Lymor

When I first arrived to Abdullah’s home, the place I would be sleeping for the next few weeks, I encountered a faded poster, hanging determinedly to the wall. It’s a picture of a man with long hair, matted by his own blood, in the rubber-gloved hands of a medic. The poster is titled in Hebrew, and I went to bed, haunted and wondering.

Tonight I met the man I saw in the poster on Christmas day. His name is Lymor, a quiet and thoughtful guy the same age as I. His hair is short now, and it refuses to grow over the three inch scar above his right ear. He sat by the fire for two hours, grimmacing loosely, disconnected from our singing.

He came to hours later, newly emerged and talkative. He didn’t remember the time we had all just spent together, and was sad to learn that he missed our songs, Danish, English, Hebrew and Arabic. He would have understood them all. Lymor, though he is shy to admit, speaks nine languages fluently. He is like a musician who picks up an instrument he has never seen and begins playing a soothing tune. Lymor patiently translated our friend Ashraf’s winding and energetic appeal to convert us to Islam, taking care to convey not just words, but intent.

He was shot in Bil’in by Israeli soldiers during a demonstration four months ago. Three rubber-coated steel bullets slammed into him, one embedding deep inside his skull. The soldiers held him for hours in the sun without water or treatment, preventing the ambulance from reaching him. He was finally transported in a military vehicle to the hospital, in a jeep full of soldiers’ gear, riot shields falling continuously over him.

Though several operations have saved most of his eyesight, he is being denied rehabilitation through an elaborate buerocracy that is sending a message to Israelis who cross into the West Bank to challenge the Occupation.

Lymor looks not at you, but into you. He hears something in voices the rest of us do not, and his affectionate understanding lends the chance to express ourselves, not with words, but with intent.