by Eshkol Nevo
She got off at Acre. I couldn’t quite catch a glimpse of her, and maybe that was a good thing, it left room for the imagination. That, after all, is the important thing about the moment a book is born: It needs to have something unknown. A gap you will want to bridge with your writing. And of course, it should relate to some pain you have suffered. So that you are linked to the moment by an invisible tunnel, like the ones you dig in wet sand on the seashore until your hands finally come together—
* * *
—
When I woke up on the morning of our civil wedding in Lefkara, Cyprus, Dikla wasn’t in bed.
There was a note on her pillow: I went out to take a short walk.
The marriage ceremony in the deputy mayor’s office was scheduled for one o’clock in the afternoon.
And at twelve thirty, Dikla still hadn’t returned.
There were no cell phones then, and I was forced to wait for four hours, during which I moved from euphoria to fear to anxiety to total realization, based on many clear indications from the weeks preceding our trip, that she was about to cancel everything.
It was so clear to me that I didn’t even put on my groom’s clothes. I stayed in my tracksuit. And every once in a while, I went to the window to look, just in case. But all I saw were the famous lady embroiderers of Lefkara sitting at the doors of their shops, embroidering. And embroidering. And embroidering.
At twelve thirty-one, Dikla came into the room. And along with her, an unfamiliar smell.
She kissed me on the mouth.
What happened? I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
I had to think for a while, she replied, her expression serious.
About what?
For the last few weeks, I’ve felt like I was being swept away by a strong current and I never stopped to think: Is this what I really want?
Okay. So what did you decide?
Yes.
Oh, great.
Are you angry?
Very. But we don’t have time for that. The ceremony is in half an hour. Do you want to change into your dress?
Of course. And you? You’re going to stay in your tracksuit? Actually, you look good in it.
Then we went to the deputy mayor’s office and read aloud the vows we had written in advance and kissed and wandered around the village of Lefkara and bought a few pieces of embroidery to cheer up the famous, dejected-looking embroiderers and drank lots of red wine and made love again and again in the large white hotel bed and flew back to Israel and had a party for family and friends and those four hours of her disappearance were swept far under our shared consciousness, along with the unfamiliar smell that had risen from her and that we have never spoken of. It wasn’t until the time she stayed at the desert ashram that all sorts of brief, discomfiting images from Cyprus flashed through my mind. How I stood at the hotel-room window, muttering to myself, Come back, come back, please come back.
* * *
—
She came home yesterday. Took off her backpack and propped it up against the wall.
I stood up from the couch and hugged her, unburdening myself of a full week of longing, but her entire bearing reminded me of a line from the Shmulik Kraus song: Give me a minute to get used to you again.
So I went into the kitchen.
Want something to drink? I asked. I’m boiling water.
I’ll make it myself, she said.
We stood close together in the kitchen. Not touching. Not looking directly at each other. Taking a quick glance, I noticed that her face was relaxed, the way it is when she comes home from water therapy with Gaia, and she was suntanned, which looked good on her. But I knew that compliments would not be well received now.
We took our cups of tea into the living room. There’s one long couch there that can seat several people, and perpendicular to it is an armchair. She sat down on the armchair and wrapped her hands around her cup without sipping from it. Which left me no choice but to sit on the long couch alone.
So how was the Tantra festival? I asked, and added a forced smile, like someone adding a smiley face to a text.
I didn’t go to the Tantra festival, she said.
But on the ashram site, it said—
Is that how well you know me? I was there for the weekend, but the minute the place started filling up with all kinds of huggers with rasta braids, I took off.
Really?
Aha.
So where…?
I went to see Shira.
Shira?
She nodded.
At Sde Boker?
Yes. I called her and asked if I could come.
And she agreed?
On the spot. One of her roommates had gone to see her parents in Metulla, and the teachers gave me special permission to sleep in her bed. Where are you going?
Ah…to…to get cookies. Want some?
No thanks.
* * *
—
I didn’t really want cookies. But like Effi, the graduate of the anger management workshop from Minneapolis, I preferred to cut off contact and move away from the situation before I said things I would regret. He had stepped out of the car into a snowstorm, and I—I went into the kitchen and pretended to look for cookies. I opened and closed a cabinet and a drawer and another cabinet, although I knew exactly where the box was, and meanwhile, tried to absorb:
Not a sorrowful widower Dikla met in the desert but our eldest daughter.
But still, betrayal.
When that daughter learned to talk, she used to tell me five times a day: I love you. And draw red hearts on slips of paper that she put on my keyboard. When she learned how to write, she would draw a heart with an arrow piercing it: On one side of the arrow she wrote “Shirush” and on the other, “Daddy.” For years, we had a silent bond that sometimes upset Dikla, who remained outside it, and now—
When I returned from the kitchen, I was already two people. One sat straight and continued speaking with Dikla, and the other withdrew into himself.
