by Sara Shilo
Until Itzik brought Delilah home, he’d sleep with us, too. But now he says it’s better to put her in the old kitchen where there’s water and no one to disturb at night. He put his own bed there, too. Mum and Kobi shouted at him, saying he should get her out of the house. When that didn’t work, they tried being nice to him. They tried everything. They said it was written in the Torah that you weren’t allowed to sleep in a kitchen, that the kitchen didn’t have a mezuzah. Itzik pretended not to hear them. Then, one day, when they were both at work, he started to drag his bed to the kitchen, as best he could with those hands. No one helped him. We just watched him fall and bleed, watched the bed getting stuck in the hallway. We wanted to help him, but we were afraid of Kobi.
After Itzik got the bed into the kitchen, it blocked the whole room. Now, if you open the sliding door, you can fall right onto his bed. The bird is tied to the tap and he sleeps next to her. There isn’t a clear patch of floor.
Itzik
I lie on my back in bed for half the day. I’m completely still.
I dream about terrorists at night. They’re always in my dreams. Every time I hear shouts or explosions, one of them is standing over me with a gun. Then I’m on the floor, and he’s hitting me on the head with his shoe. The mud from the shoe gets into my eyes. I see them grab Etti by the throat, stuff a rag in her mouth, smash her radio. I see the rest of the family murdered in their beds, a bullet hole in each head, dripping blood on their pillows. I see Dad, too. He’s in the house with us, a hole in his head where the bee stung him. He’s time-travelled to die with us.
Last night the dream was different. For the first time I dreamed the terrorists were standing next to the building, waiting. I was so happy I could hardly believe it. I brought them here! They walked right up to our building without a care in the world. Everything I arranged worked. Delilah and I looked out at them from our fourth-floor window.
Three fat terrorists standing under a streetlight. I don’t know how such fatties made it here from the border. They look up at the flags I’ve hung from my window. The middle terrorist looks just like Shushan from the cinema, except he’s wearing a keffiyeh. The other two I don’t recognise, but they both have moustaches. They aren’t afraid. They stand, their legs apart, and laugh. They’re laughing so much they’re crying. They’ll wet themselves in a minute. The terrorist that looks like Shushan puts his arms around the shoulders of the other two, and they hold their dancing, laughing bellies. I wait for Delilah to go for them. Nothing. She’s not interested. Suddenly the Shushan terrorist takes his hands from the shoulders of the others, and turns. The other two do the same, turning their backs to me. Now they look like a row of hand grenades, laughing then dissolving into the darkness.
I’m going mad. Why didn’t she attack them as they stood and laughed? I’m holding her in my hand. She’s as hard as iron and her sharp feathers pierce my hand. I look at her. Her eyes are glassy. She doesn’t recognise me. Angrily, I throw her out of the window. As soon as I throw her into the air, she turns into a real bird. Then she flies away, disappearing into the night sky, lost to me.
I hear Mum in the kitchen. I open my eyes. It’s the beginning of the end of the night. Delilah is still tied to the tap. No terrorists, no grenades. Nothing.
The dream’s over, but I’m left me with a question: how can I get Delilah to peck out the eyes of terrorists? Until today, I didn’t give it a thought.
I close my eyes again and think about all the animals in the world, not just birds. Big animals, little animals, birds and fish – they don’t play the same game. They don’t run into shelters when the Katyushas are falling. Then I wondered if it would be better to be an ant than a person, because an ant doesn’t fear war. He doesn’t know any different. If a Katyusha falls on him he dies, and if it doesn’t then the possibility wouldn’t even cross his mind.
I hear Mum leave for the nursery. I go back to sleep.
When I open my eyes, the room is light and quiet. Everyone has gone.
My mouth and throat are dry. I’m dying to pee and to eat. I look at the ceiling, questions spinning in the air. Do Israeli soldiers fight because of fear or pride or hate?
Delilah definitely has no fear. The way she flies, why would she be afraid of anything? And her pride comes from deep inside; it doesn’t ask favours. Then I think about hate. After a while I have a thousand more questions. What is hate? How does it begin? Where in the body does it live? How do you get soldiers to hate? Is it like a one-off injection that lasts for life, or do you have to keep topping it up, like food?
