Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “Your father will come home much sooner than that,” I told our Levi.

  I went mad, people said. She would never have dropped out, abandoning The Land to marry some Canadian only a year after her Arik went missing, were she not clear out of her mind, they said. Even now, some say that, sane, I wouldn’t be venturing to Sinai. Those infected with madness are never cured, some people think. Like malaria, madness can flare up any time.

  So, all these years I tell no one of this feeling that visits me from time to time, that you are still in Sinai, Arik, living with Bedouins . . . Such a notion—call it wishful thinking or fantasy—is not out of line, according to the guidelines for the wives of the missing-in-action. In fact, such a notion must have visited most everyone in the family; otherwise, they wouldn’t have suspected that I am going to Sinai this time to track you down, my Arik. And they wouldn’t be saying that I should go to a psychiatrist, not to the desert, would they?

  Who knows, they might be right.

  But wouldn’t it be something if I tracked you down after all these years, found you in some compound of some Badu clan that forbids all strangers to enter, not only their tents, but their maq’ads—their guest-receiving-places? No outsider would have heard even a rumour that this clan exists, in such complete solitude this Badu clan has lived—for centuries perhaps, or maybe just since you bailed out of your flaming plane.

  Landing in some deserted dry riverbed, you cracked your thigh bone, like Jacob; dislocated your left shoulder; and smashed your right arm. You could barely crawl to a spot of shade, a drop of water, a twig to build a fire. And when the pain didn’t knock you out, you cried for help. But no one heard you for days. The desert nights assailed you with frost. Then, each day, the desert sun first thawed your bones and then broiled you. You were unconscious, frost-bitten and dehydrated, by the time a couple of camel-riders found you.

  A Yahodi pilot—a Jewish Israeli pilot—they knew as soon as they saw your tattered uniform. Wallah, Israel will pay a fortune to ransom him, the camel-riders thought, and Egypt might pay twice as much for this pilot of their arch-enemy and the military secrets he is sure to divulge under torture. So, as fast as they could, and careful to keep you alive and hidden from smugglers, raiders, spies, soldiers—Israeli or Egyptian—or from anyone who might snatch you from them, the camel-riders carried you to their forbidden mountains.

  And there, in a Badu compound so remote and isolated, inaccessible even to camels, they nursed you month after month, until you walked with only a slight limp and used your left shoulder and right arm only slightly awkwardly. But, even after all these months and all the Badu remedies, amulets, and care, you remembered nothing from your life before the war; you couldn’t remember your name, never mind military secrets that would interest Egypt. You knew only whatever the Badu had taught you during the months they cared for you.

  Now, having invested so much of their heart in you, they couldn’t part from you—not even for the fortune Israel was sure to pay . . .

  “Oh, there was a man, but look, he is no more. His plane engulfed in flames plunged into the sandstone mountains . . . But not on a silver platter shall the State be delivered . . . No, each man shall pay with his blood . . . Each man shall pave with his bones . . .” The pine by the gravestone that bears your name has grown tall. So has your son, my son, Levi. He is as tall as you were the last day you stepped out of the room-and-a-half that we called home.

  It’s our son’s turn, my Arik. Our Levi starts his army duty three months from now. He wants to serve in our air force, like you, to be a pilot like you. He even took flying lessons in Canada, and now has such a head start, he’s licensed to fly jets, not only in Canada, but here as well. Still, he cannot serve in our air force as a pilot like you. The law of The Land does not allow an only son to serve high-risk duty, in the sky or on the ground, without the parents’ written consent—yours, my Arik, and mine. But only on me does he work for this parental consent. And he is not a child now. I don’t like to see him nagging his mother for permission like a child, and God knows it is not his fault that he is our one and only child. But how in the hell can I consent to waive a law devised to protect his life—the only living trace of you? What right have I to strap him to the altar? I see no sign of the angel that had spared Isaac. I see no end to the war here. Is it not a life-and-death decision your son is badgering me to make—alone?

