by Sayed Kashua
In Kfar Saba and Tira there is never any chance of snow, even though my father told me that one night in the fifties so much snow fell and accumulated overnight that in the morning they weren’t able to push open the door and go out into the yard. During our years in Jerusalem it snowed every now and again and whenever it did it dominated the news cycle and every year the residents of the city waited longingly for the arrival of that white wonder. There was a chance of snow during the week that I got married. It was the middle of February and the weather forecasters had their eyes fixed on a storm front moving from Russia to the Middle East. The rain started as soon as we left Tira. My father took us to the row of bus stops at the Ra’anana–Kfar Saba Junction. I sat in the front of the car, my wife in the back. She was silent for the duration of the ride. The radio news told of intensifying rain, strong winds that would reach speeds of eighty kilometers per hour, and snow that would be falling overnight on Mount Hermon, the high peaks of the north, and, possibly, Jerusalem.
Palestine had brought just one suitcase with her, and at the bus stop I helped remove it from my father’s trunk.
“You have money?” he asked as he passed me a fifty-shekel bill even though I had told him that I did. He shook my wife’s hand and said that he was sorry, and that he wished her all the best in the world.
Palestine stood silently under the bus stop’s roof, face sealed, staring straight ahead in the direction of a point that didn’t exist. She did not cry as is the custom among so many Arab brides, who are ceremoniously met by the groom and his coterie at the door of their family houses and accompanied from there to the wedding and from the wedding to a new house and a new family. The father of the bride holds the crying bride’s hand and leads her to the decorated car, generally the fanciest car in the extended family’s possession, drafted especially for this mission, and there, in the back seat, the groom awaits her, in a suit and tie, for the first time in his life. In the old days, the ceremony was done with horses, and the bride would be lifted onto a horse. But there are no horses left in Tira, so German automobiles have replaced them in the wedding convoy. We took Palestine from her father’s house in an undecorated Fiat Punto, with no ululations of joy and no honking to let the public know that a wedding was under way. Her father stowed her suitcase in the trunk, and she got into the back seat alone and said not a word. Instead of a wedding hall, we went to Ra’anana Junction and after a ten-minute wait, the bus showed up and I put her suitcase in the luggage compartment and boarded before her in order to pay for two passengers with the bill my father had put in my hand. I so wanted to sit beside her during that ride, but there were no seats together, so she sat next to a soldier near the front of the bus and I sat a few rows behind her, fixing my gaze on what I was able to see of her head and her long hair, which flowed over her right shoulder. The rain only intensified during the ride, and the radio, which was tuned in to one of the public stations, delivered the forecast at considerable volume and predicted a looming storm and said the chances of snow in Jerusalem are especially high, particularly between midnight and the early morning hours. “If snow falls during those hours,” the weatherman said on the radio, “then there’s a good chance that it will stick and accumulate. We’ll just have to wait and see, because a degree in either direction will prove pivotal.”
I was really hoping for snow that night, so we could wake up to a blanket of white. I had been in Jerusalem on days when it had snowed but I presumed that this would be Palestine’s first time in a snowy city. We’d wake up together in Jerusalem and the snow would signify a fresh start, and perhaps we would hug by the window, and if the snow started to really pile up then we’d head out and make snowballs, or we’d walk from the college campus on Mount Scopus to the center of town. I so wanted Palestine to love Jerusalem, and I was counting on the snow to erase any longing for the village from her twenty-one-year-old mind. She did not turn toward me once during the ride. She’s so young, I thought to myself. Granted, I was only two years older than she was, but still I’d lived in Jerusalem for five years already, had completed a BA, and was working as a reporter while pursuing my MA in Hebrew literature. I knew so little about Palestine back then: I did not know if she’d gone to college, if she’d ever lived outside the village, where she’d traveled, what she’d seen, what she loved and what she hated, if she’d ever taken a bus before, and if she’d ever been to Jerusalem. And she was so beautiful that when I first saw her I understood how someone’s breath could be taken away, even though I lowered my eyes when I spoke a few short sentences to her: “Tfadali.” “We get off at the last stop.” “Please let me know if you need anything.” I felt deeply embarrassed by my own excitement, sitting behind a woman who, on her wedding day, was behaving as though she were grieving. And how was it that on that morning I’d still clung to a plan of disengagement, a scheme I’d devised to disentangle myself from this marriage, which I’d never considered, never sought, and had been imposed on me on account of a wretched and lone mistake? For on the morning of the wedding I still despised Palestine with a deathly vehemence and still planned to do what the sheikh had asked of me to do—to sign the papers and to take her as my lawfully wedded wife. But then, upon arrival in Jerusalem, I planned on sending her on her way and running for it, even at the price of permanent banishment from that cursed country. And then I found myself seated a few rows behind her, incapable of looking away from her back, praying she would forgive me soon, love me overnight, trusting that the snow, which may or may not stick, would abolish the sin and the humiliation.
My phone rang as I lay on the bed in the Aliya tenement. On the screen, in Arabic, the word “Palestine.”
