by Ibtisam Azem
“A lovely project. I hope you succeed. I’ll be one of the customers if all goes well after these events.”
“We’ll see. Lakhayem, again.”
Ariel gestured to Alex, who’d come to stand next to them. She raised her glass and, after taking a sip, said in an icy tone:
“I have to close in fifteen minutes.”
“Understood. Can we get the bill then?”
“It’s on me.” Ariel said looking at Dana and smiling.
“Toda motik. Ata gentleman.”
“A glass of wine won’t deplete my budget. Plus, I ate more than half of the olives.”
“Want to come for a drink at my place?” Alex said, looking at him with anticipation in her voice, but he hesitated.
“Honestly, I’m very tired and have a lot on my mind. I can’t focus except when writing my articles and I have to. I don’t want to come to your place for the first time and be in such a sorry state. And I have to get up early.”
He took her hand and kissed it, but she withdrew it quickly with an extinguished smile.
“OK, darling, I hope your head clears up.”
“I want to come, but it’s a tough tonight. Do you understand? I’ll stop by some other night soon.”
Alex didn’t say more and started collecting her stuff. Dana looked at Ariel and said in a hushed voice, “Looks like you ruined this night and your chances for coming nights with this beautiful woman.”
He smiled and raised his eyebrows. They waited for Alex to go out to the street all together.
30
A Man and a Memory
Dayan was more than eighty and his hair was hoary, but neither his memory nor his health were weak. Shock turned him into a statue watching TV. He couldn’t believe what he had heard and seen on Channel 1: empty houses and ghost streets in Arab neighborhoods.
Did he lose the opportunity forever? Why had he waited and never knocked at the door of that house? It was only ten minutes away by car. What will he do now? Will the catastrophe be repeated? It wasn’t a catastrophe for him. Were it not for the pinpricks of his persistent conscience, things would be fine.
Thoughts swirl in his head like a trapped fly that keeps hitting the glass of a shut window. His thoughts keep him awake at night. For more than sixty years now he’s been waking up many a night, drenched in his sweat. He sees her as clear as day and still remembers that night. The Arabs had decided that they didn’t want them. Could they have lived here any other way? He repeated those thoughts and then voiced them out loud, as if fearing they would escape. A thread of doubt about that night revisits him every now and then.
What could he possibly say about what took place? That night hunts him. He wanted to apologize, just to get it off his chest, and rest; maybe she would too. But who says she’s tired. She must be? No? He should have gone to that accursed house a long time ago, but he couldn’t. Her silence hunted him. What he did that night hunts him. He feels that everything around him is not his. No, he doesn’t feel that, but something around him is not his. Something disturbs his happiness. He should have gone to her house. To say what? She has been sitting in front of her house every day and grinding the mortar for more than sixty years saying, “I chose you, Hasan.” Is Hasan her husband? Where did he go? What can he do? He asked a young Arab he knew to accompany him, and stay close to her to listen and translate what she said. She spoke of many things he couldn’t understand. He didn’t know if the translation was bad or there was some other reason. What does “I chose you, Hasan” mean? Who is Hasan? These Arabs say many meaningless things. He sighed deeply as if this last thought had appealed to him more than before. Yes, yes, these Arabs talk a lot. But why can’t he forget? Why did she have to go now, before he could talk to her?
Sometimes he dreams that he is tongue-tied and he cannot untie his tongue. He sees himself inside his mouth trying to untie his tongue. He speaks in the dream even when he’s tongue-tied and no one understands what he says. He cannot take the nightmare within the nightmare. It disappears for a long period, only to return and haunt him again. When he joined the organization they told him they were defending the last spot they had left in the world. What can he do today? He survived everything except that black place in his memory, which is stuffed with nightmares. It grinds him from time to time. He didn’t want to be weak. Maybe he hated the Arabs because they were weak like him. No, no one is like them. He will say that what happened to them never happened before, nor will it happen again. He didn’t want to do that, but they forced him. And he didn’t say no!
