The Art of Leaving

by Ayelet Tsabari

  That night, my friends and I smoke narghiles and drink arak, the room thick with apple-flavored smoke and anise. Ali and I sit in the corner like a couple, his hand around my shoulder.

  After the party, on the steps of my home, Ali tells me—a stone in his throat—that he has fallen for me, and my crush on him deflates as though pricked by a pin. For the next few days, as I get ready to leave, he is clingy, desperate. He calls, asks to accompany me on my final errands. He inquires about my plans for the future, when I will be back in Canada, and where I see myself in, say, two years, and I tell him I don’t know. I have no plans. Surely he knows that about me by now? I resent having to deal with this on my last few days in Vancouver. I say things like “I am not looking for a boyfriend,” and “I like you but not in that way.” It is all too little, too late. He’s not hearing me. In his world, my flirting, my attention, can only mean one thing. Women don’t act this way unless they have serious intentions. I wish I had listened to my sister, to Leyla. I wish I could redo everything, and this time be good, be compassionate, be thoughtful. I can’t shake the feeling that I liked the idea of Ali more than I liked Ali, that my contribution to world peace had little to do with the world and more to do with my need for instant gratification. My need for a good story.

  He insists on taking me to the airport. By the gate, we hug. “I will miss you,” he says.

  I gaze at my feet. “Don’t.”

  “I will anyway.”

  * * *

  —

  I WILL EMAIL Ali from Montreal, then Bangkok. I will be in a small fishing village on an island in the South China Sea when the U.S. invades Iraq. I will message Ali from an internet café with no walls in the middle of a jungle, the smell of fish and salt permeating the humid air. He’ll tell me he’s heading back to Iraq for a while, to be with his family. I will cry and wonder if maybe I have feelings for him after all.

  A few weeks later, I will leave Thailand and fly to Israel, already infatuated with someone else. The memory of Ali will make me feel foolish and contrite; I won’t be able to recall the attraction. When I return from my travels the next fall, Ali will be gone. Our friends will tell me that he never liked the rain. He moved to Spain, then the U.S. For a while, our friends will keep me updated, until they too lose touch.

  Sometimes he will pop up as a potential friend on Facebook. My heart will clench at the sight of his picture, his name. I will remember him. I will lower my eyes. Then I’ll refresh the page and he’ll be gone.

  KEROSENE: A LOVE STORY

  I DRANK KEROSENE.

  I dropped the bottle, folded over, stuck a finger down my throat. My hair fell to the sides of my face, the shells I’d braided into it bouncing against my cheeks, cool and dry. The liquid tasted grimy, like a gas station. Like a disease. Sleek and oily, a flammable raw egg. It coated the inside of my mouth, tingly, sharp. Broken glass and jelly.

  I’m going to die.

  I looked up, scanned the market for Raz. Where was he? Thai housewives with canvas bags curled their lips at me. Vendors pointed and whispered. Nothing came out. The poison was absorbing into my insides, itchy, ants crawling inside my skin.

  I’m going to die.

  I tried vomiting again. Flush it out. Quick! Reverse the spell. The plastic bottle rolled by my feet, a gleaming film around its neck, oily fingerprints on the label. The clear substance sparkled, seductive, deceiving, little stars catching the sun.

  Is this what dying feels like? I had spent most of my life fearing other people’s deaths, not my own. It was that cavalier attitude toward my mortality, that youthful, blissful shortsightedness, that had enabled me to live as recklessly as I did. Was I really going to die on a Thai island before I turned thirty? How was it possible? My death—so trivial, so stupid. I thought about my mother in Israel, my family sitting shiva; pictured my friends in Vancouver gathering in someone’s house, wiping away tears. “She thought it was water. She was really thirsty.”

  I shoved my finger deeper, my ring scratching the roof of my mouth.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Raz placed a hand on my shoulder. Finally.

  “I drank kerosene.”

  He chuckled. “Why would you do that?”

