Dancing Arabs

by Sayed Kashua

  My mother says that every Saturday, when she went to visit her parents, she’d tie my foot to something so I couldn’t run away. She says that otherwise I’d have run off to chase cats, turn over garbage cans, knock on doors, and ring every doorbell along the way. She says I was the reason my father had to sell half a dunam of land and buy a car. Cars were expensive back then, but they had no choice; they had to find a reasonable way to take me to the pediatrician in Kfar Sava. Mother says the first bus ride was enough for her. When the driver stopped the bus and told us to get off because of something I’d done, she cried.

  My older brother’s body is full of scars. My parents point to a scar on his stomach and say, “That’s from when you tried to operate on his stomach.” They point to some large ones on his legs and tell me they’re from when I decided to attach his left foot to his right leg and vice versa.

  My parents say I broke three new television sets, and they had to buy new dishes almost every week. I broke the locks on the kitchen cabinets, I stopped up the toilet with sand, I slaughtered the neighbors’ chickens, I put ants in my cousins’ eyes, and I burned down half the mango grove. I had a complete stock of slingshots, but instead of stones I’d use nails, aiming at cars or at people who happened to be walking by.

  My parents stopped going to relatives’ weddings because of me. They hardly slept in those days, for fear of what I was liable to do at night. People felt sorry for them. Everyone figured there was something wrong with me.

  Nothing frightened me. I wasn’t afraid of kids or adults, belts or snakes. When they hit me I’d pretend to cry, and I’d apologize, promising it was the last time, and within two minutes something else would break, another calamity would happen. That was my biggest problem: I knew how to put on a good act. I’d writhe in pain and pretend I was dying, so they’d feel sorry for me and let me go.

  My parents tried everything. They tried being nice, being tough, hitting me with a belt, with a stick, with their hands, spanking me, hitting me on the back, on the legs. They tried regular doctors and pills and sheikhs and medicine men, but when all is said and done, it was the bump on my head that did the trick.

  It happened when our neighbor, Aisha, and her husband, Abu-Ibrahim, got divorced. That day she brought all her things from her house to our yard—a mattress and blankets, pillows and clothes—and waited for the truck. There was a whole pile of soft things there. When I saw the pile, I climbed up on building blocks I’d brought over from a construction site, grabbed hold of the water pipes, and used them to hoist myself up onto the roof. Then I tried to jump onto Aisha’s pile of bedding and clothes. I missed and cracked my skull. They thought I was dead.

  Father’s shirt was soaked in blood, as he and Abu-Yakkan from the grocery store rushed me to the hospital. No one who saw me lying there on the stones, with the blood and everything, thought I’d make it. But me, I was like a monkey, back on my feet after a few days.

  My parents say I didn’t remember hitting my head or anything else that I had done before that. They say the bump on my head turned me into a human being. I’d broken my skull, but my brain was intact. Lucky for me I had a head as hard as stone. For two days, I lay there unconscious, but when I came to I was a different person—a wonderful child, polite and quiet and smart. On my very first evening home from the hospital I put on my pajamas and brushed my teeth, and at six o’clock I kissed my parents good night.

  The Day I Saw Jews Up Close for the First Time

  The day I saw Jews up close for the first time I wet my pants. Mother was furious, because she’d asked us to keep our clothes clean. She’d dressed us in our best outfits that morning, because she knew that when she got home from work in the evening she’d barely have enough time to cook before the guests arrived. So she’d dressed me up and sent me off to kindergarten.

  The kindergarten teachers had decided to take us to the soccer field that day. They brought sunflower seeds for themselves, sat on the bleachers, and started chatting. The kids romped all over the field, fell down, and played ball. The girls played in the sand and threw bags of sand and little stones at one another. The teachers went on cracking sunflower seeds and relaxing, and from time to time they’d pounce on one of the kids and yell at him.

  I knew I shouldn’t join the games. I wasn’t going to get my clothes dirty, not today. I was wearing blue overalls and a white shirt underneath. White gets dirty very quickly. I knew it was my best outfit, my new one. If I got it dirty, they wouldn’t let me see the Jews who worked with my father.