It was raining, unusual for springtime. They had “cleaned” one of the neighborhood in al-Lid. That’s what they termed what they did. Dayan didn’t go into the houses with them. He stayed at the beginning of the street with the others who guarded the entrance to neighborhoods. Moteh told him that cleaning was only meant to scare the Arabs, nothing more. “We have to show them our fangs. We don’t want Israel to become another Europe.” He didn’t ask what “cleaning” meant.
It was raining heavily on the way back to Tel Aviv from al-Lid. Moteh said he was hungry and what he’d eaten in al-Lid was not enough. Dayan didn’t understand what he meant. Moteh said that the Pin gang was in Jaffa that night. He was going and they all had to go along. Everyone agreed. He was afraid to ask. He tried to leave and claimed he was tired, but how can a fighter claim to be tired? Do fighters ever tire?
They went to house no. 10 on Ayn Street in Jaffa. The address was carved in his memory, because Moteh kept repeating it, as if it were a song. It was a beautiful house with three rooms, yellowish stone walls. On that rainy night, guards from the Pin gang stood outside. They only let in those who were part of the group and knew the password. When he went in, he stumbled on a flowerpot. There were many of them throughout the courtyard and the guestroom. He still remembers the sound of rain falling that night. It was knocking at the high windows.
When they walked into the house they saw a spacious room with a carpet and a man in the middle. Was it this Hasan she keeps calling? He was lying facedown to the floor, and his pants were down to his knees. Moteh said, “Whoever wants to should go ahead. Come! His dark ass is tight. If you don’t like the tail, there is a woman’s hole next door.” Dayan couldn’t believe his eyes. One of them slapped him teasingly. Moteh took Dayan by the hand to the room next door. She was there crying. Her skinny body was naked and they were taking turns.
“Why are you standing there like an idiot? Aren’t you a man? Go ahead and show her who the real men are. Go on, I said . . .”
He moved forward quietly and didn’t say anything. As if he were numb. He wanted to be numb. He stood before her, looking at her skinny body. She was weeping. Moteh moved closer and screamed at her to stop crying and laugh instead. To call out to him and say, “Come, I want you.” If she didn’t do that he was going to take her out to the street and fuck her in front of everyone. That’s what he said. She opened her eyes, and looked into their faces, and spat at him. Moteh struck her on the face and told Dayan, “Show her.” She didn’t scream. Why didn’t she? Had she screamed, they might’ve stopped raping her. She did scream a bit, but they stopped her.
He no longer remembers whether she screamed or not. As if her voice couldn’t exit her throat. Her eyes were full of fear. “Fear” wouldn’t be the exact word. They were full of horror. When Moteh lowered Dayan’s pants, yelled at him that he has to be a man, he lay over her, pretending to have an erection. He was moving on top of her. He could smell the odor of the bodies that had taken turns. He didn’t smell her scent. They stood around her laughing and saying that his ass was snow white. “Show this Arab. Show her!” said Moteh again, his laugh like cawing.
They left the house. Later he learned that she didn’t escape and had decided to stay. He doesn’t know if the man died or what became of him. Perhaps he was still there, but he didn’t see him. Moteh said he didn’t want to kill them. He wanted them to live to tell the others so that fear would spread among them.
<
br /> She stayed there saying things in Arabic that no one understood. She sat outside the house every day talking to herself or to passersby. She never looked people in the face. Always looking at the sea. He would pass by but stay at a distance. He sees her, but she doesn’t see him. Perhaps she does, but doesn’t want to see him. He passes by and thinks of going up to her and apologizing, but he cannot do it. What good will it do? His voice stays muffled in his throat. As if it is her voice, muffled inside his own throat. The voice that never comes out. Maybe it does, but he cannot hear it. What will he do today if she disappears like the rest? To whom will he apologize? To whom? Her voice is a shard of glass standing in his throat:
I chose you, Hasan . . .
I chose you, Hasan . . .
I chose you, Hasan . . .
The sentence and her voice in his throat haunts him. A shard of glass. Her voice is a shard of glass. Tonight, he hears it clearly for the first time in so long. He hears her voice clearly tonight. Is it her voice he is hearing? He hears a voice . . . a voice made of glass shards.
