All the Rivers

by Dorit Rabinyan

  Then he opened his eyes wide, raised his eyebrows into the three horizontal creases on his forehead, and asked whether, deep down inside, I didn’t acknowledge that a binational country was what would happen in the end, when we were seventy or eighty, or when we were dead. ‘Then why not now, in our lifetime? Why wait for it to happen violently, through catastrophe?’

  ‘So where is it? Show me exactly where it is.’ I froze the scene on Marwan’s home movie yesterday and leaped up from the couch. ‘The Green Line – where does it run? Here?’ I stood next to the TV and ran my finger along the screen, over the valley, between the hills. ‘Here?’ I looked up close at the landscape of villages and settlements, as if I were genuinely expecting to find an actual green border running through the dusky evening shadows and twinkling lights, possibly marked by a dotted line like it is on the maps.

  ‘It’s here,’ I heard him say behind me.

  When I looked back, I saw him tapping his finger on his head. ‘Just about here.’

  Apart from Omar, Widad and Marwan, Hilmi has another brother and two sisters who do not appear in the family movie. Sana stayed with her husband and children in Hebron; Lamis, a hospital pharmacist, lives with her family in Amman; and Wasim, a graduate student in political science and law, lives in Berlin. In early March, three weeks after the movie arrived, Wasim travels to Washington, DC, as part of a student delegation, and on his way back he stops in New York for eight days.

  The physical resemblance between Hilmi and his siblings, which fascinates me in the video, is doubly striking when I meet Wasim. He’s thirty-three, five years older than Hilmi, and resembles him not only in his facial features, height and build, but also in his voice and cadence.

  ‘No, sorry, it’s not Hilmi,’ he interrupts me when I call one afternoon to get the restaurant address, after I begin grumbling that I have nothing to wear. I stand peering into my wardrobe in a bra and stockings, raking through the hangers. Wasim continues in that deceptively familiar voice: ‘He’s in the shower. Who is this, please?’

  ‘Oh,’ I murmur after a moment, laughing to cover up my embarrassment. ‘It’s Liat, I thought you were—’

  ‘Oh yes, Liat,’ he says knowledgeably. He pronounces my name with deliberate, open curiosity. ‘This is his brother, Wasim.’

  Two hours later, outside Andalus Cuisine in Tribeca, we shake hands. Wearing a black turtleneck sweater, sports jacket, fashionable belt and shoes, Wasim looks like a more sophisticated, elegant version of his brother, who stands between us with a proud grin, his hair dishevelled, in his usual jeans and All-Stars. His right arm is around Wasim’s shoulders, and his left hugs my waist. Wasim’s curls are short and shiny, slicked back with gel. He wears thin wire-framed glasses, and when his close-shaved skin flutters over my cheeks in a pair of air kisses, there is a whiff of aftershave.

  ‘You’re all so alike,’ I comment, looking from one brother to the other with wide eyes. ‘It’s amazing.’ I run the movie in my mind again, the pictures of family members. ‘Did you tell your brother you can both come over to my place afterwards, to see the video?’ I ask Hilmi.

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Hilmi’s smile opens up as he remembers. He tightens his arm around me with a secretive squeeze of gratitude and addresses his brother: ‘The thing Marwan sent me, remember?’

  Wasim arches his brows over his glasses. ‘We can see it at your place?’

  ‘You can even come this evening,’ I reply, and earn another squeeze from Hilmi’s hand in my own. ‘If you’re not too tired.’

  When he sits down opposite me inside, I note a few dissimilarities: the arches of his eyebrows are wider, and there’s something different in the slope of his nose and the shape of his jawline. He has their mother’s brown almond eyes and thick eyelashes, but his expression is different from Hilmi’s – alert and seasoned, slightly neurotic. And there is a permanent hint of criticism, a line of dissatisfaction in the corners of his mouth, a disquietude that does not leave his face even when he smiles.

  He clears his throat. ‘Liat…’ He examines me over his glasses and coughs again. ‘That’s Hebrew, right?’

  ‘Yes, um…’ My discomfort with the clumsy translation is apparent. ‘It means something like “you are mine”.’

  He leans in closer to hear better. ‘You are mine? You belong to me?’

