by Jemma Wayne
The previous week they were in a café on her side of the city. Her side because this is where her home is, where she goes to school and to hospital and to the theatre with her parents who also play out their lives in this broad vistaed vicinity. Kaseem has spent time in this area, with university friends whom he spoke to in Hebrew or English, or even one or two in French, and who marvelled at his abilities. He has been to the cinemas and tasted the weak coffee and seen inside the tall, permission-granted buildings. But at night, he has always returned to the place in which he was born. The place that is his. Even if he could afford to, he would not move to Dara’s shinier location; his ambition is not to hunt new treasure, but to polish the rusted jewels he already owns. The East of the city, where his mother lives, and his sisters wait for husbands, and his father breathed his last breath, and Kaseem sleeps and has dreamed, this is his home, and thus, the café where he sat with Dara is on her side and he was, as always, just visiting.
Dara had ordered a tuna salad. The waiter was young with sandy hair almost the same golden tone as Dara’s and a slow, snaking smile that slithered carefully across his face. Kaseem disliked him even before he spoke. He disliked the way he moved confidently between tables, and tucked a pencil behind his ear, and brought them water and olives before they asked for anything, presuming he knew them, presuming he knew what they wanted, presumptuous enough to smile at Dara who smiled back. Even as the waiter wrote, he looked not at his pad but at her. Dara, as usual, was wearing a tight pair of jeans and a low-cut vest top with a jumper thrown over the top that was too large and so fell tantalisingly off her toned left shoulder. Her hair had grown even longer than when they’d first met and was draped in an untied bunch in front of her chest, the newly cut fringe playing with the lashes of her eyes. Underneath the table, she had slipped off her trainers, as she always does when sitting, more comfortable in the summer months of sandals and exposed toes. She had been trying to play footsy with him, trying to make him smile. Kaseem however had not been in the mood for smiling. He’d had another job rejection, the computer shop was not doing well, money was running out, and his mother had been nagging. He therefore studied the vast menu with an expression that curled doggedly into a scowl and Dara told him that he looked like the colour black. He said nothing.
The waiter in contrast, smiled broadly, silkily, lightly like his hair. “Just a salad? Nothing else for such a beautiful girl?” he asked.
And Kaseem had exploded.
Quietly.
A slow, measured fury.
He did not slam his hand on the table but he pressed it firmly into the wood. He did not punch the young, obnoxious, Jewish usurper but he raised his chin defiantly towards him. He did not swear but he took a deep, pacifying breath of the cigarette he was smoking before, and with a gentle menace he knew Dara had not yet witnessed, he snarled: “What the fuck are you doing?” It was a controlled, familiar anger.
“Excuse me, but I’m not talking to you,” the waiter had responded immediately, holding up his hand. “I’m talking to the beautiful girl.” He smiled at her again.
Now Kaseem stood up but Dara touched his arm. “It’s fine, Kaseem,” she told him. “I’m fine.”
“You see, Kaseem, she’s fine,” the waiter repeated. “Sit down, Kaseem, we are only talking.”
Kaseem could feel Dara imploring him to rise above it, to sit down, to calm down, to be more than the waiter expected. “Don’t you fucking tell me to sit down,” he said, louder, shrugging off Dara’s hand and leaning his face closer to the waiter’s. “Don’t you presume to tell me anything.”
“Stop it,” Dara said quietly.
“Yes, Kaseem, stop it,” the waiter goaded.
“And you stop it too,” Dara commanded, louder. Both men now turned towards her and her eyes flashed. She jerked her jumper back up to her neck. “Can’t you see I have a boyfriend?” she flung at the waiter. “We are not talking, you and I, I am ordering. And I want a tuna salad. With a Coke please.”
At this, the waiter had huffed, and reluctantly written the order down on his pad, and now Kaseem had smiled. Returning to his seat, he had placed his hand on Dara’s and tried to stroke her delicate, un-manicured fingers, but Dara was no longer jovial as she had been before and removed her palm from the touch of his skin and pulled her half-trainer-clad feet beneath her, unwilling to make contact now even with the parts of herself she trod upon. “What do you want, Kaseem?” she said wearily, her tone assertive but tired, like that of a fatigued mother fed up with refereeing her squabbling brood. It made Kaseem feel petty, and small, and angry all over again.
