In the Eye of the Storm:  Eating at Heba’s Home
Joel Carillet

20 May 2003

It was not your ordinary lunch.  We sat to eat and for a few moments all seemed strangely normal.  The taste of the tender lamb, its juice flavoring the rice around it, pleasantly distracted the senses.  I knew, though, that this normality was of the sort found only in the heart of a hurricane.  As we gathered around the table and enjoyed this meal together, I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach—no, in my soul—knowing that this would probably be the last one ever served in this home.  The winds of violence, hate, and revenge screamed with incredible fury and would soon blast this house to a wasted heap, even as these same winds had o! nly hours before slammed into an Israeli town north of here and torn away the lives of three innocent people.

I’ve never sat in the eye of a hurricane before, but perhaps I have some idea of what it might be like to see a dark, swirling storm move with fearful force and in a direction unknown to all.  First, I can imagine experiencing a keen sense of life and beauty.  From a position of stillness and momentary peace that the eye provides, one can look into both the past and future to see the very tangible ways in which a storm wrecks life.  This act of looking may lead one to savor the current sweetness of being alive.  From the eye of the storm one can reflect on life’s goodness and how it is exemplified in simple acts such as gathering with others around a platter of lamb and rice.  If storms did not threaten life, perhaps I would not even know what life was.

Secondly, however, there is the experiential knowledge of incredible powerlessness as one stands in the eye of a storm.  So many things that affect our lives seem to stand entirely beyond our ability to control or influence.  There may be a sense of being deeply wronged—perhaps by God or nature, or by human beings and their institutions that dehumanize, brutalize, and oppress.  The moment of quiet found in the eye of the storm allows one to take a good, hard look at the swirling forces that are approaching with speed and power, as well as the ones that have just past.

I was eating lunch in the village of Tubas, just south of Zababdeh, and six of us—three Americans and three Palestinians—were fellowshipping in the wake of terrible destruction.  It was about 2pm.  Others were drinking coffee in an adjacent room.  We all had the sense that we were enjoying the quiet found in the eye of a storm.  It was clear that soon the rotating winds of violence would arrive in this home.  The current peace, if you could call it that, was but a momentary respite.

Yesterday evening an explosion had ripped through a shopping center in Afula.  Heba Da’arma, a 19-year-old university student, blew herself up, simultaneously committing both suicide and murder.  In addition to Heba, three Israelis citizens, two Jews and one Arab, were killed in the blast.  Around 70 people had been injured, seven of them seriously.  May had been a quiet month in Israel until this past weekend.  The Afula bombing was the last of four suicide attacks in only 48 hours.  Twelve Israelis in Hebron, Jerusalem, and, of course, Afula were now dead, in addition to the four Palestinians who blew themselves up.

The storm that visited Afula that afternoon had been on the move in other places as well.  Those looking would have seen the dead people scattered here and there, especially in Gaza, as well as the homes and farms that had been so easily uprooted by a power which helpless families had no hope of stopping.  In a story that had gone underreported in the international press, Palestinians had suffered a daily succession of tragic loses since the beginning of May.  At least 47 people had been killed by Israeli fire, most of them civilians in the Gaza Strip.&nb! sp; Ten of these were children.  At least two were mentally handicapped.  The number of injured had climbed into the hundreds.  In addition, some 85 Palestinian homes had been intentionally destroyed by the Israeli military.  The Rafah Governorate was particularly hard hit the past few weeks, bringing the number of homes destroyed since the fall of 2000 in this location alone to a staggering total of almost 800.  Hundreds of acres of agricultural land had been razed.  Numerous reports of indiscriminate shelling or shooting had emerged, as they often do, from towns and camps across the Gaza Strip.  Entire communities lived in incredible fear.  Resentment toward a painful, burdensome occupati on continued to grow.
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The winds of violence reach far and wide, but my focus today was on Tubas, a small town spread out along some sloping hills in the northern Jordan Valley.  Heba, the young woman who chose to take this destructive storm to Afula by blowing herself up in order to kill others and make a statement, was from Tubas.  What she did added to the suffering and brokenness of people, both in Israel and among her friends and family in Tubas.  Sadly, it was in part her own intimate experience with suffering and brokenness that led her to strap on this bomb.  She had received pain in her life, and she ended her life in a way that gave pain to others.

