Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “You’ll be surprised how much a person has to lose even when he thinks he has nothing left to lose,” the newspaper editor responded. Mottke didn’t argue after that; neither did Riva and the lawyer. Maybe because of the numbers tattooed on the editor’s forearm. He couldn’t have been more than a child, not bar mitzvah yet, when they had shoved him into the death camps. I don’t know how they could tell he was Jewish—his eyes were almost as blue as Dorit’s, his hair almost as fair—and now, with his ruddy complexion, and a pot belly hanging over his low-riding belt, he looked like a lumberjack from Algonquin.

  “One word from Misha, and the sheikh lays off Awaad’s people,” the newspaper editor told Mottke.

  “Who is Misha?” I whispered to Riva when Mottke went to their bedroom to call Misha. Riva whispered back that Misha was Mottke’s second or third cousin; that Misha had served with her, Mottke, and the lawyer in the Underground; and that Misha headed our Intelligence.

  “You mean the sheikh works with our Intelligence?” I said.

  “It appears so,” Riva replied.

  One word from anyone around this table to Awaad, and the sheikh would be at the mercy of Awaad’s people; there was no need to ask Misha for any favours. But they followed two separate sets of rules, it seemed—one for peace and one for war, one for servicemen and one for civilians. You don’t breathe a word to anyone about a person who works with our military Intelligence, but if you don’t raise hell about our civilian Green Patrol, you fail in your civic duty.

  Mottke couldn’t have spent more than two or three minutes talking with Misha. He said that Misha had already heard the whole story from a Canadian, a Professor Russell, who had called him just a little while ago “. . . and told him he’ll expose the sheikh in the media unless Misha makes sure the sheikh lays off Awaad’s clan . . .”

  Well, Russell said he’d take care of the sheikh, and, Wallah, he did.

  “How does this Canadian come to know Misha, let alone Misha’s unlisted phone number,” the lawyer asked me, like a Canadian WASP would ask how a Jew had gained entry to a restricted club. And Russell had moved from Canada to The Land so that no one would think him not good enough to belong to any club; that is probably why he likes to rub elbows with the Establishment in The Land, which is, no doubt, where he got hold of Misha’s unlisted phone number.

  “You better ask Misha,” I was about to tell the lawyer, but Riva said, “She wouldn’t tell you even if she knew.”

  “For your sake, and that of Awaad’s people as well,” the lawyer said, as if our destinies were linked. “I suggest you tell that Canadian professor that a person could be charged with treason just for threatening to leak classified information to the press.”

  The lawyer called the former commander of the Green Patrol using a phone that Mottke had dragged to the dining-room table—to save himself the trouble of telling us later what the commander of the Green Patrol said. Riva told me that this commander was a retired lieutenant-colonel, or general, I can’t remember his rank now, he obviously was such a high-ranking hero of such a reputation, Riva and Mottke couldn’t believe that the man the Badu and Russell knew as the man in charge of the Green Patrol, and this man, were the same person. They thought “the gangsters” had replaced him with one of their own. The lawyer obviously considered the commander to be one of his own. They talked for a brief while about their respective families and mutual friends, and about their vacations to Europe . . .

  “We didn’t gather here to travel to Europe,” Mottke said when the travelogue moved on to the canals in Amsterdam and Venice.

  “I assume the gangsters replaced you,” the lawyer said to the hero on the phone. “. . . No, no one told me that you were replaced or going to be replaced . . . Well, if you didn’t know you were replaced, you were not replaced . . .”

  Now everyone, even Mottke, seemed to be wondering if I was a reliable witness. Like the bereaved, they were not ready to part from one of their own, not just yet. The lawyer first told the man in charge of the Green Patrol that he was sitting with a few friends, and then he said, “Do you know Awaad’s clan?” as if he thought a man charged with the task of conserving nature and cultivating what little green there was in a desert threatened by an atomic reactor and development towns would be too busy to even notice a Bedouin clan like Awaad’s.

