by Sayed Kashua
“No,” I said, and I felt myself blush. I hated myself for having the gall to come to this place, for listening to Osnat and Dana, who said I would get into Bezalel with my eyes closed.
“Do you have your camera with you now?” the head of the department asked, spreading the photos out on the table so the student could see, too.
“Yes,” I said. “I have it here.”
“Let me see it, please,” the department head said, and I opened the camera bag, which had almost always been on my shoulder during the past year and a half.
“Wow, a Pentax,” he said, when I handed it to him. “Do they still make these?” The department head held the camera in both hands and passed the rest of the pictures over to the instructor.
My portfolio consisted of portraits. I asked permission and I photographed people. Yonatan had focused on portraits and I studied his work at night, tried to understand what it was about his photos that drew me in. I also studied his books, which dealt only with the art of portraiture, and I looked over each and every photograph under the lamp in the attic for hours. Since I’d learned how to use the camera, I’d been taking pictures of people, especially in the Old City.
Ruchaleh had split the caretaking work into three shifts and I took the afternoon and night, back to back, and that, along with the waitering, left me a lot more money for photography. After a few weeks at the café I worked up to asking the owner if I could take pictures, and I started shooting on the premises, taking pictures of the employees once they’d given me their permission. I used those for my story in ten pictures. They were portraits of the kitchen workers, from the moment they were given an order until they slid the dish out from under the window in the wall that divided the café and the kitchen and hit the bell. I had also been taking pictures of the café regulars, the ones who came each morning, and for the category of three pictures of my choosing, I picked Sara, who, so long as she wasn’t in the hospital, came to the café each morning along with her Filipina caretaker. In the picture I submitted, she was holding a cup of tea in both hands and smiling with her eyes. The other two shots were from the Old City: one of the Armenian laughing, a gold tooth glinting in his open mouth, and the other of a border policeman smiling as he checked my ID, which is to say Yonatan’s.
“Hold on,” the department head said, sifting through the pictures on the table, “I’m missing the self-portrait.”
P.O. BOX
I hurried out to check the mail the next day to see whether I’d gotten an answer. After applying as Yonatan I’d also gotten myself a post office box with his name. You had to have a mailing address to put on the application form and I remembered from back when I was a student that some of those who didn’t have a permanent address rented a post office box. Before mailing the application off to Bezalel, I rented a box for a few dozen shekels at the King George Street post office, near the café where I worked. Each morning, on the way from Beit Hakerem to the café, I stopped in at the post office and checked my box. Sometimes I found advertisements or mail with someone else’s name, but now an entire month had passed since the interview and I had not heard a word from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
Before the interview I had not been sure I even wanted to go there and I was pretty sure that even if I did want to there was no way I’d dare embark on a four-year degree with a stolen identity. But once I’d gone to the interview there was nothing I wanted more than the piece of paper that said I had been accepted. I wanted to know that I had convinced the panel that my photographs were good enough to continue on in the field. I just wanted to be told that I was good. I constantly imagined myself reading from a piece of paper embossed with the Bezalel seal, “We are pleased to inform you . . .” During those days of waiting I was estremely sorry I had not completed the third assignment, the self-portrait, even though the head of the department had smiled forgivingly when I offered my explanation for its absence: “It hasn’t come into focus yet.”
By the fourth week of waiting, I had convinced myself that applying to Bezalel’s school of photography had been a terrible mistake. Sure I loved photography more than anything else, but I was a naive idiot, believing that a few months of tinkering would get me into the most prestigious art school in the country, one that only took a handful of students each year, all of whom had studied art in school, not learned it on their own in an attic that reeked of medicine and having their pictures developed in an old machine in a crummy store in the middle of the Armenian Quarter.
