The Book of Disappearance

by Ibtisam Azem

  Why do I always imagine Baron Rothschild cutting the ribbon at the street’s official inauguration? I don’t even remember seeing such a photograph. But he was here on some spot in this street. When I walk the city’s streets, I touch its houses with my looks. I hear myself screaming out loud. As if a clear glass separates me from the people around me. Glass that shields sounds. I rarely see it, but I know that it is there when I scream and no one hears me.

  I sit in the middle of the boulevard. Yes, Rothschild is a boulevard and not a street. I don’t know why I call it “street.” I sit on the wooden benches that sit, together with trees, in the middle of the street. Waiting and I sit together. I don’t know what I am waiting for, but I am waiting for something. Sometimes I even dream that I’m sitting and waiting. I dream that I’m waiting. What a silly dream!

  When evening creeps in, the lights of houses and cafes around me appear, and I wait. That’s not a dream. That is what I actually do as I sit on the benches that are surrounded with giant trees in the median. As if the buildings around me, from which lights and shadows appear, are also waiting for someone, or something. Everything is beautiful from the vantage point of the bench. As soon as night falls, I begin to wash the houses around me with black memory. I wipe the whiteness off the facades of buildings and paint everything black. I take black from the night’s kohl and draw the city black. As if I am afraid that the white memory will possess me, so I wipe it with the blackness of a moonless night. I love the color black because it resembles us. It is us.

  Sometimes I leap out of the bench like a clock spring and walk in stammering steps to the sea. I see nothing around me, because I’ve colored all the houses with black. Even the moon is black. I often go through Shenkin Street. I greet the people sitting at coffee shops. They smile and call out, “Alaa! Come sit with us! Let’s chat and have a glass of wine . . . tell us about Jaffa and your Jaffan grandmother. Come on!” I imagine them being genuinely interested and asking what never crosses their mind . . . How do we feel? How do we live? But questions no longer have any meaning. I leave them without responding. I no longer care to tell them anything. Everyone welcomes me. They all want to hear my stories and yours. Yes, your stories! My stories are fissures of your stories. The ones you told me, and the ones you never did. What a big lie. I pay them no attention and go on. I leave Shenkin Street and pass through the small streets of al-Karmil Market until I reach the sea. This is not a dream. I do this time and again. I imagine and hear people saying what they say. I imagine that I paint everything around me black and see no other color. Black is beautiful.

  I reach the sea to catch a glimpse of your city as it shimmers at night. But its lights are faint. Like a corpse cast on the seashore. You will say that Jaffa hasn’t died. I didn’t say it has. “Corpse” is used to describe a pulsating body in Arabic. Don’t we say, “He has a huge corpse”? The youth in Ajami say, “Man, his corpse is like that of a mule.”

  Here, on Jaffa’s shores, the sea looks exhausted. Jaffa doesn’t scream the way I do. It stammers. But those who inhabit it don’t hear what it says. There is something in this corpse, Jaffa, that no one in the White City understands. Is this what you felt when you said that the city’s mornings were tired and had left “that year”? You didn’t say it exactly like that. But you said, “Our morning was like a widowed man. His beloved died and love disappeared.”

  What if we were to scream into their ears? Would they hear us? We could pull their ears and scream. Would they hear us? I had a strange dream yesterday. You’d laugh if I told you about it. I dreamt of a huge square. I keep walking to its end but it kept moving farther. It was full of people—crowds like ants. I don’t know why I thought they were Palestinians. What does it mean to be Palestinian? Anyway, someone, speaking very calmly, unlike orators do in squares before crowds, decided that the only solution was that we convert to Judaism. No one objected. Everyone agreed and we solved the question of Palestine. When I woke up in the morning I went online to see if this was true. You would’ve laughed at my dream and told me, “It wouldn’t make any difference, dear.”

