by Malka Marom
“‘The Book is a book, not a contract,’ Mottke snapped. ‘The Book is a good book to learn that King David was an expansionist like you and your Block of the Faithful. King David was punished for that. Here is the lesson for you, Gingie. Look at the Book and you will see God will not permit expansionists to build the temple.’
“‘What expansionists?!’ Gingie pounced on his father. ‘Yehuda and Shomron is our land, I can show you deeds from the Turkish time, never mind from the British. Legal deeds fully registered in our names to lands, homes, in Yehuda and Shomron. Arabs live there today, and when we show them the deeds, they scream we are evicting them . . .’
“Oh, how Mottke is going to dump on Gingie now, I thought. But Mottke saved it for later. He only said, ‘Look in the Mishna and you’ll see it says that the West Bank, or what you call the Shomron, lies outside the borders of The Land. The Mishna even tells you why—because Jews have not lived in the West Bank that you call Shomron . . . A million Arabs live now in the West Bank. The West Bank is their home; they have no other. What are you going to do with them, Gingie? Expel them, as we were expelled? Rule over them, like the Tommies had ruled over us? Do you know what ruling them is doing to us? Did you see your Block of the Faithful—yourself—driving through their West Bank, like the Tommies used to drive—at full speed—and Arab children and women running away, afraid like our children and women were when the Tommies ruled The Land.’
“Of course, Mottke didn’t mention that driving fast was necessary when you are being stoned. ‘You call yourself religious but I saw how you and your Block of the Faithful talk down to Arabs, as if God had created them to do your dirty work, dig your ditches, build your settlements, in their West Bank while you pray, study Torah, serve in the army. These Arabs are not freeloaders. They need the money to support their children. They have no other means of support, while you . . . you and the mob you elected, you and your government—are exploiting this . . .’
“Mottke, still fighting the old brother’s war, calls the other Underground group: ‘the mob’, ‘the gangsters’, ‘the terrorists’ . . . more than thirty years ago that other Underground battled the British not alongside our Underground, but . . . it’s ancient history now. Still, Mottke can’t forget. And to his son, who wasn’t born then, he said, ‘The Land has a face today like the mob, the gangsters, the terrorists, the manipulating demagogues that you had voted into power. They are misleading you. You got your criminal record for nothing. You are wasting your sweat, your youth. You have no future in the West Bank. One day the gangsters you voted for will be voted out, and then we will trade the West Bank for peace, just as we will be trading Sinai for peace . . .’
“‘Like Chamberlain, you think you’ll give them Sinai, Yehuda, and Shomron, and that will appease them,’ Gingie told his father. ‘How do you know the Arabs don’t mean to slice us up like a salami? Today they want us to give them Sinai, tomorrow Yehuda and Shomron, next day Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa . . . How many wars do we have to fight before you’ll face that fact? The Arabs claim the whole land is their homeland. They say they aim to destroy us. Why don’t you take them at their word?’
“Gingie and Mottke were fighting, like alpha males, for position. Who would have thought Mottke would be afraid of losing his crown, and Gingie, smelling the fear, would go in for the kill? Gingie, who knew how his criminal record broke Mottke’s heart, went and told his father, ‘Your old friend, our Defence minister, issues an order to troops in uniforms to come and arrest me for building a settlement. Do you know how they felt? . . . ‘Gingie, don’t resist,’ they told me. ‘Gingie don’t resist. We’re with you, don’t resist . . .’ But I resisted like you and Imma when the Tommies arrested you for building settlements.’
“‘Nothing of the sort!’ Mottke was white hot with rage. ‘Your mother and I—and our old friends, as you call them—we didn’t call ourselves religious, but we did God’s work. God had allowed millions to go up in smoke. We rescued the few survivors. We gave them shelter. We didn’t call ourselves religious but we dreamed of being a light to the Nations. We dreamed of the brothers Ishmael and Isaac living side by side in peace. We tried to learn from the Arabs, to become their friends, and like brothers, to split The Land with them fifty-fifty. The Arabs didn’t agree. They made a mistake. So give them a chance to correct it, give them an inch . . .’
