Neve Emek: Room 102 - Part 9 of ?

9

I advanced through the heart of the serene settlement, steadily making my way to the mosque-turned-synagogue in the northeast. What had been left of the minaret guided me through the dawning like a beacon, grounding me to the present and helping clear my mind of the creature. But it wasn’t the thought of reaching the local bus in time that occupied my mind as I advanced.

The caretaker had not lied.

A slew of villagers moved through the lanes alongside me, avoiding and giving me hostile looks as if I had trespassed and was not welcome. Mostly elderly men with knotted hands and hunched backs, shuffling past with their sticks tapping against the stones, while the few women I saw wore their scarves tightly around their heads, hiding half of their faces. But it wasn’t the hostile nature of their gazes or arcane antics that sent a shiver up my spine. It was the implication behind those gazes.

All of them watched me.

Not with the caution of seeing a new face where there shouldn’t be one, but with suspicion. Like they expected me to suddenly do something that would warrant them the right to attack me. Like a ticking bomb. But why such palpable hostility? I did not know any of these people, nor did they know me. What happened between the Palestinians and the Israelis several years ago had nothing to do with us, the people in the present, so why should I accept being seen as inferior and a subhuman? As if the tears of blood Palestinian mothers shed through decades were not enough, just not enough.

A cold, marrow-deep certainty then crawled through me: I didn’t belong here, this place my grandfather once called home. It was a foreign place I had only heard stories about. My late mother used to tell me that there had once been a time when she and my missing aunt used to run about in these lanes with the other kids – Muslims, Christians, and Jews – playing marbles with stones and skipping rope with makeshift ropes.

Thinking back, I suppose Mum never gave up the hope of returning. Maybe she told me all those stories so I wouldn’t forget my roots – or my missing aunt. And maybe… she believed telling me those childhood memories would one day help me find her – Amal Khalil.

I remember overhearing my mother and grandfather talk late at night, when they thought I was asleep, that our village was one of the few left untouched back when Khāle was still with us. It had yet to be accused of being built over an ancient Jewish site, set on fire, and renamed for imperial motives. But rumours spread like wildfire: nearby settlements were already being emptied into displacement camps, and those who resisted were taken by the Israeli military, never to be seen again.

 

Had my aunt been taken too by them or perhaps caught in the crossfire between those who resisted and those who oppressed them? Then again, who knew? It was total pandemonium back then, with the corrupted press deliberately withholding information about the recurrent settlement abuse and displacement camps. And maybe, in that chaos, she encountered a much more gruesome fate.

As I was having these thoughts, the caretaker, whose name I still did not know, crossed my mind. He said his family had worked for ours for generations. Did that mean he’d seen my missing aunt back then? Surely, if she did make it here as she told everyone she was going to, he’d be the last person to have seen her alive? But why did he not mention anything about her if that were the—

I stepped back instinctively.

An old man spat on the ground two feet from me and snapped me back to reality. What was the matter with these people? They were acting like I wasn’t a human being like them, but some other species! What kind of deep-rooted grudge was this to last for decades? Surely, if someone needed to harbour such vile sentiments, it was the very people forcefully displaced and then accused of being terrorists wherever they went!

At the same time, I did not want to cause a scene. So, I moved on, head low, hands curling into fists beside me. It would be a lie to say I did not fear, that these villagers did not give me the heebie-jeebies. There was something innately evil about people who hated other humans for no other reason but for the colour on their skin, the religion they followed, the culture they grew up in and had no say in, or the clothes they wore, or simply because they were “the other” – an outsider. Hard to describe exactly, but this was close enough, I guess.

I pressed on, telling myself I would reach the bus stop in time without needing the help of these people. What else could I do? The caretaker told me it was hard to miss once I passed the synagogue. Worst case scenario, I’d have to return to the burial grounds and hit up the solicitor, ask to postpone the meeting. But for now? All I wanted was to find that bloody bus stop on my own, without getting involved with anybody.

