by Malka Marom
She hugged her infant daughter tight to her chest and cried out, “Like vultures they will descend upon me all too soon. Oh, my child, my daughter, take what is left of my life and enjoy it.” Her umpteen bracelets jingle-jangle as Tammam points her finger at me and declares, “She is the first of the vultures—”
“Oskoti—hold your tongue!” Abu Salim snaps at her, startling his infant-daughter, Salimeh. She cries. He spits, then spews a torrent of words too fast for me to understand. And all too abruptly, with a tough hand, his senior-wife grabs my arm, shows Tammam how my hair stands on edge of goosebumps, and says, “Look at how your words frighten our guest.”
“Aywa. I see you are truly my sister,” says Tammam, her tearful eyes almost pleading.
And so I am transformed—just like that, faster than I can jot it down—from vulture to sister.
Why did I ever think that life in Badu tents was tranquil?
Nothing prepares you for this place. The drastic contrasts—dew and drought, sun and shade, open desert and the claustrophobic compound, the serenity of the surroundings and the Badu: tense, strained, volatile. It is almost as if they are swimming, fighting the current, in a river beneath a river. The river they show us—the river of customs and manners, poems and legends, a thousand and one Arabian nights—is calm and flows inexorably out of some ancient headland. And the river they wish to hide—the one they forbid all strangers to glimpse, even stranger-friends and scholars; the one in which they keep their secret of secrets, shame of shames, fear of fears . . . and the mysterious magnet that draws you to them—is treacherous and changeable. Tammam can barely keep her head above water.
Azzizah throws her a line time and again. Her secret-river talking is not as fast as it was, or else I’m starting to catch more words, and parables. I can imagine a hundred and one tales when I hear her telling Tammam:
“We, who are accustomed to the tents of the high are not about to descend to the low. . . A falcon, not a sparrow, you lift your hood and bring your prey. . .Tongues twisted by evil eye of envy. . .Blood exposed, dir balak—watch out, be careful—honour, reputation, patience . . .”
“Aywa, yes,” responds Tammam. “Patience is better than thinking, if only you can manage it, oh self—”
“You frightened your stranger-guest,” Abu Salim muttered to his wives.
“No, no, I’m not afraid,” I protested, too much.
Silence. Abu Salim rolls himself a cigarette, slowly, deliberately, prolonging and compounding the feeling of uncertainty, suspense, and fear that creeps into my gut with nearly every Badu silence. Like an idiot I brace myself now, as if I have said or done something wrong and Imsallam Suleman Abu Salim is going to lash out at me, punish or reward me, as he does his wives. He coughs and coughs. His tobacco smells like hashish.
“The desert is a place safer for a woman than for a man . . . are you ready? Write it to remember,” he demands.
“We Badu so value a woman,” he dictates, “that one of our names for woman is amarat a’beit, meaning the main pole of the tent, the pillar of the house. If a woman is violated, it is as if the house or tent has collapsed. Thus, the curse of curses, Yekhrab beitak—May your house be destroyed—means: May your woman be violated. And even in blood-price, a woman is valued more than a man. Aywa, if a man is killed in battle or in a fight, someone from the other side, the side that spilled the blood, must be killed to avenge the death, or a blood-price must be paid in his stead.
“Blood price: forty camels for killing a man; one hundred and sixty camels for killing woman; three hundred and twenty camels for killing a pregnant woman.
“Even a wealthy tribe can become impoverished if one of its sons harms a woman, even if in error. That is why women wear black, to prevent error. Even in the old days, when Badu tribes raided one another and plundered, the men would flee if too weak to drive back the attackers. But the women and children stayed. They knew that, no matter how their menfolk fared, no other Badu tribe would stoop so low as even to frighten a Badawia, let alone harm her.
“Aywa, we Badu are Arabs, true Arabs, not fellahin, like the Felastiniyiin—Palestinians—who have slaughtered your Yahodi children in Ma’alot.” Abu Salim spits behind his back. “You are surprised, I see. You think we Badu know nothing.
