One night, as Abu-Maher was nosing around some rocks in the desert, he encountered the wary old viper Ibn Sa’id, who was busy digesting inside his long striped stomach a young field mouse eaten two days earlier. Abu-Maher was so hungry that even though fresh meat disgusted him, he thought of eating Ibn-Sa’id. His cast-iron stomach could digest the worst offal; however, his parents of blessed memory had never taught him whether a snake’s poison is found only in its fangs, or in its veins as well. And so before undertaking so risky an enterprise, as he bent over the coiled viper and opened his jaws, which glistened with good, strong teeth, he said, without beating around the bush, “Would you mind telling me where you keep your poison? And also, does it lose its power when you die, or does it remain deadly?”
Ibn-Sa’id had never been asked such a searching question about himself, let alone by an experienced and desperate pair of jaws located so near his head. Though brave and honest to a fault, he was afraid to tell the truth, which was that all his poison was concentrated in a gland behind his fangs. And so he lied and told the old hyena that the poison was everywhere in his body, even in his tail, and that it was best to leave him alone.
The old hyena Abu-Maher, not knowing any better, found the snake’s answer logical, sadly snapped his jaws shut, and went off behind a large rock to lie down and pray for mercy.
The snake felt sorry for the hungry but fair-minded hyena, who could have killed him from sheer disappointment. Having digested the field mouse and passed what was left of it, he crawled quietly over to Abu-Maher, coiled himself gently around his neck, and whispered a surprising proposal:
“You know as well as I do that nobody likes snakes or hyenas. Even though we work hard for our livelihood and are no worse than other animals, we aren’t well thought of. Frankly, I see no hope of changing such superstitions in the near future. Yet if the two of us get together and become friends, perhaps others will think better of us, too.
Abu-Maher listened to the snake’s hisses and replied:
“But there is a great difference between us. Your bad reputation comes from God and is very ancient. Mine comes from holding up a mirror to mankind, because I eat dead meat and laugh, just as men do.”
“Indeed,” the snake admitted, “my reputation is worse and more frightening than yours, since I have been cursed by Allah himself. And as I need your help to improve it, I’ll do more for you than you need do for me. Not only do I require less food than you, I’m a better hunter, especially in times of drought. If you let me ride on your back, we can easily approach animals that have no fear of you, since they know you won’t eat them until they’ve been killed by another animal. I’ll slip off your back, kill them by surprise, and then you can feast on them.”
And so the cunning snake and the hungry old hyena became friends. Hated by everyone else, they learned to like each other and formed a single monster that the beasts of the desert were soon afraid of. This great fear of them led to their being held in awe, and awe is the mother of glory.
5.
RIVLIN LISTENED ATTENTIVELY, his chin in his palm. Despite his efforts to find some social or political moral in the Egyptian veterinarian’s fable, all he could think of was Samaher in her beard, dressed as a young rabbi and pulling out a whip to lash the doll held by her cousin.
He took the translation from her mother and put it in her file. “Very good,” he said. “There’s food for thought here. These old stories collected by Dr. Suissa are treasure troves.” And while Afifa, plump and bejeweled, regarded him with big eyes, waiting to see whether Samaher had completed her seminar requirements, he added, “The translation is excellent. Did you help her?”
He could not tell whether her hot flush meant “yes” or “no.”
“It’s a pity you never finished your studies,” he rebuked her. “You should ask one of the secretaries if your university entrance-exam results are still valid.”
She spread helpless hands. “Valid for what?”
“For continuing your studies.”
“But why should I continue them? It’s Samaher who needs her degree.”
“And she’ll get it. Just keep her cousin away from her. He hangs around her too much.”
“It’s not her fault, Professor. It’s yours.”
“Why mine?”
“He’s always talking about you. He thinks that if he can get you to like him, you’ll help his sister return to Israel.”
“But that’s crazy.”
“He’s even found some official in the General Security Service who’s an old student of yours. Do you have a student in the GSS, Professor? What is he doing there?”
“What kind of question is that?” The Orientalist chuckled. “I have old students in the GSS, in the Mossad, in the foreign office. Why do you think there’s a demand for Near Eastern Studies? To hear about hyenas and snakes?”
Afifa reddened again. “Well, there’s a student of yours there who thinks a lot of you. Rashid says he could take care of everything if you’d talk to him. Believe me, that’s the only reason he hangs around Samaher. It has nothing to do with her.”
“Then why doesn’t he speak to me?”
“He’s afraid to.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of your having thought he was making fun of the Jews in that play in Ramallah.”
“But it’s his right to make fun of us. His Dybbuk was marvelous.”
“Well, I’m telling you, Professor, you’re all he thinks and talks about.”
“Honestly, Afifa, would it make sense to separate Ra’uda from her husband by bringing her back to Israel?”
“But of course it would, Professor. She’s Israeli. And this husband of hers, he’s from the West Bank and a Christian and sick. He could die at any time. Where will that leave her?”
“I suppose so.” Rivlin felt exhausted. He rose, stretched, led Afifa to the departmental office, and asked a secretary to look for her old file and tell her what credits she could get for courses taken twenty years ago.
