Fields of Exile

by Nora Gold

  Everyone agrees.

  Suzy asks the group what they want to do about food on Anti-oppression Day. There is a general groan and a rolling of eyes. Apparently last year they offered participants two different lunch options, and when people registered, they indicated their preference. There was a three-course meal for ten dollars, and a five-dollar, lighter option — pizza and a donut — for students and the economically disadvantaged. It all became very contentious, with some complaining that even the five dollars for the latter was too expensive. Suzy says she recently attended a family therapy conference where the organizers dealt with the food problem by just writing on the program: Lunch — On Your Own. This is the latest thing, she says, and one easy way to get around all this. But James and Lola object. There is a principle involved.

  “I believe eating together on Anti-oppression Day is a crucial part of the experience,” says Lola. “That is part of what being a community is about. It’s symbolic. The other way you’re basically reinforcing a two-tiered system, the same one that rules in society. The profs and the more privileged students will eat one kind of meal, chicken or whatever, while everyone else gets something crummy. That’s not what social work is about.”

  “My feeling exactly,” says James.

  Oy, thinks Judith. It’s true, of course, that often these “small” decisions are microcosms of larger issues in life. But seriously. Everyone eating the same pizza is not going to equalize society’s inequities. That’s like in H.M.S. Pinafore when they sing, “Love levels all ranks.” Of course it doesn’t. Neither love nor pizza levels anything.

  To her astonishment, though, Suzy nods at James and Lola. “I see your point,” she says. “Maybe we can all go home and give it some more thought, and revisit this issue at our next meeting. We don’t have to decide anything conclusive right now.”

  Clever. Judith inwardly gives Suzy a thumbs-up.

  “Okay,” says James, and Lola shrugs her assent. Suzy wraps up the meeting. She thanks everyone for coming and reminds them that next time they’ll be striking two subcommittees — Teacher Evaluation and Admissions Outreach — so they should each decide which of these they want to serve on. The meeting adjourns exactly on time, at 8:30 on the dot. Suzy beckons to Judith and they set a date to go over this meeting and plan the next one.

  “Do you think it went okay?” Suzy asks in a low voice.

  “Yes. It was fine.”

  “Thanks.” Suzy touches her on the arm.

  Judith collects her things and starts walking alone down the hallway. Then she hears someone call her and she turns around. It’s Hetty, the big bird, walking quickly, her cape flapping like wings. Judith feels her stomach twist with anxiety, and she thinks of Mandelstam’s bird: “the grey bird, sadness.”

  “I hear,” Hetty says in her European accent, “you wrote an exceptional paper for your first assignment in Weick’s course. A feminist critique of Systems Theory, I understand.”

  “Yes. I mean, yes, that was the topic.”

  “There’s no need for false modesty, Judith. According to Weick, it was first-rate work. Tell me, have you considered entering it into the school’s annual essay competition? I’m on the jury this year for the B.P. Dunhill Award, and we’re trying to get all the brightest students to submit their work.”

  All the brightest students, thinks Judith. She sees me as one of the brightest students.

  “There’s a fifty-dollar cash prize,” Hetty says eagerly, “and a big ceremony with the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the end of the year.” Her beady eyes shine eagle-like, not without a certain charm.

  Judith blushes. “I’d be happy to submit it. If you believe it has a chance.”

  “It certainly does,” says Hetty. “But we’ll need it soon. Could you put a copy in my box this Monday? The jury starts its deliberations next week.”

  “No problem. And … thank you.”

  “No. Thank you,” says Hetty, and walks off.

