It was eight o’clock. From the village mosque, the prayer call of the muezzin came pleading over the rooftops. Was he still in a Jewish state? Or had he been, like his wife, transported to a far land? He wondered whether the new department head would be more pleased or appalled to know how he had spent the day. Once more turning Samaher’s quarters into a seminar room, he explained to her and her guests why the Syrians were right to not to fear the French writer’s philosophy of the absurd. Meanwhile, they were joined, his clothes clean and his hair wet from the shower, by Samaher’s husband, who waited for her to make room for him on the edge of her bed. He, too, wanted to hear the story of the Local Stranger. So did Afifa and Samaher’s grandmother. Even the large contractor peered in bewilderedly from the hallway. Everyone was there but the black horse.
The Story of the Local Stranger
Jamal bin el-Maluh, a Tunisian journalist and author, had written a rather sardonic preface for this story, which was published in 1949 in a small magazine called El-Majaleh. “Not long ago,” he wrote, “on a visit to France, I noticed that all Europe was praising a short, absurdist novel by a French colon named Albert Camus. It told the story of how, one hot day on the beach, for no reason at all, a young Frenchman named Marseault murdered an Algerian he had nothing against. ‘ The sun was too much for me,’ he casually told the court. And yet if that young Frenchman had no reason to murder anyone, and reality is absurd, as our philosophical author claims, why would it have been any less absurd of him to kill a Frenchman like himself? Why must he absurdly kill an Arab?”
And so Jamal bin el-Maluh decided to invent an absurd Arab to balance the absurd Frenchman. If everything was absurd, let the absurdity be equal. His story, a parody of Camus’s novel, began in almost the exact same words: “Today my father died. Or maybe it was yesterday. I can’t remember.”
“In The Stranger, it’s his mother,” Rivlin mused.
“Yes, I noticed that, Professor. But here it’s the father, because it would be hard to imagine a young Arab who didn’t mourn the death of his mother. A father is something else. The character’s name, Musa, even sounds like Marseault. He lives in Algiers, and he puts his dead father in a car and takes him to his village to bury him without feeling any grief. That same night he returns to the city for a date at the movies with his girlfriend. And the next day he takes off from work and goes swimming, just like the character in Camus. But he doesn’t go for an afternoon walk on the beach, because who can take the midday sun in Algiers? He waits for it to be evening—say, like now—and then strolls on the sand looking at the waves. After a while he approaches a nice French couple, a boy and a girl sitting on a bench, and asks how they are and what time it is. They tell him the time but not how they are and go on talking to each other. He’s standing near them, staring at the moon rising over the bay. It’s like a big egg yolk, and it scares him, and he can’t take his eyes off it. And so he decides to wait for the two French to start kissing in the moonlight. That’s what the French like to do, and he thinks it will calm him. But they just go on talking, and he gets more and more scared, because now the moon is overhead and could fall on him at any minute. So he goes over to the couple and asks in French, ‘What do you think of that moon?’ ‘It’s a very nice moon,’ they say. ‘You don’t think it will fall on me?’ he asks. That makes them laugh. Let them laugh, Musa thinks, at least they’ll die happy. And he takes out a big knife, slits their throats because it’s absurd, and goes home for a nap.”
“For a nap?” Rivlin asked. He couldn’t tell whether that, too, was part of the story or one of Samaher’s embellishments.
There was a stir in the room. From a corner of it, the coal black eyes of the messenger signaled his readiness to set out and at the same time stole a glance at Samaher’s husband—who, seated on the edge of the bed, was as curious as anyone to know whether the Arab murderer would stick to his absurdity in court or come up with explanation for his deed.
The shrewdly ironic Jamal bin el-Maluh kept his hero faithful to the absurd. Like Camus’s stranger, the Arab refused to say he was sorry or ask the court for mercy, and blamed it all on the moon. The one difference was that in the Arabic version, the judge, too, was so affected by the spirit of absurdity that he acquitted the defendant. And so, Samaher concluded triumphantly, Jamal bin el-Maluh proved that the Arabs could be even more absurd than the French.