Right then, a stone skittered across the frost-hardened ground at my feet, cutting through the stillness out of nowhere. My legs jerked back as adrenaline flowed through my veins. The surface was jagged, but carved deeply into it was a single word in Arabic script: kāfir. Heathen.

My gaze shot upwards, scanning the small crowd that had gathered unbeknownst to me, forming a circle around me and standing too close. I spun in place, perplexed,  as every face was turned towards me, the hollow eyes unblinking, and mouths fixed in grim lines. I could almost hear it, those words drilled into their indoctrinated brains: leave or regret.

My breath came in short bursts as I weighed my options, or rather, the absence of them. Every instinct screamed at me to flee, but my legs refused to listen to my commands, keeping me rooted in place. My mind reeled nonetheless, skimming every potential path forwards, every subtle movement that could signal compliance or escape. I knew that any misstep, any hesitation, could be noticed and misunderstood. And yet—

There was one sound now, distant but unmistakable, that pierced the prevailing silence: the low growl of an engine drawing closer by the second. Around the same time, as if on cue, the villagers dispersed, and a small opening formed in the direction of the oncoming bus. I broke into a run without waiting for the villagers to close the gap once more and trap me, sprinting towards the noise to my left, beyond a bend, past the run-down synagogue.

The bus stood at the edge of the settlement itself, its windows reflecting only the flat, brightening sky. My legs carried me forwards in a sprint until at last I reached the steps and hauled myself inside. The stale warmth was the first thing to greet me, mixed with oil and dust.

The chauffeur didn’t look at me as I entered. His eyes were fixed ahead as though I did not exist. I tried a greeting. There was no sign it had been heard or acknowledged. I slotted some coins into the metal tray anyway and stepped further down the aisle. The few passengers scattered along the seats were sparse, but they were all watching me as I apologetically passed by.

Heads turned with slow motions, so much so that it sent a chill down my spine and put me on high alert. Like they were all mannequins that mimicked one another and were pulled by invisible strings, yet looked just as human as I did.

I edged towards the back and slid into the final row, pressing my shoulder and back against the window. Outside, the frost on the glass caught the first pale morning light, breaking it into pieces. I exhaled shallowly, trying to steady myself, but the sense of being observed lingered still.

Then the doors clanged shut.

Silence returned as if the bus had swallowed the world outside, and time itself had stopped. Minutes passed slowly, stretching, each tick of the clock telling me that the meeting with the solicitor drew closer and closer. I twisted in my seat. Uneasy. Why wasn’t the bus moving? Though I had no words for it, this growing pit in my stomach, I did know that something was off. According to the caretaker, the bus was supposed to leave the village several minutes ago, so why were we still stuck here?

Now that I thought about it, the engines had been shut off, too.

I rose and moved towards the driver. The aisle felt longer than it should have as I did so, each step resonating against the floor. My hand lifted, a small tremor betraying my tension. And then, suddenly, the bus jolted forwards, and the world lurched violently on its axis.

I stumbled, grabbing instinctively at something solid to steady myself.

“Sorry,” I muttered as I looked back. My fingers had closed around—nothing. Just air. The support I had thought was there, another hand, a railing, or some graspable edge was gone. My body swayed slightly, anchored only by the floor beneath my feet and the weight of disbelief pressing down. What the fuck?

I sank back into my seat, knuckles whitening as I gripped the seat in front of me, unsure of what to make of what had just happened.

Outside, the landscape stretched with steep drop-offs, twisted and uprooted trees, and glimmering stone paths surrounded by olive trees. It was a beautiful sight, one that symbolised the resistance of my people, of their determination to fight till the very end. The sun had risen fully now, too, a bright and cheerful light that should have comforted me but bitterly failed.

I pressed my head against the cold glass and let the sunlight wash across my face. But even as the warmth kissed my skin, the unease settled deeper, whispering that this calm, this fleeting normalcy, was only skin-deep.

