Second Person Singular

by Sayed Kashua

  SODIUM CHLORIDE

  During my first weeks at the Nusseibah housing projects I hardly left the building, aside from daily trips to work and the occasional trip to the grocery. I shopped for the three of us and after a while Majdi started calling me the Minister of Shopping. I’d get receipts for the things we shared—bread, eggs, sausages, cheese—and we’d split the cost three ways, even though I’d frequently get a fancier cheese or a more expensive sausage and ask the grocer to put it on a separate bill. “Ever since you arrived we have cleaning supplies in our apartment,” Majdi would say, laughing at the sight of floor cleaning liquid or dish soap.

  I took charge of the actual cleaning also. That meant scouring surfaces that hadn’t been touched since the day the cousins moved in. My first mission was the refrigerator. Majdi and Wassim were shocked to learn that its interior could be cleaned and that the shelves could be made white again. The bathroom was no easier. It took an entire bottle of sodium chloride and a bottle of bleach to make the sink, bathtub, and toilet somewhat acceptable. I’m not sure if I cleaned because I wanted to combat the filth or simply because I wanted something to do with myself, a way to pass the time until Wassim and Majdi came home. They arrived one after another, at just before nine thirty.

  Other than late in the evening, it was rare for the three of us to be awake and together in the apartment at the same time. Wassim and Majdi worked whenever they could, even on the weekends, trying to earn a little extra cash. Those were the worst times for me. I tried to entertain myself with the small TV and the old newspapers that Majdi brought home from the hotel. Every once in a while I’d treat myself to a cup of coffee. Those dead hours alone were dreadful enough to make me miss the office, and when I knew I’d have to spend an entire weekend alone in the apartment, I’d photocopy a few files, the thickest ones I could find, and shove them into my bag so that at least I’d have something entertaining to read.

  The weekends that we spent together, on the other hand, were glorious. When Wassim and Majdi were off and hadn’t gone home to visit their families, we’d take the bus or a share-taxi down to Damascus Gate and go to Lina for hummus with fava beans. Then we’d meander through the old market, shuffling in and out of the human traffic while Majdi shopped for what he called “hilarious” music, asking the shop owners to play him a track from, say, Egyptian pop star Ahmad Adawiya’s newest album and then bursting out laughing. He liked Sheikh Imam, Ziad Rahbani, Michel Halifa, and a Palestinian band called Sabarin, which he talked about constantly. Wassim, whom Majdi called a hopeless conservative, liked the classics, always on the look-out for el-Halim, Farid al-Atrash, Sabah Fakhri, and Fairuz. I didn’t buy cassettes. I didn’t own a single tape of my own. Nor did I have a stereo. But I was fine with whatever they played at home. All-out wars would erupt over which music was to be played during what we called our narghile nights.

  Majdi was the master of the narghile. Like an artist at work he would shape the tobacco in his hands—the flavor of choice was usually apple—then he’d cover the tobacco with aluminum foil and punch strategic holes with a toothpick, laying the heated coals over the aluminum tent. He’d sit with the rubber hose in his hand and take monumental pulls from the water pipe. The king of nonsense, Wassim would say. The two of them passed the hose from mouth to mouth, exhaling long plumes of smoke toward the ceiling. I tried the pipe a few times, but I couldn’t really figure out what to do with the smoke once it was in my mouth. In the end I gave up trying, but still very much loved the narghile nights. Especially the tea, a weak brew with sharp mint leaves and tons of sugar—three teaspoons in each little glass.

  On most narghile nights the main topic of conversation was girls. Majdi, who loved all kinds of girls, was full of stories about those he met at the hotel, at work, and on the bus. He liked talking about girls, especially the pretty Russian ones who worked with him at the hotel and the tourists who made eyes at him over their dinners. Wassim contended that he made it all up, that every single detail was false and that from what he could tell Majdi was on the fast track to becoming the most flagrantly lying lawyer in the country and that God should have mercy on his clients. Wassim, for his part, had a girlfriend. Or at least a sort of girlfriend. She was from their village, had studied education in school, and had gone back home after college. Wassim had never spent a minute alone with her, nor could he call her, because her parents or brother might answer the phone. But they loved each other, and it was clear that they would soon be engaged to be married.

