by Jemma Wayne
“Here you have air conditioning!” His cousins are wearing t-shirts and sandals but the temperature is cooler than some days in an Israeli winter.
“Soon you’ll think this is hot,” Jonny warns. “Anyway, it’s a heater too.” And he shows Udi the switch that turns the blowing air effortlessly from cold to hot.
***
Driving on the left takes more thought than he’d expected, largely because most of the time he has no idea where he is going and the Sat Nav doesn’t seem to speak to him until it’s too late. He finds himself frequently swearing at the voice that tells him to ‘make a U-turn’ and after a while doesn’t bother to turn her on. Instead he talks to Ella on speakerphone who, amused by his misdirection, consults Google Maps. Fortunately, Udi learns fast and in any case the drivers aren’t as impatient as they are at home. His first trips are to places of necessity: the bank where, after an elongated discussion with the manager and the arrival of Ben who vouches for his credit, he sets up his first English account; the post office where he applies for a British driver’s license; the mobile phone shop where the family and friends he lists are Ben and his family. After that he begins to venture further. It is a Saturday afternoon when he drives the greatest distance he has navigated so far, to meet Ben 25 minutes away at a shopping centre. He takes a wrong turning only once and parks in the multi-storey car park.
Because he is late he hurries: slams the car door, barely notices where he has parked it, and strides towards the entrance. It is raining outside and he notices the smell of dampness that has seeped into even this covered building. The smell is satisfying. A wetness that reminds him how far he has travelled from the dust. It adds an invisible boost to his step and he bounds through the rows of parked vehicles, slipping easily through the spaces between them.
Until just before the entrance, Udi stops.
There is a pillar between him and the man he is watching, and he conceals himself behind it. The man is only stepping out of his car, but there is something about the way he is moving that seems unnatural, deliberate, disconcerting. The man is bearded and sandaled, and wears a kufi atop his head. Udi observes in silence as the man moves quickly around to the back of his car. He opens the passenger door. But Udi sees no passenger. The man reaches inside – carefully, purposefully. Udi can feel his muscles tightening, preparing. He glances around the car park for a security guard but cannot see one. He will have to act himself. Udi breathes quietly and takes a step forwards, revealing himself just a little from behind the pillar. The man glances up and notices him but doesn’t stop, reaching further, faster. Udi contemplates wrestling the man to the ground. He contemplates shouting. Running. But before he can decide, the man has stood up again exposing the careful package he was reaching for: a baby boy. The man straps the baby to his chest. And nods amiably.
For perhaps the hundredth time in days, Udi shakes his head. The disparity between his assumptions and reality makes him feel ridiculous. He must adjust, he tells himself. Be British, like his father decided to Be Israeli. But at the entrance to the shopping centre it happens again because what faces him there is unthinkable: nothing. There is no guard, no gun, no search and no metal detector; only open doors. The place is crammed with busy shoppers. If there were an explosion, hundreds would die. He cannot fathom it. He tells Ben he cannot fathom it. That it is crazy. That Brits are crazy. But Ben argues that it is the Israelis who are crazy, that in Israel the constant security makes him feel not protected but unnerved. Later that day they stray into the same conversation again. Ben is taking Udi clubbing with him and they ride the tube to Piccadilly. Again there are no security checks though their carriage is full with people, races, suspicious-looking bags. There is even one bag unaccompanied, propped up against the barrier by the door.
“Whose is this bag?” Udi asks loudly as soon as he spots it. “Who owns this bag?”
There is no answer. Some of the people turn to stare at him as if it is he who’s insane, a few catch on to his anxiety and glance around for the owner, but most simply ignore him, burying their heads in Kindles or conversations more important than the imminent ending of their lives. “Whose is this?” Udi repeats more firmly, moving towards it, and finally a few passengers begin to take note.
“Udi,” Ben says. “It’s fine.” But Udi is already reaching for the emergency stop lever.
“Does this bag belong to anybody?”
