by Sayed Kashua
The demonstrators are marching through the village, and people keep joining them. Women take their place at the end of the procession, careful not to come too close to the men. The more neighborhoods they go through, the more demonstrators there are. Their faces are more angry than concerned. The shops, the offices and the restaurants close as a sign of mourning. It isn’t a strike. The demonstrators are making their way toward the exit from the village, toward the roadblock. I take my place in the rear, as close to the women as possible. I’m not taking any chances. If they fired this morning, they might fire now too.
The mayor and a large group of his young relatives are there, with their backs to the barbed-wire fence, waiting for the demonstrators, signaling them from a distance not to go any closer to the makeshift fence. The mayor hasn’t a chance of keeping them away. If the demonstrators were inclined to come closer, he couldn’t stop them. It just hasn’t occurred to them. Nobody’s willing to run the risk, and the procession draws to a halt at the roadblock. The demonstrators are shouting their tried and true slogans into their megaphones. The Muslims are shouting “Allahu akbar,” and “Khaybar khaybar, ya Yahud,” and that the Army of Muhammad will soon be back. The Communists are singing songs of solidarity and support of the Communist Youth Movement and the pan-Arabists are praising Nasser. Gradually the demonstrators begin to disperse, and soon there is nobody left facing the roadblock. In the distance, the soldiers can be seen getting up and putting down their weapons.
7
The atmosphere in the village has changed. More and more people are worried. The grocery stores, the bakeries and the restaurants that reopened after the demonstration have never seen so many shoppers. The stores were more crowded than on a Saturday before the Intifada, when Jews used to arrive from all around Israel.
There are one or two grocery stores in each neighborhood, a total of fifteen in the village as a whole. At the entrance, very close to the roadblocks, are the larger stores, for people arriving from the outside. The owners of those outlets used to be considered very lucky. Many Jews preferred shopping in the village, because they were sure the Arabs charged less, which wasn’t really true. The fact is that most of the villagers actually shopped in the city and saved quite a bit.
Despite the heat wave, the streets are full of kids and teenagers standing around in groups and talking about the demonstration, about the casualties, the soldiers and the roadblock. Everyone is convinced that Israel is about to drop an atom bomb on Iraq or Iran. Some of the youngsters are even swearing that they heard it on broadcasts from the Arab states. They’re saying that American and Israeli forces have launched an all-out offensive against the Arab world, and they’re afraid that we, the Israeli Arabs, will undermine their efforts by photographing targets for the Iraqis. Others swear they heard the Egyptian army has conquered Beersheba by now and is quickly advancing toward Tel Aviv, and that the Israelis have decided to hold us hostage.
Men and women are marching down the road, perspiring and carrying home large bags of food. As for me, I seek out the least busy-looking grocery so I can buy candles, batteries and maybe another pack of cigarettes. I’ve figured out that the food I bought can feed the whole family for at least a week, so that even if my older brother doesn’t manage to buy everything on our mother’s list, we’ll be okay. The thought that I’ve saved my family, so to speak, gives me a sense of victory. I quickly curb the feeling.
The older people who normally spend all their time at the entrance to the mosque aren’t there. They’ve taken their seats in the mourners’ tent. Two neighbors are standing in the doorways of their homes talking about an episode in an Egyptian series that was on TV last night. One of them says she doesn’t know what she’ll do if the power doesn’t come back on by nightfall. She’ll go crazy if she misses the next episode. I know the series they’re talking about. My wife has become addicted to it too and I myself try not to miss the story of the textile merchant who was once poor and has turned into one of the richest men in Cairo. He takes four wives. Three of them get along well, but the fourth is a wicked woman who is only after his money. Slowly I make my way home, and decide to enter the neighborhood grocery store despite the crowd inside.
