The Distance Between Us

by Masha Hamilton

  “And it all lacks playfulness.” Ya’el is still complaining. “For him, it’s sex as an act of desperation. A distraction from hopelessness.”

  Caddie leans forward, her attention suddenly snagged. “Desperate?” she says.

  But Ya’el switches topics. “Oh well, he’s too Orthodox for me anyway. By Jerusalem standards, I’m a heathen.” She sighs. “Here I am, in great condition after the divorcee’s diet, and what do I get? I’ve got to face it: I’m a firmed-up old lady with two kids. And I love them, but I had them so fast, so blindly, that sometimes it seems like one long birth broken only by nausea and nursing. God, I should have held off. The way you have.”

  “Held off. Yeah, right.” Caddie makes a face and Ya’el laughs.

  “No, really. I think, someday . . .” Ya’el says.

  Caddie stops listening. She knows all about the emotional buzz of having kids. She’s seen the look on Ya’el’s face when she pulls one of her daughters close. And sure, she’s felt a quick stab, a glimpse of possibility. In weak moments, she’s even wondered if having a child might save her from herself somehow, plant her in one place, solidify her.

  But those moments are short-lived. What sticks with her longer is the diminishing power of motherhood, the way choices seem reduced. Moms either erase part of themselves, as Grandma Jos did, or flee, like Caddie’s mom.

  Without doubt, getting quotes from children is far preferable to having them. That’s exactly what she told Marcus one early dawn when the yielding light coming in through the windows lent itself to dreamy visions and he wanted to talk about kids. Caddie refused to succumb to the mood. “No way, no, never,” she said, slipping out of his grasp, rolling away to get a drink of water, silent a few moments and then changing the subject, her mind moving from birth to death, reminding him of the severed leg they’d seen on the field the day before, a suicide-bombing victim, the limb turned into an object so disconnected from life that Caddie had trouble imagining that it had ever been part of a breathing person.

  Now Ya’el reaches to touch Caddie’s arm. “You okay?”

  Caddie realizes her eyes are moist. “Dust in the air. Makes my eyes water. That’s all.”

  “Dust?”

  “Absolutely.” She reaches for her bottle of water, takes a sip.

  Ya’el stares at her another moment, sighs, then throws back her head and sings out the window, “I need a lover that won’t drive me crazy.”

  “Who,” Caddie corrects.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Ya’el slouches in her seat and fiddles with her purse. “And speaking of men.”

  Caddie glances her direction. “I know. You don’t like him.” She doesn’t have to say the name. Even though they haven’t spoken about him since Ya’el met him three days ago, Caddie knew this was coming.

  “It’s not a matter of like or dislike, Caddie,” Ya’el says. “Anyone can see his posts are not well planted.”

  Ya’el would be more sympathetic if she knew Goronsky’s story. But Caddie cannot share it with her neighbor. What he told her that night belongs to her.

  “He’s manipulative,” Ya’el is saying. “And angry.”

  Besides, if Ya’el were clued in to the intimacy of that conversation, she’d probably guess all the rest. Caddie doesn’t want that.

  “Maybe you don’t see it,” Ya’el is saying. “I remember after my brother. You lose someone that way, it throws off your judgment for a while.”

  Caddie hits a pothole and releases a loud, frustrated breath. “My judgment’s fine.”

  “I don’t think so. Because this is as obvious as a mountain in the middle of a highway. Steer clear of this guy, you hear me?”

  “Ya’el. You meet him for, what, ten minutes? You think you’ve got a complete reading? He’s not a beach book, you know.”

  “I ask him a simple question, and he gets nervous; I ask another, and he gets mad. He’s focused one minute, distracted the next.” Ya’el turns to look at her. “Shit, Caddie. You’re not in love with him, are you?”

  In love. The mad thing that springs from indecipherable logic and runs on its own internal steam. The thing that leaves her more exposed and exhilarated even than covering the clashes. Caddie sucks in two small, careful breaths. “Maybe he got tired of your endless questions, Ya’el. You wouldn’t let go of him. He’s a professor, for God’s sake, and you treated him like a terrorist.”

