by Sayed Kashua
I found a job within a week. It wasn’t hard. In Jerusalem, there are lots of institutions for people with special needs, and they’re always short of attendants. The Jews preferred Arabs who had a blue ID card and could get to work even when there were roadblocks, curfews, or war; not like the Arabs from the West Bank with their orange IDs. This was toward the end of the first Intifada, and the orange ones missed many days of work.
I started working at an institution for the retarded. On my shift, I was responsible for six children, some with Down syndrome and others with different conditions. The retarded kids didn’t like me, and I didn’t like them either. I took them to the bathroom, scrubbed them with a brush, and made sure they were clean. When the girls had their period, I sprayed water on them from a distance. I took them to the dining room, to the occupational workshops, and to the depressing playground. Sometimes, I simply took them on walks through the long buildings. The smell there was terrible, but somehow I got used to it.
I worked every day, and on weekends I’d do a double shift. The pay was very low, and you couldn’t really make a decent salary without the overtime and the extra pay on Saturdays. I didn’t have much to do anyway. I didn’t know anyone except Adel, and I didn’t see much of him either, because he was deep in his law studies and I was stuck at work.
Sometimes, when both of us had a free evening, we’d go down to the grocery store, buy some of the cheapest wine with the highest alcohol content, and drink it in the parking lot of the dorms. He always wanted me to tell him what it was like to fuck, and he kept talking about girls. In the end, we’d both throw up and go back to the room, and if one of the legal occupants was out, we’d share the bed.
Sometimes, when I didn’t want to go back to the dorms, I’d go to the university, look for the psych department, and wait outside for Naomi. I had tried to talk to her at first, to tell her I had a job, and money, and might invite her to a restaurant sometime. But she was always busy. Sometimes I followed her from a distance and tried to find out whether she had a new boyfriend yet. I wanted to know if she was as unhappy as I was. Maybe she still loved me and missed me; maybe it was only because of her mother that we’d split up. But she almost always looked happy, and she was surrounded by friends as she went to the cafeteria or the library.
I had a bus pass from my job, and I would travel around for hours on the buses, listening to my Walkman and staring at the people, the shop windows, the cars. I got on and off whenever I felt like it. I made a point not to keep taking the same bus, because I didn’t want the drivers or the regular passengers to notice me. Sometimes I’d be lost in thought or else I’d fall asleep, and the driver would wake me with a shout when we reached the end of the line.
I knew all the bus routes. I knew where each bus went, and which streets it went through. I studied every way of getting from the dorms to work. I knew the timetables by heart too, and all the drivers’ faces. I started avoiding eye contact when I got on the bus, because I was beginning to feel as if I knew them a bit too well. I knew where there would be traffic jams, where the old people would get on, or the children, or the religious people, and which routes were used by Arabs. Sometimes I tried to guess where the passengers were going. To work? To school? To the souk? To the hospital? Sometimes I wanted to know where one of the passengers lived, and I’d get off with him and follow him from a distance with my Walkman on. Sometimes I’d go as far as my school and head right back.
Adel helped me with the math final. It wasn’t hard. I took the test and signed up for the two courses with the easiest admission requirements. Sometimes I’d have a cutlet and rice at the university cafeteria. I never thought about the war in those days.
That Morning I Got Up, Made Some Coffee, and Decided to Get Married
It had been four years since I’d spotted Samia in the bus station near the dorms. She was a refugee but with a blue ID, which meant their village had been destroyed in the war, and some of her family had wound up in Tira. I recognized her and she recognized me. We’d gone to the same elementary school, but had not been in the same class. We’d never talked. I shook her hand and introduced myself, and she smiled. Said she knew me. She looks okay, I thought. I got on the bus before her and took my seat in the back. I was hoping she’d sit down next to me, and she did. I never would have dared to sit down next to an Arab girl. I’m well-behaved and shy.
“Do you know how I get to Hadassah?” she asked.
“Yes, you go to the central bus station and take the Twenty-seven to the end of the line. I’ll go with you,” I answered.
