‘Vat happened?’ Chubby addresses Hilmi in a friendly tone, gesturing at his bandage. ‘Vit your hand?’
‘This?’ Hilmi looks at the back of his forearm as though he’d been asked what time it was. ‘I had an accident. Broken glass.’
Chubby gives a silent look of astonishment. ‘Broken glass?’ he says after a while, as though surprised by the information. ‘Really?’
The reason for the pause and the exaggerated response is Hilmi’s accent, with its obvious Arabic inflection.
‘Washing dishes can be a dangerous mission,’ Hilmi adds with a grin.
Chubby narrows his eyes and gives Hilmi an awkward, curious smile. ‘Vere are you from?’ he can’t resist asking. ‘Vat place?’
‘I’m Palestinian.’
‘Palestinian?’
‘Yeah, man. From Ramallah.’
Chubby laughs in disbelief. ‘Ashkara Palestinian! For real!’ He looks over at his friends on the bench. ‘Pshhhh…’
Hilmi seems amused too, his eyes flashing at me. ‘Ashkara Palestinian.’
‘Ve are from Izrael!’ Chubby laughs again, completely astonished. ‘From Herzliya.’ He points to the bench. ‘Ve arrived here only in Sunday.’
‘You’re acting like it’s the first time you ever saw an ay-rab, you retard,’ the sunbather says in Hebrew.
Chubby becomes uncomfortable and adopts a serious expression. He takes half a step back, as though unsure whether to respond to his friend. ‘Don’t use that word,’ he says curtly to the bench, ‘say cousin.’
The Indian chief hisses and huddles secretively with the sunbather.
But they’re not only talking about Hilmi. When the two of them glance at me and quickly look away, I can guess what they see: nothing but eyes, veiled by this mock hijab; they probably think I look like some kind of terrorist. Feeling embarrassed and strangely insulted, I keep staring in the other direction, faking a distant, impenetrable look, ignoring them and pretending I don’t hear them saying the word mujahedin. As though I really am who they see me as.
‘So you’re from Hebron?! Are you joking?’ Chubby is beside himself. ‘Of course I know Hebron! I know Hebron very very good.’
He does not pick up on the irony in Hilmi’s repetition: ‘Are you joking?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Very very?’
The clouds of smoke exiting their mouths are amplified by their steamy breath, and the two billows connect above their heads and dissipate in the cold air.
‘Yes!’ Chubby exclaims. ‘I voz der, just four monts ago, when I did my… in de…’
He stops for a minute and looks down at the platform. Begrudgingly, almost apologetically, he mutters, ‘In de army, you know…’
The sunbather starts teasing his friend: ‘He ain’t heavy, he’s my cousin…’ he sings in a deliberately American accent.
Chubby yells, ‘Shut up already, Yaniv! I’m serious!’
‘Oh, give me a break.’
‘For fuck’s sake, let me talk to the guy!’
Hilmi peers over Chubby’s shoulder and gives me a questioning, bemused look, wondering what they’re saying. They’re just babbling, I signal with my eyes, dismissively furrowing my invisible eyebrows. I almost put my hand out to ask him to come back and sit next to me, but the Indian chief suddenly whistles.
‘There he is!’ He whistles again and waves at the entrance. ‘Over here, Abramov!’
It’s amazing how quickly I recognize him, even from so far away. My face is covered, thank God, but my eyes – my heart starts racing, pounding against Hilmi’s backpack on my lap – what if he recognizes me just by my eyes? I hold my breath and slouch down on the bench like the old lady, hugging the backpack and burying my head in it, pretending to be asleep.
‘Everything settled, dude?’ I hear Chubby say in between my breaths. ‘Did you have mobile reception?’
I burrow further down into my coat collar.
‘Mr Abramov!’
Beneath all the layers of clothing, I tremble like an animal about to be ravaged, saved at the last minute by playing dead.
‘Meh. Not great.’
It’s him. I recognize the cadence of his voice.
‘Also, I got lost.’
I know that nasal, congested tone, the soft whistle of the s.
‘Wound up on the other side.’
‘Dude, that goes to Queens.’
‘I got mixed up with all the entrances.’
