Sulha

by Malka Marom

  My mind was drifting in a hundred and one directions: to my son packing up to move here, and Dorit packing up to leave; to my parents and how it would hurt them to hear Dorit bad-mouthing The Land, after the price they—and Arik—had paid to defend her freedom to talk her head off. And Dave—I could almost hear him saying, Israelis like Dorit are turning the country into rat shit . . . Dave can’t stand the Israelis who dropped out to Canada—to him I’m not a dropout; his wife lives in Israel even when she’s in Canada, he likes to say. Neither he, nor any of his U.J.A buddies, would hire or socialize with any Israeli dropout. The more a Canadian contributed to the support of Israel, the more he preferred Israelis to be in Israel—to sustain his contribution and support, reaffirm it, validate it, and, of course, appreciate it.

  Dorit’s father was their history teacher in high school, Tal was saying; her father believed that, in a moment of weakness, desperation, impotence, a tribe—a nation—not unlike a person, is more prone to make a mistake that fucks them up for life: “Staying in exile was the mistake in our tribal history, Dorit’s father believes.”

  “But you know I disagree with my father,” Dorit said, munching the olives, pickles, peanuts the waiter brought with our next second of drinks.

  “You say it just to shock. You know better than to say that exile is where we belong,” Tal told her. “You know millions were slaughtered in exile—some, if not many, as gifted as Einstein. They definitely didn’t thrive in exile. That one mistake decimated our Nation, scattered us, changed our thinking, destiny, mentality . . . One mistake, committed two thousand years ago, is still affecting our life—yours, mine—today. If, two thousand years ago, we had regrouped, rearmed, forced our way back into The Land, right after we were expelled, would anyone claim we had no right to live in The Land today?”

  “Hey, cool it, man,” Dorit said in English, laughing. “You don’t have to fire up the troops, you’re out of the fucking Unit, remember?” she told Tal, switching back to Hebrew. “Two thousand years ago the Romans were strong, man, and we were broken, defeated, destroyed by our own great hero, Bar Kokhba. Reminds me of our great heroes today . . .”

  “Don’t tell me Bar Kokhba destroyed us more than Hitler did,” Tal said.

  “But, Outside, some of us survived, man. Here, in Masada, we committed suicide—like crazy dope-heads, man—rather than surrender to the Romans,” she said. The two of them talked about the Romans and Bar Kokhba like Monday-morning quarterbacks in Canada talk about the football games they watched on TV all day Sunday. In one breath, Dorit was talking about the Romans and suicide at Masada and, in the next breath, she told me, “You cannot imagine how we in the kibbutz trembled for Tal when he served in the army. Like, for ten fucking years, man, we didn’t know what he was doing, but we knew Tal would volunteer for any shit-job the army considered vital to our security. Tal would buy that shit, we knew, man . . .

  “Pheew!” She fanned herself with the laminated menu, like a lousy movie actress. “You two stink like Arabs, like Chukh-chukhs. You are not a Chukh-chukhit, are you?” she asked me, straining my tolerance and pity for her.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Ironic, man, isn’t it, how these Chukh-chukhs who had lived in Arab ghettos for centuries are like the Arabs they hate.”

  Hate. The demon of hatred hummed in her laughter. Who would have thought a daughter of the kibbutz, raised in the cradle of equality, would be so prejudiced. It seemed as if she had to knock and besmear everyone and everything in The Land to justify her decision to drop out. She smoked her cigarette, her nose up to the ceiling so as not to blow smoke into my face, her long blonde hair swinging from side to side, like hair of the stranger-girls who “bewitch” Badu youth.

  Tammam and Azzizah would be preparing supper now. I could almost smell the cooking fire. Mutt and Jeff would be crouching near it to keep warm, and be at the ready for the first of the well-done pitas. And Abu Salim would be coughing lungs full of TB, fire smoke, and granite-mountain dust. There they were, only a couple of days away from this hotel by Jeep. “Wouldn’t it be something if Abu Salim walked into this lobby,” I said to Tal.

  The lobby, full of tourists and locals now, all bent on having the vacation of their lives, buzzed with that forced gaiety of a New Year’s party—at the Tower of Babel.