  ‘It sounds better in Hebrew.’

  He touches the tiny diamond-like stud in his earlobe. ‘Interesting.’

  Hilmi looks surprised. ‘Really? You are mine?’

  ‘I already told you that,’ I scold, and lean back in my chair with feigned insult. ‘You never remember—’

  But he interrupts me with an embrace: ‘What were you saying? I can’t remember…’

  ‘You never remember anything.’

  ‘You are mine.’ His voice chirps next to my ear and he kisses the side of my neck. ‘Mine, mine…’

  Wasim’s look – I notice it for a moment over Hilmi’s shoulder – tracks one of the waiters wandering among the tables. I pull away from Hilmi and run my hand over the spot he kissed. ‘And what does your name mean? What is—’

  But Wasim is distracted by Mahmoud, who has come back from the bathroom and sits down next to him. Mahmoud is a friend from the student delegation. He’s getting his doctorate in law at Birzeit University, a shy, plump man in his early thirties with a French goatee. After a few minutes, Zinab and Christian arrive and dispense warm hugs and kisses and apologies for being late.

  Zinab is an old friend of Hilmi and Wasim’s older sister, Widad. They’ve known each other since the two families were neighbours in Hebron. She is a beautiful thirtysomething, the daughter of a Palestinian father and a British mother, and she teaches at a private school on Staten Island. Christian, her British husband, is a paediatrician. When Hilmi came to New York a few years ago, Zinab and Christian were the only people he knew. He told me about them soon after we met, when he said he was going to visit friends on Staten Island. Zinab’s father had been a senior member of the PLO leadership in the eighties and was assassinated by Israeli commandos in Lebanon when she was thirteen. And so – he apologized – even though he would really like me to join him, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But a few weeks ago, when he came back from lunch at Zinab’s, he brought a Tupperware box with a portion of roast chicken, orzo and sweet-potato fritters. He said he’d told Zinab about me, and that she’d sent the food for me.

  The initial tension is broken by the joyful atmosphere and the excellent food. It’s an inexpensive Moroccan restaurant, designed like a scene from The Arabian Nights. The restaurant is closed to the public tonight, but the owner is a friend of Zinab and Christian’s, which is the only reason we could get a table, she explains. The rest of the tables are filled by forty-odd French tourists, middle-aged men and women, veteran immigrants from North Africa on a group tour of New York. There is a commotion of Arabic and French and clanging cutlery, and the red and blue walls, adorned with lampshades, iron grilles, copper coffee finjans and thick-bodied pitchers, reverberate with the hubbub.

  It seems, though, that neither the owner nor the mainly Muslim clientele are observing the prohibition against alcohol. The waiters, all wearing colourful kaftans, carry out endless pitchers of sangria and bottles of wine. Then, in a vibrant, aromatic parade of cinnamon, ginger, chilli and saffron, they approach with the conical clay tagines of lamb and fish and steaming platters of couscous and pastilla, which they set down before us to the sound of cheers and hungry murmurs.

  When Hilmi first introduced me to Zinab, she kept sliding into Arabic and did not disguise her annoyance at having to speak English because of me. (‘But then why would you know Arabic?’ she observed with a sarcastic arch of the eyebrow, as if to say: After all, you Israelis are more likely to be fluent in Flemish or Ancient Greek, aren’t you?) She seemed to be avoiding me, her gaze moving between the other diners, uncomfortable with my presence. But my apprehension vanishes when the food arrives.

  Zinab peers ov
er Hilmi’s shoulder at my plate with a worried look. ‘Pass me that plate, please, it looks too empty,’ she instructs him. She piles on more couscous and lamb, and pittas like thin crepe paper leaves, which we use to soak up the sauce. ‘Eat, eat,’ she urges me, supervising, ‘don’t be shy.’ With a hint of a smile, and that same ambiguous raise of the eyebrow, she says, ‘You’re one of us now.’

