The Ascent of Eli Israel

by Jonathan Papernick, Dara Horn

  “Do you have a candle?” the old man asked.

  Yossi stood up in silence, walked to the pantry, and returned with two Shabbat candles. He lit them.

  “We’ll play until the winner of three,” the Arab said.

  This time Yossi was determined not to get caught in the back of the board. He would rush his two white stones out from the very start and race the rest of his stones around to his side before the Arab could do the same. Yossi rolled, and then the old man, and then Yossi. They moved quickly, sliding their stones around the board, hypnotized by the rhythm of the rolling dice. He was so busy concentrating on the board that he did not notice the old man had been speaking in Arabic. Smelling tobacco smoke, Yossi looked up from the table to find three more Arab men sitting on the kitchen floor beside the old man. He grabbed the table, nearly knocking the board to the floor as he tried to stand up. But he was unable, paralyzed in his seat. Two men slightly younger than Ziad wore kaffiyehs and took turns smoking from a tall gold-plated water pipe, a third ancient man with a battered fez planted on his head awkwardly fingered a set of worry beads. Yossi could still hear the soldiers’ radio crackling faintly outside his kitchen window.

  “Do not worry,” Ziad said. “We are old men. There is nothing to fear. They are only my brothers and our blind father. Do not worry. Please. Please play.”

  The four men continued to talk in Arabic. Yossi, not understanding Arabic, did not know what to do. He took a deep breath but still could not fill his lungs.

  Ziad asked Yossi, “Do you smoke the nargilah?”

  “No. No,” Yossi said, coughing. Then he remembered his pregnant wife as smoke filled the kitchen. Yossi excused himself.

  From the bedroom doorway he saw Devorah asleep as before, her long hair splashed out onto the pillow. Yossi sat on the bed for a moment looking at her. Moonlight shined through the window and lit up her face. He kissed his index finger and touched it to the end of her nose. “Sleep tight, my Bumblebee,” he whispered and opened her night table drawer, removed his wife’s mini 9 mm pistol, and placed it in his side pocket. Then he closed the bedroom door tight and hurried back to the kitchen half afraid of the encroaching Arabs, half determined to prove that he could win the game.

  “She is sleeping?” Ziad asked.

  Yossi nodded his head and sat down at the table.

  “I shared that room with my brothers as a child,” the old man said.

  Yossi rolled the dice, ignoring him.

  “There was a pomegranate tree at the window. My son Youssif liked to climb in it.”

  “It isn’t there anymore,” Yossi said, rolling a three and a one. He moved his first lone stone four spaces and said, “The tree is gone. There is no tree.”

  “I am just remembering,” the old man said.

  Yossi’s white stone was open at the edge of the outer board one space short of safety. The old man paused a long time before rolling the dice again. With the moon high above the apartment the three Arabs sat cross-legged on the floor; two of them passing the water pipe back and forth between them, the older man continuing to fumble with his worry beads. It was only now with the moon out of the clouds that Yossi noticed the blind father’s empty eye sockets.

  “How would you feel if someone took that glass of tea from you?” Ziad asked.

  “This glass?” Yossi said.

  “Yes. That glass,” the Arab said, rolling the dice.

  “I would get another glass.”

  The old man rolled and promptly hit Yossi’s single stone, removing it to the center bar. Yossi rolled, and entered in the fourth slot, moving his other lone piece from the first to third slot. His two stones were now open at the back end of the board. The Arab rolled again and Yossi found his stone back on the bar with the fourth and sixth slots occupied. He rolled a two and a three. His stone came off the center bar, but Yossi’s stones were still hemmed in.

  The Arab asked, “How old is your wife, Rabbi?”

  “Nineteen,” Yossi answered.

  “And what is her name?” the Arab asked, rolling and knocking Yossi’s stone to the bar again.

  Yossi did not answer.

  The game continued, and Yossi’s stones were alternately knocked onto the center bar as the old man removed his pieces from the table two by two, whispering in Arabic. The Arab men on the floor clapped their hands on each other’s shoulders — the blind old man mumbled something in Arabic that could have been a prayer.