  “Man, how could you stay with Bedouins?” Dorit said. “I shudder at the sound of Arabic, and the smell, pheeeww . . .”

  “You talk of Arabs the way a Jew-hating Gentile will talk of you in California,” I told her. She laughed, then said, “I say it like it is, man, not like the hypocrites on the left who say we’re all alike, but don’t accept Chukh-chukhs as members in the kibbutz, let alone Arabs . . .”

  “You don’t have Chukh-chukh members in your kibbutz?” I ask, and she, delighted to have the chance to murder my innocence, replies, “One—a token Chukh-chukhit, blonde in her soul like an Uncle Tom, if you know what I mean. We’re better than most, let me tell you. Most kibbutzim don’t accept even token Chukh-chukhs.”

  “Oh, come on,” Tal says to her, then to me: “The fact is, Chukh-chukhs don’t like the kibbutz. They prefer city life, private enterprise . . . Dorit likes to shock people,” he adds, as if I hadn’t noticed.

  “You hypocrite!” she cried out. “What came first, the chicken or the egg? Man, did the Chukh-chukhs prefer city life because the kibbutz rejected them, or did the kibbutz reject them because they are not what the kibbutz would call ‘suited for communal life’?” she said, angry at him for stealing her weapon, her shock tactics. Then she turned to me and added, “Eilat is full of Chukh-chukhs, you know. You can’t be a hypocrite here in Eilat, man, or it will cost you, let me tell you . . . I didn’t know Chukh-chukhs from a hole in the ground when I lived in the kibbutz. But here, I live with them, man . . . I can’t stand this place, man. Ever since they got voting power, The Land smells like an Arab country—corrupt, backward, filthy . . .” She had never stepped into an Arab country but has no doubt what one smells like. It pained Tal, I sensed, to see her—like a sister to him—compelled by demons to hate her family, her people, herself.

  That’s how Riva would see Dorit—as the very embodiment of self-hatred, our tribal disease, a ghetto disease, a victim’s disease. It’s a tenacious virus that locks you into a vicious cycle: hearts deprived Outside become insatiable at home, and insatiable hearts are bound to feel deprived. But feeling deprived in your own home, with your own family, your tribe? Unbearable the pain, the disappointment, the virulent anger, like Dorit’s—hatred with no temperance, without a drop of compassion —not for others, not for herself.

  It’s hard to believe that she and Tal grew up in the same kibbutz, shared a room, a life.

  It spreads like typhoid, this self-hating virus, Riva would say. Some people catch it and some are spared. Tal was spared, but Dorit—less fortunate, less resilient—was not. Isn’t that why Dorit laughs, frantic, desperate, every second breath. Isn’t that why she finds life a drag here in The Land, where people pray for a boring moment, a rest from all the “excitement.”

  Her job—ground hostess of Arkia—is a burden as well. “Boring, boring job,” she said. “Kills my fucking face to smile all day.” She couldn’t understand what attracts tourists to The Land. She couldn’t see the beauty or the interest that would attract anyone to this place. “Nothing special about this place, man,” she said, “except the fanatics. Man, what a pain. And the survivors of the death camps are also boring, frankly. Man, how many times can a person hear the same story? And what have I to do with them anyway? I mean, I have more in common with the survivors of Hiroshima. The atom bomb can blow up any minute, but the death camps were a ‘Hitler thing’—ancient history, like the Spanish Inquisition . . . You know, patriotism feeds on such stuff, on yesterday fires, yesterday’s nightmares, yesterday’s dreams. Man, patriotism leads to Hiroshima . . .”

  “Your father is not sittin
g here, Dorit,” Tal muttered.

  She laughed and rolled another cigarette, then, turning to me, she said, “You know my father has a thing about Hiroshima and the Shoah. He wonders if the two were not connected—if the hate directed at us did not lead directly to Hiroshima. If we Yehudim are sort of the barometer of the world conscience, you know. Look at how the world treats us Yehudim and you will see a preview of how the world will treat itself . . . Neat, right? My parents are all right, man; they realized their dream, but that doesn’t mean I have to continue it, keep their dream going. Right? They did their thing, man, and I’m doing mine.”

  “What is your thing?” I ask her.