  “Do you know Awaad’s clan?” the commander of the Green Patrol must have said to the lawyer. “No, I don’t know Awaad’s people,” the lawyer said. “No, Professor Russell is not sitting here. No, I don’t know the professor, but I heard you told him Awaad’s people couldn’t return to the Negev with their herds,” the lawyer said.

  “Oh, that is not accurate? Well, I’m not surprised,” the lawyer said.

  And for a moment he, like everyone around the dining-room table, including me, thought Russell had made a terrible mistake: he had heard the man in charge of the Green Patrol say couldn’t when he had said could. Awaad’s people could return to the Negev with their goatherds without any problems, whenever they wished. That’s the message I should have delivered to Awaad’s clan. What unnecessary pain and worry I have caused them, I thought. And already my mind had started to compute ways and means of reaching Awaad’s clan first thing tomorrow—not in a green Jeep, but in a Skyhawk. . . Instead of napalm, I would be dropped onto Awaad’s welcome-carpet. I was floating that high, imagining Awaad’s face when he heard his problems were over. His clan could pack up, go home, and Jum’ah’s maiden would sing like Miriam at the celebration around the fire—a celebration in biblical time and Skyhawk time at once, with no discord, no guilt, no blame.

  I held my breath then, waited for the longest time, as the lawyer frowned, a frown that deepened by the minute. No one was prepared to hear him say, “Look, I don’t know what could possibly lead the sheikh to fear that our Bedouins would end up like the Native Indians in America. It’s bullshit, and you know it. I can’t understand what you mean when you say Awaad’s people are free to live in a brand-new Negev settlement. So am I, but you have no right to tell me or Awaad where we are free to live . . .” The lawyer was listening now, breaking his silence by muttering: yes, yes. Each yes registered on his face as no, no, you Absalom, you Brutus, you Judas, and not because the man he was talking with was betraying Awaad’s clan, but because he was betraying the lawyer’s dream—the blue and white dream to which he, Riva, Mottke, and their Underground friends had given life; the dream of being a light to The Nation, the dream he had entrusted to the man in charge of the Green Patrol, the next generation, who had also been raised on the dream. It was a betrayal of trust—both personal and tribal.

  “Yes . . . yes,” the lawyer said, “but if, as you say, Awaad’s people were stealing water or raising goats illegally, it’s up to a judge presiding in a court of law to decide how to punish them, not up to a civil servant like you. And if, as you say, Awaad’s people are the best Bedouin poets and storytellers in the Negev and the burning of their tents by your men is just another one of their tales, then let me ask you, first: what do they have to gain by spreading such a tale—other than the sympathy of bleeding hearts, like mine, of course? And, second, why are they afraid of you—afraid like our people feared the Cossacks, the Gestapo—and if you think that that is a strong word, wait till you read the papers tomorrow.” The lawyer went on, using words and threats I’d never heard used with any Outsider. But then, we expect more from our own —and the higher the expectation, the harder the fall.

  “Leave the papers out of this,” the newspaper editor said, looking like he also wished the lawyer would also leave the Gestapo out of this.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t hang up if I were you,” the lawyer was shouting now. “My friends may be out of power these days, but the law of The Land prevails . . .”

  The lawyer moved the receiver away from his ear, and the man in charge of the Green Patrol was shouting so loud, we could hear him telling the lawyer tha
t he didn’t know what he was talking about, that a lot of things have changed in the Negev since his friends were voted out of power, and that he had apparently lost touch, obviously didn’t know that Bedouins from all over Arabia were sneaking into the Negev and laying false claim to the unsettled Negev lands, counting on the bleeding hearts in The Land to scream that we are stealing Arab lands, just as the bleeding hearts are screaming for peace now with Egypt—a peace/no-peace that is going to cost us not only Sinai but the Negev; going to turn the Negev, “the breadbasket of The Land,” into a military base, and a gold mine for the carpet-baggers from Arabia. The bleeding hearts may get their wish, but not at the taxpayers’ expense. . . On and on the commander of the Green Patrol was yelling, while the lawyer muttered, “Schmuck . . . gangster . . . fascist . . .”

