by Claire Hajaj
‘That’s right,’ Salim said. ‘I’d say come, but I guess you don’t want to.’
Marc shrugged. ‘Maybe I’d like to see this place. What did you call it? Your legacy. That’s perfect. It was always more your child than I was.’
Somewhere deep in the recesses of memory Salim heard his voice screaming, heard the words he’d thrown at his own father in that same apartment. It’s your fault. You made us miserable. You did everything wrong. They rang in his head as Marc pushed past him in the same haze of pain and bravado.
It was instinct that made him seize his son’s arm, the sudden overwhelming urge to throw everything else away, to convince his son that he was loved, that they were all loved, that they could find a new place to begin. Marc’s face was half-turned towards him, half in the shadows, and he paused for the briefest moment. But it was too quick; the surface of Salim’s mind was still full of press conferences and plans, and the words he needed were buried so deep they could not find their way out.
Marc wrenched his arm away and walked through the door. The last thing Salim saw was his hand, clutching his bag as he disappeared into the dark of the stairwell. ‘’Bye, Dad,’ he heard. And then, like a dream, Marc was gone.
The last day bloomed bright as a rose in Jaffa. By noon the Orange House was wrapped in a blaze of light under a radiant winter sky.
Salim stood at the end of the track. It was like looking through a frame, as if the house lived only in a picture, set apart from the racing world.
Creepers tumbled over the closed garden walls, moving softly with the sway and fall of the cool December air. The arching windows of the top floor were wide eyes looking out to sea. Their gaze sped over the top of the dirty new Jaffa, through the softening light of the harbour over to the glorious old city.
Around the house, it was pandemonium. Mobile tents painted by Jimmy’ progressives swelled on the scrubland like unripe melons. The front gate was guarded by two police officers. More stood beside police cars blocking the street. Their sirens waved silently, flashing white and blue into the air.
A crowd was arriving for the spectacle. They came in huddles, people with nothing to do on a Sunday morning. Most kept their distance, standing linked arm to arm behind the cordon of police cars, whispering to each other. Others, the bolder ones, came laughing into the arena of tents, pointing at the placards and taking pictures.
Across the wreck of fallen Al-Ajami, the bells were ringing for the Christian Sabbath. Salim saw, to his amazement, a light burning in the upper window of the house. A menorah. Then he remembered. It was the twentieth of December, the sixth day of Hanukkah. The day after tomorrow, someone’s hand would light the eighth flame to celebrate the day the Jews rose in rebellion and took back the Temple. How ironic.
‘She moved out, you know.’ It was Jimmy, suddenly standing behind him. A half-eaten piece of manquish was in his hand, rich and cheesy.
‘Who moved out?’
‘Her.’ Jimmy waved the manquish towards the light in the window. ‘The woman who lived here, and her kid. Just for today, I heard. I guess she didn’t want to get her face in the papers. I don’t blame her.’
Salim remembered her puzzled smile, and her hand on his shoulder. Regret touched him – for another soul infected with the pain of loss.
‘Not to worry about it now, habibi. We have work to do today. Let’s talk again later. Yallah, I’ll go get Mazen. You boys look so good together. I want him in the pictures.’
The crowd and the noise were building together. Salim walked over to the podium. One of Jimmy’s progressives was wrapping it carefully in the Palestinian flag. Watching, Salim remembered that the flag had actually been designed by a British diplomat called Sykes in the days of the Arab Revolt against the Turks. Tareq called it a joke, another trick of the British Empire, to fool Arabs into believing they were one people.
It was Mazen he thought of, who’d once showed him how to strangle a chicken from the market. ‘They’re stupid,’ he’d said, as the bird gabbled around with a rope around its neck. ‘They try to run and run and they don’t notice the knot is getting tighter.’ Salim rubbed his throat, feeling the constriction of an invisible noose. Maybe Rafan, or Jimmy, was pulling on the other end. Worse, maybe he’d been pulling it himself. I’m more stupid than the chicken, he thought. I didn’t notice it for forty years. The whole performance suddenly felt as hollow as the flag-draped podium. I turned my son away for this?