  I will not decide alone, not this time. This time, my Arik, you damn well better assume your share of responsibility for this boy that you and I brought into this world. Ever since he was six months old, I have kept you alive for him—alive in the present, not merely in the past; not larger than life, but part of it; not as the carrot or stick, to encourage or to punish him, but as a man, with demands, expectations, disappointments, self-doubts, conflicting emotions, contradictions, ambivalence, and opinions. Oh, it was a terrific workout for my imagination. But, in this decision, I am not going to imagine. Do we give him our consent or not?

  Come on, give me a hint, a sign . . . It’s midnight, the seven heavens are wide open. Open up to me for once when I need you . . . Oh, tonight, more than ever, I wish you were here—or gone from my life, once and for all . . . The more I miss you, the angrier I get, and tonight—I long for you more than ever.

  “There was a man, but look, he is no more . . .” Only in dreams can I feel your breath on my face, my beloved Arik.

  “Woe to you if you waive this law that exempts from high-risk duty our only living link with our son Arik and, God forbid, Levi gets killed. We will hold you responsible,” your parents told me when I parted from them yesterday. I shouldn’t have allowed Levi to take flying lessons, they added. I shouldn’t have told the kid that he’s as good a pilot, if not better, than you; I should have flatly said “no” when he first asked me for my consent . . .

  Your parents were not telling me anything I hadn’t told myself—and Levi—in moments of weakness. In moments of strength, I’d illuminated for him the dark crevices of fear that had compelled me to overprotect him. In moments of strength, I had reinforced his courage to fly, to overcome fear—his and mine, if not your parents’.

  Neither Levi nor I will ever know the state of fear your parents have lived in ever since they lost everyone and everything they knew and loved in the Shoah. “If such unimaginable expression of man’s inhumanity to man could happen in a country as civilized as Germany, it could happen even in America and Canada,” your parents believe to this day. “In a fool’s paradise, millions of Jews live in America and Canada, like we did in Germany.” No one is happier than your parents that Levi decided to return to The Land.

  But you know, Arik, Levi didn’t exist for them in his first five years of life. After you fell, for nearly five years they couldn’t muster a drop of love for anyone alive.

  And then, one winter day . . .

  Levi was five years old. It was one of those February days when the sky was blue, the sunlight gold, the almond trees in their celebrated bloom, and the scent of the jasmine hedge drifting with the sea breeze up to your parents’ front balcony, where Levi was building a model airplane. I managed to coax your parents to come out of their shuttered rooms and away from the fumes of their oil heaters. It was warm on their balcony, but your parents didn’t feel it. I don’t remember how long they sat wrapped in layers of sweaters, jackets, and shawls. Then, just as it seemed they were dead to the world, your father peels off his shawl, and your mother heaves a sigh and says, “What a beautiful day for someone.”

  “Yes, for us,” pipes up little Levi, turning his head just as you had in the photo your parents snapped when you were his age. And all of a sudden your parents’ eyes met and they looked like they used to, before you went. Then, just when they turned and looked at Levi, as if they saw him for the first time, your father covered his eyes with his hands and kept shaking his head, “No! No! No!” Yes, yes, yes—your mother nods her head and, weepi
ng, leads your father back to their shuttered room. Halfway, she turns to me and says, “You better take the child away . . .”

  “I’m not leaving until I finish building my model,” the child announced. He had a mind of his own even then.

  “You’ll finish later,” I told him.

  “No!” he balked. “I have to build it now . . . because now I see how to fit all the pieces, and later the glue will be too dry to build with.”

  “I’ll buy you another tube of glue,” I snapped, torn between a compulsion to withdraw with your parents and the instinct to protect my child. And Levi was hitting and running now . . . and carrying it way too far, even before he grabbed the mugs of tea I had brewed for your parents and flung them in their direction. Too angry to think, I was slapping any part of him my hand could flick-flack, when I heard your parents yelling, “Stop beating the child! Leora! You are killing him! Stop it! Stop it!”

  I couldn’t believe my ears, my eyes. Just as Moses beat the stone and water gushed out, I beat the child and your parents snapped to life, opened their arms to shelter their grandchild.

