by Sara Shilo
I fall to the floor and curl up. I hear the door close. My head is exploding. I think I’ve twisted my foot. I can’t feel my back – it’s as though it has taken off, is flying somewhere. When it returns the screw has gone. The pain has moved down to my legs. I put my hands into my armpits. My jacket is torn on one side and my shirt has come undone, my belly sticking out. I want to get up, but my foot can’t take my weight, and I fall back to the floor.
Someone opens the door. I turn my head. Jamil’s mother is standing there, the knife in her hand. I close my eyes. She’ll rip out my liver with one twist, and eat it raw, taking my strength.
6
The mother leaves. Jamil comes back in, helps me into a chair as if nothing happened, puts a package in my hand. He doesn’t say a thing. There’s a little scratch next to his eye from the armrest. His face is still blank. You wouldn’t think I nearly took his eye out. I don’t know where he’s put his anger, how his blood isn’t boiling, how he’s looking at me with his blue eyes as if nothing happened. I open the plastic package and take out a brown envelope with ‘Kobi’ written on it, as well as some Arabic figures. I start to count the dollars. When I reach a thousand, I know the whole seven thousand is there. I can’t look Jamil in the eye. I put the dollars back in the brown envelope and the envelope into the plastic bag, then I let the package fall to the floor. I start to cry and, like a kid, I can’t stop.
I just sit there, holding my head and crying. Where are all the tears coming from? I can’t see a thing. All I can feel is the water pouring out of my eyes. I don’t know how to stop it. I’ll have to wait for it to stop by itself. Crazy thoughts creep into my mind: maybe if I don’t pay the water bill, they’ll cut me off; all my blood is turning into water and coming out of my eyes. I can’t do anything about it. What can I do? I’ll just sit in Jamil’s chair and wait until I have no more blood to shed.
Jamil takes off my shoe and my sock, then goes away and brings in another of his brothers, Zoheir, a nurse at the hospital. Jamil’s scrawny but he’s the opposite. He looks as though he could smash me into a pulp with one finger. My foot hurts. A dark-blue ball has swollen up. I’m suffering the pain in silence. I don’t want to be a nuisance. He wraps a bandage around my foot. I don’t want him to stop wrapping. His hands feel so good I want to kiss them. As smooth and fat as a baby’s. It’s as if the world is topsy-turvy and the babies are looking after the grown-ups. I wish he could wrap me in a bandage from my head to my feet.
His mother comes in with a cup of tea and a painkiller. They talk in Arabic. I don’t want to understand them, don’t even try to listen for words I know. I don’t look for the package. I don’t want to see it. What do I want? Just for them to take me somewhere, feed me, put me to sleep, talk in their language about what to do with me. I want them to tuck me in, wake me in the morning, send me to work, take my salary and guard it for me. I want them to bring me a woman to marry, to tell me what I have to do every minute of the day.
Jamil’s brother puts a sock over the bandage. They take me to eat with them. I put one hand on Jamil’s shoulder and the other on his brother’s shoulder. At the table they sit me in a chair. From elsewhere in the house, other people come. Where were they hiding? I just sit there. Everyone comes to me, so I won’t have to stand up. I shake hands with his dad, his brothers. They all sit down and start to eat. Two minutes later, we hear two loud booms, one after the other.
I don’t know how I could have forgotten about the alert. I get up when I hear the first boom, wanting to go to the shelter, and they say, ‘What shelter? We don’t have shelters like you. Sit down and eat. This is the best room – the wall is almost a metre thick.’ So we eat the meat, the rice, the salads, hear the second boom, and carry on eating. I never imagined that Katyushas might land here. I don’t know why. I just didn’t think Katyushas would fall in an Arab village. A few minutes later, a short, thin guy comes in, talking quickly. Jamil translates into Hebrew for me: ‘Two Katyushas fell in the town. The electricity’s out. The second one landed in the town centre, no doubt about it. He’s the uncle, the headteacher of the school. He saw everything from his roof – the ambulances and fire engines, too.’
