Second Person Singular

by Sayed Kashua

  DISCUSSION

  Tarik snorted cigarette smoke out of his nose and chuckled when he learned from the lawyer that they were about to join a salon discussion on a predetermined topic. “Are you kidding me?” he asked.

  “Relax,” the lawyer said, “there’ll be exactly five minutes of discussion before the conversation goes off on a tangent.”

  “Well, what’s the discussion supposed to be about?” Tarik asked.

  “You think I know?” the lawyer said, and Tarik covered his mouth so that his laughter wouldn’t carry from the office downstairs to the guests seated upstairs in the living room.

  “What’s going on,” Samir’s voice boomed, “you still smoking down there? We’ve got important matters to discuss up here.”

  The lawyer put his cigarette out in the ashtray and Tarik prepared to do the same but the lawyer signaled to him to take his time. Tarik took several long drags as the lawyer ripped open his gift-wrapped book. “The Kreutzer Sonata?” Tarik read, mispronouncing the name. “You know what, I’m really jealous that you can find time to read.”

  “I don’t,” the lawyer said, yearning to see his guests filing out of his house.

  Faten, the accountant’s wife who was also an assistant professor at the teachers’ college, sat on a separate couch, poised to lead the discussion.

  “I want to begin by wishing everyone a good evening,” she said. “We’re so happy you’re all here and so glad to finally meet . . .” and the lawyer’s wife stepped in, “Tarik.”

  “Yes, of course, Tarik, sorry,” she said. “Our topic tonight is nationalist education and the absence of a Palestinian narrative within the Israeli ministry of education’s curricula for the Arab citizens of Israel.”

  The lawyer recalled that this was what they had agreed to discuss while sitting at the last meeting, at the gynecologist and his wife’s house. It also happened to be the topic of Faten’s PhD thesis at Hebrew University, where she had been studying for quite some time now.

  For many long minutes Faten relayed the findings of her research and compared the ministry’s guidelines for Jewish and Arab elementary school children in the following subjects: homeland studies, geography, history, and civics. She spoke of methodology, of ideology, and of her work within the ministry, where, she explained, the collective history of the Arab citizens of this state was erased, the Palestinian narrative was trampled, and the Arab students were force-fed the Zionist version of events. The other people present had very little to add. They conveyed their agreement with silent nods. She carried on, speaking about the intentional blurring of identity and the cultural, social, and moral crisis within the Arab student body—a crisis rooted in the tireless attempts to strip the Arab citizens of Israel of their true sense of national belonging.

  The lawyer noticed that all present, but particularly the males, were looking fatigued by the all-too-familiar lecture. He got up every now and again, apologized, and went to the freezer to replenish the ice supply, which was being used with the whiskey at this stage of the evening. Two bottles sat on the table, one Chivas and one Johnnie Walker Black—the whiskies of the rich Arab.

  The lawyer glanced at his watch as casually as possible and saw that the discussion had been going on for longer than usual. Faten, armed with all sorts of facts and figures, had not yet run out of steam. Had the discussion adhered to what the group had initially intended—a cultural ­dialogue —it would have gone stone-cold long ago.

  The lawyer knew, as did everyone present, that they all merely gave the impression of being educated. They had come a long way, each in their own field, but in their hearts they knew that they were lacking in comparison to their Jewish colleagues. There was no changing the fact that they were all members of the first generation of educated Arabs in Israel. Their parents, like most of the Palestinian population that remained in the land after the War of Independence, were soil tillers, fellahin, who, if they were lucky, and their village had had a school, had perhaps attained a high school education. The parents of all those present, although uneducated, understood the importance of education and did all they could to ensure that their children went to university and succeeded. The dream of every Arab mother in Israel is for her son to become a lawyer or a doctor. The Arab students that are accepted to those faculties are as revered in their communities as the flight school cadets among Jewish Israelis. But academic achievements were one thing and a firm knowledge of the essentials of Western culture quite another. When in school, the lawyer had frequently cringed at his own lack of familiarity with contemporary music, literature, theater, and film. Like all now present, he, too, consoled himself with the thought that the Jewish students were certainly ignorant of Arab culture, its singers, movies, and plays, but he had to admit that most of that culture was frankly not worthy of being called art. There were several impressive classical musicians, but in so far as theater and film were concerned, most of which came from Egypt, the lawyer knew there was nothing to be proud of.