So you were with Shira for three days? I asked as I placed the plate of cookies on the table.
Yes, with her and Nadav.
Nadav?
Her boyfriend.
She has a boyfriend?
She has a boyfriend.
I don’t believe it.
One of those nature types. With curls and sandals.
But Shira…she’s so…
So what?
I don’t know. Vulnerable. She…
She’s absolutely fine. And so is he. You should see how he looks at her.
But…I don’t want him…to use her.
Forget it. He’s madly in love with her.
Shira has a boyfriend. Wow.
Yes. And she…asked me not to tell you.
Why?
You know why.
But—
Listen, she’s happy. She’s really found her place there. I never saw her like that.
What…you really talked? You had a conversation?
Not just a conversation. A heart-to-heart conversation.
No kidding. I mean…it’s great that you talked.
It’s that Nadav, he’s a good influence on her, she suddenly opened up to me. Like those flowers in the desert that open at night.
She didn’t ask you why you suddenly showed up.
She did.
And what did you say?
That I needed some time away.
Which is true.
Which is true.
I can’t believe she has a boyfriend.
She has a boyfriend.
And I can’t believe she told you not to tell me.
You should see them. They walk down the paths of Sde Boker hand in hand.
I really should see them, becaus
e I can’t imagine Shira with—
One night he brought a pot of soup to the room. He made it himself. He added all kinds of herbs he picked in the herb garden. And he requisitioned bowls and tablespoons from the dining hall.
Are you sure it’s your daughter who’s in love and not you?
Come on, really. It’s just so awfully nice to be near it. Love…in fact, it’s a beautiful thing.
At their age.
At every age.
Yes. At every age.
And it’s such a relief…that she’s happy. We’ve wished for it for so long.
I don’t know, I said. I don’t feel relief.
Why?
Maybe because…I wasn’t with the two of you.
But—
And I don’t want to be happy too soon.
I picked up the plate of cookies. I offered her some again. She shook her head and hugged herself.
Are you cold? Do you want to come and sit next to me? I asked. You’re so far away over there.
I feel good here, she replied, and took a long drink from her cup of tea.
Okay, I said, and drank from mine.
We didn’t speak for a long while.
There was a time when our silences were relaxed, I thought.
In the end, it’s simple mathematics, I thought. The number of thoughts you have during a conversation with your wife that you don’t share with her, divided by the total number of thoughts that pass through your mind during the conversation, equals the chances you will split up soon.
* * *
—
How are the kids? Dikla finally asked.
Fine, I replied. They had a good week. And I wanted to add: But I had a bad one.
I missed them.
We missed you, too, and every night, when—
But I needed that time. I’ve been chasing my tail ever since Shira was born, and if at any time during those years a doubt slipped into my mind, I told it to go away, I have no time for you. And then…then Shira left for boarding school and you…you came back with that story from…Colombia, that you made up or didn’t make up, I don’t know anymore which is worse, and that forced me to say to myself “Stand still!” And think. That’s what’s happening now. I’m standing still. Thinking.
Okay. So…did you reach any conclusions?
I’ve had a few insights.
Want to share?
No. They stay with me for the time being. Tell me, how’s Ari?
They’re trying some new drug on him now. Developed in Canada.
You don’t say.
Yes. The chances are slim. I’m even afraid to hope. But imagine if he gets well?
I hope so. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.
Are you coming to bed? I asked.
In a little while.
Okay, I said, stood up, kissed her on the forehead as if she were my sister, and went to the bedroom. I waited a few minutes in the hope she would join me, but when I heard voices coming from the TV in the living room I understood that she wouldn’t. I felt both disappointment and relief, because as much as I wanted her, I was afraid of being rejected.
I texted her father: She’s back. (He didn’t understand why she hadn’t answered his calls all week, so I had to make up stories to calm him down.)
And to her, I texted a line from our song, Johnny Shuali’s “Sometimes.”
Is there a meeting with readers that you remember in particular?
It was before the civil war in Syria, but even so, I knew no one would believe me when I said I was going to a meeting with readers in Damascus. So I told everyone that I was going to eastern Turkey. Which was true, because that’s where I would be smuggled across the border. Everything was arranged through e-mails with a British go-between, Jeremy. He was the first to contact me and say that a reading group in Damascus was discussing the Arabic translation of my book and the members wanted to know if I was willing to meet with them there. I replied that it sounded a bit problematic, technically, and he e-mailed back that most of the technical problems were solvable if I happened to have a foreign passport. I wrote him that, as it happened, I did. I was born in Bern when my parents were there on a sabbatical, so in principle, I had a Swiss passport. Which had expired. I traveled to Basel, where I received the next e-mail from the head of the Damascus reading group. Jeremy forwarded it to me. He wrote in fluent English that the group was very excited to hear that I had agreed to visit them and explained that I need not concern myself about security measures. Among the members of the reading group were high-level officers who would guarantee my safety throughout the visit. All that remained was to set the date and time of the meeting and book my flight to Turkey. They would pay for it, of course, and also take me on a tour of the city. The only thing I had to do was make sure my Swiss passport was valid.