A bunch of women are standing in line to pay. Some of them have come from other neighborhoods. The shelves of canned goods have been swept clean. There are no bags of rice or flour left either. One of the neighbors comes into the shop and screams at the owner to bring out the merchandise he has in his storerooms. The owner swears that he doesn’t even have any left for himself. He’d meant to keep a bag of rice for himself, but it’s all gone. He swears by all that’s holy. The neighbor gets even more annoyed and looks at the strange women standing in line and goes on screaming at the owner that he shouldn’t be selling to strangers, that he should be responsible enough to keep his merchandise for his regular customers, the people in his own neighborhood, his faithful clientele.
Practically the only things left in the grocery store are candy, snack bars and condiments. The furious neighbor, sporting a hat with the logo of a local transportation company, makes the rounds of the grocery, wringing his hands and saying, “What’s the matter with everyone? Have people gone crazy or what?” and then leaves.
They’ve hardly touched the candles or the batteries. I take two packages of each and get in line. The owner recognizes me and signals that I can leave. He knows I’ll be back to pay later. On my way out I ask if there are any cigarettes left. He bends over and pulls out two packs of a local brand from under the table. “They’re the last ones, want them?” The woman facing him is holding a few bills in her hand. She looks in my direction and lets out a hiss that makes me feel uneasy. I say yes, take the two packs and get out of there.
The whole family is at my parents’ house. They’re outside this time, seeking comfort in the shade of one of the few trees in the yard. “Look at him,” Mother says. “He thinks of everything. Who else thought of buying candles?” My father laughs at me for buying so many batteries. “What do you think, that we’ll never have electricity again?” Everyone’s laughing now. Even my nephew, who doesn’t understand any of this, manages a smile. My wife has already told them about my shopping spree yesterday, which she discovered when she went into the storage room.
“So?” Father says. “I see you’ve decided it’s going to be a long war.”
My older brother comes to my rescue and tells us that he’s hardly managed to buy anything. “And what if things go on this way? Nobody really knows what’s happening, so I’m glad you did what you did,” he tells me.
My mother goes into the house and returns with a bowl of potatoes and two peelers. I say at once, “Mother, why waste the potatoes? The things in the fridge are about to spoil. Let’s eat those first.”
Father laughs out loud and coughs. “Yes, the potatoes should be kept for the tough times of the war. By tomorrow we’ll have nothing to eat, after all,” and he continues coughing.
My wife says I’m right. It really would be a waste. They’re going to be cooking all the meat in the three families’ freezers today, so there’s no need for potatoes. My mother puts them back and says in a ceremonious voice that we have so much meat we won’t be needing bread today either. I go inside, enter my parents’ bedroom and look for the battery-operated radio. It’s the one we used during the Gulf War, when all of us moved into the sealed room at night. I put in the batteries. The official Israeli channel has no reports of casualties. They’re just talking about the new situation, what they call a general state of emergency, and the moderators, assisted by security officers, government officials and experts from academe, are trying to analyze the implications. There’s nothing on the radio about an attack either, nothing on Iraq or on Syria. There’s no mention of terrorists, except the story from this morning about an attempt that was foiled by our soldiers. Everyone agrees it’s important not to take any chances, but nobody says a thing about roadblocks.
Outside, they’ve decided to roas
t all the defrosted meat. My mother says that’s in bad taste. “This is no time for a barbecue. People might think we’re celebrating when two families in the village have just come from burying their loved ones. Think of the contractor’s mother. She kept fainting. Her son was the backbone of the family.” Mother says she’ll use a pressure cooker to prepare the meat. “It’ll be much tastier, soft as a doughnut.”
Father insists that the contractor was a complete idiot, only a fool would run a roadblock that way. “What was he thinking, that it’s a game? What’s a soldier supposed to think when a pickup comes charging straight at him? Isn’t he bound to shoot?”
A car stops in front of the house and everyone stares at it. A young man gets out, one of the mayor’s nephews. “Salam aleikum,” he greets us, and informs Father that the mayor has invited him to a meeting with the heads of all the families in the village, in the council building.