31
Ariel
Ariel kissed Alex, who was still cold with him, on the cheek, and promised her to come back in the following few days. He went out with Dana and said goodbye at the door and then walked back to his apartment. He looked for the building number before turning around. As if wanting to make sure that building no. 45 of the restaurant was still there, and he wasn’t dreaming or delirious. He went the other way. When he reached no. 16, he sat on the wooden bench in front of the building and scrutinized the statue of the man on the horse. He looked at Dezingoff House, which was now a museum. It was a modest building and he remembered the simple furniture he saw inside when he visited to see the place where Ben Gurion established this tiny dream and declared independence. He got up and headed toward the building. He climbed the nine steps and touched the door. Who could’ve imagined that they could return after thousands of years? He smiled at the thought. It was a long road across all these continents, but there was no other way. Yes, that’s what his English paternal grandfather wrote in his memoirs when he came here in the 1920s. He was a real “gentleman” and believed in the importance of western European Jews saving their brethren in eastern Europe from anti-Semitism. This was the only place where no one would threaten them. After their arrival, their Arab neighbors got water and electricity and the number of orange groves in Jaffa doubled. It’s true the Jaffans had developed the Shammuti oranges eighty years before, and that Jaffa oranges were a registered trademark before Herzl thought of Zionism. His grandfather never denied that, but the knowhow brought by men and women who came from established empires is what developed the country. He’s not a colonizer. He was returning to his ancestors’ land after thousands of years. That’s what his grandfather wrote in his memoirs. He said that any progress Palestine witnessed was European, French, or English. The railroad, for example, was French. His ancestors came from these civilizations. That’s what his grandfather wrote, and what his father used to say when they discussed politics. Ariel reminded himself of all that. He wasn’t naïve enough to believe everything his grandfather wrote, but he knows that they are alike, somehow. Ariel takes pride in his grandfather, the able English Zionist who came to the promise land. He was English in everything, but he adopted Zionism. It became more than an idea, but rather a way of life. He believed in it like a warrior. His grandfather saw Palestinians as nomads and peasants, passersby and no more. Unlike some Zionists of his generation, he never wrote that he was in favor of expelling Palestinians. He wanted to buy as much land as possible. It’s true that the land that was sold was not much, no more than 10 percent. But what is important is that they were able to control it and build this miraculous western country in the heart of a backward east. It was a war, and they won. He cannot see things any other way, Ariel thought. He resisted any thought that would doubt the veracity of what his grandfather had said. Yes, his grandfather was English, but he was no colonizer. He cannot call him a colonizer even if there is a resemblance. Ariel held on to that thought as if he didn’t want it to leave his mind.
He took a deep breath as he looked at the avenue. The building stood quietly that night. Although it was not that famous, it did witness a miraculous resurrection. He smiled and headed to the sea instead of going back to his apartment, but he didn’t take the short way. He made sure to go back and pass through some of the streets that intersect with Rothschild. He felt the need to breathe in the place and the history of the White City on the path he chose to the sea.
32
Ariel
The memory of white, and the memory of black. Does a place have memory? What if we were to place a person who knew nothing of the place’s history, not even its name or geographic location. If we were to take him, and have him walk in the city or place, would he feel the place’s memory? Which memory? Ariel wondered this while remembering arguments he had with Alaa about this subject. He was looking at street signs and names. He was counting the important landmarks of the avenue: the architecture, houses, and stories he had read or heard. This city has the largest number of Bauhaus buildings, the style fascism banned. Bauhaus found its freedom here: creative architecture, whose philosophy broke free from complexity to combine form and function. This style of architecture found a home in this tiny country after it fled fascist Europe, Ariel thought as he looked at the buildings. But he couldn’t hide his admiration of the ones designed by Yehuda Magidovitch, whose original style one recognizes in many houses on Rothschild. Ariel laughed when he remembered the story he read about Churchill’s visit, and how Dezingoff, then the mayor, took big old trees from adjacent areas and spread them around so they would appear as if they had been there for a lifetime. But one tree fell down and embarrassed him. Laughing, Churchill said, “Without roots nothing will grow here.” Ariel imagined Churchill’s laugh and heard it roaming the avenue, but he wondered about the veracity of this story.
