving our way very quickly.A huge piece of crackling tent flew intothe air and over the razor wire.Soldiers surrounded us.There was no way to escape exceptthrough the flames.So we ran.I covered my face with a towel and raced for the kitchen area.There was only ten feetbetween the burning tents and the wall.More than two hundred of us tried to pass through atonce as the soldiers continued to saturate the section with the yellow gas.Within minutes, half of Section Five was gone everything we owned, what little there hadbeen.Nothing left but ashes.Many prisoners were hurt.Miraculously, no one had been killed.Ambulances came to col-lect the injured, and after the riots, those of us whose tents had burned were relocated.I wasmoved to the middle Hamas tent in Quadrant Two.The only good that came out of the Megiddo riots was that the torture by Hamas leadersstopped.Surveillance continued, but we felt a little more at ease and allowed ourselves to be-come a little more careless.I made a couple of friends whom I thought I might be able to trust.But mostly, I walked around for hours by myself doing nothing, day after day. Eight twenty-three!On September 1, 1997, a prison guard returned my belongings and the little bit of money Ihad when I was arrested, handcuffed me, and put me in a van.The soldiers drove to the firstcheckpoint they came to in Palestinian territory, which was Jenin in the West Bank.Theyopened the door of the van and removed the handcuffs. You re free to go, one of the men said.And then they drove off in the direction we hadcome from, leaving me standing alone on the side of the road.I couldn t believe it.It was wonderful just to walk outside.I was eager to see my motherand my brothers and sisters.I was still a two-hour drive away from home, but I didn t want towalk quickly.I wanted to savor my freedom.I strolled a couple of miles, filling my lungs with free air and my ears with sweet silence.Beginning to feel human again, I found a taxi that took me to the center of a town.Anothertaxi took me to Nablus, then to Ramallah and home.Driving down the streets of Ramallah, seeing familiar shops and people, I longed to jumpout of the taxi and lose myself in it all.Before I stepped out of the taxi in front of my house, Icaught a glimpse of my mother standing in the doorway.Tears rolled down her cheeks as shecalled out to me.She ran toward the car and threw her arms around me.As she clung to meand patted my back, my shoulders, my face, and my head, all the pain she had held in fornearly a year and a half poured out of her. We ve been counting the days until your return, she said. We were so worried we mightnever see you again.We are so very proud of you, Mosab.You are a true hero.Like my father, I knew I could not tell her or my brothers and sisters what I had gonethrough.It would have been too painful for them.To them I was a hero who had been in an Is-raeli prison with all the other heroes, and now I was home.They even saw it as a good exper-ience for me, almost a rite of passage.Did my mother find out about the guns? Yes.Did shethink it was stupid? Probably, but it all came under the heading of the resistance and was ra-tionalized away.We celebrated the entire day of my return and ate wonderful food and joked and had fun,as we always did when we were together.It was almost as though I had never been away.And over the next few days, many of my friends and my father s friends came to rejoice withus.I stayed around the house for a few weeks, soaking up the love and stuffing myself withmy mother s cooking.Then I went out and enjoyed all the other sights, sounds, and smells Ihad missed so much.In the evenings I spent time hanging out downtown with myfriends eating falafel at Mays Al Reem and drinking coffee at the Kit Kat with Basam Huri,the shop s owner.As I walked the busy streets and talked with my friends, I inhaled the peaceand simplicity of freedom.Between my father s release from the PA prison and his rearrest by the Israelis, my moth-er had become pregnant again.That was a big surprise for my parents, because they hadplanned to stop having children after my sister Anhar was born seven years earlier.By thetime I got home, my mother was about six months along and the baby was getting big.Thenshe broke her ankle, and the healing process was very slow because our developing babybrother was consuming all her calcium.We didn t have a wheelchair, so I had to carry herwherever she needed to go.She was in a lot of pain, and it broke my heart to see her thatway.I got a driver s license so we could do errands and buy groceries.And when Naser wasborn, I took on the duties of feeding and bathing him and changing his diapers.He began hislife thinking I was his dad.Needless to say, I had missed my exams and did not graduate from high school.They hadoffered the exam to all of us in prison, but I was the only one who failed.I could never under-stand why, because representatives from the Education Ministry came to the prison and gaveeverybody an answer sheet before the test.It was crazy.One guy who was sixty years oldand illiterate had to have someone write down the answers for him.And even he passed! Ihad the answers, too, plus I had gone to school for twelve years and was familiar with the ma-terial.But when the results came, everybody passed except me.The only thing I could figurewas that Allah didn t want me to pass by cheating.So when I got home, I began taking night classes at Al-Ahlia, a Catholic school in Ramal-lah.Most of the students were traditional Muslims who went because it was the best school intown.And going to school at night enabled me to work during the day at the local Checkershamburger shop to help take care of my family.I only got a 64 percent on my exams, but it was enough topass.I hadn t tried hard because I wasn t very interested inthe subject matter.I didn t care.I was just grateful to havethat behind me.Chapter 15: Damascus Road1997 1999Two months after my release, my cell phone rang. Congratulations, said a voice in Arabic.I recognized the accent.It was my  faithful Shin Bet captain, Loai. We would love to see you, Loai said,  but we cannot talk long on the phone.Can wemeet? Of course.He gave me a phone number, a password, and some directions.I felt like a real spy.Hetold me to go to a specific location, and then to another, and then to call him from there.I followed his instructions, and when I made the call, I was given more directions.I walkedfor about twenty minutes until a car pulled up beside me and stopped.A man inside the cartold me to get in, which I did.I was searched, told to lie down on the floor, and covered with ablanket.We drove for about an hour, during which time no one spoke.When we finally stopped,we were inside a garage at somebody s house.I was glad it wasn t another military base or adetention center.Actually, I learned later that it was a government-owned house in an Israelisettlement.As soon as I arrived, I was searched again, this time much more thoroughly, andled into a nicely furnished living room.I sat there for a while, and then Loai came in.He shookmy hand and then he hugged me [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]