In the following weeks, we tried to set the time for the meeting, which turned out to be a complicated business. Their holidays did not coincide with ours, their Sabbath was on Friday, and the smuggler’s trail from eastern Turkey to Syria was open only a few days a month. In the end, with Jeremy’s active mediation, we found a time convenient for everyone.
I wrote in my diary: Izmir. Eight o’clock in the evening. Meeting with readers.
I didn’t want to write “Damascus,” in case someone saw it, was alarmed, and either tried to talk me out of the escapade, using valid, logical arguments, or else accused me of being a traitor.
At dinner at Dikla’s father’s house in Ma’alot, I had to really control myself. Her father was born in Damascus, grew up in Damascus, and was imprisoned for one year in Damascus for wanting to immigrate to Israel. Dikla says that he never talked about Damascus. When they were kids and asked him what it was like there, he said he didn’t remember anything. That all of it had been erased from his mind.
Then, two days before my trip, he suddenly remembered. In a Damascus open market, there were artichokes the size of watermelons, he said, and everyone at the table was struck dumb with astonishment. There were spice stalls there, he said, that made you sneeze when you just walked past them.
Is it large, that market in Damascus? I asked him. The others were too stunned to speak.
Twenty times larger than the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. And I’m not exaggerating.
What are some other places worth visiting in Damascus? I asked.
Why, you’re planning to go there in the near future? he chuckled.
I have a trip to Izmir and thought I’d pop over afterward, I said (the truth is sometimes the best lie).
Everyone at the table laughed. But their attention didn’t waver. Even the young grandchildren leaned forward to hear more about their grandpa’s forgotten childhood. And he spoke—looking at me but speaking to everyone—about the Barada River that crosses the city, about the Great Mosque and the Jewish quarter, as lucid and detailed as a tour guide. Then, as suddenly as the window of his memories had opened, it closed. Khalas, he said in Arabic, enough. I talked so much that it made me tired. Who wants fruit salad for dessert?
At the end of the evening I went over to him and asked if he happened to remember the address of his childhood home.
The house behind the synagogue, he said. That’s the address.
No numbers?
Not in the Jewish quarter. But why are you so interested in Damascus all of a sudden?
I’m thinking of writing about something that happened there, I said (sometimes time transforms a lie into the truth).
Ah, he sighed. Writing. Deep down, he never understood why his daughter had chosen to marry someone who didn’t have a real profession, but he knew her and her semi-Syrian stubbornness, and he knew that objecting would not help. Just the opposite.
* * *
—
I left on Sunday. I knew I was doing something irresponsible, but ei
ght years of suburban living can drive a person so crazy that all he wants is for something interesting to finally happen, for God’s sake.
The driver of the van that waited for me on the smuggler’s trail played a Zohar Argov cassette. His best hits. I knew that under no circumstances should I let it slip that I knew that Israeli singer, but still, melodies have hidden power, and in a moment of inattention, I hummed along with the song “Elinor.” The driver looked at me in surprise through the rearview mirror. A beautiful melody, I explained quickly in English, and he stared at me suspiciously but continued driving.
I moved from the first van into another vehicle, but not before I was blindfolded with a handkerchief. I tried to sharpen my other senses so I could pick up what was going on around me, and based on the voices, I decided that there were three other people in the vehicle with me.
There was no music in that vehicle, and only occasionally ululating songs drifted through the windows from the street. An eternity later, my co-passengers offered me water. I drank without seeing and a bit of the water spilled on my shirt. I heard more and more sounds of the city: horns, drilling, street vendors. Okay, I didn’t really hear the street vendors, but after my father-in-law’s stories about the Damascus market, I imagined I was hearing them.
When they removed the blindfold, I was on a small stage in a dark cellar that reminded me a bit of a club in Tel Aviv, the Left Bank. There were around twenty people in the audience. Bassel came over, shook my hand, and apologized for the blindfolding. I’m sure you understand the sensitive nature of your presence here, he said, and I nodded. He picked up the microphone and introduced me. From the little I understood, I could tell that his introduction was based on my Internet biography, which was filled with minor inaccuracies. I used to correct anyone who introduced me using that Internet biography. But as time passed, I began to believe that it really was my biography.
While he was speaking, I looked at the audience. One of the men in the last row looked like Ron Arad, the missing-in-action airman, in his last photo, with the thick beard and sunken eyes, taken more than thirty years ago.