  The lawyer was certain that the other members of the group had also been made aware of their shortcomings and that they realized that they, too, had to close the gap. If they were unable, then they had to ensure that their children were given the tools to do so. After all, the decision to found a mixed school, to send their children off to study with Jews, the lawyer thought, was not borne of shared ideals or a dedication to coexistence, as the brochures claimed and the philanthropists believed; the Arab parents simply wanted their children to soak up Western culture, for their children to learn from the Jews that which they themselves could not provide. All of a sudden the lawyer started to feel that they were sending their children like spies into the heart of a foreign culture. It will be interesting to see what type of insights they come back with, he thought, whether they return as double agents.

  He shook himself free of his thoughts and tried to follow the twists and turns of the discussion, which had veered into the nature of the curriculum at the school that many of their kids attended. “We have to look really closely at the kind of values that are being instilled there,” Nili, the gynecologist’s wife, said. “All week long my son’s been singing ‘On Rosh Hashanah, On Rosh Hashanah.’”

  “What’s wrong with that?” the gynecologist asked, turning to his wife. “It’s a good song.” Everyone laughed, and then Anton, who was on the school’s steering committee, said, “We’re working on that, though,” adding that the school administration had been told in no uncertain terms to beef up the Palestinian nationalist dimension of the studies, which, he conceded, was lacking in comparison to that of the Zionist Israeli narrative.

  “It’s true,” Nili said. “I see that the kids are constantly singing about the Land of Israel and Hanukkah and Passover, but other than that one poem by Mahmoud Darwish they haven’t learned a thing that qualifies as Palestinian. There has to be equality. It can’t go on like this. We have to do something.”

  “Why is that?” Tarik asked, drawing all the eyes in the room. “I’m sorry. I don’t really know anything about this and I don’t have kids yet, but why exactly do they need to strengthen their Palestinian nationalism?”

  Tarik’s question was met with silence and an edgy bewilderment.

  “What do you mean, why?” Samir asked. “Because they’re Palestinians. A child needs to grow up with a sense of national and cultural awareness. Look at the Jewish kids, from age six they know all about the wars and have a good sense of where they want to serve in the army when the time comes.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tarik said, somewhat bashfully, feeling as though he had butted into a conversation that did not include him. “But when you see that kind of an Israeli kid, how does it make you feel?”

  “Bad,” Samir spat, earning nods all around. “Because they don’t teach them about us. They purposely pave over the Palestinian side of the story. They learn the Israeli narrative, as viewed throu
gh the lens of the Zionist industry.”

  “Yes, I understand that. But why respect either side of the story?” Tarik inquired, plodding on even though his face showed that he already regretted it.

  “What do you mean, that’s the history of our people you’re talking about. Our roots, our culture. Children have to understand and internalize these things, otherwise how will they plot their own futures?”

  “That’s true,” Tarik said, preferring to avoid an argument. “You’re right.”

  The lawyer knew where Tarik had been headed. He had worked with him for long enough and he regretted that Tarik felt too shy to continue to make his case.

  “You know what,” the lawyer said, quoting a line he’d heard from Tarik, “I also don’t buy catchphrases like, He who has no past, has no future.”

  “How can we raise a proud generation,” the gynecologist’s wife asked, “if we don’t teach them to be proud of their forefathers, their history, their people? I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t know,” the lawyer said. “It just seems to me sometimes that we—not just us Arabs, but all of us—don’t have that much to be proud of in terms of our pasts.”

  “That’s nonsense,” the gynecologist said, gathering a fistful of cashews. “Honestly, I’m surprised at you. What’s a man worth without his roots? It’s just like a tree, how can it grow without strong roots? It’s the same with kids, with nations.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” the lawyer said, smiling as he distributed more ice and whiskey. “Sometimes I think a tree is a tree and a man is a man.”

