Captain Moshé’s vandals didn’t hold themselves back. My study has been turned upside down. The same disorder reigns in the bedroom: the mattress flipped over, the sheets on the floor, the bedside tables and dresser violated, the drawers spilled out onto the carpet. My wife’s lingerie lies among the slippers and cosmetic products. They took down my pictures to see what was behind them. Someone even trod on an old family photograph.
I have neither the strength nor the nerve to go to the other rooms and inspect the damage.
The mirror on the armoire shows me my reflection. I don’t recognize myself. Disheveled, wild-eyed, hollow-cheeked, unshaven, I look like a madman.
I undress and go to the bathroom to fill the tub; on the way, I find some food in the fridge and pounce on it like a famished beast. I eat standing up, using my dirty hands, nearly choking on the big mouthfuls I gulp down in quick succession with pathetic voracity. I empty a basket of fruit and two platefuls of cold meat, drain two bottles of beer—one long pull apiece—and lick the dripping sauce off each of my ten fingers, one by one.
I have to pass in front of the mirror again before I realize I’m completely naked. I don’t remember wandering around the house in my birthday suit since before I got married. Sihem was a stickler for certain principles.
Sihem . . .
How far away it is already, all that!
I slip into the tub; the water warms me to my core. I close my eyes and try to dissolve myself in the hot torpor washing over me. . . .
* * *
“My God!”
Kim Yehuda’s standing in my bathroom, incredulous. She looks to the right, then looks to the left; she claps her hands together as if she can’t admit what she’s seeing. With a quick about-face, she opens the little cupboard on the wall and reaches in, looking for a towel.
“You spent the night in there?” she cries, simultaneously horrified and outraged. “What were you thinking, damn it? You could have drowned!”
It’s hard for me to open my eyes. Maybe because of the daylight. I slowly become aware that I’ve slept in the bathtub all night. The water’s gone cold, and my limbs don’t react; they’ve become hard as wood. My thighs and my forearms are purple. I also notice that I can’t stop my body from trembling or my teeth from chattering.
“Amin, what are you trying to do to yourself? Stand up and get out of there this minute. I’m going to catch my death just from looking at you.”
She helps me out of the tub, wraps me in a bathrobe, and rubs me vigorously from my head to my calves.
“I can’t believe it,” she keeps saying. “How could you fall asleep in water up to your neck? Don’t you even realize? I had a premonition this morning. Something told me I absolutely had to pass this way before I went back to the hospital. . . . Navid called me right after they let you go. I came by three times yesterday, but you hadn’t come home yet. I figured you went and stayed at some relative or friend’s house.”
She leads me to my room, puts the mattress back on the bed, and lays me down on it. My limbs shiver harder and harder, and my jawbones are about to crack. “I’m going to fix you something warm to drink,” she says, spreading a blanket over me.
I hear her busying herself in the kitchen. She calls out a few questions about where this or that is. My mouth is trembling too uncontrollably for me to articulate a word. I curl up under the blanket in a fetal position, making myself very small so my body can warm up a little.
Kim brings me a large bowl of tisane, lifts my head, and sets about pouring the scalding, sweetened beverage into my mouth. A burning flood spreads through my chest and moves into my stomach.
I’m quivering so much that Kim has trouble holding me.
She puts the bowl down on the bedside table, adjusts my pillow, and helps me lie down again. “When did you get home? Late last night, or early this morning? I found the gate unlatched and the front door wide open—I was afraid something terrible had happened to you. Anyone could have come into your house.”
I can’t think of anything to say to her.
She explains to me that she has to perform an operation before noon. She tries to reach the housekeeper in order to ask her to show up, but she keeps getting her answering machine. Finally, she leaves a message. Kim’s uneasy about abandoning me, unsupervised, to my own devices; she tries in vain to come up with a solution. When she takes my temperature, she calms down, and then, after fixing me a meal, she tells me good-bye, promising to return as soon as she can.
I didn’t see her leave.
I think I went back to sleep. . . .
