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Fields of Exile

Page 36

by Nora Gold


  She slept deeply and well. On Sunday she spent all day at the library, and at midnight returned to her pallet in front of the stove. On Monday morning she turned off the oven, ate breakfast, and got on the road.

  Now she is a third of the way along the highway, and since it’s eleven o’clock — well past rush hour — the road is almost empty. By now Brier has finished his keynote and the panellists are speaking. This whole nauseating event, she thinks, is the product of Dunhill’s — Dunghill’s — version of democracy. Yay democracy. Which rhymes with hypocrisy. She flies down the highway, singing a Purim song, because today in Jerusalem it’s Shushan Purim Katan, the second day of Purim Katan, or Little Purim. She hadn’t known until four days ago that there was a little Purim as opposed to the regular (big?) one. As a girl, on Purim, she loved dressing up as Queen Esther, the hero of the Purim story. She loved Queen Esther because Queen Esther was brave. She risked her life to save her people and, thanks to her, the Jews of Persia were spared death. The Purim song Judith is singing now is the first one she ever learned, “Today Is Purim,” which her father sang with her in Yiddish. Then she starts “My Hat Has Three Corners,” a Purim song in Hebrew. Partway into it she notices she is low on gas. She pulls into a gas station and, still happily singing in Hebrew, inserts the hose from the pump into her gas tank. But sensing something, she turns: the man at the neighbouring pump, filling his car, is glaring at her. Immediately she stops singing. Then she wonders, Why did I do that? There’s no reason I can’t sing a Hebrew song in public. A song in Israel’s tongue is no worse than a song in Canada’s. Defiantly she starts singing again. But now the joy has gone out of it, so she stops. Life in galut …

  Soon she reaches Dunhill. In her usual parking lot, the one closest to FRANK, she sees a very good spot and grabs it without thinking. Then she realizes she could have kept going and parked in the second lot, nearer to Le Petit Café. But she decides not to bother switching spots now. It isn’t a long walk and it’s a beautiful day. As she ambles down the path toward Le Petit Café, the magnificent weather makes her feel invigorated and alive. She recognizes a tree with gnarled, powerful branches reaching skyward. Soon it will sprout pink buds. Soon it will be spring.

  But then her stomach clenches. She is approaching FRANK, where Anti-oppression Day is being held. In a minute the path she is on will diverge and she’ll veer off to the left, away from FRANK and toward Le Petit Café. But now the path is taking her straight toward FRANK, and all she feels is fear.

  Then shame. To be afraid right after singing these songs about Purim. When Esther was so brave. And when she knows there is nothing really to fear. Today she won’t set even a toe inside FRANK. She won’t have to see any of those horrible people. So relax, she tells herself. Just have a nice meeting with Cindy and Darra. Feeling slightly calmer, she continues on her way.

  At Le Petit Café, Cindy sits alone at a round pink-and-turquoise table, like the one Judith sat at with Suzy for their suppers last term. Cindy gives her a hug. They sit and chat, waiting for Darra who is in the bathroom. Cindy asks Judith about her weekend, and she answers selectively. She tells Cindy about the fallen electrical pole and being stuck in a cold house without any food. But she tells it humorously, giving no hint of what Friday night was truly like for her. She also does not mention that her house is still without heat, so she is sleeping on the floor like a dog in front of the stove. Still, Cindy looks concerned.

  “That’s terrible, Judith,” she says. “I wish I’d known. You could have stayed at our place.”

  She looks at Cindy, astonished. Such a thought never crossed her mind. “Thanks,” she says, touched.

  “Seriously. If this happens again, come stay with us. And get a cellphone.”

  Judith nods vaguely. She can’t afford a cellphone. To change the topic, she asks Cindy how it went this morning with Brier.

  Cindy makes a face. “He’s a weird guy. At first, he seemed okay. He’s smart and good-looking, and he has charisma, so you’re listening and you kind of want to agree with what he’s saying. But after a while I started to feel — I hate to say it, Judith, but he totally hates Israel. I think he hates Israel more than he even cares about the Palestinians.”