  “You’re missing out on life,” Majdi would say to him, “you should get the most out of the city before you lock yourself up in the village.” His advice, of course, was not heeded. Wassim was the exact kind of guy who would stay true to his love and marry the honest, shy girl from the village whom he had never so much as touched. “So long as her parents don’t give me too much grief,” he would say. “Her father is very rich. He has an electronic appliance store. And what am I? A teacher . . .” Without a house in the village, there was no point in even discussing marriage. That was one of the reasons Wassim was still in Jerusalem. He wanted to save as much as he could before heading back home. That was also why every cent of the rent was painful for him to cough up. He managed to put away a salary and a half, but neither of them was substantial.

  Majdi was more of a high roller. He earned a lot less than Wassim—interns got minimum wage—but he treated himself to new jeans and new shirts, and the money he did put away was earmarked for a new car. That was the other topic of conversation—cars. A BMW was the ultimate vehicle. It’s not the most expensive, Majdi would say, but it’s a beast on the road. In the meantime, he had his sights on a Volkswagen Golf, an ’84 or an ’85.

  “Maybe you should get a second job,” Wassim said to me one night, the night that led me to Yonatan. “Maybe you should get a girl,” Majdi added, but Wassim ignored him. “There’s this one job,” he went on, “I don’t know if it’s still available but if it is, it would be perfect for you. The shifts are evening and nights, I think.” Wassim told me about Ayub, a teacher in his school who was about to get married and would have to give up the night shift. I remember Wassim saying, “You don’t have to do a thing, absolutely nothing. He takes care of a kid, in the kid’s house. The kid has some kind of problem, I’m not exactly sure what the technical name for it is, but if you want, I could ask Ayub tomorrow. All I know is that Ayub works nights and he doesn’t lift a finger. He says he sleeps better there than he does at home.”

  “Okay, sounds good,” I said, not meaning it at all.

  SCOUT

  I waited for Ayub at exactly six p.m. at the bus station opposite Damascus Gate, just as Wassim had told me. Ayub showed up at six fifteen. I spotted him as he darted across the street that divides east from west. He was wearing a thick gray sweater and a heavy jean jacket that was lined with fake sheepskin. A backpack hung off one shoulder. “You’re the guy?” he asked before extending a hand. “Sorry I’m late. The road was backed up, some kind of accident or something, but don’t worry, we’ll make it on time.”

  Ayub said that he usually took a share-taxi from Issawiya, where he lived, to Damascus Gate and that from there he walked down to Jaffa Road, some ten minutes away, and took the 27 bus or the 18, which went down Herzl Boulevard, leaving a short walk to Scout Street. But since it was really cold he suggested we take the bus to Jaffa Road. “I don’t mind walking,” I said, but Ayub said he didn’t want to be late, and just as he said that a bus nosed into the stop.

  I got on ahead of him and bought two fares. The bus was practically empty. We sat toward the back and Ayub started telling me about himself and about the job. He said he was a special-ed teacher and that he had studied at the David Yellin College, which was no simple feat because he had a Jordanian matriculation certificate. “But I played it right, because I knew that the only thing I’d be able to do with a teaching degree from the West Bank was to wipe my ass, so I spe
nt the year after college working on my Hebrew, then I took a prep course and got in to David Yellin. Of course, Birzeit and Bethlehem Universities are a thousand times better than David Yellin, but what’s a Jerusalem resident going to do with a degree from there? Everything here’s Israeli.”

  When he decided he needed someone to take his night shift, he considered offering it to his cousins. They sat at home all day long and did nothing, but Wassim had recommended me really strongly, and Wassim’s a hard person to say no to. “Wassim’s a great guy,” he said. “He’s got a heart of gold. It’s hard to find people like him these days. Anyway, he told me a lot about you.” He also knew they wouldn’t take just anyone for the job. “They want a quality person, someone who knows Hebrew, too, and someone who has some kind of background. Someone who studied special-ed or nursing, but social work is good, too. It’s different, but it’s still about caring for others.” And anyway, he explained, there’s a registered nurse there all day long. “We’ll meet her in a second. She’s a good person, precise, goes by the books, but good. Her name’s Osnat.”

