by Jemma Wayne
Unsubtly and with uncharacteristic frenzy, Dara now glares up and down the road for a glimpse of him, but she cannot make out his white t-shirt amongst the lethargic throng. Dara stands up. As she does so, her pad falls from her lap and sends up a cloud of dust, her pencil rolls slightly down the road, and the shadows are still in front of her and not possible for her to pin down. Dara crosses the road and walks defiantly into them. She touches the canopy, an object at last, solid, firm. And then suddenly, the man is by her side.
“What are you doing?”
He has appeared again from inside the shadows, inside the shop, and he speaks to her in Hebrew, not Arabic. Also not in English or French or Spanish. He knows she is not a tourist but an Israeli Jew. His Hebrew is flawless. Dara spins around. Up close, the man is younger than she had imagined, she guesses 21, 22, although he leans against the wall again with the same mixture of assurance and weariness that had fooled her. His eyes are almost jet black, unnerving in their absence of light. It is as though they are able to pierce right through her, to look but not be looked at. To see but be unseen. Dara wishes that her pad, her explanation, was in her hand and not languishing in the dirt across the path. Nonetheless she answers confidently.
“I am drawing, of course.” She says this in Hebrew and waves her hand towards her abandoned tools. “You were watching me draw, no?”
The man smiles, his teeth imperfect but casting whiteness against his dark skin. It seems to uplift him. Dara flicks her golden hair over her shoulder. His eyes have not left hers and they follow this movement as though he is a cat and she his plaything, or prey.
“I am an art student,” she tells him.
Now his smile prickles at the corners with laughter. He takes a roll-up out of his pocket and taps it on the end of his lighter. “A student? Yes, I saw you here last week. With some friends, no? You were in your school shirt.” Dara blushes. “How old are you? 16?”
“I’m 17,” she lies quickly. “I’ll be finished school next year, I’ll be going to the army-” She stops, but if he’s offended his face does not betray it. “And then to university.”
The man nods and seems to stare at her harder, as if waiting for the last flicker of her untruth to pass between them. His black eyes continue to pierce her own and occasionally they brush downwards. Dara feels intensely aware of her sun-kissed shoulders, exposed in a white vest since she removed the t-shirt she’d had on top, and of the red bra she is wearing underneath it, the material hinting with a pink hue at the generous area it is covering, the straps escaping altogether. She grapples for something else to say and feels a need to impress him. An unfamiliar compulsion.
“I’m going to study art and art history,” she volunteers.
But the man ignores this. He puts his hand on the wall behind her and tilts his head down, close to her face. “What is your name?”
“Dara.” She pauses. “It means compassion.”
“Dara.” The man accepts the name and seems to consider it, to consider her, as he lights his cigarette and inhales the strong smoke, holding it in his lungs for many seconds before relinquishing it to the heated Jerusalem air. Air that feels closer here, where people are closer, where there is less of it to share between them. “Dara, what is it you are trying so hard to draw?” he asks her finally.
“The shadows. From the canopy. But the light is difficult.”
“You don’t have shadows near your home?”
Dara flinches. Of course she has shadows. It is not even a beautiful part of the city. “Art is everywhere,” she replies assuredly.
The man smiles. His eyelids bat a few times in quick succession as though he is a camera readjusting his focus, then he lets his hand slide down the wall so that it is almost touching her shoulder. “You should come back in the evening,” he tells her.
This time, Dara does not have a quick response on her tongue. She can smell the smoke on his breath, feel the warmth of it, see deep into the black pools of his fortress eyes. In the reflection they provide, she can also see her own wide stare and wonders if he has noticed the fear in them. The fear and abrupt, surprising longing.
He has seen something, for he laughs. “The light is better in the evening.” Standing straight and a little back from her, he removes his hand from the wall. “You can own it then. At this time of day it is too high, too harsh, too bright to see the colour. It is hard even to capture the form it illuminates. Or to break it.” He grins. “Even with compassion, Dara.”
“You know about art?” she asks, surprised.
“I know about many things.” He takes another puff of his cigarette.
“I know. Of course. I didn’t mean-”
The man laughs again. “I am Kaseem,” he tells her. “And you, you are very beautiful.”
***
As she walks away – taking in the crumbled walls and the angry graffiti on them – she glances back again over her shoulder, her golden hair swishing to the side, her skin pale and pure.
Come back in the evening, he said.
Beautiful, he said.
But she is an enemy, as well as a beautiful thing.
***
Then
8
She goes three times a week. Sometimes Naomi and Rachel are with her but then she and Kaseem have to stick to niceties and he cannot show her how to de-emphasise her lines, or how to transform shape into form, or illustrate how the space in her sketchings is just as important as the content. How to own the light. He has been teaching her about gradation and her latest pieces seem to contain more movement, more rhythm than before. Kaseem says that art is about knowing oneself, or at least about the quest to know. Once, he dug out one of his old canvases and revealed a city landscape that had overwhelmed Dara with an uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia. “Why have you painted the sky black?” she had asked him. “And a blue and white sun?” And he had answered that a blue sky was something he knew, but black was what he felt. Adding colour, he said, adds the truth.