  She stares at Cindy. “That’s amazing you said that. Golda Meir once said something similar. She said Israel will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their own children more than they hate us. Were there a lot of people there?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it, the place was packed. The whole auditorium was filled — all 350 seats — and there were tons of extra people crammed in, standing against the back wall. Also sitting on all the steps inside the auditorium, from the top to the bottom, even though it’s not allowed.”

  Judith’s stomach turns over as she pictures all those students eagerly squeezing into the auditorium to hear this hate-monger peddling his hatred of Israel and Jews. She can almost smell the hot, overcrowded room and see the gullible students opening their mouths like baby birds to receive Brier’s poisoned worms. “How did Darra react?” she asks Cindy. “Did she feel like you?”

  Looking pained, Cindy shrugs. Judith realizes she has made Cindy uncomfortable and also put her in an awkward position, and she is sorry. But she needs to know where Darra stands on all this before spending the next hour with her. Also, she feels jealous, and wants to check if Cindy’s loyalty lies with Darra or her.

  “She liked Brier.” Cindy frowns. “Don’t get me wrong, Darra’s a good person. But she always has to side with the victim. Or anyway with whoever she sees as the victim.”

  Judith smiles, gratified that Cindy has sided with her.

  “But I see the situation in the Middle East,” Cindy continues, “differently than most people, because of knowing you. Maybe if I hadn’t heard from you all last term about Israel, I wouldn’t have seen through Brier, either.”

  “You would have. You’re discerning.”

  “I don’t know. He’s an extremely good speaker, very persuasive. You should have seen those people, Judith — they ate it all up. He got that whole auditorium frothed up against Israel.”

  Frothed up. Judith pictures a mad dog frothing at the mouth. Then a whole auditorium full of mad dogs with frothing mouths.

  “Darra’s just like everyone else who was there,” says Cindy. “She thought Brier was sincere. That he was fighting for the Palestinians, a champion for the underdog and all that. Shh. Here she comes.”

  Lo, here she comes, thinks Judith, following the direction of Cindy’s eyes. Darra, briskly walking toward them, is rubbing her hands together repeatedly, reminding Judith of Lady Macbeth in the mad scene trying to wash the blood off her hands. Reaching their table, Darra says laughingly, “That bathroom always runs out of paper towels,” and finishes drying her hands on her pants. They eat the Anti-oppression Day pizza special while working on their presentation. It quickly becomes obvious to Judith that Cindy and Darra have done much more reading than her, both for Hetty’s course generally, and specifically for this assignment. But it also seems like neither of them minds, and they both assume they will take the lead in presenting next Monday. By the end of the hour, they have mapped everything out in detail, and all she will have to do is read, and report on, one small section. Gratefully, she thanks them.

  “It’s nothing. You’ve been sick,” says Darra, then rushes off to the afternoon session of Anti-oppression Day. Judith restrains herself from saying anything about her to Cindy, and watches silently as Cindy wipes some crumbs off the table. Judith says, “Where are you parked? I’ll walk out with you.”

  “Actually, I’m staying. My cellphone is broken, so I’m going to use the pay phone here. I have to call Mikey’s doctor.”

  “Mikey’s doctor! I thought you said he was okay.”

  “He is. Don’t worry. But his doctor’s latest theory is that he has allergies, so we’re checking into that. I have to phone him before one o’clock when he starts seeing his afternoon patients.”

  “
I see. I’m glad Mikey isn’t sick again. He’s been sick so much.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait for you?”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks again, Cindy, for organizing this.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  Walking to her car, she feels very lucky to have a friend like Cindy. This whole year, this term especially, would have been so much worse without her. She strolls along in reverie, barely noticing the brilliant spring-like sun or anything else around her. She is cogitating about what she has to prepare for their presentation next week, and all the other work she still has to do in the remaining seven weeks of school: a research project, two major term papers, and two medium-size assignments. It is daunting but doable, she decides. Liking the sound of that, she repeats this in her mind a few times: Daunting but doable. Daunting but doable. Daunting but doable …

  Meanwhile, she has been walking automatically toward her car, oblivious to her surroundings. So only now does she notice there is a sizable crowd up ahead that will soon block her way. She frowns and slows down. What is this? It can’t be anything to do with Anti-oppression Day; that’s all happening inside FRANK. But glancing in that direction, she sees a huge crowd filling the area between FRANK and where she is now. There must be five or six hundred people. There is noise and excitement and placards waving in the air.

