as if he were a dream which might disappear any moment. ‘It’s okay,’ he assured her. ‘It’s all okay now.’
But he was wrong. The officer was true to his word and made sure Abed did not forget there was a bullet with his name on it.The first reminder came a couple of weeks after the incursion as he stood in the street outside his front door drinking a bottle of Coke and taking a moment to feel the sun on his face. The bottle shattered in his hand as a single shot rang out from no-man’s-land on the Gaza-Egypt border a hundred yards away. He dived back into his house, his hand bleeding from a cut caused by the shattering glass and wrapped a cloth around it to stem the flow. The sniper had missed him, but Abed knew it was not through lack of skill.The IDF snipers were far too good to miss someone standing still from that range.They had plenty of practice.The shot had been a reminder, a message that Abed had not been forgotten and his day would soon come.
A week later he was open for business in his new metal shop situated on the corner of a block near the marketplace only a few hundred metres from home. After finishing welding a metal framework for a door he turned off the acetylene torch and accidentally knocked a tool off the bench. As he bent down to pick it up a shot slammed into the wall behind him where his head had been a second before and ricocheted off several metal sheets in various parts of the shop before lodging itself in the ceiling. People in the street outside scattered with practised alarm and Abed flung himself to the floor behind his bench just as another shot slammed into one of the metal table legs in front of his face, splattering him with flakes of rust and dirt. The adrenaline soared through his veins as he realised the day of his execution had come and the sniper had so far been unlucky. He could not stay where he was and crawled as fast as he could across the floor, heading for a corner out of view from the street. Another shot rang out but no bullet entered his shop. It sounded different, louder, as if fired from close by. Abed remained tight in the corner unable to see out of the shop, which hopefully meant the sniper could not see inside.
He lay there for what seemed an age, contemplating his situation.The bottom line was it was only a matter of time before he was killed as the officer had promised. If he was going to stay alive, he had to do something radical and he spent the next few hours mulling over his options.
By the time Abed got to his feet he had come to a decision, which was not difficult since he had only one choice.
That night he asked a friend who had connections with the Islamic Jihad to arrange a meeting for him. He was asking to join the cause. The truth was he still did not truly want to be a part of the armed struggle, despite all that had happened, but he could not stay in Rafah, and since he could not leave Gaza he needed to relocate to somewhere else in the Strip. But that was not easy. Gaza was not a big place and if he and his mother moved to another part, they would have to find somewhere to live in an already overcrowded place and begin the equally difficult task of finding work. Abed was not exactly sure what the freedom fighters could do for him but he had to find out. Of equal concern was what they would ask him to do for them. He hoped they might hide him in one of their secret compounds, but if so, what about his mother? She could not live with them. If she remained at their home in Rafah and the IDF learned he had joined the Jihad they might retaliate by destroying the house and quite possibly killing her too.
To his surprise, when he eventually met with the council he did not need to explain any of his concerns to them. The council, who remained secretive about their names and everything else that did not directly concern Abed, had already decided what was best for him. He was told nothing other than they would take care of everything and