by Sayed Kashua
Another salvo of shooting. My wife bends over, and her silhouette on the wall frightens me for a moment. “It’s as if we don’t belong.” She yawns. “We’re onlookers, like strangers, doing nothing.”
“Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll call the power company,” I tell her. “It can’t go on this way. I’ll sue them.”
I’ll sue my father too, for planting hope in my mind, for lying to me. For teaching me to sing:
“We’ll march through the streets, for united we stand Let us sing to our glorious nation, our land.”
I’ll sue him for telling me that the Lebanon War was the great darkness before the great light. I laugh at him when he says, every time they shell Gaza or Ramallah, “That’s it, that’ll be the end of them.” I remember how we once sang to being free and united. Father’s voice would rise as we sang:
“Let the revolution come. Let victory be ours.”
I can never forgive him for giving us the idea that we’d defeat the enemy with tires and stones.
I haven’t an ounce of hope in my heart. I’m filled with hate. I hate my father. Because of him I can’t leave this country, because he taught us there was no other place for us, and we must never give up; it would be better to die for the land. I picture him and tell him everything that’s on my mind. I say that if it weren’t for all the nonsense he drummed into us I would have left long ago. Now he’s drunk, like me, but he clings to hope. If he loses that, he’ll die. Hope is dwindling, but somewhere it can still be felt. Even when he cries, as Nazareth comes under attack, it sounds like the distress of someone who expects the great redemption to come soon—just the way he described it in what he wrote while he was in detention.
I don’t remember the date of the last demonstration I attended. I don’t remember what it was about: Land Day, Nakba Day, or just some Arabs who were murdered at some intersection. I remember how my father and his friends worked all night. They drew slogans on big signs. I stood there, bringing them colored markers whenever my father asked me to. The only person I recognized was my math teacher, and he acted as if he didn’t know me. They wrote: YA PERES, YA SHARON. THIS IS OUR COUNTRY AND HERE WE ARE. They wrote: THE CHICKEN OF THE GOLAN HEIGHTS IS BEHAVING LIKE A LION IN LEBANON. (Father said it was directed at Assad.) They wrote: REJOICE, O MOTHER OF THE SHAHID. ALL CHILDREN ARE YOUR CHILDREN. My father and his friends drew flags of Palestine and asked me and my brothers to color in the squares: green, black, red, and white. That was when I finally learned how to draw a flag, and we fought over which one should be on top, the green or the black. Father said it didn’t matter, because it’s the thought that counts.
The next day, I couldn’t remember what the reason was, but my father said we should be taking part in the demonstration too. A pickup truck with loudspeakers set out from our house, and my brother and I and some of Father’s friends followed it with our signs. I could hear his voice over the loudspeakers, and people started joining the group that was marching behind the pickup. It seemed to me that everyone had turned out. The crowd swelled till it turned into an enormous body marching forward. My brothers and I tried to keep our place near the pickup, near Father. When we passed our home again, Mother and Grandma were waiting there with pitchers and bottles of water and gave some to the marchers. Mother said, “May God bless them,” and I could tell she was crying. She signaled the pickup to stop and gave my father a drink of cold water from a glass, just the way he liked it.
“What’s going to happen?” my wife wants to know. “War?” I wish she’d come back to bed because I’ve just begun undressing the first female combat pilot.
From the neighborhood up the hill above us we can hear the noise of Jews. Under the streetlights along their road I can see them advancing toward our house. The crowd is growing larger. They’re marching down the road above us. The house we’ve rented is pretty isolated. It’s the closest to the Jews. The landlord, who lives above us, knocks on the door and says, with a flashlight in his hand and tension in his face, “The Jews are attacking.”
The Jewish voices grow louder. Under the streetlights along their streets I can see them streaming toward our house. It’s becoming dangerous, so the landlord invites us to stay in his parents’ old home in the center of the village. We’ll be better protected there.
My wife starts crying, and I say, “We’re going home.” I take the baby out of her crib. She screams. I wrap her in her blanket, and we’re off. I hope they haven’t blocked the exit yet, but if the police cars are there already, I’ll tell them I’m a citizen and that I’m only renting here. I’ll show them my ID. I got it at the Ministry of Interior in Netanya. I’m not really Palestinian. I’ll tell them the baby’s sick.
