by Assaf Gavron
I can’t remember everything he said. Only fragments of ideas and occasional sentences. He talked about Chronos, the Greek god of time. About Native American tribes that don’t have words for ‘late’ or ‘wait’ or even ‘time’ about time’s arrow, a river flowing in one direction only, from past to future, a series of events that cannot be reconstructed; about Stephen Hawking and the ten dimensions. We sat there in a state of shock. We were asking ourselves: what does he want, this man? What is he going through?
After the meeting we crowded into the kitchenette to drink coffee.
‘To think we used to swallow all his bullshit about time,’ Bar said. ‘We actually used to get motivated by some of that crap!’
I didn’t say anything. But I wanted to say: don’t you see that it’s not Jimmy who’s changed, it’s us? It’s us. We’ve changed.
At the end of the day I called Fahmi and picked him up on the way to Tel Aviv. He had one of those little leather pouches on a belt that backpackers like to strap round their waists, which he dangled over his thigh. We didn’t talk much on the way: he seemed a little stressed. It was nothing, he said. He just wanted to get to the bar.
The place was heaving, but I managed to find us some seats at the corner of the bar. Fahmi was happy with the spot. Bar arrived and started telling us about the Maccabi game and explaining the finer points of basketball to Fahmi and then Dafdaf called and wouldn’t get off the phone. She’d had a major row with her husband and wanted to know what I would do–as if I had a clue! Me, who hadn’t managed to get married; who hadn’t even managed to not get married. It felt as if she was trying to tell me something but I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, and they turned up the volume of the salsa music so I had to hang up. It was nearing midnight by the time we finally broached the subject of Tamer Sarsur, and Bar spread his hands and shouted out. I leaned over and yelled in his ear.
‘What do you mean, “Nailed it”?’
‘What?’
‘You said, “Nailed it”!’
‘Didn’t you hear what he said?’
I shook my head. ‘Let’s get out of here! I can’t stand this! Can’t hear!’
‘What?’ shouted Bar.
I pointed outside. ‘Out of here!’
Fahmi looked taken aback. ‘Out? Why?’
I put my mouth to his ear. ‘I can’t hear anything! Let’s get out of here!’
‘No! Stay longer! I want to look at the girls!’
‘Come back later! Talk outside! Then come back!’
I struggled through the crush towards the exit. At the doorway I turned around and saw Fahmi reluctantly trailing after Bar, his pouch slung over his shoulder, as if he were a child dragging its heels. I walked out: it was like getting out of a vacuum cleaner. It felt like the first air I’d breathed in two hours.
‘Goddam, that was noisy!’
We decided to walk down to the beach in front of the Hilton, where we found three sunloungers. We lay on them and listened to the sound of the waves whispering. There was no one else around on the beach; from time to time a pleasant shiver ran through me to remind me that summer was finally loosening its grip. I eased my lounger back, as if I were moon-bathing, and lit a cigarette.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘can someone tell me what is going on?’
‘It’s very simple,’ said Bar. ‘Tamer fucked the professor’s wife.’
‘What? How do you know?’
‘It’s what Tamer’s friends told Fahmi. That he was fucking “some doctor’s wife” in Tel Aviv.’
‘But he’s a hundred years old. You saw how old he is. She’s…what?’
‘Fifty-four, according to them,’ said Fahmi.
‘So Tamer was screwing Warshawski’s wife. What’s the link to Guetta? How exactly does this mean “nailed it”?’
‘You’ll have to ask Warshawski,’ Bar said.
‘Me? Why me?’
‘Who else? This is all to do with you, Croc. Not me.’
‘You don’t have to ask him at all. It’s obvious.’ This was Fahmi. He was lying on the middle lounger, and both of us turned our heads towards him. ‘Warshawski paid Guetta to kill Tamer.’
‘What?’
‘You said there was money involved. You said there was a secret meeting. You said nobody was talking. I’ll bet you that’s what it is.’
‘But Guetta was just a kid, just out of the army.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, where did he meet Guetta? How did he come across him?’