“‘After you,’ Gingie said in English. You know he speaks English like a Canadian. ‘After you,’ he said, then switched to Hebrew and told his father, ‘I don’t see you giving the Galilee to the Arabs. ‘I don’t see you giving the Jordan valley or the Negev to the Arabs, and hundreds, thousands of Arabs are living there. And how did you treat them? You had given them voting rights, but your friends in power treated Arabs as if they were second-class citizens. You have allowed the Druse and the Bedouins to serve in our army, but not the Arabs. Why? You didn’t think it was right for Arabs to fight Arabs? Did you ask your Arabs?’
“‘Your Arabs,’ Gingie called the Arabs now when he was talking with his father. Your Arabs . . . And Mottke just sat there and listened, his face pale—too pale. But Gingie wouldn’t stop—‘Your Arabs have a child every year just like my friends, but that doesn’t bother you. In thirty-forty years, your Arabs will be the majority. You gave them an equal vote, so chances are they will vote their own people into power, then your Arabs will rule over you and me, my sons, your grandsons. Is that what you want? Do you think your Arabs will treat me better than I treat them? Did your Arabs ever treat us better than I treat them? Do you know how many friends I’ve lost because your Arabs live here like a fifth column—serving Arabs, not us, not you, not me. And you gave them an equal vote. And what is it going to be like fifty years from now? Did you think of that when you were dreaming of brotherhood?’ Gingie had never talked to his father like that.
“Maybe he should have—should have challenged his father, challenged us years ago; should have told us he thought we’d fucked up, left him a messed-up legacy. Maybe he should have asserted himself as a man, should have measured himself against his father years ago . . . You know how Gingie always held his father a notch above all other men. He always said his father worked miracles, laid miraculous foundation for him to build on, healed the sick, and had a conscience like a saint. ‘If a man like Abba could survive in this world, then Hashem—God—is still in his prime. ‘God didn’t give up because of men like you,’ Gingie would tell his father, even before he chose to be observant, remember? And even as recently as when he saw what his criminal record did to Mottke. Yet now, so soon after, he was talking to his father like that.
But Mottke was looking at his son as if he was the disappointment of his life.
“And the girl-bride was trying to hold back tears when Gingie told his father, ‘What did you want me to be, Abba? What did you expect me to be? Did you want me, like your friends’ sons, to play tennis, strive for smart furniture, fancy cars? Do you see your friends’ sons digging ditches? Your kibbutzim hire anyone but Arabs to do their dirty work. Why not Arabs—because they harbor Arab terrorists, or because they are Arabs? The Arabs need the work, you said so yourself. Would you rather I didn’t hire Arabs?
“‘Only Hashem—God—has the wisdom to solve the conflicts in this region, Abba. Someone should pray. Does it bother you that I chose to pray? Would you wish me mazel tov if I, like your friends’ sons, lived like the Gentiles? Is that what bothers you, that your son is a Jew?’
“That was the last straw. Mottke looked like he’d lost hope—Mottke, who always rebounded, even when all seemed lost. But Mottke knew Gingie was as stubborn as he was—once Gingie had made up his mind to marry his girl-bride, nothing would sway him. Looked like his heart was breaking, for the girl-bride, for Gingie, for us, for her parents.
“But who would have thought that Mottke would ever tell his son, ‘How can you call yourself a Jew when a Jew is, first and foremost, for peace? How can you call your
self a Jew when your West Bank settlements are blocking the path to peace? You are not half the Jew my friends’ sons are. My friends’ sons may play tennis, but they are for peace. They know there is no mitzvah greater than making peace. Ask your rabbi, your elders. And if they cannot find where it is written, then tell them to come to me and I will show them. Look in the Tanach and you’ll see it is written that King Saul had spared his enemy. I love King Saul for that. But you love King David—King David, who robbed King Saul of his kingdom; King David, who murdered his own soldier, his next-door neighbour, because he coveted his neighbour’s wife. Did he inspire you to stand above the law?
“‘Did you think your mother and I didn’t know what you had to do in the Unit? Oh, if you knew how I wished you’d never have to hold a gun. Yes, I wished you’d rather hold a tennis racquet . . . Oh, if you knew how I wished you would be spared from knowing war . . .
