I hear Hilmi’s steps coming from the bedroom, the rubbery squeak of his All-Stars on the parquet floor. How long has it been since I came out to the living room – five, ten minutes? I see him reflected in the window, which the night has turned to a mirror, coming closer until he stands next to me and we both look out at the street.
‘So when was it?’ he finally asks, his voice breaching the silence. ‘When were you in the army?’
I want to tell him I’m not in the mood for politics, but I’m afraid to seem evasive. He might think I did all kinds of things in the army, when in reality I had an office job in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Big deal. A venerable Arab-killer.
‘Ninety-one to ninety-two,’ I say in a wrinkled voice, and my image in the window grimaces. ‘It was ages ago, I don’t even understand how we ended up talking about it.’
But I do understand. I understand completely. It could not have been avoided. Yesterday, when we were waiting for the train and he asked how I knew Andrew, I answered without even thinking that we’d served on the same army base. I told him how Andrew, who had no family in Israel, used to come home for Friday night dinners with me, and everyone fell in love with him and he became like family. I prattled on as if the fast talk and the giggles would make him forget what I’d said at the beginning. Andrew even went to visit my parents on weekends when I was on the kibbutz with my boyfriend, I told him. Then I stopped, because Avichai, my first boyfriend, was a helicopter co-pilot, and I pictured him flying over Ramallah, rattling his helicopter above Hilmi’s mother’s house.
‘I asked you,’ he reminds me. ‘That’s why we’re talking about it.’
He continues to stare out of the window, and I want so badly to touch him, to lean on him and burrow into him again. It feels as if a part of me was buried in him last night, and now I long to be entirely inside him.
‘Wait, ninety-one?’ He breaks away from the window and turns to me, surprised. ‘In ninety-one I was in prison. Four months, in Dhahiriya.’
My heart plummets. ‘Prison?’
‘And there were a few women soldiers there, so we could—’
‘Why?’ My voice is petrified, thin and weak. ‘What did you do?’
And just as he probably imagined me as a soldier in IDF uniform, armed with a rifle, I see his face looking out from the window of a bus full of security prisoners, like a quick cut to a news item on television. I see him handcuffed and blindfolded with a group of other men.
‘Just graffiti,’ he says dismissively, and stretches out his entire body, reaching his arms up to the ceiling. ‘Me and my brother, Omar, they caught us painting a flag.’
‘Graffiti?’
‘On a wall in Hebron.’
‘And for that…’ I am genuinely astonished, disbelieving, but I know that my gasp of surprise also contains a significant measure of relief. ‘Four months?’
‘Yeah, those shits,’ he says with a yawn. ‘It was against the law back then.’
But what did you think he’d done? I ask myself with a sour taste in my mouth. A terrorist attack? Feeling guilty, as if he might have recognized himself in the picture that flashed through my mind before – spotted himself among the shackled, blindfolded men, the terrorists and suspected saboteurs – I turn back to him: ‘How old were you? You must have been…’
He yawns again and nods. ‘Fifteen. It was illegal to paint the Palestinian flag or anything in the flag’s colours.’
I stifle down my own yawn. ‘Wait, what do you mean?’
‘Red, green, white and black. You weren’t allowed to use those colours. Even if you were just painting something innocent, like a watermelon, you could get arrested.’ He laughs.
I could have moved closer and hugged him, threaded myself between his arms and let them enfold me again. I could have distracted him with a murmur – for a moment I even feel a tickle of laughter when I remember the expression on his face when we were on the train and I recited a line from the Arabic television broadcasts of my childhood: ‘Sabakh al’kheir, saydati wasaadati fi urshalayim al-kuds.’ He laughed when I mimicked the melodramatic ‘Mish mumken! Mish mumken!’ and ‘Inti taliya! Taliya, taliya!’ from the Arabic movies they used to show every Friday afternoon. But after just staring outside silently without moving for a long time – where is Dhahiriya anyway? Which side of the Green Line is it on? Inta bidoobi? Shu bidoobi? – I ask timidly, not really wanting to know, afraid of what he might say, ‘So…what was it like there? In prison.’
‘You know what?’ He sounds happily surprised. ‘This is so weird.’
‘What?’
‘I was just thinking about it today. Just this morning I remembered it.’
I almost say: That’s what I remind you of? Your experiences in the Israeli prison?
