by Barry Rachin
A weak glow as though from an infant’s nightlight was flickering on the Formica counter next to the toaster. Sonny went to take a better look. The light sputtered dimly from a thick tumbler filled with milky white wax. The wick had burned down three-quarters of the way to the bottom. A piece of paper with Hebrew lettering was glued to the outside. “It’s a yahrzeit candle,” Naomi said by way of explanation. “Jews light a candle on the anniversary of a family member’s death. My mother died a year ago today.” Again she picked up the glass, sloshed the pale liquid in an undulating motion then set it down without drinking. “I was here in Massachusetts a thousand miles away when she passed.”
“I’m sorry.” Sonny didn’t know what else to say. The Israeli woman was even more beautiful than he remembered, if that was humanly possible. All his smutty and indecent fantasies fell away in an instant. He wanted to hold and comfort her, to say something profoundly grownup, brilliant and resolute to blunt her sorrow.
You got my postcard?” He nodded. “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is very close to the Jewish quarter, so after I said a prayer at the Wailing Wall for my mother I went to an Arab kiosk and bought the card. I thought to myself, ‘Sonny will like this one, for sure.’” She rose abruptly, tossed the wine in the sink and put the bottle away. “Like I said, when I’m here I’m homesick for my family in Israel, but when I’m there visiting I can’t wait to return home.”
Sonny thought a moment. “Which is home – here or there?”
Naomi smiled sadly. “Both. In the spring I shall apply for American citizenship. It won’t make the pain go away, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Mrs. Shamir, a self-professed non-believer said a prayer for her departed mother at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Was it a logical inconsistency or just another example of Sonny’s all-encompassing ignorance? In the den Ruthy was singing along with the silly tune that opened Malcolm in the Middle.
You’re not the boss of me now.
You’re not the boss of me now.
You’re not the boss of me now,
and you’re not so big.
Life is unfair….
“Just in case you came home early, I shoveled out your driveway every week,” Sonny said, “and threw traction gravel on the flagstone walkway and back stairs.” Mr. Gossage had bought a sixty pound bag at the beginning of the winter. Sonny filled a pail and hauled it down to the Shamir residence each time after cleaning the walkways. The heavier crushed stone was a better choice over playground sand or rock salt, which could discolor or damage the mortar in the brickwork.
The dark-skinned woman was puttering at the sink and he didn’t think she heard him. “I’m tired,” Naomi announce, “and I’m going to bed now.”
Saturday night Mrs. Shamir had a dinner engagement. Sonny arrived a half hour early. Naomi was dressed rather conservatively in a dark blue dress that looked like something more appropriate for Vision World than a romantic soirée. “Mr. Klezmer is treasurer of the brotherhood at Temple Agudas Achim. Tonight is the board members’ installation dinner-dance.”
“But I thought you weren’t religious?”
Naomi grinned devilishly. “That’s our dirty little secret.” She was fumbling with an earring; the backing kept coming loose. Rushing back into the bedroom, she slammed the door. Sonny drifted into the kitchen and cracked the refrigerator open. Removing a small dish covered with cellophane, he placed it on the counter.
The doorbell rang. Mr. Klezmer was a stocky man with dark-framed glasses and gentle, almost feminine features. He wore a shapeless brown suit with wing-tipped shoes. Despite a boyish charm, he suffered from a bad case of male pattern baldness. In a few short years, Sonny mused, the few remaining tufts of frizzy brown hair would be ancient history and the middle-aged man would look positively prehistoric. “Mrs. Shamir is still getting ready. I’m the babysitter.”
He led the way into the living room just as Naomi cracked the bedroom door open and gestured to Sonny with a crooked finger. “I found a run in my nylons,” she whispered pettishly. “I’ll just be a minute longer, if you could keep Sheldon occupied.”
He went back into the living room, where the man was studying an oil painting of an Arab village with stucco, sand-colored houses and a cedar forest fading into a mountainous background. “A humanitarian crisis exists in the Gaza Strip,” Sonny blurted the words out all in a jumbled heap, “and many of the residents don’t have safe drinking water.”
Sheldon stared at the young boy through thick glasses and ran a hand over his balding head. “I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”
“Actually, I’m Catholic,” Sonny stammered. “Last month National Geographic featured an article on Gaza, although I can’t say as I understood the half of it.”
As Sonny explained it, the journalist who wrote the report flew over the region in a small, single-engine plane. On the Jewish side were verdant fields, farms, flower gardens and even luxurious swimming pools filled to overflowing. But less than a mile away in Gaza, the water—what little existed—was foul-smelling, polluted and undrinkable. The Israelis, who controlled the pumping stations rationed water to the Palestinians while refusing to allow them to build modern purification facilities. Many of the Arab children were malnourished and sickened with diseases spread by the putrid water.
When Sonny finished talking, Sheldon observed, “Something that has enormous value in use, might be taken for granted simply because it’s plentiful.”
“Like water,” Sonny ventured.
“Smart boy!” Mr. Klezmer winked playfully. “When you think about it, nothing is more useful than water, but its cost is negligible. A diamond, on the other hand, has few if any practical applications outside of fashion or as a sharpening agent, and yet we pay a small fortune for a single gem.”
“I don’t see how any of this applies to the situation in Gaza.”
Mr. Klezmer cracked a dreamy, introverted smile. “The value of water depends inversely on the thirst of the person and availability. Suppose a Palestinian is dying with thirst and there is fresh water available but beyond his reach, the Arab will give everything for that water, even a sack full of precious diamonds.”
“Where did you learn all this?”
“I studied finance in college,” Sheldon replied. “It’s all part of eighteenth century economic theory.” The congenial demeanor faded away and his expression turned bitterly grim. “The Israeli government’s policy toward the Arabs is inhumane; it’s why Gaza is little better than an open-air prison with security checkpoints and Jewish soldiers as wardens.” Mr. Klezmer looked Sonny full in the face. “Water tainted with raw sewage is symptomatic of a deeper moral malaise.”
“Then what’s the solution?”
Sheldon smiled in his silly boyish manner and was just about to reply, but the bedroom door burst opened and Naomi rushed from the room.
“So what have you men been gossiping about?”
“The shortage of clean drinking water for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” Sheldon replied. “It appears your babysitter has been brushing up on the subject.”
Naomi’s eyes brightened as she turned to Sonny. “Since when did you become an expert on Middle Eastern diplomacy?”
When they were gone, Sonny brought Ruthy into the kitchen where they sat together silently devouring the hummus. The plate licked clean, they went back to the den and curled up on the couch together watching the latest episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick and SpongeBob were capturing baby jellyfish in butterfly nets, but then a grownup jellyfish interrupted their fun electrocuting them with high-voltage shocks. Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! It reminded Sonny of the cautionary tale Mr. Klezmer told him before Naomi emerged in her new hosiery.
Mr. Solomon, the chisel-faced Jew, was a tank commander in Tzahal, the Israeli Defense Force. Sonny could picture the reptilian oaf single-handedly shutting every spigot in the Arab households of Gaza. No more water, clean or otherwise, for you rotten Palestinian bastards! Yes, poker
-faced Mr. Solomon definitely seemed the type.
Sonny had made a joke of it. Mr. Solomon – his first name was “Ariyah’, which meant lion in Hebrew - was hummus minus all the rapturous herbs and spices – no tahini, no garlic, no fresh lemon, no jalapeño pepper. No nothing. On the other hand, Mr. Klezmer, despite a receding hairline and myopic eyes, was just the person to ease Mrs. Shamir’s heartache in a year’s time when Sonny was far away at college, and she had to light yet another funny little candle in the thick glass tumbler.