  Now she understands: this is the “rally over the lunch break” — the anti-Israel demonstration she read about last week in the alley near Suzy’s office. She can’t believe she forgot. If she had remembered, she never would have parked her car where she did. She’d have parked in the second lot, next to Le Petit Café. Now she will have to walk through this rally. Right into the heart of it. Like into “the heart of darkness.” Before her there is a wall of people, mostly students but also several faculty members, and some outsiders, demonstrators from the community with no university affiliation. Everyone is looking toward the quad, so she does, too, and recognizes Michael Brier standing on the front steps of FRANK. He is, as Cindy said, good-looking. He speaks into a microphone, but she can’t hear anything. The mike is not working. Near him a guy of about forty with greasy hair fiddles with the equipment. Surveying the people around her, she sees Darra in the crowd. She is about to call out and wave to her, but something restrains her. Darra seems too happy somehow, too relaxed and at home here. She is smiling and laughing with the guy beside her. Judith, turning away, sees a horizontal yellow stripe along the outside of the crowd. It’s a line of campus policemen in their yellow uniforms, with something (clubs?) dangling from their hips.

  Reluctant to advance, she looks in the one direction she has not yet: upward. In the highest windows of FRANK there are faces peering down at the rally below. What are they seeing? she wonders. How much do they understand about what they are viewing? She spots an orange curtain in one of the top windows and recognizes it as the very window from which, on Orientation Day, she first looked down and saw this quad. She contemplates the crowd ahead of her. If she wants to reach her car, she will have to start advancing. But she can’t; it’s as if her feet are nailed to the ground. Some distance away from her, but close enough to read, are two signs:

  ISRAEL = APARTHEID

  and

  END ZIONIST OPPRESSION

  Par for the course, she thinks, observing with satisfaction that she is not that upset by these signs anymore, in contrast to her reaction two weeks ago to the poster near Suzy’s office. Maybe she is becoming inured to all this. Maybe she is learning to grow a tougher skin. She scans the crowd and the area beyond it, searching for an alternate route, but there isn’t one. The only path to the parking lot where her car is parked is on the other side of this demonstration. It’s like that song:

  So high you can’t get over it,

  So low you can’t get under it,

  So wide you can’t get around it …

  You’ve just got to go right through it. So she starts weaving politely through the crowd: “Excuse me, excuse me. Excuse me, excuse me.” After what feels like a great deal of work, she peeks behind her and discovers she has come only about the length of her bedroom. She is making progress, but at the rate of an inchworm. Furthermore, she is feeling breathless — it is claustrophobic in this dense herd — but she tries to stay calm. She tries also not to think about the fact that she is surrounded by hundreds of people, many of whom hate Israel, and who would probably hate her too, if they knew she was Israeli. Not that there is any way they could know, she reassures herself: there is nothing about her that could give her away, like a kipa, or a Jewish star around her neck. She continues through this throng, feeling anxious and wishing she weren’t here alone. She regrets she didn’t wait for Cindy; if she had, they would be walking through this together, which would feel completely different. Suddenly a thunderous voice booms overhead.

  “We must — stand — together,” this voice roars. She glances at the steps in front of FRANK: Brier, alone there, is speaking. Evidently the greasy-haired guy fixed the sound system.

  Brier shouts: “We must stand together against Zionist aggression! We must stand together against Zionist oppression!”

  She pushes and jostles her way more forcefully through the crowd. I have to get out of here, she thinks. I can’t listen to this. Some people, irritated, push or jostle her back. But she keeps advancing, one person at a time. “Excuse me, excuse me. Excuse me, excuse me.” Meanwhile she tries to block out Brier’s words, which continue to blare over the loudspeaker, and to concentrate only on her slow but steady progress through this mass of people. But this is not possible. Brier has taken over the airspace. His booming voice dominates every cubic inch of the air, penetrating not just her ears, but even her nostrils, forcing her to inhale his voice. To take it into her body and mind.