  Do you know that when father committed suicide, mother found him in his bed? He took poison. I don’t know which kind. Mother refused to give me a copy of the hospital report or talk about the details. I don’t know if he suffered. Mother took care of everything. It looks like she’ll only rest when she is dead. She turns one page after another, and with each, she turns over one of the lives of those around her: her father, who remained a blank page, you, and then her husband. She doesn’t see me. I don’t know why I imagine my mother’s corpse is the city’s corpse. Her hysterectomy and sickness, and father being too busy for her, crushed her heart. She didn’t die. She’s still alive. Corpses are our living bodies. But she’s the nakba generation. Those who were born when the nakba was born. They know how to give, but don’t know how to express affection. What can I tell you? I think you were cruel to her, but . . .

  22

  Alaa

  I sit on the coffee-brown sofa in the living room of my apartment on Rothschild Boulevard. The one you slept on once when you visited me. You were tired because we had walked so much that day. Do you remember how you said, “Oh, sweetheart. Why do you have a painting of a man with his face covered hanging on your wall? Why not roses, or Jaffa . . . or maybe a pretty girl . . . and why is everything in the background red as if he’s bleeding . . . poor boy . . . Why do you hang such depressing paintings? Put one of a beautiful woman, not a man whose face is covered and is surrounded with blood.” I laughed a lot and didn’t say anything. I don’t know why this painting bothers a lot of people. When I came back to the room after making coffee for both of us, you’d fallen asleep. I went out and drank the whole pot by myself on the balcony.

  My handwriting is annoying today because am lying down on the sofa as I write. Maybe it’s better to sit at the sewing machine I converted into a table. I love it and know very well that it carried your pain and loneliness and still remembers them. You used to tell me, “You couldn’t imagine how lonely we felt in our country that year when everyone left and we stayed . . . we were like orphans. We were orphaned. The most difficult thing is to be orphaned in one’s own home, and then people from abroad arrive and become the home owners . . . Enough, sweetheart, enough!”

  Maybe we are still like that. Maybe we are still orphans.

  I took your sewing machine from mother and converted it to a small table. The sewing machine you worked on for decades making wedding gowns. The machine that exhausted your feet and wore them down, but saved you and allowed mother to enter the Teachers’ College and get married. Do you remember it? You must, since you used to boast about it all the time. You were afraid that mother would throw it away. “Your mother is crazy and only leaves rags around her, but throws away all good things.” As I mentioned once before, mother took out all your clothes after you left and gave them to the poor. She didn’t keep a single piece. She should have. I was angry and fought with her and made her cry. She said they had your scent, and whenever she passed by them she smelled it and thought you’d enter the house any minute. She used to sit and cry for you. The house is empty. Mother is afraid that they would demolish it if they knew that no one was living in it. She said that I should go back and live there. But it’s a tiny house and I don’t think they would grant us the permit to repair it. It’s so chilly there, but, I’m thinking seriously about going back. Mother goes there every day. Makes her coffee, sits in the small courtyard, smokes her cigarette, and waters the flowers. She misses you, but never says it and just cries in silence, as if summoning you. I’ve never seen anyone cry the way she does. As if the tears flow from her skin pores and not her eyes.

  She kept all your photographs, even hung some of them on the living room wall. I was surprised, because she never used to look at or talk about them when you were still alive. Do you remember the one in which she’s wearing her engagement dress? It was glittery, the color of almond blossoms. You sewe
d it yourself, just as you sewed all her dresses. It was taken in 1966, a year before I was born. How old was she back then? Eighteen? It shows her standing there with a timid smile. Father on her right, and you on her left. My father’s uncle and his wife next to you. My father was an orphan. Maybe his parents were alive, but I doubt it. Otherwise why didn’t they come back to take him? Why did they leave him with his uncle and never inquire about him? Maybe they died on the road when they had to flee? He lived with his uncle whom he loved a lot. But he didn’t love his wife. His relationship with his cousins was complicated. After his uncle’s death, he only saw them at feasts and on major occasions. How did he get to study medicine? Was his family wealthy? If so, where is the money? He’s been a doctor ever since I can remember. He travelled abroad a lot to conferences. Did he have affairs there? I don’t know. His trips abroad used to annoy my mother, but she lost interest later. Or her interest faded and became that of a typical spouse, especially after she had that major surgery. I didn’t know anything at first, but later on I discovered that it was a hysterectomy. We were doing well, financially, but not that great. Our house didn’t look like a surgeon’s house. It was big and beautiful, but hadn’t been renovated in the last twenty-five years. Mother used to complain that my father worked half of the time for free, and that he should’ve taken fees to help his family instead of spending it on strangers.