* * *
The screeching of a gate wakes me up. I throw off the covers and go to the window. Two teenagers are skulking around on my property with stacks of paper under their arms. My lawn is covered with dozens of photographs cut from newspapers. Some gawkers have gathered across the street. I yell, “Go away!” but I can’t open the window, so I rush to the door and out into the yard. The two teenagers clear off in a hurry. Barefoot, my head boiling, I pursue them into the street.
“Dirty terrorist! Piece of shit! Arab traitor!”
The invective stops me short. Too late—I’m right in the middle of an overexcited mob. Two bearded men with plaited hair spit on me. I’m pushed about. “Is that how your people say thank you, dirty Arab? By biting the hand that pulled you out of the shit?” Some shadowy figures slip behind me to cut off any possibility of retreat. A jet of saliva strikes my face. A hand pulls me by the collar of my bathrobe. “Look at the house you live in, you son of a bitch. What more do you have to have before you learn to say thanks?” They push and shake me. “We’ll have to disinfect this prick before we finish him off.” A kick in the belly bends me in half; another kick straightens me up. My nose is split open, and then my lips. My arms aren’t enough to protect me. A shower of blows rains down on me, and the earth shifts under my feet.
* * *
Kim finds me lying in the middle of the driveway. My attackers chased me into the yard and kept punching and kicking me long after they knocked me to the ground. Their bulging eyes and frothing mouths made me think they were going to lynch me.
Not a single neighbor came to my aid; no charitable soul had sufficient presence of mind to call the police.
Kim says, “I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
“No, not the hospital. I don’t want to go back there.”
“I think you’ve got something broken.”
“Please don’t insist. Please don’t.”
“In any case, you can’t stay here. They’ll kill you.”
Kim manages to get me back to my room. She helps me dress, throws a few things into a bag for me, and inserts me into her car.
The bearded guys with the plaited hair appear out of nowhere, probably alerted by a lookout.
“Let him croak,” one of them says to Kim. “He’s just a piece of shit.”
Kim’s tires squeal as she pulls away.
We speed through the neighborhood like a runaway racing car in a minefield.
* * *
Kim drives directly to an outpatient clinic near Yafo. The X rays show no fractures, but evidence of extensive trauma is now visible on my right wrist and knee. A nurse disinfects the cuts on my arms, sponges off the blood caked on my split lips, cleans my battered nostrils. She thinks I’m suffering from the consequences of a drunken brawl; her gestures are full of commiseration.
I leave the room hopping on one foot, with a heavy bandage around my right hand.
Kim offers me her shoulder. I prefer to lean on the wall.
She takes me to her place, a loft on Sderot Yerushalayim that she bought back when she was living with Boris. Sihem and I used to come here often to celebrate some happy event or just to spend a pleasant evening with friends. The two women got along very well, even though mine was rather reserved and remained constantly on her guard. Kim didn’t care—she loved to have guests and throw parties. And ever since getting over Boris’s defection, she’s red
oubled her hostessing efforts.
We take the elevator. An old granny rides up with us to the third floor. On the fifth-floor landing, a dejected puppy waits, with one end of his leash closed in the far door. The puppy belongs to Kim’s neighbor, who, if she follows her common practice, will get rid of it as soon as it reaches maturity and get herself another one.
Kim has trouble with the lock, as she does whenever she’s nervous. She grimaces in frustration, and dimples form in her cheeks. Her flush of anger looks good on her. Finally, she finds the right key and steps aside to let me enter.
“Make yourself at home,” she says.
She takes off my jacket and hangs it in the entrance hall. With a movement of her chin, she directs me to the living room, where a wicker chair and a worn old leather armchair are staring daggers at each other. Half the wall is taken up by a large surrealist painting, which rather looks like the doodles of unstable children fascinated by bloodred and coal-black. There’s a wrought-iron pedestal table that Kim discovered in a flea market where she loves to go on weekends. On this table, along with some terra-cotta bric-a-brac and an ashtray as full as an urn, there’s one of our leading newspapers—open to a photograph of my wife.
Kim lunges for it, but I hold her back by one hand. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.
Confused, she nevertheless gathers up the newspaper and throws it into a wastebasket.