  Outside it’s very cold. Judith sits shivering in her car for a while, collecting herself for the long trip home. Then she drives out into the night. It’s the first time she’s driven home from Dunhill in the dark, and it feels odd, but somehow also exciting and delicious, like getting to know a new, secret side of someone you thought you already knew. Passing through downtown Dunhill, all the shops are locked for the night, black-windowed, and the streetlamps shine like floodlights over the wet, deserted streets. One of the brightest students. She’s never been viewed this way before — she was always a voracious reader and full of thoughts and ideas, but she didn’t get good marks at school. So it’s thrilling now — it even feels to her like something of a minor miracle — that at Dunhill she’s seen as smart. It’s not just Hetty, she reflects as she drives. She has aced all her assignments so far, she’s been nominated for an academic excellence scholarship, and when she walks down the hall, all the profs know her and greet her by name. Just seven weeks — forty-nine days, like the number of days between Pesach and Shavuot — since she first drove to Dunhill for Orientation, and already she is part of the life of this school, and even, because she co-chairs SWAC, something of a big shot.

  Turning onto the highway, she does what she always does at this point: she inserts the Israel at Forty tape, and immediately “Hallelujah” fills the car. It’s the perfect song. “Hallelujah!” is exactly how she feels right now. Joyful. Triumphant. So she sings along with the tape, trumpeting out her triumph and joy. Singing this song differently, though, than she did on the first day of school, when in her mind’s eye she was still singing with her friends in Israel. Now she is singing by herself. Here in galut. But happy. “In exile just for a while.” She grins and sings in the car.

  The song that follows “Hallelujah” is a dirge she can’t stand. Its opening line is “We were from the same village,” presumably about someone who died in an Israeli war. But she isn’t sure because she’s never listened to the whole song: the music is so depressing that, by the end of the first line, she wants to jump off a cliff. Quickly she ejects the tape and the radio comes on. But instead of the usual classical music, she hears a man’s voice: it’s the CBC nine o’clock news. In the headlines tonight, there are two main items. The Conservatives are opposing the Liberals’ new health care plan, and in response to Israel’s incursion yesterday into Gaza, the U.N. is proposing another resolution condemning Israel as an apartheid state in violation of international law. Oh fuck, she thinks. The whole world’s against us. Even the U.N. hates us now.

  She used to love the U.N. She was taught to respect and admire not only the concept of the U.N., but the organization itself. For her fifth birthday, Auntie Hilda gave her a large cardboard package with the logo of the U.N. on the front, containing ten different-coloured pamphlets, each about a different country, and telling the story of a child living there who was helped by UNICEF. There was Mozambique, Colombia, Pakistan … She can still remember some of the children and their stories, which Auntie Hilda read to her while she snuggled up close against her, her thumb in her mouth. One story included a picture of a black girl with a tray of coconuts and tropical fruits balanced on her head. She had gotten glaucoma, and her eyesight was saved thanks to an ointment supplied by UNICEF. On the back of that pamphlet there was a copy of the thank-you letter this girl had written to UNICEF. There was also a boy, Judith recalls, who helped his uncle herding goats and sheep, and a South American girl who wove brightly coloured fabrics on a loom with the old women of her village. The title of this collection was “One World, One Family.” What year was that? She quickly does the math … 1975. Just before the first anti-Israel resolution at the U.N., which equated Zionism with racism. That for her was the end of the U.N. The end of “One World, One Family.” Driving, she passes a field that’s vacant except for a lone cow grazing in the corner. As alone as Israel, she thinks. Over the past three days, in response to Sharon’s intensified campaign against terrorism in Gaza and the territories, the Toronto newspapers have b
een full of anti-Israel rhetoric. She can’t stand Sharon and doesn’t support his policies or his recent crackdown. But in the papers, she can feel hatred for Israel bouncing off the page, and if she tries to eat her breakfast while reading them, she can barely swallow.

  Judith punches off the radio to silence the news, shoves the tape back in, and presses fast forward to get past “We Were from the Same Village.” The song that comes on now is bright and chirpy, but again she ejects the tape in disgust. These cheerful, tinny songs are now starting to sound stupid. And not just stupid; they’re a lie. This isn’t Israel anymore. Israel’s not forty, it’s fifty-four, and Israel’s song isn’t “Hallelujah”; it’s “Will We Survive?” Not Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” that defiant, affirmative statement by an individual, but a question being asked collectively, with anguish, by an entire people. A collective cry like the Israelites in Egypt crying out to God. Only this time no one seems to be listening. The economy is in tatters, poverty and hunger are dramatically on the rise, bombs are going off almost every week in Jerusalem, and the so-called peace process is dead. It’s a time of desperation and deep dread. An aching time, she thinks. An Aicha time — like the title in Hebrew of the Book of Lamentations.