In Heba’s life and death one can see the circular storm of violence and how easily this storm seeds too many lives with hatred and pain.  For most in the West, Heba will simply be known as a compassionless suicide bomber.  For the people of Tubas, however, she is and will always be much more than this.   She was a daughter, a sister, a neighbor, a friend.  She had held her younger siblings and helped raise them.  She had felt sorrow when her brother was taken to an Israeli prison to begin serving a 20-year sentence.  She had grown both hardened and convicted by the daily images of dead! Palestinians on television, and sometimes in her neighborhood.  She had seen the clips of Israeli soldiers sometimes treating dead Palestinians as trophies, smiling widely as they carted off their catch.  She also lived not far from where last August two Israeli Apache helicopters fired three missiles at a black Mitsubishi passing through a residential area in Tubas.  The helicopters hit their target.  But they also hit others in the process.  Two children, Osama (a 14-year-old boy) and Bahira (a 7-year-old girl), were standing in front of their home when the missiles hit the car only 20 meters away.  They died.  Others were seriously injured.

Some people I have met in the United States tell me that Palestinian suicide bombers must be less than human.  If only it were so simple.  In fact, people who do these awful deeds are actually all too human.  They are flesh and blood and spirit.  They are products of an incredibly difficult environment, filled as it is with injustice, violence and tragedy—all things that leave even the best of men and women feeling suffocated and angry on a regular basis.  Of course, they are also! the products of their own choices, for which they alone are ultimately responsible.  Their decisions, however, are usually made without the luxury of a quiet park or other neutral setting in which to relax and reflect.  For many, particularly in the refugee camps like Jenin, there is simply no space into which one can withdraw from the pressure and stinging reminders of the occupation.  Not even one’s own home, which can be shot at for no reason from a neighboring military outpost or passing armored personnel carrier, can dependably serve this purpose.  People who become suicide bombers love life but at some point allow themselves to be so consumed by their hurt and hatred that this then becomes their guiding force.  Those that do decide to sacrifice their lives in such a violent manner make an immoral choice, but it can neve r negate their humanity.

I know that there was much love and warmth in Heba’s family because it was in her home that I was now having lunch.  Just a 15-minute drive from mine, it was an easy place to visit.  And because I knew what would soon happen to this home, it was also an important place to visit.  A grieving family would soon have even more to grieve over.  Perhaps my visit would have some meaning to them during this difficult time.  In a week in which they would both lose a daughter and then their home, I hoped I could be a vehicle through which something more beautiful and loving would enter their lives.  I was not paying a visit to condone what their daughter did, I was paying a visit to recognize their suffering and offer my prayers for peace—real peace—to one day be a reality for them.

Most of the family was not present during our visit.  Heba had blown herself up in the hour or two before sunset on May 19.  Several hours later, about two o’clock this morning, Israeli soldiers came to Tubas to arrest Heba’s mother and father, taking them to Israel.  Later in the day they were forced to identify the body, which was so badly shredded that for the first several hours forensic experts believed the bomber was a man.  With the parents taken away in the middle of the night, Heba’s younger brothers and sisters were looked after by extended family.  Heba was one of eight children, ranging in age from 23 to two.  The family of one of the weekend’s other suicide bombers, I read, was being deported from their home in the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, an incredibly cruel act in a society where home and community are of vital importance.  I wondered what might happen to Heba’s family.

