In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees

by Jeff Talarigo

  From the doorway of her room, his wife asks the question that every wife would ask if they saw their husband up a ladder, nibbling on a book, at that hour of night, “What are you doing?”

  Abu Khalil pauses, taking his time to swallow the last of the page. He clears his throat and recites, as much to the wall as to his wife, the first verse of Shakespeare she has ever heard:

  Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

  The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

  Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

  And by opposing, end them?

  Before her husband finishes with the verse, his wife goes and wakes their son.

  Thus begins the strange days that follow. Abu Khalil, whenever he speaks, recites only the pages he has eaten. At meals, his wife begins to serve, along with bowls of cucumbers and sardines and tomatoes, a bowl with a page or two from one of the books, torn into bite-size pieces. Once, Abu Khalil’s son pinches, with a piece of bread, a shred of the paper. He eats them together and is afraid to speak, but when he does, normal words come out of his mouth, words no different than he has spoken his entire life. Still, he doesn’t eat any more of the pages.

  Nor are the nights diffident to strangeness.

  In the middle hours of the night, Abu Khalil joins the black-hooded graffiti artists, and on the cement block canvas of the camp, after they have painted their red, black, green and white maps, he recites a line or two from one of the books and they paint them across the pictures. Each morning, Abu Khalil revisits the walls of the night before and admires what they have created; he makes sure that he is there early, for within hours of daylight the whitewash of the soldiers muffles the walls until they are free to speak again that night.

  Secrets are as fleeting as the days of spring in Jabaliya.

  Within weeks a convoy of jeeps stalks the street and surrounds Abu Khalil’s house. Tear gas is dropped between the roof and wall and flushes out his family. With spotlights shining, as though the full moon has fallen and become hung up in a tree, Abu Khalil and his family are lined against the wall and forced to watch as the bulldozer compresses their house. His heart moans, but is soon comforted by the thought that almost all the banned words are inside him.

  But the back wall doesn’t fall. The bulldozer can’t bring it down, nor does the bomb placed at its base. Hours pass and the neighborhood is left in rubble. Abu Khalil is taken away and, in the upcoming days, his family clears out enough of the destroyed house to where they can pitch a tent and that is where they remain until new walls can be constructed and a thin roof, once again, placed above their heads.

  At the military compound, Abu Khalil is on a chair in the middle of a brightly lit room. His hands are tied behind the chair and the bare bulb dangles inches from his head. He has been in this position for hours and has not spoken a word. Even the military’s top interrogator cannot extract a syllable from his mouth.

  Finally, they untie his raw wrists and leave him alone with a book leaning against the far wall. Abu Khalil, after only a few minutes, cannot stand the taunting book and he lunges at it. Paying no attention, he rips out a handful of pages and gorges himself on them. Two, sometimes three pages at a time, he eats, ignoring the texture of the pages—a newer book, with a sheen coating them, more difficult to chew and swallow than those back in his house. Soon he finishes. Braced against the wall, he feels sick to his stomach and pregnant with guilt. He thinks he is going to cry, but instead of tears, words rise up, like bile, and he shouts them and the louder he shouts the more they scour his throat and they pound off the walls and only grow louder for they have nowhere to escape.

  When hearing the words from the interrogation room, the soldiers are elated; the rumors of this man who eats words and recites them verbatim turn out to be true. They wait until Abu Khalil exhausts himself, but the wait is long. Days pass, dozens of times he recites The Occupation Handbook before slumping to the floor. The soldiers allow him to rest and they feed him two times a day.

  One morning, several weeks later, they lead him out of the room and gently into the back of a jeep, holding his head down so he doesn’t bump it. They drive the coastal road and enter Jabaliya from the west. Before turning past the market, the soldier in the back hands Abu Khalil a second copy of The Occupation Handbook and he eats it slowly. Waiting for him to finish, they drive several times around the camp. Stones from the youth pelt the jeep.

  He finishes. The jeep heads up School Street and stops under the willow. A couple of men sitting against the tree are grabbed and, along with Abu Khalil, are used as human shields. But not a stone or shoe or Molotov cocktail is thrown, nor are any words launched at the soldiers; some of those gripping stones drop them in their shock, the words sons of whores fall harmlessly to the street below. Everyone listens to Abu Khalil reciting, with such passion, in the language of the soldiers, the words of humiliation, words that if any son or daughter of yours spoke them, you would not hesitate to take a knife or pair of scissors and promptly sever their tongues so they could speak no more.

  The black hooded men do not even wait until night to come and haul Abu Khalil away. His family offers no resistance as a filthy towel is shoved into his mouth, leaving only the muffled shadows of his words. He is thrown into the back of the car and it vanishes up the street.

  Even after all this time, more than fifteen years since Abu Khalil was taken, and six years since the military has left, the back wall of the house still stands. The ladder is braced against the wall and every once in a while someone will climb it, to the fifth or sixth or seventh rung, depending on how tall they are, and they will place their ear against the fake cement block and listen to Abu Khalil’s voice reciting all the books he ate. Others from the camp go to the beach at night, the part of the beach that is closest to the border, and from there they listen to him speak in the language of the waves. More and more people from Jabaliya can be seen gathering under the giant willow, where you can hear his tears fall before being swallowed by the ground.