  “I don’t care what he calls himself. After a few decades living in Jerusalem, I recognize the wild-eyed ones from a hundred meters. The ones who turn dangerous if you get too close.”

  Caddie is aware of her hands tightening on the steering wheel. Yes, Goronsky is a little wild-eyed. Who can blame him? And maybe that’s part of the draw.

  Is that in love? She’d like to know. But Ya’el is not the one to ask.

  “What about Mr. Gruizin?” she says to change the subject. “He paints red on the mailboxes to save lives, for God’s sake. Is that unbalanced? Or me. Can you, with your extensive powers, tell that I’m another Anya in the making?”

  Ya’el doesn’t return Caddie’s grin. “Since you bring it up, what’s with this pervasive need of yours to see the bullet come out of the barrel? You didn’t used to be like that.”

  Caddie scoots closer to the driver’s-side door. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’ve seen you coming in, day after day, black from the ashes, reeking like one of your photographer friends. I smell it in the stairwell.” Ya’el shakes her head.

  “And what do you suggest I cover, Ya’el? Political discussions in the Knesset? Archaeological excavations? Maybe religious holidays?”

  “You used to, when I first met you.”

  “That was a different time. The violence is the story now.” Caddie pulls up in front of the mechanic’s shop where Ya’el’s repaired car is waiting. Ya’el makes no move to get out.

  “Okay,” Ya’el says, “then cover it. But why obsessively?”

  Caddie squeezes the steering wheel. For the adrenalin hit, damnit. Which is—as long as she survives—no more harmful than a nightly drink or a daily cigarette. But she won’t get into a discussion about that.

  “This is what reporters do, Ya’el.” She bites her bottom lip, willing herself to stop before she says more.

  “If you don’t have a camera in your hand,” Ya’el says, “you don’t need to be there all the time. You told me that.”

  That was then. Now she’s living with the privilege of having survived.

  “You know shit about this,” Caddie says. “You work in a bank, for God’s sake.”

  She stops, sucks in her breath. She and Ya’el move carefully around their differences; they always have. They don’t speak this way to one another, not ever.

  Ya’el looks out her window. She turns toward Caddie. “Okay. Your story. Your friend.”

  Caddie knows she should apologize, but she can’t find the words. After a minute, Ya’el shakes her head. She gets out of the car, then leans down to stick her head through the open door. “Be careful today,” she says a little stiffly.

  “Yeah.” Caddie nods her head several times. “Yeah, thanks.”

  Ya’el turns, and the door clicks closed.

  WITHIN MINUTES, Caddie is past the Israeli checkpoint, into Palestinian territory, and taking deep breaths. She loves Jerusalem, loves how her own carefully tended neutrality stands out against its biases. But today, what a relief to leave behind the city’s adamant judgments. Being alone, headed down a West Bank road, feels like a holiday compared to Ya’el’s interrogation.

  She soon reaches a narrow dirt track that climbs to a hillside village. Amber marshmallows of dust rise from the car wheels. She rounds a corner to find a gray-haired goat blocking the road. She taps her horn. The beast answers with a stubborn stare.

  Before she can get out of the car to shoo him on, half a dozen kids sweep from around the side of a house. The tallest one eyes her suspiciously, but
the rest are smiling. Two who look to be about seven years old, already accustomed to the obstinate arrogance of goats, move to one side of the animal and expertly drive him out of the way. They swat at his behind as though it were a fly and call out from somewhere deep in their throats.

  “Shukran,” Caddie says out the window. “I’m looking for the home of Halima Bisharat.”

  “We show you, we show you,” one boy says. He opens the back door of her car and climbs in. A friend joins him. He directs Caddie to turn right, then left. “There is house.”

  Caddie parks, thanks the boys again and swings out of the car. She pauses to squeeze her left hand into a tight fist and make a wordless wish for a good interview. She wills herself to become immersed in the stink of donkey manure and exhaust fumes and sweet rotting fruit. In the competing tastes of dirt on her dry lips and the sweet tea she knows will soon be offered. In the village’s background music—a thick hum of women and children—that comes from nowhere in particular and seems to hover near her like kicked-up earth.

