Mazel Tov

by J. S. Margot

  My fellow students hadn’t been able to hack it, and I wasn’t going to be able to hack it either. How could I work with people who made their belief and their origins the focus of their lives?

  “Do you know the joke about Moshe?” Mr Schneider asked.

  He didn’t give me time to answer.

  “Moshe is on his deathbed, and he calls his business partner Abe to his side.”

  He told the whole joke again. When he got to the punchline he again guffawed and again looked at me expectantly. Again I laughed, feeling desperately awkward.

  “When can you start?”

  “This evening,” I answered.

  I said goodbye without a handshake. Just before Mr Schneider shut the door of his office, he called me back. Could I write my boyfriend’s name down on a piece of paper?

  Seven

  When I got home, Nima and I had a terrible row, the worst in the two years we’d been together.

  “Why did you give him my name? These people—what are they called, Schneider—don’t have the right to ask for my personal details. Even if the police were to ask you my name, you wouldn’t be obliged to answer, ma chère, you should know that! We’re not married, are we? So it’s only our business who you live with, right? Really, how could you be so naive? I should be teaching you, instead of you tutoring those Jewish children. You don’t know the first thing about human rights! Lesson one: never say more than is strictly necessary, because everything you say can be used against you, especially if you’re an immigrant or political refugee!”

  I’d never seen Nima—with whom I spoke French, English and Dutch alternately—so angry and unreasonable as on that evening. His usual serenity deserted him. And it wasn’t so much Mr Schneider’s impertinence that infuriated him. He was mainly mad at me, at the cultural divide that I (like it or not) stood for.

  No longer was I the woman he’d spent months wooing, whom he’d showered with poetic declarations of love. I was the spoilt Westerner who utterly lacked political and historical awareness; I embodied the American imperialism that imposed its political, ideological and economic systems on the rest of the world; even culture was dictated by the Americans, because how many people would still go to the movies if they weren’t made in Hollywood?

  He left no frustration unvoiced.

  Did I have no idea how much Israel, that tiny little strip of a country, influenced world politics, particularly in the Middle East? Didn’t I know what Mossad was? Had they written down the names of their lovers for me on a piece of paper? Had they said to me: “Here are our particulars, check out who we are with the intelligence services”? Did I only read Noam Chomsky’s linguistic treatises? Shouldn’t I familiarize myself with the political works of this remarkable, left-wing, anti-imperialist Jewish intellectual?

  Privacy wasn’t about what you had to hide. Privacy was about everything you wanted to keep to yourself, because that was your right. Your own space. Your own security. Your own freedom: the most precious thing in the world. Why had he fled his own country, did I think? Was he—he really couldn’t believe it himself—really having to explain this, the foundation of all civic freedoms?

  “You’ve just got a grudge against Jews,” I exclaimed. “You just don’t want me to teach Jewish children. Put on your ‘Free Palestine’ T-shirt, why don’t you? Tell me where it is, I’ll get it for you. Or have you mislaid it, and is that Israel’s fault, like everything else?”

  He didn’t find that funny.

  We didn’t find anything funny.

  “You’re not listening,” he said.

  “I heard you.”

  “You heard what you want to hear. I’ve got nothing against Jews, nothing—please get that into your head once and for all! But I do have a problem with the state of Israel, with a government that doesn’t want to negotiate with Palestinian representatives, and with the whole mess that America and Europe have created in the Middle East. Marx was a Jew. Trotsky was a Jew. I owe my ideology to Jews! Well, its basic premises, at least.”

  “I’ve given your name to a Jewish father of four children, that’s all. Now Mossad is on your case and I’m partly to blame for all the deaths in the Middle East.”

  “My best boxing partner was a Jew!”

  “Where?”

  “In Tehran. Where else? You come across a lot of Jews in the ring. They’re excellent boxers.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Ask Mr Genius Schneider. Ask him if Jews are good boxers.”

  “He told me about the Jews in Iran.”

  “Twenty thousand Jews live in my country! But that’s not interesting, I know. Only fanatical Muslims are interesting.”

  And so it went on.

  The upstairs neighbours stamped on their floor, our ceiling.

  “Look at me!” I shouted at Nima. He didn’t. He never looked at me when his emotions got the better of him. Even when he missed his family so much it choked him; after the telephone sessions with his mother, for instance, who, after she’d talked to him for an hour, would pass him over to his father, who’d talk to him for five minutes at most. Twice I’d seen him bang his head against the wall. Once when he found out that his favourite uncle had died: as long as the radical Islamists called the shots, attending a relative’s funeral was out of the question. The other time was when it dawned on him that Khosrov, an Iranian friend with whom he played chess every week in the Full Moon cafe, was gay.

  “Lots of Jews stayed in Iran after the Islamic Revolution. They don’t have it easy. But they’re a lot better off than Palestinians in Jewish-occupied areas, that’s for sure.”

  “How can you be so certain? Have you been to Israel?”

  “I know the Middle East.”

  “Jews are entitled to their own country, you know that very well.”

