by Sayed Kashua
The children haven’t gone to school today and they’re using the day off as an opportunity to roam barefoot among the garbage pails, playing tag and hide-and-seek. A group of men huddle in an alleyway and surround two village council workers in blue coveralls who have come to deal with the sewage overflowing. The smell grows worse as you get closer. Some of the men cover their noses and watch the city workers trying to fix the problem, but to no avail. I hear one of them say there’s nothing to repair. The village sewage has been blocked from the outside, and they’ll have to wait till the powers that be unblock the pipe. This explanation doesn’t go over well with the crowd and some of them start shouting at the guys in the coveralls, saying they don’t know how to do their job. One of them takes advantage of the opportunity to curse the village council for not clearing the garbage. “Instead of handing over the Palestinian workers,” a large, middle-aged man in a gallabiyeh says, “you should have let them fix the garbage and the sewage. They’re much better at it than you are.” All the others laugh as if they’ve just heard a particularly amusing joke.
The café at the outskirts of the older part of the village is packed. Men of all ages fill the inner room and the courtyard. Many have nowhere to sit and they settle for drinking a cup of tea or coffee in plastic cups while standing up. At some of the tables, four men are playing cards. There’s no work today either, and nothing much to do except wait for the closure to end. The local workers woke up early out of habit, if they got to sleep at all, to check what happened after the West Bank workers had been handed over to the soldiers—hoping to hear they could now resume life as usual. Once they understood that the mayor’s plan had failed, there wasn’t much left for them to do, and a game of cards coupled with some café chitchat seemed like the ideal way to get through another day of idleness.
A group of high school students who’ve gathered at the school decide to stage another march, except that this time nobody is eager to join them. No more than a few dozen people take part. From time to time, one of them tries to lead the others in a refrain of protest cries, but this soon dies out. When they realize that their rally is doomed to fail, the students disperse and head home. They don’t even get as far as the roadblock at the entrance to the village. The old men go on sitting at the mosque, rolling tobacco. At the nearby cemetery the Palestinian workers are digging two graves. In one, they bury the worker that the women had managed to pull back. As for the one on the other side, all they can do is throw his clothing over the fence into the grave. They don’t cry. The burial takes place in silence and prayer.
At the entrance to the cemetery I see the lupinus seeds vendor. I haven’t seen him for years, with his green cart, the same one he used when I was still in elementary school. Nobody knew what his real name was. Everyone just called him Thurmus, the local word for lupinus. He used to show up every day when school got out, equipped with a tape recorder that he’d position next to his big bowl of thurmus seeds, and play his Egyptian songs. Everyone made fun of Thurmus. He looked strange, and his eyes would follow you everywhere. His eyes followed the shoppers even as he was scooping up the warm thurmus seeds from the vat and filling the bowls. He never missed the bowl, even though his gaze wasn’t focused on what he was doing. He’d stare right through you, never smiling, never talking with anyone. I was scared of him at first, and I wasn’t the only one. But everyone bought thurmus from him because it really was the best.
I can see him now, standing at the entrance to the cemetery, his tape recorder playing the same songs, songs which used to be hits and nobody remembers anymore, waiting for the workers to finish the burial rites. Maybe he’ll manage to sell them some thurmus. In earlier times, he’d walk the streets all day, seeking out the crowds, the big events, pushing his green cart. His favorite sales spot was the soccer field. He’d show up not only at the Saturday games of the adult team but at all the practice sessions too, including those for the junior team.
I remember he never missed a single practice, not even of the junior team, when I was playing on it. I wasn’t exactly playing, I was signed up, and I came to every practice, always on time. I didn’t like soccer, but I treated it as another subject I had to excel at. Like math, or carpentry, or religion. The kids on the team said the only reason the coach agreed to take me was that he was afraid my father would get him fired. I could never find a partner when we were supposed to divide into pairs. The coach always had to force one of the kids to pair up with me. I’m not sure I was such a bad player, actually, but I hated those practice sessions, hated coming to the soccer field and hated the kids on the team. I didn’t want to upset my father by quitting. He always said, “Mens sana in corpore sano.” And he’d repeat it over and over again. I remember him telling me once, “Maybe you don’t run as fast as the others, maybe you don’t kick as hard as they do, but you’re smart and you should decide how the game is played.” But that’s bullshit. The best players were the ones who ran faster than everyone and kicked harder than everyone. They never invited me to play in the games that took place in the village. I was always on the bench, a backup, except I never got to replace anyone. But I had a team shirt, with the logo of a cement factory splashed across it. The factory belonged to the father of one of the kids on the team. The kids said they bet my father had had to buy me the shirt, but I didn’t take it to heart. I knew they were just jealous.
