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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
My daughter is 12, like Jamal's boy was. Mohammed loved to swim in the sea; my daughter is on a swim team. Mohammed was good in English -- I know he took after his father. My daughter walks to school beside cypress trees, amid bougainvillea. Her pet dog waits impatiently for her to come home. Mohammed had pet birds. But had he lived to be a grandfather, it's unlikely he and my daughter ever would have met.
Right after Jamal was wounded, Moshe Tamam, the contractor who employed him, said he had tried to get Jamal transferred from Gaza into a big Israeli hospital. He offered to pay for all the expenses, Moshe said, but the Palestinian Authority hadn't allowed it. Jamal had worked for him for 20 years, since he was 14 years old.
"These people are born in hatred, raised in hatred, " Moshe told me. "They return home from working in big houses to their shacks without even sewage. Jamal is a terrific man. He slept in my own home many times. He is a wonderful worker, and I know that I can leave him alone in any customer's house and there will be no theft, no vandalism, no breakage."
Israel radio reported that Jamal also said that Moshe had offered to send him to an Israeli hospital and pay for it, but that he preferred to be treated in the Arab world. Everything in the Middle East has two stories.
When I reached him by telephone, in Amman, Jamal called his boss, Moshe, a "brother."
"I hope to be healthy again, but back to work I don't think I will ever be able to go," he told me.
I asked Jamal what does he wish for his remaining children. "My children? To grow as all the children in the world." I heard his voice break. "That they will be surrounded by all good things and nothing bad, nothing bad."
Not a week had passed since his boy was killed. And yet when the reporter from Israel radio asked him if his attitude toward Israelis changed forever in those terrible moments beside the wall in Gaza, Jamal said, "I am a man of peace. We two peoples must live together. There is no other possibility. There is no other possibility."