School was set to start in a couple of months and I knew that the acceptance letters must have been sent long ago. Clearly I had not gotten in. Two months was too little time, especially for out-of-town students who had to find a place to live and get settled in Jerusalem before the school year started. Nonetheless I continued to check the post office box every morning and afternoon. In the middle of the week, when the café was relatively empty, I’d head out and check the box compulsively—sometimes five times in a single shift. During those days I started to get the feeling that someone was onto me, that they’d discovered my true identity, because even if I’d been rejected I should still have been given notice of some kind. Maybe someone who’d known Yonatan in school or someone who knew the Forschmidt family, or someone who knew me, who picked up the foreign intonation and had his suspicions had turned me in. The criminal implications of what I’d done, the theft of Yonatan’s identity, suddenly became clear and in my mind I no longer saw myself reading an acceptance letter but began to envision police officers arriving at the house in Beit Hakerem or at the café, or, worse, at my mother’s place, looking for the imposter. All I wanted was some word from Bezalel, preferably a rejection letter, so I could put the whole affair behind me and get rid of all the stress.
I tried convincing myself that I’d get a pretty lenient sentence. I’d be arrested, no doubt about that, and I’d have a criminal record, but since the identity theft had not been for the purpose of fraud—the pictures were truly mine—I probably wouldn’t have to do time, at least not a lot of time. I had been asked to provide a Bagrut certificate and I had given them Yonatan’s, but I had one of my own and mine was just as good as his. My assumed identity for the purpose of work at the café didn’t seem like the kind of crime you did time for, either.
“Your Honor,” I imagined myself saying from the stand, “all I did was provide a different name than my own. Ask the owner, though, I was his best worker. Ask the clients. My sole intent was to get a job as a waiter and not a kitchen worker.”
The prosecution’s attempts to attribute a nationalistic element to the crime, to say that my goal had been to harm Israelis, would surely be discredited by the brilliant young lawyer, Majdi, whom I would have to contact even though I had no idea how I would explain my actions to him. It would be easy to show that I was not politically active. I’d never been in a rally, never voted for the Knesset, never voted in the local council elections, never even voted in the elections for Arab student council or in the general elections on campus.
“A waiter, Your Honor,” I imagined myself concluding my argument. “All I wanted to be was a waiter.”
I used to spend the afternoons, on my way from the café to the house, thinking about an immediate escape. I practiced the lines I would use on Osnat. “Please tell Ruchaleh that there’s been a family emergency.” Or, “I have to go home and be with my mother.” Or, “There’s a bit of trouble in the village.” All lines that were tailor-made for Osnat and Ruchaleh, spiced with a dash of mysterious Oriental drama so they wouldn’t ask too many questions, merely accept that a situation had arisen that required my immediate attention. I had to be with my mother, and they would understand that I had no choice but to leave and they would find someone else on very short notice to pick up the shifts. But what if they didn’t forgive me for leaving like that? What if they were offended? Well, screw them, I thought to myself. True, they didn’t ridicule me
or underestimate me, but the salary they had been paying me was a joke. The monthly salary did not correlate at all to the sixteen hours a day that I worked, and the only reason I was able to get by was because I had no rent to pay and I made do with a fold-out couch for a bed.
They can both go to hell, the two of them and the guy with the frozen gaze. Tonight is the night I bail. I’ll call Osnat from the central bus station and tell her I’m leaving Jerusalem and then hang up. She could shove it. Neither she nor Ruchaleh would come looking for me. Why would they? What good would they get out of it? I hadn’t violated any agreement, there was no contract, and they couldn’t demand anything of me just as I wasn’t demanding anything of them. Unlike Osnat, I had no benefits—no sick days, no vacations, no worker’s insurance. Nothing. A defenseless day laborer. Just as they could boot me out whenever they saw fit so, too, could I leave whenever I felt like it. They’d find another Arab to take my place. He’d be happy to have the job, no questions asked. Same goes for the café owner. I wouldn’t even call him. Screw him and the way he talked about the kitchen workers behind their backs, patting them on the shoulders and then talking about them like scum. So proud of the few words he knew in Arabic, the greetings and the curses, which he used as if they were a joke, waxing on about the techniques he’d developed to tame his Arab workers to make them follow his commands.