Obviously, the action of a suicide bomber not only affects Israelis, it also affects Palestinians, particularly immediate family.  The government of Israel responds to suicide bombings in a manner that is often in violation of international law and destructive to the family of the bomber.  From an Israeli policy perspective, the “eye for an eye” punishment system for those who commit terrorism is useless—it is too weak—because, as in this case, the one who murdered Israelis also killed herself.  Not being able to get back at the perpetrator, Israeli policy then direc! ts its retributive justice to the family of the perpetrator.  Generally, the home of the bomber is demolished by Israel.  According to Palestinian sources, 147 such homes have been demolished since the beginning of the current intifada.

This is why I was eating lunch in this home less than 24 hours after one of its occupants had blown herself and others up.  Israel was about to make a family, the youngest child being a mere toddler, homeless.  The home in Palestinian society, more so than in the West, is of incredible value.  It is in the home that a family invests its savings and finds security.  It is from the home that people in a culture famed for its hospitality are able to offer welcome to friends and strangers.  When the Israeli army wires a home full of dynamite and blows it to smithereens because a person who became a suicide bomber lived there, it does something much more than punish terrorism.  The Israeli army also shatters the lives of an entire family, a family which is often already suffering greatly due to the unexpected loss of a child or sibling.  The guilty individual having passed from this life, an angry and desperate government now reaches for the family of the guilty.  The family will probably try to rebuild, but what about their children?  As they grow up, what are they to think about a government that came in the middle of the night with dynamite and made them homeless for something they did not do?

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Our hosts treated us warmly.  I explained who we were and why we came to their home.  The cousin worked to hold back his emotion, though his eyes kept their bloodshot look for most of our first hour together.  As word of our arrival at the home spread, several neighbors and friends of the family came by.  Some of Heba’s sisters arrived as we were leaving, but other than them we only met extended family.  We spoke about the impending demolition of the home.  They had already worked through the night and into the morning to strip the house of anything that could be salvaged.  The light fixtures, windows, sinks, and even the toilet were gone.  I went into a room where some of the children slept and saw a 2nd grade English quiz that had been left behind on the floor and would probably go down with the house.  The child scored 70 percent on it.  There was also a Winnie-the-Pooh and Tiger notebook, which complemented the cardboard cut-outs on the wall of other characters.  So much had changed for this family in less than 24 hours.  This time yesterday the house functioned as a house should, with kids running around, furniture and decorations in place, and so forth.  But now the family was bracing for the continuing storm that would almost certainly des! troy the home.  Kids and f urniture were gone and already the house had a ghostly feel.  I found myself looking for a place to spit out my gum, then I realized I could just toss it onto this nice marble floor—it would all be garbage soon enough.

Folks went out to fetch a white plastic table and six matching chairs.  It had been removed from the home earlier but was being briefly returned for our lunch.  As we sat I looked out the empty window frame, down toward the road from which the destructive forces would soon travel here in their jeeps and who knows what in order to blast away this home.  The broken window frame was the portal through which I imagined more brokenness coming.

I began to eat the lamb and rice, caught between two injustices, one that blew up people and the other that will blow up a family’s home and all that it symbolizes.  I was in the calm of the storm’s eye but yet engulfed in brokenness, tasting the sorrow of what these damned winds do to people.  Birds chirped near the hibiscus blossoms by the front door, but powerlessness screamed everywhere else.  My how the sound of powerlessness can nearly drive you mad!  A mere pound of explosives, or a piece of shrapnel the size of a baby’s fingernail, is enough to snuff out the life in our frail bodies.  A man in uniform, waving his gun, is enough to force an entire family to flee and watch from the sideline as other soldiers rig a home with explosives and in an instant send years of labor and memories crashing to their foundations in a monstrous thud.

A shift was starting to take place, as it sometimes does for me in the West Bank or Gaza, which I needed to correct.  I was beginning to feel caught between these awful acts of people.  The vice was tightening in my spirit, and I could feel those noble qualities of hope and love starting to gasp for air.  I have seen so many others in both Palestine and Israel lose much of themselves in this same way.  Powerlessness in the face of a system of revenge and counter-revenge, violence and
counter-violence, hurt and suffering in all of its forms, takes on the weight of a stone that seems impossible to roll away.  If this stone is not moved, however, the effects of its awful pressure on the human spirit can be frightening.  Some critics of this conflict might even suggest that it causes some to lose their humanity, though I do not think humanity being crushed is the same thing as humanity being lost.  Crushed humanity can be healed to the degree the stone is moved away.