  Back in Jabaliya, he opens his eyes to the night, surrounded by three generations of sleeping men, and he hears the footsteps of Bassam and goes out of the bedroom and joins him. The both of them pace the cement floor and then make some sweet mint tea and they drink it in the darkness, neither of them divulging what it is that keeps them from sleeping on this night.

  Every ten days or so the American begins to feel the crush of the camp, the smother of its walls, the heckling of the curfew, the utter lack of ever being alone. He imagines climbing the giant willow, way up into the highest point of its umbrella and sitting there with the ebb and flow of Jabaliya far off below.

  Twice a month he goes the fifty miles to Jerusalem to get a reprieve from the claustrophobia of this place. After passing through the hour long wait at the border, with every road sign along the way, the driver begins his lament:

  Dimra.

  Najd.

  Dayr Sunayd.

  Simsim.

  Burayr.

  Bayt Jirja.

  Barbara.

  Bayt Timra.

  Al-Jiyya

  Hirbiya.

  Kawkaba.

  Some of the names he recognizes: Simsim and Kawkaba and, of course, Burayr, only eight miles from block number four, the town of the family he lives with. He thinks of the many times, on the many journeys in his life, that he has walked this far—eight miles—and how frighteningly close it can be, and how great a distance.

  A cold rain pelts Jerusalem, chasing the last of winter away.

  He ducks into a basement bar, dripping water on the spiral cement steps. A dungeon-like place. Bob Marley’s lyrics of freedom and the psychopathic strobe lights pull the American down the steps. The lights make it difficult to see and at first he thinks that the dancing soldiers playing their Kalashnikovs as guitars is a mirage.

  It is not and he walks away from the strumming soldiers and to the counter where he orders a beer. Many of the patrons wear army fatigues and are
in a festive mood, dancing and singing along to Marley. He takes a drink and imagines the sound of the rain pinging the tin roofs of Jabaliya and the blurry reception of the Egyptian soap opera and his mat in the sleeping room, where, on this night, Mustafa, the youngest in the family, will most likely sleep once again, the room where he has slept all his life until the American arrived.

  He regrets coming here and feels the tightening of its walls and the lights and the music drumming at his head and even more, the guilt. A soldier leans on the counter and looks at the stranger.

  “To Mandela,” he says, lifting his drink.

  The American gives him a baffled look. The soldier leans closer and shouts.

  “Mandela has been freed after twenty-seven years in prison!” Again the soldier raises his glass.

  He isn’t sure what to say, what to do. He calculates the years—1963 he was imprisoned, more than a dozen years after the opening of Jabaliya.

  The American looks at the soldier, who still holds his glass aloft. He wants to say—I know the truth. I have been to Ramallah and Hebron and Nablus and Bethlehem and to each of the eight camps in Gaza. I know the truth, he wants to say. I know of places where children, because of years of nighttime curfews, have never seen the moon or a shooting star. He hates himself, hates his weakness in front of the soldier. A devouring hopelessness crumbles him and he understands now that what he feels is only a slice of the hopelessness endured all over Gaza and the West Bank. It is paralyzing, unforgiving, an exhausting way to live one’s life. Like driving on ice.

  He manages to turn away from the soldier and look at the crowd of people, people between him and the stairs, stairs that will lead him out into the lashing rain, rain that he cannot wait until it slaps him coldly in the face.

  The rain of the night before has let up, but the day is still dreary. On his way to the taxi to await a ride back to Gaza, the American stops at a food stall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

  The balding older man is carving some chicken from the spit into a platter.

  “Can I have a large chicken shwarma?”

  Without turning around, the man asks:

  “What part of the states are you from?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  He cuts the top of the pita bread and squeezes it to make a pocket.

  “What do you think of our beautiful country?”

  He remembers the bar and the soldiers celebrating the night before.

  “I have been living in Gaza.”

  The man doesn’t react. He continues to fill the sandwich with chicken and lettuce and tomato and pickles.

  “Tahina?”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Would you like tahina sauce?”

  “Yes, please. Only a little.”

  The man adds the sauce, wraps the sandwich and as he hands it to the American the left sleeve of his jacket slides above his wrist. As the American gives him the money, he notices the tattooed letter “A”, followed by the number “1”. The crinkle of the paper bag rips his eyes from the man’s left arm. He takes the bag and begins his journey back to Gaza.

  The American returns to Jerusalem twice more before he leaves Gaza forever. He spends his days roaming the stone streets in the four quarters of the Old City—Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Armenian. For breakfast, he eats sesame bread with a packet of spices while sitting atop the steps outside of Damascus Gate. The routines are comforting, but now he finds himself looking more closely at those passing by, at those folding up prayer notes and placing them into the cracks of the Western Wall, staring at shopkeepers. But instead of studying the faces of the people, he searches their left arms for numbers hiding beneath the crawl of a sleeve.

