To the End of the Land

by David Grossman

  “Anti who?”

  “I have no idea”—but she has a guess—“maybe delicacy? Fragility?”

  Avram suggests: “Adam?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. It’s like he decided to be as … I don’t know … as rigid as possible? And masculine. With two feet planted firmly on the ground, and even a little, intentionally, corporeal?”

  The day grows hotter and they walk silently, comfortable that way. What has not been recounted now will be told in the evening, or tomorrow, or maybe years from now. Either way, it will be told. They climb to the top of Devorah Mountain and lie down for a snooze on a shady patch of grass. They sleep for almost two hours, exhausted from the mountains, and when they awake they are surrounded by families who’ve come to spend a leisurely day at this spot looking out onto Mount Tabor and the Gilboa, Nazareth and the Jezreel Valley. Loud Arabic music blares from car radios in all directions, smoky aromas rise up from grills, nimble-fingered women chop meat and vegetables and roll kibbeh on long wooden tables, babies laugh and coo, men smoke bubbling hookahs, and a group of young boys nearby aim stones at glass bottles, shattering them one after the other. Ora and Avram leap to their feet into this vision, amazed at the abyss into which their sleep has rolled them. They have the strange sensation of having let their guard down, and they quickly gather up their backpacks and walking sticks and pass through the revelers without saying a word. They slip away with inexplicable secrecy, the dog with her tail between her legs as well, and they walk down the path toward a nearby Arab village. The muezzin is calling, and the echoes of his voice engulf them, and Avram remembers the muezzin at Abbasiya, with whom he used to sing along in his cell, composing Hebrew lyrics to the tune.

  Low and ruddy, the sun hovers over the land, inflaming the colors with one final touch. “It’ll be dark soon, we should find a place to sleep,” Avram says. The trail markers have been erased, or else someone has intentionally knocked them down or even turned the wooden posts in the wrong direction. “But it’s so beautiful here,” Ora whispers, and there is shame in her voice, as though she is peeking into someone else’s scene. The path, which may no longer be their path—perhaps they have been exiled onto a different route—winds through olive groves and fruit-tree orchards, and a stream runs alongside. Ora feels the bristle of Sami and their drive with Ofer to the army that day, and Yazdi who had slumped on her, and the woman who had breast-fed him, and the people who sat on the floor in the underground hospital, warming up food on little gas burners. And the man who knelt down and bandaged the foot of a guy sitting on a chair in front of him.

  How had she not realized what Sami was going through when he saw those injured, beaten people? She swears that the first thing she’ll do when she gets home is call him and apologize. She will describe to him exactly what state she was in that day and will force him, just like that, to make up with her. And if he refuses, she’ll explain in the simplest way that they have to make up, because if she and he cannot make up after one bad day, then maybe there really is no chance that the greater conflict will be resolved. As she delves into these thoughts, moving her lips while she enthusiastically plans her conversation with Sami, Avram raises his eyebrows at the hilltop above them, where, behind a rock, a young shepherd is watching them. When he sees they’ve noticed him, he cups his hands over his mouth and calls out, in Arabic, to another shepherd perched on another hilltop, riding a horse or a mule. That one calls to a third shepherd who emerges on yet another hilltop, and Ora and Avram hurry down the path as the shepherds above them call back and forth. Avram translates for her out of the corner of his mouth: “Who are they?” one shepherd asks. “I don’t know,” another answers, “maybe tourists?” “Jews,” the third determines. “Look at his shoes, they must be Jews.” “Then what are they doing here?” “I don’t know, maybe just walking.” “Jews, just walking, here?” asks the horse-mounted shepherd, and his question remains unanswered. The sheepdogs bark while their owners shout, and the golden bitch gurgles and barks back. Ora pulls her close to her leg and tries to calm her.

  One of the shepherds starts to sing, trilling his voice repeatedly, and the others join in from the hilltops. Avram hisses that they should hurry. To Ora the melody sounds like a courting or flirting song, or just crude innuendo aimed at her. They both walk quietly, practically running along the narrow path between the hills that close in on each other until they finally meet at a heap of boulders that blocks their way. At the foot of the massive boulders, on a large straw mat, three heavyset men are sprawled serenely, watching them without any expression.

