by J. S. Margot
The sharpest stab, however, was this: no one in the family, not even Elzira, had thought of me when they were looking for a new home for the dachshund. After all, I’d known him since he was a puppy, and he me. How many hours had we spent together on our walks? Three a week? Five solid years? A hundred and fifty times five?
I’d fantasized about a sort of shared custody. Monsieur would remain the Schneiders’ dog, but would spend half the week at our place, until Elzira came back to Antwerp after her stint in Israel. “Supposing…” I’d suggested to Nima. “Monsieur can stay with us,” he’d answered resolutely. So we were already somewhat prepared for a four-legged house guest.
I gave Elzira a cookbook: La cuisine juive à travers le monde (The Jewish Cookbook: Recipes from Around the World) by somebody called Sylvie Jouffa. I’d snapped it up at De Slegte, a shop that sold remaindered books, and wrapped it in a black apron that said “I love Antwerp”. But not before I’d copied a few recipes out of it. Latkes. Levivot. Pancakes with almonds. Carp stuffed with couscous. Shakshuka. Chicken sofrito.
Living with Nima had brought home to me how important a mother’s cooking can be for someone who—whether or not by choice—is separated from home and family. It works like a poultice on homesickness. Sitting at a table full of the smells and tastes of your past, your present becomes tinged with warmth.
“You’ll visit me, won’t you?” Elzira asked hopefully. “We will see us there, surely?”
“We will see ‘each other’ there, Elzira, not see ‘us’.”
“Will you come to Jerusalem?”
“Perhaps,” I answered. “But in the meantime you’ll often come back to Belgium, right? For festivals and that kind of thing? Let me know, and we can meet up.”
She knitted her brows; her hair was combed back off her forehead and tied in a ponytail with a clip in the shape of a blue-velvet bow.
“Do you think I’ll be all right?” she asked. “Do you think I can do it? I mean: live with other girls? Cook with them? Study in Israel? Be away from my family?” It was only then that I realized how nervous and unsure she was. I’d been too focused on her growing self-confidence, and the slight self-pity at Monsieur’s fate being placed in Opris’s hands. “Shall we write to each other?” I suggested.
She reached under her pillow and, with that gentle smile of hers I’d miss so much, pulled out a gift: a set of wafer-thin sheets of writing paper and envelopes. For airmail.
PART II
1994–2000
One
After a long holiday travelling around Cuba, Nima and I decided to go our separate ways.
Neither Cuba nor Castro—both disappointing—were to blame for this decision. Nor did our break-up have anything to do with the fact that when we landed back at Zaventem airport, Nima was marched off by Belgian border officials and questioned for hours (while no one would explain to me what was going on). An Iranian political refugee who’d made a laughing stock of the Belgian national security services by refusing to work with them, and who then rubbed salt in the wound by travelling to the only Communist-run island in the world could hardly expect any other kind of treatment.
We made a few desperate attempts to save the relationship, but the spark had simply gone: the seven-year itch proved too powerful. Nima, who was leaving Antwerp for Brussels, suggested that I stay on in our flat. I thought it would be better to leave a building where the memories creaked as loudly as the wooden floor.
Not far from our old place I came across a nice-looking little apartment, light and airy, with high ceilings. And from the roof—which the landlord had declared forbidden territory—you could even see a sliver of the Scheldt. If a big container ship sailed past, you might just catch sight of the top of its bridge. The long and short blasts on the ship’s horns sounded like melodies.
I signed the rental contract, knowing full well I didn’t have the money for the deposit. Every cent of my and Nima’s savings had been blown on the Cuba trip. Though we did manage to recoup some of the outgoings: we sold our haul of thirty Cohiba cigars, straight from the factory, to a well-known restaurant for a sum that lifted our spirits sky high. I wasn’t worried about my precarious financial situation. My friends and family had always been better off than me; it shouldn’t be hard to get a loan from someone. When push came to shove, though, I couldn’t face the well-meant but tiresome opinions they’d surely trot out, ranging from “but you were such a lovely couple” to “well, you should have known, mixed marriages never work”. Someone was bound to quote that old Dutch proverb “twee geloven op een kussen, daar slaapt de duivel tussen”: where two religions share a bed, the devil sleeps in the middle. In fact a third religion entered the fray in this sea of opinions: Hollywood.
The movie Not Without My Daughter had just been a box office hit. A cliché-ridden film about an American woman trapped in Iran by her brutish Iranian husband, trying to flee the country with her child. A romantic dream that turns into an ayatollah-filled nightmare. Everyone had seen it. Very few questioned the way it caricatured Iranian culture, peddled prejudice and stereotypes. A few people in my circle expressed relief that we’d split up. I could see them thinking: Nima might seem open and friendly, but I bet that’s just a pose. And someone said to me: “So that goes to show: you just never know with Iranians.”
Two years after I’d said goodbye to the Schneiders, I rang them up. They were far enough away from me, I thought, to be able to judge matters from a distance. But close enough to do so all the better. And: “If we can ever be of any assistance to you, you only need ask. Don’t ever forget that.” That was what Mr Schneider had said when he bid me farewell the evening Elzira got her diploma. I was touched by his words, but also struck by his ironic tone. I knew of course, just as he did, that I would never appeal to them for help. How could they, in their world, ever help me, in mine?