It was her first day in Jerusalem. I knew she needed me. I was an expert, I knew everything there was to know about public transportation, and the names of streets and places in Jerusalem. I could show her around, maybe do the Old City, even though I didn’t enjoy going there, but I’d take her wherever she wanted, even to El-Aqsa, if that’s what she felt like doing. I’d buy her a present. I’d show her what a good person I was, even if I had screwed up now and then, especially when it came to school.
She’d understand that I’ve had it rough, that I’ve been depressed. Maybe she’s been depressed too. She only knows me from Tira. She knows I’m smart. She’ll be surprised to hear I’m studying philosophy, and I’ll tell her it’s because I love the subject, and that the job market in hospitals and lawyers’ offices is very tight. But she’ll probably wind up dating a medical student. That’s how it is; doctors marry nurses. I’ll tell her I intend to do a doctorate in philosophy.
After we got off, I walked her to the Twenty-seven bus stop, and waited with her till the bus arrived. I knew what it was like to take your first bus trip on a Jerusalem line. Before we said good-bye she told me where she lived, and I gave her my room number. As soon as I got back to the dorms I went looking for her room in the long and narrow buildings. She wasn’t there.
How did I even dare? Idiot. What could I have been thinking? In the end, she won’t want to see me, and I’ll get into trouble. I’ll fall in love just the way I did the last time. I won’t be able to keep my mind on anything else, and I’ll screw up my studies again. I’m going to blow this new chance to prove that I can still make it, that I can take exams the way I used to and get the best grades. I haven’t recovered yet from the previous fiasco, and here I am repeating it. I’ll never learn.
When I got back to my room, Samia was on the stairs. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “It took me an hour to find the room.”
* * *
We’ve been together for four years now. It’s about time. I’ll drink my coffee; then I’ll wake Samia up and tell her we’re going to be married. Until yesterday she was living in the dorms and I was living in the Nahlaot neighborhood with Jewish roommates. Now that I’ve moved into an Arab neighborhood, we’ve got to get married if I want us to go on sleeping together. The owners, who live upstairs, would never allow us to sleep together unless we’re married. That’s it. We’ve got to do it. I know she’ll never ever leave me, so why put it off?
I didn’t know anymore back then whether she was staying with me because she loved me or in order to make it clear to me that I should forget about her ever leaving me. She kept saying I’d promised her we’d get married. I would never break that kind of a promise. It could wreck her life. Everyone in Tira knew by now that we were together, and it was all because of my lack of consideration. As far as she was concerned, she shouldn’t be walking hand in hand with me, let alone sleeping with me. She told me that a Tira bride who isn’t a virgin is sent back to her parents on her wedding night. Once, her aunt had a heart attack when a daughter of hers showed up at home on her wedding night, but all the bride wanted to do was to pick up her hairbrush.
I couldn’t believe Samia’d work up the courage to sleep at my place on that first night in the Arab neighborhood. She cleaned the house, and we told the owner we were engaged. With Jewish owners, we wouldn’t have had to explain. Samia used to visit me in Nahlaot and slept over whenever she felt like
it. My roommates liked her, and for them it was natural. Not like with the Arabs in the dorms, always gossiping and spreading rumors. Well-founded rumors, but what business was it of theirs? “You, what’s it to you? You’re a man. What’s the worst that could happen to you?” she always said.
Samia has one more term paper to submit. Then she’ll go back to Tira, because what would an Arab girl be doing away from her own village? Her father has already found her a job in the municipality. She says there’s nothing for her in Jerusalem. And her parents are already suspicious of her latest excuse, the term paper. They say she could be working on it at home.
I look at her in her sleep. Pretty. Facing the wall, as always. It’s still early, and she spent all of yesterday cleaning, while I connected the appliances and opened the extra bed I’d bought long ago.
“Get up,” I say. “We’re going home to get married.”
“What, now?”
So I took two days off from work and went home to be married.
