Back to a reality where one’s eye and ear decipher every single trace, every code and gesture, immediately picking up each hint and tone. It is as though Israeliness itself is written from right to left, like Hebrew, and I can easily read all its nuances, both the explicit and the implicit, without any translation. Back to the smell of sea and dust in the open summer air, to the birds and butterflies and even to the flies and mosquitoes and bugs, inebriated from the heat just like the people are. Back to the sweat and the sensual lightness of a thin sundress fluttering on my skin, my toes unencumbered in flip-flops that flap cheerfully on the pavement.
Perhaps sometimes you, Hilmik, at home, on the streets you returned to, in your city, can also feel it sneak up: a pale soul that shadows you and comes into sight once in a while. As though another passenger’s almost identical suitcase snuck in among your luggage, and there is a certain distance between you and your surroundings. For a while you are still something of a stranger here, almost as detached as you were there. And there are moments when you look at the sights and the streets and the people and you see them through a tourist’s eyes. You perceive all the simple, ordinary things, all the domestic and the familiar and the known, with a sharp and somehow mysterious clarity.
Perhaps you, too, feel as though part of your being has not yet landed here and is still making its way across the skies. Especially at night, in the small hours, when the whole house is asleep and the time zone you brought back from the other side of the world, where the clocks are seven hours behind, keeps you up until dawn, awake and overcome, staring into the dark silence. As though not only your sleep is troubled but your identity, too, still dallying, hovering between the longitude and latitude lines and the time differences.
Perhaps you, too, in your parallel universe, lie awake tonight in a narrow single bed in your childhood room at your mother’s home. You lie there as I do, on your back, staring at the ceiling and thinking about us. You lie there awake at 3.30 and find me here, also awake, whispering in the dark. You see the white of my eyes glisten and you can feel the spot in your chest where I seared it with love, and it blazes all the way to the bottom of your stomach and enflames you again.
Perhaps you, too, stood in the middle of a town square and the angle of the sun suddenly played tricks on you, so that for one blinding moment, while noisy cars and buses drove by, you imagined you could see me seeing you on the other side of the street – curly hair, long shadow, dark sunglasses. I stood frozen in place, Hilmi, and my heart fluttered and shouted: Hilmi! And it pounded and shook in my chest long afterwards, turning that jolting moment over and over – Hilmi! He’s here, he’s in Tel Aviv! – and when the bus passed you disappeared from sight and there was someone else there, someone older, someone who was not you.
Even when I walked up from Masaryk Square through the playground, even when I continued down King George Street, the taste of that illusion stayed with me. I still saw you there walking beside me on the street, among the people, following me into the post office, then the pharmacy. When I stopped for the security guard to check my bag on the way into Dizengoff Centre, you cut ahead and snuck in, and we window-shopped together. You were with me when I walked out to the corner of Ben Zion Boulevard and on towards Allenby Street, and when we got closer to Jabotinsky House I looked up and showed you the large sycamore treetops. On the corner of Borochov Street, next to the building I once lived in, I pointed to the second-floor balcony, and the shoe shop that used to be a second-hand book and record store where I liked to spend time. And even though it took longer, I walked further up King George Street so I could show you the stone lion at the end of Almonit Lane, and the Italian restaurant where I waited tables as an undergraduate, which I discovered had shut down. And even though it was getting late, I crossed the street and walked back to Meir Park, past the dog park and the lily pond, and just then, as I walked out to Tchernikowsky Street and the illusion began to melt away, the phone rang.