I heave a sigh of relief as we reach the lit-up part of the city. They’re not going to recognize me. I’m counting on the fact that I look like a Jew. Let’s just hope they don’t see my wife. Couldn’t I have picked someone with a lighter complexion? She speaks softly to the baby, trying to calm her, and I shout at her to shut her trap if she wants to come out of this alive. The Jews haven’t reached the entrance yet, and the ones we meet peer into the car suspiciously, but when they see me they let us go. We’ve got to get out of here right away. Lucky I’m not one of those who hang prayer beads on the mirror. Lucky I don’t have a hamsa or letters in Arabic. I’ve got a pretty Jewish car, a Subaru, not the typical Peugeot or Opel Ascona. I’ve always known how to make myself inconspicuous.
I turn the dial, skipping over the Arab stations, and select the IDF channel. Then I turn up the volume till we’re out of the city. They’re burning down mosques. They’re shooting at villages and cities. People have been killed. There’s a strange pain in my joints. My arms and legs feel hollow, full of cold air, paralyzed.
I drive down the road out of Jerusalem much faster than usual. I’ve never gone at such speed with my daughter in the car. I’m afraid of crashing on the slopes. The roads don’t look any different. Every now and then, there’s the light of a passing vehicle and my eyes seek out the trucks carrying the tanks covered in heavy netting and green tarpaulin. I usually speed up once I reach the bottom of the hill, but I’m careful this time, because even the traffic police could be dangerous. That’s all I need now, for some cop to ask for my papers and find out who and what I am.
On Days When There Are Terrorist Attacks
On days when there are terrorist attacks, my wife says we’ve got to start saving. We should stop paying for cable. We could use the money to buy something new each year. Instead of watching TV we could be buying new sofas. She says what we have can hardly pass for a sofa. Besides, we need a new stove. We need a microwave oven to heat up the baby’s food. She doesn’t want expensive furniture. Even the least expensive will do. She’s seen some nice sofas at Golan Furniture in the Talpiyot neighborhood. In any case, since we move every year or two, there’s no point buying anything expensive, because the movers ruin the furniture. Last time, they broke the handle off our fridge and never managed to reassemble the cupboard.
My wife says we shouldn’t buy good things until we move into our own home in Tira. All we have there for the time being is the shell of a building, but with my parents’ help we can finish it within a year. Her father will buy the appliances. That’s how it is. The husband builds the home, and the wife buys the appliances. He bought very expensive ones for her younger sister. He’s stingy, but he feels compelled to make a good impression on strangers, like I do.
Unless I return to Tira now, my younger brother will get all my parents’ savings. He’s finished school and he’s coming back to the village. He’ll join my older brother, who got married six months ago and lives in a house of his own already, behind the one my parents live in: a spacious nice-looking house with a garden. There are two identical shells alongside it—one for me and one for my younger brother. My wife can’t understand what I like about being in Beit Safafa, when we’re surrounded by the scariest Jews—from Gilo, and the Patt neighborhood, and the Katamon projects. At le
ast in Tira you don’t hear shooting or helicopters overhead, and they don’t disconnect the electricity every time they shell Beit Jala. She figures she’ll work in the municipality. Because she’s fed up. Every time there’s a terrorist attack, nobody at work will talk to her. She knows they need social workers in Tira. There are plenty of problems and not enough staff.
Before my younger brother got engaged, he asked if I was planning to move back home, because if not, he’d prefer to take over the shell they built for me. It could save him a lot. He wanted to get married quickly. He was engaged to a girl from Karra who went to university with him, and he was finding the distance oppressive. I told him that as far as I was concerned he could have them both, because I was never coming back.
I can’t figure out where my father got the money to build three shells. I didn’t think he had any money. He’d always complained about the cost of my tuition. He said if I’d been studying something useful he wouldn’t have minded so much, but I was just wasting my time. I started working right from my freshman year. I didn’t want to live in the dorms, and my father said if I wanted to rent an apartment I’d have to get a job.
