Sulha

by Malka Marom

  For a flash, as I was about to climb back into the Jeep I saw how minuscule the granite mountains are—like tiny ant hills, and Tal and I like a couple of ants much smaller than the piece of straw we’re dragging, and vulnerable to the sun and shade—both wearing dark djinn-demon protective eyes. I laughed and laughed; never before had I felt such a release, from much more than the shackles of remembering, duty, propriety, the conventional, the mundane, the trivial. Never before had I felt so happy to be alive. Never before will I be the same Leora, I felt, delighted with this new sensation of freedom.

  Tal watched me, with the wise amusement of an old man who had been through it all.

  The Jeep looked like it hadn’t been touched since we parted. Just like then, the sleeping bags filled the gap between our seats; the green toolbox was stashed under my seat and, under his, the army holdall containing the classified maps and cartons of ammunition. And behind the rolled-up sleeping bags, within easy reach from my seat, the carton containing our “snack bar,” or “combat rations.” And on the two-by-four, supporting the canvas roof, the list we had scribbled of the names we gave to the chunks of desert we had crossed, and the “restaurants” we stopped at, and the “hotels” we checked into. And next to that list, on the canvas roof, that portrait I drew, like a child—exaggerating his furrowed brow and square jaw and the dent in his nose. And next to the jerricans in the back, the white and red first-aid box, my brown knapsack, his khaki paratrooper’s kitbag, and loads of provisions to spare. He had changed nothing in the Jeep, knowing all too well the bliss of finding something constant and familiar in the pervasive otherness of a journey. That was his gift to me, one of many . . .

  As the shadows stretched long, the Jeep circled and circled, the cliffs spinning all around us sunset gold. Then, Tal shouted over the clank of the engine: “The Gates of the Wadi . . .”

  I hardly recognized the place. Here you could see how fast the drought was drying up waterholes, forcing Badu by the thousands to move, to change their way of life and cluster together for survival. The shantytown of sorts that only forty days ago had sprawled no farther than the banks of this wide dry riverbed now covered the slopes of the mountains that encircled the Gates. Defeat was carried on the wind in the stench of sewage mixed with the smoke from cooking-fires fuelled by goat and camel dung, and the sweat born out of misery and resignation. In the flat of the wadi, there was not only one water tank, like forty days ago, but three huge ones trucked over by Israel, looking like three white islands in a sea of black goats. Countless shepherd children and women stood there, waving at the Jeep. If A’ida, her husband, and children were among them, I didn’t see them. It took the Jeep a minute to pass that sprawling shanty metropolis—a minute, and then there was no sign of a goat or a Badu. Another minute, and the night swallowed the straggling rays of the sun. In that instant, the temperature dropped thirty degrees or so, and with it the noise of the engine, it seemed. The high beams revealed the dry riverbed sloping gentle, wide, and full of tracks: wheels, camels, goats, men’s shoes, children’s bare feet, and Badawias’ sandals. Azzizah and Tammam wouldn’t believe that the Jeep had rolled in to the Gates of the Wadi by sundown. It takes two days at least to cover the distance by camel. They are probably eating supper now—rice and tea. We should have left a carton of provisions back at the maq’ad, I was thinking, and must have said it out loud.

  “What?! . . . Couldn’t hear. Speak louder,” Tal shouted over the engine clamor, his eyes locked on to the high beams, pushing back the night as if to make room for the Jeep. The soft green light that spilled from the dashboard dials coloured his t-shirt, green now, like the hair and the goosebumps that swelled on his arms. Wrapped in his parka and in myself, I had forgotten how cold the night wind had become.

  I could live in his enormous parka, and I had to fold my legs under me like a pillow to sit tall enough for my arm to encircle his shoulders with warmth. His hair was a tangled mass of dusty curls. His neck tasted of salt, and I could feel every shiver of mine echo in him . . .

  CHAPTER 31

  “The desert is wasted on tourists,” Hillel told us. “They can’t wait to get out of the crowded city, but the minute they see the wilderness, deserted, they start looking for a crowd of Israelis . . .as if we Israelis couldn’t have pulled through the decades of war without some secret thing going for us, something besides courage. But no one clings to Israelis for safety like us Israelis. Comes night and every Israeli who travels the desert likes to camp in my backyard.”