  Wasim, under the influence of the wine and food, also seems more relaxed and satisfied. Earlier, when we walked past the crowded tables, I saw him make a face at the French people’s loud chatter. He arched his head away and covered his ear with one hand as though he couldn’t tolerate the noise, and when we were seated, he looked around sourly and said that in Berlin he would never set foot in a place like this. He rolled his eyes at the supposedly authentic charm, clearly meant to satisfy the Western appetite for exoticism. He also seemed bothered by Hilmi’s displays of love for me. He looked away when his brother touched me, although Hilmi didn’t notice or care, even when I hinted and tried to wriggle away from him. I thought perhaps Wasim was jealous or feeling competitive, bothered by our physical intimacy.

  But his apparent possessiveness of Hilmi – a feeling I could easily imagine my sister having in the same situation – and the dent in my self-confidence caused by his distant look and tone of voice, which remained cool even when he took an interest in me and asked about my name, evaporate during the meal.

  By the time the waiters have cleared our dishes, raked the coals in our hookahs, reappeared with huge silver kettles and gold-rimmed glass teacups which they ceremoniously fill with fresh mint tea poured from up high with a noisy drizzle, and almonds and dates and marzipan, Wasim and Zinab are both talking freely and laughing loudly, their faces flushed. They reminisce with Hilmi about their Hebron days, while Mahmoud and I – Christian was summoned by his beeper to the hospital even before dessert arrived – serve as their audience.

  I don’t remember what it was that suddenly caused tensions to flare. When did the conversation flow away from its relaxed, sociable channel and wash us over with dirty water? How did it happen that we started talking politics, and Wasim and I could not stop arguing?

  ‘You Israelis,’ he says abruptly, looking straight at me. ‘Do you know what your problem is?’

  Until now, he’d avoided looking at me over the course of the evening, his eyes wandering from Zinab to Hilmi, from Hilmi to Mahmoud. But now, as if to underscore his observation, he narrows his eyes into slits and focuses on me.

  ‘You live in denial,’ he finally says, smiling in delight at the tension he has aroused at the table. ‘That’s your problem.’ The toothpick in the corner of his mouth shifts back and forth when he speaks. ‘You refuse to accept the fact that in the not-so-distant future you will be a minority in the land.’ He rolls the toothpick back and forth with his tongue, and every so often he chews and sucks on it. ‘You work so hard to push Palestinian history out of your consciousness that you can’t see ahead any more. You’re in denial of what is bound to happen in the next thirty or forty years.’

  He is a skilful orator, Wasim. Self-confident, charismatic. Despite his deep guttural accent, he speaks an impressively highbrow, unapologetic English. He sounds like someone accustomed to lecture halls, and clearly enjoys hearing the effect of his voice. But as a conversant, as a debater, he turns out to be controlling, arrogant, spiteful, and determined to win at any cost.

  The first time I interrupt to disagree with him, he looks down at the table and waits for me to finish. Then, as though teaching me a lesson in restraint, he pauses for a moment before repeating his entire sentence, with preachy paternalism, and this time he does not let me get a word in edgeways. He raises his voice, waves his hand in the air, and insists on finishing. There is an impervious look in his eyes. At times he makes a dramatic gesture of shock, speechless at my bad manners, and looks around at the restaurant as if to find witnesses to my affront.

  He pulls the toothpick out of his mouth and gives a quick, arrogant glance at its gnawed edge. ‘Because even within the ’67 border, as you call it, even there it’s going to be a binational state.’ A satisfied grin spreads over his face. ‘It’ll be a binational state whatever happens, with or without an agreement.’

  I hold my breath and half-listen, my rejoinder already on the tip of my tongue, threatening to burst out any minute.

  ‘And as I mentioned before, if we look at simple logic, at demographics alone, it seems that as early as 2020, less than twenty years from now, both populations are expected to be equal in size.’

  I monitor the movements of his lips, the twirls of the toothpick, waiting for a summarizing note, a comma or period I can slip through.

  ‘And not only inside the country. Joint democratic sovereignty is clearly the inevitable future of the whole region.’ The chewed toothpick is in his hand and his tongue pokes around for a crumb. ‘From the Mediterranean to the Jordan river.’

  I spot my opening: ‘But how can that be?! How can you even aspire to a peaceful state and imagine that kind of shared democracy, when in reality—’ I take a shallow breath, ‘in reality the extreme nationalist forces are only getting stronger all the time?’ I look wide-eyed at Zinab, then turn to Mahmoud. ‘How can you envisage that, when religious fanaticism is taking over your people, under the pressure of the occupation?’ My voice gets thin and high-pitched, sounding strained, pleading. ‘And when in Israel, from one intifada to the next, it’s the right wing that’s gaining power?’

