Agent on a Mission

by Rose Fox

  She stroked Naima's golden hair, but Naima recoiled and distanced herself from the Principal. She thought about what the Principal had said and couldn’t understand. She knew her mother loved her and that she had a wonderful home, but she was also angry with her mother for having given her away. Suddenly she sensed that they were staring at her and she heard the Principal’s question.

  “What’s your name, dear?”

  “Naima, Ma’am,” she whispered without looking at her.

  “Naima? Naima, Naima!?” She rolled the name round on her tongue a few times in her French accent and hesitantly suggested:

  “Perhaps we can think of another name? What about a name that’s a little more Israeli? Won’t that sound better?”

  Naima turned up her nose at that. No, she wouldn’t agree to change her name. Her name was Naima and all she wanted was to go back home, to the tents, to the desert she was familiar with and to hearing the Arabic language that sounded so pleasing to her ear.

  Arlene turned to Naim with a questioning glance and he immediately responded:

  “There are no problems at all; only good intentions. Any name would be good, especially if it fits in with the rest of the girls living here. Why not?”

  Clearly, Naim thought it an excellent solution for his little Bedouin because, if she were given a different name, she would disappear from view completely. He stroked her hair affectionately and Naima, who was angry with him, too, recoiled at his touch.

  “What name, for example, might be suitable?” she asked. “Come, let’s see. Perhaps, Nechama?”

  Naim reacted sharply and said: “No, it would be better to choose an Israeli name that sounds different from Naima.”

  “Ah, what about, Inbar, Ilana. Perhaps Evelyn or Abigail?”

  “Abigail, yes, yes, that’s an excellent name. It’s also completely different from your name, right Naima?”

  He leaned over as if to ask her, but she knew that from now on that would be her name.

  “And what about your last name?” Arlene asked.

  “Naima belongs to the Ka’abiah tribe,” Naim announced proudly. “It is a large tribe that lives along the route that Joshua Ben-Nun and his people travelled when they reached this country.”

  “Wonderful! So what have we got? Abigail Ben-Nun! Abigail Ben-Nun! Arlene tried saying the name in her French accent.

  “Yes, yes,” Naim said enthusiastically and noticed that the little girl beside him was crying.

  He bent down to her and began speaking to her in Arabic. He spoke quietly, as if to hide things from the woman standing over them.

  “Listen to me, ya’Binti, my daughter; it’s only a change of name. After all, we know that you are our child, but here, there are no Bedouins, there isn’t even one Bedouin and we want you to blend in more easily with all the others.”

  Naima sniffed hard. Naim acknowledged her sadness and his heart went out to the child. He tried to embrace her, but she wriggled out of his grasp and kept on crying quietly. Naim continued trying to pacify her:

  “You are Naima, a Bedouin from the Ka’abiah tribe,” he said, “and you will always be the daughter of Leila and Sultan.”

  When there was no response from her, he tried to reach her heart again:

  “Believe me, ’ya’Binti, everything is written down in these papers I brought here,” and he kissed her soft hair. “You will always belong to us. Abigail Ben-Nun is only a name, a name that will help you mix with the others.”

  Naim stood up and spoke clearly as he changed back to the Hebrew and looked at the woman, who had been watching them in silence.

  “You know that for me and for your parents, you will always be Naima, but for all the others, you are Abigail from now on.”

  Naim was pleased. Now he knew that he could keep Naima far from the tents and conceal her identity. Only girls attended the school. They were gathered from all over the country and spoke Hebrew, Russian and other languages but none of them spoke Arabic. Naima realized immediately that she was different from the others. The color of her skin was darker and her customs were different, which made her feel even more miserable. Most of the girls did, in fact, come from homes, in which there was no warmth, from families that found it difficult to raise them.

  “We are unnecessary and unwanted children,” Natty told her on one occasion.

  Her early days at boarding school were bitter and hard to bear. The days came and went, but the nights were worse, and they were endless. She cried and cried until the very source of her tears dried up. She almost never left her room, ate close to nothing and refused to cooperate with anyone.

  On her fifth day at ‘The Home’, Arlene, the principal, came to her room and sat down on the bed beside her. She looked at her affectionately as she moved a golden curl back in its place. She embraced her very lovingly and encircled her shoulders as she caressed her hair with motherly tenderness and said things that melted little Naima’s heart.

  “Your mother is crying and longing for you, just as you are for her,” then added, “I promised your mother to think about sending you home in another few days and perhaps we’ll also consider a permanent arrangement for you to get to see your family.”

  Naima sensed the tremor in Arlene’s voice and fell into her arms sobbing bitterly. This time, big tears wet her dark cheeks. Arlene had gradually succeeded in opening a window to the child’s little heart, through which the other young girls around her at the school also entered.

  Naima began to mingle and integrate in her Israeli surroundings and even responded when she was called by her new name, Abigail.

  Arlene, an intelligent woman and an experienced educator, sensed the plight of the girl very well and realized that it went beyond hardship and longing so, she decided and arranged for the Bedouin child to go back each month to her tribe in the Negev, to the place she loved and that is what happened. She would spend two days and three nights at home and return to school with renewed vigor.

