Nice village. Have to admit it. The nicest Arab village that I have seen since the war started.
Occupation: worker.
Hmm. What did you do? Judging by your room, you were making good money. Maybe you worked on the railway in Lod and rode your bike to work each day. The girl went with you to the road and waved you off with her little hand. In the evening you probably brought her sweets back from Lod. Those bright, tasteless sweets that she liked so much.
Race: Arab.
Rubbish. There is no Arab race. Just as there is no Jewish race. You are a Levantine mixture. A remote ancestor of yours was probably a Canaanite peasant. His daughters were carried off by the Jewish invaders and their great-grandsons served King David and Solomon. Later the Greek soldiers came and the Romans. And they too have left their traces in your veins. And when Khalid won the battle of Yarmouk,3 the Arabs came, gave your ancestors their religion and their language, and married their daughters. Since then you are an Arab. And if you are an Arab, we must pursue you. And if necessary, kill you. You and your wife and your children. Understand? That is a law of nature. Were your ancestors and mine brothers and sisters? Did they come from the same Israelite family? Or maybe my fore-bears weren’t Israelites at all. Perhaps they came from Tyre4 or Carthage and adopted the Jewish religion only after the Roman con-quest. But all that is not important at the moment. The main thing is that you are an Arab and I am an Israeli, and that we have to kill each other as soon as possible. That is the simple logic and all the rest is nonsense.
Height: 5 feet 9 inches. Eye color: dark brown. Hair color: dark brown. Build: normal. Scars or marks: scars on both temples.
Here. Another photo of you. With a mustache. One could say that you are a good-looking fellow. Tall, masculine, broad shoulders. Judging by your scars, you don’t go out of your way to avoid a decent fight. Your wife must have liked the look of you, when you bought her from her father.
Don’t look at me like that, Attalla. It is not my fault. I didn’t want this war. Really I did not. Of course not. I know that stealing is wrong. It says so in the Bible. And in the Qur’an I am sure.