The room laughed at the French defeat.
“But how could he have acquitted him?” Rivlin chided her, as if Samaher had made the whole thing up. “Are you sure that’s the end?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said, with a complacent smile. “I can’t help it, Professor.”
The Jewish Orientalist felt a tremor of delight. Though weakly and dully perhaps, the spark of inspiration promised by his Jerusalem mentor was beginning to glow like a dusty coal. He rose, took a cup of Turkish coffee from a tray brought by Samaher’s sister, downed it in a gulp like a shot of brandy, and asked the jet-colored messenger if he could locate Jamal bin el-Maluh’s wonderful and important story in the photocopied material waiting in the minibus.
“Of course he can,” Samaher answered for him. “I told you, it was he who found it.”
The young ladies bowed their heads, fearful of being blinded by the dazzling light of illicit love that flashed past the tired husband.
19.
“DID YOU MANAGE to eat?” Rivlin asked his driver, who stepped on the gas as they left the village.
“There’s plenty of time for that, Professor. Don’t worry about me. During Ramadan I eat all night. After I return you to Haifa, I have to pick up some workers in Jenin and bring them to their jobs in the morning. Have you ever been to Jenin, Professor?”
“Maybe once, thirty years ago. After the 1967 war.”
“I have a sister not far from there, in a village called Zababdeh. I’ll drop in on her tonight too. That’s the custom. On the nights of Ramadan, a brother visits his married sisters and brings them gifts. Money, food, whatever he can . . .”
“That’s something I never knew.”
“For sure. It’s to keep her from feeling low that she has to be with her husband’s family and not with her own kin on the holiday. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a pig for her tonight. . . .”
“A pig?”
“A wild boar. There’s a forest after Elkosh where I want to stop, if you have no objection, and look for some hunters.”
“Pork on Ramadan? What are you talking about?”
“Relax, Professor. My sister is a Muslim, but she lives with a Christian. Most of Zababdeh is Christian. They’ll eat anything you bring them: chickens, pigs, sharks, frogs, you name it. The pig isn’t for her. It’s for the school run by the Abuna, the Christian priest. She works as a cook there. He’s a good man, the Abuna, always ready to lend her a hand, because her man is sick and not so young anymore. She had to raise the children by herself, away from her family. She doesn’t eat pork, but she’ll cook it for the Abuna.”
“But where is she from originally?”
“Where should she be from, Professor? She’s Israeli, born in Mansura. Her bad luck was to marry someone from the West Bank twenty years ago and lose her Israeli ID. Now Israel won’t let her back in. We’ve filled out forms and begged Knesset members to intervene—nothing helps. They won’t even allow her to return with just the children, without her sick husband. They say she has to leave them behind, too. You’d think they were lepers or something. How can she leave them? You tell me, Professor. But that’s the West Bank for you. It’s a trap. The poor woman walked into it and can’t get out. . . . After Elkosh, if you don’t mind, we’ll take a dirt road, half a kilometer at most. It goes to an old grave that’s being renovated because it’s some rabbi’s from the Torah. We’ll see if there’s a pig or not. It won’t take more than half an hour. But only if it’s all right with you. If you’re in a hurry or feeling tired, just say so. I heard in the village that you slept for a while. . . .”
�
�For a while?” He grinned at Rashid’s tact. The driver must have heard of his marathon. “It was more than a little. It was four whole hours—and in your bed . . .”
“It’s an honor, Professor.” The Arab lowered his head almost to the steering wheel and murmured, “My bed is your bed.”
Rivlin’s head throbbed, as if the gentle but powerful erotic force that had lifted Samaher from her bed, grazing the pimples on her face, might make demands on him too.
The windows were open. The dry fragrance of the summer night filled the minibus, which took the curves swiftly but surely, braking before the turn-off to the dirt road. Newly blasted, to judge by the red soil still seeping from the rock on either side of it, it wound to a small structure awaiting the pouring of a concrete dome, its venerable sanctity’s seal of approval. In the meantime, while the ancient rabbi’s new home was under construction, a large jeep was parked beside it.