  In Canada, on the other hand, things are comparatively easy. So even if life here sometimes feels rather shallow, and callow, to her, it’s still a great relief after Israel. This wonderfully “bearable lightness of being.” Even the people here are lighter. She smiles, musing about her Canadian friends Cindy, Pam, and Aliza, and the fun they have together. As for Suzy, who’s not exactly a friend — or anyway not yet, but who in a way feels like the grounding force, the gravity, for her new life here at Dunhill — she too is not heavy. Sure, she can be serious. But she’s charming. She’s fun. Everyone is lighter in Canada. Well, why wouldn’t they be? No one here has a child in the army dodging rocks, bullets, and hand grenades day after day; or in prison protesting against the occupation; or having to take their lives in their hands if they want to go hear a concert downtown. No one in Canada, thinks Judith, ever has to lay themselves on the line for anything. They can if they want, they can voluntarily engage with issues if they choose to. But people here can take for granted their existential survival. They just live their individual lives and enjoy them as much as possible.

  As if to support this opinion, Judith now spots ahead neon signs in red, yellow, pink, and green for Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s, and further on, a neon dancing girl, and flashing all around her the words SEX SEX SEX. Which reminds Judith of Aliza, who just got a part-time job at Lovetoys, and during class breaks and at the cafeteria over lunch surreptitiously pulls out of her schoolbag fluorescent green, blue, or skin-coloured dildos, and passes them around under the table, after pressing the button and starting them vibrating. Sometimes she even shows off her wares in the classroom to all the students before class begins. Judith laughs every time and blushes: it’s vulgar and disgusting yet also fun. Cindy’s considering buying one to spice things up with Tom.

  “If you’re interested in anything,” says Aliza, “buy it from me — I get a 15 percent commission.” Aliza has brought different items to show them on each of the past three Mondays. The vibrators and dildos come in all different shapes and colours, lengths and textures: slimy, smooth, and with little bumps on them for greater friction. This seems to Judith so Diaspora. So not-Israel. She can’t even imagine someone there bringing fluorescent lime-coloured battery-operated vibrators to school to show their friends. In downtown Jerusalem if she walks around in a pair of shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, she is looked at like a whore. Yes, she thinks as she drives, it’s good I’m here for a while. In this easier, more innocent place. I can use a half-year of Canadian lightness.

  And also of Canadian safety. Canada’s safe. Everyone here is polite and civil. Civil vs. uncivil, but also civil vs. religious. There’s relatively little religious fundamentalism here or fanatical nationalism. No shaheeds or Yigal Amirs. You can relax. Last week she and Bobby went to the jazz club they like, and halfway through the first set, in walked a skinny, scruffy-looking guy wearing a bulky down jacket. It was way too big for him, reaching halfway down to his knees, and also much heavier than what the weather called for. It bulged out in front, and she immediately understood: that bulge under his jacket was a belt of explosives. He’s a suicide bomber, she thought, and he’s about to blow himself up, along with me and Bobby and all the people in this club. But then she caught herself: Don’t be stupid — this is Canada, not Israel. Still, she pointed this guy out to Bobby, and asked him what he thought of the suspicious, anxiety-provoking bulge below his waist.

  “Judith,” he said, laughing, “that’s called a hard-on.” Then he pulled her hand under the table, and hidden by the tablecloth, pressed it against his crotch. It was warm and she felt his penis starting to stir. “See what you do to me? Now I have one, too …”

  Now her hands, on the steering wheel, are cold. It’s already time for mittens and gloves. Winter is upon us. It’s also very dark out now: pitch black all around her — not a single street lamp on this stretch of highway — and she can’t see any of the usual landmarks. Yet it’s beautiful too, in a calm, black, deep way. Like watching the sea at night, knowing there are whales beneath the water.