‘How do I know?’
We didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Eventually I said, ‘I don’t think so, Fahmi. Things don’t work like that in this country. To murder a cheating wife–it doesn’t make sense. We’re not some…not some African…’
‘Don’t forget, he’s only an Arab.’
‘So what?’
‘An Arab’s life isn’t worth anything. The doctor would have killed plenty of Arabs in 1948, so what would one more be to him? Not a problem. He was fucking his Jewish wife. A good enough reason to kill an Arab.’
We fell silent again. Now I didn’t know what to say. Fahmi was fiddling in his leather pouch again: he’d been doing it all night.
‘What you got in there, Fahmi?’
He pulled his hand back out. ‘Nothing. It’s, uh…’
‘You want to know what I’m thinking?’ Bar said. Even at midnight under a nearly full moon, he was still wearing his shabby baseball cap. Now he shifted it slightly to one side. I waited, staring up at the stars, listening to the unhurried waves.
‘I’m thinking that what Fahmi said sounds pretty reasonable.’
I stared at the stars some more, absorbing this.
‘So what does that mean? What should we do?’
‘Not “we”, Croc. This is all about you. I’m done now. If you ask me, you should go to Ichilov and have a little chat with the professor.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then you’ll see.’
We stayed on the beach a while longer, saying little. I was thinking about Jimmy, trying to remember exactly what he’d said in his surreal speech and feeling a little sorry for him, when Fahmi broke into my daydreams. Didn’t we want to get back to the bar? I said I didn’t feel like it: the noise there was killing me. Bar didn’t fancy it either, so I asked Fahmi if he wanted a lift home.
He was silent all the way to Kafr Qasim. I had thought that over the course of the day we’d spent together we’d become, if not close, then kind of friends. Yet there were no signs of it that evening. It was as if he’d come because he was obliged to, as if it were a continuation of the work he’d done for Time’s Arrow. But it wasn’t work: we hadn’t paid for the information he’d dug up, and he hadn’t asked for payment. I mean, until that evening, the whole Guetta thing had seemed like something between friends. I couldn’t understand what had happened. It was difficult to understand why he’d bothered coming to Tel Aviv at all, if he was going to be so withdrawn and distant, if he wasn’t, in fact, our friend. Whatever, I thought: I’m not going to bring it up. We rolled in silence up to the entrance to Kafr Qasim and I slowed to a halt to let him out, and Fahmi dug his hand once again into his little leather pouch–and that’s the last thing I remember.
42
‘Hello, sweetheart. Let’s see how you’re doing…oh, hardly anything. Less work for me! But not so good for your body, lyubimyi moi.
‘Your big day today. The medical committee, Fahmi. Everyone’s going to be here this morning. Your sister, your sweet girlfriend with the perfume, your father. Good luck, sweetheart.
‘Ya polyubila tebya s’pervogo zglyada, Fahmi. At first sight, Fahmi.
‘The committee are talking to the intensivists and the neurologists. Then Dr Hartom will present her conclusions to the supervising consultant.’
I don’t know exactly what that means.
‘Fahmi, can you hear me? You have to wake up now. Be a good boy. Wake up. Fahmi. Ya lyubya tibya, Fahmi.’<
br />
The Al-Aqsa mosque is calling me. Rise up for your nation against those who exploit us. For you, my steadfast nation, together we will fight. Call with all your strength: Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar! We will revenge every drop of blood, every tear shed by a mother for the children taken from her. And for every shahid that dies another will rise. Soon you will attain eternal happiness with the prophets. With all your heart yearn to see the face of death. Strike like champions. At last the time has come…
‘Please carry on, Dr Hartom.’
‘Thank you, Dr Baram. Well, the patient was injured in a car. Its door was open and he was probably getting out. But he was still at least mostly inside. The exact location of the explosion has a very precise impact on the type of injuries we get in this context. A closed car is a particularly lethal space.’
‘Yes, of course, the collapse inwards occasioned by the vacuum. The implosion in addition to the explosion. It’s a wonder he’s still alive at all. Amazing that no limbs were amputated.’