  She wills herself to have better luck than she did at Moshe’s.

  A small group of children, boys and girls both, is playing a homegrown version of cowboys and Indians—soldiers versus martyrs. One, the “martyr,” is splayed on the ground pretending to be dead. “I want to be killed next,” another boy says peevishly as Caddie approaches. Several break away from their game to circle Caddie curiously. A middle-aged woman with a basket balanced on her head pauses to stare.

  Half the homes are little more than concrete boxes with corrugated tin roofs held in place by piles of discarded tires and cement blocks. The others, Halima’s included, are sprawling by comparison, spread over several rooms and built of pink-tinted limestone. They were clearly constructed in times of relative calm and have managed to survive despite the frequent house demolitions carried out by Israeli troops.

  Halima opens the door before Caddie, surrounded by the boys, can knock. Halima holds a baby. Caddie didn’t think this girl was a mother. Even though she’s about seventeen, which makes her old enough to have been given in marriage and borne a child or two, she doesn’t have a mother’s eyes. Her gaze is too lacking in caution.

  “Welcome, welcome,” Halima says in English. She seems to sense Caddie’s unasked question. “This is my cousin.” She bounces the baby. “And this is my mother.” Behind Halima stands a woman who smiles shyly. Her face is tan and wrinkled. Her hands, which she holds tightly in front of her, are red, as if they’d been scorched with boiling water, but Caddie can’t tell if it’s an injury or a birth deformity. The woman nods welcomingly, gestures Caddie inside and then retreats.

  The boys start to enter behind Caddie, but Halima stops them. She speaks too quickly for Caddie to catch the words, though the meaning is clear. Grumbling, the boys back away and Halima closes the door.

  “Sit, sit.” She gestures to a deep brown velvet couch with a look that communicates this is a possession of some pride. Above it hangs the framed painting of a young man. “My father,” says Halima, following Caddie’s eyes with her own. “He used to own a furniture-building factory.” She emphasizes the word own. “He died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’d been ill a long time.”

  The mother returns now, carrying a tray as if it were a cushion of jewels. It is crammed with eight or nine plates of salads, olives, hummus and pita. She sets it down, then disappears and returns with another tray holding cups of tea.

  “Eat. Drink,” Halima says, handing her mother the baby.

  Caddie smiles at the mother and sips the tea. She is surprised to be here alone with Halima, her mother and the infant cousin; she’s surprised that the women have not been relegated to a corner of the room by the assortment of males who would, in most clans, insist on being present, and then take over. Even though the father is dead, she would expect uncles and cousins.

  But she’s far from displeased. With the men, there is so much rhetoric to be gotten through; with the women, usually less so. “Tell me about that night, then, with your cousin and his friend,” she says.

  Halima begins to describe settlers who come in cars to the village. Her expression is cautious. Caddie, taking notes, nods encouragingly. “Some nights they hurl stones at our house,” Halima says. “One night they tried to throw gasoline at our neighbor’s home. My uncle and two of my cousins ran after them with sticks, yelling. Finally they fled.” She shakes her head. “It is what we know to expect.”

  “Eat, eat,” says the mother. She is watching Halima speak. Pride and concern dart, in turn, across her face.

  Caddie takes a bite of pita. “How long has this been happening?”

  Halima looks around as though to find the answer written on a wall. “Even when I was very young, it happened. But not as frequently as now. Now, every few days, they come through again. Still, you can’t live in fear. That’s what Walid used to say.”

  “Walid, he’s your cousin?”

  Halima nods.

  “What happened that night? The night Walid was taken, and his friend was killed.”

  Halima’s voice is delicate, precise—a wonderful singing voice, Caddie suspects. “Walid and Nazir were sleeping outside on the roof; it was hot. Walid’s wife and child were inside. Walid woke up when he heard a noise. He shook Nazir and together they went down. Someone captured them from behind,” Halima makes a grabbing gesture, “and blindfolded them. Walid heard men speaking Hebrew. Three of them, he thinks.” Halima watches Caddie closely, as if to make sure every word is recorded. The mother pours more tea.