“‘Perhaps I had failed you,’ Mottke finally told his son. ‘Perhaps I should have prayed. But we have been praying for centuries, yet did our praying prevent the expulsions, the persecution, the ghetto, the pogroms, the death camps? And here in The Land, Jews who prayed day and night, Jews who said they studied Torah, betrayed my Underground friends to the Tommies. We had no right to reclaim The Land, they believed, wanted us to wait for the Redeemer to redeem . . . to wait—when each and every day thousands of Jews like them were being exterminated in death camps. That’s when they had betrayed us to the Tommies . . .’ Mottke was going too far, much too far.
“He didn’t hear me saying, ‘Mottke, enough. Enough, Mottke . . .’ And Gingie sat there, speechless—the light gone from his face. And his eyes kept saying, ‘Abba—father—Abba, be like yourself, Abba. I don’t recognize you, Abba.”
“And his bride kept wiping her tears.
“But Mottke went on to tell him, ‘If you knew how I hate to see you wearing kippa and tzitzit like the shnorers—the ungrateful freeloaders who live at our expense, who squeeze us dry to build more and more yeshivas, keep their sons safe in their yeshivas, while you and my friends’ sons do their dirty work. My friends’ sons may play tennis, but they do their duty—double duty, in fact—for the yeshiva shnorers too. God’s messengers, they called us in the War of Independence, when Jerusalem was besieged and they were trapped inside the walls, when bullets were flying—and the Tommies didn’t protect them then. Your mother and I crossed enemy lines to rescue them, and they followed us then. They didn’t wait for the Messiah then. They didn’t seem to mind then that your mother’s shirt was sleeveless; they didn’t call her a whore because of that, like they do today. Today they stone me when I drive on Shabbat, as if I have no rights, as if this land is theirs, not mine. But you only remember when Arabs stone . . .
“‘Oh, if you knew what dreams I had for your sons. If you knew what dreams I had for you . . .’
“Mottke left the table then. He left the room, closed the door. And Gingie . . . I don’t know when he and his girl-bride left. I don’t know where I was. Perhaps I went to Mottke.
Gingie and his girl-bride didn’t leave a note.
“They ran to the girl-bride’s parents as if for shelter, for comfort. Soon after, her parents came over to our place. What people her parents are! Straight. So nonsense. They told us they almost died when they first saw Gingie. You know he’s not much to look at, and their daughter is a beauty. It disturbed them that the marriage was arranged, that so fast they wanted to marry, they didn’t know each other. But they wished them mazel tov because they knew their daughter would not change her mind, and they didn’t want to alienate her. They also liked Gingie’s answers to the questions they asked him. They thought we should hear the answer he gave them to one question. Only an hour or two before their daughter and Gingie came to our place, her father had asked Gingie, ‘What moved you to ask the elder to find for you a wife?’
“And Gingie’s answer was: ‘The times. . . I mean, because I have a criminal record, it is time to take a lawful wife. Because The Nation is dividend, it is time to unite. Because we are occupied with war, it is time to be engaged with love. Because we are losing hope, it’s time to have children. And because I trust in Hashem—God—I marry a woman I don’t know.’”
“That’s Gingie,” I told his mother, the best of my friends, Riva.
And Riva, her eyes red-rimmed, stroked my cheek as if I was a child. “Do you know what Mottke’s reaction was?” she said. “Two words—‘King David,’ he snapped, like a person says, ‘Bullshit’.”
“So heartless was Mottke, so alien it was to be so destructive of his family, of himself, it made him sick. It was the first time since—I can’t remember when was the last time he stayed home from work. He wouldn’t make a sulha with Gingie even if it killed him, it seemed, on the afternoon you blew in from the wilderness and, with you, Awaad, the Green Patrol, the new realities. Tighter than ever he held onto the old, until his old lawyer friend asked him: ‘What are you defending Gingie for, all of a sudden?’
“Mottke left the room then, remember? He left to call Gingie . . . Make a sulha with his son . . .”
CHAPTER 40
A solitary bird—a raven or falcon—flies high above a flock that keeps circling, as if in their hearts they know this is the desert they have been migrating to autumn after autumn, but their eyes insist they have come to the wrong place, their hearts have misdirected them; the ground below is no wasteland, but farm land.
