I hit rock bottom one day while lying on the beach. In front of me sat two tourists, tightly entwined in an embrace. She was tall, blond, about fifty, and with freckles all over her back. He had only a little hair left, a heavy gold necklace, around seventy. Both were raptly watching a game of matkot, their heads turning from side to side, in sync, following the ball. When the ball was out, both shook their heads in disappointment.
The woman lying in front of me turned onto her back and I thought of Anne Frank. At age eleven I had read her diary and understood that I wasn’t the only woman who desired women and that these feelings didn’t exclude the others. The homoerotic passages in her diary had reassured and aroused me, just like the woman who lay in front of me and, spreading her legs, so enticingly presented her pelvis. I’d been watching her for half an hour already. The sky was completely clear again, not a single cloud, and despite it being only morning, the sun already burned down.
My cellphone vibrated, Sami’s name on the display. It had been a long time since we’d talked and I was excited and excited and excited to see his call. Then I held my breath and hoped that he wouldn’t notice.
He asked whether we could meet in Vienna.
“Come on, seriously? Why don’t you come here instead?” I answered.
“With my kind of passport? Thanks, but no thanks. In case it slipped your mind, I was born in Beirut.”
“But I would love to see you,” I couldn’t help saying.
“I just sent you the booking confirmation.”
“What booking confirmation?”
“For the hotel and flight.”
The woman in front of me turned around and was now lying on her stomach.
“Cem and I have signed you up for an exam.”
“What kind of exam?”
“The United Nations Competitive Examination for Russian Language Interpreters, in Vienna.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“Sami, I’m not prepared at all.”
“Come on. Cem also thinks you need to get out of the Middle East.”
“Cem is from the Middle East himself. And you guys can’t just enroll me for an exam.”
“Not true.” Sami was laughing now. “We forged your signature.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago, when Cem was visiting you.”
“Are you guys completely out of your minds?”
“Are you coming?”
“What I wanted to tell you …”
“Yes?”
There was a pause. I heard Sami’s breath and had all possibilities right at the tip of my tongue, and all I said was, “I’m not prepared.”
17
My boss was a small, pudgy man with a slight paunch and expensive suits made from light fabrics. He had asked me to come into his office for a serious talk. Serious talk were his words. I was afraid that meant he’d finally discovered just how superfluous my job was. When I entered he was standing behind his desk. With his right hand he pointed toward two armchairs in the corner. Above us hung a portrait of the chancellor.
I approached the armchairs and was about to sit down when he said, “That’s my side.”
He’s going to fire me, I thought. I sat down in the other chair.
“Masha, there hasn’t been that much to do lately. That’s partly because of the relatively calm political situation and partly because of severe budget cuts. And you’ve not been with us for very long.”
I took a deep breath.
“I’m going to tell you something about hierarchies. You know that I’m your boss and therefore you should generally do as I say. I don’t particularly feel like you have fully internalized that. You know, I have a boss, too, and my boss has a boss.” He looked me in the eyes, checking whether his words reverberated in my soul. Then he pointed with the index finger of his right hand toward the portrait of Angela Merkel. “I’m not particularly fond of that boss. Do you think I want to be ruled over by a woman from East Germany? Do I care about East Germany? Don’t make me laugh. But. I do as I’m told and I pay my taxes. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Next week our boss from Berlin is coming. As you know, our standing in Berlin is not exactly stellar. It’s our Arab offices that get the most funding these days. The foundations that are active in Israel get less and less. That’s just the general trend.”
I nodded.
“I’ll have to have several meetings with him. Present our work and our current projects to him. But he won’t be alone. He’s coming with company.”
“His wife?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Ah.”
“The lady who is accompanying him is in the region for the first time and I want you to take care of her.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the same age. You are going to accompany her to Jerusalem.”
“I don’t speak any Hebrew.”
“I’ve heard you speak. Why are you making such a big deal about it?”
“What does she want to do there in the first place?”
“Stroll through the market. Buy a few spices. What do I know? I’ll have to talk with him and she needs a babysitter.”
“I’m an interpreter.”
“Precisely. Why not haggle in Arabic at the market?”
The next day I picked up my assignment. She was already waiting in front of the hotel, in a very short leather skirt and dark designer shades. Long hair with blond highlights. She’d recently gotten a manicure. I considered myself lucky that she didn’t have a handbag dog. As a hello, she kissed my cheeks.
“I’m Maya. Thanks so much for coming along.”
“My pleasure.” I tried to smile just as fatuously as she did. “What would you like to see today?”
“I’d love to see the old town and then I want to see one of those settlements on the outskirts. I’ve read so much about them. So much injustice.”
We strolled down Yaffo Street. Maya kept stopping to look at window displays or take a picture.
“Bringing a camera along is like having a toddler with you,” she said coyly. Men on the street were constantly whistling at her. Even a few Orthodox Jews turned their heads, not as covertly as you might think.