“How much do you need?” Mr Schneider asked when, seated at their round kitchen table a few days after our phone conversation, I outlined my situation. His hair had gone greyer. Six prints hung on the wall: colourful works by Chagall and Modigliani. They were new, and I thought: these paintings do what the children used to do, they fill the white room, cheer the place up.
“Fifteen thousand.”*
“When do you need it?”
“Right now, preferably,” I answered frankly.
“When do you think you can pay it back?”
I thought for a moment. “How about I pay you fifteen hundred on the first of the month, for ten months in a row?”
“Oh.” He banged his fist on the table. “So you think you can borrow from us interest free! I see that after all these years, you really don’t know us!” The loud guffaw that followed made me feel uncomfortable.
A little while later he slipped me an envelope. The kind of envelope I’d seen around their house before. The first time I’d noticed one was after Jakov crashed the car. Opris got given them. I’d received a few myself in my six years at the Schneiders’: at the end of every school year; after Elzira had cycled to school effortlessly for the first time; after I’d helped her through a few difficult days, and on at least fifteen other occasions.
“Could you recommend my services to a family you’re friendly with?” I asked Mr Schneider, finally, before leaving. “Now that I’m single again extra income is always welcome, and I’d like to do some more tutoring—after my time here I think I know how,” I laughed. He nodded. The laugh was a poor attempt to disguise the longing behind my question. A longing that seemed to hang in the air. Did he sense it too? Whatever the case, I was embarrassed.
Although I’d got my degree several years earlier, I still regularly went to the Institute of Interpreting and Translation Studies to look at the noticeboard advertising student jobs.
Once I saw that a Mr Schwarz was looking for a reliable, experienced female tutor for his son. I got in
touch. He turned out to be a divorced Jewish man with one son, Benjamin. That was unusual: divorces were rare in the Orthodox community. Benjamin lived with his father. His mother had moved to Israel. Benjamin turned out to be a likeable, funny fifteen-year-old with light-brown curls and green eyes that didn’t dare look at me directly, but peeked at me from under their lashes. He and his father were modern Orthodox, like the Schneiders, but at the more liberal end of the spectrum. They lived on the edge of the Jewish neighbourhood, more between non-Jews than Jews. Yet Benjamin went to a religious school.
We, Benjamin and I, did our best. But unfortunately we just couldn’t click. I couldn’t connect with him, nor he with me, and because his father was never home I, and even more so the boy, fell into a vacuum. After three weeks, not without a wrench, I gave up on the job.
I’d tried a similar job with children living in an Antwerp suburb. After a mere two visits I concluded they were even more annoying and time-consuming than the bus trip to get to them, so I soon gave up on this job too, without a wrench this time. Very briefly, I tutored a girl who lived near me. She was an only child and hideously spoilt. After only three sessions I’d grown to loathe her.
“I miss Jakov and Elzira,” I admitted to Mr Schneider.
He nodded. “Of course you miss them,” he said. “We miss them even more.” He looked at me searchingly. I returned his gaze. The old familiar setting overwhelmed me. My place in it was different, all of a sudden. Sometimes you have to push something away to see it better. This house wasn’t a place in which I’d been employed: it was where I’d spent time, shared life with a new family.
On a side note: the repayment of the loan went according to plan. Or rather, not entirely, because Mr Schneider let me off the interest. He drove to my apartment in his old Volvo, bringing me some bits of furniture he and his wife didn’t need any more. “Now the children have left home, we’re making a bit of space.” My question about whether he could recommend me as a tutor to another family never got a response: children weren’t passed around as easily as cash.
* Around £250
Two
She wrote to me. Thin sheets of lined paper containing thirty or so sentences.
About the weather, her letters told me, about the dust in Jerusalem, the city sticky with sweat and tourists, how it could easily be thirty-five degrees in summer, and especially hot at the Wailing Wall, where the white stone remains of the temple blazed in the sun, hurting her eyes. She wrote how she’d discovered public transport and how, unlike in Belgium, she did feel safe; people sometimes lugged entire washing machines into the bus: incroyable mais vrai, I really must come and see Jerusalem one day, I wouldn’t believe my eyes! She and some of her friends had tried a few of the recipes from the cookbook: délicieux! She hoped that one day, when she’d started a little family of her own, I’d come and eat at her house. She’d travelled to the north coast, Haifa, where she’d picked oranges from the trees and seen dates hanging from branches along the road.
About her new friends, she wrote: they came from all over the world, they understood one another despite their different backgrounds, and she loved it; that was new for her, to meet young people who knew nothing about her and Lady Dyspraxia.