  “I’m not claiming they aren’t. But there’s no dialogue with the original inhabitants. America looks down on the Middle East, so Israel does too.”

  “What was your boxer friend called?”

  “Raoul Eskenazy.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “How should I know? The ayatollahs are bad. But you lot are even worse. You’ve let yourselves sink into a kind of torpor. Despite all the possibilities you have.”

  “So why did you flee here, if we’re all such losers? If only you’d stayed in your own terrific country!”

  “I bet those Schneiders or Schleipers are helping finance the state of Israel.”

  “Oh, is that suddenly the issue?”

  “Have you ever wondered why Israel takes part in the Eurovision Song Contest?”

  “What does the Eurovision Song Contest have to do with it, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Israel, the conscience of Europe, isn’t even in Europe! So why does it take part every year? Because Europe wants to forget the extermination of the Jews. And how does Europe settle this debt? By allowing people in neighbouring countries to be exterminated. Has Israel ever entered a Palestinian candidate for the contest? A Muslim? A Palestinian from the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Gaza? Have you ever heard of a Jew who didn’t get a Belgian residence permit? A Jew who’s been deported? But take a Palestinian or a Lebanese Muslim with exactly the same social, economic and intellectual background as his Jewish neighbour, and he’ll be sent back on the first plane.”

  “Everything is the fault of the Jews.”

  “You shouldn’t have given my name to those Schleipers.”

  “Schneider, they’re called Schneider. And Mr Schneider is very nice.”

  As we made love afterwards, once again reconciled, it seemed unwise to confess to Nima that I’d gone so far as to write his name twice, the second time in capital letters, to make it easier for Mr Schneider to read.

  Eight

  I was aware that Nima’s fears we
ren’t entirely unfounded.

  He’d even had dealings with officers of the BOB, the Surveillance and Investigation Brigade of the Belgian gendarmerie, and the National Security Agency.

  Once I’d gone with him to their regular meeting place, deep down in the bowels of the Brussels metro. I’d insisted. Not that I suspected Nima of inventing these spy stories, yet at the same time I didn’t quite believe them entirely.

  I stood a few metres from Nima and the secret agent on the narrow, smelly, draughty platform of Madou station. He wasn’t going to tell the spy about me, or that I was there. Anyway, if the agent knew his job, he wouldn’t need to.

  The man—a white guy with a moustache, in civilian clothes—didn’t wear a hat or a long beige raincoat, nor did he have the obligatory briefcase that spies in films always carry around with them. He just looked like a regular commuter.

  I watched them as unobtrusively as possible, squinting over the upturned collar of my jacket. They talked to each other the way spies do. The contact gazed at the ground and the train rails, Nima stared straight ahead at the opposite wall; when a train stopped, blocking his view, he hardly shifted his gaze.

  The whole scene was funny and scary at the same time.

  Funny because it was so unreal. Scary because the Belgian secret police had power over Nima and not the other way round.

  I fantasized about how anyone could be a secret agent. The woman a bit farther down the platform, wearing a bus driver’s uniform. The guy with gelled-up hair who was emptying the waste bins. The student sitting on a bench, hunched over a sociology textbook.

  It was no coincidence that the BOB had contacted Nima. They’d picked him because they felt his left-wing sympathies might make for a mutually beneficial partnership.

  Not that Nima had told them his ideological views, or that they were set out in his asylum dossier. The BOB had managed to winkle this information out of him without him realizing. A remarkable achievement, given how alert he was when it came to privacy issues.

  The BOB’s technique involved having their agents attend evening classes in French and Dutch for newcomers to the country. They would sign up under an assumed name and profession. During the breaks they’d hand out chewing gum and cigarettes: this and the fact they joined in the smoking sessions loosened tongues.

  Nima was learning French. An occasional smoker, he’d once told some undercover BOB officer about the political posters he’d put up in Tehran. About his role in the student movement of the law faculty. Not knowing who he was dealing with, he’d even shown him the scar on his side, running from his right nipple to his back: “Souvenir of a jail sentence.”

  A little later they exchanged telephone numbers. “I play chess, so if you’re looking for a partner, appelle-moi.”

  The man rang him a few days later. How would Nima like to infiltrate the ultra-left wing of the Iranian students’ association in Brussels?

  Nima, furious, had immediately hung up.

  But a few months later the same man rang him again. “As I said, we want you to brief us on ultra-left groups at the university. But they’re not the ones we’re really interested in. Where progressives and atheists assemble, religious fanatics—fundamentalists—are never far away. It’s them we want to know all about.”

  This time Nima didn’t hang up immediately.

  In exchange for passing information to the secret police, the Belgian state would pay for his studies. If he proved useful, they’d pay him a monthly allowance. Expenses, too, were negotiable. “It can take more than a couple of drinks to get to the truth.”

