She looked at him in astonishment, whispering to me, “What’s this? Can he read Hebrew or is he just pretending?”
“He knows Hebrew yery well … he’s been to school … he knows poems by Bialik by heart …”
She was furious.
“What does he want with Bialik? What use is it to him? Oh, we’re ruining these Arabs of ours … they’ll stop working and write poetry instead … but if he can read then he can read to me a little … my eyes get tired so quickly. And there are so many interesting things in the newspapers …”
She took the paper from him, leafed through it and handed it back to him.
“Leave off the pictures now. Read the article by Rosenblum on the first page. He’s a wicked man but he knows the truth.”
I stood up from my seat. I was charmed by her.
“You see, Na’im, you’ll have interesting work here.” But he didn’t smile.
“Are you going already?” She was disappointed, didn’t want me to leave. “What’s the time? Drink some more coffee … eat some supper perhaps … your wife won’t have cooked anything for you yet … when should I put him to bed?”
I laughed again.
“Oh, he’ll go to bed by himself. He’ll be fifteen soon … he can look after himself.”
“But all the same … will you be coming to fetch him tonight?”
“Perhaps.”
And suddenly she clutched at me, unsteady, weeping.
“I wish I could come with you to search for him … so kind of you to care about me, not turning your back on me, like all the others.”
I put my hand on her shoulder, she smelled of baby soap.
And Na’im was sprawled in his chair, ignoring us, sipping his coffee, turning the pages of the newspaper one after the other.
NA’IM
I told Father and Mother, “He wants me again, the garage boss. I’ll be staying with an old woman because he wants me at night for special work, but he can’t say when he’ll be bringing me back.”
“Is his boiler out of order again?” Mother asked, because I’d told them too that I’d helped him repair his boiler that Friday night, not that I’d broken into the house of an old woman who turned out to be at home.
“No, he’s starting to tow in broken-down cars, he wants to catch new customers when their cars are smashed up, looks like he’s expanding the garage. And I’m helping him with the tools and things like that.”
And they were very impressed, really proud. And Father said right away, “You see, Na’im, you wanted to stay on at school, wasting your time, it’s not yet five months since you started working for him and already he can’t do without you.”
“He can do very well without me, he just wants me there.”
And Father went straightaway to Aunt Isha’s and came back with a big old suitcase, and Mother started folding up my clothes and putting them in, putting in more and more clothes like I was never coming back. But I don’t have that many clothes, the suitcase was still only a third full. Then Father looked inside the case and called Mother aside and they went into the room that used to be Adnan’s and whispered a bit, then they called me in and I went in and saw Adnan’s clothes lying there on the bed and they told me to undress and I undressed, and they tried some of his clothes on me, shirts and trousers and sweaters, and Mother marked with pins the places that needed shortening, and Father looked at me with tears in his eyes and started to moan, “Adnan, Adnan,” and Mother said, “Perhaps we shouldn’t do this,” but he said, “No, who else should we give his clothes to, the security police?” And so they put some of Adnan’s clothes into the case too, and they gave me his overcoat, which had once belonged to Faiz as well, and even then the suitcase wasn’t full so Mother went out into the fields and came back with peppers, eggplants and garlic and she even put some eggs in at the top – “These are for the old lady that you’re going to live with, so she looks after you properly and feeds you.”
And they were all excited and confused and anxious but they were pleased as well that I was getting to be a real expert mechanic. And Father took me aside and said solemnly, “Wait two more weeks and then ask for a raise. Promise me.” And that night I had a bath. And in the morning they were all awake extra early and Father fetched a wheelbarrow and he put the suitcase on it and we went to the bus stop.
I saw on the bus that morning that the workers were looking at me in a shifty sort of way. The news had already gone around the village that I was going to do a special job and they were all a bit jealous of me because is there anyone who wouldn’t like to leave the village and sleep in the town and not be awakened by the cocks crowing in the morning? The only one who didn’t care at all was Hamid. He just gave me a dry sort of look, didn’t say it was good or bad, just indifferent.
I got to the garage late because I had to carry the suitcase by myself and it really slowed me down. And he saw me and told me to wait on the side. And I sat there with my suitcase the whole day, it seemed strange to me that they were all working and I was sitting there on my own, and all of them watching me from the side. And I looked at the pictures of naked women, not many changes. Only the picture of that old woman who used to be Prime Minister was torn and dirty, someone had drawn glasses on the President’s face, only the ex-President was left as he was.
After work he took me to the old woman’s house and this time we went up the stairs and she opened the door, at first I thought it was someone else, she was so clean and nicely dressed and the apartment was clean and tidy, but it really was the same woman and right from the start I saw I was going to have problems with her, that, like I heard one of the Jewish workers in the garage say about somebody, she was going to fuck my mind up, and my spirits fell.
First of all, she started talking to me in Arabic and I don’t like it when Jews speak Arabic, they make so many mistakes and it always sounds like they’re making fun of us. Those are the Jews who think they know us best, damn them. The only things they know about us are the things they can make fun of and they never have any respect even when they’re pretending to be good friends.