How many Badu, like Awaad, have been uprooted by this greening of the Negev desert that we have been boasting about?
Once again Russell stops—to puke or to relieve himself. He certainly wasn’t faking to get sick leave from reserve duty. Instead of going home, he is going to intercede with the sheikh of Awaad’s tribe for Awaad’s clan.
It feels strange to sit in his Land Rover and not hear him talk of the trees, plants, flowers, birds, and wadis in the regions we passed. I ask him the name of something, I don’t remember what, and he muttered, “I’m not a teacher today, not a scholar.” He doesn’t seem to know what or who he is today.
Never before has he interfered so aggressively in Badu affairs, Russell said. He had wasted no time in broadcasting on “The Voice of Israel” how the Nation’s Green Patrol had wronged Awaad’s clan. And in the Land he didn’t have to explain what punishment it was to be driven from your tribal grounds. Still, the response to his broadcast has been mostly indifference. It is that indifference, as much as the torching of Awaad’s tents, that is burning his dream: his reason for moving from Canada to this country and his decision to study the Badu way of life, he said. His first field trip was to Awaad’s clan, he said, whatever professional reputation he has, he owes in great part to Awaad’s clan. “How can you live with yourself if you don’t do everything in your power to help Awaad, his clan, now; but how can you live with yourself if you do interfere so aggressively in their life? I’m ashamed,” he said, leaving it hanging like a sign unfinished. “Today I see what a fanatic I have become. But how can you stand zealously against fanaticism without becoming a fanatic yourself? How can you struggle against evil without being touched by it? How can you deal with history without becoming exposed to its toxic effects? This challenge is altogether different from the challenge I thought I’d face when I moved from Canada to The Land.”
A command car manned by Israeli soldiers detailed to guard Awaad’s sheikh, his family and his household, is parked just outside the stone wall that surrounds the sheikh’s stone house—a stone house with a stone floor, a flat poured-concrete roof, electricity, running water, fridge, stove, cupboards, kitchen counters. Still, the women prepare food on the floor, crouching like Badawias in the open desert . . . How I would love to be now with my Badu family, Wallah, Azzizah, Tammam, Abu Salim, little Salimeh, Mutt and Jeff; I miss them all.
The sheikh’s receiving room is crowded with Badu men reclining on welcome-carpets like in desert maq’ads. Every wall is pain
ted a different colour; the paint is peeling, and some of the windows are cracked. The toilet is a hole in a wet brown floor—a bit of a stench, no toilet paper. A youngster brings us a jug of water and a towel, after we have cleaned up and straightened our clothes, the youngster left to announce our arrival.
The sheikh—clean-shaven, his shrewd eyes drooping in pockets sagging with age and fatigue, wears a black abaiah—cloak—embroidered with gold thread over a well-tailored grey three-piece suit and a red tie. His smile is sparkling gold and white, like his kaffiyye, and a diamond sparkles on his finger. He is Abu Salim’s age, I guess; his bearing and manner are regal, gracious, and commanding, like Abu Salim’s, but with a potbelly and without the wild streak, the dust on his abaiah, the stains, the fire-spark holes, the frayed hem. The sheikh doesn’t really look like any Bedouin I’ve met before, and yet he does. And, if life were a movie, he’d look right for the part of our secret emissary to Arab leaders at war with us—is that what he does for our head of Intelligence, Misha?
Russell isn’t sure for how many centuries a member of the sheikh’s family has ruled Awaad’s tribe; other members, sons and daughters, were married off to the ruling and royal families of the Arabian desert. Imagine the exchange of intelligence-information at those family gatherings. Outside this huge family circle, even feuding members wouldn’t dare leak even a hint, not without the family’s approval. Or so Russell maintains.
The sheikh received Russell with outstretched arms and invited him to stay for dinner. If Misha told him of Russell’s blackmail-threat, there was no sign of it. Russell whispered something to the sheikh (the purpose of our visit, Russell told me later), and the sheikh led him to the living room, where he ordered one of his sons to serve us honour-coffee. He’ll not be long, the sheikh said before he returned to his receiving room, where he adjudicates and settles disputes, offers advice, jobs, and influence.