Can Delilah feel hate or love? I raise my head from the bed and look at her. I can’t tell whether she’s happy or sad. Her face always has the shape of anger, that’s just how her eyes are. The black feathers in the middle make me think of an angry person’s wrinkled forehead. But that’s just my imagination.
In any case, birds can’t smile. Only people show their feelings that way. A person’s face is like a blank cinema screen with the film rolling inside. But Delilah has pride. What’s inside her stays there, even if a judge ordered otherwise. When people put on a face, it’s a mask, a sign they’re lying. If they’re burning with anger, they’ll look cool. If they’re happy, maybe because they met someone they like or saw the girl of their dreams in the street, they pretend they don’t care. God gave people faces so they could tell each other everything without speaking, but then we started messing around with the design, wearing masks and telling lies.
Delilah won’t ask you how you are, meaning you have to reply, to put on your mask. She’s not interested. She wouldn’t lower herself to bother with human stuff. I’ve been with her for seven months and I don’t know what’s in her head. I don’t even know if she likes me. I’ll never know.
If she did understand our language, I’d take her to hear Rabbi Kahane when he comes to town, as that could be her injection of hate. If she understood him, she might then go for Hassan, assistant manager at the bank, because Kahane says all Arabs are terrorists. He doesn’t make any distinctions. When I saw him the first time – what was I? Just seven, playing in the centre of town – everyone suddenly ran to the falafel shop. Dudi and I went, too. We had no idea what we’d see there. How could we? Dad was lying on the floor with the bee-sting under his eye, raised like a little mountain. I had no idea a bee could knock someone to the floor like that.
I get out of bed, holding onto the old kitchen counter so I won’t fall. I have a Yom Kippur headache. It’s probably midday. I go to the bathroom to pee. I push down my pants and underpants. All my clothes are elasticated with no buttons so I can take them off myself. I have one long finger, a good size but twisted at the end. I call it Elijah because it reminds me of Raphi’s grandpa, who always stoops. With Elijah’s help, I pull my clothes back up.
I wander into the kitchen. Mum has left us three pots for lunch. I move the cover of one aside, count the chicken pieces and take two: one for me and one for Delilah. When I see how she pounces on it in her sink wadi, I get the answer to my question: there’s nothing Delilah won’t do for meat.
Dudi
I brought home three rows of flags from the Absorption Centre so Itzik could hang one across our window and two on the trees in the wadi to bring the terrorists to our building. At first he wanted me to go up the wall of the Union to get the flags. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘That wall was made for lizards to climb.’ Luckily I remembered somewhere else I could get the flags. I went to Sally, head of volunteers at the Centre, and said, ‘Yehuda from maintenance sent me to collect flags for the town hall. No need for you to call Gid’on; I’ll get them down.’ It wasn’t a problem. She brought me a ladder and held it for me so it wouldn’t wobble. She even said thank you.
Afterwards we went straight home to the old kitchen where Itzik sleeps with Delilah. He said we were going to make a terrorist mask, an Arab face, for her training and he wanted me to make it out of Dad’s white plastic bowl, which he used to wash the falafel-making equipment. I said whit
e was not a good colour, but he told me not to think too much, that we’d colour it with burning matches.
All Dad’s things from the falafel shop are in a cupboard in the old kitchen. When Mum moved everything to the new kitchen she left them behind. Why should she have taken them? She didn’t want to look at them.
I made two holes in the bowl for the terrorists’ eyes. Itzik couldn’t do that with his hands. Then I painted the whole thing black with burnt matches, and painted on a nose with Ettie’s marker pen. For a beard and eyebrows I used steel wool, which Mum uses to clean the stove, and glued them on with contact cement that we nicked from Assouline. The mouth turned out, looking like a clown’s, so I covered it with a moustache made out of more steel wool. What else could I do? When I cut the mouth out with a knife, that’s how it ended up. He was laughing in our faces, unconcerned about the end of his life. With the moustache, he looked like he was thinking about his final hours, and that he knew what was in store. I made a keffiyeh out of a white vest, with a black shoelace to hold it on to the bowl and my head, so I wouldn’t have to hold everything on with my hands, although in the end I did hold it at the edges.