Straightaway she opened up the suitcase to see what was inside it and she found the eggs and the vegetables on top of the clothes. I almost wished the ground would swallow me up for the shame that Mother was causing me in front of Adam, who thought I’d brought these things to sell. And then she told me to have a bath, even though I was very clean. Only dirty people need to wash all the time, Adnan used to say. And she seemed to think I might be bringing bugs into the house, though the last time I saw fleas was in her kitchen that night and there’d been a mouse too.
But I didn’t say anything and I went to have a wash, I’d had a bath in a Jewish house before and I wasn’t afraid but I felt offended all the same. Then I went and saw the room that she’d fixed up for me and it really was a nice room with a bed and a wardrobe and a view of the bay, nothing to complain about. But I knew I wouldn’t get any peace here, she’s such an old windbag, a real political old lady, every other word she says is something about politics, she’s a newspaper nut. Can’t understand how she ever went into a coma, her mind is the only part of her that works, the rest of her is like a big ball of fat, she can hardly move.
And Adam liked her, laughing at everything she said, laughing happily. And that irritated me, I didn’t see anything special about her. In the meantime she brought in coffee and some cookies that were really good. These Oriental Jews know how to cook, they learned it from us Arabs.
I decided I wasn’t going to have too much to do with her, it wasn’t for her that I came to live in the city but for Dafi. I want to see her again and get to know her and fall in love with her. And I wasn’t going to get too friendly with this old woman so I sat there quietly reading Ma’ariv and that surprised her, she thought it was odd an Arab reading a newspaper in Hebrew. Pity she never knew Adnan, he knew the papers by heart and he had answers to everything they said.
I’ll have to keep on my guard here, sit qui
etly and not get into arguments, otherwise things will be unbearable. I’m not here for politics but for love. And so I sat there quietly, pretending I didn’t care about anything, like Hamid, looking out of the window, thinking maybe I’d go to the movies if only I had some money. And at last Adam got up to go and the old woman went with him to the door and suddenly she started crying. Hanging on to him. Damn her.
So the evening began and she went into the kitchen to get a meal ready and I didn’t know if I ought to take the dirty plates off the table or not. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I was here to help with the housework, I’m just a mechanic lodging with her, but I saw she really was terribly old, hardly able to walk, and groaning with every movement, and the evening light made her look all white, like a corpse. She must be over seventy, Father is seventy, and I was afraid she might suddenly drop dead so I quickly got up and picked up the dishes and took them to the kitchen and she smiled at me, a dead smile, and said:
“Sit down quietly and read the paper and I’ll make you some supper.”
I asked, “Do you have any repair job that needs doing?”
She began to think, then she bent down, nearly crawling on the floor, opening cupboards and looking for something, then she got out a small stepladder and started climbing up it. I almost shouted, “Tell me what you want and I’ll do it for you.”
And she smiled with her toothless mouth.
“You really are a good boy.”
But I didn’t want her to start talking Arabic again and I said straight out, “You can talk to me in Hebrew, no need for you to make an effort.”
She laughed. “But then you’ll end up forgetting your Arabic and your father will be angry with me.”
“I won’t forget, there’re plenty of Arabs even in Haifa.”
Then she smiled her dead smile again and told me to climb up the ladder and look in the top cupboards to see if there was a good bulb to put in the socket in the dining room so we’d have more light and we’d be able to see what we were eating. And I went up the ladder right away and looked in the cupboard and there were maybe twenty bulbs there, all of them burned out. I don’t know why she kept them, maybe she thought she’d get a refund on them at the supermarket. I had to try them all before I found one that worked.
In the meantime she was cooking supper, mutton with rice and beans, great stuff, really tasty, Arab food. And she fussed around me all the time, not eating herself, going and fetching salt, pepper, pickled cucumber, bread. I kept telling her, “I’ll fetch it myself,” but she said, “You sit there quietly and eat.”
The last course was sweet sahalab. And she was walking slowly, dragging her feet. When the meal was finished I took the dirty dishes off the table and said to her, “All right, I’ll wash them.” But she wouldn’t let me, like she was afraid I’d break something. So I said, “O.K., at least let me take out the rubbish.”
And I went out to empty the rubbish and it was already dark in the street, and I walked along with the empty can to have a look at the street, to see what there was, who the neighbours were, what the shops were like.
When I got back she was sitting in her chair, everything was clean and tidy, she looked at me angrily.
“Where have you been?”
“I was just walking in the street.”
“You must always tell me where you’re going. I’m responsible for you.”
I felt like shouting, What do you mean you’re responsible? but I didn’t say anything.
And she picked up Ma’ariv and I picked up Yediot Aharonot because that was all there was, she didn’t have a TV or a radio for listening to music, and we sat there opposite each other like a pair of old people, quietly reading. It was really boring. And every five minutes she asked me what the time was. In the end she got tired of reading, took off her glasses and said, “Read me what Rosenblum says on page one.”
And I read it to her, I can’t remember all of it, the main thing was that all the Arabs want to destroy all the Jews.
She groaned, nodding her head.
Then I couldn’t stop myself and I asked, “Do you think I want to destroy you?”
She smiled and muttered, “We’ll see, we’ll see. What’s the time?”
