The Book of Disappearance

by Ibtisam Azem

  “What happened? Why are you here early? You usually come in the late afternoon. It’s twelve thirty now.”

  “Did you see Akram and Yasmeen?”

  “Yeah, they each drank their coffee here during their break yesterday. Akram came back after closing the shop and stayed here for a while. He smoked more than usual and was absent-minded. When I asked him about it, his eyes welled up, and he said he was ill. He has kidney problems and doesn’t know what to do. He was thinking of Yasmeen and their children. He was going to start treatment next week and had to talk to Yasmeen. He hadn’t told her yet. Then he kissed me on the cheek and left saying ‘till tomorrow.’ He walked slowly though.”

  “Do you think that’s why the shop is closed?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something bigger. They say the Palestinians are on strike today!”

  “Strike? Why would they go on strike?”

  “Didn’t you hear the news? They are saying they want to improve their conditions.”

  “Buy why go on strike? What does improving their conditions mean? Who’s stopping them from that?”

  “What can I say?”

  “I don’t get this nonsense. Why would they go on strike? What do they lack? I don’t care, but they should’ve announced it beforehand. I’ll take my coffee to go today. I won’t be drinking it here.”

  Sara shrugged and didn’t say anything. Roni left and stammered as he bid her farewell. He left Shenkin and its busy cafes, small shops, and the noise of tourists, and headed to Allenby Street. He passed by some tiny shops and thought they were whispering to each other, conspiring against him, and hiding the secret behind the disappearance of Sahtayn’s owners.

  14

  Airport

  Clouds were absent at that hour. The sun took its place, alone, amid the sky of that tiny country. It resembled a big sesame seed. Blood-red dominated the information screens for departing and arriving flights. All flights had been cancelled for the next twenty-four hours. Most understood that, because the country was witnessing an unspecified danger. Therefore, unity in the ranks and the house was necessary. This is what many had said, and what the media had been trying to relay since early morning. But a few travelers were furious about these measures and could not understand the need for them. Nor did they understand the correlation between the strike of the Palestinians, or their disappearance, as some said, and halting all air traffic. People appeared lost in the airport, which was usually a place of utmost order and control.

  A traveler who had not acclimated to the country, even after living in it for five years, and who was sick of the strange logic of things, said, “What is odd about Arabs not showing up for work or going on strike? They don’t work at the airport anyway, so why would air traffic be affected by their presence or absence?”

  He yelled at the woman standing behind the information desk.

  “Why should I care if the Arabs didn’t show up to work, or if they have disappeared? Let them go to hell all together. Why should we give a fuck?”

  The Frenchman stopped yelling and waited for an answer, but she just raised her eyebrows:

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any further information.”

  “Why do they delay travel and what is this strike? Why would they go on strike? If they don’t like it here, they can go to Arab countries. They have more than twenty of them.”

  The woman shook her head again and smiled. The cranky Frenchman stood there, shaking his head too, and then snarled and followed that with a deep sigh. The waiting went on. Many lost any hope of the travel ban being lifted. It appeared that it would go on for more than twenty-four hours. So, they left the airport and returned to where they had come from. Herds of humans, all walking in one direction.

  15

  Ariel

  Sometimes, taking a walk helps him find new ideas. He put on his elegant Geo sneakers. There were a few specks of dirt stuck to the sole of his left sneaker, so he kicked them off with his right sole.

  He put his wallet in his back pocket, his cell phone in the front pocket, and headed to the door. He stood before the key hanger next to the door. He was about to take his apartment key when he glimpsed the key to Alaa’s apartment dangling from the adjacent hook. They had exchanged spare keys in case one of them lost his. He clinched it anxiously and went up to Alaa’s apartment on the third floor.

  He rang the doorbell, then banged on the door. He didn’t wait long and just took Alaa’s key out, and turned it, nervously, inside the lock. He hesitated a bit in his first few steps inside the apartment. What if Alaa was inside? He’ll understand why Ariel is doing this, he told himself.

