2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (36 page)

As they passed through a cordon, soldiers searched them, stripping them of their possessions. Ahead of them, one of their neighbours, recently married, who quibbled about surrendering his savings, was shot dead before the horrified eyes of his new bride. After that, no one protested. The al-Ali family were robbed of their money, their gold jewellery, their watches, even their silver coffee cups. All they were allowed to keep was a bundle of clothes, some bread and olives and a bag of oranges.

“Run! Run!” The soldiers fired volleys of shots above their heads. But the asphalt road was barred, and they were forced to make their way eastwards across the stubbly, newly harvested fields.

By now it was midday and the heat was intense, the sky so blue and hard it seemed to glimmer like lazurite. In the coastal plain, the temperatures in July can easily reach forty degrees. There was no shade at all—only a few prickly thorn bushes growing among the rocks. Beyond the plain stretched a long hill, and they could see a miserable procession of their fellow townspeople already stumbling towards the stony horizon.

Mr Ali paused. He sat back in his chair and stared at the sky, his eyes wrinkled up as though to keep out too much brightness.

“Each time I remember this story, my heart turns into stone.”

“Go on,” I said.

The al-Ali family joined the procession walking across the fields, stepping out briskly at first, buoyed up by their anger, and confident that this was just a temporary situation, that soon the Arab armies would drive out the intruders and they would be able to return to their home. After a couple of hours, as they mounted what they thought was the crest of a hill, only to find another steeper one stretching out ahead of them, their hearts sank. Sitting with their backs to the sun, the women with their scarves pulled over their heads for shade, they ate some of their bread and olives, and quenched their thirst on the oranges. They had brought so little water—who would think of carrying water instead of silver and gold? All around them, other families were sitting, too exhausted and dehydrated to move, while others abandoned the possessions they could no longer carry, and plodded on up the hill in the searing sun.

As the day waned, they came into the small village of Kirbatha. There was a well there—but no bucket. The women took off their scarves, tied them together, and lowered them down till they tipped the little black circle of water, then pulled them up and sucked the water from the damp cloth.

The third day of the march was the worst. The women’s sandals were already falling apart, their feet were bleeding and swollen. Netish thorns and blue field-thistles snagged at their skirts and legs.

“Go,” said his mother to her older son, Tariq. “Go on ahead and find us some water to drink. Maybe there is a village up there with a well.”

But there was no water. All along the way people were fainting from thirst and exhaustion. On a rocky scree the boy came across a woman staggering under the weight of a huge bundle. Two watermelons, it looked like; and he thought, if she drops them, I’ll pick them up and take them back to my mother. But as he drew closer the woman sank to the ground and he saw that she was carrying two babies.

“Help me, brother,” she pleaded. “My boys are too heavy for me. I cannot carry them.”

The boy hesitated. He was only fourteen years old, and he already had his mother and sisters to look after; but it was clear this woman was not going to make it.

“Take just one of them,” she said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.

Tariq looked at the two babies. They looked terribly red and wrinkled, their eyes screwed shut against the light. How could he choose? Then one of them stirred and opened its dark bright eyes, which seemed to stare straight into his. The woman, seeing him waver, wrapped the baby in her shawl and thrust it into his arms.

“Go on ahead. Don’t wait for me. Go. I’ll meet you in Ramallah.”

Mr Ali went silent. I
gazed
at the green sunlit garden, the busy thrushes, the bursting daffodils, but I could feel a desert wind on my cheek, and all I could see was dry rocks and thorn bushes.

“That was you? The baby in the bundle?”

He nodded.

A door opened and from the interior of the house I heard the sweet jangle of Arabic music and the noisy patter of daytime television. Then Mrs Shapiro appeared on the doorstep wearing her dressing gown and her
Lion King
slippers.

“Will you take a coffee mit us?”

Mr Ali didn’t reply. His eyes were fixed somewhere else.

“My name is Mustafa,” he said quietly. “It means one who is chosen. My brother Tariq told me this story.”

I wanted to touch him, to take his hand or put my arm round his shoulder, but there was a reserve about him, a self-containedness, that made me hold back.

“Did he tell you what happened to the other baby?” I asked.

Mr Ali shook his head. “He told me only that the soldier who shot at the bridegroom had on his arm a tattoo—a number.”

Mr Ali’s story had cast a shadow over me, and I found I couldn’t join in with the cheerful gossip over coffee. I caught his eye once or twice, and I kept wanting to ask him what had happened to the al-Alis; whether they had all made it to Ramallah, and whether he, Mustafa, had ever found his mother and brother. But in my heart I knew the answer.

