My Story of "Peace" !!

My Story?

Who the hell cares about your story, you little crazy Bedouin!!!

I am Just a little Bedouin boy who is still so fresh like the vast burning desert, of a hollow feverish hot heart roaming the land in an everlasting search for the heavenly shade of God, and shade (for us bedouins) is like the warm sun for Scandinavians. Here we are burned by the hellish heat of sun pouring over our heads and so you (always) would find us lunatic hallucinating like fevered children. The sun did it work today and thanks god (YOUR GOD) that I am still alive!!

I still remember, one day when I stood beside the road leaving my sheep grazing behind the hill, just a little Bedouin boy bewildered by the vast open nature of God when suddenly the street (a modern black glistening one) appeared, as if from nowhere, to split the barren desert into two (endlessly) divided and probably quarrelling parts.

The street, that splits the desert, is always amazing with every passing car, motorbike or even just a lingering bike of a lonely ghost.

There, I stood, beside the street, a little bedouin boy of seven distracted (or bewildered, as my grandmom used to rebuke me when I leave the sheep and stay the whole day there) by the bizarre snake that splits the desert of our home, the Negev, when a hazy ghost appeared swaying in the distance. I suddenly remembered what my dad used to tell me: " Don’t trust those Christians (and that was a long time before we knew the jews, the worshipers of Juhua and power), they worship a wooden cross, they don’t believe in God, they are not clean at all, they eat pigs, frogs, dogs and even snakes,,, don’t take anything from them to eat... and even when they force you to take, just hide it and throw it later).... why the hell I remember that????

At that time there were no jews on their "promised land" or at least it seemed to me so... So our tribe (that was tanned from the sun and the desert, that took the brownish color of the desert, and it's dusty smell and even the dry taste of it) didn’t know nothing of strangers other than the "hateful" crusaders. Every tourist for us is a Christian (or a crusader if you like), every blond, everyone who doesn’t have the smell and the color of the desert is consider for us, and especially for me at that time an “alient” crusader!!!

Standing there, I saw the swaying haze of that crusader coming closer with a potential danger every finger (inch, the American way) and I felt frightened!!! The swaying haze ‘s got a long hair of a blond ghost (or a woman, it is the same) and horrored I picked a big stone this time, and stone is our only weapon in the desert, the desert that doesn’t bear but sand and stones. I anticipated the danger to hurl (at the most hurting point, as my granddad told me) the stone on the head. Arching to launch, the ghost was ten arms away (yards, the British "Christian" way) and I saw that face. A smiling face of a beautiful woman with long blond hair biking (swaying) along the street that split the desert and a soft sweet voice (of a bird) saying "shalom"!!!

SHALOM!!!! What's that... but before she passed me I had nothing to say but to mumble the world SH-A-L-O-M!!!! and that was the first time I hear that word and also the first time to stutter it "sh a l o m".... Such a lovely word that sounds of a bird's singing in the bushes of Ein-Gedi!!!! I don’t know but she was heavenly smiling and probably she thought I was sitting there waiting for a bus or any moving ghost on the street that split the desert... But no... I cant move and leave the desert, I will stay with my sheep in "shalom"!!!

What strikes my already crazy mind and drives me insane is that ever since I heard that word "shalom" I never felt in peace any more... that word grasped me out of the peaceful desert to the gloomy hellish depth of the zionist war .... a war that started with that word "SHALOM"... what a misery I live in now!!

I don’t know... I don’t know.. I might be having a fever .... But I will never, ever be able to detach myself from that sweet singing bird word of SHALOM... but I just wonder... and would die to know, if that blond beautiful lady of a "singing bird" voice (that said shalom) still remember that little bedouin replying her with a heart full (سلام שלום and peace)!!!!

Sami, the bedouin.

May 21st 09