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PARTISAN REVIEW
Fitzpatrick to swing them wide, drive us through, and shut them behind.
She drives quickly through the grounds to a rear area of dense woods
and up a road to a house. There, behind a low stone wall with a rusty
metal door, lies Beit Jalla under curfew.
We are in a dusty little courtyard, and from a caged window in the
side of a house spills loud Arab music. A Palestinian voice calls out in
broken English, "Hello Breda!"
"That's Nissim," says Fitzpatrick. "He's on his exercise treadmill. He
drinks too much, had a coronary this year, but I've got him working out
and he's cut back ... some. His prognosis is hopeful."
We enter the woods and, following the barrier wall, mount a small
hill which affords us a panoramic view of the entire city. It spreads
before me white and hot, mirage-like. "Listen," she says. It is the
Muezzin in his tower sending the faithful a mournful, lilting summons
to prayer. Then, out comes a cell phone. "I'm calling Sami," she says.
"He's the contact. I'll leave out the supplies. He'll come get them when
it's safe."
Sami, she explains, is Sami Adwan, Professor of Humanities at Beth
Lechem University and, according to Fitzpatrick, that rarest of rarities:
a still-living, outspoken critic of Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority who is unafraid to point out what he sees as the PA's corrupt
practices. She makes the call. Sami answers. The conversation is brief.
We descend to the car. She pops open the trunk and begins lifting out
transparent pink grocery bags filled with jars of baby food, cans of pow–
dered breast milk, and medicines of all sorts . These are left in a small
pile by a wall at the side of the house. "I've treated some of these chil–
dren since the day they were born. Some of them need special medicines,
foods. I know their cases. The authorities can't be trusted to get them
what they need, so I bring it myself. It's my money."
In the U.S. you could find this pathetic little pile of goods on the
shelves of any pharmacy. Looking at it, I wonder how many jars of baby
food would go to buy a clip's worth of armor-piercing, incendiary
rounds. How many cans of powdered breast milk formula, how many
children's-strength antibiotics, how many bottles of ear and nose drops
and packs of cotton swabs to underwrite a suicide bomber's belt? I think
of fever-ridden Arab infants bawling untreated in their cribs as young
fanatics camouflaged as human beings trigger their detonating vests and
blow Israeli men, women, and children into death and mutilation.