  “Alaa! Alaa. Ata bu?”

  His voice searched timidly inside the apartment for Alaa.

  “Alaa! Ata bu? Ze ani, Ariel.”

  The aroma of the cardamom Alaa used to put in his coffee hit him as soon as he entered. He must’ve had his last cup a few hours before, otherwise the aroma wouldn’t be this potent. Ariel preferred vanilla. He liked its scent in the cakes his mother brought. Sometimes he would ask her to come just to bring the apple pie mixed with vanilla sugar.

  He stepped inside and shut the door behind him without locking it. His eyes moved steadily in every corner. His back always to the wall as he walked. He opened the doors carefully, starting with the bedroom on the right, his head moving sideways like a surveillance camera.

  Ariel noticed that the curtains were drawn. Alaa only drew them when the sun crept into his bed in the morning and forced him to get up to draw them. He inherited this trait from his maternal grandmother, who left the windows open most of the time. Ariel remembered his conversation with Alaa about that and about his own maternal grandmother, Barbara, the Polish woman with striking green eyes and a pale white face. Barbara didn’t like that there was so much sun in this country. She missed Poland’s winters, she used to say. Ariel used to tease her by asking her why, then, did she leave Poland? She used to get angry, but later she realized that it was his way of compelling her to talk about her life there.

  The burgundy comforter was crumpled over the bed. He called out “Alaa” a third time. He crossed over from the bedroom to the balcony door. There were three stools made of straw and wood surrounding a small table atop which there was an ashtray full of melon seed shells. The white damask roses and mint plant looked like tired dogs panting in the heat. Ariel picked up the empty water bottle that was next to the flowerpots and went to the kitchen through the living room. The balcony had two small doors, one leading to the bedroom, the other to the living room. He filled the bottle with water and came back to water the plants. He went back in to the living room and scrutinized everything. The coffee pot was still on the bamboo table in the middle of the room.

  Alaa was an avid drinker of Arab coffee. The coffee cups were turned over their tiny saucers, which were adorned with Nile blue and dark red. Just as they had left them when they drank coffee the night before and left for Chez George’s. Alaa used to look inside the cups and foretell, half seriously, what fate and the future had in store.

  A New York Times issue fell on the Afghani carpet next to the bamboo table. Why was Ariel studying the place in such detail now? Almost like a vigilant soldier on reconnaissance.

  He rummaged through his memory to remember what Alaa had told him about each item. He wanted to make sure that Alaa was still there and that he hadn’t lost his mind. How can hundreds of thousands, nay millions, disappear just like that? Is it conceivable? He couldn’t believe what he was thinking. He stood in the middle of the living room, lost, looking for something out of the ordinary: a sign, or a signal. He collapsed on the coffee-colored sofa. To his right were shelves crowded with books that overflowed to the surrounding area. Bright-colored pieces of papers could be seen between the pages. Alaa was in the habit of jotting down his notes on these pieces of paper. Some of the books stacked huddled on the floor. Ariel looked away at the window to his left, as if to avoid looking at the painting Alaa had hung on the wall, ri
ght in front of him. That painting perturbed him, but his eyes returned and settled on it again, as if to devour each stroke.

  Someone is lying down, or sleeping. Their body is covered with a velvet blanket. The head is covered with the Palestinian kaffiyyah, the way the youth wear it at protests. Nothing is visible except the eyes. Is it a male or a female? Ariel wasn’t willing to stand up and go closer to read the title. The velvet blanket is adorned with bright green flowers. There is red behind, below, and inside the gray pillow. Is it blood? Is it symbolizing it?

  Ariel began to feel at ease being alone in the apartment. He put his feet up on the table. Nothing was moving except his pupils, expanding and contracting as he gazed at the painting. His eyelashes batting, as if he and the veiled person were eyeing one another.