I remember that Saturday morning when the group was supposed to play its very first away game. Everyone was talking about how we’d be taking a bus to play against the Jews in a real junior league game. The coach ordered us to show up at the field at nine A.M. I got there first. The second to arrive was Thurmus with his cart. I kept my distance from him, and just went on observing him. If he comes closer, I thought, I’m out of here as fast as I can go. The coach and the minibus arrived before the rest of the team. I was the first to get on, wearing the red uniform of the team and regulation shoes. Slowly the bus started filling up. The coach asked me to get off for a minute, said he needed to talk to me. “Bring your bag with you,” he said. The coach explained that the minibus was too small and there wasn’t room for everyone, and the cement-factory owner had decided to come along too. “Next time we’ll take you along,” he said, and got on the bus. I managed to control myself, didn’t show a thing. I was about to explode but I didn’t say a thing. I could see the kids laughing from inside the bus, looking at me, and I knew they were talking about me, but I showed nothing, I kept it bottled up. Only when the bus drove off did I feel I couldn’t take it any more. My shoulders shook, and even though I tried hard not to cry, the tears just streamed down.
“This is for you,” I heard a voice from behind me. Thurmus was standing there with a cup in his hand. “Take it, it’s for you. Don’t cry. I’ve seen you play. You’re good. I’ve seen you.”
I look at Thurmus now, the only person who came to the funeral. I wait to catch his gaze, to see the big eyes following me. But no, his head is lowered and his big body is trembling.
4
The piles of garbage in our neighborhood are smaller than elsewhere, mainly because the neighborhood is at the edge of the village and a little less crowded than the ones in the center. But it’s still difficult to ignore the stench. Our sewage hasn’t clogged up yet, but it will soon. Women in dishdashes keep sweeping and cleaning their houses. I step up my pace as I walk toward my parents’ home. My wife and my brother’s wife are back from school already. Very few children came to class today, and the principals, who met with the mayor early in the morning, decided to send everyone home. Nobody dared to use the term strike for the day off they’d been forced to take. Nobody wanted to have to answer to the Ministry of Education later on.
My father is sitting in the yard. He has the chess set in front of him and is just about to arrange the pieces for a game. His cousin Salim will be arriving soon, as he does every morning. Everyone at home knows by now that the handing over of the workers hasn’t done the trick, and that the roadblock is st
ill in place. My younger brother has gone back to sleep. My older brother is at the bank. My mother and her two sisters-in-law are in the kitchen peeling potatoes. I look at them, and see the pity in their eyes, because they know what happened and that I saw it all. I don’t have the strength to speak. I only tell them there’s no more water and that the sewage has begun overflowing in a few places, and that we shouldn’t use anything connected to the drainage system. I know they’re waiting for an explanation. This latest piece of news worries them. I go into the children’s room and spread out on my boyhood bed. I look at my brother, who’s only half asleep. Our eyes meet, but we don’t say anything. I can hear the women in the kitchen, amused at my mother’s announcement that from now on all peeing will be done in the yard.
The images rush by me in rapid succession—the workers in their underpants, the roadblock, the reverberating sounds, the shooting, the yelling at the rallies, the smell of garbage everywhere. Because of the heat, stifling by now for lack of air-conditioning, all the doors and windows in the house are open, letting in the filthy air.
I should be in my office right now. I’ve missed my final opportunity to get a story into the weekend supplement. I’ve got enough material for a big one. How I’ve missed writing full-length stories. The deadline for supplement stories is right now, Tuesday morning. They’re about to lay it out and this evening they’ll send it down to be printed. I wonder if the written media are as oblivious as the electronic ones to what has been going on. I suppose they are. If there’s been a gag order issued, it applies to all the media. I’m glad, actually, to know there may have been a gag order because it means no one will have written anything on the subject, and maybe I’ll get a chance to do a big spread next weekend.
I miss my chair, my workstation, my position. I miss the black coffee in the disposable cups, the secretary’s smile when I pass her on my way to the kitchenette. I even miss the shouting of the editor reminding me about my deadline. I miss the people I share an office with. I wonder what they’re thinking, if any of them have missed me, if they feel sorry for me. Everyone must know what’s going on here. Everyone must have seen the gag orders by now, delivered by fax and treated as sacred.
I wonder if any of them are concerned about me. I can picture them sitting around sipping their coffee, talking about me, laughing as they always do, making fun. I can picture the fashion writer who’s taken my spot, who uses my keyboard, my phone, my ashtray.
How I hate them now, how I hate myself for trying to believe I was really one of them, for trailing after them on lunch breaks, for trying to kid around with them, to make them laugh. I never managed to feel like I was one of them. They always made me feel like an outsider. I hate myself now for not doing a thing about it all this time, for letting things get this way. Didn’t I realize we’d find ourselves in a situation like this sooner or later? Not that I really know what kind of a situation this is exactly.
I hate myself for thinking that coming back to the village would solve anything. For some reason, I thought that if I was surrounded by people like myself, my own people, nothing bad could happen to me. I thought that in the village I’d be much more sheltered than I was in the Jewish neighborhood. I thought the village would make a good guesthouse for me to come back to at the end of my working day, like everyone else. I’d go off to work and I’d come back to sleep, safe and sound. But now I have no choice but to admit that there’s nowhere to run away to anymore. I hate myself for not getting out of here at the right time, for finding comfort in the thought that everything would work out soon. I hate myself for not getting my wife and daughter out of here as soon as I felt the danger approaching, as soon as the hatred began getting to me, day in and day out, at work, in the street, at home, in restaurants, in the malls and in the playgrounds.
