You could see Shlomo was very upset and about to say something terrible, when Miriam stopped him with a little wave of her hand. Actually, she couldn’t stop laughing, and she said to me, Anna, come with me, and let me show you.
The first thing we did was go for coffee—well, she had coffee. I had a Coke. That’s when she told me she liked my brain.
“You’re always thinking,” she said. “God wants us to think.”
“I guess,” I said.
“But he also wants us to see.”
“See what?”
“That’s what I’m going to show you.”
After the Coke we went outside for a walk. We were walking very close to each other, and I didn’t mind, and I also didn’t mind the way she looked, with the long skirt and the long-sleeved blouse, because it was actually a pretty blouse and because, I don’t know.
Then she asked me, Why do you think your father got bombed? I told her I didn’t know. Think about it, she said. Why did he lose everything he worked for? Why do you think he hit that guy on the street?
I said, “What guy on the street?”
She kept saying, “Don’t you think there’s a reason?”
“Well, I guess they hate us,” I said.
“Of course,” she said, “but why you?”
“Me?”
“Exactly,” she said. “You.”
“It wasn’t me. It was my father.”
“It’s funny with fathers,” she said. “My own father didn’t understand me when I became religious.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he went crazy. He even cried. He thought this was the end of everything. That he’d lost me forever.”
“Did he?”
“Of course not. Yes, he has to become kosher for me to go to the house, and he has to observe Shabbat and some other things—then we can definitely be together again. But, no, it’s not that he lost me. It’s that he’s lost. Know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But no matter what, Anna, when they strike the father, don’t you think they are also striking the daughter?”
That felt like the truth to me. And I told her so. And then she took hold of my hands and said, “Everything has a divine purpose, doesn’t it Anna?”
I had to be honest with her. I said I didn’t know. That was my problem.
“Yes, tell me exactly what your problem is,” she said.
“I don’t know if I believe things have a purpose,” I told her. “I just know they exist.”
“But you don’t have to believe,” she said. “You just have to act. There is this old Jewish expression, Do first, believe later. You don’t have to believe anything. You just have to do. When the Torah was given on Mount Sinai and Moses presented it to Israel, they replied in one voice, ‘We shall do and we shall hear.’ You don’t have to hear anything, you just have to do.”
I wanted to tell her, But I do hear. That’s my other problem. I hear everything.
She said it’s from Exodus. And then she explained what Sfat Emet says about it, which is that the commands that were already revealed, we promised to do, but that which isn’t yet revealed we promise to be ready to hear.
“And how do we become ready to hear?” she asked me.
“By doing?”
“Yes!” she laughed. “When you fulfill the commandments, any commandments, you will automatically be ready to hear. It’s easy.”
“And then you believe?” I asked her.
Now she stopped laughing and leaned in very close and whispered into my ear. “God will be present through your actions,” she said. “That’s all you need to know.” Then she ran her fingers through my hair and said, “I love your hair!”
“I cut it myself,” I told her.
“Wow,” she said.
We walked a little more, and I asked her, “Is that what you wanted to show me?”
“No,” she said. “We’re not there yet.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A long way, sweetie,” she answered. “We’ve only just gotten started.”
And that’s when I really started on my journey. Only it’s not a journey at all, because actually you are standing still, and everything else is traveling toward you. People don’t think about this, but when you are reading, the words are coming at you at the speed of light. When you are learning and changing, it feels like you are moving, but you’re not. This is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
I had just finished writing down those thoughts when Yohanan appeared at the corner schlepping his huge briefcase full of Talmuds and whatnot, and even though he was still a block away I could see he was sweating because there were these big wet stains under his arms, which were sticking out of his short sleeves like two uncooked kolbasi, pale and mushy, and of course the big glasses and everything. I guess that’s why I love Yohanan. He has no sense of style.