Afifa, who had no intention of going back to school, stood embarrassed in a corner. Rivlin went to check his mailbox. As he emptied it, he smelled the scent of Miller’s aftershave. The young lecturer was in the middle of sealing an envelope, doing a thorough job of it. Rivlin gave him a friendly smile and invited him to speak at a one-day Orientalists’ conference soon to take place in Jerusalem, on the first month’s anniversary of Tedeschi’s death.
6.
THE WINTER, HAVING BEGUN at Hanukkah with an impressive display of wind and rain, had petered out. Days of unseasonably high temperatures arrived and parched the earth. “If the summer has no bounds,” Rivlin said to Hagit, “I may as well take some vacation.” He intended, he told her, to take all the shopping coupons accumulated over the past year and exchange them for gifts. “They lose their value after December 31,” he explained. “Pick what you want from the catalogs, and I’ll get it.”
Equipped with the coupons and Hagit’s instructions, he set out. His first stop was a shopping mall, where, after climbing up and down many flights of stairs, he came to a small office near the washrooms, signed a form in triplicate, and was given a large, green plastic carrying bag. Next, in a department store, he received a beach towel and an apron. From there he went to a supermarket and after patiently standing in line was rewarded with two small bottles of olive oil and—for only two extra shekels—a bottle of detergent.
A second shopping mall, at the southern edges of the city, was his next-to-last destination. Here they were out of Teflon frying pans and offered him a choice between a saucepan with a transparent cover and six flower-patterned Turkish coffee cups. Lacking clear directives, he phoned the courtroom and found Hagit between trials. A brief discussion ended in a decision to take the saucepan. “When do we ever drink Turkish coffee?” Hagit asked. Finally, he went to a store where, although his coupons for it had become invalid, he obtained a rather odd-looking desk lamp as a premium for buying a cookbook of pasta recipes. B
urdened with his acquisitions, he returned home in time for lunch and wrote the following letter to the municipality:
Traffic Department
Municipality of Haifa
Re: U-turns at the intersection of Moriah and Ha-Sport Streets.
To Whom It May Concern:
I wish to propose a way of facilitating U-turns at the intersection of Moriah and Ha-Sport Streets. Such turns, though legal and unavoidable for drivers heading from Carmel Center for the shops and cafés on the east side of the street, are impeded by the unnecessarily wide sidewalk. As a result, even cars with power steering, like my own, must make a broken U-turn, reversing in the middle of the intersection and in the face of oncoming traffic.
A careful examination has led me to conclude that, were the unnecessary pavement on the left-hand side of the entrance to Ha-Sport Street (which is of little use to anyone, since it slopes and is fenced off from the street) to be reduced, it would be possible to execute a U-turn in a single maneuver, making it easier and safer for drivers in both directions.
I would greatly appreciate your giving this matter your careful consideration. I would also be happy, should it be deemed helpful, to come to the municipality in person to explain my plan.
Sincerely,
Professor Yochanan Rivlin
Department of Near Eastern Studies
University of Haifa
7.
HANNAH TEDESCHI TELEPHONED EVERY day to consult with Rivlin about the memorial conference in Jerusalem. If Hagit picked up the phone first, Hannah took advantage of the opportunity to ask for legal advice regarding Tedeschi’s first wife, never divorced by him despite her many years in an institution.
Ever since Tedeschi’s retirement from teaching eight years previously, his connection with the Near Eastern Studies department at Hebrew university had grown tenuous. Hannah was concerned, therefore, that if the conference were left to the department to plan, it would become a dumping grounds for second-rate papers unpresentable elsewhere. And so, making Rivlin her adviser, she chose the lecturers herself, leaving only the administrative details to the university. She asked Rivlin to give the main lecture, on the subject of literary sources of the Algerian Terror.
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” he excused himself. “Carlo knew this was a subject in which I was still groping in the dark. I’m still not prepared to lecture on it. But I will give a eulogy. I’d like to talk about Carlo’s humanity.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That’s my secret.”
“Be careful, Yochanan. There are sensitive areas . . .”
After much debate and changing of minds, the program was decided on. The morning would begin with two Ottomanists, one discussing the age-old relationship between Turks and Arabs, and the other, Ataturk in retrospect. They would be followed by a scholar with some new ideas about the period of the great Abbasid caliphate, on which Tedeschi had written his doctorate, after which the translatoress would present several Sufi texts by Al-Hallaj, polished versions of her improvisations in Ramallah.
The afternoon session would begin with Dr. Miller and a provocative lecture in the spirit of Said’s Orientalism (a book Tedeschi had been surprisingly tolerant of) on the profession of Near Eastern Studies. Then would come two traditional scholars, the “Sudanese” from Bar-Ilan and an “Iraqi” from the Dayan Center, who would defend their approach against Miller’s revisionism.
In the evening, as dusk appropriately fell, the Orientalists would be joined for the last, memorial session by a number of prominent Jerusalemites and members of the city’s Italian-Jewish community. There would be a violin and flute duet and three eulogies. The first of these would be given by the head of the Near Eastern Studies department in Jerusalem, who would review Tedeschi’s scholarly work; the second, by a speaker from the Truman Institute, who would talk about the Jerusalem polymath’s public activities; and the concluding one by Rivlin, who, if not as the dead man’s successor then at least as his close friend, would mourn Tedeschi’s passing and reveal a secret.