“I’ll have a coffee. Black.”
“Of course.” The waiter smiled, not writing it down but sticking the pencil behind his ear. “But just a coffee? No food for you, Kaseem? Nothing more?” And they both understood the allusions. No money for something more is what he meant. No prospects, no future, no right to be sitting in an expensive café in a nice part of Jerusalem with a beautiful, Jewish girl.
“Fuck you,” Kaseem spat, loudly this time with a flick of his hand knocking his menu to the floor. He glanced at Dara, but this time she did not stay his arm, or ask him to be calm. Instead, her feet half in and half out of her trainers, she walked straight out of the café.
Kaseem followed. Feeling foolish and indignant. Hating the waiter for his smug prejudice. Hating Dara for making him feel so inadequate. Hating himself for being so. Her long hair swished freely in time with her pace and for a fleeting second he imagined himself yanking it and her to the ground. How easy it would be. How satisfying. To rub dirt in the face of something so righteous. But in picturing her face, he saw at once her soft, compassionate smile. And hated himself again. The heels of her trainers folded underneath her step as she strode into the distance.
Eventually, stopping at the entrance to a park, she looked around to see if he was there and paused just long enough for him to catch up with her. When he did, he bought two coffees from the vendor just outside the park gate, and followed her in. She had wanted, he presumed, a quiet, neutral place in which they could talk, but as soon as they were inside it was obvious to them both that the space was too open, the sun too bright, the children on the playthings too high-spirited for their dark, brooding tensions. Eventually they found a bench in the shadiest corner and sat at separate ends of it, fondling their hot, plastic cups. Dara’s full lips were pursed together, her cheeks were flushed by the winter chill, her skin had lost the bronze of the summer months and in its paleness looked fragile and innocent. A china doll. Kaseem wanted to put his arms around her, to bring her close to his chest, to feel the store room tug of her own arms around him that made him feel needed and worthy. But a scowl worried her brow and kept Kaseem on his side of the bench. Finally, because one of them had to, he spoke, but he hadn’t prepared the words and hadn’t intended them to be wrapped in the tight, angry tone that shot out of his mouth and hit Dara’s porcelain defences like sharp rocks.
“You heard how he insulted me, Dara. You heard him, and you expected me to do nothing?”
It was meant to be an apology but Dara’s scowl deepened. Her eyes hardened. “You were rude, Kaseem. And aggressive. It wasn’t necessary.”
“Well of course you would think that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He’d meant because she never used swear words herself, because she saw the world through her rose-tinted glasses, because she was delicate, and innocent, because she was only 16.
“You mean because I’m Jewish? Because I’m like him? Because I’m racist? I thought you knew me better than that. God, Kaseem, you carry such a heavy chip on your shoulder, you can hardly breathe beneath it. You don’t see what’s really happening. I thought you were different.”
“Different from the rest of the fucking Arabs you mean?”
She froze, her eyes brimming with hurt. “How can you say that to me?”
“You mean after you’ve slummed it with me? Come on, Dar
a, admit it, I can see it in your eyes. You’re so confident of yourself, you think you’re so open-minded and perfect, but you still see a stinking Arab when you look at me. An uncivilised, backward man who embarrasses you in cafés. You don’t see what your people do to make me act this way.”
“My people?”
“Yes.”
“My people?”
Her eyes had grown smaller than Kaseem had ever seen them and the hand in which she held her coffee was shaking. She looked as though at any moment she might explode, or weep, and again Kaseem was overwhelmed with a desire to put his arm around her. His Dara. His Compassion. But the words continued to slip out of him, like a threaded yarn, the pattern old and fixed and deeply sewn. “Yes,” he repeated.