  “Go . . . Go to your Abba’s Abba and Imma,” I whispered to him.

  But he muttered, “I want to go back to Canada, Toronto, to be with Gingie . . .”

  “Is Gingie your dog?” your mother asks him.

  “No.” The child cracks up.

  “Gingie is a boy, your friend?” says your father.

  “Yes,” says Levi, stepping over to your parents. And now, hardly pausing to breathe, he goes on to fill their ears. “Gingie’s name is not really ‘Gingie,’ but because Gingie’s hair is red, everyone calls him ‘Gingie’ . . .”

  I looked after Gingie then, while his parents studied in Toronto. We lived like an extended family for my first seven years in Canada. Had it not been for them, would I have stayed Outside in exile? God only knows.

  Soon after Gingie’s parents finished their studies in Canada, they bundled Gingie off with them back to The Land. Levi and I were the only Israelis in Toronto then. Or so it seemed.

  It was the same Gingie who had talked me into buying a rusty old clunker for this desert journey—and for the desert trips he is planning to take with his best friend, our Levi. I never saw a kid as crazy about Jeeps as this redhead. That’s the only secular keif—pleasure—Gingie couldn’t give up when he became a born-again Jew. In search of the Great Find, as he calls my tired old Jeep, he combed the whole of The Land, then skipped his religious studies to overhaul it. It probably ate him up that he yielded to this secular “weakness” of his. He had kept postponing our departure date; as if I have nothing better to do with my time than wait—for him to escort me to the desert; for Dave, the Canadian I married, to decide to move to The Land. And for you, my Arik, to share the responsibility for the decision your son nags me to make . . .

  Around midnight, seven hours before our departure time, the phone rings in my hotel room—the redhead is calling up to postpone again, I think. But I pick up the receiver and a voice I’ve never heard before says, “Hello. Leora?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Tal. Tal Granot. I phoned to tell you that Gingie has transferred your Jeep to me. I’ll escort you to the desert, if that’s all right with you.”

  “What happened to Gingie? Is he all right?”

  “Yes. Gingie tried to reach you before he set out for the Territories. He was offered a job there, starting this morning. He told me your departure time had been set for seven o’clock this morning. That’s too early. The Jeep still requires a bit of work. I’ll collect you at nine.”

  “What did you say your name was? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch it.”

  “Tal. Tal Granot.”

  “You don’t sound like Gingie’s friends from the Block or the Faithful.”

  “No, I’m a kibbutznik, Gingie’s former commander.” He chuckled. “See you at nine.”

  “Shalom. Le’hitraot—see you.”

  “Shalom. Shalom.”

  Only at home, in The Land, would a man and woman who had never met decide, after a brief phone call, to embark to deserted terrain that demands they trust each other with their lives. Only in Hebrew could I tell in but a few words from this Tal—his mettle, his values, even his madness and the bond that bound us: that invisible indivisible bond forged by a shared dream, the prophetic spirit imbued in our ancient ruins, the unremitting heat of our long summers, the stinging salt of our seas . . .

  He must be free of commitments to job or family, for the next seven days at least, this Tal, I thought, and he probably loves the desert, craves challenge and adventure—otherwise, unless he owes Gingie a hell of a favour, why would this Tal have agreed on short notice to roll in the Sinai Peninsula with a woman Gingie had probably described as “the mother of my best friend, whose first husband, my friend’s father, was a pilot shot down in the Sinai War . . .”

  Ah, Arik, I can hear your brother, my sister, and her husband now:

  “Mad to travel to the desert with a person you don’t know from Adam . . . The Land today is not like The Land you remember, not like what Arik had dreamed of . . .”

  CHAPTER 3

  First day in the forbidden tents

  August (?) 1978

  One week (?) after leaving Herzliyya

  “Wake up, wake up,” a voice whispered. Sounded like a man’s voice, but it could have been the wind or just another dream. The eyelids opened, but it was just as dark as when they were closed. Dark and silent and still—as if God were holding his breath. Then, suddenly, it was shivering cold, and the blanket felt heavy and soggy, like after a rainfall. The next moment, or so it seemed, it was sauna hot; the blanket felt bristling dry, and blinding red circles started to grow and ripple inside my eyelids, as if I were watching a stone sink into a blazing lake. And when I opened my eyes, all I could see were black dots popping out of a painful white light. And all I could hear was the roar of the wind against my ears. And, with the wind, a smell arrived that slowed the pulse as though the blood sniffed danger, an enemy—an ambush; no, fresh-baked bread.

