The Day the Music Died

30 March 2001

Six months to the day that Ariel Sharon bullied his way onto Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, thereby setting ablaze the portentous pile of tinder that was the Palestinian outlook after seven years of failed peace process and broken promises, he ordered Israeli Defense Force helicopters and tanks to open fire on Palestinian Authority targets in Ramallah in the West Bank and in Gaza City; adding two more victims to the ever-expanding Intifada casualty list.  The measure was not unexpected, coming as it did as the new Israeli Prime Minister convened his security cabinet to outline an Israeli response to two days of bomb attacks and the killing of a settler baby girl in the maelstrom that has become Hebron.  As I walked the streets of Birzeit that night, April 28^th, searching the clear night sky for the hum of helicopters and the flash of rockets, I caught myself realizing how jaded I must have become during this uprising that I’m now nonchalantly tottering down the road to catch a glimpse of a mechanized war machine raining fire on a city not ten kilometers away.  Six months ago – six eternal months of conflict that has cost the lives of over five hundred Palestinians and Israelis and shattered the futures of tens of thousands more – my reaction was not so composed.

It was Thursday, October 12^th of last year when I first saw such a display.  I remember the sunset over the hills that evening to the west of Birzeit was one of the most stunning I’ve seen during my time living here.  The supple clouds most qualified for amplifying the tones of red, orange, and violet were abundant in supply and positioned like Kasparov’s chess pieces. 

I remember I remarked to my flatmate Ben as we walked to university that morning that it would be a beautiful day, based on the cool breeze and the clear skies permitting a view of Tel Aviv skyline some fifty kilometers in the distance.  Until 11:15 a.m. all signs pointed to my precision of prognostication.  Perhaps the newborn Intifada was rehabilitating.  But at that point, while in the middle of Arabic class, two frightened and shaky girls, employees of the international office, entered the classroom.  Trembling and fighting back tears of terror (the worst kind of tears), one of them informed a shocked class of twenty students that two captured undercover Israeli soldiers had just been killed inside the nearby Palestinian city of Ramallah – not just killed but indeed dragged out of a Palestinian Authority Police station and murdered by a mob; one’s body even being burned in much the same way that a group of Jewish settlers had burned the body of a Palestinian civilian just days earlier.

The most immediately shocking thing to me was the degree to which the Palestinian students were scared, especially two weeks into an uprising which had all but destroyed the final vestiges of the old Oslo Peace Process.  All of the students tore out of the university, many to get home to Ramallah.  Likewise the international students bolted, and the day quickly turned into a frantic mess.

At 11:45 I arrived back at my Birzeit home, accompanied by my flatmates Ben and Yassin, fellow PAS students and Ramallah denizens Ingie and Aaron, and two Palestinian students who were at the moment too terrified to attempt the taxi ride home to Ramallah.  Hospitably I put on some tea while everyone with a mobile phone called his or her families and friends.  Shortly thereafter the two Palestinians left for home after receiving assurances that it was safe, for the time being.  We flipped on the Israeli news on our old TV, and as Aaron understands a bit of Hebrew we were able to attain some sense of the situation.  Yassin and Ben trooped to the market to stock up on supplies of candles, bread, pasta, and cigarettes.  I got a concerned phone call from the Canadian Representative’s office in Ramallah, offering to evacuate me to Jerusalem or even Tel Aviv.  I declined for the time being, as I was uninformed of the larger sense of the situation and they were no help, but I didn’t rule out the option entirely.

At 1:45 the Norwegian couple who live below us returned home, and from their satellite television the situation was confirmed.  As the sounds of IDF helicopters filled our flat, we reheated some leftover soup for the group and made telephone contact with every international we knew in Birzeit.  The Norwegian couple packed a few bags and hopped a service taxi for Ramallah with Aaron, hoping to meet a consular caravan to Jerusalem.  I put on a Tom Waits CD as the three of us flatmates instinctively packed our bags to move to Gretchen’s apartment more centrally located in the village.  I stuffed some clothes, my toothbrush, camera, journal, and money into my daypack.  At approximately 2:50 p.m. the power went out and the music died, and from across the olive-treed valley and over the settlement of Atarot the wind became suddenly chilly.

We met the Norwegian couple on the path to Gretchen’s – their van refused to go to Ramallah as rumours of IDF bombings circulated amongst the extensive taxi driver information network.  They joined us at our new “safe house;” our own Haram Ash-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).  Most of the internationals in Birzeit and several Palestinians were at this third floor flat on the southern face of the hill of town.  Glasses filled and cigarettes flared as everyone tried to mold his or her judgment of the situation into a more sensible one by thieving bits and pieces from others – a perfectly normal crisis-management tactic.

At exactly 3:49 p.m. local time, the first circulating IDF chopper fired a missile towards Ramallah - a flash of light interrupted the silhouette of the helicopter, and a projectile could be visibly tracked with the naked eye until it disappeared behind the lone hill separating Birzeit from the outskirts of Ramallah.  Moments later the groan of the explosion rattled our windows and our nerves.  For no less than ninety minutes at least six helicopters circled and hovered and then attacked in waves of two at a time as the sun descended in the western sky.  At about the same time the IDF was striking Palestinian Authority police and military structures up and down the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  The Birzeitis sat on their balconies and roofs watching the “show,” and we did the same as long as we could.  Ingie and I settled into a candlelit game of backgammon while others sought chessboards and puzzles and silent conversation, proving beyond a doubt that there is emotional strength in numbers.

In the late evening Mike and I trekked to the market to buy pasta and vegetables for a dinner we forgot to eat in the day’s commotion.  We made our beds on the floor and conversed as long as we could.  The artificial radiance of the early morning full moon reflected off of the swift and rogue clouds, lighting up the peaceful village of Birzeit; silent except for the nocturnal crickets droning a melancholic refrain - a still life painting in shades of gray.

The time that has passed between that night and this is ostensibly enough to see empires rise and fall; to permeate epochs of history with ice ages and continental drift.  Six months ago the ice broke between two fragile peace partners.  Now there is barely a strip left to bridge them.  Six months ago there were two leaders willing to discuss peace in such a way as to be a model for postmodern national heads; now evolved into a pair of dry-throated men content to let a brutal history repeat itself.  Peace, if not justice, might have been close at hand.  But the peace of the brave cannot endure in a fist of iron nor a heart of stone, nor in a land where justice plays court jester to occupation’s Pharaohan vice.