He saw Elia pushing his way through the throng. His friend’s face was furrowed, as he squinted over Salim’s shoulder into the glare of the lights.
‘Quite a turnout,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I hope it does you good, Salim. But I told you before, I don’t think this is the way.’
‘I know,’ Salim replied, feeling the weight of sadness hush his voice. ‘It’s gone far enough – too far.’ Elia looked at him in concern. ‘What’s the matter? You look terrible. Did something happen?’
The words came into his mouth automatically. My son came to me, and I failed him. But what was the point of telling Elia? When this was over, after the judgment tomorrow, he would make it right.
He looked at the house, at the light burning in its window. For a moment he wished he believed in God, in something more sacred than a pile of bricks that could hold him to his promise.
Elia pinched his arm, nodding at Jimmy walking towards him with Mazen alongside. Tareq followed unhappily behind them. Mazen caught Elia’s eye, and Salim saw his face shift from a puzzled frown to resentful recognition.
‘Elia, by God,’ he said, ‘always taking up with the Arabs.’
Elia turned away, his body instinctively shielding itself as he did when they were boys. ‘We’re on the same side now, Mazen. It’s not about politics. This is for Salim.’
Mazen snorted. ‘Yes, we’re on the same side,’ he said, his shoulders squaring. ‘A master and his dogs.’
‘Boys, boys,’ Jimmy said, pushing between them. ‘Give me one moment. I have to talk to the star of the show.’ His chin wobbled as he jerked his head and pulled Salim to the edge of the crowd.
‘There’s a message just arrived from Jerusalem,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Your brother needs you.’ He held out a piece of paper, folded in the middle. Salim had no choice but to take it, but his heart revolted. It was half-open, like a door, and Salim knew where it led. I don’t have to walk through.
‘He crossed the border okay. But then we were betrayed. They raided the safe house in the West Bank this morning and took everyone inside.’
Salim touched his throat and felt the tug of the rope again. Once it had been Rafan’s arms around his neck, the love of a frightened little brother. And he grieved for Rafan, for Marc, for himself, for all the little boys consumed by this ever-hungry land.
Jimmy slapped Salim on the cheek, a light warning. ‘Hey, wake up. This is very serious. This could mean Mossad, and your brother’s life maybe.’ He bent towards Salim. ‘He told them he’s here for you, just visiting family. He’s using British papers. After this, we go to the station. You need to back up his story.’
Salim slowly opened the note. It read, in English: Big brother – remember, I help you and you help me. Come as soon as you can. I’m waiting here for you, Rafan.
Salim turned his head and looked out west, over the crowds towards the sea. It was only an instant, but he thought he saw Marc’s face at the edge of the scene, pale and bright as the day. He whipped his body around, but the face had vanished – if it had ever been there at all.
He turned back to Jimmy. ‘When this is finished, I have to find my son,’ he said. He thrust the note back into the fat hand and walked back towards the podium.
Tareq, Elia and Mazen were beside it still locked in their argument. The crowds had gathered in an arc around them, grinning as they shouted. Mazen was laughing at Elia. ‘You want to be an Arab, go ask your mama. Maybe the white Yehuda got bored of fucking a tailor, maybe she was spreading her legs for a dark one in Manshiyya.’
Ignoring him, Salim pushed in front of Mazen. He saw the rage there, dug deep by the years of disappointment.
‘Be careful what you say to these people, Mazen,’ he said. ‘They’re my family.’ He felt Tareq and Elia standing close against his right shoulder, breathing hard, and saw Mazen back away in surprise.
‘Your family?’ Jimmy put his arm round Mazen’s shoulder, the contempt unleashed in his voice. ‘Your family is sitting in a prison cell, Salim, waiting for you to finish this fucking speech. So yallah, let’s go. Both of you. It’s time to get you in the pictures.’
‘Don’t listen, Salim,’ Tareq said quietly. ‘Some dogs never change their bark.’
