It was hard to fall asleep that night. I heard him talking on the phone late into the night, “A screw-up… I don’t know… you know the State of Israel and our political system… I am certain that if a mistake was made, it will be investigated… when conclusions are drawn, we will certainly implement them… without fear, without bias, without prejudice.”
Danny was right about the situation. It was the beginning of a very tough period. I started going to school with a security guard. There was a lot of tension at the embassy, thanks in part to the PLO office in Rome, which was especially active and popular and thanks also to the numerous warnings about an impending terror attack. The end of the school year was getting close and I didn’t really feel like studying. On Monday morning I told the security guard that I was sick and would be staying at home.
The car that drove me to school every day arrived anyway. The bodyguard from the new detail looked very serious and asked what the exact reason was for me staying at home as if it was his business. Only after further explanation, including a weak sigh, did he go on without me. At the International School, we studied the American Constitution and the First Amendment that allowed people to say anything they wanted to except for shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. We learned about Abraham Lincoln’s speech in which he said we should let the dead bury the dead. But none of it really interested me. I just wanted to remain Israeli. I stayed in bed until ten and watched funny Mickey Mouse cartoons in Italian on television. It was a freezing morning.
At around twelve, I went to the Gamla Hotel. With frozen earlobes and a leaky nose, I reached the small lobby, which was always nice and warm. The receptionist, a cheerful and good-hearted African girl from Sierra Leone, spoke a funny Italian with a guttural accent, “Tami isn’t here. She will be back soon,” The lobby smelled of freshly baked rolls and soap. I sat down in one of the soft old armchairs and started leafing through a colorful theater magazine. Tami returned after a short while with bags full of purchases: cosmetics, food, and earrings that she had found that morning. She beamed at me, warmed her hands, and after she realized that I had come to visit her, she stated happily, “School is really not that important. Let’s try the new make-up and then we’ll go for a walk. You’re twelve years old, right? You look at least fourteen. Let’s go have fun.”
I was deep inside Arbib’s hat and scarf store on the Via Veneto when I heard the newscaster on Channel Two announce that there had been a bombing at the Israeli Embassy. The number of casualties was unknown. I froze while looking at the hat in my hands. Tami quickly pulled me out of there.
“We need to get you home right now. Sorry, darling, there’s no choice. I’ll call the embassy.” She used the emergency phone numbers that she always carried for events such as this. “Two injured in total,” she told me and I started to regain my composure. “Danny is alright.” Ten minutes later, an embassy Alfa Romeo arrived with two security guys. They were not as cheerful as they used to be, grabbed me roughly without uttering a word, put me in the car, and drove me home. They took me upstairs, sniffed around, and checked if there was anyone else in the house. One of them finally spoke up, “Don’t leave the house until one of your parents comes home. Do you understand? Don’t open the door to anyone else, no matter what!” I didn’t reply. “Do you understand?” I nodded and waited for him to leave. Then I burst out crying.
“Do you realize you did something wrong?” Danny asked when he came home that night. I looked at him.
“You just can’t avoid school without my permission anymore. It’s no longer the Jerusalem school days.” I still gazed at him not uttering a word, afraid that I would burst out crying again.
“You won’t do it again.”
I nodded.
He calmed down slowly and tried to caress my hand, just as Theo used to do when we would sit at Joseph’s patisserie. “You’re OK now,” he said. I had a lovely, warm feeling, like love. Maybe because he wasn’t so mad at me anymore and had stopped yelling. He saw it on my face and liked it.
“Next week we’ll go to New York,” he added as a sweet surprise. “We can spend New Year’s Eve in a wonderful place without all the tension here. New York is different. There’s no other place like it.” In retrospect he may have been right, but not in the way that he thought.
We landed in New York on December 24, Christmas Eve. At the passport control booth we met a depressing agent with a Japanese face, shorter than me, who tried his best to give us the feeling that as far as he was concerned, we were not much more important than the grime under his fingernails. He did everything he could to humiliate Danny and get him to lose his temper, but no matter how hard he tried, Danny only became nicer and more polite. He seemed to enjoy the drill. The Japanese broke down first. Karni waited for us at the exit and went through customs control with us.
With Karni, it was all different and exciting, or maybe it was the Christmas in New York scene. It was straight out of the movies I loved. The store windows on Fifth Avenue and the nativity scenes of dolls were like a dream. We went through the Rockefeller Center with its giant Christmas tree towering above the ice skating rink. From there to the Empire State Building which was lit up in green and red. I strolled in the footsteps of James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and imagined myself in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. New York looked sweet and a little bit ridiculous. We walked on to Woody Allen’s dreamy Broadway, with its winking neon lights beckoning us to nude shows and peeping holes and then a dinner at Smith & Wollensky, where I had humongous steak in a darkened room with waiters wearing bow ties. They knew how to snivel and grovel better than any waiter I knew of in Rome. They were there just to serve. In Rome, the waiters had a smug air of self-importance about them.
“Here, only money talks,” Karni explained in reply to my question. “In Rome, where you live, it’s also about tradition.”
“How come they don’t have tradition here?”