  I don’t know my father’s relatives who stayed in Jaffa that well. I see them during visits and at weddings, but that’s it. You said once that he rarely talks to them “because they exploited him and short-changed him with the inheritance.” I never understood why you never spoke about these matters unambiguously. “Shush” was the answer to any questions about these subjects. I never liked to attend weddings. They were quite boring and miserable. You used to say that most of my father’s relatives, like your relatives, were scattered all over the world. Some in Kuwait, others in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and the rest somewhere else.

  I realized today that you were heavy. Your bare shoulders and arms look huge in the photograph. Don’t get upset. I’m just teasing. You were always beautiful. Who said that being thin is beautiful anyway? I know you’ll say that I’m a liar and that all my girlfriends were as thin as broomsticks. Maybe I do prefer thin women, but I don’t necessarily think they are more attractive than heavy ones. Do you remember how you sat among your many visitors boasting about Jaffa? You used to utter words I didn’t understand, like “Prophet Rubin.” Which prophet was he? And why did you ask me to name my son after him if I get married and have a child? Rubin, the name of your brother and the prophet you used to celebrate.

  The Jaffa I grew up in was full of fear, poverty, ignorance, and racism. Full of those who look like us, walk on two feet, but, for a reason I didn’t understand at the time, scorn us. That’s what it seemed like to me at the time. No, it didn’t “seem.” I heard it with my own ears. I heard them cursing me, so I cursed them back. I used to be afraid of them when I was a child. Now I’ve learned not to see only them. I see them and see my own shadow whenever I see them. Sometimes I see myself walking next to them and sitting in their homes. It’s strange for me to say that their homes are their homes. Sometime I don’t wish to see them. Just like that, and for no reason.

  I love Jaffa just as you loved it, but in my own way. Maybe we love it equally. I don’t know, and it’s not important. I won’t deny that I hate it sometimes. Tourists come to our neighborhoods just to watch. And others offer exorbitant prices to buy our houses. They used to come and watch us, as if we were monkeys in a zoo.

  My feet used to take me to walk northward, to that other city whose name they stuck onto Jaffa’s name. I pass by the old city houses overlooking the sea. The ones the artists and the affluent have usurped. They’re like a museum. Who observes whom in these museums? The exhibits or the visitors? Do they feel, even for a moment, that these houses are stolen? Are they haunted? I want to believe that the spirits of those who used to live in them are still there, seeking comfort. Maybe what actually happens is that it all comes to an end and nothing more. Had there been a God, this would not have happened. I’ve thought a great deal about this and I even told you once. Do you remember? You became angry and didn’t speak to me for a week. You didn’t forgive me until I fasted a whole day for you. And you know that I am not friends with fasting. That was the only time I fasted my entire life. I did it just for you. You said you were sad when “they stuck Tel Aviv’s name to Jaffa. Just like someone being up your ass. You don’t see them and they never let go.” The image cracked me up. Mother protested, “Shame on you for saying such things at your age.” You laughed and didn’t respond.

  I used to ask you often why your relatives left, but you stayed? You’d remain silent for a couple of minutes and then say, “There is no answer, dear. It was a coincidence that we stayed. They left because they had to leave. Do you know what kind of bombing we endured? There were explosions every day. They killed people and threw them out on the street. Do you know how many buildings collapsed on our heads? No one leaves their country just like that. Leaving was like suicide, and staying was suicide too.” Then you’d fall silent as if you departed and went back to those moments. I was trying to understand. I asked you even more frequently as I grew older. You grew more silent.

