Gaza Gains a Martyr, Parents Lose a Son
GAZA CITY –– The poster boy for Palestinian defiance stood about 5 feet 4 inches in his socks. He might have weighed 100 pounds if he had eaten recently and well, which he rarely did. He was good at soccer, naughty at school, and before he died--shot in the neck by Israeli troops and left to bleed to death on the battlefield--he told his friends he was intent on becoming a martyr for the Palestinian cause.
Faris Odeh got his wish, and then some.
Killed last month, a few weeks shy of his 15th birthday, Faris has been immortalized posthumously by a remarkable photograph. It captured him--short, scrawny and wearing a baggy sweater--rearing back to sling a stone at an Israeli tank perhaps 15 yards away.
Now Faris is a Palestinian legend, his valor celebrated in graffiti and wall art. Political parties pay him homage. Television extols his example. His photograph adorns calendars and posters and has been painted, larger than life and in bright colors, on the walls of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and on the sides of West Bank office buildings.
But at home in Gaza City, where Faris lived with his parents and eight brothers and sisters, the hullabaloo over his death strikes a sour chord. His mother, for one, is not sure she buys it.
"When I see his picture my heart is torn to pieces," said Anam Odeh, 40. "I guess I feel proud for him being called a hero, standing in front of a tank and all that. But when I see his classmates come around after school, all I can do is cry.
"And this is what I was just telling my neighbors"--she starts to weep softly, brushing the tears away as the words come tumbling out--"that I'm so afraid that Faris's death will be for nothing. That everything will just go back to normal. And the only thing that happened is that I'll have lost my son."
In death, Faris has joined a pantheon of Palestinian martyrs, such as Mohammed Aldura, the 12-year-old boy shot to death Sept. 30 in Gaza as his father tried to shield him. Faris's image fits above captions proclaiming "the Palestinian David and the Israeli Goliath." Some predict his name will live forever as a synonym for heroism.
On Nov. 1, after a month of clashes, Faris's cousin Shadi--a young man who had recently joined the Palestinian police--was killed in a confrontation in Gaza. "When that happened, Faris said, 'I swear I'll avenge his death,' " Anam Odeh said. "He went to Shadi's funeral wreath and placed a snapshot of himself in it. He said the wreath would be for him, too."
Late at night, after the beatings and the screaming and the punishments, Faris's parents would talk quietly in their room. "I'm afraid for Faris," his father would say, Anam Odeh remembered. "I'm afraid something bad will happen."
Faris was killed Nov. 9, at Karni--about 10 days after the famous photo was taken. His friends said he was shot while crouching down to pick up a stone. He was so close to an Israeli tank, they said, that they could not drag his still body to an ambulance for more than an hour. The hospital pronounced him dead on arrival.
It was not long before people began to stop Anam Odeh on the street, recognizing her from television. "Aren't you the martyr Faris's mother?" they'd say. Like all families of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops since September, the Odehs received a $10,000 check from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
For Palestinians, the Odehs' son is a hero, a lesson, a model. But not to his mother.
"Faris was a boy who loved me so much," she said, weeping again. "His blood is worth so much more."
© 2000 The Washington Post
http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/gazmart.htm
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