  “Shalom,” Ora says and stands still, breathing heavily.

  “Shalom,” the three answer. On the mat between them are wedges of watermelon and a copper tray with three coffee cups. A finjan is heating on a kerosene burner.

  “We’re hiking,” Ora says.

  “Sahtein—good for you,” says the oldest of the men. His face is strong and heavy, with a thick, yellowing white moustache.

  “It’s nice here,” she murmurs, oddly apologetic.

  “Tfadalu—please,” says the man, waving for them to sit down and offering a dish of pistachios.

  “What is this here?” Ora asks as she takes a larger handful than she’d meant to.

  “We’re Ein Mahel,” says the man. “There, up top, is Nazareth, the stadium. Where did you come from?”

  Ora tells him. Surprised, the men pull themselves up into seated positions. “So far? Are you, ya’ani, athletic?”

  Ora laughs. “No, not at all. It worked out this way almost by accident.”

  “Coffee?”

  Ora looks at Avram, who nods. They take their backpacks off. Ora finds a bag of cookies she bought that morning at Shibli, and a package of wafer biscuits from Kinneret. The man hands them slices of watermelon.

  “But please, just don’t talk to us about the news,” Ora blurts out.

  “Is there some special reason?” the man asks, slowly stirring the coffee in the finjan.

  “No, no reason, we just want a rest from all that.”

  He pours coffee into little cups. The man next to him, thick-armed and taciturn, with a kaffiyeh and agal on his head, offers Avram a puff from his hookah. Avram takes it. Then a young man, undoubtedly one of the three shepherds who had watched them from the hilltops, comes galloping over on his horse and joins them. He is the grandson of the older man. His grandfather kisses his head and introduces him to the guests. “Ali Habib-Allah is his name. He’s a singer, and he passed the first round for a competition they’re going to show on your television,” the grandfather says, laughing, and pounds his grandson’s back affectionately.

  “Tell me,” Ora asks with a sudden boldness that surprises her, “would you be willing to answer two questions for me?”

  “Questions?” The grandfather turns to her with his whole body. “What kind of questions?”

  “Nothing, just a little thing,” she giggles. “We’re doing—actually we haven’t really started it, we were just thinking of doing—we met someone who was doing a sort of little survey, along the way.” She laughs nervously again and does not look at Avram. “We thought, I thought, that every time we meet someone, we’d ask them two questions. Small ones.”

  Avram looks at her in astonishment.

  “Which questions?” asks Ali, the boy, his cheeks flushed with excitement.

  “Is this for the newspaper or something?” his grandfather asks, constantly stirring the coffee, turning the flame up and down under the pot.

  “No, no, it’s private, just for us.” She blinks at Avram. “A souvenir from our trip.”

  “Ask away,” says the grandson, and he spreads his legs out on the mat.

  “If you don’t mind,” Ora says, pulling out the blue notebook, “I’ll write down what you say, otherwise I won’t remember anything.” She is already holding a pen and looks from the old man to the younger one. “Very short questions,” she adds, trying to retreat now, to shrink, to postpone the actual que
stioning, sensing the metallic taste of an approaching mistake. But all eyes are upon her and there’s no way out. “Okay, so the first question, it goes like this, what do you most—”

  “Maybe it’s better if we don’t,” the grandfather interrupts with a grin. He puts a heavy hand on the upper back of his grandson the singer. “More watermelon?”

  “Once every three weeks or so, he would come home on leave,” Ora repeats the next day, threading her way back into what came unraveled on Mount Devorah in the afternoon. She remembers how she would fall on him in the doorway, set upon him with insatiable hunger. His giant backpack would block the doorway and Ora would try to dislodge it with both hands and give up. “Yalla, come on, unpack now, before you do anything else. Straight into the washing machine. I’ll thaw out some meatballs for you, we’ll leave the steak for tonight. There’s a new Bolognese sauce I want you to try—Dad loves it, maybe you’ll like it too—and I have stuffed vegetables, and we’ll have a nice salad soon, and tonight we’ll have a big meal. Ilan!” she shouts, “Ofer’s here!”