They sit me back down, put more food on my plate. The headteacher says in Hebrew, ‘I’m begging the Katyusha to come and fall on the school, but it didn’t happen.’ Everyone at the table laughs with him, and he looks at me because I’m not laughing. ‘The school is empty and each Katyusha means millions of government money. With two I could build a gym so good that all the villages in the area would use it.’
I think that if I’ve got any human decency, I should be worrying about my family. I have to run and help them. Our apartment is fifty metres from the centre of town. I look at Jamil. But he hasn’t realised what he’s said. He doesn’t know where I live. I don’t tell him. I don’t want to think about what might have happened. I don’t want to decide who will live and who will die. I don’t want to decide about money. I don’t want to decide where they should live and what they should do. Instead I pretend I’m someone from the village, someone who eats lamb prepared by his mother every day. Take another pitta. Don’t think about shelters.
Zoheir hands me another pitta. ‘Eat, eat. Don’t be shy.’ I scoop the food from the little bowls with the pitta like everyone else. I start to taste the food, to feel my hunger, to love their house. I sit and I eat just like everyone else.
Jamil’s little brother catches my eye, laughter racing all over his face, coming and going quickly so the grown-ups don’t see. I’m the only one who sees him laughing, the only one who knows he’s playing with a ball under the table. When his dad picks him up to give him a nice piece of meat, he catches my eye again and rolls the ball over to me so I can keep it for him. When he sits down, I roll it back with my good foot. He’s the little one in the family. Someone’s always watching out for him, or thinking about what’s good for him. We eat, the two of us, not looking at each other, but rolling the ball back and forth underneath the table. I glance at him, catch the laughter as it runs from his eye to the side of his mouth. Suddenly I feel his laughter setting me alight, and I’m laughing, too, though no one can see. When he sees that, he passes the ball to one side so I have to move quickly to catch it. Then I bring the ball back to the middle, keep it under my chair, wait, drink, eat, until I see it’s driving him mad, and then I roll it back to him. He gets up again, sitting with his uncle this time. The ball’s under my chair. After he’s gone I ask Jamil, ‘How old is the kid?’ Jamil doesn’t understand who I mean. It’s only when the kid sits back down that he catches on. ‘Who, Amir?’ he says. ‘He’s the little one of the house. He’ll be thirteen this month.’
ETTI DADON
1
My mind went blank when it fell. It was a horrible one. The electricity went out. Then another fell straight away, a million times stronger and even more horrible. I couldn’t think of a thing, couldn’t remember a thing, and everyone else was the same: grown-ups, old people, children, babies. We all forgot everything. We just screamed.
The scream seemed to spread out in the darkness of the stairwell where we were, making us into a single mass, a monster with many feet, trembling hands and open mouths. Then, afterwards, memory began to resurface. Children started to yell ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’, parents called out their children’s names, someone shouted, ‘Why is the shelter closed?’
With its dozens of mouths – asking, accusing, imploring – the monster repeated, ‘Why is the shelter closed?’
A voice thundered, ‘Where’s the key? Someone should bring the key.’
The monster echoed, ‘The key.’
Hands met in the darkness. ‘Is that you, Eliko? Is that you?’
‘Meital, where’s Meital? I can’t see Meital?’
‘I’m here, Mum,’ chirped a voice.
The monster began to move, sorting itself into families. Its limbs tore themselves apart and melted into six storeys of darkness, calling the names of absent childre
n, begging for them. The echoes of the names went up and down the stairwell like an out-of-control lift, hitting the monster on the head.
‘Where’s the key?’ the monster screamed again. ‘Quick, somebody, bring the key before another one falls on us!’ The scream changed to a wail, and one head climbed the stairs to look for the key.
Before he came back, the monster swelled again, its limbs complete once more, the missing ones sobbing, complaining, accusing.
‘How can you stay in the house when you hear Katyushas?’
‘I almost got killed trying to find you!’
‘Don’t shout at him. Look how white he is!’
‘How can you see he’s white when I can’t see a thing?’
‘Let him pass!’
‘Let him …’
‘He’s got the key. Let him pass. He’s got the key.’