“Did your men kill the killers of your children?” he asks me. I can’t remember what reprisal if any followed the slaughter in Ma’alot.
“Sometimes the killers escape,” I mutter.
“Not from us Badu, Wallah—by God,” Abu Salim says. “With us the Tribe, the Hamula—the Clan—and the Family are held responsible for any wrongdoing by any man, Wallah. If I were to kill a man, then run and hide in the vast expanse of Sinaa, his kinsfolk would be sure to avenge his blood with mine or my brothers’, my sons’, my nephews’, my uncles’, or my cousins’, their children’s children’s or mine, even if it took five generations,” says Abu Salim, raising five fingers. “Even a Badawia married to a son of the family who spilled the blood is bound to kill even her husband to avenge her blood kin.
“It is maybe the biggest mistake you can make, to let pass even the slightest transgression, for it can but lead to very great trouble—as with the old Negev Badu who had heard that the virility of his youth would return if he ate the meat of a bird from the distant land of Habbash, a bird called Habbashat—”
“I never heard of such a bird remedy,” mutters Azzizah under her veil. “Ghul . . . Ghul—Tell on . . . Tell on . . .”
“Aywa. The old Negev Badu bought the bird and kept it and fed it twice a day so that it would have more meat to restore his strength.” Abu Salim goes on, in the lilting voice of Badu legend telling: “And then, one day, his Habbashat bird was stolen. Right away he gathered his sons and told them, ‘There is great danger, unless you find my Habbashat bird.’ But his sons answered that he was well rid of the bird, for it was making an old fool of him. It matters not what his Habbashat bird was making of him, the old Negev-Badu told his sons, ‘the only thing that matters now, important for us all now, is to find my Habbashat bird and bring it back to our compound.’ But his sons thought his desire to restore his virility got the better of him, and before long his Habbashat bird escaped from their remembering. And then, a few weeks later, three goats were stolen from the family’s herd. High and low they searched the whole Negev desert for these goats, but found not even a hoof-print. When they came to their father for advice, ‘Find my Habbashat bird’ was his advice, which they ignored, as before. But then, a few weeks later, their camel herd was stolen and the robbers violated their women. ‘Because you did not avenge the theft of the Habbashat bird, the whole desert thinks us easy prey,’ the old Negev Badu told his sons. Aywa, in this world of wolves, never be the sheep.
“We Badu can wait forty years to seek revenge, and even then think we are hasty. We Badu can wait, Wallah, we true Arabs do not lack patience like you strangers, always looking at the minutes strapped to your wrists. We Badu have as many minutes as there are grains of sand in Sinaa. Forever—daimann—Arabs will condemn you Yahod to live with the fear that the Arabs will push you into the sea—for, if the fathers fail, the sons will try, and their sons.”
Like Arik, his son will fall, and his son’s sons, forever and ever—daimann . . .
“How can a war, or a bloody tribal dispute end in a sulha—in peace—if you must always avenge blood for blood, or for a blood-price that depletes all the resources of your tribe?” I ask him.
“Oshrobi, oshrobi—drink, drink.” Abu Salim hands me another glass of tea. “For, even as you sit in the shade, the dry desert air and the ever-blowing winds dehydrate you.” Imsallam Suleman Abu Salim, wrapped in layers and layers of clothes, advises me to do the same, “For layers of clothes keep you warm in the shade. And in the sun, they protect you from sunburn and dehydration.” One pot of tea after another is brewed. We sip glass after glass of steaming tea. And still it’
s cold, damp, dismal . . .
Why are they fussing over their stranger-guest? Their enemy-guest? Why did they invite me to tents they forbid all strangers to enter?
Why did I fly halfway around the world and back to come to this God-forsaken place?
j
To escape—from myself. That’s what my sister thinks. That’s why I ventured to the desert to this wilderness. That’s how my sister sees me.