We have to save the way your parents did, my wife says. Where do you think they got the money? Sometimes she calculates the value of the property that my parents own—the homes and the land—and says it’s worth more than a million dollars. She says I should stop being so naïve. Since my brother’s wedding, less than a year ago, they must have saved fifty thousand already. Unless I make a move, I’ll be left with nothing. My parents will never just come out and offer me some of it.
When a helicopter hovers over our home, I feel my wife has a point. Maybe it really is time to go back to Tira, to forget about Jerusalem and turn over a new leaf. If I don’t go back now, I’ll have to wait till they marry off my brother in a fully furnished home. This is my chance. My life there could be better, more focused. My wife says I don’t have anything to hide from anymore and nothing to conceal. My drinking and smoking is something my parents know about anyway. And besides, she never could understand why a married man of over twenty-five is afraid his parents will find out he smokes. It wasn’t until the day my wife gave birth that I asked my father to lend me a cigarette.
The alcohol I can hide in the cupboard, according to my wife, like my father. He drinks a lot, and there’s always a bottle of whiskey waiting in the bedroom. I don’t dare help myself, even though I’m often tempted. Once, when Grandma still had the strength, she would look for his bottles and flasks and break them outside. She’d rock the whole neighborhood with her screaming about my father and his irresponsible behavior. Wasting his money on alcohol instead of saving for his children. Who would send them to the university? Who would build them homes? She’d scream till she was red in the face, her voice almost choking. It’s all my mother’s fault, Grandma would say. She doesn’t know how to domesticate her husband. She sits around with him, glad that he drinks. She doesn’t care about the children. She spends everything on clothing and restaurants. Instead of every bottle he drinks, instead of every blouse she buys, they could be buying another chicken for the children.
An Arab Lover
Every time I enter the kitchen, I remind myself I need a lover. Even my wife knows. Since she gave birth, she says she doesn’t care anymore. As far as she’s concerned I can bring one home with me. She says Islam permits such things, something called a marriage of enjoyment.
For a few months now, my wife has been saying I can’t stand her. That’s for sure, I say. I never could stand her, but lately it’s worse than ever. She asks what’s changed, and I say nothing has changed with me; she’s the one who’s more sensitive, now that she’s a mother.
I’m looking for an Arab lover, preferably a married one, someone who’ll understand me. Someone I’ll have a lot in common with. She can be a divorcée or an unmarried woman who’s been through a lot. I’ll put an ad in the paper. How much could it cost? But I’m afraid of ugly ones or of the Arab men who may try to find out who the pervert is. She might send me a letter and a picture to my postal box, or make a date at some café, and just then one of my neighbors will happen to come in and everyone in Beit Safafa will be talking about me.
I’m a failure anyway. One night a cabdriver who took me home asked me my name, and as soon as I told him, he said, “Oh, so you’re the one who comes home drunk every night.” Lots of taxi drivers from the village work downtown at night. I can see them staring at me as I walk out of the bar, so I start taking out the garbage when I leave, even though I don’t have to. That way maybe the cabbies will think I’m working and not just wasting money.
Unfortunately, I’ve had to rule out the possibility of finding a lover in Beit Safafa itself. Sometimes when we visit Tira, my mother-in-law talks about another married woman who was caught with one of the neighbors or with a stranger. It never fails to surprise me—Arab women who cheat on their husbands. I admire them. The ending is always tragic. They always wind up being caught in one of the orchards of Tel Mond or Ramat Ha Kovesh. The orchards, el-bayarat, have always been the scene of forbidden things. I grew up on stories of people being hunted down in orchards or orange groves, of thugs setting fire there to stolen cars, of criminals being found dead or young girls found hanging from the branch of an orange or avocado tree. If it happens in Tira, it probably happens in Beit Safafa too. Except that we’re not tuned into the local scene. We’re strangers here; we don’t know the main characters in the play. There are no orchards or groves, and I’ve yet to locate the hub of the Arab criminal scene. Sometimes I think it may be at the Malcha shopping mall or at the Biblical Zoo.