It’s Boaz. Boaz Abramov, Simona and Shlomo’s son. His brother Amnon went to school with Iris, they were our neighbours in the apartment building on Gordon Street. We lived on the third floor, they were on the first, and we used to play jacks and conkers with him and Amnon and the other neighbourhood kids. We’d gather wood for Lag Ba’Omer bonfires, and have water fights. I haven’t seen him for over a decade, since we moved to Tel Aviv. Haven’t seen Amnon either, they were both still in the army when I finished my service. He’s gained a little weight but his face is almost unchanged: he has his father’s dark, well-spaced eyes, the equine jaw, the furrowed chin. I recognized him with one quick glance before he even reached our end of the platform. The last I heard of him was two or three years ago when my mother told me he was getting married, his girlfriend was pregnant. At Shabbat dinner a while later, she reported that the wedding ceremony was beautiful and that Simona and her sisters, whose father had died suddenly this year, didn’t stop crying. My mother had remained friendly with Simona even after we moved to Tel Aviv.
‘I swear, Abramov, you are such a gasbag,’ said the sunbather, Yaniv. ‘What the fuck was up with that dumbass movie?’
‘I know,’ I hear Boaz’s nasal voice getting closer to the bench, ‘I could tell you were a little lost, Yaniv.’
‘Lost?! Lior snored through the whole thing! We were totally bummed out.’
‘Dude, I told you – I was not sleeping.’
I shrink further back and sit motionless, feigning sleep. The voice keeps trembling inside me. It’s pathetic and embarrassing to hide like this, but I have to keep my eyes shut tight. If Boaz sees me here and makes a connection between me and Hilmi, if he realizes who Hilmi is and where he’s from and what he is to me, it’ll take one quick phone call for the information to reach my parents. I feel like a little girl burying her head under the covers and believing she’s invisible, but I have no choice. I can’t take the risk.
‘Looks like everyone here’s fallen asleep, too,’ says Boaz. My heart explodes when I realize he’s looking at me and at the sleeping lady. ‘I’m pretty sure that old lady’s dead, isn’t she?’
Lior and Yaniv whisper something to him and snort. And suddenly I feel a wave of suffocation. The scarf is scratchy and too tight on my face and ears, and it’s hard for me to breathe.
‘Tree years, really?’ Chubby says to Hilmi on the other side. ‘You live here already tree years?’
‘Closer to four, actually,’ I hear Hilmi say, and I realize he’s coming closer to me. My whole body is tense, mummified in my coat. How did I get into this mess? What can I say to make him understand quickly and leave me alone? Maybe I should pretend to wake up even before he gets to me and quickly turn my back on them? Or get up now and go to him, pull him to the other side of the station? And then I finally hear the rattle of the train in the distance, its approach sending a shudder through the bench.
We don’t stop until we get to the middle of the third carriage. Only after pushing through door after door, lurching past the rows of seats, shifting and plodding on against the train’s direction, shoving our way between bodies and bags and poles, from the first carriage to the second to the third – only there, when enough distance has opened up between us and Boaz and his friends, do I stop and take off my hat and feel free to expose my face.
Back at the station, I’d mumbled to Hilmi that I was dying to pee. I could feel the train shaking the platform, and as he came closer to the bench I opened my eyes and blinked as if I were waking up, then turned and covered my face with my hands, ostensibly against the noi
se and the cold blast of air. That’s how I walked to the edge of the platform, in front of Hilmi, and when the doors opened I stepped in and quickly pushed my way further and further into the depths of the crowded carriage as though I were hurrying to the toilet. Every so often I looked back to make sure Boaz and his friends weren’t chasing us, almost believing they might suddenly come into sight over Hilmi’s backpack which still swung around on my back.
In the white neon glare on the series of steamy windows, I met the reflection of my frightened, black eyes. My face peered back at me with a foreign, fearful look from among the polished reflections of the other passengers, and even through the eyes of the people I passed. They scanned me apprehensively, or just blinked uncomfortably and looked through me. As I filtered past them with Hilmi behind me, I realized I would also recoil if I came across myself now. If a nervous-looking woman with her face covered came towards me as she pushed her way through a train carriage, I might tense up and look away like they did. If I suddenly encountered this pair of dark, strange, troubled eyes, maybe I wouldn’t recognize myself in them at first or second glance.