Rather than being “caught” by the countervailing forces of this storm I have sought to focus on being “present” in the midst of it all.  This linguistic subtlety makes all the difference.  I am “caught” when I feel powerless to stop the daily injustices around me.  Through focusing on “presence,” however, I feel responsible not primarily for stopping injustice as much as I do for witnessing it and being a particular kind of person in the midst of it.  The weight of the stone sits heavily on a person who feels trapped and compressed—who is caught—by the events around him.  When the focus is on being a certain way as these pressures come to bear, it becomes possible to roll the stone away, at least far enough to the side that it is no longer crushing in its weight.

I know that a few people might ask how I can eat with a terrorist’s family and friends.  The answer comes down to something very simple:  people are hurting and alone and often hamstrung by the hatred and anger they have developed in their response to years of incredible abuse and injustice. There can never be a reason good enough to not show compassion in their miseries.
There will never be a legitimate reason to withhold a humble offering of love in this world where so many of our neighbors—both at home and abroad—suffer from the lack of it.  By being with them I also gave them an opportunity to love a stranger, which they seemed to do with all their heart.  I wish Heba were still alive because I would have wanted to eat with her too.

My answer might also include the conviction that even the best of men have eaten with “sinners.”  There are soul-shaping stories that I’ve heard in churches around the world about a carpenter from Nazareth, a town just north of Afula, who ate and fellowshipped with despised tax-collectors, women of questionable reputation, and even self-righteous religious hypocrites who
he said didn’t have a clue what real worship was about.  I can easily imagine him also visiting a wounded family like Heba’s, which in their marginalized lives as Palestinians living under occupation would have welcomed with open arms a stranger who cared enough ! to visit them.  Jesus sought to affirm the marginalized and suffering, not necessarily their ideology or lifestyle, but
certainly their inherent worth as children of God.  He would also have recognized the ways in which they suffered because of how others abused power and position.  It was the religious folks that wanted to stone the adulterous woman in the Gospel of John, killing someone who sinned in a way they did not, but it was Jesus that wanted to save her and tell her to go and sin no more.

I said goodbye to Heba’s friends and neighbors, promising to pray for them and all people injured by hate and violence, and then headed to Bethlehem to join in the celebration of a Palestinian friend’s sister who was graduating from high school.  On the way down we picked up two bedouin children who asked for a lift as they were walking home from school.  Their mother waved thankfully to us as we let them out of the car, having saved their little feet a two or three hour walk.

At the party in Bethlehem there was joy and celebration.  People of all ages danced and smiled as the music played and good food was served.  It was a different scene from the one in which I had eaten lunch.  By about 12:30am most families had already left or were leaving to go home and sleep.  As I myself headed to a house, I remembered those who were losing theirs, perhaps even now as I exited the noise of the party and entered the cool, quiet Bethlehem night.

Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza—this small sliver of land in the Middle East—is both beautiful and bleeding at the same time.  It is as if a violent storm has stalled overhead, flooding communities with heartache, helplessness, and in some cases murderous or suicidal tendencies.  Still, in those moments of calm, one smiles at the beauty of the flowers, the tightness of community, the warmth of hospitality, the desire for peace.  It is a smile in the face of a storm, a smile that should never retreat no matter how hard the winds blow.

Postscript

 I returned to Heba’s home with one of my teammates on May 24.  It had been destroyed the day before.  I have more photos if anyone would find them useful.

For more information about home demolitions, especially of Palestinian homes in Israel and East Jerusalem, please check out:
www.icahd.org and www.jcser.org.  The second one includes powerful music and photos.