  I needed to pee, but I knew I could never pull down my overalls in front of the teachers and the rest of the kids. I saw other kids doing it, but I couldn’t. I held back a little longer. It started hurting. I never cried so hard in my life. I had wet my pants. I couldn’t hide it. Everyone saw.

  One of the kids started laughing and ran off to tell the teacher. She didn’t spank me, because she felt sorry for me. I cried hard, I screamed, and I rubbed my eyes with my fists. To this day I can feel the tears and the runny nose, the stinging in my eyes and the wet lower part of my overalls, rubbing against my feet and making it hard for me to walk.

  One of the teachers, a teacher’s aide in fact, dragged me by the hand back to school. She held her hand all the way out, to keep me as far from her as possible, and her expression was one of sheer disgust. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she told me. “You’re a big boy already.” My arm hurt. She took me to my older brother’s class, the first grade, and pulled him out of class. All the kids heard her say he’d have to take me home because I’d wet my pants.

  My screaming grew louder as my brother grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him. He was happy to get out of school early. He laughed at me, glad I’d gotten into trouble. “The Jews from Father’s work will see you.” He laughed. “Mother will kill you.” As if I didn’t know.

  I don’t remember whether I saw the Jews that day or not, but I don’t think Mother spanked me. I think she restrained herself. All I remember is that after they left, she unwrapped the present they brought. It was chocolates. I remember her saying: “Is that all they brought? And we’ve been preparing for a solid week!”

  Five years later, when I was in fourth grade, the Hebrew teacher came to class with an ajnabi, a Westerner, a stranger—blond, tall, good-looking, not like us. The teacher translated the stranger’s Hebrew. He was from Seeds of Peace. We were in Seeds of Peace too from now on, and we’d be meeting with Jews. They’d come to us, and we’d go to them.

  We liked the idea. Jews meant days off from school. And the teachers would behave better. They wouldn’t hit us, and they’d smile all the time. The Jews had more women teachers. We only had one, and she was old. The Jews were coming from Kfar Sava.

  The Hebrew teacher told each of us who our Jewish friend would be. Our class was bigger than the Jewish one, so sometimes two kids had to share. I got Nadav Epstein. We were supposed to take our friend home.

  The whole village knew the Jews were coming. A week before the visit, each of us got a letter asking our parents to be prepared, not to do anything that would embarrass us, to make a good impression. My mother took the day off, so she’d have enough time to cook and straighten the house. She only had two classes that day anyway, and she made arrangements for a substitute. The women and the children who didn’t go to school came outdoors early to wait for the Jews. My mother prepared a meat seniyyeh with tehini, maklubah, melukhiyyeh with chicken, and a salad. She set the table, bought a potted plant made of plastic, and dressed up.

  Nadav was okay. I didn’t know much Hebrew, but he was okay. Nice. What I didn’t understand was why he called our loaves of bread pitta. In Tira, pitta is what you call a roll. The bread that the Jews call pitta we call bread.

  Two weeks later we went to Kfar Sava to visit them, while a second group of Jews went to Tira. Their school looked completely different. They had loudspeakers in the yard, and they listened to music during recess. I saw a boy and girl walking arm in arm and
waited for someone to hit them. I looked for Nadav and realized they’d made a mistake. The class they’d sent to Tira today was the same one that had visited already.

  They paired us off, a Jew and an Arab. Some Jews got two Arabs. They matched me up with someone new. I didn’t even ask his name. Pretty soon we figured out that the Jews weren’t taking us to their homes. They’d prepared food for us at school; they’d set a table with loaves of Yahud bread, chocolate bars, and jam.

  I didn’t eat anything. I felt let down. How dare they give me a new friend? After my father had finally managed to teach me how to pronounce Epstein properly. The Arabs stood on one side, the Jews on the other. I was on the verge of tears, but I decided to hold back. I was upset with myself for caring which Jew they brought me. As if I’d even understood what Nadav had been talking about. Nobody really cared anyway. I bet Nadav didn’t even notice they’d switched classes. Our teachers kept mumbling about the food. They’d been sure the Jews would take us home, and now they realized they’d dressed up for nothing.

