Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “Aywa, I was not surprised to hear that all too few songs and stories were composed in the death camps—but that even one was composed is a miracle, I think. A miracle born of the habit of learning rooted so deep, it runs in your Yahodi veins. Aywa, it is this value of learning that has sustained you Yahod—I thought on it for many years and I came to understand that, were it not for this value of learning, you Yahod would not survive. For the first thing you have learned from your learning is that if there is no flour, there is no learning. Loss after loss you suffered, yet you Yahod survive, for you know not only to bend, but also to tell the story of your loss. Sufficient, Wallah, even to move you to rebuild your tribal place, not as it was in old, gone-by days, but with running water and electricity.

  “New-found treasures are false to Awaad, say those who live with running water and electricity, and Badu who fear Awaad’s people will break if they will bend. . .

  “Aywa, powerful indeed is the longing to long, and like love it blinds, if it confused the thinking of even the best of Badu historians. But in your writing of Badu history you said true, El Bofessa, that we Badu see life, not as a relinquishing, and not as capitulation, or acceptance of a drop and a half a minute, but as a struggle, first and foremost. Aywa, like you wrote, we Badu know also to submit—not to roped thinking, but to the infinite possibilities Allah presents to man. And so, if misfortune befalls us, we true Badu know Allah decreed it. And if we succeed we think: how good, how fortunate. And if we fail, we believe we will overcome. For everything is possible, and every possible thing is expected. Yes, expected, Wallah, for infinite are the possibilities inherent in life.”

  “Even the possibility that Awaad’s clan will be permitted to return to their tribal grounds?” said Russell. “Awaad’s clan have water for but three or four days,” Russell explained.

  “Aywa—yes,” says the sheikh. “Awaad’s people would rather die of thirst than drink from their own spring. Infinite possibilities, they fear. True submission, they fear. The inevitable, they fear. The flow of time, of life, the struggle, the complexities, Wallah . . . I thought of it and I came to understand that they fear to leave the domain of longing . . . Awaad’s clan are longing to be who they used to be when they do not remember even the story of who they used to be, Wallah. Noble warriors, they think they used to be, when in fact they were engaged in smuggling, raiding, and plundering, not only strangers and travellers, but each other . . . Aywa, to forget that is like forgetting that you Yahod were slaves in Egypt. I have thought on that and it came to my understanding that the progress, the far-reaching advancement man made gives hope to man. Whereas longing for days that never were leads to despair, empty repetitions, impotence.

  “Awaad’s clan lost, not only their story, their remembering, their imagination and their ability to bend or adapt, but their muruah—their virility, Wallah. A historian has to speak for them as if they were already history—ya’ani, dead.”

  “They do not know I speak for them. I swear they did not ask me,” Russell said. “But tomorrow, Inshallah, I plan to visit-see them and to tell them—what? What shall I tell them?”

  “Leave it to me, El Bofessa, I will tell Awaad what there is to tell,” said the sheikh, dismissing Russell as if he was, to him, not a historian, as he said, but a court jester invited for dinner conversation, intellectual exercise, a workout, a jousting of wits . . .

  And Russell fights to conceal the humiliation he feels, and the hurt, the defeat—his and Awaad’s—like a clown struggling to conceal sorrow, pain, and loss.

  Mind your own business was something Russell told himself; study, observe, keep your academic distance. Now he broke his rules only to discover the sheikh doesn’t take him seriously; and maybe Awaad as well, and Abu Salim, and all the Bedouins he knew, studied, observed, maintained an academic distance from.

  The sheikh knows him, I thought, Badu sense-see through mountains, I thought, but the sheikh doesn’t seem to sense-see that he’s destroying everything Russell believes in, has worked for, has devoted his life to.

  Now he is a grandfather, the sheikh, his lap full of grandchildren who have crawled from the women’s circle. The women jingle-jangle; one is leaving—probably going to sleep. The children’s huddle is scattered now, and it sounds like the TV has been switched on. The audience is over, clearly. The sheikh looks surprised that Russell and I still sit here, and I’m uncertain myself. What is Russell waiting for?

