Sweet Dreams, Isawiya

2:02 AM

I march in the dark with my battle ration and climb the ladder up to Guard Post 3 on the bare roof. Corporal Motti is waiting there.

“It’s about time. I’m freezing, freezing to death.” He notices my food. “I’m starving, starving to death,” he adds. I give him a slice of military bread and he swallows it almost without chewing. Then he climbs down the ladder and disappears into the house of secrets.

He who guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from troubles, roars the building sign at all hours, without distinguishing if it’s night or day. Two hundred submissive souls guard their mouths like the sign commands and continue preparing in silence. The building continues roaring and laughing and peeking compulsively on the people of the neighboring village.

Now they are sleeping, the people of Isawiya.

Only a thin, barbed wire fence separates my roof from the ramshackle village. The fence really is slight and it’s not very high, but the people of the village are far. I strain every sense in my body to try to gather clues about them, listen to the whispers and giggles, inhale the smell of fried dough with green hot sauce and vengeful prayers on the side. Now I look at them from above, listening to the sounds of their troubled sleep.

“They’re not really sleeping,” we are taught at the shift-changing ceremony. ”They’re preparing for the next blood bath.”

“In Guard Post 3 you must always have your finger on the trigger,” we are instructed.

Then the Israeli flag is raised. We listen on like a shamed babysitters club, because those whom we rule have stopped obeying us long ago. They know I am here. And in their prayers they ask that I come down from here and stop peeking, Inshallah. For it is late now and the people in...