The surprise of suddenly hearing his voice, rich and full of laughter, on the other end of the line: ‘Bazi?’ The waves of air that choked me up: ‘Hil… Hilmi!’ To talk to him again. In Israel. To stand in the middle of town and talk to him. Not from Brooklyn, but from here, while he is in Ramallah. To hear the music of his voice on the Israeli street with Hebrew in the background, to hear the Arabic accent in his hoarse English, so heavy and reverberating here. To look around and wonder what the two young men walking past me now would think, what that woman would say, if they knew. To turn my back on them and sit down on a stone step at the corner of Maccabi Street, just outside a stairwell, and to hear that he arrived four days ago, ‘Or maybe five? I can’t remember.’ To hear about his flight from New York to Zurich, and the delay in his connection to Amman, the week with his sister in Jordan, where he last e-mailed me about how he spent his days sleeping and his nights staring at the ceiling. And about the journey to the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge border crossing, the long lines and the hours of waiting, the series of checkpoints and roadblocks he had to get through on foot with his suitcase and art portfolio. And the joy of returning home, seeing his mother again, embracing her, hugging his sisters and brothers, his nieces and nephews, his close friends and old pals who all came to visit, surrounding him day and night, ‘Like I’ve infected everyone with my jet lag.’
Two days later he called again. It was almost midnight. The ring came from my bag just as I was leaving the apartment of a friend who lives near Habima Theatre. I crossed the street and sat down in Yaakov Garden and we talked as if he were there with me on the bench, the way we used to sit and chat in Washington Square Park. He called the next night, too, at around twelve, and this time I was at home waiting. We talked while I brushed my teeth, and while I slid into one of his large T-shirts, which I imagined I could still smell him on even after it had been washed. We kept talking like we used to in Brooklyn, where I would eventually go to sleep and he’d keep painting in the studio, with jazz playing softly.
The next day we didn’t talk. I was at a friend’s place for a birthday party. I kept my phone near me the whole evening and checked it every so often, but Hilmi didn’t call. The next night, after waiting until one, I plucked up the courage and dialled the number, with my heart pounding, prepared to hang up if his brother or mother answered. When I used to phone him in New York, I had to dial 1 and then the area code, 718, but now it was so simple, just 02, the Jerusalem area code, and his number, and a second later I heard his breathless ‘Hello?’ He had just come home and was about to call. ‘Hi, Bazi. Kifek inti?’
That night he told me how much Ramallah had changed since he’d left in ’95. He talked about the traces of the intifada visible everywhere, the destruction, the armed men, the posters of ‘martyrs’, the veiled faces, the packed mosques, the unemployed and the destitute, the air of desperation and fatigue: ‘That might be the only thing that hasn’t changed here.’
And about the wall. He talked about the wall that Israel had started building in the West Bank, which we had heard about in the winter, he with concern and me with disbelief. Now he saw it with his own eyes and he described it to me, appalled: a menacing grey concrete wall that snaked along the hills like an ugly scar, bisecting villages and orchards.
‘But here… they call it a fence,’ I stammered.
His snort of contempt came immediately, close to the mouthpiece. ‘Fence?!’
‘They say it’s a fence that’ll—’
‘I’m telling you, it’s monstrous.’
‘—that they’ll be able to take down afterwards,’ I went on, ‘not really a wall.’
‘They can call it whatever they want, but it’s a monster.’
I did not tell him what I had thought when I’d watched the news a few days earlier with my father. What I’d thought when they showed bulldozers and trucks. I did not tell him that I thought: There it is, the wall that has always stood between us, the fence I always imagined, like the hedgerows of prickly pears they used to plant to m
ark borders between villages, to indicate where one territory ends and the next begins; now it really is being built. And another notion went through my mind when they showed the concrete sections suspended from cranes, landing with clouds of dust, and the landscape of fields and villages disappearing behind them: I thought that they could protect me from him. From him missing me, from me missing him. From the possibility that he really might turn up here one day, as he’d joked in one of our phone calls, to surprise me in Tel Aviv.
A week later, it’s 1.30 a.m when Hilmi calls. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’ I shut my book and curl back up on my pillow. ‘Reading.’
‘Listen to this.’
His voice is alert and excited, as if it were 1.30 in the afternoon. He spent the day in Jifneh. It’s a village on the way to Birzeit, just north of Ramallah, and it’s beautiful. He saw a house there, an old stone house with a huge mulberry tree in the yard, and it’s for rent.