‘That’s it, I don’t need to go,’ I said breathlessly. I positioned myself between a cluster of passengers standing in the aisle and held onto a pole. ‘I’m OK.’ I tugged and extricated myself from the scarf, hat and gloves, and rubbed my cheeks, which burned and stung from the wool and from the heat generated by my fretful rush, as though my face were a stubborn mask I was trying to peel away.
Hilmi wasn’t surprised when we stopped. He didn’t think it odd that my urgency to pee had suddenly vanished. Maybe he knew that this race to the bathroom was not real, that my bladder – which now, when we stopped, actually did feel full – was only an excuse to get away from the Israelis.
He also wasn’t surprised when I told him, with some relief, still hesitant to believe that it wasn’t all a bad dream I’d had on that bench, that I definitely knew one of those guys. That I’d known Boaz for years, we’d grown up together, and I couldn’t believe I’d run into him in this remote Brooklyn station, of all places. I told Hilmi that Boaz’s parents and mine were good friends, and I described how my heart had raced, and what incredible luck it was that today, of all days, my face was covered: almost a miracle. And how I was going crazy and didn’t know what to do, I was afraid Boaz would recognize me just by my eyes, and I’d suddenly had this crazy instinct, inspired by the old woman dozing on the bench, to knock myself into a coma.
‘Yeah, I figured,’ he said finally, his eyes evading mine. Looking indifferent, he gave a weary, bored tilt of the head, looked away and stared at the window with droopy eyes. ‘I thought it was something like that.’
How is it that, with Hilmi, I always end up the culpable one? How do I end up selfish, hurtful, insensitive, in the wrong? This time, when I realize what I’ve done, my guilt is doubled and tripled. Not only did I ignore him in front of Boaz and the other guys, but I was so focused on my own anxiety and need to hide, on the danger and the escape, that I didn’t for a second consider how he was interpreting things, or what he was thinking and feeling.
I heard myself guiltily defending my behaviour: ‘And the worst thing about it was that I was afraid I was hurting your feelings, that you were insulted.’ As I uttered the cowardly, self-righteous lie I felt my ears burn and my face throb.
He looked at the window again, showing me his profile. ‘Why would I be insulted?’ he started to say. ‘You mean because—’
‘I’m sorry, Hilmi,’ I said remorsefully, and insisted that I hadn’t had a choice. I dropped my eyes to the row of shoes and the filthy floor.
‘Why would I be insulted?’ he asked again, facing the back of the man in a suit who stood next to us. ‘Because you’re embarrassed by me?’
His voice was not hateful or condemning. He wasn’t attacking me, he didn’t sound disappointed. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say he hadn’t expected any better of me. He was resigned to the fact that more honourable, loyal conduct was beyond my capacity.
‘Not embarrassed, but…’ I stretched and crushed the scarf in my hands. ‘Well, you know.’
Through the darkness and the freezing steam on the windows, it seemed the train was flying through the sky, hurtling over a bridge between clouds. The occasional light sparked through the fog, advertising posters and industrial buildings appeared and disappeared.
‘So what were you talking about all that time?’ I tried in vain to change the topic and force some cheer into my voice. ‘You and that fatty?’
He grimaced as though he had trouble hearing me over the noise, and adopted a deliberately strained, uncomprehending expression, eventually saying, ‘Nothing. Just stuff…’ He said something else, but his voice was swallowed up as the wheels screeched and rattled against the tracks. The carriage groaned and shuddered for a long time, its walls trembling, rocking this way and that as if we were riding on waves.
‘What did you say?’ I shouted when the commotion died down and the train regained its rhythmic clatter. ‘I couldn’t hear.’
‘Nothing, he was just asking questions.’
When he looked at me again I could see that his pride was slightly appeased, and I persisted with new hopefulness. ‘So he didn’t ask you about me?’ I felt a grin of relief and I laughed as I continued: ‘He didn’t try and figure out what I was to you?’
‘What did you expect me to tell him?’
The need to please him, the need to be forgiven, to bring a smile to his still-weary face, made me go overboard and exclaim in an even louder voice: ‘He didn’t think I was your wife? The ones on the bench thought I was your wife—’
‘OK, Bazi, then you tell me,’ he interrupted. ‘What am I to you? For real now.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said after a moment. My voice trembled with shame. ‘You’re my lover, what…’
‘Really? Your lover?’ he said contemptuously, and cocked his head. ‘I’m your secret Arab lover?’