  “How can you lump a Bedouin clan that has lived in the Negev much longer than you with carpet-baggers? And don’t tell me Awaad’s people have false claim to their lands; there is no better land title than the sheikh’s offer to trade them land for land. I don’t know what you have against Awaad’s people, but let me tell you, if you don’t compensate them—for their tents and for the pain and suffering that you and your Green Patrol have caused them—I’m going to take you to court, even if they press no charges. And if you think I don’t have a case because this is a matter of your word against that of the best Bedouin storytellers in the Negev, let me tell you that this is a case of your word against that of a war widow . . .”

  No one around the table but me seemed to think it strange, pathetic, a betrayal of the dream, that the word of a war widow would carry such weight in a court of law. As if a war that has raged for more than thirty years in a land of two-three million inhabitants spared anyone. And what does credibility have to do with the misfortunes of war? Had war bereavement, war injuries, or gunfire purified the soul, we’d be a nation of saints and no one sitting around this table would be feeling betrayed by one of our own . . .

  Awaad’s people couldn’t see themselves betrayed by one of their own; they rejected the notion just as fast as the Yahod accepted it. I don’t know why. Badu betray one another no more and no less than Yahod, and if Badu have been betrayed by others, so have the Yahod. But the Badu have lived for centuries in a solitude that rarely calls their self-image of nobility into question, while the Yahod have lived for centuries among neighbours who perceived them as Judases, and the Yahod have come to see themselves as their neighbours see them.

  “Victims victimize,” Riva said when the lawyer, hanging up, muttered, “Can you believe it? A man like him . . . not ashamed, no remorse, wouldn’t budge. Why? He, of all people picking on a Bedouin clan like Awaad’s . . .”

  “Leave the victims out of this,” the newspaper editor told Riva. “You Sabras don’t know the meaning of words like victim or victimizing. I hope you never will.

  “And why are you so mystified?” the newspaper editor said, turning to the lawyer. “You think blowing up the dwelling place of the terrorist is a deterrent, and then you wonder why a soldier-boy who has destroyed such Arab dwelling places is destroying Arab dwelling places in civilian life as well.”

  “I gave you more credit than that,” the lawyer snapped. “You and I, and thousands of others, have been called to battle Arabs for more than thirty years, but have you seen anyone shooting Arabs in civilian life?”

  “The days of that miracle are numbered, I’m afraid,” the editor said. “The impunity of the Green Patrol is a warning of that . . .”

  “The impunity? Not if I can help it,” Mottke said.

  But the lawyer had no doubt now, he said, that the chances of Awaad’s clan winning a legal battle against the Green Patrol, in or out of court, were slim to none. The goat law might be unjust, but the law had been enacted to protect the dream of turning the Negev into the breadbasket of The Land. And it had worked to benefit, not only the great majority, but Awaad’s clan as well. And so, no matter how many environmental scientists were to challenge the law and to testify in court that goatherds the size of Awaad’s posed no threat, as many kibbutzniks at least would testify that nothing could ravage a wheat field, turning it into desolate desert, like a herd of goats. Case dismissed. The goat law is upheld. Next case . . .

  “And to sue the Green Patrol for the Bedouin tents they had destroyed was even more hopeless,” the lawyer went on to say, “primarily because the commander of the Green Patrol maintains it’s an outright lie, and the only witnesses we have are Bedouin women and children who have a credibility problem, a Bedouin lieutenant who has a loyalty problem, and a war widow, who has dropped out. This year, this war widow roughs it for a few weeks in the desert, which hardly qualifies her as an expert on Bedouins or on hardship, or on fear. Yet, here she stands and testifies that the women of Awaad’s clan were too frightened to have invented the story of the Green Patrol—that the physical evidence proves their fear of the Green Patrol was no work of the imagination. Well, even had this war widow lived here, in The Land, the woman, bless her, would likely mistake the fluttering of a butterfly for a physical reaction to fear. And were she to find herself the only Israeli among Arabs in the hostile hills of the West Bank, she would no doubt see her own fear in them . . . And that’s all it would take to dismiss Leora’s testimony.”

  “But that’s a travesty, even more than the actions of the Green Patrol,” Mottke said.