“Marhaba, how are you?” I asked, addressing her personally for a change and not using my standard: “How’s everyone?” or “How are the kids?”
“We’re fine,” she said. “I just called to see how your father’s doing.”
“Getting better,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
“Did you go home?”
“No,” I said and wondered if that was why she’d called, because she was concerned that perhaps I had gone to Tira, that perhaps I had met someone or spoken with someone from the village. I didn’t go, I said, and I told her about the room I’d rented near the hospital and that I’d only just woken up and would soon go back to the hospital, but that first I had to find something to eat. I felt I was telling her details that she wasn’t interested in, but at times it seems that these everyday details have the power to calm and cause forgetfulness.
“Okay,” she said. “I just wanted to call and see how you’re doing.”
“Thank you,” I said and continued. “Palestine …” knowing full well that I was the only person in the world who called her that.
“What?” she asked. I wanted to tell her that I missed her, that I was sorry, and that I loved her, but all I asked was: “Did it snow?”
“No,” she replied. “It didn’t.”
4
“Come on, tell us, what’s up? How you doing? In America, they say. How is it over there? You’re so lucky. We wish we all could go. Everything’s cheaper there, right? A car is like half the price, no? And how are the kids? How’s the wife? Everyone must speak English already no problem. They must be totally American by now, no? But don’t you dare let them forget their Arabic, ah, dir balak. Kids are like sponges, they absorb languages like nothing, but they can forget if they don’t use it. Actually, how old are your kids? There’s three of them, right? Or is it two? Boys? And what do you do over there for work? And how are Muslims treated over there? Either way, it’s probably a thousand times better than over here, isn’t it? Probably doesn’t hurt that you’re light skinned, and your wife isn’t particularly dark either. Who’d even know where you’re from? Trust me, people are jealous of you, what do we have going for us over here, it’s hard to know how to raise the kids. Tira, my friend, is not what it once was. It’s hell. These days every little punk is carrying a pistol. Where you are
it’s the same, no, shootings all the time? Any nutjob can buy a gun, no? It’s scary, I’m sure it is, but it’s nothing like Tira, trust me. And clothes are really cheap over there, aren’t they? Shoes that go for two hundred dollars here cost fifty over there. The brand names are much cheaper over there. How much does a Polo shirt cost? There’s homesickness, of course there is, so you come on over and visit during the summer. What’s the big deal? It’s become impossible to live here, just getting worse and worse. How long you been over there? Two years? During that time it’s become hell here, so that it’s terrifying to even think of taking the kids into Kfar Saba to get them some ice cream. Netanya, forget it, I haven’t been there in six months, maybe more. They kill Arabs there like it’s nothing. Self-defense and you’re free to go. Heeba, our neighbors’ daughter, got pulled out of the college-entrance exam because they were suspicious of her pencil. I swear to God, a pencil is already considered a weapon if it’s in the hands of an Arab woman, and she covers her hair, poor thing, a hero, a good student. Does your wife cover her hair? And what is it that you do over there? How much do you need to make to live comfortably over there? Here you bust your ass and end up with nothing. Yesterday they shot Rajeb. You remember Rajeb? He was like a grade behind you. Come on, Rajeb, the man, Fathi’s brother. Over nothing, five caps in the legs, they say he’s going to need a new knee, an implant made out of metal. And for what? A father of four. Some say it had something to do with a woman. Others say it was a clash over parking. These days there’s no need for reasons, no matter what you say they come out shooting, spraying you with bullets. There’s a new generation coming up, and God help us you can’t say a word to these kids. Where’s the old Tira gone, and when’s it coming back? These days you feel like you’re rolling the dice every time you go and pick your kids up from school. You wait around all day till you know they’ve been scooped up and are safe at home. And what about teachers, you think they don’t get shot? In school, with no shame at all. There’s nowhere to run to. The family here with you? Where are they, let’s have a look. You have pictures of the kids? Too bad, how old are they? Wow, hard to believe, feels as though it all happened just yesterday. Trust me, you have to get to know the extended family, bring them for a visit to Tira. You have to. You know what they say: someone who’s not good to his parents isn’t good to anyone. No, I didn’t mean, of course it was difficult, but halas, enough, it’s a new generation now. Everything’s different. Look at your father. If he makes it through this year who’s to say he’ll make it through the next one. They should get to know their cousins, their family. What’s a man worth without his family? He’ll always be a stranger. With God’s help your father will stay on the mend. These days medicine does miracles. With God’s help. What’s the dollar rate these days? Four, maybe a little less, something like three eighty-five? How much does a hamburger cost over there? Here McDonald’s sells a meal at forty-five shekels. How much does it cost you over there? And your mother, you know, she’s not that young anymore, and it hurts, for sure, it hurts to leave the parents like that. Especially, if, heaven forbid, your father … may he live a long life. You know, what will she have in her life aside from her children? And besides it’s been a long time, people forget, people forgive, and you are already a man and your wife’s a woman and your kids are big, no one will say a word to you.”
