by Sayed Kashua
Parliament
Things seemed to be booming in those days. In my final year at grade school, they paved the road to Tira and hooked us up to the phone system, the soccer team moved up a league, they opened a swimming pool, and someone in Taiyiba connected the houses to cable TV.
Every single house in the village was hooked up. Nobody watched anything else, only closed-circuit cable. Everyone simply loved to watch people they knew appearing on TV. They saw them in the grocery store commercials that were shown between Indian or Egyptian films.
During Ramadan of that year, which took place in summer, they decided to hold a quiz show on cable, with prizes. Everyone in the village was allowed to take part. Within two days the quiz became a battle of honor, and every family in the village took it seriously. Some families would gather every day, to count how many of them had succeeded in giving the right answers and to prepare for the following day. The elections were coming up, and the competition between families was at an all-time high. Every family was hoping to strengthen its position in the village through the quiz show. Our family was one of the oldest in the village, but it was very small, and my father knew full well that we didn’t stand a chance in the elections. By the time the quiz show was over, Father knew whom to vote for.
Father didn’t miss a single screening of the quiz show on cable. The questions were very easy at first, like “When was the Prophet Mohammed born?” and Father would answer right away. His lips would mouth the quizmaster’s text. Obviously, he had no intention of phoning in himself or of taking part with all those idiots who got caught up in their silly games. But the truth was that Father wasn’t a hundred percent sure of himself, and he’d always wait to hear whether his answer had been confirmed by the quizmaster after some other listener had phoned in.
One day, the people on cable decided to ask some tough questions, the really tricky kind, with complicated clues. It was the middle of Ramadan month by then, and the struggle over the cable quiz had completely taken over life in the village. It was the only thing people talked about. Some said the quizmaster would only take calls from his own relatives and demanded a panel of judges with representatives of all the families in the village to supervise the competition while it was being aired.
That’s when the toughest question of all was presented. It had been written by the school principal, who was the quizmaster’s father. The larger families got their act together and started sending representatives to the cable station—huge guys who could beat the hell of out of you—to observe things from up close. This ritual show of strength gained momentum, to the point where there were so many representatives you could hardly see or hear the quizmaster asking the questions.
People got into squabbles on the air or shoved each other, and every now and then someone would let out a salvo of curses that could be heard in every home in the village. The cable people realized it was time to do something, and they moved the quiz to the soccer field. The only ones who watched from home were the deep thinkers and speed-dialers in each household. All the others took their places in the field as soon as the fast was over for the day. People swarmed through the streets toward the soccer field, almost running, before they’d had a chance to digest their hurried post-fast meal.
Father hadn’t taken any part in the game up until then. He and the principal had been in the same class, and he always used to tell us how the principal had been a nobody when it came to schoolwork and had gone to some second-rate teachers college. His grades—Father’s, that is—were the best in his class, and if he’d had enough money to finish university he would have become a doctor long ago.
The day the competition moved to the stadium was when they announced the Big Question. When my father heard that the principal, his classmate, had composed the hardest question, he stood up and plodded heavily toward the TV. “Get me a pen,” he commanded. “Now, be quiet.” And when the quizmaster repeated the question, Father wrote it on his palm:
From the land of Uncle Sam. Blue as the sky. Brings nothing but trouble. Can begin with two letters. And Abd el-Wahab lives there.
It was his battle now. Our family may have been small, but we saw ourselves as being very smart. My father copied the question from his palm to his notebooks and studied each and every word. “Has anyone solved it yet?” he asked.
“No, not yet, Father.”
Time passed, and nobody seemed any closer to an answer. Father got angry and said the question was actually very dumb and he couldn’t think like those idiots anyway. The program continued until the meal that marks the beginning of the fast, at about 5 A.M. Father stayed up and continued to ponder the question. Nobody found the answer that day, and on the following day people started to say that the principal had deliberately composed a question that had no answer. He represented his own family in the municipal elections, after all, and he’d do anything to undermine the others.
In the morning, Father phoned in and asked for time off from work until ‘id el-fitr—in other words, until the competition was over. Then he sat down with all the encyclopedias we had in the house and started digging. He checked even the unlikeliest meanings of the words. There were rumors about people who’d found the solution. There were dozens of phone calls and dozens of answers, but nobody had come up with the right one. Then my father began looking for religious connotations in the question. From time to time he thought he might be on to something, and he’d yell the answer to us, to make sure we gave him the credit if anyone phoned in meanwhile with the same answer.
A few days went by, and my father had to strike out all the answers he’d thought of that had been suggested by other people and proved wrong. Then he decided to check out the ones that remained. He never would have phoned in. He wasn’t sure enough of himself, so he decided to go ask the station manager if any of his answers was right. If it turned out one was, he would forfeit the prize and promise not to phone in until the competition was over. When father returned from his visit with the station manager, we could tell he’d failed.
There were only two days left until the holiday, and the answer had yet to be found. Heads of families began proposing ideas for the big prize to be awarded to the winner at a grand ceremony in the soccer field on the eve of ‘id el-fitr.