  BED

  “Tarik can forget about Faten finding him a match,” the lawyer’s wife whispered, mindful of the baby in the nearby crib. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing cream into her hands while the lawyer took off his clothes, stripping down to his boxer shorts. “What was that about?” she asked her husband, “I thought Tarik was a nationalist.”

  “He’s all right,” the lawyer said. “They just didn’t get what he was saying.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a bit of an anarchist,” the lawyer said, knowing his wife wouldn’t understand him. “He doesn’t buy into the system. He’s not willing to play the nationalist game.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think they liked him.”

  “It’s probably better that way,” the lawyer said, heading into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He had known all along that the assistant professor at the teachers’ college would not be the one to find Tarik a bride. He knew Tarik well, and he knew that he was in a tight spot as an Arab-Israeli bachelor in Jerusalem, where there were few matches to be found for those no longer in school, and Tarik had been out of school for five years. Nor was he in the habit of frequenting the humanities department cafeteria, as the lawyer’s wife had advised. Which all explained why, when the lawyer saw that three of the best candidates for the internship in his office were female, he had immediately hoped they were pretty and decided that he’d hire the one who seemed most suitable for Tarik.

  “Are you coming to bed?” his wife asked as he left the bathroom. The lawyer was expecting the question, even though he was hoping, on account of his exhaustion and the book that awaited him downstairs, that he would be given an exemption. But it had been two weeks since they’d been together, and the wine she’d drunk during dinner was surely having its effect.

  The lawyer shut the bedroom door, fearing that their daughter would wake up and stumble in, and then slid under the covers beside his wife. He knew that she was embarrassed about her body and that even on the hottest summer nights she preferred to conceal it beneath the blankets. They kissed quickly and without passion, and the lawyer set himself to the task at hand.

  It would be wrong to say that the lawyer did not enjoy sex, but there was something about it that always bothered him. He found the whole thing to be more of a burden than a pleasure, a situation he knew to be perverse.

  He recalled the early days after their marriage, during their honeymoon. He had been twenty-five but it was the first time he had come into physical contact with a woman. He remembered the feeling of shame at the speed with which it had all happened. He knew that something was wrong, and that his wife had not been fully satisfied. She never mentioned it, never said a word about it, but he knew that this was not how it was supposed to be. He remembered his apprehension at the time, the articles he had combed through, the sex-advice columns. After thoroughly researching the matter of premature ejaculation, he had tried to put the techniques to use, relaxing his muscles, pulling his testicles back, dulling his senses with alcohol, even smoking marijuana before coming to bed, but none of it helped. In some articles it said that sexual partners had to learn one another, give their bodies time to get acquainted, to achieve a natural harmony, but the lawyer blamed himself. After a few months of failed attempts, he tried to increase his endurance by summoning sad images from his youth. This worked, and he could tell by his wife’s moaning that some progress had been made. It didn’t happen all at once but he felt, at last, that he was moving in the right direction.

  The first time he was sure that his wife had been fully satisfied was after he had screened the footage of his grandfather’s funeral in his mind. The lawyer was eight years old when he saw his grandfather’s dead body. Years later, he lay on top of his wife, thrusting gently, eyes wide open, trying not to be distracted by the sounds of her pleasure. He recalled how the entire family had shown up at his parents’ house and how the body had arrived on the back of an orange pickup truck. He recalled how he had stood off to the side while the adults washed his grandfather’s corpse, which lay prone on an elevated wooden plank. He thought about the prayers the sheikh had intoned and the way the men had shaved the pallid body. And he remembered his grandfather’s wrinkled, flaccid penis and the white sheets with which the men wrapped him as they called out “Allahu Akbar.” He saw himself running in order to keep up with the brisk pace of the funeral procession, saw them raise the coffin up in the air, saw the opening on one side and the way it was tilted down till his grandfather’s white-robed body slid into the grave. He recalled the sound the body had made upon impact, and realized that he had just given his wife her first orgasm. She clawed his back and planted warm kisses on his face while he remained above the grave, aware that he would never again be the boy he had been.

