The Liberated Bride

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Yo’el paused by the old lectern and glanced at the page of writing. His glasses, which resembled the author’s, had slipped down his nose, giving his broad, strong face a spiritual mien.

  “For giving Israel more of what Judaism once had.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About how Israeli identity might be freed from its provincialism and given wings. How it might adopt a more spiritual attitude toward a world in need of new ideas. It should be possible to combine the Jewish genius for ahistorical abstraction with Israel’s scientific accomplishments—with the curiosity, the collective solidarity, the ability to improvise, that so many Israelis have. . . .”

  “Mostly to improvise unnecessary problems,” the Orientalist opined.

  “Don’t lose your sense of proportion,” Yo’el corrected him. “Believe me, I know the problems of other peoples. Real ones of hunger and civil war and terrible natural disasters. I’m tired of spoiled Israelis whining all the time, as if the only point of comparison with their situation were the tranquillity of Europe—as if Europe itself hadn’t been within living memory the site of the most horrible of atrocities, not to mention what just happened in Bosnia. . . .”

  Rivlin smiled. “Yes, I say the same things in defense of the Middle East when I hear it attacked. But it doesn’t really do any good.”

  “What I’m saying,” Yo’el continued, removing the glasses from his nose and laying them absentmindedly on the lectern, “is that it’s time for Israel to look beyond its local squabbles. Globalism, with all that’s frightening and fascinating about it, is our business, too. We have to think of ways to cope with it. We should learn from the way we were in the 1950s, both more modest and more driven by a sense of mission.”

  “What mission could we have?”

  “But if we believed forty years ago that we had one—that we had something important to contribute to the world even though half of it didn’t recognize us—why not now, when everything is so much more open and interconnected? Just think of what it does for our pride when an Israeli rescue team or field hospital saves lives in an earthquake or a flood somewhere. And that’s just a fraction of what we could do. It would give us a better perspective on ourselves.”

  “A better perspective . . .” Rivlin sighed. He had a great liking for his barrel-chested brother-in-law, whose old safari jacket brushed against the lectern. “Yes, that’s what we need. But we’d better get going. You’ve forgotten you have a flight tonight. Just be careful not to switch glasses with Agnon. It won’t bother him to have yours, but what are you going to do with his in southeast Asia?”

  They returned to the little street. Although Rivlin would have liked to take his brother-in-law to the hotel and show him how the garden had changed, he thought better of it. The garden meant nothing to Yo’el. It’s my own open wound, he told himself.

  It was getting dark. The rain had eased up. Above the restaurant in Abu-Ghosh the clouds had parted to reveal a dark swath of sky in which, lost and distant, errant stars glittered. Yo’el was in a buoyant mood. Hungry, he went to the kitchen to seek inspiration before ordering.

  “They’ll serve you dinner on the plane,” Ofra reminded him.

  “I’ll skip it.”

  “You know you won’t.”

  “So I won’t. So what? Who knows when we’ll be back here?”

  An elderly waiter, amused by the broken Arabic of the Israeli who had stopped for dinner on his way to Singapore, soon covered the table with dozens of colorful appetizers in dishes so small that the international consultant had no qualms about finishing all of them. But the gloom of parting hung over the two sisters. Moved by his sister-in-law’s strained face with no makeup, Rivlin turned to his wife and urged her to relate a strange dream she had had that week.

  Hagit did not want to. “Then I’ll tell it,” Rivlin said, starting to describe what he remembered. “You can stop right there,” Hagit said, taking him aback with her sternness. “It’s of no interest. And anyway, since when do my dreams belong to you?” Hurt to the quick, he stammered something in his own defense. The judge patted his knee under the table, to let him know that she was annoyed not with him but with her here-today-gone-tomorrow brother-in-law, who was still heartily polishing off dishes that were now so small that their contents looked more like medicine than food.

  RETURNING HOME AT MIDNIGHT, Rivlin had an anxious feeling about Ofer and telephoned his attic apartment. As there was no answer, he dialed the emergency number of the Jewish Agency. There he was told, in a French-accented Hebrew, that Ofer had been sick for the past few days and that the speaker was filling in for him. Rivlin dialed the apartment once more. Again no one answered. “He must have felt better and decided to go out,” said the naturally optimistic judge.