  We got off the bus on Jaffa Road. Ayub waved me into a run as he sprinted toward the 27 bus, which was already at the stop. The bus was packed and there was nowhere to sit. There was barely anywhere to stand. Ayub, who up until then had been speaking in Arabic, switched to ­Hebrew—which he spoke with a heavy Hebron accent—and he did it naturally, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. I didn’t know how to respond, in Hebrew or Arabic, so I held my silence. “The most important thing,” he said to me, “is to show her that you care about people. Be sympathetic. You know, interested. And don’t get freaked out when you see the kid. Just treat him like a normal person. He’s handicapped, but he’s still a person. His name’s Yonatan.”

  Ayub told me that Yonatan was twenty-one or maybe, now that he thought about it, twenty-two, because more than a year had gone by since he started working there. Before that he’d worked at a home for mentally disabled adults, in addition to his job as a teacher. The home was where he met Osnat, the nurse, who came once a week to instruct the caregivers on how to treat the residents. The two of them got along well and one day she asked Ayub if he would be willing to take the night shift with Yonatan. “Working at the home was so different,” he said. “This job’s a breeze. You don’t have to do a thing. Yonatan sleeps through the night. All you have to do is rotate him a little bit every two hours. Turn him onto his back, his right side, his left side. That’s it. The rest of the time all you do is sleep, and no one cares. The mother’s out to lunch, doesn’t know what’s going on. Poor thing, she’s a good person, too. All she has is Yonatan. She lost her husband, not sure how, but he’s gone. Maybe she’s a widow or a divorcée, I’m not really sure what her story is. The best thing is not to ask. Why complicate things, that’s what I say.”

  Ruchaleh, the mother, was some kind of doctor. Maybe of sociology. She worked up at Hebrew U and was a real lefty. So Osnat had told him. And Osnat, Ayub said, was also in favor of some kind of peace deal, which meant that the two of us should get along.

  “We get off at the next stop,” he said all of a sudden, still in Hebrew, as he pushed the bell. When we stepped off the bus, he switched back to Arabic. “Remember this stop,” he said. “Right next to the pizzeria on Herzl. One minute from here and you’re at work.”

  I followed Ayub down a small side street in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood. This is Scout Street, he said, then filled me in on more details about the job. “The shift starts at seven in the evening and ends at seven in the morning. It’s okay to sleep while on duty—there’s even a couch there for that purpose—but don’t say anything about it in the interview. Say you don’t plan on sleeping. Even though Osnat knows you will. She does, too. It’s fine. All you have to do is set your alarm for every two hours. I don’t even really need to wake up to rotate him. I just do it and go straight back to sleep. In the morning I’m refreshed, I sleep better than at home,” he said, laughing. He stopped outside one of the houses and pushed open a small gate. I followed him through a modest little garden. It was a stand-alone house, two stories. “Remember,” he said before sliding the key into the lock, “Scout Street, number thirty-five.”

  JELLY

  A week later I made my way to Beit Hakerem for my first night shift with Yonatan.

  “I hope you’re always this early,” Osnat said, opening the door for me. She was alone, which is to say just she and Yonatan were home. I followed her down the hall and flicked a glance to the right, toward the book-filled living room. She led me up the narrow wooden stairs to the attic, where Yonatan lay.

  “Hi, Yonatan,” Osnat said as we walked into the room. A strong smell hit me, the smell of unventilated air, medicine, and hospital food. “Look who’s here,” she said in a loud voice, as though the increase in volume would heighten his perception. “He’s going to spend the night with you, okay, Yonatan?”

  Yonatan lay on his back. I looked at him, nodded in his direction, and offered a mute hello. I had spent two or three hours a day with him the week before, learning how to do the job, and I wasn’t sure if he recognized me or not, if he was even capable of such a thing. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. I steered my eyes away from him, so it wouldn’t look like I was staring.