  I’m so happy, she thinks. And immediately feels guilty and ashamed. Here she is playing with dildos in galut while Israel is suffering. She’s fiddling about while Jerusalem burns. She should be there, not here. Not that there’s anything she could do if she were there that would be of any help. But still, that’s where she belongs. And if she has to be here in Canada instead, the least she can do is not enjoy it. Partying and dancing the night away in jazz clubs — she has no right.

  But when she says things like that to Bruria, Bruria tells her she’s crazy.

  Stop driving yourself nuts, she wrote Judith last week. Enjoy this year abroad, suck the marrow from the bones, milk every moment for all it’s worth. (Sorry to mix milk and meat in the same sentence!) But truly, Judith, it’s not going to help anyone here one iota if you have a miserable year there. And don’t worry — you’ll be back here soon enough sharing all our troubles. Meanwhile, enjoy whatever you can in Canada.

  She’s right, Judith thinks. But she pictures guiltily the two dozen emails from Israel sitting in her inbox at home, waiting to be answered. They started building up two weeks ago, and now every day there are more of them, like additional shovelfuls of earth being thrown on top of a coffin. It’s true she’s been busy with her midterm papers, but it’s not only that. For some reason she’s finding it difficult to answer her friends. What, after all, can she write that won’t sound ridiculous? What do I write, she asks herself, to someone with a child in a military prison? That I’m stressed out about a term paper that’s due next week? That my father’s old car is making strange noises and I’m worried it won’t last the winter? That Bobby is pressuring me to stay in Canada and marry him, and it’s getting harder and harder to stave him off? And how can I tell them my activism here, my social contribution for the year — the only thing I’m doing in Canada that isn’t me me me — is co-chairing a committee whose great moral dilemma is whether or not to offer two menu choices for lunch? All these things are nonsense. They’re trivial. And I’m trivial because these are my concerns. So I can’t write about them to my friends in Israel. Which means that, for now at least, I can’t write to my friends at all.

  She is now on a brighter, better-lit stretch of the highway, almost alone on the deserted road. The clock says 9:35 p.m. — in only fifteen minutes she’ll be home. Well, not home, she corrects herself — just her temporary home for this year. Her real home is in Israel. Though her parents could never understand that. Especially her mother.

  Judith notices the little doll swinging from the rear-view mirror. It’s a troll doll, but with a face that is surprisingly, recognizably human: an intelligent woman’s face. Something like her mother’s. She remembers when they
first got this doll: it was fifteen years ago, and came with the new car her father had just bought, the same one she’s driving now. This doll was hanging from the rear-view mirror on a gold string, and ever since then it’s been swinging there. With everything on her mind this past year, she’s barely noticed it till now. But it does look like her mother. There’s something about those blue, glistening eyes. It feels like her mother is with her in the car. Her mother asked her, the night before she left for Israel, why she couldn’t be happy in Canada.

  “Because,” she answered, “it’s galut.”

  “Galut shmalut,” said her mother. “You have all sorts of opportunities here in Canada you won’t have in Israel. You have your pick of social work jobs here in Toronto, whereas in Israel you don’t even speak the language. Or, if you prefer, you could do a Master’s degree. Here you have friends. You could keep seeing Bobby —”

  “I know, I know. I could live a typical middle-class Canadian Jewish life. Marry a lawyer. Live in a nice house in a suburb. Maybe have some kids.”

  “Well, what’s so terrible about that?”

  “Nothing. But that’s not who I am. That’s not what I want.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a career,” said her mother. “Did I ever say that? But don’t tell me you don’t want a family, too. I know you better than that. I know how much you love kids.”

  “I can have kids in Israel, too.”

  “Yes, but life there is so much more difficult. Why should you struggle there when you have everything you need right here?”

  She made a sour face.

  “Look, I just want you to be happy, dear. That’s all I’m saying. It doesn’t matter where you live. A person can be happy anywhere. It’s a question of attitude. You make up your mind to look on the positive side, to appreciate what you have —”

  “You don’t understand,” said Judith.