  Suddenly our principal came running over, all upset and perspiring, trying to fix his hair as he ran. He came directly to me. “Come on,” he said. “They sent the wrong class. I’m taking you back to Tira with me.” I never would have believed I’d actually get to ride in the principal’s car. The principal told me that Nadav wouldn’t stop crying because they’d switched classes. He refused to go with anyone but me. He screamed like a little child, the principal said. “He has a real problem, that kid. You’ve got to calm him down,” he added. He’d wanted to take Nadav home, but the vice principal said it wouldn’t be nice to take a Jewish boy home crying.

  I was so happy. Nadav felt the same way I did. That Jew really did love me.

  Taftish (Inspection)

  The geography teacher was the scariest teacher and the strongest. Once he grabbed Yakub by the ears and swung him in the air. Yakub was the biggest boy in the class. His legs hovered in midair and twisted around, and then the teacher hurled him against the blackboard. Bang!

  We didn’t say a word. We froze. Then a few kids laughed at Yakub.

  The Arabic teacher would come in, make the rounds of our desks, and check to see who had done their homework. Invariably, half the class hadn’t done it. They couldn’t even read or write, so how could they do homework? She had a metal ruler, and anyone who hadn’t done his homework would be tapped on the head and made to stand with his face up against the blackboard.

  When she’d finished her inspection, they all lined up in front of her, well drilled, never complaining. They didn’t try to get away or talk their way out of it, because they knew anyone who tried to pull anything would get a double dose. They would bow their heads, shut their eyes, grit their teeth, and stretch out their hand as far as possible. The hand mustn’t be close to the body, because the teacher didn’t want to come near the lice and smelly clothes of anyone who hadn’t done his homework. The Arabic teacher would hold the ruler tight and hit the culprit on the back of the hand with all her strength, and she was very strong.

  Almost all the teachers hit us. Some of them would walk through the class holding a hose. Others had a long thin bamboo cane. In the teachers’ room there was a whip, and the teachers who were on yard duty would wave it as they watched over us in the yard during recess. The science teacher hit me with it once while I was taking a leak. He came into the toilets, which were filthy as usual, and whipped anyone who happened to be there. “Animals! Pigs!” he shouted. The whip stung, but it wasn’t too bad.

  I got fewer beatings than anyone else, fewer than the girls even. I always did my homework. I never made noise in class. I didn’t talk with anyone. I spent recess at my desk with my hands folded. Some teachers favored the peer pressure system: If the class had been too noisy during recess, everyone who’d been there got a beating. Everyone except the ones whose parents taught at the school. They were exempt.

  The taftish was the most frightening of all. The nurse would come in, in the middle of class, and each of us—knowing the routine—would take out our cotton handkerchief right away, spread it out in front of us, and place our palms on top of it. If you didn’t have a handkerchief, you got hit. If you’d used it and it was dirty, you got hit. Anyone whose hands were dirty or whose fingernails were long got sent home. I always had a handkerchief. I had two, in fact—one that stayed clean for the taftish and one that I used.

  The nurse would pick out a few kids at random and, with two thin sticks, she’d inspect their hair for lice. She’d always find some, and she’d scream and hit the culprit. Whichever teacher happened to be in charge of the class would help her. The two of them would write I have lice on a piece of paper, stick it on the foreheads of the ones who’d been checked, and send them home. “It’s time your mother saw what she lets out of her house,” was the nurse’s standard line. They never found lice in my hair.

  Everyone at school thought it was all right to hit. The janitor too. He’d come into the classroom, and pull out three kids. Two of them would carry the black plastic garbage pail and the third would gather up the remains of the sandwiches and wrappings and cans from the yard. If the janitor decided the yard still wasn’t clean enough, you got hit. It happened to me once. One of the kids holding the garbage pail told the janitor I hadn’t picked up all the litter. He gave me one slap, just one, because the janitor was our neighbor and he knew my father.

