I didn't kill Imad, but that doesn't make it any easier. He died on my watch. He died because we couldn't get to him in time. It could have been any one of us. It could have been me. If it was, I would want somebody to have helped me the way we didn't help Imad. The news of Imad's death came to me as I was on the phone with the Canadian consulate over the illegal detention of my brother.
I was the first to wake up Friday morning. I woke up to a phone ringing with some news. In no time, I woke everybody up, and was briefing them. Mass arrests had begun of every male aged 15 to 60 in the neighbourhood of the person who had stolen the gun the day before. We discussed our dispersement strategy, what we could do, and what we couldn't do, and then we went about the business of getting ready: water bottles in case of tear gas.. tooth-brushing to prevent tartar build-up.. and so on..
When we were on our way out, we counted one less head than we knew we had.. Where's Mohammed? I asked.. We called into the people on the street and reported him missing and asked everybody to keep an eye out. I had woken him up that morning, so he started out in the apartment.. That much I knew.. As we walked, I finally realized what he had done: He had gone to get himself arrested..
Yeah, I knew.. I knew he wanted to live like a Palestinian.. He had read "Black like Me" one too many times.. He just didn't fully consider the consequences of walking into a situation like that without any identification papers whatsoever.. We grabbed his passport and sent a very well-versed international woman to try and get it to him.. and we called everyone.. All I knew was that he couldn't leave Jenin.. If he ended up on one of the infamous busses to Salem (a military base just outside of Jenin), we wouldn't hear from him for days.. Yeah, I knew what he had done, but I shut up. I told everybody he was sleeping in the old city of Jenin (where the arrests were), and that he was arrested while there.. I just couldn't imagine anybody wanting to help if they knew that he had walked into it himself..
Palestinians certainly can't do what we did, and what we did completely negated my brother's plan to get himself treated like a Palestinian.. All I knew was that I couldn't let him get the snot beaten out of him, no matter what.. Seven hours after he was picked up by the troops, him and about 200 others were released. At that point, it came out that he had done it on purpose, and a whole pile of shit ensued, though that's quite irrelevant..
tarek : )