Yes, the little one who used to insist we call her “Lallik” because it sounded like “Arik” and “Leora.” She was not yet nine when you went, my Arik. All the grownups she loved were stricken by grief. And some of the children around her told her that I would have to be chained-anchored to your gravestone for seven years, if the airforce didn’t find you or your body. Other children told her that you were dead and buried and I’d have to marry your best friend, Yehoshua, in seven days or seven weeks. But next she heard from her little friends that her sister, Leora, flew to Canada with little Levi—just as she was about to be chained to your grave. From other children she heard that I flew to visit-stay with my mother’s aunt in Canada for seven days, or seven weeks. Seven months later, she got it from nearly everyone around her that her sister, Leora, was a low-down dropout, a deserter, barely in mourning for her husband, Arik, before marrying that wealthy Canadian, Dave . . . A good war widow would never have done such a thing. No, I should have become a living, breathing monument to you, my Arik. My kid-sister didn’t shun me, as others did. She simply refused to let me get close to her.
On one of my annual trips home I saw that, suddenly, she’d grown up, in her high heels, fashionable clothes, trendy hairstyle, skilful makeup, and wearing a diamond engagement ring . . . Her house is only a ten- or fifteen-minute walk from my hotel at Herzliyya on the beach, but the distance is too great for her. And, on more than one occasion, she invited me over and a locked door and an empty house greeted me. No explanations, no apologies.
I ask for neither, of course—not from her, not from anyone in The Land. And yet, no matter what I do or don’t do, someone, inside or outside our circle, will confront me directly or whisper behind my back that a dropout has no rights here in The Land; no right to demand, criticize, question, or state an opinion, and certainly not to complain, especially not about anything remotely connected to The Land, the Nation, the State. I have effectively been gagged for more than two decades, silenced not only in person, but long distance, by mail, by phone, and . . . I allowed it to happen.
By now, it doesn’t seem strange to anyone but me that no matter what anyone says to me, I don’t voice disagreement, disapproval, criticism, or anything that might be interpreted as negative. I revert to the positive, supportive, encouraging, uplifting, for something to say—and to the very people who have tried to silence me. But so draining is the effort to censor myself that to be with even the ones I love has become a burden. I’ve got to take a break, be by myself for a while. But they, uplifted by me, urge me to stay—until they are all talked out. Then, almost like an opera singer after an aria, sounding the last note of the finale, they expect me to applaud. After a week or two of that, whether they have reserves of fresh material or not, they get tired of performing. And then the questions begin to build like a chorus: “Don’t you have to get back to Canada . . . to your work . . . to your husband?”
Were it not for Levi, your brother would shun me. I’ve betrayed everything you lived and died for, he believes, and he clearly can’t stand the sight of me. So, I’ve erased signs of my presence when he was around, uttered not a sound, hardly breathed. But a day before I set out for this desert compound, I drive over to your parents’ to part from them and I see him there.
“Would Arik give or deny his consent for Levi to serve high-risk duty? What do you think?” I ask your brother.
He frowned, as though thinking that only a low-down dropout would ask such a question of a man whose sons were serving high-risk duty this very minute. Seemed he was itching to tell me what he thought of a person who would consider using any law to get her son out of front-line service. But Arik’s parents were sitting with us, so he said instead, “Whenever Levi’s number comes up, he’ll be a goner, be he in Canada or in The Land, serving high- or low-risk duty.”
His parents, heaving a sigh, gave him that look. It’s even sadder now that he’s their only son. Your brother shrugged, as if reconciled to the notion that your parents would never accord him his due; to the day they die, they’ll regret that Arik got killed, not him. And then, to add insult to injury, your parents went on to remind him how in the last war—the Yom-Kippur War, fought only five years ago—he was sick with worry for his sons—not for his daughter, even though she was also serving compulsory army duty then, because she had been exempted from high-risk duty, as are all women-soldiers in The Land these days. “How quickly we forget,” your father said.
Next your mother turned to me and said, “How can you even think of waiving the boy’s exemption after your sister tells the whole country that your son wants to serve high-risk duty, to risk his life to atone for your sin . . .”
My sin—dropping out of The Land.
