Chains of Sand

by Jemma Wayne

  The nurses gesture to Ben to be quiet but Ben hovers silently next to Udi’s bed for only the briefest of moments before dragging the plastic hospital chair noisily up next to it and coughing loudly into his hand.

  “Fuck yourself,” Udi murmurs squinting through half open eyes at his grinning cousin.

  “At tachat shel dog mishuga gadol!” Ben retorts with the Hebrew phrase Udi taught him the day before – something about being a crazy, big fish’s arse. “Wake up you cooney, I’ve got news.”

  “Is it Ari?” Udi sits up. He had been watching a news bulletin before he dozed off and was sure that the Israeli soldier in the footage looked like Ari. He was alive, but limping.

  “No,” Ben says. “Sorry. But it’s good news. I had a call today from the driver who went into you.”

  “Oh?”

  Ben has never had a good poker face and is struggling to contain his excitement. “He wants to make you an offer. There’s a big dispute apparently between your insurance companies and it’s going to end up going to court, and this guy’s worried he’s going to get stuck with a huge fee at the end of it. So basically, he still won’t admit blame ’cos he maintains that you flashed him to go, but he did go into your car, and it was your right of way so…”

  “So what?”

  “So he’s offered to pay you a settlement, so long as you drop your insurance claim.”

  “How much is the settlement?”

  Ben has come prepared. He hands him a piece of paper and Udi unfolds it sceptically. He is interested to see the price tag affixed to his leg.

  “Well?” asks Ben after a long pause. “What do you think?”

  “I think… I can pay you back for the car…”

  Ben laughs. “You can do more than that you cooney!”

  “I can buy a flat in Tel Aviv,” Udi says slowly, the recognition gradual, layered. “I can open a business even. Maybe a restaurant. Maybe by the shuk. And I can do something else. I’m going to do something, really do something, something to, I don’t know, educate or, reach out, or, help… I can’t fight so I have to do something now, you know? It’s not built yet, Israel. After all. Sixty-six years, that’s nothing. I could… Fuck!”

  “So you’ll take it?”

  “Fuck!” Udi exclaims again.

  He breathes deeply. It hurts his recovering lung but the pain tells him the moment is real and he cannot help but smile at the thought of Ella’s face when he tells her. She will try of course to be restrained. She will try to be respectful of his injuries and what he has lost. She will try not to show how glad she is to be going home, with him, with a future that will not be interrupted by a call up in the post. But she will not be able to conceal her joy completely. Eventually she will give it away. Eventually she will call her mother in Israel whose voice Udi will hear careering above pots and pans and other sounds down the line of the phone. And eventually she will giggle. And they will be free.

  ***

  Then

  21

  Everything he does is in apology. Kaseem cannot take back those violent, vengeful moments, nor rid his mind of Dara’s tear-streaked face, nor forget the utter humiliation he felt at the hands of her father. No matter how hard he tries he cannot assuage his loathing for the man, he cannot stop wishing him ill. But he can try to make up for these things, for these ugly feelings. And that is why he finally takes a manual job laying cables on a construction site. He knows it is an end to his ambition, to his family’s hopes, to their way out of the stone-walled circle her people have built around him. But he takes it, in apology.

  His mother has been nagging again. She wants to know if he is going to marry this Jewish girl, if she will become a Muslim, if she will cover her legs, and if not, when he will stop this nonsense with this whore and turn his attentions to the women who truly need him, and look after him, and will remain. It is a choice, she tells him: his family or his whore. He tells his mother to be quiet and to make his dinner, but the roof of their house is leaking, it needs to be fixed, and they need more space, and he is the man of the house and it is his responsibility to take care of it, to take care of them. And she reminds him of this again and again. He applies, for the fifth time, for a permit to extend the house, and for the fifth time he is rejected, and so he shouts at his sisters who have not yet found husbands and for whom there is even less work than there is for him, except for menial, demeaning positions that he will not allow them to accept. Dara tries to be sensitive, she brings treats and leftover meals so that he can save his money, but this humiliates him further and his mother is insulted that Dara does not want to eat her food. So although Dara comes as often as before, they spend more and more time in the cramped store room, or in other small crevices of the world where they can be alone, saying things that mean nothing, and avoiding the realities around them. Despite everything, it is to Dara who he turns. It is she, still, who is the light of his day. It is her youth, her talent, her strong, compassionate, passionate soul. It is this and only this that lures him out into sun-baked streets and keeps him from the desperation and anger he is sure would otherwise consume him from inside. She is a butterfly in his hands, a species of another world, a flash of colour he can never quite hold. It is Kaseem’s greatest fear that one day soon he may be forced to open his palms, and let her fly free.