  I gave him a hard look. “I thought it was water.”

  Raz examined the bottle of fuel he had bought earlier for fire juggling, now two-thirds full, then took my hand, led me to an empty lot behind the stalls—garbage piled in heaps, streams of dark, greasy water—and left me leaning against a rock. Two barefoot kids watched as I tried to vomit; one of them whispered into his friend’s ear and they both laughed, then scurried away. Without the canopy of trees and tarps, the sun was strong and white, burning another layer of tan onto my skin. My feet, covered in severe eczema, throbbed with renewed intensity.

  Not dead yet.

  “Here.” He came back holding a bottle of water. “Drink this.”

  Some time passed and I still couldn’t throw up, but I wasn’t dying either. My body felt wasted and dirty—hard-drugs dirty, hangover dirty.

  “Let’s go home.” He wiped the sweat off my face.

  “Shouldn’t I go to a hospital?”

  “Nah. People drink kerosene all the time.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “People do. I read it somewhere.”

  I stared at him. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. Half the time I couldn’t tell what was going on in his head.

  “Your body is strong. It will fight the poison.”

  My eyes stung. I rubbed them with the heels of my hands.

  “Believe it,” he said. “Think good thoughts.”

  I wanted to believe it, wanted so badly to subscribe to Raz’s magical thinking. I took a lungful of air, as if it could dilute the poison. The children squealed, chasing a rolling tire. “Okay,” I said.

  He beamed. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him back into the market, gazing down at the blemished asphalt, a blur of flip-flopped feet parting. I climbed onto the backseat of the bike, adjusted my sarong, wrapped diagonally across my chest and tied at my neck like a halter-top dress, and tucked its flapping ends under my thighs. Behind me, the market, the scene of my near-death, diminished as we drove away.

  “You know,” I said at the intersection, “for a minute there, I thought I was going to die.”

  He turned and gave me a funny look. “Seriously? This is how you behave when you think you’re dying?”

  I nodded.

  “Wow. That was impressive. You were totally calm.”

  I leaned against his bare, freckled back, proud as if I’d been praised by my father. His skin smelled of cheap cigarettes and sea salt, smoked fish.

  * * *

  —

  BY THE TIME we arrived at the dock, the boat back to the beach had already left, slicing the South China Sea’s darkening waters, black like oil. The next boat was leaving in half an hour. Raz went to buy water, and I rested my head against a wooden table, fighting intense waves of nausea. A guy we’d known from the beach asked if I was all right. He winced when I told him what happened. “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  He jerked his chin toward Raz. “Aren’t you with him?”

  I nodded.

  “Then ask him what to do.” He lowered his voice. “He’s a bit crazy…but he knows things.”

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙

  THE DAY WE met, the sky cracked open like an eggshell and raindrops the size of pebbles pelted our beach. When the rain stopped, the sea flattened like a sheet snapped over a bed. I walked over to see Tamar and Shai, an Israeli couple I had befriended a few weeks ago, my bare feet sinking into the wet, cool sand. Tamar was out on her porch, wringing the soaked hammock.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

 
I sat down and started crying. “I don’t know. Everything.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Tamar said. “It’s probably PMS.”

  “I’ve been crying all week.” I sniffled. “And my feet are killing me.” I pressed on my inflamed feet with both hands, trying not to scratch. They looked like raw meat. I had caught people staring at them in disgust. Some asked if I had burnt them. My family doctor in Vancouver had prescribed a steroid cream. A doctor in Bangkok had given me injections. Nothing worked. If anything, it had been getting steadily worse; back in Canada, it was only on my toes. Now it was all over my feet, pulsating, itching, aching, driving me crazy.

  A dreadlocked homeopath I saw in Montreal had suggested eczema is often stress-related. My skin’s flaring up was in fact “a call to reflect and reevaluate my life.” The thought of reevaluating my life made me more stressed. Trying not to scratch and failing, over and over again, made me feel spineless and weak.