Progress was slow through the old town. The narrow alleys were crammed with tourists, backpacks strapped to their chests, and believers from all across the denominational spectrum. Everyone in a fantasy uniform. The air was humid and stale. The merchants sat in front of their shops, yelling at the crowds: “Please, come in.” “Do you want to see my shop?” “Natasha, Natasha, idi syda.” Maya smiled at each and every one of them.
We were surrounded by clothes, postcards, incense, glass pearls, cheap jewelry, henna colors, and pyramids of spices. Keffiyehs hung next to IDF shirts, sold by Arab and Jewish merchants in equal measure.
One even ran after us. He’d overheard us speaking German and asked us to write down the word sale in German for him. He wanted to lure us into his shop, but it wasn’t necessary to lure Maya anywhere. I trudged behind the two.
In between keffiyehs and postcards, Maya told me and the merchants her life story. I abstained from translating. Born in Saarland. Her father was the mayor of her village (population: 200), her mother a home-maker. Home was crowded. Shortly after getting her trade school degree, she met an entrepreneur in a bar in Saarbrücken, much older than she. He took her along to Laos.
She tried on a dark blue scarf and the merchant held a mirror up to her. Lost in her own reflection, she continued: “I hardly remember my first husband. If I think about him at all, what comes to mind is the little black notebook with the blue lines that he always carried around with him. That’s what he used to keep track of his bowel movements. Meticulously.”
“Do you want to buy this scarf?” the merchant asked and I translated the question. She looked at me straight on, as if noticing my presence for the first time.
“I don’t have any money on me.” With h
er plastic nail, she tapped on the window. The shopkeeper understood the gesture and brought a different color. “In Laos I got used to the good things in life: spa treatments, massages, yoga, restaurants, delicacies, maids.”
We continued our way through the old town. A woman lugging a shopping bag jostled me. Again and again we passed by heavily armed police patrols. I had to buy freshly squeezed orange juice for Maya. She drank it slowly as she rambled on. I had tried rattling off touristy folklore, to direct Maya’s attention to an archaeological excavation or the Via Dolorosa, but she took every interruption of her monologue as an insult. When they returned to Germany, he immediately filed for divorce, without explanation. She got an apartment in Stuttgart and money, which she invested in diamond earrings, dresses, and a pearl necklace that had once belonged to a countess. And she got a tattoo. The sun had reached its highest point and I started heading toward the Austrian hospice. I could already imagine the taste of fresh lemonade on my tongue.
There, in the cool shade, she ordered the specialty of the house—apple strudel—and continued talking. She said the Jews were resting on the hard work of the Palestinians.
I remembered sitting in a waiting room with red leather chairs and an empty water cooler. My mother was with me. I was reading a magazine that was worn out from the many readers before me. All the crossword puzzles were already solved. In that magazine I’d spotted the article “The New Self-Confidence of the Jewish Community in Berlin.” My mother was embarrassed. She was partial to quiet, unobtrusive Jews.
“Seeing that stuff, all that injustice on the evening news, really makes you hate the Jews. It’s perfectly clear who the weak one is here, the victim,” Maya said. She wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Look at all the things they’ve done to the Palestinians. They of all people should know better.”
“German camps weren’t exactly moral reformatories,” I said.
She looked at me, suddenly a little insecure, laughed, and continued to gorge on the Austro-fascist strudel. One bite after the other disappeared into her mouth. Insatiable like a black hole. I called Sami and said that I would take the test, that I’d just quit my job.
18
I would let Tal know that I was sick of her games. That I’d had enough of her masturbatory wallowing in self-pity and that I was about to leave the city, and country, forever. Not brave enough to call her, I wrote an e-mail asking for a meeting in a small fish restaurant in Yaffo.
She didn’t come. I’d sat alone at the table, the waitress waiting impatiently with the menu. Finally, I ordered a redfish that I didn’t touch.
“Is something wrong with it?” the waitress asked, placing a carafe of water on the table.
“I’m not hungry,” I answered.
“Then why’d you go out to eat?”
I paid, not leaving a tip, and went out to the street. Again and again, I checked my cellphone—no messages. I circled the taxi stand a couple of times. The drivers waited with motors running.
Riding through Tel Aviv in the back of a cab, loud mizrahi music blasting from the radio, the driver steering with one hand and tapping the beat with the other, I felt at home. It was a home long forgotten, a mosaic of landscape, temperature, music, smells, and the sea. I asked the driver to go along the beach and through the poorer southern Tel Aviv. That’s when it occurred to me that the feeling of home was associated with places that reminded me of Baku.
The lock at the front door made suspicious noises. I was sure I’d been robbed. I unlocked the door and yelled, “Hello.” To scare the burglars, I guess. It smelled funny, but the apartment was empty. On the kitchen table I discovered a limp bouquet and a note in Tal’s handwriting: “Take care of the cats. Please.” I found the cats in a carrier in my bedroom, their eyes glowing, hostile meows directed at me. A horrid smell was coming from the carrier.
“I need you,” Tal said a week later. She sat huddled at my kitchen table, crying. Again and again, she sobbed loudly. Tal’s eyes were bloodshot, her posture hunched, and her hair cut down to an inch.