  “They pulled Walid and Nazir into a car,” Halima goes on, “and drove them around for something like twenty minutes. They weren’t able to talk, but Nazir squeezed Walid’s hand. Then my cousin was thrown out of the car, still blindfolded. He had cuts, scrapes and a broken arm, but he was able to pull off his blindfold and get help.”

  “And Nazir?”

  Halima braids her fingers together, unknots them, then braids them again. “We don’t know exactly. Only that his body was found early the next morning, dumped outside Deheishe. A stick had been shoved into one of his ears, his chest was like pulp, his right arm broken.” Her tone is incredulous as well as bitter.

  The door opens then without anyone knocking. A man strides in, tall, mustachioed, with a middle-aged spread at his waist. “Ahalan.” He smiles broadly, nodding his head forcefully. “Welcome, welcome. I am Ibrahim Issa. Brother of Halima’s father.”

  Halima is blushing; she’s been found out. There can be no secrets for long in a village this small. Caddie wonders what repercussions Halima will face for bypassing the family’s men. She rises to introduce herself.

  “Sit, sit,” Ibrahim Issa says. The mother brings him a cup of tea. “Shukran.” He exchanges a few words with her, then turns to Caddie. “You are here to report on the terrorism we face?” he asks in Arabic.

  From that phrase, Caddie knows she is in the land of rhetoric. Damned rhetoric: such a thin slice of the truth that, to Caddie, it has begun to seem obscene.

  “You have heard of the Silwadi case?” he asks. She can’t place the name until he mentions the woman and her five-year-old daughter shot in their home. The killings Jon told her about. She nods to show she knows of it. “The Israeli settlers forced the grandmother to go outside,” Ibrahim Issa says. “Then they shot the mother, Randa, and her child, Salwa.” He goes into the back room and returns with a color poster showing the slain girl. She is dressed for her funeral, her eyes closed and, since the wounds of “martyrs” are not cleaned, a finger of dried blood coming from her mouth.

  Posters, so soon. Victims Salwa Silwadi and her mother are clearly already part of Palestinian lore. “It’s very sad,” Caddie says. And it is. But she has to redirect the conversation back to the reason she’s here. “Your family has its own tragedy. Halima was explaining it.”

  “Yes. Halima.” Ibrahim Issa’s voice sounds thoughtful and threatening at once. Caddie looks a
t him for a long moment, and then turns to Halima.

  “Can I talk to your cousin?” Caddie asks.

  Ibrahim Issa shakes his head twice.

  “He doesn’t want.” Halima switches to English, looks apologetic and exchanges a glance with her mother, who hovers on the edge of the room. “After the killing, Walid stopped going to school,” she says, moving back into Arabic. “It has been two weeks now and he will barely talk, even to us. We used to be close, he and I. He has no trust left. Sometimes I think not even for me.” She glances at her uncle, who is watching her and taking long drags on his cigarette. “My mother is taking care of his child now. His wife has gone back to her parents.”

  “For a visit,” Ibrahim Issa says. “She will return.”

  Halima shrugs in a way that shows she is not sure. “I used to think he would get better,” she says. “I used to hope many things. His arm heals, but the rest of him gets worse.”

  “That’s why I’d like to interview him,” Caddie says.

  “I wish he were angry like the rest of us,” Halima says dully, “but he’s—” She looks again at the painting of her father. “It’s as though he’s gone.”

  Caddie reaches out to touch Halima’s arm. “Sometimes an outsider can draw someone out even when family members can’t.”

  Ibrahim Issa stamps out his cigarette and leaps up as though no longer able to restrain himself. He chops at the air with his hand. “No outsider can accomplish this. Certainly not—” he hesitates, looking from Caddie’s feet to her face, “not you. Impossible.” He walks once around the room, his long strides better suited to pacing a field. “Walid doesn’t even know Halima is speaking to a journalist.” He gives Halima a quick and reprimanding look. “Walid would not be happy.”

  “Walid would be proud if he had heard Halima,” Caddie says. “How well she has explained herself.”