Pony: What is it that makes them hate us?
10.8.2001

Thanksgiving Monday and I am at work. Reading the news and watching the riots in Pakistan on the Internet. One of the producers here, a middle aged man and fellow-jew looked over my shouder and said: "See, I don't know what it is that makes them hate us so much. They want to kill us."

Cue flashback: It is 1994, a couple of days before Purim, my favorite holiday, and I am in my apartment in Jerusalem. A phone call wakes me up. It is my roomate's boyfriend, Boaz, who is in the navy and he has news that there has been a shooting massacre in a mosque in Hebron, and he is not sure, but he thinks it was a Jewish settler. He tells me maybe I should be careful because there are sure to be retaliations.

I go to work at the Yemenite restaurant, and none of the palestinian chefs show up. No one blames them. What would we say if we saw them? Sorry about the massacre? he wasn't like us? We don't shoot people in the back as they pray? The owner and his mom do the cooking and the day is as normal as any day can be in Jerusalem.

That night on T.V. jordanian news shows footage of jewish zealots dancing in the street. They are saying "ayzeh mishloech manos" (a gift for Purim). They are *celebrating*. My roomates and I groan in mortification. We are not like them. Don't hate us for their actions!

I am not like them for sure. I am Canadian, as everyone reminds me when they make fun of my accent that sounds strangely Quebecois.

The next day I wake up. My roomates are already up, smoking, drinking nescafe and watching the news. Are those dolls scattered on the street in Tel Aviv?

Now Purim is my favorite holiday. It is based on the story of Queen Esther who married the king of Persia and with the help of her uncle Mordecai, managed to prevent the massacre of the country's Jews, plotted by one evil dude, Haman. To celebrate, you dress in costumes and drink until you can't tell the difference between haman and Mordecai - between good and evil.

Children love this holiday. Like Hallowe'en here in Canada, their parents dress them up for school, like clowns or superheroes, with amateur-though-lovingly-drawn face paints. I sit down by the T.V. These are not dolls. They are children. There has been a suicide bombing in tel-aviv. These are children-parts. Scattered on the streets of Tel Aiv.

And what can I write that will make this story have a point and make me figure out why I remember it today?

The next night my friends and I dress up anyways, although we hardly have the stomach for it. We go to a bar in the Russian Compound but unlike the year before, no one is dressed up or dancing and they look at us like we are deeply tacky folk. Which I guess we are, but what the hell, we have to live a little in this godforsaken place that makes your heart and brain work so hard.

Finally we find a bar where there are a couple of guys dressed like gangsters. We take this as a good sign. (I am only just 21 here, OK?) and the guys join our table. We feel like everyone in glaring at us, wondering: How can we celebrate after so much death?

One of the guys leans over and flirts with me. He is drunk, but what the hell, it is Purim, and I play along. What am I studying in university, he asks? Hebrew and English literature, I answer. You know English writers?
Yes, he says, Shakespeare. Oh, great. This guy is a bobo, and what is he doing standing up and raising his glass? A toast? He begins to speak out loud: "Lehiyot o lo lehiyot? Zu ha she-aylah..." And in a loud, clear voice he recites Hamlet's famous soliloquy in Hebrew. From beginning to end. That is the question.

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