Mazen’s heavy eyes swivelled wildly from Salim’s face to Jimmy’s and back again. But then he seemed to gather himself; he leaned forward, his breath warm on Salim’s cheeks. The ghost of the smile that once haunted Salim, the taunting boyhood sneer, crept onto his lips. ‘Better a dog than a donkey,’ he said, and he gave Salim a wink. Behind Mazen, Salim heard Jimmy snort with laughter.
Salim took Mazen’s head in his hands, and pulled his face close. It was almost an embrace, and he could see Mazen’s confusion as their eyes met for a long second. In the background he saw Jimmy’s features blur into his father’s, into Rafan’s, into the Irgun and their bloody bombs and all the faceless men to whom he’d handed the reins of his life.
‘Not your donkey any more,’ Salim whispered. Then he pushed Mazen backwards, with that same sudden relief he’d known long ago watching their football fly high across the wasteland.
There was a moment of impact. Mazen stumbled and slammed into Jimmy. And then the big man was rolling in the dirt with a red mess trickling out of his nose.
Someone screamed and cameras flashed. Jimmy grabbed someone’s sleeve to hoist himself up, turning it bloody. As he staggered to his feet his eyes met Salim’s in reproachful amazement.
‘Put that in your pictures,’ Salim said to him. Turning away, he took the microphone from an outstretched hand and stepped onto the podium.
His first instinct was to look around for Marc. But there was no sign of his son. It must have been a trick of the light, a mirage made of wishes. He sensed the Orange House behind him, a looming presence. Even the light was like his dreams, an over-brightness that hurt the eyes, the distant calling of voices over a profound, expectant silence.
He felt that silence, a well to fall into. I know what they want me to say. He could tell them the same old story, that peace will never come until all the homes are restored and we are all back at our own tables. But that was only one truth.
The other was much harder to say, harder to hear. If only Marc were in front of him, he could find the words for it. He’d lost his first home despite all he could do. But that loss wasn’t as painful, as terrible to accept as the home he’d built and then destroyed himself.
He opened his mouth to speak. But suddenly there was another sound rising around, sweeping away his words before they could take shape.
In that instant of confusion he could not make it out. It started as a shriek from someone in the crowd, or from a bird sailing above them, and then a high woomf of heat and light.
Now he could hear it, an angry roar, as the sea of people screamed and surged. Turning, he saw the flames falling like leaves over the wall, the smoke creeping like a silent hand over the windows.
Then there was a deeper sound, a flash of wind and energy and a bone-shaking wail that blew silence into his ears and dust over his eyes. His mind felt light as a bird as his legs gave way and the podium crumbled. He was falling slowly into space, and as he reached out the ground of Jaffa groaned and opened to take him inside.
The Sea
They found Marc’s body inside what used to be the kitchen.
According to the police, he’d scaled the back wall of the compound, climbed down through the trees and broken into the kitchen. Then he’d thrown his arsenal of Molotov cocktails one by one into the downstairs rooms. The last three had been left to burn beside him, with the gas stove turned up.
No one knew if he’d meant to die. The newspapers called it a suicidal act, but Salim refused to believe it. Marc had booked a return ticket to London on a flight leaving that same night. Then he saw a letter to Sophie, posted before the press conference. It started: I don’t expect you to forgive me, and ended: I love you always. At the bottom of the page Marc had drawn a small figure. It was leaping forward into the sky, its arms held up in rapturous greeting.
The magnificent crescendo of Marc’s revenge took many months to die into silence. He passed into the hands of the press, who fought over his story – the tragic figure taking revenge for his lost inheritance, or the would-be terrorist who misjudged the moment and was able to kill only himself. Much was made of his psychological disorder – and the influence of his uncle, long-wanted by Mossad and now finally in their hands.
Then there was the question of liabilities and claims and compensations. The forty-year-old case of Saeed Al-Ishmaeli and sons was put aside by the courts. The owner of the house wept on television as the bulldozers moved in to clear away the rubble. ‘God saved us,’ the woman cried to the cameras, her hand clasping her little son’s arm. ‘We should have been in that house.’ Watching her, Salim prayed, for the first time in his adult life, that Marc had known the house was empty before he sent death inside.