‘Exactly. That’s why I mention the opened door. Almost certainly he was hesitating, and threw the grenade away from the car at the last moment before detonation. Forensic evidence located the exact point of the explosion two metres away from the vehicle. There was another passenger, but he doesn’t remember the…’
‘Hold on, don’t tell me this is the case of that what’s-his-name, the Croc…?’
‘Exactly. This is the case.’
‘Extraordinary. So, what have we here?’
‘A small fragment of shrapnel in the frontal lobe. You can see the point of entry here.’
‘Mmm. I wouldn’t have even noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out.’
‘It supports the theory that he might have regretted his actions. Apart from the trauma to the forehead, his injuries were light. Minor shrapnel wounds here, here, here and here. The other passenger suffered only shock and a few minor flesh wounds from the shrapnel.’
‘And cerebral function, Doctor?’
‘I might have determined brain death at any point over the last few weeks, but he responded to touch, music, smells, voices of relatives.’
‘Mmm…What kind of responses?’
‘Perspiration. Dilation of the pupils. Sexual arousal. Facial expressions and certain sounds…’
I had so many chances–in the bar, on the beach, during the drive. Perhaps I drank too much. Or perhaps it was too little. I was trying to drink enough not to be afraid. But I ruined everything. I couldn’t do it. He was silent the whole way and then we reached the entrance to the village and…what happened?
‘Mmm…very interesting. And you’re saying that in the last forty-eight hours there has been a regression?’
We sat near the sea, me and the Croc and the Croc’s bald friend. The sky was full of stars: half as bright as daylight. Now the skies are grey and the rain is wild. The muezzins are calling me to the mosque but I am not worthy to go. I played with the ring of the apple. The beer played its music in my head. Why don’t they play Amr Diab any more? Where is Lulu? Where is Rana? Not a good Muslim woman. But such a sweet Muslim woman. Leave me, brother, leave me, Father, leave me. I’m going now…
The Croc stopped at the entrance to the village. I toyed with the ring. I opened the door. This was the moment. There was no heroic option. Either way.
Now are you satisfied, Bilahl?
Lulu? Is that you? Where are you, Lulu?
‘I’m fourteen today, Fahmi. Wish me a happy birthday. And say goodbye now. They told us to say goodbye. If you can hear me…’
Our secret place, overlooking the Jordan Valley. The winter will come and rain will fall, but it won’t bother us. The air will still be the same air of my childhood. There will be no army. There’ll be no dirt ramp. Life will be normal, Lulu. You will grow up and go to university. Father will be proud of you. Bilahl will be released. I will forget Kafr Qasim. I will forget the Croc and Tel Aviv. I will try to forget the soldiers in sunglasses with their hands in their pockets watching me strip and then stuffing my socks into the crack between the ceiling and the wall, to block the leak there, saying, ‘Look! Now you’ve actually done something for your people. Now the rain won’t leak on to those who come after you.’
I can smell you, Lulu. I can…oh! I can feel your tears on my face, Lulu.
Before I left home, I looked at the grenade for a long time, maybe half an hour. I looked at it and thought: our land, our people, the shuhada, the pictures in Al-Manar, the mosque. I closed my eyes. I opened them and it was still there. I picked up the smooth green apple and laid it in a pouch I found in the closet in my room. I called Rana. The phone rang three times. She answered. I didn’t speak. She asked who was there, twice. I said ‘I love you’, silently, in my heart, and hung up and walked to the village entrance, my throat dry as sand. That was where he picked me up. That was where we returned after midnight.
‘Svetlana, could you hurry, please? Tell Mr Sabich that it’s time to…are you all right? Svetlana? Come on. Be professional, please.’