  Each month she would arrive at the tribe’s encampment, rest her golden head on her mother’s robe and inhale the familiar scent into her soul.

  Time went by and she began to miss school when she visited the encampment. She missed her lighter-skinned friends, the ones who spoke Hebrew fluently. She even began to have difficulty speaking in Arabic and sometimes had to pause to recall a word in her mother tongue as if it had slipped from memory.

  Naima lived in two worlds; she internalized them, adapted them and loved them both with all her heart.

  The little girl could not know how much her future had improved and from what a cruel fate she had been rescued.

  * * *

  When Abigail was in the fifth grade, Giron joined the teaching staff at ‘The Home’. He trained the girls in self-defense, breathing and fitness exercises. In particular, Abigail loved the wrestling lessons and she excelled at them.

  Giron was an Arab of the Christian faith. From the moment he discovered that Abigail spoke Arabic he tried to talk to her in their language at every possible opportunity. He understood that she was a Bedouin girl and couldn’t help giving her preferential treatment. This didn’t seem to matter to the other girls, but to her, to Abigail, it was really important. She looked forward to the days he would come, sought opportunities to talk to him and to be in his company whenever she could.

  She would dream of him at night and fantasize about him all day long. He was the first infatuation of a growing girl, who only saw women and girls around her.

  He would come from Bethlehem twice a week to teach them self-defense, evasion techniques and wrestling. Abigail would stare in amazement at his lithe movements and would train all the rest of the week, exactly as he told them to do. She did the homework assignments he gave them assiduously and with great dedication and even added extra training hours on her own initiative. The cries of “Good for you!” that he called out in her direction were like water for the thirsty and they added to her self-esteem and growing confidence.

  Sh
e attained such a high level of performance that Giron was persuaded to talk to Arlene, the Principal. Giron tried to inquire whether it was worth investing in the girl and sending her for further training in the various martial arts. Arlene promised to speak to her uncle, who was also her guardian, but interest waned with the passing of time.

  At the end of their seventh year, at the beginning of the long summer vacation before Eighth Grade, Giron took leave of them and left the school.

  The girls were prepared to swear that when Giron looked at Abigail he had tears in his eyes. Abigail was so angry at his leaving that she refused to bid him farewell. She ran and locked herself in her room, sat on her bed and hugged her knees close to her chest as she rocked them in sorrow.

  Her lips murmured, "Oh, my God, help me. Please, give me strength to continue living," and after a moment, she cried, "I have no strength to go on living," and her throat choked with tears.

  The days went by and Giron also dissolved from her reality and disappeared into oblivion. He resided in her mind and became part of the memory of teachers and beloved characters of her childhood.

  The girls at ‘The Home’ grew up and matured. Abigail, like her mother, became a beautiful tall, slim young woman with heavy fair hair, threaded with strands of gold that reached her waist. Her light-colored eyes also belied her Bedouin origin. She spoke fluent Hebrew without the slightest hint of an Arab accent. She often told her girlfriends that she would speak to Giron, their gymnastics teacher who was a Christian from Bethlehem, in Arabic or about where her family lived as she tried to describe what it meant to be a Bedouin. She spoke proudly of how she lived in the desert and dwelt in tents, and laughed in delight when she saw how her friends could not understand how it was possible to be homesick for a place that has hot sand and a house that no one actually lives in.

  One day Abigail asked Arlene for permission to take a friend home with her on one of her breaks away from school with her family and Arlene enthusiastically agreed.

  When the day came for Abigail to visit her family, two girls were transported to the Bedouin encampment. Abigail could not conceal her pleasure at the amazed expression of her friend, Rina and she laughed in amusement.

  “Wow, do you live here?”

  “Yes, I live here, in this tent, with my mother and my sisters. Come, look. I think it’s the most wonderful home in the whole world,” she proudly exclaimed as she pushed aside the flap to the nearby tent.

  “Here, in this tent?!” Rina cried out as she peeped inside the tent and continued to express her amazement in a loud voice. “Wow, and where are the windows here? Wait, where is a real door and how are you supposed to enter the tent?”

  A loud shout was heard from behind them and a dark little barefoot girl ran over to them, spreading her arms out and calling, “Naima! Naima!”

  Abigail smiled and quickly repeated what her friend had heard innumerable times.

  “You call me Abigail but here, I’m called Naima.”

  Beside them, at the entrance to the tent, stood a tall, willowy woman, who held a dark baby and waved to them.

  “Come, Rina, come and meet my mother, Leila,” she said.

  The young girls spent three days in the tents, the days that would remain deeply etched in their minds and would serve them when they matured. The tent, which had replaced their room at school and the atmosphere of the tribe were, indeed, special. Mixed into all of it were the smells of the desert, the smells of the hot sand together with that of the camels that wandered around, chewing the cud. There was also the aroma of fires burning, dying embers and meals being cooked on the coals. When evening fell, the blackened finjan of coffee would be placed between the embers to brew and add its aroma to the mix.