But he jumps in and starts humming a tune: ‘Lai la lai lai…’ His voice hesitates for a moment, then picks up the rhythm again: ‘Lai lai laaai…’ He starts nodding his head slightly from side to side, caught up in the reminiscence. ‘Lai lai la lala la lai…’ The more confidently he sings, the more I begin to recognize the same tune I heard when I stepped out of the shower and heard him whistling in the kitchen. ‘Lai lai lai lai…’ A chill runs down my spine when I recognize the melody: it’s the chorus from that pop song by Yigal Bashan, which was so popular when I was a girl. ‘I have a little bird in me…’ The words come naturally, filling me with emotion. ‘A warm and distant melody…’ I pick up the tune and the Hebrew words arouse a nostalgic warmth. And then it occurs to me: ‘How do you know that song? From the radio? Did you have a radio in there?’
He stops singing and rolls around laughing. ‘Radio? I wish!’
I laugh too, and look at him expectantly. ‘Then where did you come up with that song?’
‘There were a bunch of soldiers there,’ he says, and his lips sketch the traces of smile. ‘They used to do this thing…’ After a long pause he glances at me again, somewhat apologetically. ‘They forced us to sing for them.’
‘To sing?’
‘Yes, they thought it was funny.’
‘Sing in Hebrew? That song?’
He nods enthusiastically. ‘Luckily for me, I had my brother with me, they put us in prison together, because if I’d been on my own it would have been a lot worse. He was really scared, Omar, scared for our father. That was the year he had his first heart attack and he was in hospital for a long time. And so Omar kept his eye on me to make sure I didn’t get into any more trouble. There were loads of his pals in Dhahiriya, kids his age who’d thrown stones and Molotov cocktails, or burned tyres. So when someone in our wing went crazy, the soldiers punished everyone. The minute anyone started fighting or yelling or making trouble, they’d take us all outside and make us stand there for two or three hours without moving.’
His face falls and his voice fades. He smothers a yawn with both hands. When he looks up there is a thin, damp veil over his eyes, and he looks almost amused.
‘There was this one guy there, a bald soldier with glasses, and I was scared of him more than the others. Of him and his friend, a fat fuck who was always sweating. Those shits, it was entertainment for them. If they saw that one of us wasn’t singing, they’d beat on him right away. Grab his collar like this and rattle him. Or they’d come from behind and ram him in the back. Whack the back of his neck, kick his feet. And they’d yell: “Either you open your mouth or no one eats today! The whole cell will go hungry because of you!” Sometimes, for no reason, just ’cause they felt like it, they’d say, “Either you sing or no cigarettes today!” Or “No breakfast!”’
‘Did you sing?’
‘At first I stood my ground – no way was I going to sing. I was scared shitless, but I didn’t sing a single note. Then Omar made me do it. He would sing really enthusiastically, like he was enjoying it, pretending he was having fun. He didn’t care about the soldiers laughing, or about his friends who could see us. He’d start singing and drag me into it. He did it over and over again, until eventually we l
earned all the words – what else are you gonna do? In the end you just sing your heart out. Even though the Hebrew lyrics were dirty words, someone told me what they meant once, but I liked the tune. After four months, you know, it grows on you. And that’s the thing that used to drive me crazy afterwards, is that the melody is really beautiful. Even after we got out and went home, I used to hum it to myself. I’d suddenly find myself singing it in the shower, or riding my bike. It used to drive me crazy, I’d switch on the radio or the TV, put a cassette tape on, just to get it out of my head.’
How strange to suddenly hear the Hebrew erupt from his mouth. How noticeable the Arabic accent, and the faulty pronunciation. ‘I have a little sheep…’ he starts, and I cringe at the satirical version he now continues with. ‘A little sheep…’ he sings softly, trying to remember the lyrics, ‘…and a goat.’ He sounds so inarticulate to my Israeli ears, so ridiculous, like an over-the-top impersonation of an Arab on a Friday night Israeli comedy sketch show.
‘I don’t need no seventy-two virgins…’
I try to drown out his version with the innocent lyrics of the original: I have a little bird in me / a warm and distant melody / of summertime / of a thousand rhymes… To hear that lovely Israeli song coming out of his lips, distorted so crudely, and to imagine him as a young kid, standing there frightened in the prison yard like a trained circus bear, singing for the soldiers’ entertainment.
‘Every time I feel lonely…’ he sings on.