“They don’t need it. Once Coca-Cola, the blue jeans, and white T-shirts conquered the world, they didn’t need tradition anymore, and if they need it they can buy some.”
I didn’t understand what made Danny fall head over heels in love with America. Sure, it was great as a backdrop for movies, but not as a place to live in. Maybe it lost its appeal precisely because he was so excited about it. Mom and I had to drag around following this man who was controlling us with his plans and I wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
“Are there bombings and warnings here?” I asked Karni.
“Mostly demonstrations; scary as hell,” she replied. “Last time, there were five thousand people in front of the consulate. They brought fifty caskets and a bulldozer with man-sized and all-dressed-up-dolls to demonstrate the massacre in the refugee camps. They put caskets in the consulate building lobby and people couldn’t walk through.”
Danny looked around him in awe, ignoring the conversation. “Do you feel the city’s pulse? I mean—this power, this energy. It’s amazing. Can you feel its strength?”
“All the time,” Karni replied. “But I have to be on the lookout, otherwise I will get crushed.”
“You won’t get crushed,” Danny whispered, almost to himself, “unless you bring it upon yourself.” He leaned back in the car seat, having satiated himself with the landscape. “Yes,” he smiled to himself. “This is the place. Nowhere else is like it.”
“For better or for worse, Taylor,” Karni tried to calm him down”
“What can be bad?”
“Many things. Tomorrow I am speaking at Hunter College. Would you like to come and see it with your own eyes? It could be interesting for Shira,” Karni said.
“I’m not sure,” Danny said with quiet authority.
“Sure, sure,” I jumped from my seat begging.
“You come with me. See what it’s like, even though it won’t be easy,” Karni concluded.
The next day, Karni drove her beat-up blue Chevy Malibu between the potholes on Second Avenue all the way to Sixty-Third
Street, and from there to Lexington Avenue. Smoke from the underground wafted up through the sidewalks and the homeless were weaving their way through the well-dressed women, spilling out of the yellow cabs, and entering hotel lobbies. I sat next to David, a local security man, as handsome as Tom Cruz, and not much taller.
“We are expecting demonstrations,” he said knowingly. Danny and Karni didn’t react. “In case of emergency, you will have to be evacuated,” he added.
“Obviously,” my third father replied. “Don’t worry about it; just make sure the girl is alright.”
“The girl shouldn’t have come in the first place,” David said. “We can still drop her off on the way.”
“We can drop YOU off on the way if you keep this up,” Karni shot at him. “I decide who gets to come with me and who doesn’t. If you feel that you can’t do your job, just let me know and we will manage without you.” David fell silent. I felt bad for him. He was strongly built and handsome and he talked over the phone to the local campus security staff without a hint of an Israeli accent. Near Hunter College, on Lexington and Sixty-Fourth, a campus police patrol car was already waiting. Two huge African-American cops in dark uniform were leaning on the car, their belts carrying handcuffs, nightsticks, guns, booklets, flashlights, and God only knows what else. They looked battle-ready. A fat and sweaty young man who finished a phone conversation inside the car introduced himself as the head of college security. He greeted David and then stared at the rest of us before briefing us in a dry impatient voice.
“We will enter through the rear entrance. There is a demonstration at the front.”
“I’m not entering through any rear entrance,” Karni declared, and I thought I could see Danny cringe in embarrassment. “Either we go in through the front, or we cancel the whole thing,” she went on. Mr. Sweaty stared at her for a long moment. She was clearly serious about it. “Then we will cancel. No big deal” He went back into the squad car and grabbed the phone again.
“Maybe you should reconsider? It’s dangerous, after all,” David tried his luck again.
“They have campus security,” Karni was decisive. “They can bring as many security personnel as they wish, but I am staying.” Two additional patrol cars joined us and this is how we reached the campus entrance, with a heavy police escort, blaring lights and wailing sirens. A few hundred female students were waiting for us, screaming and waving their fists in the air.
“There’s an ad hoc coalition building up here,” Mr. Sweaty explained to us. “The dean of the college, for some reason, doesn’t want to call off your lecture.”
“Coalition?’ Danny was amazed
“Sometimes they succeed in getting their act together,” the chief of the campus police explained. “You guys, as a matter of fact, succeeded today in getting the Brooklyn Lesbian League, PETA, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Patricia Hearst, and the Girls of Palestine Organization. Last week they demonstrated against the use of animal furs. If you ask me, they’re completely nuts. They want people to stop raising chinchillas and for the employees of that industry to get laid off. So much for Communist ideals.”
We started to walk amid a sweaty frightening throng of hysterical female students who were whistling, screaming, and spitting.
“Nazi Zionists! Out of our College!” an obese, gray-haired student was shouting at us. “Nazi Zionists! Out of New York!” the crowd shouted.
I felt smothered and seasick. Danny held my hand firmly and whispered to Karni, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Karni replied immediately. “I’m going in. You do whatever you want. I am sure you need to look after Shira.”
“Let’s go in,” I whispered to Danny courageously. And that is how we were pushed and shoved inside.
I went into the first washroom I found in order to calm myself. I noticed Karni walking in behind me.