  But Rivlin slept poorly. When there was still no answer in the morning, he phoned Ofer’s landlady. Ofer, she told him, had come down with such a bad case of the flu that, having no one to take care of him, he had gone to the hospital. Yesterday, he had called to say that his condition had improved. Asked what hospital he was in, however, the landlady said she didn’t know. Perhaps it was just French discretion.

  “You see?” Rivlin said to his wife. “He’s been in Paris for five years, and he’s still all alone. And who would want to take care of him when his heart is far away?”

  “And suppose it is?” Hagit replied. “Is it up to you to decide where his heart should be?”

  3.

  WAS IT AN INDICATION of the position he would take that Rivlin convened the secret appointments committee in his own office rather than in the conference room next to the rector’s office, which was on the same floor as Miller’s alcove? He did not wish Miller to see them and guess what it was about.

  Yet until the last minute he was undecided and open to persuasion. Despite his hostile feelings for the young lecturer, who had arrogantly torn apart not only his introduction but the entire book that was to follow, he admired Miller’s courage and honesty. Whatever one thought of his beliefs—which, Rivlin hoped, did not have to be taken too seriously—he had risked his promotion by being so outspoken.

  The appointments secretary, a middle-aged woman who had been in charge of such meetings for years, was unhappy with Rivlin’s decision. “How am I going to bring all the refreshments down to your office?” she wanted to know.

  But Rivlin was adamant. “You’ve dealt with bigger problems,” he told the appointments secretary, who had once worked in the Near Eastern Studies department.

  And indeed, coffee, tea, cakes, and sandwiches were on hand when the committee convened to review the secret file. The other two members were the head of the Political Science department, an assistant professor from America, and a fellow Orientalist from Bar-Ilan University. Rivlin felt a comradely kinship with this man, a pleasantly bashful and reliable associate professor his own age whose field, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Sudan, was every bit as thorny as Algeria. Occasionally, the two had long telephone conversations in which they compared the form fundamentalism took in each of the two countries and argued which was worse. Rivlin had persuaded the dean to put the “Sudanese” on the appointments committee, both because he enjoyed talking shop with him and because he needed an ally to implement his plan, which was to block Miller’s advancement in Near Eastern Studies by shunting him off to the Political Science department, the American liberalism of which could better cope with the young lecturer’s revisionist theories.

  The committee had already discussed, in a previous session, Miller’s curriculum vitae and publications—which, though not numerous, had appeared in a number of prestigious American journals well known to the political scientist. Now they had to review his academic references and to discuss whether the fact that some of them had not been received was due to negligence or disapproval. Rivlin chose to read the recommendations aloud and to parse them sentence by sentence, dwelling especially on any reservations expressed between the lines.

  He was cut
short by the head of the Political Science department, who did not think this was necessary. He, too, had heard of the tempting offer made to the young lecturer by the University of the Negev, which had a reputation for body snatching, and suspecting Rivlin of setting a trap, he warned against permitting the provincial nitpicking so prevalent on their campus to lead to the loss of a promising talent.

  Just then the door opened. An unfamiliar fragrance wafted into the office. Before the door could be shut again, Rivlin spied a woman in a silk shawl.

  It was Afifa. “Professor,” she said. “If I could have just a minute with you, please . . .”

  He hurried into the corridor, leaving the door open for the committee members to see him take the hand of the flustered woman and ask, with concern and in Arabic, about his M.A. student.

  “She’ll be fine,” Samaher’s mother answered in Hebrew.

  But Rivlin insisted on continuing in Arabic, his voice echoing loudly down the corridor.

  “Le’inno hunak fi Ramallah kunt kalkan min shanha, bad-ma shuft kif kanet mujtahida kul-halkad fi ’l-masrahiyya ma’a hada ’l-jinni. Le’inno hada kan ra’i’. Samaher mitl hahim yahudi . . . bitjanin! If-takaret inno fakat b’ilnisbi lahada b’tistahik h’al-alameh.”*

  “That’s just it,” Afifa said excitedly. “I’ve brought another story. It’s time to give Samaher her grade.”

