Provoking Peace
Fiction :- A Short Story By Stephen D. Edwards
Mustafa stands among a group of Palestinian militants at the Israeli border, looking at the barbed wire fence which his father showed him when he was six years old. He told him that his own father had showed him the same fence when he was a boy. It separates Gaza from Israel, while Israel has another fence leaving a 100 meters gap. He sees the gun turrets on the Israeli side placed every 200 meters along the border.
Mustafa wonders if the fence is the same all along the border, and how he didn’t know he would be here with an old AK74 in his hands ready for combat. He remembers that his father told him that defending Palestine and obliterating Israel to regain the territory lost in 1948 is the paramount goal of the nation.
So a few weeks ago, he presented himself for training to fight this ongoing war against the enemy. He loves his people and his nation, but all he wants is change. But he cannot see any other way but to fight Israeli oppression in the name of Allah. He remembers that in his youth he heard that he will have a reward in heaven if he sacrifices his life for this Jihad. He believes this, but still has many fears. He is even afraid to give his voice to these fears because his elders may call them doubts and betrayal.
Mustafa overhears a boast from the other side of the group of young men about the power of their new grenade and rocket launchers. The rumor is these new arms were supplied by allies in Bosnia and Iran. Everyone believes this will help them win this battle if not the war. As he looks over the border at the concrete gun turrets on the other side, Mustafa cannot believe that these new arms will be effective against the Israeli army and its resources which he can see over the fence. He has no combat experience, but it plain doesn’t seem logical to him.
As waits for the militia action to begin, his best friend Muhammad asks, “Mustafa, were you able to figure out that math homework? I can’t figure out the answer.”
“It’s really simple,” he answers. “You just add up the squares of the shorter sides of the right triangle and then take the square root of the sum. That’s the length of the long side.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know how to do that,” says Muhammad.
Some of the other guys present yell, “Stop talking about school!”
The deafening sound of a rocket firing floods their ears as the missile clears the barbed wire, leaving Mustafa with a ringing in his ears. Then Mustafa sees some men cut an opening in the fence making him think this operation is better prepared than he expected. The throng of militia recruits rushes through the opening as another rocket fires off over their heads. Mustafa follows all his friends through the opening just as he realizes that one of the rockets blew an opening in the Israeli fence. Just as he goes through and runs ten paces toward one of the gun turrets, he feels a sharp pain in his hamstring, and he falls to the ground a few meters past the fence as troop-mates run past him.
He wants to walk back to the safety of the Palestinian side, but his leg cannot bear his weight so he falls back down to the ground. Feeling the back of his leg and looking at his bloodied hand, he knows that he got hit by friendly fire, the pain surging and throbbing. Rather than just lying there, he rolls into a small depression in the ground to hide from the Israelis. Mustafa becomes angry at the situation at being left for dead in no man’s land on the wrong side of the border. He thinks he should have avoided this mission somehow.
Just as he thinks he’s as good as dead, he hears a strange voice in Hebrew, but cannot understand. He looks up from the hole at the face of an Israeli soldier aiming his gun toward the border while reaching out to help Mustafa up.
Wondering what is going on, Mustafa looks up at him in a half-pleasant feeling of unease. He tentatively reaches up to the man’s hand and allows him to lift him out of the hole. The man puts his arm around his waist after dragging the young Palestinian’s arm over his shoulder to walk toward a gun turret on the Israeli side.
Behind the turret, a medic asks Mustafa in Arabic, “What is your name? How are you feeling?”
He answers, “I cannot walk. My name is Mustafa.” Then he looks back at the man who walked him to the turret and asks, “Why are you helping me?”
The two men merely smile as the other man says, “Let me examine your wound.” Then he cuts the fabric of his pants away to expose the wound on the back of his upper leg. He uses some water in a bottle to wash the wound and can see that the round hit the bone causing it to remain in the leg.
He looks up at the other man saying, “He needs to go to the hospital. We can bind up the wound to avoid blood loss, but he needs surgery to remove the round.”
“Let’s take him to Harzfeld.”
They inform their commanding officer that they are taking the young man to the hospital and get into an armored vehicle to make the ten-hour drive.
In the emergency room at Harzfeld, they wait with Mustafa for another five hours. The leg had swollen enough that pulled over during the trip so that the medic could cut away the pant leg to release the pressure and re-bandage it.
An intern examines the wound with the help of the medic and agrees that surgery is required. The intern consults with a physician who also agrees. They send him for an x-ray to see the condition of the femur as there is no exit wound. Then they schedule the emergency surgery.
The Israeli medic tells Mustafa that they are returning to Mefalsim, but they will return to take him back to Gaza after he recovers.
On their way out of the hospital they tell the doctor that the treatment is covered under the new humanitarian relief program. The doctor says, “I have not heard of this program.”
They respond that it is a military program and leave.
The doctor calls one of his government contacts asking, “What is this new humanitarian program that pays for treatment for Palestinians who have been injured in battle?”
The contact responds, “This is a new program for humanitarian medical treatment out of love for our enemy as commanded by God.”
The doctor exclaims, “This is amazing!” He calls the local newspaper, informing about the young Palestinian man who suffered a wound in the skirmish at the Gaza Strip border, and how an Israeli soldier and a medic brought the man to the hospital a ten-hour drive away for government-paid treatment.
They respond, “That’s so interesting. We have had three other calls regarding other medical treatments provided to Palestinian nationals in the last week. Most of them have come from Gaza.”
The soldier returns in a few days to find Mustafa recovered and ready for discharge from the hospital and they make the return trip to the Gaza border.
As Mustafa speaks with the Palestinian immigration official he explains, “I was injured in combat in Israel and wish to return home. I don’t have a passport.”
The official looks at Mustafa and shows him the front cover of the Al-Ayyam newspaper with his photo on the cover along with two other Palestinian militia members and asks, “You mean like this story?”
Mustafa says, “Yes! That is me!”