  Zinab gives me a worried look. Mahmoud leans his cheek on his hand so that it crushes half his face, and eyes me curiously. Hilmi sits to my left with his head bowed, focused on his wine glass.

  I try to restrain the tremor in my voice. ‘And this kind of talk, about refugees returning, and a one-state vision…’ I cling to Zinab’s kind eyes. ‘It only pushes Israelis further to the right. It only proves to the moderates in Israel, most of whom already agree that the land has to be divided, that the conservatives’ fears are justified. That the real goal of those who support a Palestinian state is in fact the destruction of the state of Israel.’ My voice rises again in a panic. ‘And that… That is simply… You have to understand, that is…’ Calm down, I remind myself, remember to breathe. I take a sip of wine. ‘That is what brings out our deepest fears, the most terrible trauma.’

  It happened when I argued with Hilmi too. This horrible melodrama would take over and I’d suddenly be swept into a fateful sense of national responsibility, as though nothing less than the future of Israel was resting on my shoulders – the destiny of the Jewish people ever after depended on what I said. I had only to produce a decisive, winning argument in order to somehow change the mind of this one, stubborn Palestinian.

  ‘Because even with the most moderate Israelis, the most sober ones,’ I continue, tremulously, ‘who are willing to make any compromise and any concession for peace, to withdraw from everywhere – that kind of talk, from our point of view, is…’

  As I speak, I pick up on Wasim making a face at Mahmoud, rolling his eyes in a show of secretive impatience. When he sees that I noticed, he makes a fake cough and puts his hand to his mouth to cover the mocking smile. He is filled with a new burst of energy when he turns back to reproach me in a seemingly friendly tone: ‘Liat, Liat, you people have to wake up, open your eyes. You keep reciting that stupid, worn slogan about two states, like a mantra, when in reality it’s been impossible for years.’ He gives a bitter, self-satisfied laugh. ‘It’ll never happen.’

  Zinab, clearly annoyed, hisses something sharply at him in Arabic. I look up from my wine glass and detect the word ihtilal1 repeated twice in her diatribe. Perhaps the language barrier hanging between us is what makes me perceive their expressions as harsh and aggressive now. The switch to Arabic seems to set them free and expose something authentic and severe, which can only be expressed privately between them. I tense up again, alert to every mention of the words Israel or Yahood, trying to understand what they’re s
aying. When Wasim says ‘el-gaysh tzahiyuni’2 and Mahmoud jerks his eyes at me, I glance at Hilmi and touch the back of his hand, hoping he will help me understand. But he is staring at Wasim, trans-fixed by his words – he is such a child in his brother’s presence, a feeble youngster, an admiring shadow – and he does not turn to look at me even for a second.

  At first Hilmi was on my side. Even when it was clear to everyone that his opinions were similar to his brother’s, I felt his support and his hand reaching under the table to calm me. He was distressed when things got heated and Wasim started his belligerent speeches. He tried to quell my anger and mediate, and recruited Zinab’s help to change the topic and the atmosphere. But at some point he sank back in his chair and gave up. He even became complacent. He barely took part in the argument himself, only listened with his head bowed, nodding every so often. His hand no longer sought out my thigh under the table.

  When I look at him expecting him to look back, when I touch his hand hopefully, he finally responds with a heavy, distracted blink, and sighs out of commiseration with what his brother was saying in Arabic.

  Wasim switches back to English, in a louder voice, as if he’s just been waiting for a signal: ‘No, Zinab, no! The occupation will never be over.’ He glances at me provocatively to make sure I’m listening. He picks up a new toothpick and holds it by the tip like a pinhead. ‘Bas, the occupation is irreversible now. As irreversible as the Jewish settlements spreading through Gaza and the whole West Bank. As irreversible as the roads and the lands and the water sources which the Israeli colonialists systematically rob from the Palestinian people. As irreversible—’

  ‘Irreversible?!’ I exclaim furiously, and they all look at me. ‘Do you think—’