About the school: that the lessons were mainly in modern Hebrew and English. About Israel, where she would live for ever, she’d never been so happy, didn’t know you could be so happy, everyone was happy. Sure, the country had its drawbacks, the traffic for one thing, and the dust, but that was precisely what was so great, the fact that everyone was working hard to improve things. Never before had she let herself to be carried along by that kind of dynamism—that was the word she used. “And mazel tov to you, j’espère que tu vas aussi bien que moi, hope you’re doing just as well as me!” She even wrote to me about a recurring ear infection, probably picked up from one of the other girls, she thought, because they were in such close contact, unlike what she was used to in Antwerp.
Now and then she scribbled a silly little made-up poem at the bottom of the letter. She’d discovered rhyme and gone into overdrive. PS: Tu me manques, pétanque, I miss you, a-tishoo. With the speed of a quick-change artist she veered from the formal to the informal, switching from vous to tu, from u to jij.
I wrote to her. Thin, crackling sheets of pale-blue airmail paper.
I updated her on Belgian politics. Told her about my work, the books I was reading and that I thought she should read too, though I suspected she never would.
We both knew that we were protecting our friendship by avoiding certain subjects. I don’t know if that balance was as difficult for her as it was for me. Sometimes I struggled: how elastic was tact? Was it tactful or hypocritical not to point out to Elzira that in her ode to Israel she overlooked the Palestinian population entirely? She had found happiness in Jerusalem. Was that something she could share with a Palestinian girl of her age? Why didn’t I tell her how cross it made me that, because of those dietary laws, I could never invite her over for a meal? She looked forward to cooking for me—why should I be deprived of the same enjoyment? Shouldn’t hospitality be a two-way process? Or was that the whole point of kashrut: to strengthen one’s own identity by excluding the other? Why didn’t I ask her to have a good think about this issue?
I wrote to her about Nima’s grandmother, who used to live next door to him in Tehran. When little Nima or his sister had an ear infection, she would light her opium pipe and blow the fumes into their ears. It made them better, and they loved it. Nima spoke nostalgically about his grandmother’s home remedies. Mrs Pappenheim no doubt had some of her own. Come to think of it, why didn’t Elzira consult her brother Simon about her earache? He was training as an ear, nose and throat specialist, after all.
I wrote about myself, about my doubts and ambitions, the struggle to turn dreams into reality. I even wrote about the lie that adulthood seemed to me to entail: from the outside you looked grown-up, but inside you didn’t know whether you were tackling life the right way, hadn’t even the faintest idea what the “right way” was—you saw so many different forms and possibilities around you, yet at the same time you were trapped in your own pre-programmed form.
On paper I was more open than in real life. Paper allowed more reflection—what you say is what you are, but what you write can be thrown in the wastepaper bin. Inadvertently, the correspondence with Elzira helped me to see more clearly the things I knew about myself, but had never considered properly. In one of my letters I sighed that above all I wanted to write: “Because when I’m constructing sentences, that’s when I feel freest.”
Her answer: “You always told me I should believe in myself. So why don’t you believe in yourself?”
Three
Did you pack those bags yourself? Has anyone asked you to take anything onto the aircraft for them? What are you going to do in Israel? Who booked your trip? Where are you staying, for how long? What’s in your hand luggage?
Standing at the El Al check-in desk at Zaventem airport I answered all the security questions. At the invitation of the Schneiders I was flying to see three of their four children who lived, worked and studied in Israel. Elzira had been the driving force behind the trip. I would also visit or meet Jakov. And Simon was having me to stay for a few days. He lived near Tel Aviv. According to Mr Schneider, Tel Aviv was a great place to be based for day trips to Jerusalem, where Elzira was studying. The bus journey to the Holy City only took an hour, he said, and there were more buses going there, round the clock, than there were stars in the sky, and only when I’d seen the stars above the Promised Land would I understand what he meant.
Elzira had extended her stay in Israel by a year. About three years had passed since I’d last been to the Schneider home. Since my request for a loan, I hadn’t set foot in the Jewish neighbourhood. Not to visit friends. Not even to go to Kleinblatt’s, the famous bakery, with its window full of sweet temptation—
I just cycled straight past. And, now there was a flourishing falafel place in my own neighbourhood, I no longer had to go to Beni in Lange Leemstraat for my favourite fast food.
It seemed that a lot of Hasidic Jews were flying to Tel Aviv and, to judge by the awed respect of their hangers-on, they must have included ravs and rebbetzins: rabbis and their wives. Both at the check-in desk and at the gate I was swallowed up in a sea of black and white. Men with beards talked at one another, shouted into big telephones, swayed back and forth as they read their prayer books. Mothers, their hair swaddled in a kerchief, grouped their offspring and buggies around them and barred the way with their pregnant bellies, their gaggles of children and all their paraphernalia without the least consciousness of causing a problem. Whenever an agitated, non-Jewish traveller asked them to make way, they looked at him as if he, not they, was behaving antisocially. Which only made the other person more agitated. Boys shook their sidelocks; some of them looked cheeky. The floor was littered with plastic water bottles and biscuit wrappings.
My reaction was the same as when I started at the Schneiders’: uneasiness at the surreal sight of this queue, a mix of mothers with their large broods and men in strict religious garb. Who on earth allowed their complex identity to be so publicly reduced to the level of hand luggage? Who was helping to foster this unflattering stereotype?