The monster pleaded with itself, but instead of thinning out, it becomes even more solid, pushing against the shelter door. Then a calm, assured voice managed to soften the monster’s body, to slip inside.
Then the shelter was open.
Inside everything was bare. The light of torches and candles was the opposite of the midday sun, which now seemed more beautiful than any holiday or Sabbath. It was a Cinderella light, weak and yellow, a light of tattered rags, waiting for the fairy godmother to arrive.
Small children clinging to their parents suddenly pulled back. Something in the hug suddenly seemed strange, and they wanted to reassure themselves it really was Mama or Papa. Everyone moved as though they were in the belly of a whale. I was trembling. I couldn’t breathe. My stomach felt like a bag of sharp stones, felling me to the floor in one swoop. My hands flew up to my frozen cheeks, to support my forehead, which felt as cold and as heavy as iron.
In the silence I watched people moving their lips. Marcelle said something and passed her baby to me, along with the bottle and the muslin. I held Asher tightly – he was kicking and his face was red, his eyes swollen. I put the bottle near his little open mouth and he attached himself to it straight away, sucking on the teat. Then he stopped fighting me and closed his eyes.
The heavy buzz of voices began to disperse. Marcelle touched my hand. ‘Hold the bottle high,’ she said. ‘Then he won’t gulp air. What can I do? Yehuda’s never here when I need him.’ Asher sucked in a steady rhythm. ‘I have to go to Yasmin,’ she said. ‘Take it easy; you’re shaking.’ The stones in my belly became soft, and round like pebbles.
The bottle wasn’t empty, but Asher was asleep. Now and then, his eyes closed, he took another sip. I felt my bra pinching me. I didn’t know if I was supposed to take the bottle out of his mouth, but I didn’t dare move to ask. I didn’t want him to wake up, and I didn’t want to look at anyone. It felt good, sitting with him, as if we were the only two people in the shelter.
But we weren’t. Yasmin was screaming and Marcelle was trying to calm her down. ‘Sweetheart, the vents just let the air in,’ she said. ‘Katyushas can’t get in. They aren’t windows, just tubes that bring us air. Don’t look at them, darling. Come and put your head down here. Look at Eliko sitting quietly – what a sweetie.’
But Yasmin kept crying, breathing in the smell of fear created by the parts of the monster now scattered around the shelter.
Asher’s hair was damp with sweat and stuck to his head. I saw a louse crawling between the hairs, and for the first time noticed the parts of its body: the head, the legs, the transparent parts, the brown back. Lice disgust me. As my arm fell asleep under his head, the louse began to look like Little Red Riding Hood walking through the forest, not knowing when the wolf would pop out. I suddenly wanted to scratch my head, just as I do when other people scratch themselves or talk about lice, but I didn’t have a spare hand to scratch with.
Yasmin burst into a long wail and started running towards the shelter door. Everyone told Marcelle she should give her daughter a slap, that it was the only way she’d snap out of her hysterics.
Suddenly, other voices piped up, loud ones. People were fighting: over mattresses, over blankets, over who was taking the most room. Others untied the chains attaching the iron bed frames to the walls, opening them out, and immediately climbing up and lying down, sticking Sabbath candles to the iron frame with candle wax. Faces flickered from the beds, just like the picture we saw in school on Holocaust Day. I can’t forget it. I close my eyes and whisper, ‘Everyone knows there’s no comparison. It’s not the same thing at all.’ But other pictures came into my head then, a chain of them: the double-decker bus where skeletons lay in striped pyjamas, the wagons heaped with white corpses, the barbed wire … my thin, trembling hand stretched through a hole in the wire to grasp a crust of bread someone was passing to me.
Then I hear shouts. Five or six people were attacking Shmuel Cohen, who had locked the shelter at midday and gone to sleep with the key.
‘He was fast asleep. It was the Katyushas that woke him. He was by himself, Ziona and the children have gone to her sister’s in Beersheba,’ Marcelle said. ‘He was shaking in his bed in the dark. He couldn’t move until Yehuda went to get the key and found him gripping it in his hand. I don’t understand what he could have been thinking, Etti. Did he think the key would save him?’