  The secret agent knew that Nima’s sister, Marjane, who was two years older than him, also lived in Belgium and, like her brother, had been granted political refugee status. “But it’s obvious she’s an economic refugee.” He assured Nima that the Belgian judicial authorities would leave Marjane in peace. The veiled threat was clear. Nima, meanwhile, just stalled and strung the BOB along. To me he said: “You don’t betray your own people. And if something needs settling between Iranians, we’ll see to that ourselves.” For months, he played the security service’s game, but with different objectives. He tried to find out exactly what it was they wanted to know about his left-wing compatriots, and what their methods were. Eventually, everyone in left-wing Iranian circles knew what these undercover officers looked like, and where they operated.

  So “Fuck you” were the last words that Nima said to the agents of the state security service.

  After that meeting in Madou station we went and drank a geuze in a cafe on the Grand Place. Or maybe in Bar Ommegang, I can’t remember any more.

  Nine

  The first time Jakov and I really talked was on a cold day in January. I was waiting for Elzira.

  One of the housekeepers told me Elzira had gone to an appointment that was running very late: “But Madame and meydl will be home soon.”

  I found Jakov in the garden. When not in school uniform—black trousers and jacket, white shirt—he always wore a basketball outfit. So there he was shooting hoops, in T-shirt and shorts, despite the winter cold. He had hairy legs and feet like boats. Sometimes he adjusted the red baseball cap under which his yarmulke hid.

  In his sports kit, Jakov reminded me of Sig Arno, the German Jewish comic film actor. With his dark hair and beaky nose, Arno looked so Jewish that he made these characteristics his trademark. Like in the film where he competes in a race and, thanks to the length of his nose, is the first to reach the finish.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hey,” said Jakov, without looking at me. He bounced the ball hard on the tiles. Compared to Arno’s great schnozz, Jakov’s was a miniature.

  I’d never talked to Jakov before without someone else being around. He never asked me to help with any of his school assignments and he’d made clear to his parents, despite their protests, that he would only call on me if he failed a test.

  Though he did drop by every now and again, when I was tutoring Elzira. He would say hello and ask, without attaching too much importance to the answer, how I was—how’s things, ça va, everything okay?

  He took a shot, but just missed the net. Time and again. After each shot he sniffed and straightened his spectacles.

  “May I?” I asked.

  Jakov made a few feints and burst out laughing when I reflexively put my hands out to catch the ball. I was struck by how tall and gangly he was. He must have been at least six feet.

  “Do you play basketball at school?” I asked.

  “I support Maccabi,” he said. He came and stood in front of me. “Look, a Maccabi cap. Maccabi is Hebrew.” He threw the ball in the air and caught it again. “In our books, Maccabi stands for a strong Jewish nation.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wanted to try a shot. I’d been good at basketball as a teenager, though volleyball took over when I got on a team.

  Jakov’s nose was red from the cold.

  “The Maccabees were fighters. Before the birth of Christ, even, they revolted against the Greeks and their Syrian allies.”

  “Throw me the ball instead of giving me a history lesson,” I joked. His patriotism, or need for identity or whatever you’d call it, didn’t interest me at all.

  “And the Maccabees refused to adapt to their Greek overlords. They were very strong, I admire them.” Jakov, too, spoke Dutch with a French accent. As a family, the Schneiders spoke French, Hebrew and Yiddish, sometimes English. Almost never Dutch.

  He spun on his heel, ran to the net and threw the ball, once again missing. After catching it, he threw me a pass that landed painfully in my solar plexus.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Assimilation is death to us,” he said.

  “That hurt, actually,” I said, now holding the ball.

  “Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

  “That as
similation is death to you,” I repeated. “That’s a pretty big claim. What made you say that all of a sudden? Hitler was against assimilation. The Aryan race wasn’t allowed to mix. Just saying.”

  “I’m talking about separate sports clubs.”

  “Oh. Is that why you have your own sports clubs? Because anything’s better than mixing with non-Jews? Like your schools, where non-Jews aren’t welcome?” Rage was rising in me as fast as the mercury in the thermometer was sinking, that chilly week. “Do you never doubt, then? Do you never ask yourselves whether the way you live now is the right way?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How can humanity strive for unity if certain groups try ever harder to distinguish themselves?”

  “You don’t know our history,” he said, his hands in the air, ready to block my throw. “Jewish athletes weren’t allowed to join non-Jewish clubs. We have to look after ourselves, because others never will.”

  I took a shot. The ball rolled round the metal hoop a few times, then dropped neatly into the net.

  “A fluke,” Jakov sniffed. “A fluke can be pretty.” He collected the bouncing ball and turned around: “À la prochaine.”

  “Shall we have a competition? Ten shots each?”

  “I’ve got other stuff to do,” he said. He went inside.

  Half an hour later, when I was sitting in the office next to Elzira, hunched over her homework—French, the simple future tense—I heard water from the bath or shower running through the pipes.

  I thought it a pity he’d brushed me off so soon. I’d have liked to talk longer with him.

  Ten

  “So you can read Hebrew too?”

  Once again, I was waiting for Elzira. Of late she’d had a few weekly appointments somewhere after school. I wasn’t told what they involved. Something to do with young Jewish girls, I guessed.