“Seven o’clock,” I said.
She said, “Off you go to bed, he may be coming to fetch you tonight, we don’t want him to find you tired out.” I wasn’t a bit tired but I didn’t want to argue with her on the first evening so I stood up to go to bed. And I looked at her, she really scared me, with her pale face and red eyes she looked like a witch. Staring at me so hard. I started trembling inside. She was really scary. And then she said something weird, crazy, whatever could have put the idea in her head?
“Come here, give me a kiss.”
I thought I was going to faint. What was the big idea? Why? I cursed myself and her but I didn’t want to quarrel with her the first evening so I went up to her and quickly brushed my lips against her cheek that was as dry as a tobacco leaf. I made a kissing noise in the air and ran off to my room, wishing I was dead. But then I cheered up a bit because through the window I could see the lights of the harbour coming on, really beautiful. I undressed slowly, put on my pyjamas and got into bed, thinking maybe tonight I’d see the girl I love in a dream and I really did see her but not in a dream.
VEDUCHA
At the time of the siege of Old Jerusalem, just two years after the cursed World War, I realized that God had lost consciousness. I didn’t dare say he no longer existed, because it’s hard for an old woman of sixty-seven whose father was a great Jerusalem rabbi to start fighting against God and those who believe in Him, but when my daughter Hemdah, Gabriel’s mother, was killed by a bullet and I went with the child and his strange father to the New City and they put us up in a monastery in Rehavia, I used to say to all the people around me, whether they wanted to hear or not, “He is unconscious,” and they thought I meant the child, or his father, but I said, “No, up there,” and they would look up, searching and not understanding, and I said, “Don’t seek Him, He isn’t there.” And the people cursed me, for to lose Him at such a time was the last thing they wanted. It was then that my love for Jerusalem died. It was a city of madness, and when they offered me a deserted Arab house in Haifa I accepted it at once and moved there with the child Gabriel, whom I had to bring up. And his strange father didn’t want to go to Haifa, but he didn’t care in the least that I was taking the child, he wasn’t much interested in him, he spent all his time wandering about trying to remarry and not succeeding. And the child loved his father greatly, pined for him all the time. And when at last his father went to Paris to try his luck there, because his prospects in Israel were very bleak, Gabriel never stopped thinking about Paris, collecting pictures of it, reading books about it, and the more I tried to make him forget his father, the more he remembered. I bought an old car and after taking the test seven times I learned to drive. I used to take the boy with me on little trips, to Galilee and other parts of the country, but he had only one idea in his head, how to get to Paris to be with his father, he wrote letters, made plans. As soon as he finished his army service he went to Paris. And so for the last ten years I have been alone, no family around me, they’re all in Paris, dying off one by one, I can’t even get to the funerals. And the world has become strange, but it’s still here and it’s not so bad, it could be much worse. I said to myself, perhaps it’s a good thing that He is still lying there unconscious, if He wakes up then the troubles will begin. Please, good people, speak softly, don’t wake Him. But I began to yearn and my yearning was so great that in the end I lost my wits, I don’t even remember how it happened. It was in the middle of lunch, because Mrs. Goldberg came in that evening and found me still holding the fork. And I lay unconscious for maybe a year and if I met Him I do not know, for every meeting was unconscious. But in the end I woke up, and still I don’t know why. For now I feel no yearning for anyone. Perhaps Gabriel’s return did touch me after all. And I go home, a
n old woman of ninety-three, that’s the truth, and this loneliness again. What will become of me? But mercy and grace are still with me. On the first night that I’m alone in the house, a thunderstorm outside, that bearded man breaks into the house – Gabriel’s friend, kindred souls they are, he will search for him on my behalf. A wonderful man. He reconnects my telephone, takes care of everything, and one afternoon he even brings along a little Arab boy to stay with me. It’s a little sad that it should end like this. The second generation of a great Jerusalem family, every other Sephardi who walked the streets of the Old City at the turn of the century was somehow related, and now at the end of my days I have nobody in my house but an Arab. Better if he had brought me a Jewish orphan and I could have performed a mitzvah before my death, but what can you do, there are no more Jewish orphans on the market, only Arabs, at least they do not flee the country. God is having a joke at my expense, that at the age of ninety-three I must look after a little Arab, send him to the bathroom to wash himself, give him food, I know, he’ll grow up an ass like all the rest of them, you can’t trust them an inch, but for the time being it’s a pretty boy that I see, a typical Arab face but intelligent, sitting on the chair beside me, like the little grandson that I once had years ago, and there’s light in the house again, I can hardly conceal my joy. He brought vegetables and eggs from his village in a suitcase, like the good Arabs, the Turks. He really makes me happy, I can give him little jobs to do. I held his hand and led him to his room, gave him a good meal. He cleaned his plate. Thank God he has an appetite, now I shall have to cook proper meals. A little man. He may be an Arab, but he’s somebody at least. A quiet boy, knows what he wants, looking at me suspiciously but without fear, on his guard, knows how to defend himself, even though he doesn’t respond to my teasing, I talk to him in Arabic to make him feel at home, but he answers in Hebrew, that’s how far they’ve infiltrated us.
The Lover Page 26