“Where are my cats?” she asked as the crying ebbed away.
“In a shelter.”
“You gave my cats away?”
“I didn’t know if you’d come back.”
“How can you be so cold?”
“You just ran away. Honestly I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Tal, what is it that you want?”
“Your help.”
“You don’t really mean that, do you?”
“We need a translator. Masha, you can’t imagine what’s going on there.”
I didn’t reply, because at that moment I understood that Tal wouldn’t leave me. She would always be coming back, until she had sucked me dry completely. But there wasn’t much left in me anyway.
“Just this one last time. Promise. If you still have feelings for me, then come with me.” Tal placed her palms on my cheeks.
19
The summer air was hot and humid, like every day. By the time I made it down the five sets of stairs from my apartment to the street, I was soaked in sweat. In the supermarket, tourists were frantically looking for someone to translate the Hebrew product information. Others skeptically inspected the kashrut confirmation on the packaging. I bought coffee and milk, then crossed the street toward the fast-food restaurants.
The Indian food sat in two small boxes. Elias wasn’t hungry. He lay on the couch apathetically, covered by a light blanket, flipping through channels. I sat down next to him and snuggled up. I wanted to feel his warmth, kiss him and stroke him, but he didn’t move, wouldn’t grant me even the slightest tenderness. Rigor mortis had already set in.
part four
1
None of the incoming cars was stopped at the checkpoint. All the energy went into inspecting the cars that went the other way, into Israel. Tal’s thin hands clasped the steering wheel, white knuckles protruding. I hadn’t asked where we were going, didn’t want to know. In the back were three boys, all vegans, squirming nervously in their seats.
“Do you have your passport?” Tal asked and shot me an irritated glance. She wore a prim dress that covered her shoulders and knees. It was the color of an Afghan burka. We passed the checkpoint and then a construction site, where an entire block of luxury condos was being erected.
“What would happen if I was to discover in Ramallah that I didn’t have my passport on me? Do you think they wouldn’t let me back into Israel?”
“This is not your average Sunday outing,” Tal said.
“Looks like Sunday to me.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the way.
Tal left the car in the city center, right next to the grave of a late Fatah fighter. The grave was decorated with flowers, like a roadside memorial for someone who had died in a car accident. Above the grave was a huge billboard displaying a picture of the deceased, a lanky man in a wool pullover holding a machine gun. The barrel of the gun was pointed directly at his own grave. As if we were shooting himself until eternity. On the side of the road were expensive SUVs with stickers bearing the logos of international aid organizations.
The vegans were standing next to the car, a little uncertain. I speculated that they were embarrassed to be overheard speaking Hebrew—which would have been somewhat inappropriate in the middle of Ramallah—but nobody wanted to be the first to break into English. None of them spoke Arabic, which was why they now stuck to their embarrassed silence. I could’ve done them the favor of saying something and thereby establishing English as the language of choice, but I didn’t.
Tal went ahead. Her steps were long and energetic—we had trouble keeping up. It was a rainy Friday morning and the city center was deserted. I assumed that most men were at the mosque and women at home. I counted the doorbell signs of international NGOs, UN schools, and parking lots supported by the European Union. A parade of the new colonialism.
Tal took to it like a duck to water. No sign of her nervousness.
“Here.” Tal pointed at
a house.
I said hello into the intercom, the heavy iron gate opened, and a petite woman approached us. Her face was powdery and her eyes black-rimmed.
Salam had a firm handshake and the habit of looking whomever she was talking to directly in the eyes. She told us to take a seat in her living room and disappeared into the kitchen.
The curtains were closed and the floor was covered in soft wool rugs. It was a large room and as far as I could discern in the dim light, reproductions of French impressionists and large oil paintings hung on the wall. Judging by the quality of the latter, they might have been painted by one of the inhabitants. A Marianne, gripping a Palestinian flag, with chastely covered, if remarkably large, breasts. A crying child with blood smeared on its head, and an old, bent man in a loamy, dark prison cell, eyes cast longingly at a small window above. The painter had gotten the perspective wrong, but at least now the window looked out straight onto the dome of the rock. Every last remaining bit of free wall space was taken up by bookshelves.
On the table in front of us was a bowl of fruit—peaches, nectarines, and mangos. Other bowls held pieces of watermelon, dried fruits, and nuts. Salam came back with fresh juice, Turkish coffee, and sweet pastries. I complimented her on the pastries. She complimented me on my Arabic and asked about my Lebanese dialect.
Tal absentmindedly drew circles on the tablecloth. I said that I’d learned Arabic from my fiancé, who had been born in Beirut. I wasn’t quite sure why I lied to her, but it felt good to talk about Sami. Salam switched to English and that brought the small talk to a close.
Before getting down to business, everyone told their story, probably a pedagogical technique. Tal sat at the end of the sofa and slowly tore a paper napkin into pieces. Every muscle in her body was tense. When it was her turn all she said was: “Tal. We’ve been in touch.”
All Russians Love Birch Trees Page 17