‘What for?’ I ask, uncomprehending. ‘Why would you rent a house for only two and a half months?’
His voice droops in disappointment. ‘What do you mean, what for?’ I can tell by his sigh that it’s not the first time he’s been asked. ‘I need a place. I need a place to work while I’m here.’
‘But…’
‘I’m spending the whole summer here.’
‘But your mother, I thought you’d be—’
‘Yes, but it’s nearby.’ In the background I hear a lighter, and a drag. ‘You don’t understand how close it is to here.’
‘I thought you wanted to be with your family.’
‘But it’s only half an hour away by bike, I can come and go whenever I want to.’ Then he seems to lose his temper. ‘Khalas! Come on, stop,’ he says impatiently, ‘I’m a grown man, I need my space, I’ve got used to—’
‘What’s going on?’ My mother pokes her head round the doorway. ‘You’re still on the phone?’
I cover the mouthpiece. ‘Goodnight, Mum.’ I need space for myself too. I’ve been back a whole month, and I only started looking at apartments this weekend. ‘Shut the door, please.’
‘It’s two o’clock in the morning,’ she adds from behind the door. ‘Go to sleep.’
He tells me about Jifneh again. Village houses up and down the hillside. Olive trees and pecans and almonds. A quiet, pastoral serenity he’d almost forgotten was possible after four years in New York. ‘Oh, and the peaches!’ The village is known all over the West Bank for its sweet peaches. ‘Every year they have a festival for three days, with music, and people come to pick them—’
‘A festival?’ I laugh. ‘A peach festival?’
He seems amused, too, surprised by my laughter. ‘I swear!’
He tells me about the house: an untamed front yard overrun with tall weeds, a giant backyard full of fruit trees. A mulberry tree that towers over the roof, blue iron shutters, painted floor tiles. He describes the sunlight that streamed in when the owner flung the balcony doors open.
‘And then…’ He laughs and tells me about a family of geckos he found, clucking away on the walls in the living room, in the kitchen. ‘I’ve never seen so many geckos in one house!’ His laughter fills my ears and delights me. ‘The whole place was full of them!’
He tells me how amazed and excited he felt when he followed the landlord into the bedroom and saw the bed in the middle of the room: a high, wide brass bed, with delicate vine-shaped embellishments at the foot, a pair of curling tendrils and clusters of grapes. It looked just like the bed he’d drawn a few months ago in New York. ‘Remember?’ The bed where the dreaming boy lies, with a vine climbing up its posts. ‘It’s exactly the same – two clusters.’ After his astonished laughter dies down, his voice grows serious as he describes the sensation that struck him: this bed was a clue, a sign. When he went out to look at the garden again, he knew it was here in Jifneh, in this village, in this house, that he would live until September, and that this was where he would finish his project.
‘And the rent? How much is it?’
‘Not clear yet.’
‘What do you mean?’
The owner had given him a copy of the lease and they were meeting the next day to settle the terms. ‘But it’ll work out. I know it will.’
chapter 30
All the windows are open. Outside the lights are on. The balcony doors and front door are open, allowing the evening air to waft into the house in fluttering threads of wind that dry out the mopped floors. The sharp perfume of the end of a summer’s day, saturated dusty heat, and a refreshing whiff of cleaning materials – a mixture that always reminds him of childhood. He used to come home at dusk after an afternoon of playing, sweaty and famished, and walk barefoot into the freshly washed house that smelled of cleanliness and dinner. The rag spread out at the doorstep, the coolness in the floor tiles, the light in the kitchen, the pad of his damp heels and toes – it all reminds him of the boy he used to be, small and simple and happy.
Now, too, when he walks in from the balcony and reaches out to flick the light on, the slippery floor glimmers. The tiles in the hallway, with faded patterns, look like a flowery rug of stone. In the bedroom, the arabesque pattern repeats in every square in red and green. His mother’s house in Ramallah is a fairly new construction, standard stuff, with sharp lines, straight ceiling, and everything whitewashed. But here there are tiles and wonderful arches, a coolness held in the stone walls – it’s like their old house in Hebron.