At last, the owner looks up from his newspaper. He does not answer but angrily leaves his seat to pick up the heavy bag and returns with it to his place, heaving it onto his lap. “Wasn’t blocking anyone,” he murmurs under his breath, before re-opening his paper.
Now, the rest of the passengers have lost interest but Udi cannot grasp their complacency. “Why don’t you check?” he demands of Ben. “You should check. It would be so easy to bring a bomb here.”
“There was a bomb,” Ben replies, hushing him.
“I know. So you want another? Why don’t you check?”
“If we change our way of life, they win,” Ben answers flatly.
“If you don’t, you die.”
“It’s not like that here, Udi.”
And it’s not. Here, in London, where the absence of security is so salient, Udi sees it afresh. He sees himself afresh. And he feels an intangible freedom he has never before tasted. It is unfamiliar in his mouth. The flavours of Israel and England twist on the tip of his tongue.
***
Now
13
Gaby had not expected to feel this way, this unsteady. Friends had warned her about nerves before walking down the aisle, and she doesn’t have those. She’s seen plenty of movies about cold feet to await that with calm readiness, but her feet have remained positively toasty. She loves Pete. Loves him, with a certainty that should crush unsteadiness. So then what? She’s not even, today, worrying about her brother.
Now that she realises this, Gaby’s mind clouds. Daniel is so stubborn, so blindingly stubborn, and naïve, and stupid. He thinks things have changed over there, that it is no worse than in London. But it is only days ago that three teenaged Israelis were kidnapped by Hamas. Gaby, no longer a teenager, cannot bring herself to speak to him.
Orli sits by herself half way up the congregation. On one side of her is Pete’s cousin Archie and from under the flower-decked chuppah Gaby notices him glancing repeatedly at the beautiful blonde. Orli is beautiful. And brilliant. And on the surface of things she is on Gaby’s side, at least about the army. But there is something else.
Daniel stands a few feet away next to Nana, dutifully wearing the lilac cravat Gaby and her mother selected for the ushers. For a second he catches her eye, and he smiles, a beaming smile Gaby remembers from his barmitzvah when he’d stood on the bimah and glanced up to the gallery of girls; but this time Gaby doesn’t reciprocate. Perhaps it is simple self-protection. Perhaps unconsciously she is trying to detach herself so that she will care less. Whatever it is, she refuses to think about it now. It is her wedding day, after all.
Gaby returns her gaze to her moments-away husband. Pete is grinning, in a mischievous, proud, triumphant way. Like they have pulled off some kind of magic trick. Now you see it, now you don’t. A tangible weight of anticipation emanates from the watching congregation, but Pete remains composed, unruffled. In the end, they have chosen a fusion of traditions: the chuppah, the circling around the groom, the stamping on the napkin-shrouded glass; but English vows – the familiarity of the words making Gaby feel giddy, as though they are play-acting and the marriage is not quite real – and no rabbi, rings straight onto the fourth finger, no ketubah. Both sets of parents seem uneasy with the mix, glancing both across the chuppah at each other and to the congregation for assurance, each feeling they have dared too little and too much. Pete however reaches out for Gaby and they interlock their fingers while the officiate talks of their union until finally, they are allowed to kiss, and of course it is not a magic trick, it is real, and this too is not what has made Gaby
so unsteady.
Pete stops to shake Daniel’s hand as they make their way down the tunnel of bridesmaids and ushers and out of the sumptuous room that Gaby and her mother have spent months designing. But Gaby doesn’t look at him. She can’t.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Three Israelis captured, probably dead.’
‘Not dead, the IDF will find them. And right on the border, Gaby. I’m not going to live on the border.’
‘Dan, if you join the army, where the hell do you think you’ll be?’
‘I’m sorry, Gaby, but I’m not changing my mind.’
‘Then I’m sorry, Dan, but I can’t forgive you. I won’t. And I don’t want you at the wedding.’