It’s the first time they’re having such a meeting. Normally, decisions are taken by council members without consulting the villagers themselves. Before the mayor’s emissary has a chance to get back into his car, my father wants to know, “Has he decided to set up a security cabinet?”
Our family may be one of the smallest in the village, barely a hundred people, but my father has always been among the mayor’s supporters. The two of them belonged to the Labor Party. The mayor followed in the footsteps of his father. His family is the largest in the village and the other heads of families had never succeeded in uniting and gaining power. When it comes to the local elections, the Muslims and the Communists and the nationalists don’t stand a chance. The only thing that counts is the family. They all turn to their families, and what’s good for the family is good for them.
The mayor has always been good at providing positions for the right people in the competing families, and ever since the state was established, there have only been two mayors, the father and the son. And like the father, the son began his party career by driving sanitation workers to the Labor Party headquarters. Somehow they joined up with the right people, who realized that whoever was in charge of transportation belonged to one of the largest families, and that with a small amount of money they would succeed in bringing in thousands of votes. When the father was elected, he bequeathed his pickup and the sanitation workers to his eldest son, and when he died, he bequeathed his position as mayor.
Father and son looked very much the same. The father I know mainly from stories and from a black-and-white photograph I used to see all through high school. The high school was named after the late mayor, the current mayor’s father. There was a large sign with his name and picture that greeted everyone who arrived at the school, and the same picture was positioned over the blackboard in every classroom, facing the students. I remember very clearly the day when the principal’s father died, and the principal, who came from the second largest family in the village, one that supported a different Zionist party, removed the sign with the name of the late mayor and replaced it with one announcing that from that day on the school would be named after his father. A few minutes later a few of the mayor’s relatives arrived. First they shot at the new sign, and then they took it down and replaced it with an even bigger sign bearing the name and picture of the former mayor, Allah yirhamo. Were it not for the intervention of some members of the Knesset and notables from the nearby villages, a feud would have broken out between the two largest families in the village. The compromise solution included naming the sports field for the principal’s father. The principal refused at first, mainly because the village sports field is a patch of sand and the goalposts are nothing more than stones that the students keep replacing. The next day, the mayor installed proper goalposts, with nets. I remember how happy that made everyone, me too.
My father comes inside to get dressed for the meeting. He is always very careful with his appearance. I offer to drive him to the council building. Some of the grocery stores have closed already, having been cleaned out completely. My father looks through the window at the groups of people milling about in the streets, then looks at me and asks:
“Does it look serious to you, this whole thing?”
“I think it’s scary.”
“Yes, but it’s just the second day. Why jump to conclusions? I bet the mayor’s going to tell us he’s been informed it’s all over.”
“I very much hope so.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I have no idea, Father.”
I park outside the council building. Hundreds of people have gathered near the entrance, waiting for some news. Cars blasting music at full volume are cruising back and forth. I turn off the engine and stay in the car, light a cigarette, inhale and turn my head to blow the smoke out the window. A big new BMW pulls up and suddenly stops beside mine. There are four men inside. I don’t recognize them, but I’m sure they’re looking me over. The driver turns down the music, leans over the steering wheel and calls out my name. “Wallah, it’s you. How’ve you been? It’s been ages,” he says, and smiles. Now I recognize him. He’s Bassel, who was in my class.
I force a smile. I feel out of breath but stifle a cough. “You’ve started smoking, eh?” Bassel says, with a smile that hasn’t changed at all. “It’s bad for your health, you know,” he goes on. “Salamat.” Slowly he starts the engine and turns the music back up.