  Dara assures him that he is her inspiration too, her foremost passion, both in her heart and in her paintings. Her paintings. A talent grown to mock him. A small gallery has agreed to stock some of her work – a gallery! She is 16. When she shows him her hanging pieces they shock him with their honesty and insight. She is extraordinary. It makes him feel both proud and ridiculous. Yet she begs him to paint her. To teach her more. To at least let her paint him. Instead, he sells every canvas of his that he can, to tourists who buy them because they are authentically Arab and want to hang this slice of his soul above their sofas, and he takes his brushes and easel and expensive paints that he bought when he was still studying to an art shop near the university. And then he splits his money into two piles, and with one of them buys bricks, and cement and the materials he needs to build his mother’s extension.

  For the next month, it is how he spends his evenings and weekends and snatched spare moments: clambering up and down the side of their small house. He is building, permit or not. He will create a fresh, airy room at the top of the house that in being higher feels closer to heaven, more clean, more pure, less coated with the dust of the city. Sometimes Dara helps him, though lately she seems loathed to pass bricks or carry things that are heavy, as though her enthusiasm for the project, for him, is waning, and so she will only help in small ways, lifting things that do not tax her. He says nothing but his mother notices too, and tells him, and if he takes a break to walk a little with Dara then he returns to recriminations and the accusation that for a lazy Jewish girl, for a piece of meat, for a whore who does not help him, he is abandoning his family. Thankfully, she does not say such things in front of Dara, but Kaseem is sure that Dara can sense them. She says nothing, but she has grown quieter and often opens her soft, rounded lips as though to tell him something urgent, before closing them again without a word. There was a time when there was nothing they could not say. But it is insurmountable, this gulf of unspoken sentences and unformed explanations and unfurnished imaginings of the future. The growing silences are dark and fear-coated. He cannot express to her in words how deeply he loves her, and is sorry.

  With his second pile of money, the other half, Kaseem walks one day to Dara’s gallery and buys one of her paintings. He does it with cash, anonymously, so that she will not find out it was him, and sure enough that night she runs to his house brimming with the news of her first ever sale. He smiles and congratulates her, but is careful to feign disinterest and so, disappointed, she changes the subject and asks him about the progress of the extension. It is almost finished. There is a letter from the Jerusalem Municipality sitting on his bed that he dares not open, but he does not tell her
about this, he refuses to ever again cause her trauma and so talks only of the positives, describing to her the new room that will be for his sisters. As he talks, he catches Dara from time to time smiling, not at his words but, he presumes, at her sale, and her happiness helps, in a small way at least, to allay a fraction of his continuing guilt.

  He hides the painting at his uncle’s house where she will never go. She signs her work with only her last name and Kaseem’s uncle does not realise that the painting is a creation of Dara’s. He thinks it is foolish of Kaseem to have spent money on art, on useless frivolity, still he accepts the canvas and Kaseem’s promise that it has been produced by an exceptional young artist and one day will be worth a great deal. When it is, in return for his help with storage, they will split the reward. Kaseem cannot keep it himself, he tells his uncle, because his mother with her feminine lack of overview cannot understand such things. And Kaseem’s uncle nods as he hangs it, and stands back to examine the depiction of a young Arab girl in a hijab, whose lips are painted hot pink, and who he does not realise is Kaseem’s sister. Hadiyah. Kaseem, meanwhile, admires the painting with a foreboding sense of sadness. It is only a small piece of Dara hanging on the wall, but he fears that, one day, it is all he will have left.