  It has nothing to do with him being an Israeli-Yahodi, Azzizah would have told him; it is because he sits too close to plentiful drinking water. The closer you squat to a water source, the more certain you are to be burdened with guests. That is why Abu Salim’s tents were not pitched close to the well. Hospitality is sacred, but, Wallah, even an oil-rich sheikh couldn’t afford to shelter, feed, and entertain every thirsty mouth in the desert. If Azzizah were to see how plentiful the water is at Hillel’s Nature Conservancy post, she would have been glad of the gold she wears to ward off the evil eye of envy. Water was so freely expended at Hillel’s post, even to quench the thirst of flowerbeds. To protect the flowers, they had put up tall bamboo fences and had transplanted acacia and salvadora trees, at least half of them dying of transplant shock. And to make the post smell like home—why else?—they also planted jasmine climbers.

  Hillel lived in bachelor quarters that looked like they’d seen more than a tourist-girl or two. These girls must have hated to tear themselves away, waiting until the last minute before their tourist truck, Jeep, or Rover was ready to push off, then packing in a hurry, their expensive French perfumes and lotions forgotten and left behind in the medicine cabinet over the sink. Those loaded shelves imparted a warning to any girl who assumed she had set up camp at Hillel’s place permanently. Hillel liked his encounters brief, it seemed. He needed the freedom of movement of a one-night stand, a short jaunt through foreign territory where you have neither the vocabulary nor the time, need, ability to bullshit.

  “Only a man cursed by fate or possessed by demons,” Abu Salim had once told me, “would, like Hilal, roam in the desert year after year with no wife, no sons, no parents, and no friends—other than stranger-tourists and Badu who tie-and-untie . . . Only a man possessed by demons, would, like Hilal, waste the passion of his youth on the protection of trees, the very trees that Allah had planted in Sinaa for to fuel Badu fires . . .” Hillel’s endangered-species list was endangering them, Abu Salim had told him; instead of trees and birds, Hillel and the likes of him should put the Badu on his endangered-species list.

  They were first and foremost on his list, Hillel had told the Badu in response. But the Badu don’t trust Hillel.

  If Azzizah were to see the scratches on his hands . . . “Those scratches on your hands look angry enough to fester. The sooner they are treated with antibiotic ointment, the better,” I told Hillel.

  “Her head is still in the tents,” Hillel said to Tal, just like a Badu man, talking about a woman as if she were not there. A tetanus shot, he’d had to take for the scratches on his hands, Hillel added.

  An eagle had scratched his hands, Hillel said. His face lit up when he told how, while he was driving in Wadi R. just before noon today, he had noticed the eagle was injured and had trapped the great bird with his bare hands . . . “A vet is treating it now. That’s why the post looks deserted. Everyone ran to the infirmary to watch. It’s not every day you can look an eagle in the eye.”

  Hillel brewed coffee like a Badu, to honour his guests; in preparing his ritual, he used a gas burner and, like a Yahodi, spiked honour with sugar and cardamom. On a round tray, like a Badu, he served up honour, but like a Yahodi, on a coffee table.

  It was the first table I had seen in weeks. The first chairs, walls, ceiling, floor, bed, cupboard, doors, windows, books, paintings, records, stereo, electric lights, running water . . .

  Gushing from
the showerhead, hot or cold at a twist of a tap, clockwise, counter-clockwise. Ten jerricans’ worth must have run down the drain before I could step into the shower stall. Tammam would have to sweat ten hours to haul that much water uphill to the tents. And here, jerrican after jerrican splashed away, down the drain, while I stood outside the stall like a child, reluctant, as if water were fire.

  Stepping in was like crossing a border to a world in which time ran so fast it stood still. The rushing spray felt like an infusion of life, of energy. (Wallah, how industrious the Badu would be if their tents had running water like the homes of the tourists who fly to the desert and say that the Badu are lazy and filthy.) Brown water spiralled down the drain; weeks’ worth of dust resisted my lathering and scrubbing. It seemed to come out of my pores, from some hidden source.