Over my desk in the children’s room, they still have the framed picture from our class trip. I remember how I did everything I could to get Bassel to agree to have his picture taken with me. My God, what an idiot I was. By seventh grade, all the kids knew everything. They’d huddle together in groups during recess, whispering to one another, blushing. I was never accepted. I never managed to become one of the gang. Bassel was the leader. He talked more than anyone, and he was always the one who managed to get the other boys to listen. He had them in his grip. He could fascinate them and he could make them laugh. We’d have long lessons together in carpentry shop, and the teacher almost always gave us something to do, planing or woodcutting, and then he’d leave us alone. In the carpentry shop there were only boys. The girls took home economics in a kitchen. They cooked and baked cakes all year round. In the carpentry shop the boys allowed themselves to talk freely. Sometimes I’d hear words like erection, hair, mustache, pain in the chest. They’d raise their arms and compare armpits, some of them already had black hair growing there. Sometimes they’d pull down their pants and break out in laughter or shouts, which they quickly muffled before any of the teachers heard them. They’d pinch one another’s chest and cringe.
In seventh grade there were three boys who were already shaving their mustache. Bassel was the first, and the other two imitated him. Everyone waited eagerly for the day they’d find black hair growing beneath their nose, and I was horrified at the thought that I would have to shave someday too. I don’t want to do it, I told myself, I wish I never had any hair at all.
When I’d get home and find myself alone in my room or in the bathroom, I’d pinch myself in the nipples and convince myself that I couldn’t feel a thing. Hair started growing in all sorts of places on my body, but it was still sparse. It scared me to death. What the hell does it mean? What are they talking about in class? And what is it about this change that they enjoy so much? Why do I find the new ache in my throat so disturbing? And what about the strange, broken voice I hear whenever I talk? It’s as though I’m not me, as though it’s the voice of some other guy I don’t want to be, not yet. I don’t want to be like everyone else, I’m not like everyone else, and things like that must never happen to me. Things like that happen to boys who get into trouble.
It wasn’t only the boys that I hated because of the changes they were going through, but the girls too. There were already a few in our class whose breasts had swelled up, and when they raised their arms to answer a question you could see they were wearing bras, like my mother’s. How could it be damn it? I hated every girl who wore a bra. I could spot them easily, I hated the
m, I was scared of them and I hoped they’d die.
Toward the end of seventh grade, almost all of the boys shaved their mustache, and even though I had black hairs that were longer than those of the other boys who were shaving already, I decided to keep pretending it wasn’t happening. When the time came for final exams, I spent all my time studying and tried not to be distracted by anything. Except that one day, just before dawn, I woke up in a panic and knew I was peeing in my sleep. I couldn’t help myself, no matter how hard I tried, and I felt my whole pajamas getting wet. What was happening to me? Very slowly I got out of bed without waking my two brothers, who were sleeping next to me. I went into the bathroom and discovered a large stain and didn’t know what to do about it. I cried in silence, wiping myself off with toilet paper. The paper stuck to my skin and only made things worse. I went back into the room and pulled out a new pair of shorts and some clean pajamas. My wet clothes I put straight into the washing machine, not on the top but underneath, as far down as possible, under all the clothes. If my mother finds out, she’ll kill me, I thought. The stickiness stayed with me even when I got back into bed.
When I discovered that the mattress was wet, I started sobbing in silence, lost and confused. I couldn’t fall back asleep. I couldn’t stop thinking feverishly about ways of concealing the terrible thing that had happened to me. I stayed in bed with my eyes open until morning, waiting for my brothers to leave the room, and only then got up. I could see the stain, and there was nothing I could do to erase it. I turned the mattress over, but that didn’t solve the problem of the sheet. I had to get it into the washing machine too somehow. But what would my mother think if she discovered me taking a sheet to the wash for the first time in my life, and how was I going to explain what I was doing? I stuck my finger up my nose and scratched the inside till it started bleeding. I had hurt myself more than I’d intended to, and let the blood drip onto the sheet. I walked out of my room with the sheet carefully folded. You could see the blood, but not the stain. The blood covered my face. With one hand I held the sheet and with the other I tried to stanch the blood. My mother had a fright, and I explained that it happened sometimes. I hurried into the bathroom, shoved the sheet into the washing machine and rinsed my nose. Mother brought me some cotton and told me to hold my head back. She said it must be because of the heat, and she gave me a packet of cotton in case the bleeding started again while I was in school.