  ***

  Neither of them speak of what is in the past. It was one blip, Dara tells herself. It is not a representation of him. The bruise to her ribs however lasts for weeks and reminds her too often of the sudden, black-eyed aggression that shot from somewhere deep within him and was directed at her. She tries not to think of it. Occasionally it appears, un-thought of but there nonetheless, in a sketch or a painting, but she quickly sends these pieces away to one of the galleries that have begun to stock her work, or to the magazine that has not yet printed anything of hers but has asked to see more, and so she doesn’t concede to looking at the innermost fears of her soul.

  She goes to him as often as before and he is gentler than ever. He has found a job. It is not high-tech and it is not well paid but it is better than what he earned at his uncle’s shop and she knows that at least this means he no longer has to stand on street edges. He is happier, she thinks. He has even been with her once to the gallery on her side of the city where two of her paintings were then hanging. He, more than anyone else, is who she wants to share this accomplishment with, but she understands his occasional disinterest, she knows it is difficult for him to toast the triumph he once dreamt of for himself.

  She has not yet told him that she is pregnant. She has told nobody. Her breasts are swollen and she has been feeling tired and sick, and she has missed two periods and taken a home test that was positive, but her stomach is not showing and she has not been to the doctor. She is still 16, and unmarried, and too young to get married, and unable to marry Kaseem. She would qualify for an abortion if she went to the committee, but she does not think she wants this. It is not because of some deep, religious ethic, but because holding this tiny life inside of her, even though she cannot yet feel it, leaves her unable to consider anything but keeping it alive. It is already a part of her, and of him. Nevertheless, a small part of her resents Kaseem for his carelessness, for doing this to her. And she imagines that he will see a baby as only another stress in his already difficult existence, another mouth to feed. She does not want to be Kaseem’s stress. She wants to be his light. She wants him to illuminate her in paint.

  He will not. He refuses even to dig out his easel and grows angry when she suggests it. There is no point, he asserts. It is not helpful to remind himself of what will never be. At first she tried to coax him, but now she is growing tired of his stubbornness, his jealousy. He is not the only one who has had to make adjustments. She understands acutely now exactly what it is like to have compromised dreams. She feels it every day at school. Never again will she be like Naomi, or Rachel, or any of her carefree friends; Kaseem has stolen this liberty from her, he has drunk her last drops of childhood, he has exchanged it for a store room, and secrets, and whispered words, and everything that is him and for which she would willingly make the trade over and over and over.

  It is his fault.

  But she cannot tell him.

  The words stick in her throat and choke her with an anguish that she finds she can only release through paint. Blacks and oranges and deep, swirling purples; brown skies and red sand and shadow people, the way things really are. In class she is distracted and draws endlessly on her pencil case, highlighter pen and black ink. Naomi and Rachel, who by now have lost interest in East Jerusalem and make trips into Tel Aviv instead, want to know why she is suddenly so pensive. Dara’s brother too asks her constantly what’s wrong, refusing to be fobbed off with unimaginative laments about homework. He takes her to the cinema and makes her eat dinner when their parents are too immersed in other people’s minds, and watches her closely. But it is only to blank paper that she is able to speak. Until, one Thursday, Dara arrives home from school to discover an envelope addressed to her from the magazine. They have received her latest piece and want to publish it. In fact, they say they want to use it on the front cover and include a cheque for the privilege. Dara feels her stomach leap, and she is not sure if it is because of the baby, or because of the news, but nonetheless she places her hand on her belly and savours the rare, joyful sensation. And she thinks of Kaseem.

  It is already dusk by the time she arrives on his side of the city. The dark, intertwining streets still make her nervous, but she has navigated them enough times now for familiarity to lull her into a temporary sense of safety. She no longer notices the crumbling walls, the dirty gutters, the overpowering stench. She feels these quirks as a part of him, or the path to him, and thus it is a terrain she loves.