  She retreats into the depths of the kitchen, brimming with animal happiness. If she could, she would lick him all over—even now, at his age—and scrub off everything that had stuck to him, restore the childhood smells that still linger in her nostrils, her mouth, her saliva. A wave of warmth spills out to him inside her, and Ofer, without budging at all, moves a whole hairsbreadth away from her. She feels it, and she knew it would happen: he seals himself off with that same quick shift of the soul that she knows from Ilan and Adam, from all her men, who time after time have slammed their doors shut in the face of her brimming, leaving her tenderness fluttering outside, faltering, turning instantly into a caricature.

  But she will not allow the hurt to bubble up. Not now. And here comes Ilan from his study, taking his glasses off, and he hugs Ofer warmly, measuredly. He is careful with him. Cheek touches cheek. “Stop getting taller already,” he scolds. Ofer lets out a tired, pale laugh. Ilan and Ora move around him with a mixture of happiness and caution. “So what’s new in the trenches?” “Nothing really, how are things at home?” “Not bad, you’ll find out everything soon enough.” “Why, did something happen?” “No, what could happen? Everything’s just like it was when you left.” “Do you want to take a shower first?” “No, later.”

  He finds it difficult even to let go of the stinking uniform and the dirt that has stuck to his flesh and that, Ora guesses, protects him a little. Three weeks in the field, on patrols, fixing tanks, checkpoints, ambushes. He has a strong odor. His fingers are rough and full of cuts. His fingernails are black. His lips look as if they are constantly bleeding. His gaze is distracted and vacant. She sees the house through his eyes. The cleanliness, the symmetry of the rugs and the pictures and the little knickknacks. He seems to find it hard to believe that such refinement exists in the world. The softness is almost unbearable to him. When she looks at Ilan, she feels clearly how he sees himself now in Ofer’s eyes, all nonchalant citizenry, demilitarized, almost criminal. Ilan crosses his arms over his chest, juts his chin out slightly, and murmurs to himself in a deep voice.

  Ofer sits down at the kitchen table and holds his head in his hands. His eyes almost close. Gradually, a casual conversation begins to hum among the three of them, crumbs of speech that no one listens to, whose purpose is only to give Ofer a few minutes to adapt, to connect the world he has come from with this world, or perhaps, she thinks, to detach them from one another.

  She knows—she explains to Avram—that she and Ilan cannot even guess the effort it takes to erase, or at least to suspend, his other world so that he can come into the house without getting burned in the transition. The thought must pass through Ilan’s mind at that moment too, and they glance at each other. Their faces are still full of joy, but somewhere deep in their eyes, they avoid each other like accomplices to a crime.

  Suddenly Ofer gets up and stands there rubbing his shaved head vigorously. He slowly moves between the kitchen and the dining area, back and forth, back and forth. Ilan and Ora watch him with sidelong looks; he isn’t here, that’s obvious. He’s walking a different track, one that is imprinted in his mind. They concentrate on slicing bread and frying food. Ilan turns the radio on loud, and the sounds of the midday news program pour into the room. Ofer revives immediately and sits back down at the table as though he had never gotten up. A young soldier from the Jalameh checkpoint is telling the interviewer how she caught a seventeen-year-old Palestinian boy that morning trying to smuggle explosives through in his pants. She giggles that today happens to be her birthday. She’s nineteen. “Happy birthday,” says the interviewer. “Cool!” the soldier laughs. “I couldn’t have thought of a better birthday present.”