  “To enjoy life,” she replies. “Like the art of life, you know, the music, the go-with-the-flow, letting-go, letting-be, have an open mind, open heart to the universe, the cosmos, man . . .” She laughs, but the sarcasm is only a veneer.

  Who is she bullshitting? Me? Tal? Herself? Or is she trying to shrug off not only the ghetto and the blue-and-white heritage that her parents had loaded on her, but history itself? Trying to be her own woman and submit to the moment—not to Fate, God, Tribe, or Man, and not to any Liberation Movement. Is that why she knocks everything, to cut herself off from anything imposed on her ever since the days of Eve, even the pull of love, union, of her womb? Is that the demon that hides in her laughter?

  Good thing I was wearing gold to ward off the evil eye of envy; I so envied her for taking her birthright for granted; I so envied her for feeling she owes nothing to the living or the dead, for taking for granted even the freedom to choose her own fucking nightmares, as Arik would say, paraphrasing his beloved Conrad.

  “Best thing that happened to you, leaving the kibbutz and heading to the desert like that. I never thought you had it in you,” she said to Tal, as we were about to leave. “I’ve never seen him like this,” she said to me, giving us more of her crazy laughter. She obviously meant it as a compliment to me, to Tal, as if love was an achievement.

  j

  Kilometre after kilometre, straight as a ruler, the Arrava road rolled under the Jeep. There was hardly any traffic for hours, and the high beams kept battling back the darkness. Then, the headlights picked out hands waving, begging us to pull to a stop—to offer help? A lift? It was the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, one or two kilometres west of the Jordanian border.

  “Might be an ambush,” Tal muttered, pulling up into the darkness between the waving hands and us. He loaded the Beretta and tucked it in his belt. “Stay in the Jeep,” he ordered me. But I climbed out with him. The sky was alive with stars. Let me not die on a night like this. Another breath and another step, and then we find two couples—middle-aged tourists.

  “Do you speak English?” one of them says in an American voice.

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “Oh, thank God. Sorry to trouble you,” says their spokesman, who then explains that the hood of their rented Fiat keeps flipping up. The lock is probably jammed. Could we lend them a pair of pliers? The car-rental people had neglected to supply tools.

  Tal hands me the flashlight and whispers in Hebrew, “Fetch the toolbox . . . I don’t want you to stay here alone with them.”

  “They look all right, Tal.”

  “That’s why it’s called an ambush,” he tells me.

  I fetch the toolbox, and it takes him about a minute to free their jammed lock. He tests it a couple of times to make sure.

  The tourists say they can’t thank us enough. One of them offers Tal a ten-dollar tip.

  “No, it’s all right. Have a safe journey,” Tal says to them in English.

  “Just a token of our appreciation,” says one of the tourists, handing me a pack of Marlboros.

  “Hand it back to him. It might be a booby trap,” Tal says to me in Hebrew.

  But I keep the pack, thank the tourists, and then I walk to the Jeep. Just before Tal catches up to me, before we climb into the Jeep, I toss the pack into the night, as far as I can, away from the road, the tourists, the Jeep, and I brace myself.

  Tal gives me a look and shakes his head. The dashboard dials tint his face green, the colour of bounty, generosity, vitality.

  “I was afraid that pack would explode,” I explained.

  “So why did you accept it?” he said.

  “I don’t know. It didn’t feel right to be so on guard, suspicious, uncertain . . .”

  “It better feel right,” he said, switching on the ignition, pressing ahead. “It’s all right to forget the wave of terror in Sinai, but here in The Land, you’d better remember the Arabs who aim to blow up the peace talks. Beware, Leora, whenever you purchase a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, eggs, cigarettes, and whenever you open a letter or a book, or pass by a bicycle. One exploded in Jerusalem, Mahaneh Yehudah, a couple of weeks ago, killing a few, injuring many . . .”

  The darkness parted for the high beams, and sitting passive in the passenger seat for kilometres was so bewitching, I couldn’t fight my yawns, my drooping eyelids.

  “Let me drive for a while, Tal. It will keep me awake. I don’t want to fall asleep now; it’s the best part of the night—the part where you can almost see how to stop wandering in the wilderness and go home—or up to Nebo, at least . . .”