I sit in the armchair, near some French windows that open onto a balcony covered with flowerpots. The apartment offers an unencumbered view of the avenue. The traffic is intense. The evening is settling in, and the night promises to be feverish.
We have dinner in the kitchen, Kim and I. She picks at her food; I chew mine without conviction. The newspaper photograph is stuck to my eyeballs. A hundred times, I feel the urge to ask Kim what she thinks about this news story, which the journalists are embellishing in accordance with their various obsessions; a hundred times, I feel the urge to take her chin in both my hands, stare straight into her eyes, and insist that she tell me truthfully whether, in her soul and conscience, she believes that my wife, Sihem Jaafari, the woman with whom she shared so many things, was capable of strapping a load of explosives onto herself and going to detonate them in the midst of a party. But I don’t dare take advantage of Kim’s solicitude for me. At the same time, in my heart of hearts, I pray that she won’t say anything either, that she won’t take my hand in a gesture of compassion; one consideration too many, and I may not survive. We’re fine together, just like this: Our silence protects us from ourselves.
She clears the table without making very much noise and offers me a cup of coffee. I ask her for a cigarette. She frowns. I stopped smoking years ago.
“You’re sure that’s what you want?”
I don’t answer her.
She holds out her pack, followed by her lighter. The first puffs set off sparks in my brain. The following puffs make me dizzy.
“Would you mind dimming the lights?”
She switches off the ceiling light and turns on a lamp. The relative darkness of the room soothes my anxieties somewhat. Two hours later, we’re in the same position, seated facing each other, our eyes lost in our thoughts.
“We have to go to bed,” she announces. “I’m half-asleep, and I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
She puts me in the guest room. “Is everything all right? You don’t need more pillows?”
“Good night, Kim.”
She takes a shower and then turns off the light in her room.
Later, she comes into my room to see if I’m asleep. I feign unconsciousness.
* * *
A week has passed, and I still haven’t gone back to my house. Kim’s harboring me, taking care not to upset my delicate balance. A technician probing a bomb could hardly be more cautious.
My wounds have scarred over, my contusions gone down, and my bashed knee no longer obliges me to hop about, but my wrist is still wrapped in a bandage.
When Kim’s not here, I shut myself up in my room and I don’t move. Go out? Where would I go? The street holds no attractions for me. There wasn’t anything for me out there yesterday, and there’s surely even less today. It’s useless to try to return to my old life and my familiar objects when my heart’s not in it. Here in this room, with the curtains drawn, I feel protected. Here, I don’t run many risks. I’m not completely comfortable, but I’m not suffering any injuries, either. Still, I have to make my way back up the slope. The bottom’s no good for anybody. In this kind of implosion, if you don’t react very quickly, you lose control of absolutely everything. You become a spectator of your own collapse, and you don’t realize that the abyss is about to close over you forever.
One evening, Kim suggested we go to visit her grandfather in his beach house. I said I wasn’t ready to renew contact with anyone or anything that wouldn’t ever again be the same as it was before. I need to get some distance, let time pass, figure out what’s happening to me. And yet, I generally cloister myself in my room all day long and think of nothing at all. Otherwise, I install myself near the French windows and spend most of my time looking at the vehicles wiggle along the avenue. I don’t really see them. Just once, I consider the idea of getting behind the steering wheel and driving in some randomly chosen direction until my radiator bursts, but I have neither the nerve nor the energy to go back to the hospital and pick up my car.
As soon as I was able to walk without supporting myself on the nearest wall, I asked to see Navid Ronnen. I want to give my wife a decent burial. I can’t stand to imagine her so cramped, shut up in that refrigerated drawer in the morgue with a label attached to her toe. In order to spare me a bout of futile anger, Navid brings me the proper forms, duly filled out; all he needs is my signature.
I pay the fine and collect my wife’s body without saying anything to anyone. I’m determined to bury Sihem in the strictest privacy. I want her grave to be in Tel Aviv, the city where we met for the first time and where we decided to live until death should us part. Except for the grave digger and the imam, I’m alone at the cemetery.