When he reached the intersection of Rothschild and Balfour he remembered how Alaa once told him that he felt someone was whipping him when he walked and saw these street names. He said he had memorized the map by heart without names, so he wouldn’t look at street signs. Sometimes he took the longer way home so as not to go through streets whose names whipped him. Was Alaa a prisoner of the past? Why all this thinking about the past?
On one of his visits to Alaa’s apartment, Ariel found a large number of signs of street names that Alaa had removed and brought home. He’d painted them over in black and wrote other names on them in green. He crossed out “Rothschild” and called it “Sharabi Street.” He loved Hisham Sharabi, had read everything he had written, and believed that he deserved to have a wide street named after him.
Was Ariel’s mistake that he sometimes listened to Alaa and tried to understand him when he spoke about these things? Why couldn’t Alaa just enjoy living in a modern state with all this freedom anyway?
He remembered how Alaa erupted in anger when he heard him say that. Ariel told him he understood that mistakes were made, and that Palestinians needed more rights, but he had to acknowledge that this state gave him so much. His situation is much better than the refugees in Lebanon, for example, or Arab countries. Alaa laughed out hysterically.
Ariel was crossing the intersection of Balfour and Ehud Ha‘am and felt a certain anger within. He wondered out loud, “Where are you, Alaa? What did you want? That we change ‘Ehud Ha’am’ and call the street ‘al-Qassam’? You should’ve stayed. Perhaps the day will come and you can then change whatever you want. Where are you now? What kind of game is this?”
“Shut up you son of a bitch. We want to sleep,” said an angry voice coming from an open window on a ground floor apartment. Ariel shot back, “Go to hell. You are the son of a bitch,” and continued toward Allenby.
Night itself was awake, as if it, too, was waiting to know what had happened. It was past one o’clock in the morning, but many of the lights in the houses he was passing were stil
l lit.
Ariel walked Feierberg, Melchett, Ayn Fered, and Straus streets, as if leafing through pages in a book. His thoughts reached out to touch street names as if honoring the persons who brought this city into being from nothing. Yes, we arose out of nothing, didn’t we? What was here before except orange groves and villages?
Ariel recalled how Alaa once erupted in a spot nearby when he asked him to stop saying this was Jaffa and its villages. He told him that he had to be a forward-looking, modern person, and not let the past hold him back. Many cities are destroyed and are rebuilt. He should look forward, if he wants to catch up. Alaa was furious like never before and screamed:
“You’ve never heard of al-Manshiyye, Shaykh Muwannis, il-Mas‘udiyyeh, and all of Jaffa’s villages? What does it mean for me to be modern? To just bend over for you to violate me while I applaud you? When will you understand that Tel Aviv is the lie that everyone believed? By the way, Jaffa wasn’t just groves! Even if it was just desert, this lie you all wanted to believe doesn’t grant you the right to kill us and expel us. Even if we were the most backward people in the world, that doesn’t give you the right to displace us. Nor to kill us. Go and fight the Europe which expelled you and killed you . . .”
While Alaa kept yelling at Ariel, some passersby had stopped.
“Let’s go now. No need for these comparisons. It’s painful.”
“I’m not comparing. What comparison? I listen and listen and listen. You guys talk all the time and we listen. We try to get you to understand that something is wrong in the equation. Sometimes we try to speak quietly, and we often stay silent. We are afraid and get upset. We hate you and get close to you or love you as humans. We mimic you and believe you, but we know that we are lying to ourselves, first and foremost. We tell ourselves they will understand, but you don’t listen to us. Everything we say is lost in translation. Even when we speak the same language. We realize that nothing will make you listen to us and hear us unless we scream at you. Unless we throw our drizzle in your faces so you stop and hear what we are saying.”