  “I think I’m having a midlife crisis,” I told Tamar.

  Tamar laughed. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get midlife crises at twenty-nine.”

  “I’ll be thirty in three months,” I said. “Thirty!”

  I had arrived on the beach a few weeks earlier from Canada, where I’d been living for the past five years. I had a one-way ticket from Bangkok to Israel, no money, no job, and no prospects. My temporary home was a bamboo bungalow on a secluded beach, accessible only by a long-tail boat—a motorized, canoe-like watercraft that traveled daily from the nearest village—or a life-threatening bike ride through mountainous jungle roads. It was the kind of place where backpackers went to unwind from the hardships of travel, hang their hammocks, and stay awhile. People came and went, but a core of us—Tamar and Shai, me, and a few others—would remain for the entire winter, pretending it was home. We prepared communal dinners over a bonfire, followed by jam sessions that lasted well into the night. Some of us spun fire, using poi—balls of wicking material attached to chains—or a long staff dipped in kerosene on both ends. We drank local whiskey mixed with Coke from a bucket, and by the third or fourth round, began making absurd plans for the future: we would move together to Tel Aviv or Barcelona, rent an apartment building by the beach, open a restaurant, start a band.

  I was still sitting on Tamar’s porch when I saw Raz coming down from the mountain, emerging from the shadows of the trees. First, his purple sarong, draped around his head like a turban, flashed in and out of sight, then him, shirtless, with a backpack and a drum: a fit but otherwise average-looking guy with a lithe gait, receding hairline, and dark eyes, small as grapes.

  Tamar gasped. “Didn’t I just say we needed a drum for our jams?” A tall man with a guitar case and a blond girl with a fluorescent backpack trailed behind Raz.

  “Welcome to the beach!” Tamar opened her arms in a theatrical gesture.

  I made eyes at the handsome boy with the guitar: British accent, blue eyes, and a long torso. Just my type. The blonde stood a few steps behind. Raz told us in a mix of Hebrew and English that they had been walking the jungle from the village that morning and got caught in the rain.

  He grabbed my Discman from the floor and asked, “Hey, can I borrow this?”

  I frowned. “Um, no.”

  “Okay.” He put it down.

  “This is one of the most expensive things I own,” I said.

  He eyed me with genuine interest. “Really?”

  “This, and my SLR camera. And I just met you, so no, you can’t borrow it.”

  “Okay.”

  “You mean the most expensive thing you have on the beach?” the British guy said.

  “No.” I laughed. “In life.”

  “It’s true,” Tamar said. “She doesn’t even have shoes.”

  Raz chuckled, intrigued. “No shoes?”

  “I lost my flip-flops last week. It’s no big deal.”

  Raz glanced at my feet. I crossed my legs, tucked my reddened feet under my knees. “Who needs shoes?” I said.

  After they left I told Tamar, “Where does he get off? Asking me for my Discman five minutes after we met? I hate how some Israelis think you’re family the minute they meet you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I like him. There’s something about him.”

  * * *

  —

  OVER THE FOLLOWING days, I learned he was almost twenty-one, half Israeli, half American, a scuba instructor who traveled with next to nothing. Chris, the tall, handsome guy, was a henna artist from London. Kelly, the blonde—also British—shared a room with Raz but never mingled with the rest of us. I ignored Raz and flirted with Chris, tried to charm him with my wit, impress him with my travel stories.

  Raz I found infuriating. One day he came out of the water and grabbed my towel from the clothesline outside my bungalow.

  “Hey!” I snatched it from his hands. “I just washed it.”

  He grinned. It seemed like his response to everything.

  Another day he came by my porch with a Frisbee. “Want to play?”

  I looked up from my book. “Where did you get it?”

  “I borrowed it from your neighbors’ porch.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  He twirled the Frisbee on one finger.

  I flipped a page and muttered, “You need to be reeducated.”

  “Reeducated.” He laughed, slapping his thigh. “Good one. You’re funny.”