When the hole where the best part of my life will rest from now on is entirely covered with earth, I start feeling a little better. It’s as if I’ve performed a task that had previously seemed inconceivable. I listen to the imam reciting verses from the Qur’an until he’s finished, and then I slip some banknotes into his hand—which he pretends to withdraw at first—and set out for Kim’s loft on foot.
On my way, I walk down a broad esplanade that overlooks the sea. Tourists take photographs and wave at one another. Some amorous young couples put their heads together in the shade of the trees; others walk hand in hand along the jetty. I go into a small café, order a cup of coffee, take a seat in a corner near the picture window, and calmly smoke one cigarette after another.
The sun begins to lower its profile. I hail a taxi and ask to be dropped off on Sderot Yerushalayim.
Kim has guests. No one hears me come in. I can’t see the living room from the entrance hall. I recognize Ezra Benhaim’s voice, then Navid’s much heavier bass, and then the liquid tones of Kim’s older brother Benjamin.
Ezra clears his throat and says, “I don’t see the connection.”
“There’s always a connection where you don’t suspect one,” says Benjamin, who taught philosophy at Tel Aviv University for a long time before joining a very controversial pacifist movement in Jerusalem. “That’s the mistake we keep on making.”
“Let’s not exaggerate,” Ezra protests politely.
“We’ve got dueling funeral processions coming from both sides. Can we call that progress?”
“The Palestinians refuse to listen to reason.”
“Maybe we refuse to listen to them.”
“Benjamin’s right,” Navid says in a calm, inspired voice. “The Palestinian fundamentalists send kids to blow themselves up in bus shelters. As soon as we collect our dead, our leaders send up the copters to smoke a few Arab hovels. Then, just when t
he government is getting ready to declare victory, a fresh attack sets the clock back. How long can it go on?”
At this precise moment, Kim comes out of the kitchen and discovers me in the hall. I put a finger on my lips, imploring her not to give me away, then turn on my heels and head for the landing. Kim tries to catch up with me, but I’m already in the street.
6.
* * *
And here I am, back in my neighborhood—like a ghost returning to the scene of the crime. I don’t know how I wound up here. After fleeing from Kim’s, I chose an avenue at random and walked until I got thigh cramps. Then I took a bus to the terminal, ate dinner in a little restaurant in Shapira, and roamed from one square to another before discovering that my feet had carried me to the part of the city where Sihem and I chose to live seven years ago, when we were certain that our home would be an ineradicable shrine to our love for each other. It’s a handsome, quiet neighborhood, jealously guarding its posh mansions and its tranquillity. Here the owners of Tel Aviv’s great fortunes take their ease, along with a colony of parvenus, among them some Russian immigrants recognizable by their uncouth accents and their maniacal efforts to impress their neighbors. The first time we passed this way, Sihem and I, we were immediately captivated by the area. Daylight seemed much brighter here than elsewhere. We loved the carved stone facades, the wrought-iron gates, and the aura of felicity around the houses, with their wide-eyed windows and their lovely balconies. At the time, we were living in an incongruous suburban neighborhood, in a little apartment on the fourth floor of an unremarkable building where loud domestic quarrels were the order of the day. We were keeping strictly to a tight budget in order to put aside enough money to move, but we were far from imagining that we’d ever unpack our bags in such an exclusive part of town. I’ll never forget Sihem’s joy when I took the blindfold off her eyes and showed her our house. She jumped so high off her seat in the car that her head cracked the cover of the interior light. She was as happy as a little girl whose dearest birthday wish comes true, and seeing her like that utterly enchanted me. How many times did she grab me by the neck and kiss me on the mouth, in plain view of any nosy onlookers, she who would blush red as a beet whenever I dared to give her a public squeeze? She pushed the gate open and made a beeline for the heavy oaken front door. She was so impatient that she made it hard for me to find the right key. I can still hear her cries of joy echoing in my head. I see her again, spinning around with her arms flung out in the middle of the dining room, like a ballerina intoxicated by the dance. I had to put my arms around her to restrain her exuberance. Her eyes flooded me with gratitude; her happiness stunned me. And there, in the huge bare room, we spread out my overcoat on the marble floor and made love like two teenagers, dazzled and frightened at once by their bodies’ first ecstasy. . . .
The Attack Page 5