Dara opened her mouth and then closed it. Whatever she had wanted to say to him she was reassessing. Tears brimmed in the corners of her eyes and she set down the coffee, crossing her arms in front of her chest and lifting the hood of her sweater over her head, turning away, retreating from him. Kaseem felt a sudden panic. He was losing her. She was losing her faith in him.
“You are the racist one if that’s what you really think,” she ventured finally, twisting back to look at him, scrutinising his eyes as though she was trying to find the truth swimming within them. Giving him one last chance.
Kaseem breathed deeply. He was not used to the women in his life making him struggle to explain himself. It was tiring. He felt tired. And reprimanded. The thought of the waiter taunted him, the waiter with his smug, underhand insults, his arrogant smile, and his hair that matched Dara’s. Kaseem clenched his fist. But Dara was still watching him, waiting, hoping.
“It’s not what I really think,” he said finally.
Dara kept looking at him. He bowed his head. And Dara began to weep.
Now Kaseem moved closer to her and took her hand. She was so young. He pulled her into his chest. She wrapped a long arm around his waist.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I know things are difficult.”
A little way off in the park, two young Jewish boys wearing yamakas chased each other through the bars of a climbing frame, clambering higher and higher, one after the other. Elsewhere, a group of girls around Dara’s age laughed loudly at an inside joke. And Dara and Kaseem, each other’s insiders, held on tight and dared not move. Only outside the park was the peace broken. It was rush hour, and the traffic made noise and stirred up dust around them.
“I need a job,” Kaseem said.
And sitting back from him, though still gripping his hand tightly, Dara replied, “I may have one for you.”
They have now not spoken for almost a week. Because of her exams and her study and the argument, but also because they have arranged for him to appear by coincidence on another outing in her part of the city. He loiters outside the electronics shop, waiting, as planned.
He has not imagined what her father will look like. She has spoken of him only briefly, as a provider of either wise insights or bad jokes, both of which she happily recycles, but she has not discussed what he does, or what he wears, or the colour of his hair, or what Kaseem might think of him. Kaseem wonders now, vaguely, anticipating more acutely the quiet enthusiasm of Dara’s smile when she sees him there, faithful to their conspiracy. When they appear however, Dara gives away nothing. Her arm linked through her father’s she is all vivacity, her eyes and laughter and chatter turned with enthusiasm towards him. Her father meanwhile is unhurried, lethargic precision – one foot in front of the other, slowly, purposefully, assuredly, dominating the cobbled pavement. Dara’s eyes barely flicker towards Kaseem’s as they pass, but he smiles. There is no need he realises for her to check his complicity; their trust is unflinching.
Kaseem takes out his bag of tobacco, rolls a cigarette and smokes it before entering the shop behind them. He gives them time to examine the computers, time to engage the Russian owner in a conversation about installation, time to talk about the security system also needed, time to get to the crux of the matter which is the cost, time for the two of them to barter, for Dara’s father to pretend that he needs a moment to think, for him to retreat to the far side of the shop where the cables that the owner has agreed to throw in for nothing are shelved and where Kaseem is carefully standing, time for Kaseem to turn to Dara’s father, who has her eyes, and quietly excuse himself for overhearing but suggest in perfect Hebrew that with his Hebrew University education and his need for work, he could do the job himself at a far cheaper price.
He hates himself for this. For the pretence of chance. For the pretence altogether. For the stereotype he is fulfilling. For not, in front of Dara and her father, being able to present himself as himself, nor as Dara’s boyfriend, nor as a self-made, self-reliant man.
***
It is difficult for Dara to stay in her room doing her homework when she knows that just a few feet away, on the other side of the wall, Kaseem is there in her house, in her home, taking instructions from her father. She imagines briefly how it might be if her parents knew about them. Would they still allow Kaseem into their house, invite him for dinner, eat with them on Shabbat, crack jokes? Would her mother analyse him? Would her father take him aside and talk politics? Would her brother get out his guitar and play him a song? She paints the scene in her head. She would use blues and yellows and other peaceful, life-loving hues. But then she hears a hammer and some kind of drill, her mind is flooded with black, and she senses the impossibility of her daydreams.
