by Jemma Wayne
He says, “You are as luminescent as I imagined.”
He says, “I care for you, you know. My baby.”
He says, “You are squinting at me as you squinted at the sun that day, you are studying me, no?”
He says they are adding truth, adding colour, creating upon a clean canvas.
He says it is many years since he has felt this free, this uplifted.
She feels uplifted too. But Jerusalem is a heavy place. Everything is complicated.
***
Then
9
Dara’s parents have no idea. It has been almost two months that she has been hiding her dashes across the city. There have been bombings: Patt Junction and French Hill, and the massacre at the Hebrew University (where it turns out Kaseem studied engineering because his father wouldn’t let him study art), and even on these days she has routed around blood to see him. But Jerusalem is calmer again now. It is still heavy, always riled, but the terror of the summer folded away, like prayers in the wailing wall: desperation scrawled on bits of brick-padded paper, flattened in crumbling crevices of stone, assigned to history and addressed only by God. It is the only way the people can move forward. Not forgetting, but crumpling up and squashing memories amidst the fabric of the city, lining the foundations, layering them.
Over the last week or two, Dara’s mother has finally stopped lecturing and restricting and is busy again in her investigations into other people’s minds. Both of Dara’s parents trust her to make good decisions and have never demanded a regimented accounting of her time. They believe her when she tells them that she is with Naomi, working on a project, or that she has begun an oil painting class, and her brother is away at camp so not there to spot the ruse and tell them otherwise. Their only concern is that Dara is so young to spend so much time with the same people, or pursuing the same thing. She is a brilliant artist they know, but they remind her that she also used to like to dance and to sing. They are worried that she is narrowing life down, too quickly closing in.
When she is with Kaseem however, the world is at its widest.
Naomi and Rachel know now. Subsequently they have stopped accompanying Dara to East Jerusalem. They think this will deter her, they tell her it will only lead to trouble, that Kaseem is an Arab, a Muslim Arab, that it will never work, that she is making things hard for herself, that she must be careful. She listens to their cautions but ignores them. Kaseem is different. He is worth the risk.
His family pretend to like her. They make her stay for dinner and often she leaves smelling of rice cooked in a lot of oil. They do not ask her age, or perhaps are simply unsurprised by her youth. It is her way of life that is novel. Kaseem has five younger sisters who all wear head-scarves and want to know how she weaves gold into her hair. His mother makes flattering comments about her ‘modern’ jeans, and asks about her ambitions – will she work, she wants to know. Can she cook? Kaseem’s father died three years ago but his brother is often there to check in on his sister-in-law, and he still calls Dara ‘beauty’. It still makes her uncomfortable, though she has learnt to laugh in a way that confirms the compliment as a friendly jest. Kaseem tells her he is glad that she laughs at him, he is glad she is not shy when she is amongst his family, he is glad she speaks as he has learnt to love, boldly and with honesty. It pleases her that he is glad, but secretly Dara suspects that his family’s smiles and inquiries turn to mocking as soon as she has closed the door. She knows they think she is promiscuous and immoral. She sees them stare at her rolled up jeans and exposed knees.
It is to the shop that they escape. To the room at the back where there is a single lamp whose bulb blows often and where faulty parts are stacked up in boxes. The floor is old and needs retiling. Ants scurry in and out of cracks; Dara once discovered a line of tiny red bites at the top of her thigh. There is no fan and the room is boiling, but they shed their clothes quickly and remain that way as they listen to each other, and touch each other’s skin, and gather proofs of their dreams.
At the end of August, a few days before Dara’s brother is due to return and a week before school restarts, she and Kaseem plan a trip away. They want to get out of the city, out of the thin, built-up streets where the dry heat rises in columns of dust and confuses old and new with its equal coating of sandy white. Dara’s parents are remodelling the house so even inside she cannot escape the disconcerting clouds. Builders and electricians and plumbers arrive early to begin the day-long moving about of noise and mess, and Dara’s mother locks herself and her patients in the office that can be accessed from a door at the side. Dara’s father works late. Neither of them bat an eyelid when she announces that she wants some quiet too, somewhere in the countryside, away. She tells them she is going camping with Naomi and Rachel.