  Ofer listens. Jalameh is no longer in his sector. He served there about eighteen months ago. It could have been him who had found the explosives. Or not found them. After all, that’s his job, to stand there so the terrorist blows himself up on him and not on civilians. Ora’s breath is short. She feels something approaching. She recites to herself the names of the checkpoints and posts where he’s served. Hizmeh and Halhul and Al Jab’ah, those ugly names. And all that Arabic, she thinks as she pads from one foot to the other, with the gurgles and grunts and yammers. Why were Ilan and Avram so into it in high school and the army? She riles herself up even more: I mean, almost every word in that language has something or other to do with tragedy or catastrophe, doesn’t it? She shoves Ilan: “Look at how you’re chopping those vegetables. Don’t you know he likes his salad chopped really fine? You set the table, do me a favor!” Ilan throws his hands up with an obedient smile, and Ora attacks the vegetables. She grabs a sharp knife, swings it, and lands it down furiously to dice Abd al-Qader al-Husseini with Haj Amin al-Husseini and Shukeiri and Nimeiri and Ayatollah Khomeini and Nashashibi and Arafat and Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas and all their kasbahs and Qaddafis and SCUDs and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and Qassam rockets and Kafr Qasim and Gamal Abdel Nasser. She slaughters them all together: Katyushas and intifadas and martyr’s brigades, and the sacred and the sanctified and the oppressed, Abu-Jilda and Abu Jihad, Jebalia and Jabaliyya, Jenin and Zarnuga, and Marwan Barghuouti, too. God knows where all those places are, anyway. If they could at least have normal-sounding names. She sighs. At least if their names were just a little nicer! Feverishly brandishing the knife, she finely chops up Khan Yunis and Sheikh Munis, Deir Yassin and Sheikh Yassin, Saddam Hussein and al-Qawuqji. All they bring is trouble, from the very first minute it’s been nothing but trouble with them, she growls through gritted teeth. And what about Sabra and Shatila, and what about Al-Quds and the Nakba, and jihad and the shaheeds and Allahu akbar, and Khaled Mashal and Hafez al-Assad and Kōzō Okamoto? She pounds them all indiscriminately like a hornet’s nest that must be destroyed, and she adds Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, and with a sudden revelation she also throws in Golda and Begin and Shamir and Sharon and Bibi and Barak and Rabin, and Shimon Peres too—after all, don’t they have blood on their hands? Did they really do everything they could so she could get five minutes of peace and quiet around here? All those people who razed her life, who keep nationalizing another one of her children every second—she stops when she notices Ofer’s and Ilan’s looks. She wipes the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand and asks angrily, “What? What is it?” As if they too are to blame for something. Then she quiets herself. “It’s nothing, never mind, I just remembered something, something was getting on my nerves.” She dresses the salad generously with olive oil and a quick dash of salt and pepper, squeezes a lemon, and puts the lovely bowl down in front of Ofer, a kaleidoscope of colors and scents. “Here you go, Ofer’ke. An Arabic salad, just the way you like it.”

  Ofer arches his eyebrows to express his opinion of her curious performance. He is still moving very slowly. His distracted look gets trapped by a newspaper on the table and he stares at a cartoon without comprehending it, without knowing the context. He asks if there was anything on the news this
week. Ilan gives him a report and Ofer flips through the paper. He’s not interested, Ora thinks. This country, which he is protecting, doesn’t really interest him. She’s sensed that in him for a while now: it’s as though the connection between the outer layer, where he spends most of his time, and the interior one, here, has been severed. “Where’s the sports?” he asks, and Ilan extricates the sports section from the recycling pile. Ofer buries his head in it. Ora asks cautiously if he hears the news over there, if he’s been following what’s going on in Israel. He shrugs one shoulder wearily but also with a strange bitterness: all those arguments, right, left, same difference, who can be bothered.

  He gets out of his chair, kneels, unfastens the straps of his backpack, and starts emptying it out. His skull amazes her: so large, full of power, and solid. Such a complex structure of heavy, mature bones. She stands there wondering when he had time to develop bones like that and how this head could have passed through her body. When he opens the backpack, a sharp stink of dirty socks fills the air. Ora and Ilan laugh awkwardly. The smell speaks volumes: Ora has the feeling that if she focuses on it, if she splits it into its filaments, she will know exactly what Ofer has gone through these past few weeks.

  As though hearing her thoughts, he looks up at her with a pair of large eyes that are dark with exhaustion. For a moment he is very young again, needing Mom to read him. “What is it, Ofer’ke?” she asks feebly, alarmed at his expression. “Nothing is it,” he answers habitually, and forces a tired smile. Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? she thinks. I’ve been to Halhul and the kasbah in Hebron. Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there? I lay in an ambush and shot rubber bullets at kids throwing stones.

  “I’m begging you,” she’d said to him roughly a year earlier, even before the whole thing happened, maybe a month before. “Don’t ever, ever shoot at them.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?” he asked with a smirk. He skipped and danced around her, his broad chest bare and red, holding up a filthy khaki undershirt and writhing like a matador avoiding a bull. Every so often he leaned down and planted a light kiss on her forehead or cheek. “Just tell me what to do with them, Mom. They’re a risk to people driving along the road!”