When they are alone, he traces that truth for her. He translates extracts of Arabic love poetry, ghazals he calls them; unfamiliar words sounding smooth on his tongue, as though uncluttered by grammar and rubble. He shows her inside his computer shop. If his uncle is there then they examine the broken machines it is Kaseem’s job to fix, his fingers moving fast and deftly over their insides. His uncle calls Dara ‘beauty’, but there is something about the way he says this that feels threatening, degrading almost, and often it is on his arrival that she makes for home. When his uncle is not there, it is Kaseem who tells her she is beautiful, and when he says it it has an altogether different effect. He cups her baby-faced chin in his hands, pushes streaks of gold behind her ears, and brings his ever-amused smile close to her soft, longing lips. He hasn’t kissed her yet. Dara feels this as both a compliment and an insult, and of course it makes her want him more.
This time, Naomi and Rachel are with her. They have stopped outside Kaseem’s shop and Dara knocks on the window for him. Naomi wants to know why they must always stick to this same part of the city. She wants to explore, she says, to dig deeper. Neither of Dara’s friends are interested in talking to Kaseem. At first they thought him handsome and exotic; but he does not smile at them in the way he does Dara, he does not pay attention to their flirtations, his Hebrew University education is not Arabic enough for them, and his offers of water (laced with the risk of diarrhoea) are too much so. They are anxious to return to the children with no shoes swinging their legs on the half-built or half-destroyed stone walls. Nevertheless they wait for Dara. They would not be so irresponsible as to leave her alone with him.
Kaseem emerges into the light, smiling. He has had a job interview and thinks he will get it. His confidence is soaring. “A Coke for my beautiful artist,” he says, handing a can wet with condensation to Dara, and then presents one each to Naomi and Rachel. They look at Dara questioningly.
“My beautiful artist?” repeats Naomi.
“How very… pos
sessive,” says Rachel.
And now Kaseem has to backtrack. Nothing has yet happened but without conferring, she and Kaseem seem to have decided to keep whatever is not happening solely between themselves. “I see you all the time with your sketchpads,” he says casually. “You are all beautiful artists, no? What are you always drawing?”
Now Naomi and Rachel are tempted into conversation. They like this about Kaseem, they will concede later, that he seems interested in their distractions, that he will let them talk without them having to shout over men who think this is their prerogative. ‘Emotional intelligence’, they will call it. But this is long after they have whispered to Dara in urgent, anxious tones on the windy road home: “What the hell are you doing? He’s an Arab. You can’t trust them. You know they only want one thing.” This is after Dara has denied her secret, tightly coiled crush.
Kaseem and Dara exchange glances as Naomi and Rachel talk and sip their drinks. It is a scorching, airless day and she is wearing a dress that flaps about her thighs when she moves. She can see him watching it, chasing the cotton with his jet-black eyes. She wishes it was possible for her to peer behind them, behind the darkness, but she does not yet know how. Nevertheless, there is something noble about the way he carries himself, something mysterious and heroic. And poetic. He is a weary warrior, he is a challenger of inequality, he is not the kind of Arab others may expect. They finish their Cokes. Dara agrees to go with Naomi and Rachel to find the market where Naomi wants to buy a special Arabic bread they can’t get at home and Rachel wants to draw the vendors, and when she hands Kaseem her empty can, their fingers touch.
“The light is better in the evening,” he whispers.
That afternoon, the sketches Dara draws at the market are full of texture and clashing shapes. When she gets home, she seeks out her coloured pencils and adds hue upon hue of red.
***
“It’s so sad, the girl was 23. The entire family has been devastated,” Dara’s mother says, pausing between mouthfuls of new potatoes. It is dinner. Dara has been back from the market in East Jerusalem, fondling her reds, thinking of Kaseem, for three hours. Downstairs, her mother has been locked behind the heavy door of her study where she runs her home practice on the days that she isn’t at the hospital. It had been left to Dara to make dinner and distractedly she had thrown together this concoction of new potatoes and salad with a casserole re-heated from the previous night, not really paying attention, knowing that neither will her family when they eat it. Conversation has always been more important than food; it is the sustenance of their lives.
Dara’s mother has been counselling some of the families of the latest Egged bus bombing. It is work she has done before over the years but the heavy fist of this time seems to have hit her harder. Perhaps because it was so close. Perhaps because so many died. Perhaps because it was the third time on the same route and because she has a husband and a son and a daughter who take the buses and who could have been one of the dead or one of these grieving relatives she is counselling. Never before has she restricted Dara’s movements, issued curfews or warnings; but she’s told Dara twice this week not to get on any buses, and after another bite of potato she shakes her head. “They are a cruel, brutal people.”