  “The towels are clean,” Hillel said when he offered me the use of his shower—in keeping with the tradition of desert hospitality dating back to the days of our forefather Abraham. His tourist-girls must have left their towels behind too. Huge foreign towels, smelling like they had just been pulled out of a washer-drier in Canada, were hanging on a row of hooks on the bathroom door. They were jammed together and as soon as I touched one, the rest slipped down to the wet floor. As I was about to hang them back up, a naked woman appeared at the door—out of nowhere, like a ghost, it seemed, the maiden of Shulem, the dancer of two camps, come to life. Fair of hair, dark of skin, her body sensuous, her eyes ethereal. At first glance, she looked as stunned as I felt, then she laughed with me as I recognized that she was my image, reflected in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, unveiled by the tumbling towels.

  “Your reflection is mirrored in people’s eyes, not in glass,” I could almost hear Azzizah saying, or was it my mother who liked to say it? Azzizah would suffer from claustrophobia in that bathroom, it was so small. You couldn’t get dressed without bumping into the sink, the toilet bowl, the shower stall, the door handle.

  The door was hollow—a door/no door that admitted the words Tal and Hillel were exchanging in the living room, but deadened the sound. There was no mountain echo here—no breathing space and no resonance. It took a bit of time for the ear to adjust—it sounded like Hillel was asking Tal if I had mentioned the letter he had smuggled to me in the tents. Tal, in response, said, “What letter?” or “Smuggled, why?” or—I couldn’t really make out what he said.

  The letter. As if the courage, or the madness, that had kept me going in the tents had been washed away in the shower, I was sweating now as I struggled into a clean change of clothes, the same layers upon layers I had worn in the tents and the only clean clothes in my knapsack. I was like a walking hourglass, the sand trickling through with my every move onto the polished ballata-marble floor with each step I took from Hillel’s bathroom to his living room.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized.

  “It’s all right. It happens whenever I come in from the desert, too,” Hillel said.

  Whatever Tal heard Hillel say while I was taking a shower had angered him. His jaw was clenched when I re-joined them.

  “The Badu see today with one eye, and eternity with the other,” Hillel was saying as I sat down.

  Tal’s eyes went to mine, inquiring, “How are you, Leora?” How are you? How are you? like Salim had asked Tammam at their reunion.

  “A person could get killed for spreading such stories,” Hillel went on. “But a story classified, highly secret, is the hardest thing for a Badu to keep . . . Left, right, and centre, the Badu betray each other’s confidence, even at the risk of getting killed. Still, the Badu trust only their own, not one of us. How can you blame them when we lock a Badawia up in an insane asylum, not because she is ill, hysterical or violent, but because we caught her crossing the border? Shame on us . . .”

  “Yaa-Allah . . . yaa-Allah!” I exclaimed inside. Hillel was at the tail end of the story A’ida had told me of the blemished bride.

  Tal lit a cigarette, puffed and puffed, then said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if that border-crossing Badawia, Salim’s bride, had appeared to be a basket case by the time she’d crossed the minefields at that border, and the fields of barbed wire. That border fence alone could drive you nuts for a few hours, if not days.”

  “I didn’t see her crossing the border,” said Hillel. “But, at the mental hospital, I saw her sitting in a large room full of lunatics, looking like an island of sanity and dignity . . . Her father is what the Badu call Sheikh ma’roof, meaning: the sheikh recognized by the Badu to be their leader, the sheikh who doesn’t cooperate with the authorities, like the official one who we call sheikh—the one we had appointed to lead their tribe and represent them—the one who complies with us . . .”

  “You mean the Badu have two sheikhs at once?” I asked Hillel. He and Tal looked at me like my sister and Arik’s brother do whenever they think me too naïve for words.

  “So, in the tents also, I see, the Badu classify this bit of information, just as we do in The Land,” Hillel muttered to Tal as if I were invisible.

  Did you know how ill I was in the tents? Did you inform Tal? Why didn’t one of you pull me out then? How did you know I had entered the tents “knowing nothing . . .” as the Badawias said . . . nothing about the rumour? . . . The fevered questions circled in my mind in an angry ululation. I was in no shape to deal with them. It was a relief to be invisible in this room.