  My Father, the Mole

  For many months I have wondered why my father no longer brings home with him the smell of sardines, and with it the silver flakes that fleck his brown skin, and the grit of sand that sometimes sprinkles into the small dish of olive oil in which we dab our breakfast bread; instead, it is a reddish clay that mats itself to my father’s jeans, and pries its way under his nails, both fingers and toes—all this leaves me feeling that the man across from me is not really my father at all.

  But today is my birthday—my tenth—and I don’t think about any of this. It is half an hour into dawn and I sit facing my father, a small tray, holding silver bowls of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and cucumbers, is on the floor between us. I am up early because Father will take me in the direction of the Sinai, where my present awaits.

  Every year is the same, my gift in the direction of south. Recounting from last year until my sixth birthday, which is as far back as I can remember, I think of the gift that has awaited me. A video arcade. A day at the beach. A night sleeping on Father’s fishing boat. Tasting ice cream for the first time—mint. I know better than to ask what the present is; I hurry up and eat as fast as I can.

  “Slow down, Zaid. There are still eighteen hours left of your birthday. Whatever is at the border will be there when we arrive.”

  Those words—at the border—stop me. I place my piece of flatbread on the tray and try imagining what those three simple words could possibly mean. I have never been there, only to the town, Rafah, and the refugee camp of the same name. Again, I run back through the previous birthdays, and yes, it is a fact, that each year my father takes me further from Jabaliya. This year, the border itself. Slow down your thoughts, I tell myself, keep to your tenth, not eleventh, birthday. But the thought won’t leave me alone: could it be that next year Father will take me across the border, into Egypt itself? Is that even possible?

  My mother snaps me from my reverie with a kiss on the forehead. I welcome the warm kiss, glad that she does so in the privacy of the house and not in front of my friends, which, although I am older now, she still sometimes does.

  “A hundred more birthdays, my son, if Allah wills it.”

  One hundred and ten, I think, I would be one hundred and ten if Allah so wishes. Only the man down the street, Abu Hassan, is anywhere near that age—eighty-five, perhaps as much as ninety—and look at him: what little hair he has is white; the wrinkles on his forehead are like the waves of the sea; I have had twice as many birthdays as he teeth in that head of his.

  “Are you finished eating, Zaid?” my father asks.

  “Yes. I think we should go.”

  “Put this on.” My mother helps me into my jean jacket. “It will be cool today.”

  It is early still and a light fog has softened the giant willow making it appear as though it is a shadow. As we walk past the school, where I am in the fourth grade, I wish, although I know it is wrong to do so, that it wasn’t so early in the morning and we would pass some of my friends, at least one of them, and a pang of envy would trundle through them for just this one day. By the time we arrive at the market, I have squelched this idea and my father finds a taxi and we go the nineteen miles in the direction of the Sinai.

  The somnolent sheath of fog has lifted by the time we arrive near the border, forty-five minutes later. When I see boys my age, carrying backpacks, I think of my best friend, Mustafa, and how, each morning, we meet and walk together to school. We have been friends since I can remember; Mustafa, with his funny bent left ear, which my grandmother says came from him sleeping so much, as a baby, on his left side.

  Together, the two of us wear our flour-white shirts and neckties for the festival of Eid. We share bites of one another’s ice cream, pass on the book we have just finished reading. As my father and I get out of the taxi, I think of how, right now, Mustafa is walking down School Street, maybe even sitting in the classroom, with math about to begin. And just as I am thinking of him, he is probably thinking of me.

  As my father takes my hand, and we walk through the streets, I wonder what the hands of other fathers feel like, say, the hands of a lawyer or teacher or martyr. My father’s hands are those of a laborer and the calluses, for him, are like the rings of a tree. Thirty-four rings, my father.

  We go into the market
where normally I want to stop and marvel at the colors and shapes and smells, but the thoughts of where and what my gift might be are a distraction. As if on cue, like magic, my father answers my thoughts, something I both love and hate when he does it.

  “A little further, just on the other side of the market.”

  “Can we see Egypt from where we are going?”

  “Something even better.”

  What could possibly be better than seeing another country? Going there, of course, but I know that is not possible with the blockade on Gaza, now in its seventh year. To see another country would begin to answer some of my questions, questions Mustafa and I talk about, and the same ones I sometimes think of alone at night. Is their soil the same color as ours? How about the sky? The sea? The crispness of their falafel?

  “Over there. We are going over there.”

  I see nothing that looks like a birthday present, just a few white tents and clusters of men smoking and chatting. My father looks down at me, a slice of a grin on his face, but not a word is spoken. One of the men motions to my father, and then another and yet another, until the huddled group of five or six all acknowledge him. We join the men, and although they throw a glance my way, none of them says anything to me. Don’t they know it’s my birthday, and why doesn’t my father say something to them? As the men talk, my father lets go of my hand and this makes me feel even more isolated.

  “Have you heard anything?”