  All these made an unforgettable impression on Rina.

  * * *

  In the meantime, Naim decided the time had come to carry out the third and last stage of his plan. Now that the young girl had grown up he had to release her and himself from the commitments and promises he had made to her father.

  The truth was that he was a little apprehensive. Naim knew that a Bedouin never breaks a promise. So, it was his intention to come to Sultan to apologize and explain why he could not marry Abigail off to his son, Walid, and that it was now clear that this would not work out.

  Naim arrived at the tent in his green truck as he blew his horn rhythmically in excitement. His tall figure appeared at the opening of the men’s tent which he entered and then went to sit down on the mat, laughing exaggeratedly. His laughter was too loud and rolled unnaturally and it was clear that the goal of his visit would soon be revealed.

  After a few minutes, he asked, if possible, to see his ward, Naima.

  She arrived, barefoot, tall and willowy and resembled her mother. Her long hair fell in waves over her shoulders and back and she stood at the entrance to the tent. Naim gazed at her in amazement. She was so beautiful and looked as though she had walked out of a painting. At that moment, as he pondered about the opportunity his son had missed by not marrying such an exemplary figure of a woman, he heard Sultan speak.

  “Naima,” he said, “Naim says that he apologizes, but your turn will come another time.”

  Naima creased her brow because she didn’t understand what her father was saying. She took a few steps into the tent and waited patiently for him to continue.

  “Walid has found another wife and I believe that Allah will send you an appropriate suitor, who will call on you and ask for your hand in marriage.”

  It was clear that he found it difficult to say the words. Naim, like the others, could tell that Sultan was not pleased with what had happened and how things had turned out because he didn’t usually say much but, this time, he had changed his usual manner and continued, as if speaking to himself.

  “No harm has been done, and even though we agreed between us that you would not be his first wife, we will forego the honor. It is the will of Allah.”

  After a brief pause, he continued:

  “Your day will also come and your destined husband will claim you.”

  Abigail felt the extent of his dissatisfaction and that he was trying to minimize the matter’s importance. All the while Naim sat cloaked in silence. He propped up the cushion beside him and invited Abigail to sit on it, but she preferred to remain standing and listen to his apologetic story.

  “Walid came home with a blonde girl. He informed me, the father who sired him that this woman is the wife he desires. He didn’t seek my advice, he simply informed me.” He stopped and twisted his lips.

  “I know times have changed. But, I ask, what about the honor that is due to parents? And worst of all, she isn’t even Bedouin.”

  Sultan still kept his silence. Naim continued speaking, hoping to appease him.

  “I have come here, especially to inform the honorable father of my ward that I stand by my commitment and will continue to finance her studies; at high school and even beyond that.”

  The truth of it was that his heart ached. At the acceptance of his son’s marriage, he also saw the failure of his authority over his children, and what was more important; he had broken an oral promise that had been made between Bedouins.

  Had he known how critical this breach of promise would turn out, he would have done everything differently to keep his word, exactly as it had been given all those years ago.

  * * *

  Arlene, the Principal of ‘The Home’ was beset with financial difficulties that led her to decide to close the school. She called the relatives of her students to a meeting and promised them, as a parting gift, to arrange to place the girls, who had grown up at ‘The Home’ in institutions of continuing education according to the wishes of the families and the abilities of the girls.

  She called each girl to consult with her individually.

  When it was Abigail’s turn, she gazed with admiration at the woman who had been a mother to her for so many years.

  “What do you want to do, Abigail?” Arlene a
sked her.

  “I think I would like to be with Rina. I want to go wherever she goes.”

  Arlene regarded the beautiful young woman before her and smiled to herself. She remembered the little Bedouin girl who had come to her with her uncle more than eleven years ago, an angry and a forlorn little girl of almost six years old. How proud she felt as she looked at her now.

  “But Rina says she wants to study law at university,” Arlene said.

  Abigail, not hesitating for a second, asked the principal,

  “So, please recommend me. Help me to get accepted and I will also become a lawyer.”

  Arlene hesitated momentarily and replied after thinking briefly. “I will look into it, my child, and if I succeed…” she threw her arms up in the air and added in her French accent which had never disappeared:

  “If I succeed, that you will be my greatest achievement of all. I know Abigail. No, I am convinced that everyone will hear of the celebrated lawyer, Abigail Ben-Nun.”

  In her heart of hearts, Arlene was apprehensive of the likelihood of a tent-dwelling Bedouin woman from the desert being accepted by the society she wished to integrate into.

  The two senior years at high school raced by and the three talented girls, and close friends, Abigail, Rina and Natty all got their call up papers from the army in their final year.

  A week later, a man, who introduced himself as Barak, called Abigail.

  “Hello Abigail. No, you don’t know me. We received your name from a very fine woman called Arlene.”

  Abigail’s curiosity was aroused because she respected and admired the principal of ‘The Home’. She knew that her life would have been completely different without the patronage of this woman who had been her teacher and a mother to her in difficult times.