  “I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to sleep,” Yossi said. He had not removed any of his stones from the table.

  “But you can’t. Nobody has won three games. Sit. Sit. I won the second game.”

  One of the Arab men got to his feet, a silver sheath shining among the folds of his caftan. Yossi fingered his wife’s pistol in his pocket and said, “Okay. We’ll play another game.”

  The old man picked up the stones in his hands and began chanting quietly the names he had just whispered: “’Allar; ’Artuf; Beit Naqquba; Deir Aban; Ishwa’; El Jura; Kasla!” Do you know of the village of — ”

  “All right. It’s time to play,” Yossi said.

  Yossi began setting up the board.

  They played on, the dice rattling against the old wooden board. The men on the floor were anxious, groaning in discomfort with every move, shifting from one knee to the other. Yossi blocked the men from his mind, focusing only on the board. When he had established a lead he looked and flashed a confident wink at Ziad. The old man sat calmly, pondering his next move. Then he called out a question in Arabic and was answered by a woman’s voice.

  Four Arab women dressed in black stood over the kneeling men. One wore a hijab over her face, the other three sternly looked on. One of the women spoke loudly in guttural Arabic. The old man listened and turned to Yossi, who was beginning to remove his stones from the board.

  “My wife, Zahira,” Ziad said.

  Yossi continued to play, ignoring her. His only interest now was to beat the old man, throw the Arabs from his home, and return to bed with his wife.

  “These are my brothers’ wives. And,” he said, pointing to the tiny woman in the hijab, “this is our mother.”

  “It’s your move,” Yossi said.

  The old man rolled. He had twelve stones left on the board. Yossi had six and rolled low but still removed two stones. The woman who had spoken to Ziad pushed her way forward and placed her hands on the table. Yossi saw the black under her fingernails, her eyes cold as the chipped stones on the board. Her face had the worn look of an old leather saddle. He rolled double four and won the game. The woman grabbed up the pieces and began to quickly reset the board. Yossi tried to place his hand on top of hers. She pulled away.

  “Hevron!” he said, making eye contact with all the Arabs except the blind father. “We were neighbors in Hevron and you came to our homes,” Yossi said, borrowing the tone of the old man, Ziad. “And you raped us, burned us, chopped off our hands.”

  “That is not true,” the woman said.

  “It is true,” Yossi said.

  “Liar!” the woman said louder.

  “You were not born then,” Ziad said.

  “You came to our homes in the City of the Patriarchs — ” Yossi said.

  “Isra-ay-lee pig!” the woman yelled. “Liar!”

  “ — and tore us apart like fresh bread,” he added.

  “Arrogant Jew. Liar. Zionist,” the woman shouted, and the men joined in shouting, knocking against the table. The woman stood face to face with Yossi and said, “You have no place here. Pig!” Then she spat in his face.

  Yossi reached into his side pocket, pulled out his wife’s pistol, and jammed it hard beneath the woman’s ribs, doubling her over momentarily. He felt her soft stomach rebound against his hand.

  “Quiet!”

  The men moved back, but Zahira, the wife of the old man Ziad, stood her ground. “Put your toy away, yeled.”

  “It was a long time ago,” the old man said.

  “It
was only sixty years ago,” Yossi said.

  “You were not born. You were not there,” the old man said.

  “Memory is in the blood,” Yossi said. “I was there as I was at Sinai to receive the commandments. I was exiled from Spain. I wandered. And I remember pogroms beyond the Pale and the killing. I remember. And the camps, I remember that, too. Jews have been in Hevron since the time of Abraham. You have only lived there since the thirteenth century.”

  He waved the pistol at the Arabs and tasted blood in his mouth, sour and metallic. He wanted to lay the Arabs face down on the floor with their hands behind their backs, and fire a bullet into the brain of each. He would clean the floor with the old man’s kaffiyeh and return to bed with his wife.

