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Tira, my love By Sayed Kashua The sound of screeching tires awakened me on Friday night. At first I stayed in bed, following the car's moves, listening to the noise of the engine that seemed about to explode from the effort, to the squeal of the tires on what was left of the asphalt in the neighborhood. I tried to picture the car spinning in circles, the people sitting inside it, their smiles, their feeling of satisfaction. How old are they? What do they do for a living? And what options for entertainment, if any, does this crappy place offer them? I tried to convince myself to go back to sleep and not to get up, lest I wake my wife and children who were sleeping alongside me on mattresses that my mother spread out in what once used to be a kid's room. What time is it anyway? I hauled myself up very slowly, trying not to touch or disturb my children's sleep. When I was on my feet, my wife turned over and said, "What time is it?" and then went right back to sleep. Advertisement The clock on the living room wall said two. A critical hour - I know from experience that waking up at this time makes falling asleep again pretty much impossible. I hate these hours of the night, the bouts of sleeplessness that hit before dawn are the worst. That's when the fear reaches levels it can't even approach during the light of day. I had to be completely silent. Besides my wife and kids, my parents were asleep in their bedroom. I sat down in the darkened living room without being able to turn on the television, for a little distraction. I tried to yawn - I once heard that this is a trick that can sometimes persuade the eyes to feel tired again. But I was out of luck. That's it. I was up now. I could officially declare that Saturday morning had begun. I could still hear the car, or maybe it was another car that was now approaching the neighborhood. I hoped that the noise would wake somebody else up so I'd have some company, but the sounds faded and no one stirred. They're all very tired, after celebrating my nephew's third birthday - the reason we came from Jerusalem for a visit. The kids ran around for hours with balloons, riding bikes, playing with friends in the big backyard. The kind of space my kids aren't used to in the capital. Their joyful smiles made me feel somehow that I was doing them an injustice by supposedly depriving them of a village childhood. I felt awful when I saw how happy they were with their cousins, almost all around their age, who always have someone to play with and can play outside whenever they want; as long as the main gate to the compound is closed then it's quite safe. I know there is nothing my children love more on the weekends than visiting their grandparents. To them, "Tira" is the world's biggest amusement park. They also get excited about the four of us sleeping on mattresses right next to each other. To them, it's like an annual field trip. I do my best to take part in their games, I try to smile, to look happy and hope that my kids don't know how much sorrow this place makes me feel. I try to blur the fear that hits me whenever I return to the place where I was born. I try to cover up the sense of dread that the only refuge I can imagine leaves me with. Oh, Tira. Tira, my love. I lit a cigarette and tried to recall the adult conversation around the bowls of fruit and plates of cookies in my older brother's yard. The kids were running around gleefully while I listened to the stories of the past week from my brother's friends. I don't know exactly how many cases of cars being torched, or of houses and people being shot at, I heard about at the party - how much can one remember, anyway? Someone said the mayor's house had been fired upon, and I'd actually read about that on an Arabic Internet site, so that wasn't really news. Someone else said that a neighbor of his who taught in the local high school had been fired at over a girl's grade on a test. Relatives of the student came and sprayed his car with gunfire, right in the school parking lot. Another teacher, who foolishly recommended that his students read Paolo Coelho's "Eleven Minutes: A Novel (P.S.)," found himself accused of incitement. A bunch of parents who were concerned about their children's future collected the books from the students and the shops and burned them. A bank clerk who dared to return a check from a wrong account woke up in the middle of the night to find his car had been set afire. And a middle school teacher was badly beaten up by a preteen girl. All the guests at my brother's lovely house were highly educated people. There was a dentist, a lawyer, a cardiologist and an accountant. I'm sure they all have nice houses, make a relatively good living and are giving their children the best education they can. They all want to leave, they all miss the cities in Israel and abroad where they were educated. They all say that they have no choice, that they never did. They're a little envious of me for living far away, for not being a part of their reality. But at the same time, they also pity me - so far away and cut off from reality. The village began to stir early on Saturday morning. It's the big market day, the main source of income for the local merchants. Tira's Shabbat market: Jews come from near and far to buy labaneh cheese and pita, to eat hummus and maybe some kebabs, to get their cars repaired, to stroll among the houses, weighed down with their shopping bags. They'll fill Tira with their cars and smile at the locals, and the locals will smile back. Maybe the visitors will worry that their car radios will be stolen, but have no fear -on Saturdays the police are out in force. The day-trippers will feel magnanimous - they're saving the economy, helping the locals to make a living. They won't know anything, nor will they want to know anything, and if you ask them they'll always answer - "Tira? What a great village. We go there every Saturday." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Fragile cease-fire Olmert: Gaza cease-fire is fragile, may be short lived. Unbalanced stance Italy FM: EU stance on Israel in past swayed by intolerance.

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