The Cherry pulls back swiftly on an inhale. “So you’re the beauty,” he says.
Ori thinks for one full second about smashing his own face in.
The Cherry draws a quick figure eight with his cigarette in a gesture that Ori has never seen before, but which he understands immediately as the Cherry offering him a cigarette. Ori makes his own gesture, hands held up like, Don’t shoot, which he means as, No thanks.
The Cherry shrugs. For the second time he says, “We hear your ima called.” He draws out the words your ima—a challenge that they both know Ori won’t take.
Ori is trying to focus on the Cherry’s face, but finds himself following the ember of the cigarette. He believes that the Cherry knows all about Ima’s phone call to Alon. He believes him. He believes this guy has seen every text Ori has ever sent. To his mother, his sisters, his friends. He’ll believe anything this guy says. They are the same age, but they are not the same at all, not even close. Ori says, “Isn’t Danny coming?” and his voice sounds pleading, childish. The Arab is smoking. No, the Cherry is smoking. But so Arab. Even the way he holds his cigarette is Arab.
“Don’t worry about Danny,” the Cherry says.
In the army, there are real Arabs. Bedouin tracking units, Druze warriors up north. All honor and carnage. When one of them speaks Hebrew, you can hear that they are Arab; you can hear the throaty gargle of Arabic haunting all the words. But the Cherry sounds normal. He sounds like Ori. Ori is about to ask his name. He wants to know if it’s an Arab name or a Jewish name. But somehow he knows that the Cherry won’t answer him. The way the Cherry smokes, he inhales before he is done exhaling. The smoke leaks out of his nose. Or maybe he would answer Ori. Maybe he would answer and say, “My name is Salem Abu-Something.” Ori wasn’t there. Ori didn’t see. He didn’t see what Meir did to the Arab. He feels like he’s saying this to the Cherry, like he’s being interrogated. Shut up. “Where are you from?” Ori asks, just to say something aloud.
“The north.” He’s facing the jeep.
“Like, a village?”
The Cherry turns to Ori. “Are you trying to find out if I’m Arab?”
“No,” Ori says. Pause. The Cherry doesn’t look away. “Yes,” Ori says.
The Cherry moves his tongue around in his mouth like he’s looking for something there. “I’m a Jew.” Pause. “Brother, brother of mine.”
Ori keeps talking like an idiot. “Why do you speak Arabic so well?”
“When did you hear me speak Arabic?”
When did he? “But you do, I mean, yanni, you can.” He’s talking fast, Ori is, talking like he can talk his way out of what comes next. But what comes next?
The Cherry laughs. “Yanni,” he repeats. “Why do you speak Hebrew so well?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer, shrugs with an agitation that feels familiar to Ori. He says, “You want me to speak Arabic.” It’s not a question.
He yells something in Arabic in the direction of the jeep. Ori hears the word “jeish,” “army.” The sounds of the foreign language creep along Ori’s shoulders, like spiders down into his ear. Arabic. And suddenly Ori knows that he is wrong. He was wrong. Danny is not coming. These are not Cherries. These are Arabs. These are Palestinians from some Hamas village. Danny is dead. They got Danny already. He is bleeding out in the dirt behind their bunk trailer. He has been dead this whole time.
The Arab is going to stuff Ori in this stolen jeep and drive him into the night through the gates that Ori, yes, Ori himself will open for them when they force him to. The Arab turns to Ori, smiling, says something fast, but Ori is sure he is so sure he catches the word “Salem.” The dead boy. They have come for revenge. Finally it’s happening.
The Arab waves the lit cigarette at the jeep, and it must be a signal, because the headlights flash on. Ori is blind. Ori is frozen. Run, he begs himself. But he does not move.
Okay, fine. Okay, fine. Okay, fine. Ori did see. He saw more than he tells himself he saw. He saw the Salem kid covering his head with his hands, cradling his own head. They were walking away, but he turned back. He saw Salem trying to crawl away. He saw that. He did see that. He does not know if he wishes he had stopped it or if he wishes he had done it. Please, Ori begs inside. Please. He can’t see for the light. Please get here, Danny. “Danny?” he finds he’s said it aloud, not exactly a question. A plea.