Of course she hadn’t meant it, that last bit. Ironically their mother had been the one to patch things over, make sure he was actually going to attend. At least he is here.
She doesn’t want to make a scene, doesn’t want to embarrass him, but she slips past his extended palm. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Orli getting up, moving forward, sliding her hand into Daniel’s instead.
Gaby and Pete pose for photos. She tries again to shake her mind free from the unsteadiness. It isn’t fair to Pete for them one day to look back at these most wonderful of captured moments and for her to remember, probably secretly, that as she smiled down the lens she was also worrying – though not about Pete who remains, unshakeably, a can’t-live-without-him kind of love.
Can’t live without him, and won’t, and would never want to despite any sacrifice. Any loss. Not that she has felt it as a sacrifice. Yet. But will she?
This is it.
This. This is what is bothering her, far too belatedly.
The master of ceremonies calls them to dinner and they enter the room holding hands, just as at any other Jewish wedding. Music strikes up, just as at any other Jewish wedding, and the guests stand and clap just as at any other. But then she and Pete make their way to their seats and not to the dance floor. And it feels quiet. There is no Jewish hora music to begin the night with a sweaty, frenetic outpouring of enthusiasm. There is no swarming of guests onto the dance floor. There are no hectic circles. She and Pete are not holding a white cloth between them and being hoisted atop chairs onto the shoulders of their male friends and relatives and her brother. There are no shouts of Mazel Tov.
There is a jazz band, as they have planned. There is Sinatra, Armstrong, Simone. Smooth and cool, as they had wanted, as she had wanted. But the fairy lights dotted around the room remind Gaby of her mother’s Shabbat candles, and of herself remembering them while drinking eggnog and looking at a Christmas tree. And for the first time, at least consciously, Gaby allows herself to understand that if she wants her own children to cherish Shabbat candles in this way then she will have to light them. And although religion in general and Judaism in particular remains irrational to her, antiquated, divisive, the archaic practices surely doing more to exclude than unite, Gaby worries that should she suddenly want to resurrect them, she might be too late, or, on her own, not enough.
She thinks about this through the starters and main course. She thinks about this through the toasts, smiling not at Daniel but just to the left of him as he proposes their happiness. She thinks about this as the band expertly drums in the opening chords to the first dance and Pete leads her by the hand to the dance floor, twirling her in the way they’ve been practising. And she thinks about it as their song ends and other couples begin to litter the room with spinning examples of easy solidity. Her parents’ back and forth jigging is perfectly in sync. Pete’s parents waltz elegantly around the edges. They haven’t, she supposes, ever had to practice.
Pete rescues her from her thoughts with a kiss. “What’s the matter, honey? Faulty flower arrangement?”
“I’m just taking it all in.” She returns his kiss, leaning into his chest, reaching around his neck. His smell is steadying.
“You sure? You can tell me if something’s wrong. I am your husband after all.”
She looks up at him and giggles. “So you are.” They dance silently for a moment before she speaks again. “I was just thinking about the music. I was thinking we should have had a few Jewish tunes after all. Maybe.”
“I thought you didn’t want them.”
“I didn’t think I did. But maybe that was just to spite my mother.” Pete twirls her gently again, hands behind them, meeting in front. “How would you feel if I wanted to light candles on a Friday?” she asks him. “Or send our kids to Hebrew classes?”
“Honey, you know I’m happy to do as much or as little of that stuff as you want. Is that what’s bothering you?” he laughs. “We can eat gefilte fish every day of the week for all I care. So long as I can still have a Christmas tree.”
Now she laughs, spinning out again, and suddenly feeling lighter. “Not even I like gefilte fish.”
They pass their arms over their heads and spin back into another embrace, practised but perfect. She can feel the photographer loitering nearby but she doesn’t let Pete go, she is happy for this moment of oneness to be captured. Pete however pulls away. He has spotted Daniel dancing nearby with Orli. Without consultation he waves them forward and cuts in, sweeping Orli away so that Gaby is left standing alone with her brother. Pete gives her a penetrative look as he melts into the crowd, and dutifully, Gaby turns to Daniel. Her brother offers her his arms. She hesitates.