A second later he was at the bus stop, throwing down his briefcase and plopping himself onto the bench next to me. Hot! he said. Beautiful, I replied, because everything really was beautiful at that moment. He said he needed a drink, that’s why he was late. He repeated for the fifteen-thousandth time how much he likes Prigat mandarin. But they didn’t have it! he complained. So I had to get lemon. And I’m thinking to myself, why is life so mundane that even at the very, very most important moments, such as this exactly is, or could be anyway, all people can think about is juice. I really didn’t care that he was late, but I said, I’ve been waiting half an hour and look at the time. He said to calm down, Shlomo had already called him, and we didn’t have to be anywhere for another hour and a half at least, and it only takes forty-five minutes. You’re always so antsy, he said, plus I’m only fifteen minutes late. Whatever, I said. And he opened his carton of juice and started sucking away. It’s not even juice anyway. I don’t think there’s any real fruit in it. So why do they call it juice? I get all fidgety, I said. Just try, he said. And I said, You shouldn’t drink that Prigat stuff because it’s filled with deadly chemicals. It’s juice, he said. It’s the slurp of death, I said. Why do you have to be so nervous all the time? he said. I was not nervous, I want to make that perfectly clear, only a little excited, but now the next bus seemed to take forever to come, and I guess I was pacing or yammering or something, because all of a sudden Yohanan took my hand. I was like—what? I turned to him, but he wasn’t even looking at me. He just stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels like he always does. But the feel of his hand on mine was, I don’t know, I don’t know. It was soft. I mean, yes, his skin was soft, because he’s a little pudgy, but that’s not what I mean when I say it was soft. I can’t say what I mean. I don’t know how to describe what I mean, which is completely odd for me because I can describe anything. As soon as he took my hand, everything got quiet. The voices of the trees and the insects and the cars and the people in them and the buildings and the pavement and the bullets wanting to be loaded into the gun that soldier standing near us was carrying on his shoulder and all the conversations going on in his head and in the heads of all the people at the bus stop, all of the stuff I was hearing that always makes me so crazy, that makes me want to shout at everyone, that lots of times makes me want to cry, it was gone. It was like coming up from underwater when you’re holding your breath and you don’t think you’re going to make it, but you do, you get to the end of the pool and you burst through the water. I looked down at our hands. Mine seemed to have disappeared into Yohanan’s, because my hand is so tiny and his is so big. He was still craning his neck, watching for the bus. Finally he looked at me. He said, There it is! I was confused. I wanted to say, Yeah, here it is, but I didn’t know what it was. And then I realized, the bus. The doors opened and he stepped up and he pulled me along with him. He said, Show him your pass, and then I didn’t know what to do, because if I went to get my pass I’d have to let go of his hand.
“Jerusalem,” he said, and the driver waved us on.
When we got to the cent
ral station in Jerusalem, we had to take another bus to the neighborhood called Geula and then find this little street near Eliezar and Auerbach. It’s so small it doesn’t even have a name, but Shlomo told us we would see a sign for the Source of Righteousness Yeshiva in the Name of the Saintly Rebbe of Amdur of Blessed Memory and then another sign that says DANGER, HIGH VOLTAGE, and then there would be a gate painted dark green where we should turn and then pass a flowering bougainvillea that hangs, as he said, like a waterfall of crimson, and at the garbage can turn onto the path that leads into the courtyard and then look for the stairs that go down, down, down, well, not that far down, to a cellar door, don’t bother knocking, just come in, sit, wait, don’t forget to drink water. He naturally reminded us to say our prayers when we got on the bus, say our prayers when we arrived safely, and maybe bring a deck of cards.
Me
This is my life, it’s so weird. You would not believe it if I weren’t telling you, would you?
Right now, where I am writing these things in my journal, I’ve never been here before and I guess I’ll never be here again. It’s kind of creepy, it’s very creepy actually, and I don’t like it and I am very anxious to get out of here, yet at the same time I don’t want to leave. But I don’t want to tell yet about that, because I’ve decided to try to tell things in order.
Chapter Thirteen
DASHA’S TOES MOVE FROM TIME TO TIME, so slightly it is not possible for anyone to see. But I can see. Her breath rises from her lips in a rosy light, illuminating the melancholy room with a hint of the life that throbs within her.
In my village there was a secret place. At first it was Fadi’s brother Halim’s, but then it was Fadi’s, and then he shared it with me. Nadirah never came there. Now that she was married to Fadi, she was supposed to be like a sister to me. But she was not like other women. Even though her father was so strict he might as well have been a mullah, when she and Fadi ate with her parents, she insisted on sitting with the men. Her father indulged her in this, as in everything. But the secret place was secret even from her.
What was that place to which she could not go? Just an old chicken coop no one used anymore. Halim had taken it over and set it up between some trees and covered it with branches and dried leaves, old cardboard and tires so that it looked like a pile of junk. But if you knew where the door was, you could enter the jeweled world. In its small space with the light of the kerosene lamp, magic. Over the years they had hung many things upon the two strings that stretched from corner to corner, crisscrossing in the middle. Photographs, bent spoons, shiny rocks, bits of writing, pieces of beaded cloth, a pair of broken eyeglasses. In the glow of the lamps they sparkled. If you brushed them with your hand, they sang like camel bells.
“Come on,” he said to me, “let’s go to the Glass Palace.”
“Now? I have to work. Ab will be angry.”
He took my hand, pulling me along. “More important,” he said.
“We’re rebuilding some guy’s engine.”
“How many times can you rebuild an engine?”
“A thousand times, obviously,” I said.
By now we were already passing Abdul-Rahim’s house and the new block of apartments, and soon we were passing Mahmood’s falafel stand—Fadi always walked fast, and he dragged me along like a kite he was trying to get airborne. We passed the empty lot with the boys from Jabal playing football and screaming curses at one another and then the abandoned post office, all broken down, and the ruins of the old Jordanian army post. Hens were roosting there. You could smell them all the way to Bethlehem. Here the village thinned out, and only a few houses, separated by scruffy yards, stood between us and the fields. But this was precisely where we suddenly disappeared into a small grove of eucalyptus. This was where our secret place was hidden.