They take a bus to Tiberius. From there, despite the heat, they are planning to hike to the Jordan River. Kaseem is carrying a tent and sleeping bags, Dara has a deflated lilo and the food. They are both dressed in jeans and t-shirts, and sitting close to him on the bus Dara feels that to outsiders it is possible that they might seem a match. He is very dark, but not black, he could be a Sephardic Jew; she is 15 but developed. She hopes that at the camping ground they will not know anyone and at last they will be able to be together without worrying about who might see or what those who do see might think of them. She glances up at Kaseem and squeezes his hand, but Kaseem is staring out of the window and does not notice her excitement. He has just returned from another job interview. It is his fourth of the week, a good position, but he no longer seems to harbour much enthusiasm. When they first met he had only recently graduated – fifth in his class despite the exams being in Hebrew. He had wanted to do art, it was all he had ever loved, but his father had told him that more important than love is survival, advancement, and so he had risen to it. And was about to reap the rewards. The computer job was only temporary, a high-tech career was around the corner. “You’ll get the next one,” Dara often tries to encourage, but such declarations irritate him now. He waves his hand at her, dismissively, and tells her she doesn’t understand. Or he mutters something below his breath in Arabic. Dara forgives him because she agrees. He is the only one from his class who has not yet secured that high-paid job from the high-tech course that cost the high price of his soul, and she can see the discrimination. She tells him this. But she cannot feel it, he tells her, and nothing she says can atone for what is. This time she says nothing. She lets his thoughts simmer in the heat of the bus, bumping over roads that are unevenly made.
Dara has never been here before though she has camped many times. When she and her brother were children their parents would often camp out with them, taking them to nature parks and beaches and harsh desert regions so that they would learn to cope. Hiking for miles at a time despite little legs, they would stop at lakes where their parents would let them swim, cook burgers on makeshift barbecues they would be allowed to light, unwrap carefully cellophaned bread and pickles and salads, drink squash from plastic cups, climb trees, run, play, scream. It was an outdoorsy kind of childhood, open to the sky. When it got dark, their father would help them name the stars. She has forgotten most of the names however: they have not camped in a while. And Dara has never been here.
It is beautiful. The banks are shaded by a canopy of eucalyptus trees that seem to hum as they sway. A hot breeze whistles gently through them, rubbing past the leaves and carrying off a scent of green. A little upstream, there are a row of neatly pitched tents, but Kaseem and Dara have hiked down a little and there is nobody else nearby. They are on the edge of a part of the river that feels like an isolated bay. The water is high and laps at the greenery; it does not seem to be shrinking, it does not tell of water wars, of dams built and resources diverted, of politics; it is only wet and cool and inviting. They throw their bags beneath a tree and shed their clothes. Dara is wearing a yellow bikini and even though he has seen her in less she feels Kaseem’s eyes appreciating her curves within it. They keep on their sanda
ls and climb over un-cleared branches and late summer nettles to reach the old, wooden steps that weave down to the water. They are unofficial, some are broken and the rope that once was taut and there for balance is decaying, unsecured on the floor, but Dara, unafraid, tries to descend first. Kaseem stops her. “What?” she demands as he pulls her back. “What? I am lighter?” But Kaseem will not let her risk her unblemished perfection, and secretly Dara likes this insistence on her protection. Still, after dutifully abandoning the steps she picks her way down the snake of rocks that diminish in size until they are just pebbles by the water’s edge. She and Kaseem arrive at the river simultaneously. He shakes his head and pushes her in.