He has learned what he’s supposed to do in a kidnapping. Kick him in the balls and run. If he gets you in a choke hold, you use your weight to disable it. Wrists are weak. Joints are weak. But he doesn’t move. All of this is happening in less than a second. In the time that remains, what Ori is thinking about is the girl in the green room. What does she see now? What does she see on her green screen? What will she do when Ori is taken away? Is she already crying, screaming into the contact radio as a yet-to-be-identified infantryman walks toward the hijacked jeep? From the stolen jeep he’ll be hustled, bludgeoned, into a rusted-out Subaru then into a Hamas basement, and that’s it. His face on posters, on bumper stickers. His face, a national wound. Which photo of him will Mom use?
The second figure is moving toward him out of the jeep. Here it comes. Here he comes. A figure in the darkness. Not now, Ori begs. Please, not tonight.
* * *
Miriam falls asleep with her phone in her hands. Yuval gently leans over her to turn out the lamp on her nightstand.
* * *
Ori’s eyes are closed. Ice water in his gut. He is trying to remember his mother’s hands.
“You piece of shit,” the Arab says.
But it’s a familiar voice.
“You piece of shit.” That’s Danny’s voice. Danny’s voice. Of course it’s Danny.
Danny is greeting the Cherry with a handshake, turning to Ori to say, “Yo, did you hear this guy’s Arabic? It’s wild.” Ori is breathing heavy. Danny is saying to the Cherry, who’s throwing the rest of his cigarette to the ground, “Have you met Ori Lev? The shitboy I’m about to murder?” Danny laughs. It’s too loud, like there’s an echo bouncing off Ori’s cold skin. Somewhere outside the gates, somewhere out there, is the deafening slam of a car door. Ori feels his guts clench, and he knows without any doubt, just pure knowing, that if any one of them—the Cherry or Danny or the third guy, whoever he is, still in the jeep—had touched him or made a move to grab him or even just pulled at his arm, that Ori would have shit himself.
“You heard how he stole my weekend?” Danny says, still to the Cherry. “He’s as stupid as he is beautiful, this shitboy.”
“He’s about to piss himself,” the Cherry says to Danny, nodding his chin toward Ori, who is trying to will his mind—beating like a moth against the armory light—to come back into his body. The jeep flicks its headlights and with that cue the Cherry heads back. Danny raises his hand to wave as the jeep drives off.
Only when they are alone does Danny give Ori a pitiful little shove. “Achi,” he says, his voice truly plaintive. “Why?”
Ori knows with all of his heart how precious those three lost hours of sleep were to Danny. All of them can fall asleep like zombies: at the bus stop, leaning against a wall, tying a shoe. All of them are empty and holding on until they are released to go home for a few days to sleep and sleep until they are human again. Ori stole those hours from Danny. He fucked up the schedule, and now they’ll both be trapped on base over the weekend.
Ori can’t look at him. “I swear,” he says, “I swear I didn’t know she’d call.”
Mornings are almost always chilly, even after Passover and closing in on summer. With her free hand, Miriam wraps her light, loose cardigan closed. She loves this gesture, how self-contained it makes her feel. She uses her elbow to lever the heavy-duty garbage bag against her hip. She loves the gray glow that fills the sky before the sun. Lit indirectly, everything around her—the flowering palms in the street median, the cars parked on either side, the dumpster she’s walking toward—seems a slightly softer version of itself, more open to possibility. Perhaps Miria
m is softer too, in this early hour before the people who need her can ask anything of her, or maybe better to say, before she can begin her obsessive monitoring for signs that they need something she can give them.
This morning, like every morning, Yuval rose first. How Miriam loves to lie in bed, soaking in the last sleepy moments of dawn, listening to the murmur of her husband’s prayers. Modeh Ani, a prayer said even before you wash, and because of this, one devoid of the divine names. The prayer is, then, an imperfect offering—one made without the right words. Yet it is no less precious for it. There may be a metaphor there. Yuval’s voice is deep, assured. When they were newly wed, lying together in an empty house, one not yet filled with children or even a dishwasher, he could make her cry out in pleasure just by speaking, lowly and sweetly, into her ear.
When Miriam rose, she hurried right to the toilet. Another blessing in her life: unshakable regularity. It’s always in the morning after Yuval goes downstairs that she has her bowel movement. Always, an inexplicable thrill of terror as she sits on the toilet seat: What, what, what will come out of me?