Fadi, as always, looked both ways to make sure no one was watching. Then he pushed his way through the rubble and found the latch of the door that was painted in camouflage like an Israeli soldier. He cracked it open a few centimeters, pushed me through, and followed me inside, letting the door smack shut behind us. When the door closed on its springs, it made us feel secure, like two foxes in their burrow.
Usually when we were in the Glass Palace, Fadi brought something to eat, a pastry, some fruit, sometimes a chocolate bar; or I might bring something my mother had baked or perhaps some cashews or olives that I kept in a jar just for this purpose. For a while we even had a little stove, and using dried twigs or little pieces of coal, we would cook khubz or pitas and melt labneh on them, but the smoke drew the attention of old abu-Kaseem who lived in the shack just beyond the trees and still herded goats with his son and grandson, and he started beating our roof with a carpet not knowing we had a house under there, so we had to dowse the stove and capture the smoke in my hat, and then old abu-Kaseem was happy because he thought he had put out a fire. But my hat was ruined forever, and that’s how it ended up cut into pieces and hanging on the string with everything else. But on this day, Fadi had brought nothing to eat, even though it had been a long day at school. Fadi didn’t go to school anymore, so he didn’t seem to remember what hunger was. He was supposed to be working in the import business with Nadirah’s father, but he hardly ever did that either.
Instead of food, he handed me a cigarette. In fact, he gave me the whole pack. “Here, take this shit. I don’t want their goddamned Israeli cigarettes anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Where are your eyes? How long can we go on this way? How long can we put up with this shit? First they take our land, then they take all we have left, rule us like we were nothing but donkeys. As if we were pigs. They’re the pigs, not us!”
“I hate them, too,” I said.
“No, you don’t. But you should. And you think anyone cares about us? You think abu-Amar cares about us?”
“He does, too.” I saw in my mind his posters: ARAFAT! LEADER! ONE PEOPLE! ONE LAND! They popped up everywhere and just as quickly were torn down by the soldiers. “Who else cares for us?”
“All right, he does, but what good is it doing? What has he done? Where is he? Tunis? Algeria? I don’t know. Who knows? Who cares? Look at reality, Amir. What are we, huddled here in this garbage pile like two rats!”
“But we love this place.”
“We do, we do. But I’m too old for it anymore, Amir.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“Amir, listen to me. We have to stop all this crying. We have to stop being little boys. You see what they did in Lebanon, don’t you? You’ve heard of the massacres there, haven’t you? You see them in our streets, don’t you? Look up on the hill, just above us. Nobody ever was on that hill! What kind of place is that hill? And there they are. They build their big houses with their red roofs and their pretty gardens and all around their village they cultivate their fields, or they have their little factories. Do we have money to build houses? Do we have water to cultivate new fields? Where are our factories? Didn’t you hear how they murdered little Fatma Sahour? Just walking to school! Just like you! Walking, walking, walking, boom! That’s all. Who is to pay for that? Who is to help little Fatma Sahour? Amir, we used to sit up on that hill. Remember the time with the cucumber and the falcon? Come on, come with me.”
He took me by the arm and urged me toward the door.
“But we just got here. And anyway, I have to work in the garage today.”
“Work in the garage? Work in the garage? What a baby you are! Come on, Amir. I’m telling you the truth here. There is a mufti I want you to hear. He speaks the truth. It comes out of his mouth like nothing you have ever heard. Never has to pause, never has to think about the next sentence, because he knows what he is saying. He teaches the true meaning of Islam. Let’s go. You’ll learn something.”
He thrust open the door. The light behind him was so bright I could no longer see his face.
“Come learn something,” he said.
But in the shadow where Fadi’s face should have been, I
saw my father’s twisted features.
As if he were reading my mind, Fadi lowered his voice and drew me closer to him. “At some point he’ll stop hitting you, Amir. They all do. No one hits me anymore. The same will happen to you. Don’t worry about it. Trust me.”
“But in the meantime, he’s still hitting me.”
“It’s time to stop thinking about your father and think about your people.”
But it was not easy to stop thinking about my father. The hand going to the strap, and the veins in his forehead swelling with anger, the bitter grunts as he let forth the blows. As for the people, all that came to mind was the gang of kids I hung around with and the old men loitering wherever there was the slightest space for loitering and the women hovering around the market stalls arguing with the butcher.
“Fadi, I have to work,” I said.
“So that’s it?” he sighed. “That’s all you have to say?”
He let his hand slip out of mine. With the door open behind him, his shape, which was really only a silhouette against the brightness of the sun, was suddenly gone. There came a brilliant, blinding moment and then the door swung shut on its spring and I was left alone in the darkness of the Glass Palace—only in my eyes everything went yellow, and I had to sit there quite a few minutes until I could see again.
Fadi had been trying to take me to these mullahs or Fatah or whatnot for ages now. He didn’t get it. I wasn’t interested. All I wanted was to go to school and have a business that was not a garage. Maybe write a book of stories, my own Book of Tales. The Israelis whom I knew were not so bad. Sure, the soldiers could be assholes, but the ones who came to the garage with their cars—what was so wrong with them, after all?
The Wanting Page 16