Those vulgar words, that melody… A horrified, panicky laughter starts to climb up my throat uncontrollably and prickle my lips, as if I am laughing along with those Israeli wardens, entertained by the performance.
‘I get with them…’
‘Stop!’ I grip his shoulder and put my other hand over his mouth. ‘Stop.’
He chuckles and moves his face away from my hand. ‘Hang on, just wait a second.’
‘No, no, stop!’ I suppress the bitter laughter, the horrible, gurgling laughter, preventing it from bursting out. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
chapter 12
It’s night now. The lights are still on in the living room. On the table are dinner leftovers from the Vietnamese restaurant on King Street, little plastic cups and bowls, crumpled paper napkins, and a half-empty bottle of red wine. We pilfered the wine from Dudi and Charlene’s collection, and a tub of chocolate Ben & Jerry’s from the depths of their freezer. It was congealed and covered with a thin lace of freezer burn. Hilmi put it on the radiator to thaw, but by the time we came back to the room, flushed and glowing after a bath, the ice cream had melted into hot chocolate. Scrubbed clean, hair still wet, we were like a pair of impostors, a butler and maid dining their hearts out and getting drunk off their masters’ expensive wine. We’d taken a luxurious bubble bath, delighted in our steamy reflections in the glimmering mirrors, wrapped ourselves in their fluffy robes, and – feeling fragrant and a little tipsy – made out on their bed.
The bedroom’s darkness is diluted by a sliver of light from the living room. Zooey lies at the foot of the bed, licking the ice-cream spoon. Franny, sprawled on her back, watches him from her perch next to the wardrobe. The gentle feline rustles are augmented by the wind groaning and wailing outside. As the moans come and go and the windowpane shudders, the sounds of Anouar Brahem now fill the darkness when Hilmi, who had the CD in his backpack, pads back from the living room. The music seeps into our loosened, sated limbs, filling the pauses between our murmurs with desert flutes and whispering drums. ‘Bazi?’ He throws a glance at my eyes as they flutter open. ‘You fell asleep.’
‘No I didn’t, I’m…’ I turn over onto my side and curl up. ‘I’m just closing my eyes.’
He moves close and wraps himself around me. Under the blanket our legs braid together. My toes – how quickly we’ve grown accustomed to each other – spread around his Achilles tendons, gripping above his heels. His voice comes from my nape now: ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing, just the music. It reminds me of something I read once.’ First I try out the translation in my mind, then, with the beautiful, dreamy sounds from the living room as a backdrop, I recite: ‘Music is the language the soul talks to itself in.’
He lifts his head up. ‘What?’ I repeat the line and his lips murmur into my back, translating into Arabic in a hoarse whisper. ‘Al-musika hiye lura a-li ma e-ruakh bithaki maa halha.’ The echo of his voice hovers in the darkness for a moment, engulfed in the music. ‘That really is beautiful,’ he says after a long breath, and his head sinks back into the pillow. ‘Where did you read it?’
‘He’s called Yehoshua Kenaz,’ I say. Then, somewhat proudly, I add, ‘He’s an Israeli author.’
‘He writes in Hebrew?’
‘Yes.’ I quote the original: ‘Musika hi ha’safa sheba hanefesh mesochachat im atzma.’
‘Say it again.’
‘Musika hi ha’safa sheba hanefesh mesochachat im atzma.’
‘See, when you speak Hebrew, it sounds different in some way.’ His voice sounds slightly melancholy, muffled in my hair. ‘Softer,’ he whispers, making me tremble. ‘When you speak it I almost think it sounds nice.’
chapter 13
Although I was exhausted, it took a long time to fall asleep. Hilmi had dropped off long ago, but my mind hummed with the sounds of our time together, unready to let go of them yet. The minutes and hours of last night and this afternoon, the time we’d spent here in the apartment. I moved back and forth over the past twenty-four hours, reran my sister’s voice on the answering machine, and Joy’s and Andrew’s messages. My thoughts wandered to the tasks I had to do this week and the work waiting for me, and back again to the room, to Hilmi’s rhythmic breathing in the dark, to what he’d whispered before he fell asleep: ‘What did I tell you?’ He sounded decisive, satisfied, assertive; his eyes were already closed. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
Only after I got up to pee and drink some water, and – though I knew all the windows were shut and locked – went from room to room drawing curtains, switching off lights, making sure the front door was locked and fastening the chain, then crawling back into bed, only then did I tell myself that everything really was going to be all right. Because yesterday, in cafés and bars and streets all over town, thousands of other young couples had met, men and women whose paths had crossed and who had spent the weekend together, taking comfort in each other, salving their loneliness in this vast city. That’s all, I thought as I sank down and my breathing grew deeper, aligned with his. Just as quickly as it started yesterday, it could be over tomorrow. It could all end with a big hug and a friendly kiss at the door. So sleep, Bazi, everything will be all right.