I should have left everything behind and made my way to a sane country, anywhere. But like an idiot, I had preferred to go back home to my parents and to ignore the warning signals. I knew Arabs are hated everywhere. I knew that being an Arab is the worst thing that could happen to a person nowadays. The xenophobia they have in Europe couldn’t possibly be as bad as what we have here. It just couldn’t be.
There is no choice now, no escape. And I can’t afford to waste time crying over things I should have done but didn’t. I’ve got to pull myself together and do what has to be done. I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’ve got to survive.
My father’s regular chess partner has arrived, and they can be heard outside, arguing at the top of their lungs. “You touched it, you moved,” my father is saying. “That was an accident,” his partner says. “What’s got into you today?”
I sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes with my fists. I take a deep breath, and the stench makes me cough hard. My younger brother sits up too. “What’s that smell?” he asks. “God help us!”
“They aren’t collecting the garbage anymore. They don’t have fuel for the garbage trucks. The truth is that the village dump is over the fence put up by the soldiers.”
“This is serious business, isn’t it? What do they want?”
“I don’t know.”
“I heard they shot two workers. God, look how far we’ve gone. I’m ashamed to be part of this village. Of this community, of this people. Know what? We have it coming. It was obvious a long time ago that we needed to put up a fight, to throw stones at them at least. Look what we get for our exemplary behavior. It’s a disgrace.”
“Listen, this isn’t the time to start analyzing where we went wrong. We were wrong, and that’s that. Let’s not waste any more time. Pretty soon we’re going to run out of water. I need you to help me, okay?”
“Are you serious? Do you think it’s going to last much longer?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did, but we can’t take any chances. They’re not pumping in any more water. All we have is what’s left in the water tanks on the roof. That’s it. We can’t waste it. From now on, water is for drinking only. Besides, I’d like you to come with me for a drive around the village.”
My brother doesn’t ask too many questions. He gets off the bed, a head taller than me, much thinner and more athletic. He puts on an undershirt, puts his hair in a ponytail, ties it with a rubber band, slips on his sandals and signals to me that he’s ready to go.
My mother is in the kitchen making tea. I restrain myself from yelling. I must not lose my cool now and get everyone worked up. They already think I’m overreacting, as usual. “Mother,” I call out to her, and my wife and sister-in-law listen from their seats at the kitchen table. “Mother, you know the water supply is running low and God only knows how much longer it will last. So please, go easy on the tea, and for heaven’s sake don’t start cleaning the house like our idiot neighbors. Better keep the water for drinking.”
Mother stares at me as if I’ve gone mad. As if the idea that we could run out of water too has never occurred to her. We’ve had several special alerts in emergency situations—before the October War, on Land Day, during the first Gulf War, at the beginning of the Intifada. Then too people bought out the food stores, to be on the safe side. Except that nobody ever thought in terms of running out of water. Especially since there was never any interruption in the water supply, which came from Israel. There were never any real shortages. This war is different from all the others.
My brother disappears for a few minutes, then returns. “I went up on the roof,” he says. “The water tank is half empty already. What’s used up is used up, and no more water is coming in.” Everyone is taken aback at my brother’s announcement. Now I can count on their taking things a bit more seriously. To make sure they don’t become overly upset, I remind them that there are water tanks on my roof too and on my older brother’s—tanks which are even bigger than the ones on my parents’ roof. “If we use the water sparingly, it can last for two weeks. But we have to be careful. Which means you can’t even flush the toilets. So, Mother, you’ve got to go easy on the coffee and tea, even if Father gets uptight. Let
Salim go have tea in his own house if he wants to.”
I leave, and my brother follows. My fuel tank is almost full. I get in the car and turn on the radio. My brother sits next to me and laughs at me for buckling up. “As if you’re going to get a ticket from the cops patrolling this village,” he says. They’re playing happy music on the army radio station. “At least in the car you can turn on the air conditioner,” my brother says, and I tell him he can open the window because I don’t intend to waste fuel.
There’s nothing unusual in our neighborhood. Even the grocery store is open, and I remember that I owe them some money. I stop the car, turn off the engine and go in. “Anything new?” the owner asks me. I shake my head and pull out my near-empty wallet. “How much do I owe?” The owner goes inside and I follow him. It’s dark in there, and it takes him a while to find my card. I walk through the aisles. There’s no food left. No candles or batteries either. Just cleaning supplies, toilet paper and the disposable dishes they sell before a holiday. I walk past the refrigerators. The shelves are completely empty. Everything would have spoiled anyway, but it stands to reason that people were so worried that they bought it all. I bend over to the bottom of one refrigerator, grab the thick handles and open the bottom compartment, with its extra-thick doors.
I’m thrilled. I knew it. People just didn’t think about the fact that they’d be needing water and sodas too, and there are a few bottles left. I take as many as I can carry and ask the shop owner to add them to my bill. Bottles of Coke, orange juice and the mineral water that hardly anybody buys unless it’s for infants, on doctors’ orders. My brother sees me approaching the car and gives a big smile. I signal him to go inside and get some more, and stuff everything into the trunk. My brother goes inside and returns with a few more bottles. Suddenly the shop owner yells, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”