Ahmad

       Ahmad is the hero and the main character which moves the axis of the story. He is 19 years old. He was born during the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon in 1982. He belongs to Jerusalem through his father and grandfather, with average height, harmonious body inclining a lot to slenderness, black haired and habitually composed. He is from Jerusalem. He wants to live peacefully despite the oppression he is exposed to every day. He lives on his land as if he were stranger, and feels as if he were always rejected. Nonetheless, he is peaceful. He is aware of the fact that he lives as a second class citizen in a state whose racialism is devouring its body. He naturally refuses violence. He could be slightly coward, for he is a normal human. He is not a supernatural hero. He does not understand the national theories. His education is so low. When his school is not choked with the smell of tear gases, you find them closed most of the school year days under the orders of the Zionist authorities. His only relation is restricted to his family. He, always and with simple instinct,  repeats “Long live Palestine. Long live the Resistance”, but his permanent trouble was how to make his living. Religion to him was something instinctive, valuable, suggesting dignity and honor, and is still beating despite hundreds of inquiries, satellite channels, currents of materialism, sex, and so forth.

      Circumstances and events are going to develop in Ahmad’s life to stimulate him as they had already stimulated thousands of the youth to defend their fathers, mothers and themselves, grabbing any weapon that may repulse the settlers’ bulldozers and tanks, even if it were a stone .. the very same stone which was part and parcel of his and his brothers’ bedroom roof before a bulldozer came and pulled it down in one moment under the sight of his startled mother and five brothers whom the Israeli soldiers ordered to stand at the opposite wall while they were half sleeping half dead, and while his father was swallowing his sticky blood with the humiliation of the rifle base beat of an Israeli soldier constantly screaming, “terrorist  , and sons of terrorist”.

      This precious stone, on which he used to draw the dreams of future by the dancing light of the consecutive car lamps in the night, turned into a weapon. It turned from being a symbol of devastation into a symbol of triumph.

      Ahmad will hold an arm, and is going to shoot, but he is doing so because he is defending himself; a conduct that is not deemed violence. It is an enormous mistake to attribute to him such a hateful term because it is a right which neither a religion nor a law could prevent neither him nor us from clinging to. We should also raise our children fully understanding this notion, because it is a minute mixture drawing a line between our existence and our extinction.

      We do not want to waste time repulsing, justifying or understanding  violence. The problem of defending our existence, as Arabs, is much more important and urgent. We will never feel ashamed of presenting Ahmad’s courage and reactions as a cure of the case of loss, weakness and humiliation which we, adults, are living today and whose influence is running through our mothers’ milk down to our children and settles firmly in our souls when we see rude shots - on the TV screens - challenging the world while looking for those soft breasts every moment; whereas we are unconsciously looking for luck sign of the zodiac and celebrating the others’ victories. We will have the honor of planting the smile of the dream of triumph and filling dignity in the hearts of the youth, the youth of future.

      Ahmad is going to move spontaneously, and he will convulse spontaneously. He will not keep silent when the jailer’s blade plunges into his living veins, the same as hundreds of similar young men and children who have been determined to reformulate the image of history with their blood.

Khaled

     Ahmad’s arm friend and his sister’s fiancé. A twenty five years young man from a village near Jerusalem. He is studying at the university of Bir Zeit. He always dreamt of completing his studies and getting married to Mariam, Ahmad’s sister. But a dispute with an Ethiopian soldier, who provoked him at the door of the university, caused him to be a wanted man.

Abou Al-Himam

(translated as father of titans)

     Both his friends and enemies called him so. Seventy years of wretchedness and three stages of occupation and revolution have never prevented this titanic old aged man from going on with his work as a steadfast cloth merchant at  the town market all daytime and as a scheming mind for the activities of the resistance groups at night.

      A white-haired man. The white hat never leaves his head. He always wears a white robe which is always clean; rather fat, with a character attracting whoever talks to him. He hearkens to you when you find none ready to do so. He expresses readiness to fulfill your need before you mention it. He lost his right leg during the war of 1967, or he planted it on the outskirts of Jerusalem, by which he wanted to engraft an olive tree as he preferred to say.

Mariam

Sister of Ahmed and the future wife of Khaled K, a symbol of the Palestinian woman ,that losses the men of here family one after another , some go to jail some get transferred outside , luckiest is the the dead .. the martyr ,works silently , cries silently , fades silently .........(soon at underash2)