  He looked away at the window again and a sense of anxiety started creeping, so he got up and went by the window. Looking at the tall trees in the median and on both sides of Rothschild Boulevard he felt that they, too, were looking back at him. He stood before the tiny table under the window. There was a red notebook on it, right next to Alaa’s Apple laptop. Ariel’s fingers touched the notebook as he looked at the laptop. He placed his foot on the table’s pedal. It used to be a Singer sewing machine, way back before Alaa converted it to a table. Ariel doesn’t usually go through his friends’ stuff, but he might find a clue. He flipped open the laptop and turned it on. It asked for a password. Alaa was obsessed with Jaffa, and loved Jerusalem, where he went to work at times, too. Maybe he chose one of the two cities for his password? He typed “Jaffa” but it didn’t work. Nor did “Jerusalem” in Latin letters and various spellings.

  He picked up the red notebook and leafed through it. He doesn’t remember seeing it before. Its last third is blank. He went back to the first page; it had Alaa’s name and one sentence written in Arabic, English, and Hebrew.

  If you find this notebook, that means I have lost it. Please e-mail me: alaa.assaf1967@gmail.com.

  This notebook has no material value, but it does have personal value. Please return it and I’ll buy you a coffee. Cheers, Alaa Assaf.

  Ariel’s hesitant fingers turned the pages more carefully now. He had that feeling he used to dislike back when he was doing his military service. His tasks included reading handwritten letters and translating them from Arabic to Hebrew. His father insisted that he learn Arabic because it would serve him well once he joined the army.

  There was one letter he never forgot. Not because it was the first one he translated, or because the script and style of its author were so elegant, but for a reason he still cannot clearly understand. It was a letter written by a woman named Wa‘d to her lover. Her lover had traveled abroad to study medicine and hadn’t come back to marry her as promised. She was beseeching him to come back so they could be engaged. An engagement would have helped her withstand the pressures from her family. He kept asking her to be patient, but she sent him a farewell letter. It wasn’t clear what she had meant by writing “I will not be with you when my letter reaches you.” Ariel discovered later that she had committed suicide. He tried to follow what was happening to her without his superiors noticing. She, after all, was a target, and not a story that he should follow. He never knew why she committed suicide. Ariel was obsessed with her tale. His father told him to remember that he was dealing with the enemy. The plan was for him to learn Arabic in order to understand the cultural milieu and “know thy enemy” but no more.

  Ariel wasn’t infatuated with Arabic. He liked it, but didn’t love it. His father didn’t want him to be enamored with Arabic. His father was a martyr. That’s what they said. The word seems strange at times, but he learned to accept it, and perhaps even feel good about it. His mother withered after that day. She kept herself busy, worked as a radio announcer, and went out with a few men, but she never regained her vitality. Something inside her was broken. After the funeral, she only listened to classical music. The funeral was without a body. He’d exploded. The chopper exploded in an instant with no prior warning. That’s how Ariel imagined it because of the army’s report. The circumstances of the accident were not clear, or that’s what the army said. The army didn’t say that things were “not clear,” because the army is supposed to know everything. It said that the chopper lost communication with central command and it appears, yes “appears,” that it exploded because of technical malfunction. But the army was certain that no one survived, because no one demanded a prisoner swap, despite the fact that more than one party claimed responsibility for shooting down the chopper.

  He went back to Alaa’s messy, even if legible, script. Looking for the last thing he’d written, he took a deep breath again, as if fearing the oxygen around him will run out. It was surprising that the last entry was from the night before, right after they had returned from Chez George’s. Didn’t Alaa say that he had to sleep early because he had to work the next day? Maybe he had insomnia? Ariel started reading.