Daoud only has a face. His body is mine. I stood in the bathroom, scratched his beard, practised Arabic words and tried to get inside his hate, although I couldn’t see my own eyes. I said all the swear words I knew, then turned the tap on, so no one would hear me.
So Delilah will learn how to peck out their eyes. We put some meat through the mincer in Mum’s kitchen, together with some bread soaked in water for an hour so it would harden when dry; that’s how we managed to glue it to the eye holes. The only thing we didn’t think about was how I would see once I was outside. It wasn’t a problem in the apartment because I know where everything is. And we didn’t think about the smell. After the meat had been outside for a few hours I’d have been better off sticking my head in a toilet full of shit.
Dudi and Itzik
‘And I’m telling you, Itzik: why don’t you put it on? I’ll stand on the rock and let her go, and you put on the face.’
‘Do I look scared? Come here, then. You hold her. Just don’t forget to give her a lot of rope, so she can get straight to my face. Get it?’
‘You don’t have to, you don’t have to. I’ll put it on. It’s better if you let her go. With you she knows what to do. She can read your mind. OK, I’ll be the target. It’s just the smell makes me feel like throwing up.’
‘Halas, stop moaning. I’ll count to seven and then let her go. Stand still and hold onto the face. One, two—’
‘Behayat, Itzik, do we have to have so much meat?’
‘Stop talking. Are you scared? She’s going to fly at you any minute now. I’m going to let her have all the rope so she can attack without stopping. Just stand still. Still, Dudi, like an electricity pylon. You’d better not move! Three, four, five—’
‘Wait a minute, I’ve got flies now. They don’t care about the smell. OK, I’m standing still. I’m not moving.’
‘Six, dir balak if you move!’
‘I didn’t move!’
‘Seven! Delilah, Delilah, meat! Meat! Grab it … You’re an idiot! It’s all gone! Gone, in less than a minute. I should have brought Etti. She’d have been more help.’
‘Etti can’t stand Delilah. Didn’t she tell you?’
‘She must think it’s Yom Kippur. She’s been screaming with hunger all day, and now she’s eating meat on the ground like a queen. She doesn’t care about the smell or about anything else. She’s probably laughing at us.’
‘I told you to do it yourself!’
‘You told me I didn’t have to!’
‘But Itzik, another minute of holding that bowl and I’d have been dead. I saw her swooping down on me, I know I did. Do you know what one of those claws could do to someone’s eye? One scratch and I’d never see another film in my life! And anyway, do you think terrorists would stand as still as electricity pylons? You’d be dead first. I don’t see terrorists putting down their bombs and saying to each other, in Arabic, “Itzik said not to move. Itzik said stand still. Itzik said please wait until Delilah comes.” Anyway, the meat’s finished now. I already told you but I’m telling you again: there’s no more meat.’
He told me to get the meat from Moshe, and I’ve been telling him for three days that Moshe won’t do it any more, but he doesn’t listen. We haven’t caught anything in the trap, either. I have to tell him again that Moshe wants a partnership in Delilah, but I know that’ll make him angry. I don’t care if there are five partners.
When I first told him, he fired back, ‘No partnerships. No! No! No! I’m not telling you again. We already know what partnerships can do. Once there was just one falafel king. There can only ever be one king, right? When he became a couple, what was left? Nothing. Do you think you can divide a king’s crown into five?’
‘But why, Itzik? Is it really better if she dies of hunger? Then all the training’s wasted and we lose everything.’