  LETTER

  In his office, the lawyer found a pack of cigarettes. He lit one just as the baby began to wail. His wife’s measured steps moved toward the crib. The crying subsided. He took a few long drags, then ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and, after a moment’s hesitation, poured water over the blackened stub. Satisfied that no gust of wind would come through the open window and breathe life into the dead ashes, he took a long gulp of water, picked up The Kreutzer Sonata, and left the room.

  The lawyer didn’t like getting out of bed once he was settled for the night, which was why he went to the bathroom even though he didn’t have to, and tried, without success, to urinate. Then he went to his daughter’s room, stacked two pillows up against the headboard, turned on the pink bunny lamp, and lay down in her bed, cradling the book.

  Although it was a used copy and had likely been passed from hand to hand, the book was in good condition, practically new. This, the lawyer felt, spoke to the character of its previous owners. Clearly they valued it, protected it. The lawyer also knew how to care for a book. He never dog-eared a page, never wrote in the margins, never broke the spine. He looked at the rather ugly cover. Two thick black lines dissected it into three unequal parts. The uppermost part was yellow and bore the author’s name, Tolstoy. The lower, green section was home to the title, The Kreutzer Sonata, and the middle one featured an ugly pastel illustration. On the right side of the drawing there was a man with fiery eyes, a hooked nose, and a set mouth. His hand was balled around the handle of a dagger. On the other
side of the drawing was a faceless woman whose body was curled and indistinct, her hand feebly raised before the murderer. Had he not known who the author was, the lawyer thought to himself, he would never have bought this book.

  He flipped to the front page, where the author’s full name was written, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. He went over the name several times, embarrassed that he hadn’t known it, imagining himself as a contestant on a game show, “What are the first and middle names of the famous Russian author Tolstoy?”

  On the contents page, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the book consisted of four stories and not just one, as the cover seemed to imply. Other than the first story, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” there was also “The Devil,” “The Forged Coupon,” and “After the Ball.” The lawyer had an aversion to long books, both because he didn’t have time and because he liked to check off the boxes on the long list of books he felt he should read.

  In the upper left corner of the page he saw the name Yonatan, delicately printed in blue ink. The previous owner’s handwriting gave the lawyer pause. Many used books had someone’s name printed on the inside flap but for some reason this name, or rather this man’s handwriting, soft and feminine, begging for help, almost like the cowering woman on the cover, caught his attention. Never mind, he said to himself, start reading. He knew he didn’t have much time. The guests had kept him up late and the wine was taking its toll.

  The lawyer read the quote on the first page of the book. “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28) He chuckled to himself. If that was the case, he was the undisputed king of adulterers, even though he hadn’t had sex with anyone besides the woman whose bed he had just left. The quote took him elsewhere. He hadn’t even started to read the book and already he found himself transported. He was back in the café on King George Street, reviewing all the women he had seen—young, old, secular, religious, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Arab, and Jewish. He recalled how he had looked the women up and down, the ones coming toward him, the ones beside him, and the ones in front of him, how he had sized up their behinds, evaluated them in pants and in skirts, how he had examined their thighs, imagined their precise shape, and how he had known that no one was onto him, that he was not the kind of person who got caught ogling—he was quick about it, and yet none of the details evaded him. In a few split seconds he could attain all of the pertinent information. His eyes were trained to spot cleavage, panty lines, bra straps. He registered the way they walked, the way they moved their bottoms, the size and sway of their breasts. The lawyer had no intention of acting on this information. More than anything else, he was trying to figure out his own taste. He knew that his wife, widely considered to be a good-looking woman, did not attract him the way he would have liked, and this he attributed to the shape of her body, her stout thighs, and the stretch marks along her abdomen, which had appeared once their son was born. At times the lawyer felt he was attracted to all women aside from the one he was married to. And at times, while walking behind a woman on King George Street, watching her and lusting for her, he realized that her body was remarkably similar to his wife’s.