That night, Father didn’t set foot outside his room. A moment before the show began, he opened the door, walked over to me, and said, with trembling lips and teary eyes, “I’m out of cigarettes. Go buy me some.”
On my way home, I looked down at the pack of cigarettes in my hand. Parliaments, Father’s favorites. AMERICAN BLUE, it said on the wrapper, and there was a picture of a blue sky. Suddenly it all fell into place. “Father, it’s Parliament,” I told him. “I think the answer is Parliament.”
Father looked at me, sat me down, and took his place beside me. He knew it was the right answer. He and the school principal smoked Parliament Longs. “Parliament is an American cigarette,” I told him. “The pack is blue as the sky. Cigarettes cause nothing but trouble. You can write Parliament in Arabic either with a P or with a B. And Abd el-Wahab Darawsheh is a member of the Knesset, the Parliament.”
Without saying a word, Father leaped to the phone and dialed the number. The principal could be seen on the screen, sitting on a blue sofa in the center of the stage. The quizmaster was sitting beside him, and behind them were some thugs whose job was to manage the incoming calls. The line was busy. Father was all worked up. He kept dialing, again and again. Then he rushed out of the house and ran to the soccer field. He had to get the chance to answer before the principal gave it away.
Fifteen minutes later I saw Father on TV, trying to get through the barrier of thugs who were blocking the entrance to the makeshift studio. Then a cameraman walked up to him, and I could hear him say, “I have the answer.”
The principal heard him too. I could see him get up out of his stately seat, walk over to his son, and ask him to put Father on the air. “I want the whole village to see he didn’t solve it
,” he said. The manager must have told him about Father’s incorrect answers. The quizmaster signaled something to one of the thugs, and my father moved up onto the stage, barely able to catch his breath. He grabbed the microphone, walked up to the principal’s seat, looked him in the eye, and said, “Parliament.”
“Correct!” the principal’s son shouted at once, but the principal got up and took the microphone from Father.
“There can be no solution without an explanation,” he said.
Father took back the microphone. He knew now that victory was his. He turned toward the camera. “Parliament is a cigarette from the land of Uncle Sam. Cigarettes bring nothing but trouble. The pack is blue as the sky. You can spell it with a P or a B, and Abd el-Wahab Darawsheh is a member of Parliament.” The crowd listened to the answer and realized it was correct. They didn’t need any confirmation. Everyone cheered like crazy. Even the quizmaster, the principal’s son, seemed happy to hear the answer that only he and his father had known. He encouraged the crowd.
“Congratulations,” he said to Father. “You’ve won five kilos of ground meat from the Triangle Butcher Stop.” But my father and the principal just went on staring at each other, panting.
The entire crowd was applauding by then, delighted that a member of a small family had figured it out. Father was still standing there with the microphone in his hand, staring at the defeated principal. The camera focused on him as he lifted the microphone again and said, with a winner’s smile, “It’s my son. My son solved it.”
The Last Days
Those were the last days of ninth grade. Every morning I’d march to school feeling very proud. I knew people were looking at me now, but I didn’t look back at them, didn’t turn my head. I tried to stay focused on myself and to look like someone who is absorbed in deep thoughts, maybe pondering some question in physics.
They started treating me differently at school too. Until then, I’d been in the weakest of the ninth-grade classes, because my father had no connections. I was the best student in the class, but it was a class where half the kids couldn’t read.
A few days after ‘id el-fitr, the principal himself came to see us. He shook my hand and asked to speak with Father. He said the Jews were opening a new school for gifted students, and they wanted to test Arab students too. The principal said the list of candidates from Tira had already been submitted, but that after I solved the riddle he managed to persuade the Jews to let me take the test too. He said they take one out of a thousand and I stood a chance, but we mustn’t be too disappointed if I didn’t get in. “The tests are tough,” he said.
The auditorium on the old Hebrew University campus was packed with Arab kids from all over the country. Tira alone had sent a whole busload. The wealthier parents had taken their kids by car. Everyone seemed really smart. I knew right away that I didn’t have a chance.
A week later all the kids at school had received letters regretting to inform them that they hadn’t passed the exam. I was the only one who didn’t get a letter. I figured I’d been so inadequate they didn’t even bother notifying me. They assumed I’d figure it out for myself.
When Father found out that everyone except me had received rejection letters, he was frantic. He started searching for their phone number—he talked to the principal, then called the regional superintendent—but nobody knew how to contact that school. Father said they’d pulled a fast one on us. There was no such school; the State of Israel just wanted to find out about the Arab school system.
A few days later—it was on a Friday—I was working in the olive grove behind the house with Father and my three brothers. Mother shouted through the kitchen window that there was a phone call in Hebrew. Father put down the bucket of olives and went running. He’s a fast runner, my father, and I ran after him. He didn’t even take off his shoes and wound up tracking mud all over the carpet. When I entered, he had just hung up. He clenched his two fists, raised his arms, and shouted, “Yes!” Then he hugged me, beaming with joy. “You’re in!” he told me.