“There they are!” the Arab cried happily. “You can either wait for me here, Professor, or climb that hill up ahead with me. Take it from me, it’s not far, one hundred and twenty or thirty meters at the most.”
The Jew, needless to say, was not about to wait in the darkness by an empty grave. Knowing Rashid’s estimates of time and distance to be accurate, he joined him in scrambling up the steep, rocky hill. “I hope no one thinks we’re pigs,” he joked as he followed his agile guide, who looked back from time to time to see if the middle-aged Orientalist needed help.
“What a thought, Professor!” Rashid said. “They’re licensed hunters. They know enough to get a degree in it. One is a lawyer, and the other is a dentist. They only shoot what they’re allowed to. Besides, I’ll give them a warning whistle when we get close. . . .”
All the same, though the moon was bright enough to highlight the yellow flowers of the prickly pears, the Orientalist, afraid of being taken for a prowling animal, stayed close to Rashid, who sounded some shrill whistles in the direction of a clump of trees on the hilltop.
“If they’re tracking something, they won’t answer,” he whispered. “Let’s wait and see.”
A call came from the branches of the trees:
“Rashid?”
“Yes, Anton. It’s me.”
“Walow,* ‘Yes, Anton, it’s me.’” The hunters guffawed at the Hebrew answer. “Weyn inta, ya az’ar kushi?”†
“Cut it out, Marwan. You too, Anton,” Rashid said good-naturedly. “I’m not alone. I have a distinguished Jewish guest. And he speaks Arabic, so watch yourselves.”
“Min hada?”‡
“First come on down from those trees.”
“Lakin min jibtilna?”§
“Come on down.”
The hunters were perched in harness seats up near the tops of the trees, double-barreled shotguns in their hands.
“Tell us who you’ve brought.”
Rashid introduced the Jewish professor. The strong beam of a flashlight was aimed at them from a tree.
“Jesus Christ!” the lawyer said. “Are you Judge Rivlin’s husband? Believe it or not, I once tried a case before her. . . .”
“Will you two come down!” Rashid scolded. “We can’t have a conversation with you sitting in a tree.”
“Marwan is ashamed to be seen.”
“Why is that?”
“Don’t ask! I hate to admit it, but an hour ago he shot and killed a piglet. A little baby.”
“It was an accident,” Marwan apologized. “I didn’t mean to. I can’t even look at it.”
“He thought it was a jackal. But how could it have been a jackal, when the jackals were killed off long ago?”
“I never said it was a jackal, you dope! I thought it was a partridge. Watch out behind that tree, Rashid. Dir balak! La tit’harak ula t’sib ishi. . . . “∥
The two hunters clambered slowly down, their shotguns snagging on the branches. Despite the hot night, they were wearing military flak jackets; their pockets bulged with shells. The gray-haired man was the dentist. The lawyer was younger and taller. Both had pistols strapped to their waists, as if they were manhunters too.
“Welcome to Hunter’s Hill, Professor,” said the lawyer, who spoke a racy Hebrew. He gave Rivlin a cheerful handshake. “No kidding, I once appeared before your wife in a libel suit. She made mincemeat of me.”
“Deservedly?”
“Who knows what’s deserved and what isn’t, Professor?” The lawyer sighed and shouldered his gun. “Ask your wife. She always thinks she’s right. A tough woman, I’m telling you!”
Rashid came to the judge’s defense. “She’s not always so tough. You should have seen her laughing at Samaher’s wedding. The village will never forget her.”
“Maybe she laughs at weddings. But in court she has a tongue like a knife. A first-rate judge. Even the losers respect her.”
Rivlin, stung by longing, nodded modestly. Where are you now, my love? Are you in your hotel? Can you—uncomplaining, uncomforted, unable to switch rooms—cope with the tacky accommodations? Who will open your suitcase for you, hang up your clothes, make bearable your world while you sit huddled on the bed, staring glumly at the ugly, dirty walls?
“What brings you here?” the hunters asked.
Rashid told them about his cousin’s promotion to research assistant on an important scholarly project.