“Remember when you made me dance with you at Auntie Netty’s wedding?”
She hesitates again so Daniel exaggeratedly reaches for each of her hands and places them in his.
“We were so awkward,” she relents.
They begin to sway. “Completely.”
“I was 13 and thought I was totally grownup. You kept treading on my feet. Netty looked gorgeous.”
“You look ten times more gorgeous,” he tells her. “Gaby, Mazel Tov.”
The words echo in Gaby’s heart. She feels something release in her chest. And tears welling. “Dan, I wish you weren’t going,” she says.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“I know.”
“Dan…”
“What?”
“I wish I was up on a chair.”
Daniel stops dancing and looks first at her, quizzically, and then around the room.
“Dan,” she says.
But Daniel only grins. “Not yet redundant,” he whispers in her ear, before dropping her arms and diving into the crowd of dancers where within moments he has grabbed their father, uncle, and various others of their male relatives, and seconds later she and Pete are holding a white napkin between them and surfing the crowd on a pair of chairs, while the men below chant the hora music she’d imagined she wouldn’t miss.
***
Then
14
Kaseem has not seen Dara for almost a week. She has exams and is studious. Sometimes she sits in the backroom of the shop and studies while he fixes computer parts, but if he attempts to distract her she warns him away with an unyielding glance from underneath the fringe she has recently cut in. It is one of the things he admires most about her – that she knows her mind, that she will not be stopped or swayed from her ambitions, not even by him. And she is full of ambition. She is 16.
Kaseem was unsurprised by this confession. He had watched her building herself up to it at the end of their camping trip, propelled by the actuality that in the coming days she was not beginning the army but returning to school. Of course he had guessed. And it is irrelevant to him anyway. At 16 she is already the most complete person he has ever known. She doubts of course, like every teenager, like every person, but her fears are not about who she is, or what she believes, or what others will think of it, but in whether the world will live up to her expectations, her highest of hopes. He sees how much she wants it to, she tries to cajole it, to cajole him, and he loves her for this; but the strength that seeps out of her soft, bronzed skin is not a casual c
ommodity and others are often lacking. He is lacking. She does not realise how rare a thing she is.
Kaseem realises it, and he can feel himself smothering her. Clinging. Controlling. Or trying to, though Dara will not allow it. For the past week she has refused his entreaties to take an afternoon off school and when, last time they met, he suggested she not drink alcohol, she ordered a second beer to prove, he assumes, that she will not be cowed by principles other than her own. It doesn’t bother him really, that she drinks. Nor that she wears bikinis and short skirts and lets her hair flow freely; it is a modernity he has tasted during his time at university, and wants. Besides it is how he first adored her. But to his surprise he is finding that the closer they become, the more it does bother him when other men stare hungrily at arms and legs and breasts that should be reserved for his eyes only. He does not know why. It is not as though he had imagined a future with Dara, it is not as though her integrity is his to protect. His fling with a Jewish schoolgirl was never meant to be more than a fleeting thing.
Perhaps if he did not perceive himself to be one of them – the other men who stare at her. Perhaps if he could cling to the self he was six months ago when he left university, when his esteem was flying like a rocket, when he had professors and peers and a piece of paper that proved he was educated, tipped for greatness, different from the rest. Now that piece of paper is worthless. The frame his mother bought in which to hang it cost more money than the illustrious degree has earned him, and it is a daily humiliation. One he fights by working all hours at the shop, applying for job after high-tech job, and yes, he recognises it, dangling Dara like a piece of gold upon his arm. He dreads the day that she will look up from her wilful adornment and see what he now sees: just another brown face with nothing to distinguish it. She begs him to paint, but he cannot bear for her to see the feelings that a careful brushstroke of colour would expose.