The routine is that Yuval puts water in the kettle while Miriam takes out the trash for a few moments to herself. When she comes back, Yuval will have finished his coffee; her tea will be waiting. He’ll kiss her forehead, then head to the office, stopping by shul for shacharit minyan; she’ll herd Tovah and Avital to school. That forehead kiss is the result of a negotiation during which Miriam told Yuval she felt neglected when he left so quickly, as if he couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. The kiss is their compromise. Is the gesture less satisfying because she requested it? No. Voicing desire does not dilute fulfillment. She teaches her brides as much—that communication is a mark of goodwill, of bravery, of love. She uses a parable of her own invention. Imagine your favorite part of the chicken is its dark thigh meat. You save this most delicious part for your husband, yourself eating the dry white breast—a sacrifice you’ve made for him without him asking you to do it. Only, you’ll never know it, but he too is making a difficult sacrifice: he hates dark meat, which reminds him of a bruise. He craves the breast meat that he gives up, every time, to his beautiful wife. Two unhappy people, and for what? Just last week, she told this to Rachel, her youngest bride: there is no marriage built on suffering. Rachel had a cup of green tea in front of her, sitting back to tug at one of her earrings—a large pink crystal cube, the kind of gift a boyfriend buys in a remote bus depot on his way back from base. Yuval used to buy Miriam tinny bangles that made her look like a Yemenite bride. She still has them. Miriam knows Rachel’s type: from a good, kosher home, yes, but filled with questioning.
Last night, Ori sent her whiny messages. He sounded annoyed, but he was grateful, she knows. She fixed the problem. She kept him safe.
Miriam opens the lid of the dumpster and heaves the trash bag in. She is at the end of the street. That’s how it works here. Streets end, and then you’re overlooking the hills of Judea. White rock and sparse evergreens, looking tentative and distant, unfolding below her. There are doves everywhere, in every olive tree. Each year, Palestinians come to harvest the olives. A pretty sight.
The houses are not stirring yet. Here again is the gentle hum that animates Miriam’s silences. It may come from the settlement’s fence, which is electric, or was. They keep changing it to make it safer. Razor wire, motion sensors, lasers, cameras.
The settlement is always growing. From here, she can see not just the olive trees beyond the security fence, but the curve of the new developments, inching down the hillside. She’s lived here for twenty years, and always thought of it as a village. Suddenly it is a sprawling place. New houses, new faces she doesn’t recognize: young couples from Russia or America, here to take advantage of the government incentives. So many Americans. She remembers when they built the basketball court. She remembers Ori no more than eight years old coming home from basketball, thin-limbed and delicate, crying. She thought someone had hurt him, but he was crying because he had inhaled teargas, although he did not know it. The stuff floated up from the valley below when the police were dispersing the crowds of Arabs. He came home red-eyed, smelling sour, and Miriam had to laugh a little when she washed out his eyes with milk. “Oh, my love,” she said, “I suppose we can’t keep everything out with our fence.” She tried to explain: “The police were shooting at bad men.” She had him lean over the dairy sink so she could gingerly trickle milk from the carton into his red eyes. “Blink, my sweet,” she said. The milk made white rivers down his precious face.
All at once, the doves let out their trills and flutter up from the lonely olive grove, which Miriam has been staring at with no intention for who knows how many minutes. The sun is up now, brightening the world and filling it with shadows.
Inside
Hamid monitors Muhi’s face. Muhi has been silent—eyes downcast, engrossed in his own thoughts—ever since he began streaming the news from his tablet. Any second now, Hamid can feel it coming, any second now Muhi is going to look up with his tragedy eyes, his thick furrowed eyebrows, and begin on one of his hopeless rants. Death and injustice. Oslo. The Jews. Both of them are sitting on low plastic stools in the storage room, peeling made in albania stickers off of wooden crosses. Muhi’s legs are so long that he looks like a crouched insect. On the news, a kid is being interviewed at an East Jerusalem protest. “They take our lives, our bodies, our homes,” the kid says in a village accent. “We have to protect what is ours.” Muhi looks up. He is about to speak, Hamid can feel the moment coming. What else can he do? If Muhi goes off again, Hamid will die of agony. What else can he do? He needs a distraction.