  Zahira stepped closer, her weathered face inches from his. “Okay, boy,” she said. “Shoot me.” She pulled his pistol closer to her stomach. Yossi’s hand was compliant. “I am all used up,” she said. “Make me a martyr of the great battle.” The men looked on impassively, the women stood stonefaced. Ziad, too, stared expressionless. “I am the mother of generations. But now I am finished. I am the husk of a pomegranate, my seeds have been scattered and grown. Shoot me. I am only a husk.” Yossi pushed his pistol into her stomach and then pulled it back.

  “Sit. We’re going to play again,” Yossi said.

  The men sat, and the women did too.

  Zahira reached forward and touched Yossi’s cheek and said, “You are weak and sad.”

  “We will play?” Ziad said.

  “Do not fear us,” Zahira said. “We are old and not to be feared. But fear our children. Fear my son Youssif. He will burn your crops, tear down your home, and eat the flesh of your children.”

  Yossi rolled the dice.

  “He will eat the flesh of your children,” she repeated.

  They began to play again, the Arab leading two games to one. The sky was turning from deep black to dark bruised blue. The moon was gone. Yossi slipped the pistol back into his pocket.

  “The tea. It is cold,” the old man said.

  Yossi stood up to boil another pot of water, then returned to his seat and rolled the dice. He opened with a solid four and two, occupying the four slot on the inner table.

  “My sweet wife was beautiful as a flower,” Ziad said. “We married when she was fifteen. Her lovely name means flowers.”

  The old man rolled and Yossi turned to the woman.

  “I brought her to the place to take her gift, and my father and uncles waited outside the room with stones and knives — if she was not a virgin. But there was blood. . . .”

  Yossi remembered his wife’s red blood on the white bedsheet and the feeling that she was truly his.

  “It hurt her and she cried and cried for days, did not stop.”

  Yossi rolled again.

  “And we prayed that, Inshallah, we would have a strong boy who would not cry,” Zahira, the old man’s wife, said.

  “And when he was born he cried,” the old man said. “He cried for Palestine, and the bloodstained hilltops, and the weeping seashores. And I slapped his face and shook him and said, ‘Do not be weak! You are an Arab!’ And Youssif grew to be an angry barefoot boy.”

  The old man rolled and Yossi watched him slide the stones around the board with his rough fingers. The smell of hashish mixed with the smell of tobacco filled the room. Yossi was afraid to look up, feeling the weight of claustrophobia on him. He just stared at the board and at the old man’s chipped black stones.

  “It’s your turn,” the old man said.

  The room was jammed with Arabs. The children had arrived. Eight young men with thick hair and mustaches crowded around the table with the others. Yossi could feel one of the newcomers breathing at his neck. Some drank beer from brown bottles, others smoked. They were all slim and strong and Yossi was afraid. The kitchen was so crowded that the Arabs pressed right up against the table and chairs.

  “I need room,” Yossi said and the woman called out, “Lebensraum?” and laughed. “I need room,” Yossi said again, but the Arabs either could not or would not move. Then he thought of his wife alone in the bedroom and wanted to run to her.

  “It’s your turn,” the old man said. Yossi stared blankfaced. “My sons,” the old man said. “And my brothers’ sons.”

  “I don’t want to play.”

  “But you must. We are the majority,” the Arab said.

  Yossi wanted to call the soldiers down below, but couldn’t raise his voice to speak. His wife’s pistol in his pocket comforted him, but he knew he would never use it. He rolled again. Then the old man rolled. The young Arabs pressing in toward the table kept a running commentary of the game in Arabic. One imitated the sound of the clicking dice with his tongue. Yossi rolled again and he was leading. He removed his first stone from the board. The old man held up his empty cup and said, “Your pot is burning.” Black smoke rose from the stove.

  “Your house is on fire,” the woman said.

  Yossi pushed his chair back into one of the Arabs, stood up and forced his way to the stove. The Arabs laughed, and as he waded through them and tried to pull his kippah from his head, one reached into his pocket. Someone had thrown a dish towel into the flame. Yossi dropped it into the sink with the blackened pot and turned on the water.

  “Some more tea,” the old man said in a cracking voice.

  When Yossi returned to the table his white stone was on the bar and six or seven of the Arab’s stones had been spirited away without even a single roll of the dice.