My father had no objection to the wedding, quite the contrary. He liked the idea. He didn’t mind that I was only twenty-two. He said Samia is from a good family. Communists. Friends of his.
My mother is happy: a girl with a diploma. Maybe she’ll reform me too. Maybe she’ll gradually succeed in persuading me to go back to the university. “How many courses do you have left? Isn’t it a shame for those three years to go down the drain? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to have a wife who’s better educated than you are? I have to hand it to her for agreeing.”
My grandmother knows the refugees. Used to work with them picking fruit. “They’re the best women in the village,” she says. “Bring her here so I can see her.” Even though she can hardly see anymore.
Father says nobody in Tira gets married this way. “It can’t be done in two days. Even if we agree, her parents won’t. They have their self-respect, don’t they?” He says we won’t succeed in finding a hall overnight or inviting people. And I explain that I want it to be small. As far as I’m concerned, the only person we need at the wedding is the sheikh. But my parents wouldn’t dream of having anyone badmouth them or give anyone a pretext for saying they’re not as good as everyone else. “Isn’t it bad enough that the poor girl is marrying someone with no home of his own? Are you sure her parents agree?”
Samia’s parents agree because they have no choice. The rumors have finished them off already. Her mother had gone to pay a condolence call and overheard people discussing her promiscuous daughter who was studying in Jerusalem. In the mosque where her father prays every Friday, they mentioned her in the sermon. Not by name, but they spoke of parents who send their daughters off to university, where they turn into prostitutes.
My parents won’t give up. They settle on one hundred guests on each side, and Father closes a deal with a restaurant owner. They buy gold the way people used to in Tira, and give us money to buy clothes in Tel Aviv. Samia buys a dress on Shenkin Street, and I get a suit at Zara in Dizengoff Center. Nobody in either one of the families understands why we’re getting married like this. The sheikh arrives and I sign his papers seven times. Her father signs for her, which is the custom. We’re married now, and all I want is for everyone to finish eating so we can go home.
The next day, my mother called and said the teachers where she worked, the ones who hadn’t been invited, thought it was a shotgun wedding and we were just trying to avoid disgrace. Samia said her family hadn’t been sure if it was an engagement or a wedding, because at an engagement you only serve knaffeh but the restaurant had served a full meal. On the other hand, at a wedding you wear a bridal gown, but she’d worn a dress from Shenkin Street. Samia cried and said it was all my fault. She knew it wouldn’t work, I couldn’t think of anyone but myself, I wasn’t prepared to do anything for her, and her parents were hurt and angry because she hadn’t been married like everyone else.
My father chewed me out too. He said I was a mess. “Next week come again, and we’ll put an end to this disgrace.”
So we got married all over again. The checks covered the hall, the music, the photographer, a thousand guests, and a Netanya hotel. Apart from my aunts and their children, I hardly even knew anyone at my own wedding. I hadn’t invited anyone. Everyone had been invited by my parents or Samia’s. I put on my black suit and my black shoes, like in an Arab movie. I had to put the ring on Samia’s finger. I had to dance with her, even though I haven’t a clue about dancing the debka. I was supposed to cut the cake and kiss men whose names I didn’t know. I had to hug my aunts and uncles and smile at the camera. I had to listen to horrible music that never fails to give me a headache. And I had to put up with all that without any alcohol or cigarettes. Because I’m well-behaved and shy.
Beit Safafa
A few months after we got married for the second time, we moved into Beit Safafa. It used to be a village, but by then it was a neighborhood of Jerusalem. It’s good to be a stranger. Nobody follows you around. Nobody takes an interest in you, and the only thing the landlord cares about is that you pay the rent on time. True, our landlords are Arabs, but we still don’t feel like we belong. We have no relatives or acquaintances or friends here the way we do in Tira.