  “At least?” He laughed, as if a glimpse of the Promised Land before you die was the most. Raising his voice over the roar of the engine, he said, “Close your circles and part from Arik, and you will be a dropout even if you return here, to The Land. That’s what sets you apart, your open circles. They spur you on to settle for nothing less than Nebo, at least . . .”

  It was one of those nights in The Land when there is no horizon, no line dividing heaven from earth, when the old moon dies and the new is born, when the heat of the desert courts and wins the cold night wind.

  j

  At the Service station by Ein Gedi, not a far distance from the fork: Jerusalem, Beersheba, while the Jeep was refilled, I tried again the number Russell had left with my mother. It connected me to an army base. He had been called unexpectedly for reserve duty, Russell explained. Then quick-fast, as if he had but a minute to talk, he went “straight to the point,” as he put it: he couldn’t leave the base and had no way of conveying “two words of utmost importance “to a Negev Badu nomad named Awaad who will be waiting for him at the Hebron–Beersheba road tomorrow morning, ‘wouldn’t take more than an hour out of your way, if that, to convey two words to this Negev Badu, Awaad: stay put.”

  And now, before I could utter a word in response, Russell went on to fill my ears with rumour after rumour about Awaad’s clan and the authorities, theirs, ours . . . all of which I found hard to believe, as did Russell. And yet he maintained, “the chances that the wrong done here would be converted into a wedding celebration are slim to none.” That’s the only reference Russell made to the rumour he had withheld from me—in my former life . . . or so it felt.

  “Awaad’s is a fugitive clan . . .” Russell knew it for a fact. “And there is also no doubt that a fire engulfed their tents and their belongings stored inside . . . They are proud Badu, but if you can spare another hour, Leora, stop at the store just a few kilometres before the meeting point with Awaad and buy a ten- or twenty-kilo sack of flour and same of rice, and a case or two of baby formula, bottles, nipples . . .” Russell had to say no more to catapult Awaad’s fugitive clan from the realm of the Other to the home compound—Abu Salim’s, Azzizah’s, Tammam’s—devastated by a fire that engulfed ancient treasures, bequeathed from jil-el-jil—generation after generation—welcome-carpets, camel saddles, tents Azzizah had been weaving day in day out, through all the days of her life, from wool she spun and hair of goats she raised . . . and healing potions made of leaves Azzizah had sweated to collect in treacherous canyons and cliffs . . . and dresses, veils, shawls, exquisitely embroidered by Azzizah and Tammam . . . and Tammam’s most precious possession, the only poss
ession strict nomadic law allowed Tammam and her mother to own, bequeath, and inherit: her mother’s tent—touching it felt like touching her mother who died birthing her . . . Didn’t take much to imagine Tammam’s milk running dry, and little Salimeh’s cries of hunger in a compound scorched to ashes . . .

  CHAPTER 35

  Whatever I wished I had brought to Azzizah and Tammam, I purchased now for Awaad’s clan.

  The load slowed the Jeep, and when we reached the Hebron–Beersheba Road, the morning traffic forced us to a crawl; so, where we had counted on gaining time, time gained on us.

  Awaad would have left before we arrived, we thought. But, as we approached the meeting place that Russell had specified on the phone, we saw a black abaiah arranged like a pup tent. We coasted to a stop. Still, we startled the Badu.

  His bloodshot eyes, full of sleep, stared at us as if seeing a pair of djinn-demons from a bad dream; his hands fumbled and his kaffiyye slipped to the ground, revealing dusty clumps of woolly black hair laced with straw. His dark stubble, like weeds that colonize a ruin, evoked not only a sense of loss, sorrow, and neglect, but also the memory of a face that had once been full of life. For the past week or two, he had probably slept in the jacket, shirt, and slacks he was wearing. The jacket and slacks had either shrunk in the wash or been borrowed from a shorter man. His scuffed, dusty army boots were laced only halfway, and probably before dawn, when it was still too dark to see that his socks were mismatched.

  A Negev Badu was bound to know a word or two of Hebrew. But this Badu didn’t seem to understand a word of Tal’s greeting. And sure enough, after a brief exchange in Badu Arabic, he told me he had never heard of a man called Awaad or El Bofessa.