  Yes; smells like bread and ambush both.

  I’d smelled them before, long ago.

  Get up, I told myself. Shouldn’t have waited so long to take that sleeping pill last night. Where in the hell did I put my sunglasses? Sun, wind, blasting, like fire in the eyes. Tearful, I groped for the sunglasses.

  There. After I put them on, I could see slumbering goats, saluki dogs, the infant-girl also sleeping, and the two Badawia wives sitting by the fire and refuelling it with dry goat dung, just as Ahmed used to do in the meadows that rolled between Qalqiliya and Kfar Sabba.

  There were meadows where houses, shops, and factories stand today, and a blazing carpet of bewitching wild poppies conjured by the first rain. The poppies were as potent in death as in life. That is why, in the summer, no one would venture into the meadows. Even police dogs avoided the place in their search for Jews and Arabs fighting each other and the Tommies.

  I kept it secret in my heart as a child, how I wished to cross that divide, and be inside the Arab houses—so close to my home town, Kfar Sabba, I could almost touch them from my window in the enclosed porch. At night they looked like a constellation of stars. In daylight they changed colours with the shifting angles of the sun. And in the heat of summer, the plain that stretched in the divide would shimmer like a lake, so wide I could barely see the hills. Only for a moment or two in the early morning, just before the summer sun would steam-dry the dew, could I see the Arab houses clustered uphill. At high noon the summer sun would bleach them out, and, in the late afternoon, a purple haze would veil them. But, when the winter rain washed away the dust that clogged the air, the horizon became wider than ever, and it seemed but a short walk from my hometown to Qalqiliya.

  From opposite directions, Ahmed and I led our goat to the meadows. Ahmed seemed as surprised to
see me at first as I was to see him, and just as afraid. He was as little as I was. And, like in the scary movies, the meadow earth was steaming after the rain. And purple cyclamen bloomed among the poppies, white and yellow narcissus scented the air and beckoned the bees. But snakes crawled up on the rocks to warm their blood in the winter sun. Like albinos, they were sun-shy in summer and kept under the rocks and the tangled thistles and thorns that shaded the weeds that the goats loved to munch on.

  “Dir balak—watch out. Step on a snake and you will die of snakebite,” Ahmed would tell his mother’s goats and mine. The first words of Arabic my mother’s goats—and I—knew, we learned from Ahmed. “My kinfolk would kill me if they knew that I even looked at your shepherd-girl-child,” Ahmed told my mother’s goats.

  “My kinfolk would punish me if they knew I looked at your shepherd-child-boy,” I said to his mother’s goats.

  “Why, because I am an Arab?”

  “No, because the men of your tribe are like the poppies: one glance, and you are bewitched for life. That is what I heard my kinfolk say.”

  “But that is what I heard my kinfolk say about the women of your tribe . . .”

  Bread and ambush.

  Thirty or forty goats are napping only a few feet from the blanket-carpets by the fire. The two Badawia co-wives are sitting on one blanket. Next to them, the infant-girl is sleeping on another. The blankets are spread on the ground—littered with animal dung; goats’, saluki dogs’, camels’ . . . Two camels, out in the blinding sunshine, seem to be munching gravel, sand and stones.

  Not a blade of green around here. But farther up, or down—I wish I knew where north is here; I can’t even tell if that speck of shimmering green is far or near, if it’s a tree, a bush, or a dream-image like the dream-lake of dancing light across the fire smoke. But now the wind shifts direction. The lake disappears with the smoke, and the Badawias start coughing and spitting. They have to lean down, almost to the ground, to avoid spitting on their veils. Why do they veil their faces when there is no one to see them but each other?