  “Oh, come on,” the lawyer said, “all evening you’ve been speaking for Leora. Why? If you didn’t think she lacked conviction, credibility, integrity . . .”

  Mottke was mute with rage.

  But I . . . I knew no personal slight was intended or inferred in all this; the less you cared about your personal feelings, the more noble you were in The Land . . . the less in touch with yourself you were in Canada . . . the lower than low you were in the Badu tents.

  Worlds apart . . . even the silence; Badu silence and Yahodi. Badu silence serves as a sort of shelter to cool down. Yahodi silence is like a cave of warring demons and angels: Sometimes you are uplifted to heaven, sometimes you are plunged to hell, and more often you are hovering at the midpoint, waiting for the rope to snap.

  “Unattainable, what you are striving for,” Riva’s eyes seemed to say to Mottke. But he didn’t seem to see her; didn’t want to see her gradually being made more pragmatic by the passing of time, quicker to say: That’s impractical, impossible; quicker to think like a can’t-do Jew. Mottke would never believe that anything is impossible, unattainable.

  The lawyer broke the silence. “If you were our witness—or better still, if Gingie’s commander, what’s his name . . . Tal, was our witness—we would have a case. Now we don’t.”

  It was all too clear now what a mistake Tal and I, Jum’ah and Awaad, had made when we decided that Tal would deliver the Jeep for its reserve duty, and I’d deliver Russell’s information to Awaad’s clan.

  “And I thought all men and women were equal in the eyes of the secular law of The Land,” Mottke said. “That was the only redeeming factor in Gingie’s criminal record—that all men, women, children—Bedouins, Jews, Arabs—are equal in the eyes of our law. Give me that, at least.”

  “Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear? Would that get me a cup of coffee?” the lawyer said.

  He had to get up so that Riva could squeeze past him into the kitchen, and the editor had to get up, push his empty chair back in, and get out of the way so that I could pull the coffee service out of the cabinet.

  The lawyer lit a cigarette, took a puff, then said, “The Green Patrol may settle out of court. If the press gives this story a lot of coverage, the public would demand it . . .”

  “Demand it where? How?” the newspaper editor said. “You practically have to wait in line these days to hold a demonstration for or against trading Yamit—Sinai—for peace with Egypt. Three hundred thousands gathered today in City Square. The public fears a civil war might break ou
t any day, and on the verge of a civil war you want the press to bleed for a Bedouin clan wronged by our boys? To demand the highest standards of moral conduct from our boys because we won’t . . . we can’t, let go of the yellow patch? Blameless were we There; blameless we must be here . . .

  “You’ve noticed, of course, that no one is suggesting we report that West Bank Arab shepherd boys had threatened to slit Leora’s throat, and Awaad’s, his people’s. Why, because it’s normal, happens every day? Or because no one at this table wants to further fuel the hatred of Arabs?

  “Look,” the editor continued, “headlines shouting about Arabs terrorized, victimized, or harassed by Israelis are not going to do us any good, but that’s what may ultimately move our government, if not to punish the Green Patrol, then at least to settle reparation on Awaad’s clan—”

  “Reparations?!” Mottke looked like the demons and angels were still tugging at his soul. “You mean to tell me that Gingie, my son, gets a criminal record for building an illegal settlement but the Green Patrol, for destroying . . . gets off with reparations paid by you, me, the taxpayers!” His coffee spilled when he pushed his cup away, like a Badu who thinks the amends made to him at a sulha only add insult to injury. Riva didn’t move; just watched the coffee spread until it looked like a huge stain of shame, and then she looked at the lawyer.

  “What do you want me to tell you?” The lawyer sighed. “The court may find the Green Patrol guilty of denying Awaad’s people due process of law. But as it’s a first offence, chances are they’ll get off with a reprimand, or at most, a symbolic fine.”

  “It was a first offence for my Gingie, also,” Mottke snapped.

  “Oh, come on. Gingie had ample warning and you know it,” the lawyer said. “What are you defending Gingie all of a sudden as if you condone—”

  Mottke pushed his chair away from the table, got up, left the room without a word.