‘I’m fine, Dr Hartom. I apologise. I’ll be fine. Mr Sabich, if you could please…Yes, I know, I understand. Oh, my God. You’re going to be with God now, Fahmi…’
So what is going through your head when you are sitting in a green Polo on a clear night, a hand grenade inside an imitation leather pouch on your lap? Your finger in its ring, like the wedding ring you never had, like the wedding ring he never had, bringing you together in holy matrimony, you and the grenade–the pomegranate, the apple of knowledge. What is going through your head? Beer is bubbling through it, and all the pretty girls of Tel Aviv are dancing through it demanding orgasms, the waves are whispering through it, and all the people who told you what to do, where to go, what to believe in, who to hate, who to be. Grandfather Fahmi, who taught you what a hero was and wanted you to be fierce, and Mother, who taught you that sometimes there is no reason for things, and Bilahl, who taught you hatred, and wanted you to believe, and Rana, who taught you tenderness and how to be vulnerable, and Father, who taught you patience and wanted you in Bir Zeit, and Lulu, who taught you happiness, and only wanted to be near you…What would be left of you after you took away what everyone told you you were? Who were you, eventually, when you were only you, when the donkey carried you back into yourself? And who were you not, eventually, because your past was stronger than you were and came to you, demanding to be paid? And who do you want to be now, with the ring around your finger and the Croc by your side in his little green car? Do you even care? Is it important for you? You wanted your life to have a purpose. But will it matter at all, to anyone or anything, if you take your finger out of the ring, open the door and climb out of the car and go back to Wasime’s house, and in the morning set off back home to the camp or to Murair to find work, to eat, to sleep, wait, grow older, marry, live quietly? Though you’ll have to spend days and nights in front of the TV with your ears filled with the sound of destruction, your eyes with the disgrace of blood, your nose with the smell of decay, your tongue with the taste of fire? Does it matter if you build a bomb? Rot in the ground? Start university? Go to Australia? Hold the grenade to your chest or throw it away? Does it matter?
I’m running out of the village now and Dayek is there and time is passing at the pace of generations. Lulu, my love, Rana, my love. Time is passing in milliseconds. I am floating in the sea, and the beach–the beach is gone.
43
Warshawski looked even older than he had the first time I saw him. This time it was only him and me, in a small café in a side street. ‘Not in the hospital,’ he’d insisted. Under his sparse white hair his scalp was pinkly visible. His beard was well trimmed but his eyes were full of defeat and–it took me a few minutes to comprehend this–full of fear. Professor Binyamin-Moshe Warshawski feared me. On the phone I’d told him that I knew all about Tamer and his wife and about Guetta and the money.
‘Do you want money?’ he’d asked.
‘I want to meet, and to hear the whole
story.’
‘And after you hear the whole story?’
‘Then I’ll decide what to do.’
I ordered hot chocolate, he ordered tea. Outside the café window it was clear but cool. My hearing was almost back to normal. After several weeks of constant pain, the discomfort from the wounds to my calf, my thigh and my lower arm was beginning to subside. I spent a couple of weeks with Mother and Father, and when I came back to Tel Aviv, Dafdaf came and stayed in the flat along with my brother, who flew over from Maryland to be with me. Between them they dealt with every phone call or text or email from Noah’s Ark and Left and Right and all the rest of them. They said no to everything for me. Including Duchi.
‘Are you going to go to the police?’
I gave Warshawski my coldest stare. You could see the fear crawling all over him.
‘I don’t know. I want to hear the whole story.’
‘Who are you? Who are you acting for?’
If I wanted to know anything, I had to maintain his fear. I couldn’t say who I really was: it was the card I had to keep hidden.
‘We are whoever we are, and we work for whoever we work for. I can’t tell you who it is but let me give you some friendly advice: don’t mess with us. It won’t be worth your while.’
He asked for a cigarette. I raised my eyebrows in surprise but lit up for both of us. His hands were trembling. ‘I’m not supposed to smoke,’ he said. I waited.
‘I discovered my wife was having an affair. There were signs. Her skin had a glow to it. Dvora always said I had the eyesight of a hawk. I also have an extremely good memory.’ He exhaled smoke, with eyes lowered, the cigarette vibrating in his jolting fingers. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘What is the point of this? You won’t understand.’