  It’s a good thing Tal didn’t come with us. A couple of naïve Canadians, he’d call us, making fools of ourselves and a fool of the sheikh. It’s simply a mistake, Tal had told me, what the sheikh and the Green Patrol have been doing to Awaad’s clan. Policy makers, leaders, and politicians the world over make mistakes, and most hate to admit it. Ours would not own up to the mistakes they made in the Yom-Kippur War, he said; what are the chances they’ll admit to this one?

  The veiled Badawia who left the women’s circle didn’t go to sleep, but to brew a fresh pot of tea and a bakraj of coffee. She probably thought Russell would not leave until his honour was restored, his face saved. She handed the tray to a child-boy, and he carried it to the men’s circle and placed it at the sheikh’s feet. The sheikh lets it stand-settle, and the children gather again, folding their legs on the carpet this time, like grownup men. Those already seated in a circle call out to the others scattered throughout the house, “Storytelling again.”

  “Ghul, ghul,” they say to Russell.

  “Let him drink his coffee first,” the sheikh says, pouring himself tea.

  “You still suffer from your stomach ailment, I see,” Russell says to the sheikh.

  “Aywa,” the sheikh replies. “It is from drinking too much coffee, the doctors say. But you know it is a professional hazard, for how can a sheikh arrange a sulha without coffee? And you know how very few the visitors, even kin, who would understand that I mean no offence to them, and have no displeasure with them, if I were to drink water or tea with them, instead of coffee.”

  As the sheikh drank his herbal tea, Russell said, “I was thinking of what you said.”

  “And?”

  “And I think you may be right,” Russell concedes, Badu-proper now. “I mean, Awaad may not know the story, but he knows the place—the desert, I mean; it is not unlike the desert that sheltered, nurtured, and instructed the Prophet himself . . .”

  “It is not Awaad but his sheikh who is sitting in the place—ya’ani—in the desert,” says the sheikh, “and in the tents as well, for we are the ones who are tying and untying, moving, bending with the wind, and encompassing, Wallah—aywa, all-encompassing was the vision of the Prophet, wider than wide, Wallah. You know, El Bofessa, if there is one thing I fear, it is the narrower-than-narrow vision of Badu like Awaad. For it is the narrower-than-narrow vision that leads to such Arab thinking as making peace means betrayal, defeat, capitulation. Aywa, and it is the narrower-than-narrow vision also that leads Arabs to close borders tighter than tight—not only to Yahod, but to Arabs who think forward, and who speak the language of brotherhood, like you and I here, El Bofessa. You speak like a Badu, and I like a professor. Aywa, El Bofessa, I know you like the desert more, much more, than you like America. But when the Hamsin winds blow the desert to your house in Tel Aviv, you close all the windows and all the doors, and even all the shutters. And then you switch on the air conditioner you shipped in from New York, do you not?”

  “Aywa, I do, yaa-Sheikh. And it is then when the Hamsin winds are blowing and I switch on the air-conditioner that I best understand the thirst you have for the great gushing spring, America. But you know the story of the parched Badu,” says Russell. “I speak like a Badu, you said, and so like a Badu I will tell this story.”

  “Listen well, my sons, for El Bofessa is going to change the story for the lesson to the sheikh—ghul, ghul, yaa–El Bofessa.” The sheikh is patronizing now.

  “But is it still a true
story?” a child whispers to Russell.

  “Of course,” Russell replies. “It happened only a year ago, or maybe even only half a year ago it happened that a Badu had to venture into the desert—venture, I say, for he was not a Badu of the Negev, but a Badu of the tribes of the north, so far north you could almost say he was a Badu of the Galilee, where a Badu remembers how close he lives to the desert only when the fifty—Khamsin—winds are blowing, meaning, only fifty days a year.”

  “Only when the sun is in heat,” says a little one, and the sheikh rewards the child with a sparkling diamond caress.

  “Aywa,” continues Russell. “Only when the sun in heat makes love to the desert—ya’ani, only when the fifty winds from the east conquer the winds from the west, did our Badu of the north remember how close he lives to the desert in the south. And having lived in a villa four stories high for thirty years already, or maybe for only ten or twenty years, he knew desert tracking no better than a Yahodi. And, to his misfortune—or good fortune, some would say—just when he, the Badu of the north, had to venture into the desert to attend a circumcision, or a wedding, or maybe for just to seal an agreement—no one knows for sure—a Khamsin was blowing and blowing, blowing up a sandstorm.”

