“A day in the life of Abed Salama. Anatomy of a tragedy in Jerusalem” (A Day in the Life of Abed Salama), by Nathan Thrall, translated from English (United States) by Frédéric Joly, Gallimard, “NRF essays”, 336 p., €25 , digital €18.
One morning in February 2012, Milad, a 5-year-old Palestinian boy, boarded a bus for a school trip. There are playgrounds not far from his school in Anata in the West Bank, but they are located on the other side of the wall in an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, and Anata’s children do not have them. access.
To reach the leisure center in which they are authorized, the bus must take a long detour via the Jaba road. A few hours later, Milad’s father, Abed Salama, received a call: there had been a serious accident involving a school bus. Then begins the unbearable quest which serves as a narrative framework for A day in the life of Abed Salamaa dense and complex story by Nathan Thrall.
Starting from this banally tragic news item in which an adult and six children will die, among whom, as we fear throughout the book, little Milad, the American journalist goes back up the chain of causalities, and draws a broad picture of a dysfunctional Palestinian society rendered powerless to protect its children. He makes the injustice of fate resonate with another, this one manufactured by men. Thus, Abed Salama holds an identity card that only allows him limited movement, and cannot access certain hospitals where his son may be.
The “road of death”
As for the Jaba road, it was built to allow settlers to go to Jerusalem without having to go through Ramallah, in order to create the“illusion of a continuous Jewish presence from the city to the colonies”. After Israel created new highways for settlers, it is now used only by Palestinians, and poorly maintained. It is called the “death road” : traffic jams caused by checkpoints cause drivers to overtake while speeding in the opposite lane. On the day of the accident, it was again these traffic jams which slowed down the Palestinian rescuers.
“If, instead of an accident, two Palestinian kids had suddenly started throwing stones on the road, soldiers would have rushed to the scene within seconds”, notes Thrall. In this area of the West Bank under Israeli control, Israeli help only arrived after the children were taken away by the people present there.
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