  “Shwoy-shwoy. Kul shi biji fi ’l-nahayeh. B’halmuddeh stanini hon. Bad shwoy bantihi ’l-jalseh u’nu’ud b’il nisbi lal-hakayeh.”†

  He returned to his office, sank pleasurably into his armchair, and declared with a deep sigh:

  “I’d be the last to deny that Miller is a solid and independent-minded scholar who’s up on the latest approaches, which may yet—who knows?—turn out to have value. That isn’t what bothers me. The problem is something else. I must say that I don’t understand what Miller is doing in our department. When I look at the bibliographies of his publications—and they’re very impressive, very up-to-date—I can’t help asking, where are the Arabic texts? Where are the original sources? I’m concerned about the systematic absence of such references. Does he think that nothing written by Arabs is relevant to what he writes about them? After all, one has to assume the man knows some Arabic. I don’t mean that he knows it like Akri—none of us do, not having had the good fortune to be born in Iraq. But he must know how to read it, and perhaps even to write and speak a bit. Why, then, doesn’t he do something with this knowledge? Does he find Arabic texts so tedious and uninteresting that he prefers to rely on second- and thirdhand Western translations of them? Perhaps he thinks the Middle East is not the subject of a separate discipline but simply grist for his theoretical mill. He’s even implied as much in his conversations with me. For his purposes, any other area—Southeast Asia or South America or Africa—would do just as well.”

  “And suppose it would,” the political scientist said crossly. “What of it?”

  “Nothing. It’s perfectly legitimate. The only question is why he needs to be in our department. Here, take this article of his. It appeared in a journal that’s apparently reputable, though it’s one I’ve never heard of. It actually contains an Arabic quotation—full of errors. Have a look . . .”

  He handed it to the associate professor from Bar-Ilan.

  “That’s not so serious in itself. But it’s typical of a certain kind of scholarship. You might call it the global approach. I don’t say it isn’t important—but it belongs in a different department, in political science, say, or sociology or international relations. It’s more interdisciplinary, and less appropriate for a historically oriented department like our own. Here in Near Eastern Studies we deal with pedestrian topics like ‘The Political Strategy of the Wakf Party in Egypt Between the Two World Wars,’ not with theoretical models.”

  “Just what are you suggesting?” the political scientist asked.

  “I’m suggesting that, for Miller’s own good, we return his application to the dean with a request to appoint a new committee, or at least a new chairman for this one. Let him be promoted somewhere else, perhaps in political science. After all, he speaks your language.”

  “I’d grab him immediately,” the political scientist said eagerly. “I just don’t have an available slot.”

  “Then why not work something out with Sociology? I’ve heard they have a part-time slot in their B.A. honors program. You might look into it. And there’s always the possibility of a position in our foreign-students program. You could create a genuinely interdisciplinary track . . .”

  The secretary felt the ground slipping out from under her. “But what will we do?” she asked in alarm. “Start the whole process all over?”

  “Why all over? Miller’s file is complete. It has all his recommendations, or at least all those that will arrive. It simply needs to be transferred to another department.”

  The political scientist exploded. “Hold on there! We’ll just lose him that way. He’ll leave us for Beersheba.”

  Rivlin clapped his hands in pious distress.

  “How unfortunate! Still, it’s not a national tragedy, seeing that Beersheba is part of the state of Israel. I understand your concern. But you have to realize that we in Near Eastern Studies don’t have many positions and have to think of the future. I’m not so young anymore. My retirement is approaching, and some little heart attack or stroke—I had an in-law who recently went in a day—could keep me from reaching it. . . . And then what? Be left without a North African specialist? I have nothing against Miller. Not that I always know what he’s talking about, but that’s no doubt my own problem. But a promotion would give him tenure and leave our department full up. It’s my obligation to think of a successor for myself. Take our greatest Israeli Orientalist, Professor Tedeschi, who died a week ago in Jerusalem. His mind was at rest, because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that I would carry on in his place. But Miller isn’t really interested in the Arabs. He’d never waste his time like the two of us here—two Orientalists of the old school—on such drudgery as examining old religious court records from Algeria or ink-stained stencils of the harangues of Sudanese imams. That’s the truth. Which isn’t to say that my colleague from Bar-Ilan and myself may not be old fogies for believing that dull spadework is crucial for the advancement of science . . .”