  “Yaa-Allah.”

  “Aywa,” Russell says. “No greater thirst knows man than the thirst of men who venture outdoors during the Khamsin. So burning hot, like a fire the Khamsin blows. And like a fire she sucks the moisture from the air—ya’ani, the life from the air. And such a blinding sandstorm the fifty winds stirred up, would blind even the best of the Negev Badu trackers. So, of course, he, the Badu of the north, trying to find shelter in a cave, a crag, or Badu tent, got lost. And he also lost the water bag he carried. By the time the Khamsin died and the sand settled, and the Badu of the north could see that he was lost, he was too weak, too dry, to move . . .

  “He was nearly dead-dry when a Badawia happened to find him. That is why some people say he was more fortunate than unfortunate. For the Badawia carried him to her tent when he was nearly dying of thirst. And he, being a Badu, even of the north, even a villa-dwelling Badu, saw how clean-pure the water in the clean glass she was offering to him. But in the clean glass itself, floating on the ever-so-clean-pure water, he saw a piece of straw. And since it was not adabb—polite—ya’ani, he knew it would offend her were he to take the piece of straw out of the glass, he said nothing, and he only sipped the ever-so-clean-pure water, ever so slowly, paying careful attention not to swallow the piece of straw. For it would choke him to death, were he to swallow it, he knew.”

  “True, Wallah.”

  “Aywa,” Russell continued, “But when he recovered his fluids—ya’ani, his life—his curiosity pushed him, and he asked her, the mistress of the tent, how could it have been that when everything in her tent was so nice and clean, there was a piece of straw floating in the glass of water she had offered him. It was then that she knew he was a Badu of the north. And so she explained to him: A man with a thirst as great as yours was bound to gulp much too fast, and so the water was bound to have passed through you much too fast. And worse, much worse, you would have for certain suffered such a case of diarrhoea, it would have drained off even the few drops of fluids that have kept you alive. That is why she decided to put a piece of straw in the glass of water, she told him, for she was certain that he, being a Badu, would not offend her—ya’ani, he would not take the piece of straw out of the glass in front of her. And ever so slowly, slowly, he would drink the water, just as she had meant him to do, for his well-being—ya’ani, his good health.”

  Silence.

  “Is Awaad the piece of straw, or is he the Badawia? Or do you mean to say that the sheikh is the Badu of the north, and the lesson is drink ever so slowly from the great gushing spring, America, or else you risk losing being Badu?” the sheikh’s daughter, sitting behind me now, whispered.

  “Allah aref—it is but a story I heard Badu tell,” Russell replied, up on his feet now, as was the sheikh, each casting a shadow of a piece of straw.

  CHAPTER 41

  Rain! Torrents, with a power outage and farmers dancing, and then crying, “Much too much. It’s all or nothing—droughts or floods.” Washed-out fields. Washed-out roads. Car accidents. Wadis flooded in the Negev desert and the Judean. Mud slides in the Galilee and the Jerusalem mountains. For once, the weather made the top of the news. The forecast was for sun and cloud. It is too early to tell if the drought has broken.

  No mention of rain in Sinai, but even the smallest spillover would flash-flood the wadis, replenish the waterholes, green the pasture, bring back Tammam’s breast milk, her goats’, and Azzizah’s, bestow a new supply of fragrant driftwood—light up the fire-circles . . .

  j

  Friday, on his way home for Shabbat, Professor Russell dropped me off at my hotel in Herzliyya. My first Shabbat in The Land after all the weeks-months I’ve stayed with the Badu?

  My first Shabbat after Arik went. . .

  My first Shabbat in Canada, I expected to be like Shabbat here in The Land. I didn’t think it was extraordinary, until then, that as soon as the sun would set on Friday evening, a mysterious spirit would rise to wrap up The Land and hand her over to us youngsters, like a gift. And soon after the lighting of Shabbat candles, we’d break hallah at our parents’ table, then we’d head out onto the street and find the crown of The Land—perfect peace—was ours for the taking. No buses ran, and cabs and cars were luxuries that few could afford in those days. The peaceful streets were ours—to consecrate, like Shabbat candles. Our white Shabbat shirts and blouses would glow in the darkness, as if from a light within.