  I got two whacks on the back of my hand with the wooden ruler from the music teacher because I didn’t recognize one song he played on his oud. Once I got hit because the garbage pail in class was dirty, and it was my day to be garbage pail monitor. I got whipped across the back by the vice principal because I’d been afraid to climb onto the roof on Independence Day to stick the flag in a barrel of sand above the teachers’ room. There were no stairs.

  The only one who didn’t hit us was the agriculture teacher. He was all right, died of a heart attack not long ago. He was the only teacher who came to school in a suit and tie, the only teacher who owned a car: a blue Subaru. He parked it far away from the tractors of the other teachers, which they’d use directly after school to go out to their strawberry fields. In agriculture class we cleaned the teacher’s car. We loved his car, and he was always pleased. When we finished, he’d throw us the ball. We loved to play soccer.

  My Only Friend in Tira Was Hospitalized

  My only friend in Tira was hospitalized. We were in the eighth grade. He was the only kid who was willing to sit next to me in class without the teacher making him.

  One day he didn’t come to school. On my way home, I knocked on his door, but nobody answered. His uncle in the neighborhood grocery store said he was sick. He had a headache, and they’d taken him to the hospital in Ramatayim. My parents dressed up. My mother bought a bag of snack bars and wrapped them the way you wrap a gift, and we drove off to visit him.

  It was my first visit in Ramatayim and the first time I’d seen a hospital. It had an enormous gate and two heavy doors at the entrance that you couldn’t open unless you were a doctor and knew the code. His parents looked sadder than usual. He was an only child. My father said his mother had such a nice ass he couldn’t understand why they had just the one.

  No one was allowed in to visit him except me. My friend looked the same as always. He said that sometimes his head hurt and he would hear strange things. I didn’t pay any attention. He looked fine to me, didn’t even have a fever. Next to the other bed in the room there was a kid who was holding a broom and pretending to shoot. He was a little older than us, and he liked to play war. My friend said that whenever they played together, the kid kept saying, “He’s an Iraqi, he’s an Iraqi.”

  My friend’s parents had bought him a computer game with cars, and he let me play with it. My parents would never buy me such an expensive game. I always envied him. He never ate Popsicles, only fancy ice cream bars. He had a bike and nice clothes, a watch with a calculator, and an Atari. My mother said it was because he was an only chi
ld. She couldn’t afford fancy ice cream bars for all four of us.

  He was the only one of my friends who didn’t get on my mother’s nerves when he came to visit. She claimed the other parents sent their kids over to our house just to get rid of them, and she asked me not to let them in, but when it came to him she was always nice and even invited him to join us for a meal. He usually declined.

  Father kept saying he couldn’t understand why they didn’t have another kid. They had plenty of money, after all. And what if something happened to that kid? My friend’s father owned an enormous tractor with a windshield and an air-conditioned cab, and my father said he plowed every field in Tel Mond, working from dawn till dusk, and wouldn’t pass up a single job. They had a new car, and it always stood right outside their home, covered by a white tarpaulin. They hardly ever used it, it was just for appearances, my father said. They never went out. My friend’s father only used the tractor, because on Fridays and Saturdays when he wasn’t working for the Jews he’d be plowing the fields in Tira.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the game, my friend went berserk. He started screeching “Laaaaa! Laaaaa!” and in no time at all lots of male nurses showed up, took me out of the room, and tied my friend to the bed. It was scary. I’d never seen anything like it. I asked my parents what had happened, and they said we had to go home.

  We didn’t talk at all on our way back to Tira. Father drove in silence, with Mother beside him and me in the back, as usual. My parents wouldn’t let me sleep with my grandmother anymore by then, but that night they pretended not to notice when I sneaked into her bed. They told her what had happened at the hospital.

  “They shouldn’t have taken you,” she said, and hugged me tight. “Don’t cry. God will cure him, he’ll be back at school, you’ll see. Go to sleep. Don’t be scared, ya habibi, yamma.”