It is not only now. Ever since their camping trip this black sensation has been growing, creeping, though she tries to push it far to the back of her mind and use it only in her art. It is as though distance from the city exposed it to her, like one of those paintings you have to stand far away from to see. Jerusalem is not good for them. It is heavy, a heavy place, the whole weight of history and fighting and accusation and clashing ambition balancing on their backs, falling too often between them. Not at night. When they talk late in the computer store room, he lifts her up with the sparkling treasures of old family tales, or art he has seen, or computer technology that will revolutionise the world, all of which he shines for her so that they are illuminated, an extension of him. And he touches her so expertly. But the day always returns. And in the day, when the realities of their separate existences come crashing and smashing like bombs and bulldozers into their lives, his shoulders are no longer reserved for her alone to curl up against and lean upon. Instead, they carry the hopes and very survival of his family, of his whole generation it sometimes seems, and though they are broad they are not broad enough. He has begun to stand with a slight stoop.
Once, a few weeks earlier on her way to school, Dara saw him standing with some other Arab men on the side of the street. He was wearing the shirt that she knew he saved for interviews and he had combed down his hair. She hid behind a tree across the road and watched him. Smoking. Talking. Waiting. He waited for a long time, such a long time, until eventually a passing car pulled to a stop, and then he and the other men hurried over to its window, offering their services – computers, wiring, carpentry, building, carrying, anything, anything. The driver took his time haggling down the small price for their labour and then selected one of the men, not Kaseem. His posture stooped a little more. And Dara felt a deep wrench in her stomach as he stepped back onto the pavement to wait for his next opportunity to beg a job far beneath him. His eyes dulled. She knows better however than to offer him money. Pride is perhaps the only thing he still has in abundance. Pride, and talent, and intelligence, and soul. All of which are useless.
Dara puts down her pen and stands up from her bed that is a soft-seated mountain of books and pens and small canvasses. She is meant to be studying geography, she has an exam in two days, but when she is not drawing she feels fidgety and incomplete. Kaseem does not know quite how much she draws, or quite how significantly he is a part of it, but his guidance has set her technique years ahead of the others in her class, and the inspiration of him has made
equal transformations to her style. She can capture emotions now. Soft strokes of her brush rush the page with feeling. Feeling for him. Sometimes she no longer even thinks about what she is creating, ideas and images and shapes and colours seem to come to her of their own accord, fighting for precedence, her task merely to choose them; like a forbidden love. Dara has been doodling without really looking while flicking through her geography textbook and listening for sounds of Kaseem. She looks down now at the canvas that has, in standing, dropped from her lap onto the floor. It is a strange, imprecise arrangement of interlocking circles, connected and separate. She throws the drawing onto the growing pile next to her desk and moves over to her wardrobe where she stares into the mirror and studies her reflection.
Her skin has paled in the winter weather but she does not apply bronzer. It makes for a greater contrast between her hair and her skin and she thinks this makes her look interesting. She wears dark colours to emphasise the clash. She has lost weight without intending to, the price of love she imagines, noting the intestinal turmoil of the past months, and her jaw bones are more defined than before, her cheeks less rounded, less baby-faced. But this, she decides, is the only physical change since Kaseem. It would not be possible for her parents to guess that she is no longer a virgin, that she has committed treason, that she has given herself to him.
Dara pulls on one of her brother’s jumpers that, since returning from camp that summer, he no longer fits into, as though they fed him only on sun and beef. It has a hole in one elbow that makes Dara think of her little brother running around wildly. But suddenly he is not so little, and not so wild, and not so young. She smiles. Over the summer he has become a contemporary again. It is good for them. They talk once more about everything – or almost everything – and she has begun to rely again on his opinion, his insight, his advantage in this that comes from knowing her so well. Though lately he has been exploiting this resurrected status. He asks her all the time where she has been, tells her she is getting too thin, rifles with curiosity through her sketches. He is careful however not to say such things in front of their parents and fortunately they do not notice the details as much as her protective little brother does. She bunches up his baggy sleeves and opens the door.