“Is Samaher still ill?” The question, asked by the lawyer, was addressed to Rivlin, as if it took a Jew to verify such things.
“Not unless pregnancy is an illness,” Rashid interposed angrily. Afraid the Orientalist might talk too much, he changed the subject to the Jew’s Ramadan solidarity fast.
The two hunters threw Rivlin wondering looks.
“But what will you do for us Christians, Professor?”
“I’ll fast during Lent.”
They laughed and led him and Rashid to a large rock. Behind it, underneath a black tarpaulin that they removed, a piglet lay in the moonlight.
“I don’t know how it happened,” the dentist lamented. “I’m always so careful.”
Rivlin had never seen a wild boar up close. The little creature lay peacefully on its bristles, its snout agape as though letting out a last sigh.
Rashid knelt and looked for the entry wound. He turned the piglet over, exposing a smooth, pink belly. It was three or four months old, he reckoned. He held it up by its hind legs to gauge its weight.
“How in hell could I have thought that was a partridge?” the dentist asked.
“The mother pig took off with the first shot,” Anton told them. “She’s still hanging around. We saw her from the trees, fifty or sixty meters off. Maybe she’s waiting for her baby to come back.”
“Are you going to shoot her too?” Rashid asked.
“If she insists.”
“On what?”
They laughed. “Dying.”
“What do you say?” Rashid asked. “Should we give the piglet to the Abuna?”
“Just take it as it is, unskinned and uncleaned. It’s our gift. Il-banduk hatamli kalbi.* It will bring us bad luck.”
Rashid turned to Rivlin. For the first time in their travels, he laid a light hand on the Jew’s shoulder.
“You won’t mind, Professor, if we put the piglet in the back of the minibus? Don’t worry. It’s fresh and won’t smell. But if it will bother you, forget it. You’re the passenger. It’s up to you.”
Rivlin looked at the piglet, deep within which, like a powerful sleeping pill, was a bullet. It seemed to be poignantly hugging itself, its forefeet crossed, when dangled by Rashid. The Orientalist gingerly stuck out a foot to touch the curious tail, stiffly erect in the moonlight. Dreamily he rocked the carcass with a toe, suddenly struck by the realization that he was in for another sleepless night. “All right,” he said glumly to Rashid, who was awaiting his decision. “Wrap it up, and we’ll take it to the Abuna.”
Odd, his using the Christian title of respect for a priest he had never met.
20.
AND HOW, REALLY,
did you manage to stay up that whole night? What kept you going? Wanting to meet the Abuna? Or was it the Song of Paradise that enticed you from your bed to a foreign adventure needing no passport?
You may as well admit it: the displaced and irreplaceable Arab with the coal black eyes, who is the age of your eldest son, though more like your youngest in his sure and easygoing sense of himself, has an influence over you. And not at all a bad one, though it has made his concerns and adventures yours too. A transporter of men who are at home in the give-and-take of human commerce, he finds it entirely natural to transport you, an introverted old professor, across a dotted green line on the map that, imaginary demarcation, will be haggled over until the end of time.
One way or another, now that the minibus is again speeding along the main road with a prematurely and sorrowfully shot piglet in its backseat, you can check your clarity of mind and powers of endurance—both, despite (or is it because of?) the bizarre day, amazingly keen and looking forward to the night plans of your driver, which include, so it seems, not only a charitable Abuna and a needy sister awaiting her holiday gift, but a Song of Paradise sung by an angel in a church.
“An angel?”
“A Greek Orthodox nun brought from Lebanon to sing in the Abuna’s church so that the Christians won’t feel left out during Ramadan.”
“Your Abuna sounds like a wise man.”
“He can’t be mine if I’m a Muslim,” Rashid tactfully corrects you. “But he is a wise and good man. He helps everyone. And I tell you, Professor, the Song of Paradise is heavenly. You can ask the Muslims from Nablus and Kalkilya who came to hear it last year.”
“What do they know about Paradise?” you ask, to take the young man down a peg.
“They haven’t been to it yet,” Rashid admits. “But if the angels there sing like she does, they’ll have no complaints when they get there.”
The Liberated Bride Page 23