When I get myself a lover, I won’t know where to take her. All the places I’ve thought of seem too dangerous, too visible. There are Arabs in all the cafés and all the bars, and working in just about every restaurant in town. Maybe someone will recognize her? Maybe someone has seen me sometime in the past? If I can work up the courage, I’ll take my lover to the Jerusalem forest. We’ll find a quiet spot or park the car and walk down to one of the side paths. We’ll sit there, talking and looking at the view. When it gets dark, we can make out in the car. Just once, I’ve got to make out in a car. Maybe she’ll bring her husband’s BMW. Maybe he has a Volvo. But me, I’d never risk going into the forest. What if they stole my car? It’d take us five hours to walk back to town. And what if we’re killed by some Arab? Nobody will feel bad about the mistake, not even the Arabs. They’ll say it’s an omen. God wanted to expose the criminals and punish them. Better die by hanging in the groves of Tel Mond than get shot as a Jew by mistake—and with a lover, no less. How would they be able to tell we were Arabs, sitting in the forest and making out? I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be wearing a veil.
It’s not that I’m good-looking. My wife says I’m okay. She says I have no neck and my head is too big. She says I’ve got to stand up straight when I walk, because it could add five centimeters to my height. At the pharmacy she bought me a device that’s supposed to support your back, but it bent out of shape within a week. I’m not fat, but my cheeks are too big. I look in the mirror and see the bulges I should get rid of. They really are ugly, and no matter how much weight I lose they won’t go away. My wife says it has to do with the shape of my skull, and nothing is going to change it. I try not to eat too much, and if I do, I try to throw up as much as possible. I never leave the house, even just to the grocery store, without throwing up first. My wife says my proportions are all wrong. My body’s thin and my head’s enormous. I’ve got to gain some weight.
I need a lover quick. How much longer can I last with the same woman? I’m not to blame. They keep talking on TV about the chemical substance of love that stops working after four years with the same person. So according to science, I’ve been walking around for two and a half years without the chemical substance. Sometimes I think that’s why I throw up.
My wife says that unless I change I’ll never find a lover. I’m too lazy. I don’t even take th
e trouble to empty an ashtray. I’m too immersed in myself to be able to invest in a lover. “You’ve got to invest,” she says, but I don’t know what that means. And she explains, “It means to invest emotionally, but you’re not capable of that. As far as you’re concerned, anything goes. Ahalan wa-sahalan. I wish you had a lover. She’d suffer like hell. At least there’d be one more person who knew what you’re like. Maybe she would help me with the baby and the house.”
Sometimes my wife says I have a good heart. I’m the kindest person in the world, she says. And sometimes she says I’m as mean as they come, so mean I have no idea what love is all about, and the best thing I could do would be to stay drunk. Now she remembers how I seemed to her back at the beginning. How she liked me then. How I used to go to the supermarket on Fridays to buy tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers, to make salad and fry cutlets for her. Now she laughs at herself, for ever believing I really was different.
Not Made for Love
My father always says I have no love in my heart, that I’m not made for love. My wife agrees with him. She’s never met anyone as indifferent and inconsiderate as I am. She says I don’t even see the other person. As far as I’m concerned, I’m in the center, and the whole universe revolves around me. She says she hates me, that I have no idea how much she hates me. She’d love for them to find I had cancer, so I’d die as soon as possible. She can’t stand the sight of me anymore. I’m the most repulsive thing in her life. She wishes I’d die—amen! She won’t wait long after I die. She’ll remarry quickly. I was the one who made her forget the joy of living. I destroyed her, I shattered her, I turned her into a depressive old lady in her twenties. If only I’d have a traffic accident and get killed. She doesn’t want me to wind up disabled. She wants it to be final, wants me to die on the spot. Actually she wouldn’t mind if it took me two days to die. Quite the contrary, she’d be pleased if I suffered. Or I could be unconscious, and she’d stand at my hospital bedside, cry, and hold my hand as all the people came to see me for the last time, but when we were alone she’d be happy. She’d be sure I knew how happy she was. She would give a voiceless chuckle and whisper in my ear, “It’s what you deserve, you sonofabitch.”