part two
WINTER
chapter 14
December. The three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Awake at night and asleep by day, almost inseparable. Secluded in the dark apartment in Brooklyn or with the cats in Manhattan, tinted pale blue from the snowfall outside the windows. Quiet hours and long talks, awash in each other’s being, basking in the sweet warm breath of the radiators, in tune with the wind and the claps of thunder. The same few CDs on repeat: Chet Baker, Mazzy Star, Chopin, Ella Fitzgerald. Those frozen December days, the last days of 2002, come back to me years later slightly blurred, shining through the mist, as though preserved in my memory with a slightly unreal distortion right from the start. Or perhaps it’s that over time they have lost some of their sharpness and acquired a dreamy afterglow.
Here we are, replete and drained, on the couch. And there in the kitchen, cooking meatballs in tomato sauce and potatoes for lunch while Ella and Louis swing. Again in the living room, with the rest of the wine, playing backgammon. Then in the small, darkening bedroom. It all looks clouded and radiant at the same time, glimpsed through a milky white translucence. I look back in time and see the two of us rolling around on the rug laughing, clutching our aching ribs. There I am, cheeks flushed, biting down a smile, wearing a purple scarf t
ied around my hips. The sweeping sounds of Rachid Taha boom out from the speakers, mingling with the trilling voice of a Lebanese singer whose name I can’t remember. Hilmi, smug and satisfied, sprawls on the couch with his legs open wide and follows with sparkling eyes as I shimmy and sway and twirl my hands up to the ceiling. Even when I look back at myself dancing, whirling before his admiring eyes, hair flying, scarcely believing my own performance, it’s a scene viewed from the outside, as if through the eyes of a bird looking in from the icy windowsill. Obscured by the billowing bedroom curtain the dancer eventually grows dizzy. The bird has long since flown away.
There stands Hilmi in his work clothes, facing the easel. I am sitting cross-legged on the couch with my laptop, busy writing to my sister. When I look up again from the screen, Hilmi has not moved: he squints with his right eye and holds his left arm straight out with the thumb up. He turns the paintbrush upside down and roams back and forth across the canvas. He leans towards the easel, then to the palette he holds in his right hand, with its little mounds of blues and greens and yellows. His curls sway slightly as he nods his head. I resume my note to Iris.
Sometimes it almost feels as if we can fly. After we wander around the city, through the East Village or the Lower East Side, when we walk up First Avenue or Second Avenue and make our way through the crowds and the weekend stalls around St Mark’s Place, when we flow hand in hand through the streets filling up with partygoers in the evening, groups of tourists and beautiful couples who pass us in clouds of perfume and aftershave, kids swarming the pavements in noisy clusters, when we step lightly among the peddlers of incense and jewellery and movie posters and used books, past the bars and cafés, in a cheerful hum of music and bubbling conversation that bursts out every time a door opens, with fragments of voices and clanging silverware and aromatic spices from the thousands of bustling restaurants, sushi and falafel and Chinese and Indian food, flowers and balloons hawked amid the river of faces and honking taxis, beggars and buskers and jugglers and card sharks, and once in a while, frozen in place, a medieval knight in armour or an Egyptian mummy, human statues, and suddenly an incredible taxidermied hoopoe with its feathers on end, standing awestruck on one leg. We are greeted by one thick-bearded Santa after another, huge bellies and flushed cheeks, chocolates and advertising brochures, charity boxes and ringing bells, and they’re all together all the time, street musicians like a huge travelling band, Dylan giving way to Tchaikovsky, cello to clarinet, blues to country, mandolin to saxophone, and in the thick cold night air mingled with the clean dampness of snowfall and the smoke from kebabs and hamburgers on grills, an orchestra of sounds all around us as we walk, and everything hums, and the entire world seems to be threaded on a single string, pulsing and brimming with life, with voices and lights and colours – I feel then that the two of us might take flight at any moment, lift up above the heads of the people on the pavement and soar high up to the sky.
All the Rivers Page 7