‘She’s not going to die! She’ll be fine. Listen to Itzik: this one is the queen of birds. Show me another bird that flies like she does. How can I explain it? Let’s say you got married but you can’t feed your wife, who you chose to marry because she was a queen, the best girl you knew. Now, say you start to work in a factory, only the factory suddenly runs into trouble. The consultants turn up with their fancy clothes and their nice cars, and they say, “Get rid of twenty workers and the factory will be fine.” You were last in, Dudi, so you’re first out. Two days’ notice and you’re out on your ear, so the factory can recover. You try to get welfare, but they say you’re healthy and must work. So you look for work – it’s not as if you’re not looking, and every day you go to the employment office – but you can’t find anything. Meanwhile, your wife’s at home with a baby, and both of them are hungry. What would you do, Dudi?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll tell you what you’d do. You’d come to me, cry on my shoulder, say you don’t have a thing to eat. As your brother, what would I tell you? I’d say, “Go to Moshe, Dudi. He’ll give you some food. But he also wants to share your wife, like a business partner.” How’s that, Dudi? Is that what you want to hear from your brother when you’re in trouble? Would you let him share your wife? You’d punch him. You’d beat him up.’
‘OK, Itzik, how would you beat him up? Think you’re Samson, do you? Come on, beat me up. I’ll even stand still for you – like an electricity pylon. What are you going to do?’
‘Did you tell him anything else about her? Just tell me the truth.’
‘I told him … I didn’t tell him … I don’t remember what I told him. What would I say anyway? I didn’t say a thing about her training, honest. You don’t have to worry about that.’
‘Now look – she’s eating everything.’
‘Why not let her eat? Enjoy your meal, Delilah.’
‘If you see someone coming, Dudi, put the mask in the bushes until they’re gone, and I’ll take Delilah away from the meat.’
‘What is there for them to see? They’ll just think she’s eating rotten meat. They’ll think nothing of it.’
‘Don’t underestimate people, Dudi. Don’t assume what they do and do not understand. They wouldn’t want you to, either.’
‘Everyone’s the same to you. You’d throw them all in the rubbish bin if you could.’
‘How can you try to understand someone who doesn’t have a clue himself? He doesn’t even know if he’ll be alive in a minute’s time. That’s the honest truth. One minute you’re standing, the next you’re on the floor. And while he’s standing there, what’s he thinking about? God, is this my last minute? No, he’s thinking about nothing much. I need a pee, maybe. Or, I’m hot and I’m thirsty. What’s on everyone’s mind? I’ll tell you, Dudi, they’re thinking about rubbish. It’s only us – you and me, Dudi – that have grand plans. We’re not like everyone else. Who is ever going to hear of them? Who’s going to write about them in t
he newspapers?’
‘I don’t care about newspapers. What’s a picture in the paper worth if my eye’s been scratched out?’
‘And if I tell you that God sent us here to prepare things for the terrorists? Do you ever think about God, Dudi? Maybe he’s the one that put the plan in my head! So what should I do? Complain that he didn’t give me a leather strap or meat or flags? I’m not a moaner, Dudi, understand? I don’t moan to God. That’s how he likes it. He laughs at you; you laugh at him, too. In the end, he’ll respect you more than those who fear him.’
Itzik
When I want to understand God, I sit down by an ants’ nest. First I decide which ant I’m going to watch. So what? you might think. But it’s harder than it looks.
The ant you’ve chosen is running around, and there are a thousand ants just like it running around, too, and your eyes always want to look at the other ants. It’s boring to watch one. While it’s just running, suddenly you see another one dragging something, and you want to know what it’s dragging. But as soon as you move your eyes, your ant escapes, and then you’ve lost it amongst the others. So you start again. You think you’re getting to know this one. You watch it go into a hole and then you wait for it to come out again. But ants are coming out of the hole all the time. You think: Maybe that one’s mine, or that one. But you have no way of knowing. Before it went into the hole it was dragging food and that’s how you could recognise it. But now there’s nothing.
I’m half a metre from them and I know they can’t see me. That’s how it is with God, too. We always think he’s hiding or far away, but why should he? He’s so big we can’t see him. Even if the ants lifted their eyes, they wouldn’t be able to see more than the sole of my shoe. I’d like them to know a god is sitting half a metre away from them. How do I do that? Well, I have two games: Good God and Bad God. The problem is, you have to know what an ant would think is good or bad.