He walks through the living room and turns on the bedroom light. The room is still bare except for the glorious bed, now joined by his orange suitcase next to the wall. Before washing the floors he had dumped his clothes in a heap on the bed. He puts them away, and retrieves the mesh bag he uses as a laundry basket. From the suitcase he removes a plastic bag of linens he brought from his mother’s house. He shakes out a cotton sheet and spreads it on the mattress, stretching out the corners. He puffs up the single pillow.
The bed is uncomfortable for the first few nights. The coils creak and groan every time he turns over, the indentations and bumps in the mattress bother his back. But a week later he’s grown accustomed to it. Early in the morning he gropes his way to the bathroom, eyes half closed. He likes being here. Likes the emptiness of the rooms, the blue iron shutters, the darkness in the kitchen. He likes the quiet, and at dawn he can hear the birds sing and the trees rustle through his sleep. He likes the geckos that come out at night, and sometimes he stands on a chair to track them on the walls – more and more lizards in pale pink and baby blue, their skin almost translucent, tails curled. He is fond of his slightly foolish feeling that they are protecting the house, watching it, bringing him good luck.
The landlord, a wealthy produce merchant from al-Bireh, told him about the patriarch of the family who had lived here for years, Dr Fayed. He was a gynaecologist, the landlord explained with a smile hidden under his moustache, who worked at the maternity ward in Beit Jallah. A few years ago the doctor passed away, and his widow emigrated with her son and his family to Canada shortly after the troubles started. ‘A lot of people are leaving now, because of the situation. They go to America, like you, or to Australia.’ The house had stood empty for the past two years, and he bought it through Mrs Fayed’s lawyer just last month. Hilmi is his first tenant. ‘You’re… how do you say it?’ He patted Hilmi on the back: ‘You’re inaugurating this place for me.’ He walked through the rooms turning lights on and off, testing the taps. The phone line was disconnected for now – there was an unpaid debt and some interest. ‘Those lowlifes at PalTel,’ he hissed, then paused for a moment, but promised to take care of it and slapped Hilmi’s back again. The next day a pick-up truck arrived and two workmen unloaded a used refrigerator and stove-top, and hooked up the gas. Hilmi brought a few cups and dishes from his mother’s, as well as a pot, frying pan and cutlery. His nephew Shadi, who had recently got his driver’s licence, helped him move the stuff together with Marwan.
Hilmi also brought th
e easel his parents had bought for him in Bethlehem when he’d turned fourteen, which his mother had kept in a cabinet with his old palette. How moving it was to feel the wooden board in his hands and touch the indentations of dried paint, that very first mosaic of stains. He set the easel up in the middle of the living room with his back to the light streaming in from his balcony workspace. He arranged his paintbrushes, jars and tubes on a wooden board he found outside, covered with spiderwebs, which he balanced on a chair. But he did not take out the five drawings wrapped in tissue paper from his portfolio. He still had not started painting.
It begins with wanting to hang up a hammock outside. He’s already set up a nice coffee corner on the porch, where he sits in the morning and entertains in the evening, looking out onto the garden and the wadi beyond. One day, biking home from Ramallah (Marwan got hold of a fairly new five-speed with mountain tyres for him), he stops at the eastern entrance to Jifneh next to a watermelon stand on the side of the road. The place is deserted. He chooses a medium-sized watermelon, taps its green belly all over, listening to the echo. He takes out a twenty and calls the seller, who is dozing on a tattered fabric hammock in the back of the shelter. The seller doesn’t know where Hilmi can buy a hammock, but suggests he tries the nursery at the intersection. Hilmi walks up and down the aisles of greenery. Near the pottery planters, vases and garden gnomes, he finds a red, white and blue woven hammock made in China. He knows immediately where it will go: in the northwest corner of the garden, under the mulberry tree.
All the Rivers Page 22