  “Where is the tea?” the old man asked.

  “There is no tea,” Yossi said. “Put the stones back or I won’t play.”

  “All right. I will put them back and you will play.”

  “Where is your toy?” the woman asked.

  Yossi felt his side pocket. His wife’s pistol was gone and had been replaced with a slab of olive wood. Yossi’s head felt light and then heavy.

  “You will play now,” the old man said.

  Yossi’s stomach churned and his mouth tasted bitter, acidy. With the pieces back in place, he rolled again, more determined than ever to beat the Arabs. “When I win you’ll give me back my gun,” Yossi said.

  “You still don’t understand. We make the rules,” the old man said.

  Yossi bit his lip and rolled again — double four. A lucky roll. Five stones left. The room still smelled of hashish now mixed with body odor and Yossi’s head felt too heavy for his neck. The Arabs rolled. Then Yossi — two more stones off the board.

  “Which one is Youssif ?” Yossi asked.

  The young Arabs laughed and one called out, “Youssif no home.”

  “Youssif is not here yet,” the old man said.

  Yossi put his hand to his forehead and rolled again — two more stones.

  “You have won,” the old man said, picking the last stone off the board with his battered fingers. “Now tell me of the six million, or some other lies, Rabbi.”

  “Tell me, Jew,” the woman said. “Tell me some more fairy stories.”

  Yossi remembered the burned-out carcass of the bus on Jaffa Street, the shattered glass, the body parts scattered in the street. The bomb blast had woken him and Devorah in their apartment within the walls of the Old City. He had rushed from their bedroom to see, arriving while the acrid smell of burning flesh was still thick in the air.

  “Bus number eighteen. I was there when the second bus blew up.”

  “Good. We have a bomb-maker here,” the woman said, pronouncing the second “b” as she pointed to the young Arabs.

  “He’s a terrorist and should be killed,” Yossi said, remembering the Hesed shel Emet workers cleaning flesh from the statue of the winged lion who sat perched atop the Generali Building.

  “That is not very humane. Does your Torah allow that, Rabbi?” the old man said, setting up the board.

  “The Torah of Israel is not about being humane,” Yossi said. “This is the land of Isaac and Jacob. This is the land of my fathers and t
he land of my children and it will be the land of their children. This is our land. The land of Israel. The land of the Jewish people. I don’t give a damn about your orange trees and date palms and pomegranate trees. You do not belong here. You are Amalek. I should have poisoned your tea.”

  “You should have,” the old man said. “But your right hand forgot its strength.”

  “What?” Yossi said, stunned.

  “I have read your books, Rabbi. Does it not say, if someone is going to kill you, it is your duty to rise early and kill him first? Yes, I am Amalek and you are not welcome here. You have scattered my children, chopped down my trees, thrown me from my home,” the Arab said. “I am a son of Ishmael and you are a son of Isaac. But for that, we are not enemies. We are enemies because you came to make a family in Al-Quds. The land of Palestine is an Islamic holy possession, given to future Muslims until Judgment Day. You are a cancer and you must be cut out.” The Arab paused for a moment. “Now it is your turn to roll again.”

  Before Yossi had a chance to reply, he heard what sounded like a window smashing in his wife’s room, the glass shattering onto the stone floor. Yossi’s stomach turned. He tried to stand up but was forced down by his shoulders.

  “Help!” he called, before the old man pulled off his checked kaffiyeh and stuffed it into Yossi’s mouth with the help of his laughing nephews.

  “If I forget thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” the old man said, shaking his head.

  “Psalm One thirty-seven,” Yossi thought, sickened.

  Yossi could hear someone stepping through the broken glass. His wife, in a panic, would rise in search of her gun, pull open her night table drawer and find it empty. The taste of the dirty kaffiyeh in his mouth made Yossi want to throw up.

  “Hacol b’seder?” a soldier called from beneath the kitchen window.

  “B’seder,” one of the Arabs answered.

  “Lo b’seder,” Yossi thought in Hebrew. “It’s not okay. There are Arabs in my kitchen!”

  “Tov,” the soldier said. Then there was silence.