He saw Jude once that year, across the room of the inquest. When the judge pronounced death by misadventure, she raised her bowed head. Her blue eyes turned to him, dark with pain. And when the court rose he watched Nadia pull her close as she tried to move towards him. But he saw her eyes and read the words rather than heard them, as if she’d burned them into the air. You. You killed him. You killed our boy.
And then finally, there was silence. The newspapers moved on, the payments were made. The site of the Orange House was cleared and left for the sea to claim. Green shoots and saplings began to grow again under the wheeling gulls. By the time the authorities decided what to do with the land, they would be young trees just ready to fruit.
A year to the day after Marc’s death, Salim stood across a rising path, leading up from the sea. The sun was high and the wind blew cold and fresh from the west. Dry stalks of grass rattled around him, as feathered white seeds drifted through the shining air. They would find a place to land, not too far away, to grow again with the first breath of spring.
In the soft haze he watched a small knot of people gathered on the highest point of the land. They stood around a young tree, slim and green with the earth newly dug at its base.
They are all here. He saw Sophie, taller than Jude with her crown of dark hair. A man stood next to her, just as young and slender, black haired and fair skinned. He put his arms round her waist, and pulled her to him with love. Pale Gertie was there, and Uncle Max, and Tony, soberly dressed in a black suit alongside his wife and children. Dora, thin and bent, held onto her brother-in-law Alex’s arm. Her other arm held Nadia’s, who patted the old woman’s hand. Tareq stood beside Jude, and Elia beside him. Even Hassan was there, his wife and children huddled around and three little grandchildren kicking up dirt behind the group.
Then he saw Jude, her golden head high. She knelt down on the land and scooped up some of Jaffa’s soil in one hand. Reaching into her pocket with her other hand, she brought out a bound cloth.
As he watched, she poured dark and crumbling English earth from the scarf into the lighter, warmer soil in her palm. Dust sprinkled away from her in glittering flakes, as she placed the mixed soils at the foot of the tree.
He stood there, listening to the wind catch and blow through the scrubland. It sang to him, a sweet, wordless song he’d always loved to hear.
Sophie walked to stand beside her mother, tipping a pitcher, one Nadia used to make yoghurt. Water streamed down, clear as the sky, onto the hard ground. The tree dran
k it like a baby at the breast, its soil turning dark with life.
The ceremony was over, and the people started to move away. Sophie took Jude’s arm and they both looked towards him. She kissed her daughter and Sophie’s hand dropped. Then, Jude was coming down the slope, unbuttoning her dark blue coat.
The light caught the chains around her neck. His gift to her was there, tangled with Rebecca’s star. My other gift to her is lying under the earth. Marc was part of the land now.
Finally, they stood opposite each other, across the path. The wind blew around them, catching at their clothes. He saw it then – a third chain in white gold. A child with butterfly wings, leaping for the sky.
Jude tried to absorb the stranger opposite, the remains of the boy she’d loved for his sweetness, his easy warmth. Her husband was hunched, lifeless. A grey figure etched in pain. Part of her mourned, even as another part rejoiced it was so.
‘Remember we once talked about coming here together,’ she said, forcing herself to break the silence.
He nodded. ‘I told you it was impossible.’
‘And yet, here we are.’ Her eyes went out to the billowing sea. ‘I guess you never know how things will turn out.’
Behind her the crowd was moving towards the cars. Sophie was standing at the brow of the hill, her lover’s hand in hers. Marc’s tree stood on its own, a delicate sliver of life, its green arms waving in the sunshine. Beyond it, the two cities, old and new, rose into the distance.
‘I don’t blame you for hating me,’ he said. There were claws in his throat. ‘You were right. I killed him.’
Her eyes were dry. ‘I did hate you, Sal. I would still hate you until my last breath, if it could bring Marc back. But he wouldn’t want that.’ Her hand touched the hollow of her throat, where the leaping boy lay still. ‘You know what he was like. He’d want us to say goodbye.’
‘I know.’ His voice was soft. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a slim rectangle wrapped in white silk, the colour of innocence.