  4.

  HIS COLLEAGUE FROM BAR-ILAN joined him in recommending that Miller’s file be transferred from the department. The meeting was adjourned, and Rivlin hurried to invite Afifa into his office.

  “Have some cookies,” he said. “Perhaps there’s some juice left, too.”

  She shook her lovely head, from which the silk shawl slowly dropped. Without warning, as on her previous visit, she let out a hot, overwrought groan.

  Rivlin said nothing, curious to see how deeply her distress stirred him. Cautiously, he offered her a box of tissues. She took one, wiped her eyes with it, and left it soggy with tears on his desk.

  “Did Rashid bring you?”

  “Rashid!” She waved Samaher’s cousin away with both hands. “He’s too involved with the family. They’re all like that, those Arabs who . . .”—she groped for the right phrase—“ . . . who lost their villages. They don’t know who they are or where they belong, and they don’t let a body be. He’s always fretting about Samaher, as if she didn’t have a husband to do that. And about that sister in Zababdeh he wants to bring back to Israel. . . . Even Grandmother, though she cares about that sick Christian, too, told him, ‘Enough, give us some peace! Shu hada? Hada zalameh hatyar u’nus, musn, leysh lay’kun l’halo?’”*

  “The man’s a jinni,” Rivlin said, half to himself, as if remembering.

  Afifa’s big, bright eyes shut unhappily.

  “U’shu ’l-aaher?”† He switched gently back to Arabic. “Rah el-habl, ow yimkin inno ma balash b’il-marrah?”‡

  “The doctors were wrong.” She resisted the intimacy of switching to her own language. “We thought having a baby would bring her some p
eace of mind, so we believed it . . .”

  “Never mind. Min nahitkun el-iman k’tir kwoyis.§ But where is Samaher? At home?”

  “Yes. She’s still resting. That’s why I’ve brought you the last story, so that you can give her—but really, Professor—her final grade. It’s terribly important to her husband’s father that she get her degree.”

  Her broad, clear face moved him to compassion. Pleased with having blocked Miller’s tenure, he thought languorously of bathing in her tub in the Ramadan twilight. He glanced at his watch. “All right, let’s begin,” he said, trying to sound impatient despite his smile.

  This story, too, was a strange one. Outwardly, it was an animal fable, one of a series written during World War II by an Egyptian veterinarian named Shauki ibn Zamrak. Invited to Algiers by the Vichy government after the fall of France to serve as a consultant for a new zoo established for the amusement of French children, Ibn Zamrak, who called himself “the Arab Dr. Doolittle,” also wished to educate young Arabs about the animals brought in cages from the interior of Africa. And so he began publishing stories in the local Arabic press, in which, being a broad-minded man, he did not shrink from describing even the most dislikable beasts. His fable of the snake and hyena who became friends, translated into Hebrew by Samaher and typed up, was now held by Afifa—who, putting on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that gave her a rather intellectual look, insisted, as if the Orientalist were illiterate, on reading it to him.

  The Snake and the Hyena

  Once upon a time there was an old hyena named Abu-Maher who had trouble finding carcasses to eat. In part this was because of a drought, which made the leopards and wolves less generous with the meat from their kills, and in part because younger and spryer hyenas than Abu-Maher were getting to it before him. One way or another, he grew thinner and thinner and more and more depressed. His laughter at night was bitter and strained, and life was a burden to him. All hyenas hang their heads, since they are ashamed of eating what others have killed, but Abu-Maher’s head hung so low that although he was tall for a hyena, his tongue practically licked the ground.