In the water, they dance. It is a mating ritual almost as old as the river itself: she splashes, he chases, they kick their feet and race, she rides on his shoulders, they dunk one another, she dives under the water and re-emerges next to him, a mermaid, an enchanted thing. They are aware of their unoriginal romantic silliness, but continue nonetheless. In the end, she wraps her long, lean arms around his neck and in the dying sun they sway back and forth like a slow, water-logged waltz, gazing undisturbed by land into the equally deep pools of each other’s eyes. Dara is beginning to be able to read his, finally. When she gets really close she can see that at the very far edges they are not jet-black after all. Between the pupils and the whites, there is the thinnest line of grey.
***
Later – dry, hot, full – Dara and Kaseem lay close in their shared tent. They have not had time like this, time to lay uninterrupted, time to learn the hills and valleys of each other’s bodies, the scars and their stories. He traces hers with his quick, engineer’s mind and deft, artist’s fingertips, at his leisure, carefully, and she cannot look away. He makes her feel nervous and safe all at once.
They talk about everything that is not important. They talk about art, her dream to go to the Bezalel Academy, the uselessness of his own painting, his longing for it. They talk about friends they do not have in common; Rachel’s new obsession with nightclubs and ecstasy, Naomi’s parents who are getting divorced, Shmuel who she suspects is gay. They talk about Kaseem’s 12-year-old sister Hadiyah who has told Kaseem that she wants to dye her hair like Dara’s, and wear jeans, and go to university. Kaseem does not tell Dara that he doesn’t approve of this, and although she can see it in the way he flicks his finger and waves his hand as he talks, they do not for now dwell on the subtext of their opposing views. This is their moment, their escape. They can smell their freedom on their river-scented skin. Dara remembers that this is the same river that Joshua once crossed with the Israelites. But for she and Kaseem, their freedom is not from Pharaohs or shackles. Dara’s parents are not the sort who would call Yad L’Achim and seek intervention to drag her away from her Arab love, her father would not lock her in her room, she would not become a news story. Her mother would pretend it was okay, like Kaseem’s mother does. Their escape is from glances and opinions, unmovable barriers of the mind, quirks of law and perception that stop Kaseem from finding work and unless one of them converts, means they will never marry. Their chains are made only of sand. Soft. Elusive. As hard as steel.
It is different by the river. Here, the water carries their manacles away, and instead it is only they who clasp each other’s wrists and hands and bodies. Still, it is after midnight before they pick their way towards the topic of his job, his situation, Israel’s situation, their opposite sides of it.
“You know, I feel like my house.”
Dara raises herself up onto her elbow and looks at him quizzically. “Your house?”
“I have some land, I have good, solid foundations, but I can’t build, I’m not allowed to build.”
“Your permit hasn’t come through?”
Kaseem laughs a little, but not because it is funny. “This is the third time we’ve been refused,” he says. “On the other side of Jerusalem the buildings are touching the sky, but for me, no, it’s not allowed. I must stay in my one storey house with five sisters and a mother who tells me every day that she needs more space. And I have the tools, you know, that’s the thing. I can get the materials, I can imagine it and build it, and I would do it well.”
“I know you would.”
“But I don’t have permission. I am not permitted to advance.”
“And you feel like that? You feel like your house? Unfulfilled?”
“Unfulfilled is nothing. I am limited. Belittled.”
“But things are changing, no? You told me yourself, you said the job in the computer shop was only temporary.”
Kaseem tuts at her, a little aggressively. “It’s not for want of trying,” he says.
“Of course,” she answers quickly. “I know that, of course.” She has not meant to upset him, or offend him, or make him mad. “But don’t you still believe you’ll find success in the end? Don’t you feel that?”
“I feel humiliation,” he whispers. “And resentment. And also yes, I still believe.”
Dara nods. “I believe too,” she tells him.
Now he smiles, and kisses her softly. She takes his hand. She is in awe of his strength. And his sensitivity. And the way he is both at once. “When will I meet your parents?” he asks her.
Now, without intention, it is Dara who tuts, though she manages to disguise hers in a heavy exhalation of breath. It is not for want of desire that she hasn’t introduced them. It is not because she doesn’t long for it or dream of it, or sketch it in her pad. It is only that when they are not here but in the city, he is an Arab and she is a Jew.