“You have to constantly remind them who’s boss,” he told me once, letting me in on the tricks of his trade. “If you let your guard down even the littlest bit, they’ll eat you alive.”
During one of those days, while I was bracing myself for arrest and planning my escape from Jerusalem, I heard a girl’s voice call me from behind. I had just finished up at the café and was on my way to the bus stop on King George Street. I didn’t turn around. “Yonatan,” she called again, this time from closer. I turned around, scared, and I saw number six smiling at me and plucking little earphones out of her ears.
“You don’t remember me?”
“I do,” I said. “Number six.”
“Noa,” she said, shaking my hand. The soft touch of her long fingers in my palm made me withdraw my hand quickly.
“You looking for an apartment?”
“No, I live here.”
“Oh, you’re a Jerusalemite?”
“Yes,” I said. “I work over at the café down the block. What about you?”
“I don’t know the area at all. And I don’t really understand what a school like Bezalel is doing in the middle of this city. Just the thought of four years in this place weirds me out.”
“You’re looking for an apartment?”
“Yes, I’ve been to this fucking city every day. Sorry. I must have seen five or six places already, but you have no idea what kind of rat holes they rent around here for five hundred dollars!”
“I know. The prices are crazy.”
“I found something nice today, though. In Nachlaot. I figure if it’s going to be Jerusalem, I might as well go all the way.”
“Yeah, all the Bezalel students live there.”
“This goes to the central bus station, right?” she asked, pointing with her chin toward an approaching bus.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good seeing you. I’ll see you in school, right?”
“I didn’t get in.”
“What?” she yelled, and I heard her say, “No way!” as the bus closed its doors.
I’m glad that just happened, I thought as I waited for the bus to Beit Hakerem. I’m glad it happened now. I needed that wake-up call, that smack in the face from Bezalel. I am a social worker, with a degree from Hebrew University, with good grades and the ability to get a good job. Why have I been wasting my time with photography? Why have I been wasting my time in an attic redolent of medicine and excrement?
LETTER
I fed Yonatan, brushed his teeth, changed his diaper, put him in his pajamas, moisturized his hands and feet, and got him ready for bed. I’d put my escape off until tomorrow. In the morning, I thought to myself, tomorrow morning, as soon as Osnat shows up, I’ll tell her that I’m leaving. I won’t even demand my salary for the days I worked in August. I’ll just disappear.
When Yonatan’s eyes closed, I took down the camera from the top shelf. I hadn’t taken a single shot since that cursed day when I went to the Bezalel interview. During the six months before that, I had shot about half a roll a day, about three rolls a week, but since that day, nothing. The thrill was gone. During the first week after the interview I still kept the camera slung over my shoulder, but after that I put it back in the closet. Now I took off the lens and looked through it, aiming at the farthest point of light outside the window, then I turned it toward Yonatan and tried to focus on his half-closed eyes.
I almost dropped the camera when I heard knocking on the attic door. “Just a second,” I yelled as I stuffed the camera back in its box and up on the shelf. I tried catching my breath as I opened the door. I didn’t know that Ruchaleh was home. Ordinarily I kept very close tabs on what was happening on the floor below me, listening to the jingle of keys as she returned home, following her steps and the sound of the keys hitting the wood of the dining room table. The faucet, the opening of the fridge, the bottles, the clink of the plates, the lights. I could always tell when she was in the living room and when she was in the bedroom. That night, maybe because she had come home earlier, while I was still in the bathroom with Yonatan, I hadn’t heard her come in.
“I think someone meant to send this to you,” she said, handing me an envelope and then leaving, shutting the attic door behind her. It was from Bezalel. I recognized the logo on the front of the envelope, next to the sticker that bore my name, which is to say Yonatan’s, and the address of the house in Beit Hakerem.