“They?” asks Dara. “Who are they? All Arabs are fanatics?” She knows this is not what her mother thinks, not really. Both of her parents have been vociferous in challenging just this kind of prejudice, they have written papers and letters and held meetings to that effect. And though there are no Arabs in her school, there are times when they pass them in the street and Dara’s parents do not mutter the insults or cautions she has heard other parents pass on. Dara’s father even speaks some Arabic and sometimes when they have come across Arab families when they have been hiking in nature reserves, he has struck up conversations with them, and Dara has seen them laughing at each other’s jokes. “All of them are suicide bombers?” she presses.
“Of course not. First it depends what kind of Arab we are talking about: Christian, or Bedouin, or Muslim or… But the Muslims, there is something in them, I think, now. Something, violent, that makes them, that makes them send their children to murder ours. It’s a psychological phenomenon.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t judge a whole people from a few,” Dara insists. “You’re being racist.”
“Not racist,” Dara’s father intercedes. “Realist. I don’t like to say it either, Dara, I want to hope too, but more than 82 Israelis murdered in one month... And you see, even right here in Jerusalem, the Arabs who are citizens, who have rights, who enjoy the benefits of being an Israeli, even they celebrate when we die.” He looks tired, older somehow. “Maybe Sharon has it right.”
“You hate Sharon,” says Dara’s brother. He has been playing basketball and is still in his sweaty vest. It is too small for him now. He is growing fast, though still only upwards. “You said Sharon is too hard-line. You said he’ll only cause more violence.”
“I know.” Dara’s father reaches for some more stew. The bowl is too hot but he quickly tames the heat with his napkin. “But, maybe we need him to be.” He dollops a spoonful of the thick beef and carrot concoction onto his plate, then carefully returns the bowl to its place on the heat-proof mat in front of Dara. His glasses are hanging around his neck and his long, newly greying hair gives him an aura of wisdom. He is wise, Dara knows this, but he is also wrong. It is terrifying. “So,” he says, breathing out heavily. “Dara, how is school?”
But Dara is not ready to accept the crumbling of her parents’ liberalism. “Ima, you always said that these bombers did it as, what did you call it? A form of self-actualisation? Because of their sense of power-loss, of impotency. Because of their poverty. Don’t you still think that?”
Her mother sighs. “Yes, I do.” She puts down her fork. “But that’s not all of it. It’s not poverty, is it, that drives people to this? There’re plenty of Jews who live in poverty too. That’s not it on its own. You can’t ignore the other things, the politics, the lack of autonomy, the history, but also the religious motivation, this is the thing, the promise of virgins in paradise… it’s, it’s primitive.”
Dara thinks of Kaseem. Of his proud face after his job interview, of his knowledge of art and poetry. “It’s not true,” is all she can mutter.
But now her father speaks again. It is as though having finally given each other license, both of her parents are letting escape a lifetime of stored up, pushed down loathing. “Look at how they treat their women,” he says. “Dressing them in these ridiculous shrouds. Keeping them in the home. Beating them. Polygamy. It’s of another century. How a society treats its women is revealingly indicative of the progress of that society.”
“Some of the women are very well educated, and successful,” Dara battles.
“Few and far between,” her mother declares sadly. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if even those ones went home to violent husbands.”
“No. You’re wrong,” says Dara, but her usual fight has left her. Colours flood her head. But what she needs is words. Her brother rolls his eyes at her sympathetically, as if to say, they don’t know, they’re older, they don’t see how things have changed. But they used to see. They used to see every shade of the debate. Dara’s parents are liberals, peaceniks. They’ve taken abuse for it. They’ve campaigned for it. They’ve taught it to her. If they cannot keep hope then who can? She does not want to listen to their words that taint them and fill her with guilt. It is only dinner conversation, but suddenly, Dara cannot breathe.
In the dark, the streets look different. It is not evening but night. What little light there is comes from inside homes that Dara would never wish to disturb. Around them, archways and alleys are littered with men who materialise from nowhere and in groups threaten her with their shadowy presence. She runs the whole way to Kaseem’s shop, realising only as she nears it that this is not where Kaseem lives but where he works; he might not be there, she might instead end up alone with
his uncle, or with the Arab night. Dara runs faster, her fists clenched tight. She is not carrying a bag, she has no sketchpad or book or other modes of camouflage. She is here only to see Kaseem. She has to get to him.
The shop is lit. Dara sees him sitting behind the counter, reading. She taps softly on the window and he looks up, unsurprised. He stands and for a moment they stare at each other through the dirty glass, rust-tinted no longer, the dirt black and definite. Smeared by her own hand. As he crosses the room towards her and unlocks the door’s series of latches, they do not smile, but neither do they take their eyes off each other. It is a serious business and they know this. There is no middle ground between loyalty and treason. They are crossing over.
***
Kaseem is gentle but determined. He does not pause between a kiss and what comes after it. Dara tells him that she is a virgin and sees him try to slow down but this pronouncement of her purity excites him further. Perhaps there is something about sullying something so clean that makes him feel powerful. Dara feels fragile under his hard, dark frame. She wants to feel fragile. She is nervous, shaking, but also liberated. It is he who tugs at her t-shirt, but she who unhooks her bra.