Two of my cousins sat on benches facing the entrance to the internal medicine department, even though I’d been careful to arrive at the hospital after seven in the evening, at which time visiting hours were over to all but the immediate family. They just sat there, having already seen their uncle. “Alhamdulillah, he looks a lot better. With God’s help he’ll be home soon,” they said to one another.
“They’re just waiting for Dad to die,” my youngest brother said once the cousins were gone. My older brother had left without a word as soon as he saw me coming.
“They haven’t remotely waited for him to die,” the brother two years younger than me said. “I wish they would have waited for his death before starting the war.”
This was my first time meeting my brothers’ wives. Walid, my older brother, majored in economics at Ben-Gurion University and has a good job at a bank. He got married three years after me. His wife’s from Tira, an educational adviser at the middle school, and they have two boys. The older one is in sixth grade and the younger one is in first. The brother who is two years younger than me, Tarek, is an accountant who ten years ago married an elementary school teacher from Tira, and they have a son in third grade and another on the way. His wife is in her eighth month of pregnancy. The two met as undergrads at Tel Aviv University. My youngest brother, Hamouda, came accompanied by his wife, also a teacher with a full-time position and a job as a substitute teacher at the elementary school in Tira.
My younger brothers and their wives wanted me to meet their kids. I must come back to Tira they said, and if not then they’ll bring the kids to the hospital tomorrow. My brothers swear that the kids have heard only good things about me from their parents and grandparents, stories about how well behaved I was and what a sharp student I was. “He’s smart as his uncle,” the educational adviser said, quoting my father, who liked to compare me to her firstborn, because he, too, is the top student in his class and is also enrolled in the program for gifted children. There’s no need to apologize they said when I told them how much I wish I’d been at their weddings. They have photo albums and videotapes of the events and will be happy to show them to me.
We have neither albums nor video footage of our wedding and have even managed to forget the true date of our anniversary, having taken a new date, which is properly in sync with the birth of our daughter.
I last saw my three brothers as I left the family house and drove off with my father to Palestine’s home. My older brother hugged me hard back then, and the little one cried because he did not understand the sadness that had permeated the house and why all of this was happening. They were not witnesses to the wedding. Only the two cousins, those I met at the hospital, accompanied me and my father, a convoy of three cars, in front of and behind the used Fiat Punto my father had only recently bought. The ceremony was less than five minutes long. The father of the bride did not shake my hand; he took my father’s instead. The sheikh placed a cloth kerchief over the clasped hands of the two fathers, asked several terse questions, murmured a few words of prayer, and then had me sign some papers and turned toward an interior room, where I assumed he was signing Palestine to the same contract.
A biting Jerusalem cold greeted us as we got off at the Central Bus Station. Palestine had no coat, and I so wanted to offer her mine, but the tongue, the cursed tongue, spoke not a word. We took a taxi to the Mount Scopus dorms. Palestine sat in back and I sat beside the driver. I had a single room, one of the privileges offered to students pursuing advanced degrees. I had taken the room’s two single beds, which in America they call twin size, and pushed them together and up against the north wall of the room, far from the window. When Palestine walked into the room I separated the beds and returned them to their original spots, one pressed against the south wall and the other against the north wall. “Are you hungry?” I asked Palestine, and I handed her a towel for her wet hair. She shook her head. “Can you leave me alone” was the first sentence she spoke to me.
On the morning after the wedding, Jerusalem was blanketed in white.
I was then not yet twenty-two and Palestine was not yet twenty-one; eight months later our daughter was born, on the day that yet another war broke out. I remember that I smoked my first cigarette that day, in a small, square garden trapped between concrete walls just outside the obstetrics department of the Hadassah Medical Center. That morning we’d taken a taxi to the hospital for a routine prenatal checkup. That morning my wife felt nothing unusual and no contractions. They gave her an ultrasound in the maternity ward and connected her to a fetal heart rate monitor. Then they put these straps around her with electrodes that were connected to
a monitor and a thin needle that drew lines on a moving sheet of paper. The midwife said Palestine’s cervix was dilated and that the birth was imminent. She asked that we not leave the hospital grounds and suggested that we do some labor-hastening exercises, such as going up and down the stairs.
The contractions started soon afterward. When we got back to the maternity ward the nurse examined Palestine again and moved her into a delivery room in order to properly prepare for the birth. Palestine asked for an epidural and the nurse recommended that being young, strong, and healthy she try a natural birth. “There’s nothing about this birth that’s natural,” my wife said in Arabic, so that the midwife wouldn’t understand and I would.
“Out,” she said to me as the contractions intensified. The television in the waiting room broadcast silent images of destruction—a building between crosshairs and then a spiral of smoke, at first black and then white.
I so wanted to be a supportive husband in the delivery room, like in the movies. I’d hoped that my wife would let me hold her hand while she pushed and breathed and sweated, that moments before the sound of crying would be heard a sublime smile would settle across her face, the smile only a mother can produce, and she’d raise her eyes to meet mine in a look that says thank you, that says I love you, I forgive you.