“I’m really sorry,” I said to Ruchaleh. She was sitting on the couch in the living room reading a book. I had never before started a conversation with her, but it was clear that she knew I had been using her son’s identity. She had not opened the envelope.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, begging her forgiveness, avoiding her eyes. “I really don’t know what came over me.”
“Sit down,” she said, but I remained standing, eyes downcast.
“Again,” I said, “I’m really sorry, ma’am. It was just a game. I really don’t know why I decided to write your son’s name down and not my own.” I really didn’t know if the whole thing had happened because Yonatan had been a photographer or because the camera belonged to him or because I had learned everything I knew from his books, his pictures. Maybe it was just a game, I don’t know. But when I was taking photographs I was someone else, someone unfamiliar, foreign. Holding the camera in my hand I felt like an extension of Yonatan or the continuation of what he had been. I didn’t tell her about the post office box or the café or the bank account. She might not understand.
“Ma’am . . .” I started.
“Don’t ma’am me,” she said. “Sit down. And don’t give me this I’m-an-obedient-little-Arab routine.” No one had ever called me a little Arab before or spoken to me in that tone.
“You’re insulted?” she asked. “Good, I’m glad. Now do me a favor and do yourself a favor and don’t talk to me in that groveling slave-at-the-master’s-house tone. And sit down already.” I sat before her, prepared to fling one of her books in her face. I’m not apologizing anymore. Let her call the police for all I care. I’m not scared of her or of anything else in this world.
“Listen to me, ma’am,” I said, this time in a gruff tone. “I know I did something wrong, something that I can’t even explain to myself at this point. But I don’t intend to study photography using your son’s name and I had no good reason to apply as him. As you know, I have a Bagrut certificate and a BSW and my chances of getting into Bezalel, if I really wanted to go there, were far better if I’d applied as an Arab.”<
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“Yes,” she chuckled, “I’m familiar with Bezalel’s system. They take every Arab that applies. Maybe that’s what led you to apply with a Jewish name?”
“No, not that.”
“Then why? I can understand the desire to want to be judged for who you are and what you’ve done and not your nationality or your ethnicity. That’s a very reasonable thing to do.”
“I don’t think that’s why.”
“No? You applied with a Jewish name, an Ashkenazi one, the kind that has no chance at affirmative action. I think you probably didn’t want to feel like someone was doing you a favor.”
“I don’t really know why I did it,” I said again, realizing that she wasn’t interested in chastising me or charging me with an offense. “Maybe it was because I knew that Yonatan wanted to go there,” I said without thinking, and I saw her expression change. Perhaps only now was she realizing that I had been looking through all of his things.
“I know,” she said.
“I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t,” she said, and then added, “Well, don’t leave us hanging.”
“What do you mean?”
“The letter,” she said. “What does it say? Did you get in?”
PART
FIVE
TRANCE
The lawyer leaned against the wall and tried not to collapse onto the filthy tiles of the bathroom floor. The thump of the speakers pounded his eardrums. Feeling like someone on the deck of a bucking ship, he tried to take a deep breath and scatter the collage of nauseating images. He leaned against the wall, legs weak and untrustworthy, and stuck his hand out for some toilet paper but felt only metal. Looking out of the corner of his eye, which took considerable effort, he saw that there was no toilet paper to be had. There was a thick roll of paper towels on top of the toilet and he spread his legs out, anchoring himself on the wet, filthy floor, and reached for them. He palmed the wall behind the toilet as he reached forward and in that way managed not to fall. Once he felt his body was adequately prepared, he let go of the wall and, with the sleight of hand known only to three-card monte players and expert pickpockets, snatched the roll of paper. He ripped off a big piece, put it on the floor near the toilet and with his foot began mopping away some of the mud and grime. Placing more paper on the floor, he felt a wave of relief as he dropped to his knees in front of the toilet. He wrapped a long length of paper around his hands, fashioning a pair of paper mittens, and held on to the sides of the toilet bowl as he brought his face close to the foul water at the bottom. He thought he could see the shimmering reflection of his face.