The passengers in the row of seats on my left were listening the whole time, forced to eavesdrop on our conversation. I saw them look away quickly. The man in the suit glanced at me before turning his pockmarked face away from us in feigned disinterest. But I couldn’t not answer, and I couldn’t whisper because of the noise.
‘Yes, Arab and secret,’ I hissed, avoiding his eyes. ‘What can I do.’
‘Arab, and secret…’ He paused, inviting me to complete the sentence. ‘And…?’ Holding up an incriminating finger, which he wagged at me from his bandaged hand, he added emphatically: ‘And temporary.’
It had been a couple of weeks, but I instantly knew what he meant. We’d spent the evening in Chelsea, wandering around galleries, walking among the crowds, sipping a glass of red here and a glass of white there, and we still held plastic cups as we walked down Tenth Avenue to the station.
Perhaps I was particularly excitable and happy that evening. Love-struck. I felt a dreamy sensation that grew purer as I tapped along on my high heel boots, as if everything around me, the moon and the lit-up streets and the feathery snow above our heads, was all staged, as the set of a movie in which we were the stars. We sat down to share a cigarette, looking out at the street as we huddled in our coats, our bodies interwoven, drawing warmth from one another.
‘Maybe this is what’s so beautiful about it, you know?’ I buried my face in his chest with only the crack of my eyes peering out from the side of his neck, and continued a thought that had begun in my heart: ‘This temporariness.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our transience here. Without a future.’ I blinked at the other side of the street and pulled him closer. ‘Without a promise for the future. It makes us appreciate what we have at this moment.’ I felt him shiver when I slipped my hand into his collar and ran my fingers through his chest hair. ‘Immediate and temporary, just like life. Like everything here. Ephemeral.’ I closed my eyes and kissed the bottom of his neck. I kissed the warm patch of exposed, fragrant skin a
nd buried my face in it. ‘It makes me love you, Hilmik, very much.’
Now, as the train carried us closer to home, the screen of mist evaporated and through the steamed windows we could see the lanes on the road and the lines of cars rushing along. Far beyond the concrete railing and the massive iron beams of the bridge, the East River merged with the sky, both spread out in one dark sheet. The conductor announced the next stop, Delancy-Essex, and when the train slid underground and charged into the tunnel, we could see graffiti on the wall, and the lit-up platforms, and all around us the buzz of people preparing to get off.
Even before the train braked, I saw that two spots had been vacated in the row of seats to my left. I hurried over before anyone could grab them, against the current of passengers moving towards the door. The minute the doors opened I sat down, threw Hilmi’s backpack next to me and looked up for him. Passengers got off and others got on, and for a moment, while he stood in the same place, still holding the pole with his good hand, my eyes met his.
‘Is this seat taken?’ A large woman was standing over me pointing at the backpack. ‘May I?’
‘I’m sorry, um…’ I looked back at Hilmi. ‘Someone’s sitting here.’
Meanwhile the carriage had filled up and I could no longer see his eyes but only parts of his body through the crowd, a bit of his hair, his hand on the pole, one of his shoes among all the pairs of feet.
‘Please move away from the doors,’ the conductor announced. ‘Please move…’
The woman was still standing over me expectantly, and when I pulled the backpack away she sat down heavily. She bent over and picked up Hilmi’s scarf. ‘Is this yours?’
chapter 20
Terrible cold. Unreal cold. Cold you cannot believe is possible. Cold that freezes your head and your ears, hurts your teeth, cuts to your bones. Cold so venomous and piercing that even your pupils seem to freeze. Cold that shocks your entire being and makes it lose hope.
On the news they say it’s one of the coldest, longest winters in New York history, and one of the snowiest ever. The first snow came overnight shortly before Thanksgiving, followed by more and more, a quantity and force that have not been seen here for twenty-two years, landing on the city and piling up on the streets. From the end of November to late April, New York is entirely white-and-grey, sealed in frost. From day to day the layer of ice regenerates under our feet, crunching and melting, sullied with mud, growing so thick that our boots sink in ankle deep. After Christmas we get almost seven inches, and by January it’s more than knee high. In the third week of February a harsh blizzard pummels the city over Presidents’ Day, and precipitation hits a new high: the mountains of ice in Central Park tower over thirty inches, almost to my waist.
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