The following day, as we stood in rows for morning drills, the principal came over to congratulate me: Mabruk, he said, and ordered everyone to applaud. Everyone knew I’d been accepted.
There was this girl in school named Rim. Maybe now there was a chance she would love me the way I loved her, I thought. She must have known who I was by then, even though I’d never spoken to her. I used to seek her out and follow her around. I knew when she had recess, and when she finished school each day of the week, and how much time it took her to get from her classroom to the gate—so I could stall and take the same amount of time.
After two years I’d become an expert at following Rim home from a distance, far enough away not to be noticed but close enough for her to see me. She must have heard about the new school. Everyone was talking about it. Maybe she’d come with her parents to the party my father was throwing in honor of my having been accepted. They’d bought me a new outfit already. She’d be impressed, I thought. I even considered shaving my mustache a little, but I was afraid it would grow in black. Besides, only the lousiest students started shaving early.
My parents and hers had met on a bus trip to Egypt. They were in the same group, struck up a conversation, had their pictures taken together, and visited one another from time to time. I started seeking her out after I saw a picture of her near the pyramids. Pretty, with her head tilted slightly, long black hair, and mature eyes. All I knew about her was her name and that she was in the eighth grade. I’d met her parents a few times when they came over. Now the timing was right. Now I could talk to her. I was entitled. I was smart, and I was going away.
When she comes, I’ll ask her to wait for me. She knows I love her. She’s seen me following her. I’ll promise her always to think of her and to return to her when I finish school. We’ll be married and we’ll be happy. When she finds out what I’ve done for her these past two years, when she sees the picture of her by the pyramids in my wallet, when she discovers that I know her schedule by heart, she’s bound to agree to wait.
I walked behind her, feeling very proud, realizing people were observing me and that everyone was filled with admiration. If anyone makes fun of me today, of my mustache, of my bag—people will know that it’s just because they’re jealous, poor sports who can’t accept defeat. Rim’s flower-print pants fluttered in the wind, then clung to her legs. I lowered my gaze. It was the last day of school, and she was going to find out.
Mango
“Today you’re the aris, the groom, the star,” my father says, and goes to the door to greet our guests. In my neatly ironed cotton pants and my white shirt buttoned up to my neck, my hair not quite dry yet, and my tiny mustache, I take my place by his side. With us are all my aunts with their children and families.
Father’s friends from work are the first to arrive. They shake my hand, saying Mabruk and Congratulations. They bring gifts, mostly cheap Parker pens. They say they hope I’ll become a rocket scientist. They say I’ll build the first Arab atom bomb. Then Rim’s parents arrive, carrying a gift-wrapped box, and shake my hand. She must have been held up, I think. She’s got to come today.
The grown-ups are drinking coffee, eating knaffeh and mango, and laughing from time to time. My brothers are with my cousins outside. They’re playing hide-and-seek and they invite me to join them, but I say I don’t want to get my clothes dirty. I sit on the fence separating the house from the street.
I want to go to bed. The guests leave, and my mother begins cleaning up the yard. My brothers have gone indoors. Father comes out and asks me to go turn off the water in the mango grove behind the house.
It’s dark out there, and I’m scared.
Father insists and doesn’t understand why I’m scared. He gets annoyed and slaps me. I start crying and go to turn off the water.
When I come back inside, Grandma is shouting at Father. Mother is washing the dishes, and she says I ought to apologize. I enter the room. My younger brother is in
his bed already, next to mine. I crawl into bed without taking my clothes off, pull the covers over my head, and let the tears roll down my cheeks.
Grandma comes in and mutters something I can’t make out. She tries to pull down the blanket, but I cling to it. She raises her voice at my father. “You’re killing the boy. Come see for yourself how he’s trembling. You have no soul.”
Grandma puts her hand on the blanket and tells me to calm down. She’s crying too.
“It’s best for you that you’re going away,” she says. “Thank God it’s over.”
PART THREE
I Wanted to Be a Jew
The Toughest Week of My Life
I look more Israeli than the average Israeli. I’m always pleased when Jews tell me this. “You don’t look like an Arab at all,” they say. Some people claim it’s a racist thing to say, but I’ve always taken it as a compliment, a sign of success. That’s what I’ve always wanted to be, after all: a Jew. I’ve worked hard at it, and I’ve finally pulled it off.
There was one time when they picked up on the fact that I was an Arab and recognized me. So right after that I became an expert at assuming false identities. It was at the end of my first week of school in Jerusalem. I was on the bus going home to Tira. A soldier got on and told me to get off. I cried like crazy. I’d never felt so humiliated.
Sometimes, before I fall asleep, the familiar smell of the boarding school comes over me and paralyzes every muscle in my body. It belongs nowhere but there, and it comes back to haunt me: the smell of a different world, of buildings and furniture and carpets and people I never knew. A smell that used to make me feel uneasy, every single time. I spent three years there, and I never got used to it. That smell remained foreign to me.