  How can anyone who knew Jaffa leave it? I say it and am embarrassed. I say it realizing that the narrative of the White City’s people about the brunette city has seeped into my memory. It’s the lie of whiteness. Their memory has seeped into mine. How can I sweep it out of mine? Is it possible? Even if I do, there will still be a trace. Is this the toll we have to pay for staying here?

  You were a woman who spoke for herself and never let anyone speak for you. You even spoke for others sometimes. Is that why mother spoke so little? Speech was almost a defective act for her. You were the mistress of words. I used to love chatting with you so much. Perhaps the angrier women are, the more silent they become. Is mother often silent because she’s the angriest among us?

  Ariel’s phone rang. He flipped the edge of the page he was reading. It was his mother. He didn’t listen well at first because he was still occupied with what he’d just read. He was confused a bit, so he took a deep breath, as if drawing a line to separate his thoughts from his mother’s voice on the phone. She was asking too many unanswerable questions, punctuated with “but you are a journalist.” He was about to tell her that he wasn’t a news agency, and even news agencies with their network of correspondents and journalists don’t have a clue as to what’s happening. But he sensed fear conquering him, too, and only said what would set her mind at ease.

  23

  Ariel

  He called some friends and acquaintances to see if it was possible to go into any of the Arab areas in the country, or to Arab houses in Jaffa. There were Jews living in many of these neighborhoods, and one could go there. He was told that all these houses and neighborhoods were surrounded with police and army units. They didn’t allow anyone to enter without a search and a check on IDs and addresses to make sure they lived there. He had to wait.

  Is the army clearing the area there, or did the Palestinians really disappear? Our army can never do such a thing. Have they made mistakes? Yes, but at the end of the day they follow laws and adhere to humanist values. Who doesn’t make mistakes? They do everything according to international norms. Sometimes they’re not fair, true. But is there absolute justice in this world? Where was it during the Holocaust? Our founding fathers were wise. They predicted that these catastrophes would take place. And that’s why they came here. Ariel sighed deeply, as if trying to hold on to this thought, and to prevent other ones from taking its place. What is most important now is for him to figure out what is happening.

  He moved to the bedroom and turned the TV on before lying in bed. He felt the evening grip him by the neck and was anxious about the coming hours. He took a deep breath and exhaled very slowly. He stared at the ceiling and found himself wond
ering how the country would be, were there no Palestinians in it. He wished he could drive out all these thoughts and just stare at the light reflection on the ceiling. To think of nothing except colors. He thought of rolling a joint, but he needs a clear head. He has to stay alert these days. He spent half an hour staring at the ceiling and listening to the TV. Then he got out of bed, turned the TV off, and went to the living room. He put his laptop and Alaa’s notebook in his black bag. He added the key to Alaa’s apartment to his keychain and headed to Chez George.

  24

  Rothschild Boulevard

  Ariel walked nimbly. Rothschild Boulevard was still there with its trees and tiny white buildings. Tel Aviv seemed tame and tranquil, as if it had renounced its reputation as a restless city. That evening, for the first time in its tiny history, since the first brick was laid in the first settlement, the city stopped, to take a deep breath and contemplate what was taking place around it. Tel Aviv is small and beautiful with its big, clean, and dreamy beaches. It’s a dream come true! A dream that started with a tiny step but came true. It doesn’t matter how, or at what price. What matters is that it came true. Ariel paused before each of these passing thoughts. Had he been writing them down he would’ve underlined or bolded some of them.

  The streets were almost empty. Most people were nailed in front of their TV screens, whose lights were reflected on the walls and curtains of the buildings he passed by. The sounds were escaping through the windows. He looked at the chinaberries, cypresses, palm trees, and the younger sycamores, which were planted way back in the 1930s. He tripped on a pebble, or a bump, because the street wasn’t paved properly.

  He crossed to the other side and passed between two sycamores. He stood to gaze at no. 16. It was here, in Dizengoff House, that Ben Gurion read the Declaration of Independence, at 4 p.m. on the 14th of May, 1948. Eight hours before the end of the British Mandate. Wasn’t that a miracle? That we returned after 3,000 years? His excitement was about to move his lips to say it out loud.