Our house is in an area that was occupied in 1967. Its Hebrew name is Givat Ha-Matos (Hill of the Plane), because an Israeli plane was downed there in the war. From 1948 to 1967 there’d been a barbed wire fence running through the village, splitting it in two. For nineteen years, brothers, relatives, and families living on either side of the fence couldn’t visit each other. Our landlady says that the only time the Israelis and the Jordanians would allow families to approach the fence and shake hands with two fingers was on holidays or wedding days. She showed us pictures of a wedding being celebrated on both sides of the fence. Half the family lived in Jordan and the other half in Israel, she said, and laughed. Now both halves are occupied by Israel, except that people in the part occupied in ’67 have residents’ passes and those in the part occupied in ’48 have citizens’ passes, so they’re considered superior and more loyal. At least their homes are higher. It figures—they’ve always had more work on the Israeli side.
My wife and I are citizens, and thanks to that our landlady treats us with respect, because we have medical insurance and social security and we know Hebrew well. The homes in the half of the village that was occupied in ’67 are cheaper, because there’s no sewage system, and the water and electricity are supplied by Arab companies, so there are a lot more power stoppages and problems with the water system. When war broke out—the Intifada—the Palestinian part came under much greater pressure because the electricity was cut every time Israel shelled Bethlehem or Beit Jala or Beit Sahur. There was a big settlement separating us from places that were shelled, but we still belonged with the Palestinians, at least when it came to water and electricity. Life became much more difficult with the Intifada, and my wife and I began to regret that we hadn’t rented in the Israeli half. The rent’s a little higher, but we would have managed with a smaller home.
Since the war broke out, there have been more soldiers milling around in the Palestinian half, and the power cuts are making the winters tougher, especially for the baby. We can hear the shellings, but they haven’t reached us so far. The Palestinian side of Beit Safafa is quiet, because they know that if they join the Intifada the Arab tenants will move out of the rented apartments, which are their main source of livelihood.
Almost all of the people in the Palestinian half have set aside a room for rental or built an extra home for citizens like us who are trying to leave their own village in favor of the big city. People feel solidarity with the ones who are being shelled just a short distance away, and they take up collections of toys and money for the refugee camps, but they won’t throw so much as a single stone at the Jewish soldiers who are underfoot everywhere. It’s embarrassing what people will do to make ends meet.
We have a small home. Our daughter sleeps with us in our room, and there’s a small ki
tchen and a small bathroom. When a Jew is killed, our landlady bakes basbussa and brings us a portion in a small dish. She takes off her head scarf and stuffs it in her mouth to muffle the sound. Then she gives muted cries of joy.
Our landlady is a refugee from the village of Malcha. Sometimes she climbs up on the roof and looks down at her home. It’s still there, two meters away from the mosque. In 1948 she escaped to the southern part of Beit Safafa, which had become Jordanian, and since 1967 she’s been working at the Hebrew University. She’s head of a department, which means she’s in charge of the toilets on the law school campus. When the war broke out, her brother was praying at the El Aqsa Mosque, as he did every Friday—and was killed. He was a plumber, and he had a small Fiat. His sister used to call him every time our pipes were clogged. When our daughter was born, he arrived with his wife and children and brought us a present.
The Fashion Channel
I’m lying on the sofa, trying to entice myself with the fashion channel. Bridal gowns flash in front of me. I try to think back on my own wedding, but I’m too drunk for that. One of the landlord’s brothers has just gotten married. They kept the guest list small, with no music and no food. The two families only spent half an hour together.
There’s shooting again, and another power cut. It wakes up my wife. I can’t understand why it’s the quiet that causes her to wake up. Or the darkness. She calls me from the bedroom, trying to talk loud enough for me to hear, but not so loud as to wake the baby. “The flashlight is on the TV,” she says.
In summer the shooting and the shelling are louder, especially at night. You sit there trying to imagine exactly where they’ve landed or to picture the helicopters homing in on a target, tilting downward and shooting. The pilots are the best. They must be my age, but with a good physique and a nice face. They’ll finish their nightly assignment, step out of the plane, and take off their helmets, and with an impressive flick of their wrist they’ll fix their hair. Fair hair, blond maybe, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. Especially since the alcohol throws me off.