  We were the promise, the children of the covenant.

  Shabbat is a non-event in Canada. Traffic does not stop, stores are not closed; Canadians on the whole don’t share the dream of perfect peace—for one day a week, at least. The borders of Canada are peaceful all the time. Being alone on Shabbat in Canada is like being alone any day of the week; the mood answers to the moon, and not the heart. Yet, even in Canada, Shabbat was the loneliest of days after Arik fell.

  I tried to reach his parents now. I phoned them all: Arik’s parents, mine, his brother, my sister, Riva, Mottke, Gingie. No one answers. Some are probably still at work, others busy with last-minute arrangements for Shabbat.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of staying in this hotel suite alone, decided to surprise-visit Arik’s parents and mine before their afternoon nap, bring them flowers for Shabbat, and the goodies they love from the Garden of Eden Bakery on Dizingoff Street.

  Soldiers, boys and girls, crowded the Trampiyada—the hitchhiking stations—at the cut-off to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv. The whole country seemed to be rushing home. The Coastal Highway was jammed, all six lanes, bumper to bumper, and nearly every car with an empty seat picked up a soldier from the Trampiyada and a bouquet of flowers for Shabbat from the Friday flower-vendors who stationed themselves not far from the hitchhiking stations—affording two mitzvot at one stop, and they were cashing in on it. Shabbat profiteers, the cab driver called them.

  No one answered the bell at Arik’s parents’ place.

  At my parents place, my mother takes one look at me and says, “You disappeared to nothing in the desert . . . you lost so much weight, were you ill?”

  “No . . . the Manna that drops from heaven unto the desert these days is low-fat,” I reply. She chuckles, shaking her head.

  At sundown she lights two Shabbat candles, without any ceremony; or any prayer that I can tell. Her lips move just to blow out the matchstick. Next she covers her face with both her hands and, like this, she stands in front of the glowing Shabbat candles—so very still, as if she was transported from this world of the breathing, to—

  “Where? Where are you, Imma?” I whisper to her, like when I was little.

  Her hands float from her face to caress mine. “Shabbat Shalom,” she says, her face i
s luminous now and her smile—as if angels had just whispered to her—

  “What? Imma, what happened to you?”

  “It’s a secret,” she replies, like she used to when I was a child.

  “She communed with her fellow Lamed-vavniks—the thirty-six Righteous Ones, believed to exist secretly and to uphold the world until the days of redemption,” my father says, only half in jest.

  Three of the family’s most treasured possessions have been set on the table at the same place ever since I was old enough to remember. By now, much of the silver patina has been polished off the two candlesticks—a wedding present to my parents from my mother’s parents, as is the Shabbat Hallah cover, hand-embroidered by my mother’s sister. She, and my mother’s parents, and all her four brothers perished There in The Shoah. Their possessions plundered. Nothing remains, but these wedding gifts, and one photo of my mother’s parents, and the story. These also might have vanished There, together with my parents, had it not been for a knife . . .

  A knife unlike the knife in the story that tells how Isaac was spared, “there was no sign of Divine intervention in this case,” as my father had put it. In this case it happened at a time when it seemed that the mad shall inherit the earth, not the meek; a time too painful for my parents to touch—even with words.

  Too little to understand it, but not to sense a locked door here, I was moved by curiosity to unlock it. But the more I would probe, the tighter my parents would lock, the more I would probe . . . until my father relented to open—only a crack. Only a peek into his story, yet this one, unlike the others he told, would invade my sleep, my being—so lifelike my father would appear, wielding a knife like a madman and, furious as hell, tearing into the Jewish agency in Poland, and at the top of his voice he curses the Jewish Agency people, accuses them of being worse than the British Mandate Tommies who issue to Jews all too few entry visas to The Land. “The Tommies are Gentiles but you are Jews,” my father yells at them. He calls them A Shame to The Nation and to the name “Jewish”—all because they are selling legal-entry visas to the highest bidders instead of to the next in the line that he and my mother have been waiting in for years and years like fabrente—burning—idealists.