“Believe me,” Hamid says, before Muhi can get a word out. “Believe me, I think I made progress with Mai today.”
Muhi’s full eyebrows contort, but all he says is, “Oh?” He takes another cross out from the cardboard shipping box in front of them.
They are in the souvenir shop storeroom. All around them are cardboard boxes stacked on cheap metal shelving, piles of crosses, plastic bags filled with Palestine key chains, Virgin Mary icons. Muhi has the news streaming from his tablet, propped up against the legs of an empty plastic chair.
Hamid watches as his friend uses a pink plastic wedge to push off the incriminating made in albania sticker. Muhi has boyish features—long eyelashes, mussed black hair—especially striking given how tall he is, standing at almost two meters. “Believe me,” Hamid says, playing up his own deluded buoyancy for comic effect. “After class, I asked to walk her to the bus, and she said—” He pauses here, holding up an index finger, waits for Muhi to look at him with his dark tragedy eyes, and when he does, Hamid delivers the line: “She said, ‘Maybe next time.’” He lets his hand fall in defeat.
“Oh?” Muhi repeats without much interest. His hands work off a sticker. Muhi is wearing one of his suits, or at least the dress pants. But whereas in the past the snappy clothes made Muhi look sharp, ambitious, now they seem a bit big on him. Hamid wonders if he’s lost weight. Maybe he should ask. There are probably a lot of things that Hamid should ask his friend, but it’s too hard to listen to the answers. Every time Muhi starts talking about his trip to Norway—freedom in Norway, that friend in Norway, can’t stay in the West Bank, can’t live like this, got to get back to Norway, Norway—Hamid needs to cut him off. He can’t help it. He starts talking over Muhi, drowning him out with a pointless little routine about Mai, the rich girl who is breaking his heart.
Hamid wants it to be like it was before, when Muhi in his crisp suit used to dispense advice and all matter of aphorism. Don’t say, “If I . . .” Say, “When I . . .” Hamid searches his friend’s face for signs of an old Muhi that might be coaxed out, like kneeling down to the burrow of a small, nervous animal. Come out, he thinks.
The news anchor has moved on from the protests for Salem (Allahyerhamo) and is now covering an old story that Hamid already saw on his feeds: an American TV chef had an “Israeli food night” in which she made hummus, maq
luba, falafel, and never once said the word “Palestine.” The news lady is reading tweets aloud. “‘They are erasing us, one bite at a time,’ tweets Shab47 from Ramallah,” she says. She’s paid an actual salary to say that.
They have two more boxes of crosses to rid of made in albania stickers. When Muhi acquiesced and finally agreed to let Hamid come hang out at the souvenir shop, he was clear on this: the albania stickers come off, but the genuine olive wood ones they leave on.
Hamid doesn’t let up. “Wallah, love is going to kill me,” he says, then theatrically grimaces and puts his head on his forearms. Honestly, it’s not a total lie. Even as he fools around for Muhi, Hamid really can see Mai flitting across the back of his eyelids. She is soft. In speech, yes, but physically too—neither fat nor thin but soft. And regal! So elegant when she turns away to smile into her hand or whisper something to Noor, that hardmouthed sidekick (and one to be careful of, Noor, with a brother locked away in Mejiddo). Mai is always walking away, walking toward a bus that takes her out of Bethlehem and across a checkpoint that Hamid, with his green hawiyya and no chance of a permit, can’t ever hope to cross. At least not legally.
“Man,” Muhi says at last. Finally speaking.
Hamid looks up, expectant, nervous. Will Muhi play along? Or will he pull them into another black hole?
“Man,” Muhi says again. “What is it with you and these unattainable girls?”
Relief, because it’s fine. It’s fine. This time, it’s fine. “I know,” Hamid moans miserably. “Remember the girl from Nablus?”
“Wallah, I thought her brothers were going to kill you.”
“How was I supposed to know?” Hamid gestures with his cross. “Who would know they were that high up in Hamas?”
Muhi makes a show of beating Hamid on the head and back, but really just giving him little baby taps. Hamid fends him off, making his own show of flailing his arms, of grabbing the back of Muhi’s neck to pull him into a hug. The hair at the base of Muhi’s skull is cut short. Hamid can hear the relief in his own laughter as they pull apart. They have been friends since before they were born.
City of a Thousand Gates Page 21