  “The Badu dislike their official sheikh much more than we do; he sells them out, they think. Yet they treat him like a sheikh because they know that if he doesn’t accommodate us, they will not get their free water tank week after week,” Hillel said, as he refilled his wine glass and Tal’s, then poured me some of the red Cabernet that Tal had presented to him on our arrival. “That’s the language of the region, the desert, Arabia, the Levant; the language of the souk—the market. Their official sheikh speaks this language all too fucking well. He probably bleeds the Badu, just as he bleeds us. His sons roam the desert in Peugeot pickup trucks, he in a chauffeur-driven air-conditioned limousine. Their unofficial sheikh rides a thoroughbred camel, which probably costs more than the limo.”

  The wine was starting to get to him, Hillel said. He had never seen a Badu drunk, he said. He himself drank beer from time to time, but rarely wine, and never anything stronger. “The desert is intoxicating enough . . .” A glass or two of wine seemed to be enough to loosen Hillel’s tongue, or maybe the wine was just an excuse to talk and talk, and keep us there with him. He rambled on, a lonely man, homesick, missing old friends like Tal, who had gone through fire with him, understood in blood missions behind Their lines, the Yom-Kippur War . . .

  “You haven’t seen nobility till you see that unofficial sheikh,” Hillel went on. “No one could buy him. I wasn’t surprised when he told me he had dispatched his daughter to Jordan, even though it was probably a made-up story to redeem her reputation and spare her life . . . just as Abu Salim had probably invented the story about his son running off to see the world, to spare the lives of his son and girl-wife. That’s how the Badu survive, circumvent their strict laws: they invent stories, like Scheherazade, and by accepting two sheikhs. One sheikh collaborates; the other does not compromise. And if the ruling authorities don’t like it, they go and lock up his daughter in an insane asylum, knowing full well that if the Badu hate anything, it is to be locked up, confined . . .”

  Mutt and Jeff’s father was caught smuggling a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of drugs—hashish or heroin, or both—Hillel told Tal. He’s out on bail. Abu Salim paid a fortune to bail him out. That’s why Abu Salim is flat broke these days. His clan too. They all chipped in.

  “Yaa-Allah,” I thought. “I know nothing about the Badu.”

  “Jail, bail—both are a sort of professional hazard to the Badu, almost a given part of their smuggling. But an asylum . . . If we locked up every girl who lost her head to a prick, we wouldn’t have space for
the real lunatics.” Hillel laughed at the thought, lit a cigarette, took a long sip of wine. “Can you imagine how fucking surprised I was when a psychiatrist friend called me up and said he had a Badawia in his ward? I told him he’s probably got some nut thinking she’s a Badawia. But I knew he could tell a true Badawia when he saw one, so I drove up north and saw the sheikh’s daughter sitting in that ward . . . She probably thinks now that all of us Yahod are deranged.”

  Heaping virtually everything in his fridge onto the table, Hillel said, “I heard Gingie was slapped with a criminal record. Overnight, our lawmakers declared it illegal to build new settlements in the West Bank in order to woo Egypt back to the peace table. Next, Egypt won’t even consider coming to the table until we pull out of the West Bank altogether . . . We might as well hand the Arabs the key to The Land. No way in hell can we defend her, if we give up the West Bank.”

  “We’ll have nothing to defend if we keep the West Bank,” Tal said. “Nothing, but a cancer, wasting our moral fibre, to defend our rule over nearly a million Arabs in the West Bank.”

  “Tell me, why do you peaceniks make noise about the West Bank Arabs but never about the Sinai Badu? No peacenik ever mentions the legitimate rights of the Sinai Badu to Sinai. Why?” Hillel was waxing rhetorical while he and Tal prepared supper, chain-smoking and sipping cabernet . . . Like the Badu, Hillel wouldn’t allow me to do any work; he regarded me as a guest; a woman-guest he ignored, not unlike Abu Salim’s clansmen do a woman in public. Addressing Tal, Hillel continued to say, “I can understand why Egypt would hold it against the Badu for being the only Arabs in this region to live in peace with us, but you peaceniks . . . It’s beyond me why you don’t make noise for the whole world to hear that, if Egypt wants to have peace with us, she’ll have to guarantee water, food, medicine, and schools for the Badu. Or better yet, include the Badu in the peace talks. That’s what the Badu want. That’s what they tell me, as if I could get through to the top people, as if there is someone with a bit of sense there up at the top.”