  * * *

  —

  IN THE AFTERNOONS, I lounged on cushions at the open-air restaurant, nursing a fruit shake for hours, listening to music, and reading. The restaurant, built on stilts and nestled between the trees, was a cooler, breezier place to lounge on hot days. One afternoon, Raz sat beside me.

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Arabic pop,” I said.

  “Do you have any Cat Stevens?”

  I shook my head no.

  “I feel like listening to ‘Peace Train.’ ”

  “Maybe someone has it. Ask around.”

  “You’re right.” His eyes grew round. “Let’s go find it!”

  His enthusiasm was contagious.

  We spent the next twenty minutes asking everybody on the beach for a Cat Stevens CD. I was just about to give up when I saw Raz sprinting across the sand, waving a case.

  We sat with our legs dangling off the restaurant’s railing, sharing my earbuds. At the chorus we joined in. The waiters frowned at our attempts to harmonize. Then Raz jumped to his feet. “I’m going to pick fruit off the trees. Want to come?” I did.

  * * *

  —

  WE STARTED HANGING out together, collecting shells, picking fruit, going for swims. Raz rented a bike one day and showed up at my doorstep. I hopped on, held on to his waist. “Where are we going?” I yelled as the bike cut through the dense jungle.

  “To look for a bald man with a snorkel and a mask.”

  “What?”

  “Long story.” He pulled to the side of the road, next to a curry stall, and bought two plastic bags filled bright yellow. We canted our heads back and drank the curry, then fished out the drumstick with our hands. Raz ran across the road and returned with a water bottle he’d found in the ditch, shrunken and warped by the heat. He held it over my hands while I washed the yellow away.

  “So, a man with a snorkel, huh?” I said as we got back on the bike.

  “You ask too many questions,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  SOON, HE BROUGHT an extra hammock left by some departing backpackers and tied it next to mine so we could swing in tandem. Afternoons melted into evenings as we talked about our lives, our pasts, our heartaches. Unlike most Israelis I met on the beach and in my travels, Raz shifted between two identities, two languages, as did I. We discovered both of our fathers died when we were young. We
both owned next to nothing. We loved the sea, spent most of our lives near it, enjoyed scuba diving and swimming. Raz’s relationship in Israel had ended recently: it was one of the reasons he had come on this trip. I’d been officially single for a year and a half, but my relationship with Anand had died long before that.

  “So you and Kelly—?” I asked about the blonde.

  “It’s not a love story,” he said without elaborating.

  He taught me how to hit the drum, tie knots, make necklaces out of shells, crack coconuts, build a tent from sarongs and sticks. We crawled underneath it and lay on the sand, staring at the pieces of starry sky that peeked between the fabric.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked. “You don’t want to be a waitress forever, right? What do you love doing?”

  I pulled on a flower garland I had hung as decoration. “I don’t know,” I lied. “I don’t even know where I want to live.”

  “Well, what do you like better, Tel Aviv or Vancouver?”

  “I don’t know.” I put my hands on my face. “I like them both.”

  “So that’s your problem? You’re happy everywhere.”

  I had never thought of it that way. I leaned my head back and looked at the bungalows behind us, the candles flickering from their porches. By the water, a man dipped a staff in kerosene and struck a match. The staff lit up and erased the silhouette, the brightness turning everything around it black.

  We were silent for a while, arms touching. The music from the restaurant boomed behind us and the fire spinner drew orange twirls across the inky sky. I was afraid to move, feeling the heat from Raz’s body radiating beside mine. Though he’d been physically affectionate with me, his touch always felt dialed down, neutralized. I couldn’t quite read his signals. Feeling brave at that moment, I said, “Can I kiss you?” He said, “Sure,” so I did, leaning over his sandy, warm chest. He kissed me back but didn’t part his lips, so the moment fizzled like an unfinished sentence. I lay back, face hot, and gazed at the patterns on the tie-dyed sarong. I licked my lips, tasting salt.