“I don’t care,” she said defiantly. “I will speak here. I’m not even thinking about giving up.”
“Even if they hurt you?” I had to shout out loud.
“How much can they hurt me? It’s just a demonstration. They want to see me back down. It’s only a symbolic thing.”
“And if you don’t back down, we win?”
“Would you like me to back down?” she asked with disappointment in her voice.
“Not at all. I am terribly proud of you; I am just a little bit worried that they might hurt you.”
“Are you scared?”
“I guess I am. I swore once that I would never be scared, and that I would always look after my mother. But it doesn’t always work. I am afraid of you getting hurt. Aren’t you scared?”
“Sure, I am scared. I am scared to death,” Karni admitted. “But I am getting paid to represent a country that is apparently always right. So let’s get to work; let’s go. And remember, there’s no shame in being scared.”
The hall was packed with almost two hundred students and close to twenty police officers. Karni walked on stage, very pale, tried to smile, and sat down next to the moderator, close to collapse. A few whistles were heard from the audience. The moderator raised his hands and everyone became quiet. He was the head of the political sciences department. “A proud Jew, not a closet Jew,” as Karni had sarcastically explained to us earlier.
“Good evening and welcome,” he started calmly as his eyes scanned the audience, on the lookout for pockets of resistance. The hall was deathly quiet. “We have a special guest with us here today.” Apparently, he had gathered some confidence and went on ceremonially, like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of his hat, “The Israeli consul will tell us about the chances for peace in the Middle East.”
The hall remained quiet. Karni approached the microphone hesitantly and said in English, “Hello, everyone.” The audience burst out screaming and whistling. She took one step backward and smiled sheepishly. The audience became silent. She approached the microphone again. “I would like…” she began, and the air was filled once again with screaming, whistling and rhythmic chanting, “Zionist Nazis, out of our campus!” Karni turned to the moderator helplessly and said something to him. He replied as if he didn’t understand, and she tried talking to him again.
The moderator approached the microphone with a stern look. “We must defend the right of every person to express himself,” he explained to the audience, which was again completely silent. They were toying with us. Karni returned to the microphone and tried to adjust it to her mouth, but it was in vain. Her trembling hand could be seen a mile away.
“Good evening, hello,” she tried again and her voice cracked. The whistling and screaming resumed even more loudly. “Is the police here?” she continued talking into the microphone with an apologetic and shy smile. “Could you please escort these people outside?”
The policemen started dragging students out, lifting them by their hands and feet. After they had evicted a dozen people, Karni started speaking and I saw her fighting back the tears. She talked of the State of Israel extending its hand to the Arabs and she spoke about the terrible tragedy of two peoples living on the same land, each one with its legitimate national aspirations that needed to be addressed. She ended her remarks and got a number of faint applauses. We rushed to the car through the rear exit. Karni was exhausted. On the road, Danny said to her, “I hope you realize that you said things we are not supposed to say. Legitimate national aspirations? For the Palestinians?”
“Yes, I know,” she replied. “So what?”
“Just making sure you noticed,” he shot back.
“I noticed,” Karni looked out the window. “Are you still that sure that New York is the best place on earth?”
“Sure, I’m sure. You just have to play it right.” She didn’t care to argue or even ask what he meant. I think this was the moment when the small rivalry between Karni and Dad became a sort of animosity. Something evil penetrated that car.
By the time we returned to Rome on an Alitalia flight, Danny had forgotten ab
out Karni’s trouble. He was elated. New York seemed so wonderful to him that he hadn’t even noticed that I was miserable and depressed about the whole Palestinian issue. Maybe he really did think it was just a matter of marketing.
“I understand that New York is our next posting,” Mom said.
“It must be,” he pronounced. “Every effort must be made, my love”
* * *
Chapter 11
Nahum Shemer was not a bad ambassador. Danny was his spokesman, and with a lot of patience, like an industrious spider, he weaved and constructed their close relationship. That relationship was slightly reminiscent of that which had existed between him and Theo, whom he missed terribly, but when Theo came to Rome for a visit, Danny was too busy to spend time with him.
Theo strolled with me from the Piazza di Spagna, through the Quirinale Palace, and towards the Trevi Fountain. Along the route, he examined the buildings, the sculptures, and the fountains, and never stopped expressing his awe. “Every stone here is a living history! And the Italians simply do not care. It’s amazing how naturally they take it all. To live, to enjoy yourself, and nothing else besides that.” I hardly listened to him. I was humiliated and angry and anxious because Danny didn’t care enough to be around.
“You have to tell him something, you have to tell Danny,” I told Mom later. “Don’t you understand that if he doesn’t learn now, he will never learn? Just as he is distancing himself from Theo, he will distance himself from all of us. Someone needs to teach him.” Even if she understood me, she did nothing about it. Maybe she thought wrongly that now that he was distancing himself from his father and despising his softness, he would get closer to her.
“Get him off me,” he told Mom when he thought that nobody was listening. He apologized to Theo profusely when he saw him for the first time two days after Theo had arrived in Rome. He missed all our family dinners with all kinds of phony arguments and let Theo leave without exchanging one more word with him.
Peace, Love and Lies Page 9
