by CHINA MIEVILLE
In the occupied West Bank, “Undesirable life is ended, and unauthorized death is banned.”
Recall his face. Even from a government one of the chief exports of which is images of screaming children, his was particularly choice, tucked behind his desperate father, pinned by fire. Until Israeli bullets visit them and they both go limp. He for good. Pour encourager les autres.
Now, though, thirteen years after he was shot on camera—one year more than he lived—he has been brought back to life. But wait before you celebrate: there are no very clear protocols for this strange paper resurrection. Mohammed Al-Durra is a bureaucratic Lazarus. After a long official investigation, by the power vested in it, the Israeli government has declared him not dead. He did not die.
There was another boy at the hospital, there were no injuries, it was a trick. A blood libel to suggest he was killed by Israelis, the same day as were Nizar Aida and Khaled al-Bazyan, one day before Muhammad al-Abasi and Sara Hasan and Samer Tubanja and Sami al-Taramsi and Hussam Bakhit and Iyad al-Khashishi, two before Wael Qatawi and Aseel Asleh, three before Hussam al-Hamshari and Amr al-Rifai, but stop because listing killed children takes a long time. Keep his name out of that file.
Jamal Al-Durra will open his son’s grave. “Is that enough?” he asks with a unique exhaustion. “To prove that this thing we saw happen happened, that the boy we saw die died?”
The task is complete. Wheels are spinning. A new pass law. The IDF has been sent, a checkpoint set up at the border of the land of the dead. And Mohammed Al-Durra has been hard-stopped by the guards because he does not carry the right papers.
Undesirable life is ended, and unauthorized death is banned. Where is Mohammed to go now, the victim of this necrocide, this murder of the killed?
Between wire runnels, tangled chains, cages, again. Again, again. Maybe that’s where the shot-again newly unkilled boy will kick his heels. A purgatory not for the unshriven but for the troublesomely Arab, for the death-contested.
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