That sister of mine, thinking I’ll let it slide, no doubt, like the umpteen times she stood me up, greets me with her practiced smile when I finally track her down at my parents’. She and my parents haven’t heard me raise a voice here in many years; the shock when I explode at her is all too obvious, scary, painful.
“Where in the hell did you dig up this crap about Levi feeling he has to atone for my fucking sin, even if it kills him? . . . To you I’m a dropout, but not to Levi . . . To you, not to Levi, it’s such a sin that you shut me out for more than twenty years, not only here but Outside . . . Six thousand miles you fly to New York, only an hour by plane from Toronto, but not once have you been moved by curiosity, never mind love, to fly the distance, see where Levi grew up, how he lives, how I live . . . And you think you know enough to make such a pronouncement! For more than twenty years, I’ve been sitting on a suitcase with one foot in The Land, the other in Canada. And you think I dropped out!
“You have no idea how I wish I could . . . No idea what a peaceful country Canada is. No idea what Levi is giving up to return to The Land. No idea what a burning idealist the kid is. No idea how he loves to fly, how good a pilot he is. As best as he knows how, Levi wants to defend The Land, the Nation, in the front lines—like his father, Arik’s brother, his sons and the best of his friends, Gingie . . . Why is that so inconceivable to you, you have to invest him with such a puny motive—atoning for his mother’s ‘sin’ reduces him, and you, the Nation, The Land . . . For so little was Arik wasted?
“Or are you afraid Levi will fall like Arik? Is that why you invested him with such a motive? No way would I waive my son’s exemption for that. Is that what you thought?”
All the while, my sister stroked my mother’s arm and my father’s, like when she was little, to take the pain away, make it better.
I phoned her later. She was sleeping, her husband said. A while later I called again, and she says she’s about to sit down and eat.
“I just phoned to say goodbye. I’m going to Sinai first thing tomorrow, you know,” I told her, and before I could add, “Let’s make a sulha—a forgiveness—”
“Shalom,” she says, and hangs up on me.
Would you be as unforgiving as her, my Arik, or would you remember and count in my favour the devotion of my youth? Remember how beautiful I was in your eyes? Remember how you loved to hear me laugh, how you whispered, “Your thighs are like a palm; let me climb, drink. Your lips are . . .” How I long to caress you, to kiss you, to love you now. Oh, how I remember the muscle of your youth . . .
In my requiem years I couldn’t make love without feeling unfaithful to you, my Arik. Dave knew it before he married me. He said he understood it, respected it. I believed him, took his waiting as an expression of his love for me. But now . . .
Dave thinks, or rather pronounced, unequivocally, that I’m going through a midlife crisis, as he calls it. That’s what compelled me to make an eighteen thousand-kilometre U-turn—from Sinai, to Toronto, to Sinai—he maintains.
“Dad,” is what Levi calls Dave.
“Abba,” he calls you, Arik. He looks like you, your son Levi, speaks Hebrew like you—and English like a Canadian, like my husband, Dave.
His dad won’t move to The Land, not even for one year, let alone the three years of Levi’s compulsory service.
Levi thinks I’m running off to the desert because he and Dave have put me in a situation whereby I must choose between my husband and my son.
I have no life of my own, our Levi thinks; no dreams of my own; no fantasies, yearnings, cravings that have nothing to do with husbands or sons.
CHAPTER 9
In a grand swoop, the sun rises above the cliffs and, in minutes, the carpet-blankets, even the firewood, has dried up. Only the dewdrops trapped in the desert plants remain: “The pasture,” Abu Salim calls those desert plants, “the pasture that sustains our camels and goats, which in turn sustains our Badu way of life.”
A desert splashed in sunrise gold—while sand carried on the wind prickles like shards of glass—dwarfs us.
Azzizah makes shade, propping open the side flap of Tammam’s tent like a sort of a veranda awning, with a couple of rusty poles that were once water pipes. Next she moves the welcome carpets to the shade, where it’s so cold I put on my parka.
Instantly, it seems, Azzizah has lit a fire in the scorched fire-circle here in the shade at the side of Tammam’s tent.