  Osnat shouldered her bag. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said, walking over to what she called the staff closet, “there are sheets and blankets here for you. Everything’s been washed, so make yourself at home. Ruchaleh will probably be back soon and she knows it’s your first night. If you need anything, I’ll be home in half an hour and my home number’s on the board. Feel free to call till around midnight, okay? See you tomorrow morning at seven. Good night. Have a good shift.” She wrapped herself in a heavy wool coat, walked toward the door, and said, “’Bye, Yonatan, good night.” Then she left.

  I heard the door slam shut below and immediately threw open the attic window. Shoving my head out, I breathed in the crisp air. Then I slid the window back along its track till it was just barely open. The radiator was working full steam and Yonatan was tucked under a blanket that had been pulled up to his chin.

  He was positioned in the middle of the room, on a large bed, on what Osnat called an electric egg-carton mattress. It was connected to a machine that sent waves through the mattress, preventing bedsores. Bedsores—that was the word I heard most from Osnat, so much so that it seemed to me that my main goal at work was to keep them at bay.

  There was nothing for me to do with Yonatan until eight, when I would feed him his dinner. The food was in a jar in a small refrigerator in the corner of the attic and once he had eaten it I was supposed to give him a small container of jelly, instead of water, which he couldn’t swallow.

  I sat down on the recliner and stole a few glances at Yonatan, just to make sure that the blanket was rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing. His wide eyes were fixed on the ceiling, his face expressionless. Osnat had said that Yonatan’s condition was defined as vegetative and that the cause was an accident. Ayub said it was a car accident, but he wasn’t 100 percent sure. I got up and looked for figures in the lit windows of the high-rises on Herzl Boule-

  vard, thinking of how jealous I had always been of people who live in big buildings looking over crowded streets. They would never be bored, they could always just look out the window and see people. They’d never feel like they were alone.

  A substantial amount of space had been set aside for Yonatan. The attic was built like a studio, with a large bathroom and a grand desk. There was an old computer monitor on the desk and shelves full of books above it. There was also a sleek and powerful-looking stereo. The speakers, on either side of the desk, faced the bed and alongside one of them were two tall racks of CDs.

  I ran my eyes down the long column of discs and found that I did not know a single one of them. I’d never had a CD player. At my mother’s house and in th
e apartment in Beit Hanina we only used a tape deck and cassettes. I looked over the books and some of the titles seemed familiar, even though I’d never read any of them. The truth is that back then the only books I’d ever read were the young adult books my mother used to bring back from the school where she taught in Jaljulia. She talked a lot about how important it was to read, even though she never did it herself, and there were few books at home. At one point she bought me a set of encyclopedias—the school principal was a salesman—and I read from them pretty often. They, for instance, taught me about the reproductive system. I spent many a long hour in front of the strange genitalia illustrations, especially the female ones. I had read the chapter called “The Human Body” close to a million times.

  I was sure that prior to the accident Yonatan had been a musician. There was a hard black guitar case in the room and a black box that looked like an amp. There were posters of what must have been his favorite bands up on the walls. One stretch of wall was decorated with framed photos, but they weren’t family pictures or anything like that, they were just photos, not always clear, sometimes shadowy and blurry, all in black and white. I thought to myself that it would have been interesting to hear him play, this Yonatan.

  I was jealous of people who could play music. When I was a kid I really wanted to learn how to play an instrument, and for a while my wish came true. An engineer who lived in the village had gone to study in Russia and had come home with a music teacher for a wife. The engineer had not found work and his Russian wife, who was known in the village as Sweeta, started offering piano lessons to the kids in the village. My mother sent me to her house every Wednesday and for six months I had a weekly one-hour lesson. Sweeta was happy with my progress and said that if I wanted to continue to develop I had to have a piano at home. It could be a used one, she said, or an organ would be okay, too, but I had to have something to practice on. Mom went to Petach Tikva especially and bought me a battery-operated keyboard. When I brought it over to Sweeta’s house, she said that it wasn’t an instrument at all, that it was a toy. She showed me how it played nursery rhymes. And it only had eight keys, which was useless, because I needed to practice playing with two hands. That was my last lesson. I told my mother, who didn’t understand why I had given up the piano, that the teacher had said I wasn’t good enough.