  “Repeat after me: Zionism is apartheid!”

  “Zionism is apartheid!” the crowd shouts back.

  “Louder!”

  “Zionism is apartheid!” the crowd shouts louder.

  “Good! Now repeat after me: Get the Zionists out of Palestine!”

  “Get the Zionists out of Palestine!”

  “Get the Zionists out of Palestine!” Brier cries again.

  “Get the Zionists out of Palestine!!”

  She keeps walking. I have to get out of here. These repeat-after-me’s scare her. The content of them, but even more than that, their anger and hatred, and their mindlessness, like a mountain echoing a yodeller. A mountain has no mind, she thinks, and neither does a mob.

  “Palestine for the Palestinians!” shouts Brier.

  “Palestine for the Palestinians!” the mob shouts back.

  “All of Palestine for the Palestinians!” screams Brier.

  “All of Palestine for the Palestinians!” the mob screams back.

  “From Haifa to Eilat!”

  “From Haifa to Eilat!”

  “With Jerusalem the capital of Palestine!”

  “With Jerusalem the capital of Palestine!”

  “Jerusalem the capital of Palestine!” shrieks Brier, shaking his fist.

  “Jerusalem the capital of Palestine!”

  She stops walking. She stands, frozen. Jerusalem, she thinks. Jerusalem is my home. You can’t have my home. She is having trouble breathing, she’s panting slightly and holding her chest. It’s nothing, she tells herself. It’s just stress. Brier’s words can’t hurt me — they’re only words. Sticks and stones can break my bones … She looks around to get her bearings. She has come almost halfway through the crowd, and here the view is different. She is smack in the middle of the demonstration, about fifteen rows from the front, and Brier is almost straight ahead of her. A real demagogue. He reminds her of a newsreel she once saw of Hitler at a rally. He shouted and shook his fist in exactly the same way.

  “No Israeli products at Dunhill!” Brier is hollering.

  “No Israeli products at Dunhill!” hollers back the mob.

 
“No academic exchanges with Israel!” Brier shouts.

  “No academic exchanges with Israel!” the mob shouts back.

  What this mob is really calling for, same as that poster, is a Dunhill that is Judenrein. Or anyway “Israel-rein.” Next they’ll be shouting, “No Israeli students at Dunhill!” Which means her. Feeling panic and horror, she starts pushing her way through the crowd again, but harder, more urgently, than before. Desperately.

  “Hey, watch out,” says a guy she just squeezed past. She turns around. “Sorry.” Then she recognizes the guy with the long greasy hair who fixed the mike. He holds a sign. She glances at it — it’s not like the other two she saw. This sign has words but also a picture. She studies it, frowning, feeling watched by the greasy-haired guy. The picture is of a can — a regular can, a soup can — and on the front of it there is a picture of a boy, seven or eight years old, and below that some words. She squints to read them:

  ONE PALESTINIAN CHILD

  Ground up with his Bones and Blood

  Still Fresh — Good Until April 25, 2003

  Murdered by the Israelis Only One Week Ago (Feb. 10, 2003)

  Certified Kosher by the Chief Rabbi of Israel

  For Use in Making Passover Matzos

  She turns away, holding her stomach so she won’t vomit. A child ground up with his bones and blood. Her stomach heaves and she struggles to control it. Then with shock she understands what this poster is. It is the medieval blood libel, translated into the contemporary Palestinian narrative. She can hardly believe it. She takes some deep, slow breaths to calm herself. She does not dare glance again at the sign or at the guy holding it. Because if she does, she’ll go crazy: she’ll lunge at him and start pummeling him and screaming. But what’s the point? Nothing she says or does will make any difference. She can’t change the mind of anyone here about Israel. She pictures Bobby and knows what he would advise: Just keep walking, get into your car, and drive home. That’s all. She begins to walk away.

 

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