Free Before We Say Goodbye by Gabriella Ambrosio Page B

otherwise; she wouldn’t do it.
    That was when she saw Myriam. Approaching from the opposite side of the park with a light step and a dreamy expression. Wearing jeans. Small, dark, her hair loose, her eyes gleaming. The first thought that leaped into Dima’s head was that she knew her. That girl looked familiar. She reminded her of someone. She couldn’t say whom, but someone she knew well. She was sure she had seen her somewhere before… But she was also sure that she was Jewish.
    Dima felt irresistibly drawn to her.
    *   *   *
    But no one had predicted that those two Arab women would have their stand right there. Why had she only just noticed it? Dima turned towards them. This wasn’t in the plan, but it was only right that she should do it.
    “Get away from here, now,” she said to them, and she said it in such a low voice and with such an imperious look that the two women slipped the loose change they were counting into the folds of their clothing and hastily began to collect up their things.
    Then Dima turned once more towards Myriam and purposefully but naturally fell into step with her. The first guard let them both pass, and the sliding doors opened.

2 P.M.
     
2.05 P.M.: D IMA , M YRIAM , A BRAHAM
    What’s with those two women? Abraham wondered. From his post just inside the sliding doors he had noticed something unusual. The two Arab women selling spices were hurriedly packing up and leaving – or so it seemed. Too hurriedly.
    Abraham’s heart froze.
    The girl the bag was passing he could only hang on to her to stop her the children the beauty of Lia the sun Amin.
    The guard was yelling and trying to stop the girl beside her – Michael’s arm; Oh God, Michael! – God, no.
    The second guard tried to bar her way. He had blue eyes. Alongside them there was only the girl she had come in with, holding her shopping list.
    *   *   *
    So they exploded at the same time.
    Dima was stretched out with her eyes wide open. She was lying on her chest flat on the floor, her arms spread. “She looked like a Greek statue,” someone remarked later.
    Myriam had flown across to the opposite side, under a mountain of cardboard boxes.
    Abraham was all over the place.
    Reported like this it seems as if it happened quickly; and yet it didn’t. In that moment, Dima had time to picture the day of her diploma, Faris, the house with Abdelin. Myriam, in reverse, saw California again with all its colours and Jerusalem all white, and she and her father at Disneyland, and finally a curl of convolvulus that was reaching out and all the trees in the photos that carried on growing for her.
    Abraham had plenty of time to understand: a Palestinian girl entering with an Israeli girl, same age, same height, same complexion, same features – like sisters. The first guard was local and had recognized the Israeli, who was a regular customer, so without thinking he let them pass together. They both had beautiful black eyes. They both had deep eyes. They both had lost eyes. But in one of them Abraham recognized the look that had been following him around since that morning, for the whole day, or perhaps it had been seeking him for a lifetime. And he even had time to return it.
    After the blast and the silence come the cries of horror and the moaning of the wounded. Then the blood flowing and blending with the red paint spilled from the drums at the supermarket entrance. Then the shock of the people who come running. Then the ambulances. Then the panic and the anger and the powerlessness. Then the cursing. Then the strange light that glitters in the eyes of the Arab shoeshine boy on the corner. Then the looks that pass between one Palestinian and another all over the city.
    Then the sky of Jerusalem which darkens once more.

T HOSE WHO REMAIN
     
L IA
    “That’s enough now; it’s time to do your homework,” says Lia, trying to shoo the children away from the television, which they’d made a dive for after lunch. She goes to