Shmuel looked at the floor, his chin sunk into his collar. ‘I locked it because of the children,’ he said. ‘They were going wild playing in here. Your children’ – he raised his head a little – ‘not mine.’
‘We almost died because of you, Shmuel, died,’ they moaned, then rebuked themselves for not kicking up a fuss at the water company, so they’d finally come to fix the drains, for not cleaning up a little, for not bringing some blankets and women’s magazines.
‘Halas, stop moaning,’ someone said. ‘How would you have kept it all safe? It would have been stolen or wrecked.’
Everyone quietened down then, turning their backs on each other, drawing imaginary lines around themselves and settling down on their mattresses. I leaned against the wall, watching the children being tucked in, four to a mattress, head to toe. ‘Put your head down, sweetheart,’ soothed their parents, and sleep began to open little doors here and there, sneaking the children inside, one after another, until they were all gathered up inside. Then it was night-time.
It was just seven or eight o’clock, but night had fallen upon us in a moment, a private, local night, like rain falling from a single cloud. There were no hours, no minutes. It was as if our time was separated from normal time, racing ahead until it had to stop and rest, to wait for normal time to catch up. Only then will we become part of the daily news programme, maybe even the main headline.
I heard everything that happened, saw it and smelled it, but I remember nothing. I felt like a part of the baby and the bottle, my hand attached to the bottle, the hand of a girl with a mother and siblings. But they’re not here.
Not one of them was here. In the darkness, I went into a different building by mistake, number 122. I ran here – my legs remember – right after the first Katyusha, like a little girl who sees someone who looks like her papa from behind and grabs his sleeve by mistake.
2
Yehuda, Marcelle’s husband, came in. He works in the maintenance department at the Council. He’s the one that opened the shelter for us then disappeared. All the men got up the minute he came, and the women stood, too. I looked at him through a tunnel of people, and saw his mouth open to speak like a red cave inside his moustache and beard.
‘It’s Big Amsalam,’ said the mouth. ‘We took him to hospital. They don’t know if he’ll be OK. You know Big Amsalam – his wife was six months pregnant when she lost the baby last year.’
She used to work at Mama’s nursery, but not everyone knew who he meant. The ones who didn’t know got an explanation from those who did, leading them on a twisting path to remembering that man, whose face they would have recognised in the street and only now attach to his name.
‘Big Amsalam, Itzik Amsalam. Suddenly no one knows who tha
t is?’
‘Amsalam from the hardware shop?’
‘No, not him.’
‘You mean Meir from Housing. With a wife called Susie?’
‘Susie? Shequn huway abuah?’
‘Bint Elyahu ‘Amar’?’
‘Aywa!’
‘Why didn’t you just say it was Eliyahu’s daughter?’
‘That’s what I said. Not her sister Mazal, the one with the limp?’
‘Nu, who’s her husband?’
‘Who’s her husband? Hasiba’s son?’
‘The guy who almost won a million in the pools?’
‘Not him – his older brother, Amsalam, who works in the defence industry.’
Over and over, without tiring of it, they traced their own paths to Big Amsalam, before someone lost their way and had to start again.
In minutes, names and stories were flying around the shelter, each summed up in one sentence: ‘the one who once went out with Simcha from the building where the mad woman lives’; ‘the one whose sister-in-law’s daughter once went out with an Arab, an educated one, actually, who went to Romania to become a dentist – he’s back now’; ‘the one whose brother works on a new Volvo truck that has ten gears’; ‘the one whose baby was born handicapped on Maimouna night and they left it in the hospital – didn’t you hear about that?’
All this new information rustled in the cramped space, and the confused faces looked squashed and tense and as if they were about to split, like tangerines with a thin peel. I knew my face looked exactly the same.
Now everyone was talking softly, passing water bottles back and forth, offering clean nappies, toilet paper, rubbish bags, headache pills, blankets, even mattresses: ‘Go on, have it. Don’t be shy. We have two already, and they could sleep together, warm each other up.’