  She will tell him both things, she has decided. About the magazine and about the baby. His life is hard but still he can appreciate what is good. He is not her husband, but still he can be a father. They cannot be together, but still… She feels a rise of hope in her chest and trains her eyes downwards, forcing herself to see the pot-holed track. The letter from the magazine sits folded in the back pocket of her jeans. Her breasts throb.

  Dara turns the corner into the road where Kaseem lives to find a commotion. People have spilled from their houses into the street and are floating in angry rings, leading like crop circles to the source of their fury. Up the hill. Towards him. They speak in Arabic and Dara cannot understand what they are saying, what has happened, but they gesticulate violently and Dara pushes through the throng amid hot, scathing stares. One man shouts something at her but she ignores the words that she doesn’t understand anyway and hurries forward. She wonders if she has stumbled upon a Muslim festival she wasn’t aware of and shouldn’t be intruding upon, or if there has been a riot, or a fight, or a death? She starts running. And then suddenly, she sees.

  Kaseem is standing amongst the rubble. His mother is sitting within it. His sisters – embarrassed by their inside wares being on display, as though their hijabs have slipped or their knickers are showing – gather pots and pans and clothes and bathroom soap. All the women are wailing. Around them, Kaseem’s diligent work of the past month is in pieces; the bulldozers have done their job. The newly tiled roof lies in shambles on top of their kitchen table, the old front wall is half-collapsed and the room inside it open to the dirt and dark of the city. The bricks Dara once passed him, one by one, lay broken. The extension might never have existed. The house too. Rice scatters the ground like shattered glass. A pot of water is on the stove, still boiling. Soon it will overrun.

  Kaseem is staring blankly into the distance. He does not at first see her as she picks over the ruins towards him, but his mother does, and his mother screams: “Whore!”

  Dara freezes. Kaseem turns.

  “You have done this. This is your fault. You, trying to Judaize him, you all trying to Judaize us!”

  “Ummi-” Kaseem interrupts his mother, and he raises his hand. But he does not say anything to defend or admonish, he does not move, either
towards her or to Dara. Only others have moved – the angry, watching people who are now watching Dara. Eyes everywhere. Even Kaseem’s are flashing black.

  “What happened?” she asks him softly, tripping over a piece of broken brick as she steps closer.

  “What do you think happened?” he snaps. “The bulldozers came.”

  “But you had your permit.”

  “Of course I didn’t. Don’t be so naïve, Dara. Who would give me a permit? They don’t give us permits. I am not a Jew. I am not like you.”

  The people are listening now too. Watching and listening. Dara moves closer to Kaseem so that she is able to whisper. “Kaseem, I am sorry. I know this is unforgiveable.” She places her hand on his shaking arm.

  “Go home, you Jewish whore!” Kaseem’s mother screams again, loudly, for the onlookers. “Leave him be. He doesn’t need you. He does not want you.” She grabs Dara’s hand from his arm and throws it back towards her, her nails scratching. “You bring us shame.”

  Dara looks up at Kaseem. He holds her gaze, but he says nothing. It is as though he cannot find the words to either break her, or pull her back. As though he is too tired, or too confused, or too…

  “Kaseem, I have to tell you something,” Dara urges softly. Her stomach tightens as she feels the circle around her moving closer, and she feels an urge to cover herself. She fumbles with the zip of her cardigan and does it up. She reaches again for his arm. To steady herself. To steady him. “Kaseem-” Again Kaseem’s mother slaps her hand away and now the crowds begin to close in on them. A step. Another step. Suddenly it feels dangerous. But she is still with Kaseem and this calms her. With one hand on her stomach she reaches for him once more. “Kaseem-” He is stony-still. Looking now not at her but at the wreckage beneath his feet. He will not look up. She doesn’t mean to but feels tears welling. Her hormones are betraying her. Or, he is betraying her? “Kaseem-” Her voice breaks.