  16

  Alaa

  It is almost midnight now, and I feel so tired I cannot fall asleep. Do you remember that evening when I slept at your place in Jaffa, a month before you moved to live with my parents? I was tossing and turning in bed, and had gone to the kitchen five times to drink water. You must have heard me, because I kept shuttling between my bed, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Your voice preceded you out of the dark, and you asked me if I wanted some mint tea. As if you knew, without even asking, that I wasn’t able to sleep in the room next door, and that I was staring at the silence. The silence and not the hush. “Hush” has some peace of mind, but silence is like waiting for the unknown. I smiled even before seeing your face. “That would be great.” We drank the tea together without saying anything. We sat watching the silence, in and around us. That was the first time I felt you were tired of life. We sat for a whole hour and drank the whole pot of mint tea, cup after cup, exchanging a few words about the taste of mint. You said that sometimes it has a rancid taste. I disagreed, but ever since you said that, I feel it’s a bit rancid. When I look back at your life, I am surprised that you didn’t get tired of life until you were in your eighties. Maybe you did, but I never noticed. What am I tired of? Why do I feel so tired? You once said that a human being dies when s/he loses hope and the taste of life. Did you say all that, or am I imagining it?

  “Good Night Grandson.”

  You said it in a night-calm voice and went to go to sleep.

  “Mad, she’s mad.” That’s what my mother said when she discovered that you’d bought and prepared your own shroud. “How did you know?” I asked her. Your grandma told me. She always referred to you using “she” and “your grandma.” I rarely heard her say “my mother.” You bought your shroud ten years before you departed. Ten years. Can I call your death anything but a departure? You could’ve stayed longer with us. Your presence brought us together and gave our lives a special flavor. You were my only grandmother. My father’s folks left him with his uncle, and were forced to flee to Jordan. But they never returned. No one knows what happened to them on the road. Maybe they perished in one of the massacres? They were worried about him because he was so little. They left him with his uncle so they could put things in order in Amman first. But no one heard anything from them. They went and never came back. When we used to go on school trips to the Galilee, or any other place, I used to wonder: Should I tread lightly? Was I walking over the corpses of those who had passed through, and who were decimated in the nakba? Was I walking over a land made of decomposed bodies? When I walk in Palestine I feel that am walking on corpses. The images of multitudes of people escaping in terror are always on my mind. All my grandparents had died, except for you. Do we inhale the decomposed corpses? What are we going to do with all this sorrow? How can we start anew? What will we do with Palestine? I, too, am tired. But whenever I wake up in the morning, I remember you and smile. And I say, just as you used to, “God will ease things.” Then I listen to Fayruz singing “Yes, there is hope.” Because her voice tra
nslates what you used to say, with a slight variation. I think that’s what you meant by “God will ease things.” But is there hope, really?

  Perhaps our presence could no longer give you hope or zest? Perhaps you departed because life became bland. You said that often in your last year. Because people wither and die when they can no longer savor life. You said you didn’t want to inconvenience anyone after your death, and that’s why you bought the shroud. You even put the funeral expenses in a pouch, next to the shroud. But then you gave the money to charity after mother started sobbing when she knew about the whole thing. And after one of the neighbors told you it wasn’t right, religiously speaking.

  Your initial reaction to the neighbor was a roaring laugh. You said, “I’m not going to wait for nitwits to tell me what’s right and wrong. They’re smaller than my foot and have the nerves to tell me what’s right.” Speaking of nitwits, do you remember that afternoon when you were sitting with Um Yasmeen in your courtyard, and the proselytizing sheikhs came to lecture you about faith and religion? One of them said, with an idiotic smile, “You have to wear the veil, Hajja. You made the pilgrimage to Mecca and you will surely be rewarded greatly for that. But a veil and a long gown would suit your age and your faith better than this scarf, which exposes more of what it covers. Do you want to be like them Christian and Jewish women?” You shook your head and let him finish. Um Yasmeen was red in the face and was about to get up and leave. You held her hand and pushed it so she would remain seated next to you. As soon as he finished, you asked her to take off her shoe. You took it and stood up to beat him with it.

  You spat on him and yelled, “Um Yasmeen’s shoe is worth ten of you. Go away! You worthless imbecile. I never want to see you, or any of your kind, in this neighborhood again. I swear by the Ka‘ba I visited, if I see you here again, I’ll pluck your beard. Get out both of you. So, Um Yasmeen is an infidel because she’s Christian? What kind of nonsense is that? Did God give you power of attorney? You have no manners and no sense, you losers.”