“But what kind of secret?” Hannah asked again.
“Wait and see.”
“Just be careful you don’t say anything you’ll regret, Yochanan. Don’t be carried away by truths no one needs to hear. I’m still living, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
Meanwhile, the winter that had petered out returned full force. The skies clouded over, and fierce winds blew. Three days before the conference, the forecasters predicted snow in Jerusalem. Hannah Tedeschi now phoned several times a day. What should they do? Should the conference be postponed? Who of Tedeschi’s elderly Jerusalem friends would brave the heights of Mount Scopus in a snowstorm?
Rivlin pooh-poohed the snow warnings. If it snowed in Jerusalem every time somebody said it would, he joked, the city would be known as the Geneva of the Middle East rather than as its disaster zone.
But the warnings came faster and more furiously. Snow had blocked roads in the Galilee and a blizzard had closed the ski slopes on Mount Hermon. Hannah’s telephone calls were more and more hysterical. Perhaps, she said, the event should be moved to a hall in town. “On the contrary,” Rivlin replied. “Snow on Mount Scopus will tell us who Carlo’s true friends were.”
Yet on the day before the conference, as he was putting the finishing touches to his eulogy, the news bulletins announced that the capital had been closed to everything but buses and vehicles with four-wheel drive. The translatoress, afraid of losing him too, phoned at once. Rivlin turned to Hagit and said, “Why spend a day on buses when I have a better idea? I’ll hire Rashid. How much could he ask for?”
8.
HE PHONED RASHID AND got straight to the point:
“Does your van have four-wheel drive?”
“For you, Professor,” Rashid said, “I’ll have four-wheel drive.”
“What do you mean?” Rivlin asked.
In a village near Mansura, the messenger told him, was a hunter who rented out his jeep.
“Then let’s hunt for Jerusalem tomorrow in the snow,” Rivlin asked. “Just tell me what the pleasure will cost me.”
There was silence. Then Rashid almost whispered:
“What have I done to you, professor, to make you insult me?”
“Either I pay you, Rashid,” Rivlin said, “or we don’t go.”
Hotly, however, the Arab explained that he had been intending to visit Jerusalem anyway. He wanted to apply again at the Civil Administration Bureau for an Israeli identity card for his sister, and there was no better day than a snowy one, when the lines would be short. Rivlin relented. “But only on the condition that I come with you and try to use my influence,” he said. “I heard from Samaher’s mother that there’s a GSS official in the Bureau who’s a former student of mine.”
“Not one student, Professor,” Rashid said. “Three. A person might think no one joined the GSS without first taking a course with you . . .”
And so on a gray, cold, misty morning, a big old jeep pulled up in front of the Rivlins’ building on the French Carmel. It was still full of hunting gear, including a harness seat, a large flashlight, some nets, and a partridge snare with a long, shiny knife in it. Although it had a sturdy top, Rashid covered the Orientalist with a woolen army blanket. “The canvas,” he observed, “isn’t windproof.”
The weather forecast had been taken seriously, for the road leading up to Jerusalem was almost empty. The snowflakes drifting down on the large cemetery at the city’s entrance were no sign that the storm was letting up. Unplowed snow caked the city’s streets, and Rashid shifted into four-wheel drive at Rivlin’s request, though even without it the jeep’s big wheels crunched easily over the white powder.
They talked little on the way. The blanket made Rivlin pleasantly drowsy, and Rashid, concentrating on driving an unfamiliar car in bad weather, was uncommunicative. He inquired briefly about Hannah Tedeschi, wanted to know how important the husband had been whose face he had covered
with a sheet, and then lapsed into silence. He did not even respond when, as they started the ascent to the capital, Rivlin awoke and praised his double-brided production of The Dybbuk. Nor did he mention Samaher. The Rabbi of Miropol’s exorcism, the Orientalist thought with a grin, had worked. The jinni had been banished—and not only onstage . . .
Yet once he had killed the motor upon reaching the Civil Administration building in north Jerusalem, the Arab abandoned his reserve. Sitting with Rivlin in the jeep, in teeth-chattering cold amid European-sized snowbanks, he explained the bureaucratic obstacles that kept his sister from returning to her native village with her children. The officials, he said, acted as if they were dealing with an intercontinental border. And why? Solely to protect the rights of the sick father, who might miss his sons and complain to the Red Cross that he wasn’t allowed to visit them. “How odd,” Rivlin said. “I never would have imagined they’d worry about such a thing.”
“They don’t. It’s just an excuse to turn my sister down. You know Ra’uda’s husband, professor. He’s a sick old Christian who eats from a soldier’s mess kit. Does he look the type to complain?”
“But what should I say to them?”
“That you’ll be responsible.”
“For what?”
“For no one complaining.”
“How can I be responsible for anyone’s complaints?” Rivlin smiled and pulled the blanket back up over him. “I can’t always keep myself from complaining.”
The Liberated Bride Page 53