Indeed, so it was – only I didn’t know at the time.

The bus rattled and groaned as it traced the narrow cliffside road, tyres scraping against the gravel. The slope below plunged into a dense forest, where sunlight pooled in golden patches between thick clusters of pine and olive trees. For a fleeting moment, I let my shoulders relax. The brightness of morning, the gentle sway of branches, the distant hum of the engine – all of these eased the tightness of panic in my chest, and my hands unclenched, and I finally allowed myself to watch the trees slip past in a calm, hypnotic rhythm.

But calm was but a fragile illusion.

A hut appeared, hunched against the roadside at one point. Not that it arrested me. Not at first, that is. Beside it, a single gnarled tree twisted strangely at an angle, roots clawing at the soil. A thicket of brushwood surrounded the hut, too, bristling and restless in the wind. I blinked, overcome by the sweet and tender embrace of sleep.

And the bus passed it once, and then…

Again.

The same hut.

The same bent tree.

The same thicket.

My frown deepened, confusion and panic taking shape in my chest as I forced my eyes open, staring hard outside the window. At first, I thought it was a trick of my tired mind, a hallucination born from lack of sleep. But each repetition came with subtle changes: the hut sagged lower, the tree’s bark peeled, the thicket darkened, and the sky above began to darken too without warning.

By the fourth cycle, the hut was nearly unrecognisable, a collapsed shell leaning into the earth. I felt sick, as sick as a dog. This made little sense! Something beyond reason was at work, twisting the world to an unfamiliar pattern of repeating cycles! Then…

The bus screeched to a sudden halt, and the air shook with the hiss of doors opening. I pressed back into my seat instinctively, knuckles white against the cold metal, looking out the window once again – eyes widening.

From the ruins of the hut, the creature that had pursued me back in Neve Emek slowly came into existence. Its limbs elongated and twisted at unnatural angles, joints jerking with dissonant rhythm. Its posture was bent, its movements lurching – too fast. And then—I held my breath.

Our eyes met.

I blinked.

It drew closer.

I blinked again, harder, faster.

This time, its crooked limbs snapped forwards with impossible speed, like a film reel skipping frames, and I screwing my eyes shut, teeth clenched, every muscle braced for the impact of claws or hands or whatever it would use to drag me out the window and tear me up.

When—

There it was – right before me! Inches from the glass!

Its face slammed into focus with its skin stretched thinly across sharp bones, the eye of the Khamsa wide and empty, pupils nothing but pits of absence. Its mouth yawned open in a rictus, the gums slick and teeth long and crooked. Frost appeared instantly on the window where its breath touched, several branches of lines spreading outwards like a blooming flower or the roots of a tree.

I jolted back with a strangled gasp, and in that heartbeat—

“Chaver, tat’orer… ata cholem.”

My eyes snapped.

Hyperventilating.

“Ata beseder?” You okay?

This was a phrase I knew, one of the few I knew by heart. You okay. A scrap of memory from another place, another time. And now, somehow, it was the same phrase that pulled me back into the present, steadying me, helping me push through the haze that still clung to my skin in beads of cold sweat.

With frantic eyes, I glanced at the young man, who had woken me up from whatever nightmare this was, clutching his arms and digging my nails in without being aware of it. Then I let go. Still out of it. Still breathing too fast.

Outside, through the window, lay rolling, golden fields under a sun now stark and scorching. The road had straightened, trees realigned. The bus was no longer in the middle of nowhere, no longer near that bloody hut.

Heck, had it even stopped at all?

Most of the passengers were gone by then, leaving only me and the young man behind in the aisle. I let out a hushed, cracked “Todah” – thank you in my broken Hebrew – and followed the young man out, still shaken. I couldn’t, for the life of me, recall how or when the bus had ended up here.

Or when I’d fallen asleep.

To be continued...