His friends will be stopped and asked for identity cards; hers will do the stopping.
His history lessons have been filled with occupation and deprivation and injustice; hers with survival and terror.
And when they are back in the city, back folded amongst the layers, these differences between them rise like the dusty Jerusalem billows, and there is a haze around them, a stifling, far-reaching fog.
Only at the river, under a cloudless, star-lit sky, does the air feel cleaner. She lays back into Kaseem’s arms and turns to face him. They are cleansed here, cleansed of their histories. It is possible to explain, at least a little, to talk of now, and from now, and of each of them as beings, separate from their different Jerusalems. When she speaks, the water helps her words to flow. She promises that she will introduce them, when she is a little older, when the time is right. And just as she did, Kaseem listens. He lets Dara rekindle his hope. He does not flick his fingers and wave her away when she tries to encourage him. He lets her tell him how smart he is, how intelligent, how destined for greatness. He smiles when she talks about his art, how it has influenced her already, how he has influenced her, how she loves him. He listens, and understands, and takes her in his strong, dark arms and holds her tight. And lets her believe that what they feel for each other cannot, unlike the river, be dammed.
***
Now
10
The package is in the drawer of Udi’s desk underneath a stack of Playboys with a thin piece of tape across the join. He hasn’t opened it and he has told nobody. He thinks of it though at least once every few minutes, and Ella has noticed. She is complaining that he’s not paying attention, that he is distracted, why is he distracted she wants to know.
They are back together. Or rather, for now they are together. For now they have chosen to release their issues into the spring air. Marriage. London. The words float around them like the city dust, but they have not settled, not yet. For as long as they can they are pretending these pollutants are simply part of the atmosphere, part of the tumult they breathe. He is not sure what he will do without Ella’s chatter. It will be hard in London. If the package contains a visa. It will be harder here if it does not.
Since miluim things have been better. There were only two options – wait or work – and it seemed stupid to cling to a dream likely to fail. Besides, his mind needed occupation. So he worked every hour he could and less than a month later wa
s promoted at the construction company. The change has suited him. He is good at practical tasks, at organising others, at making things happen. He enjoys the illusion of being in control and he likes that slowly, very slowly, the funds in his bank account are growing. Nevertheless, the old disquiet has returned. Ella charges him with it daily, demanding to know what is wrong so that she may help him, desperate to keep his mind with her.
“Udi,” she prods now. He looks away from his desk, away from the closed drawer containing the unopened envelope, and back towards the swimsuit Ella has bought that afternoon and is modelling now for him. “Don’t you like it, Udi?”
He finally looks at her properly. Her hair is loose and pulled to the side so that it falls thickly over one shoulder and covers half of the white bikini top that illuminates her deep olive skin. The bikini bottoms are miniscule and perfect. He feels himself stirring and for once his mind is fully concentrated on her. She sees it in his eyes and walks smilingly towards him, pursing her lips as she straddles his lap. She pulls at his trousers, gently passing her hands over the scars beneath them. In the next room, Batia is preparing dinner, and the sounds of cupboard drawers opening and closing waft underneath the door. Ella presses herself against him and undoes the single thread of material that seems to hold her entire top together.
“Shall I stay over?” she asks in a whisper.
He nods.
The envelope will still be there tomorrow.
***
But he cannot wait.
Ella is fast asleep but Udi has been alert for hours, even after a spliff. Every time he attempts to close his eyes they simply fall open and he finds himself staring again at his drawer. Climbing out of bed he creeps across the room and in one swift movement breaks the tape and pulls the brown envelope free from the magazines on top. Ella stirs. She calls him back to bed and he sits next to her. The space beside her is still warm, welcoming. He contemplates telling her about the package that is in his hand, that he is about to open, that is about to decide their fate. But her tousled hair swathes the pillow, her delicate, tanned arms are folded beneath her restful face, and her body is tranquil, her breath steady, steadying.