I was troubled, too, by the story of the soldier with the number tattooed on his arm—what was in his mind when he shot the young bridegroom? How could a Jew who was himself a survivor of the death trails of Europe act with such casual cruelty against the hapless civilians of his promised land? What had happened in his heart? Then I started to wonder about Naomi herself—when she had let herself be photographed in the archway at Lydda, did she really not know what had taken place there two years before? Or did she know, and consider it a necessary price?

“What are you thinking about, Georgine?” Mrs Shapiro reached across and patted my hand. “Is it your running-away husband, darlink? Don’t worry, I heffa plan.”

“No. I’m thinking about…how hard it is to live in peace together.”

She threw me an oblique look. “Ach, this is too serious.” She lit a cigarette for herself and one for Nabeel. “Better to enjoy the happiness of today.”

§

After we’d finished our coffee I left to go home. The sun was still shining and Wonder Boy was still sitting patiently under the tree, gazing at the thrushes’ nest. Mr Ali was back up his ladder. Inside the house, Nabeel was clattering pans and playing music, and Ishmail was vacuuming. A westerly breeze stirred the tips of the saplings and made the daffodils dance. But I kept thinking about the twin babies in the bundle, heavy as watermelons—the one who was chosen, and the one who was not.

If only I had Mrs Shapiro’s gift for living in the present, I thought, as I walked home past the front gardens greening with new growth; trees, shrubs, weeds, grass—everything was coming to life. Near the corner of my street, a willow tree was sticking out its silvery buds through a railing. I thoughtlessly snapped off a pussy-paws twig, and my mind flashed back to the bunches of pussy willows and catkins we used to bring in to decorate our classroom at Junior School in Kippax. Soon it would be Easter. I remembered Mrs Rowbottom’s plonkety-plonk on the piano and our thin wobbly voices as we sang ‘There is a green hill far away’. How that hymn had scared me as a child. It had seemed a harsh intrusion into the happy world of Easter bunnies and foil-wrapped eggs. I knew now, as I hadn’t known at the time, that those hills were not green at all—they were rocky and barren. I’d been puzzled, then, by the absence of a city wall; now I realised that so many walls had been built and knocked down and rebuilt again over the centuries, that time itself had lost track of what belonged to whom.

He hung and suffered there
. Yes, the history of that place was steeped in cruelty. Mrs Rowbottom had glossed over the details of what happened during the crucifixion and tried to convince us that ‘
without a city wall
’ meant ‘outside’. But when I asked Dad he said, “War and religion—they both ‘ave an unquenchable thirst for human blood. They feed off each other like nuggins.”

Mum rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“E’s off again.”

“What’s…?”

“Dennis, she’s only nine.”

I never did find out what a nuggin was.

Mum always waited until closing time on Easter Saturday to buy chocolate eggs for us, when those that were left were reduced to half price.

“What d’you want them fancy eggs for, Jean?” Dad said. “We’re remembering an execution, not celebrating a birthday.”

But he ate them anyway. He had a real fondness for chocolate.

Cyanoacrylate AXP-36C

O
n Sunday I’d planned to make the most of the fine weather and do some gardening, to get some good dirt under my fingernails, have a go at the nasty spotted laurel bush and see off the fat brown slugs. But I seemed to spend the whole day on the phone, and each phone call left me feeling more upset. The first call was at nine o’clock (on Sunday morning—would you believe it!) from Ottoline Walker, the Scarlet-mouthed Slut.

“Hello? Georgie Sinclair? Is that you?”

“Who’s speaking?” I kind of recognised the voice already.

“It’s me. Ottoline. We met. You remember?”

Like hell I remembered. Big banana bogey. Ha ha.

“Yes, I remember. Why are you ringing me?”

“It’s about Rip…” (well, it would be, wouldn’t it?) “…I just wanted to tell you I had no idea you were still…sort of…involved.”

“Sort of married, actually.”

“He told me it was over between you two ages ago. He told me you didn’t mind…”

“He told
me
he was advancing human progress.”

“Oh. I see.” There was a pause on the end of the phone as she fumbled for a response. “Look, I’m really sorry. It sort of changes things…I mean, when you’re in love, you don’t always do the right thing…you don’t think about the consequences for other people.” She paused. I said nothing. “I believe in commitment, you know.”

“Like you were committed to Pete. And now you’re committed to Rip.”

“That’s not what I mean. You make it sound terrible.”

“Actually…” I stopped myself. I didn’t want her to have the satisfaction of knowing how much she’d hurt me.

“Ben doesn’t know, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“What about Pete? Does he know?” I almost called him Pectoral Pete.

“He found out. Poor Pete. It was awful. He was going to kill himself. Then he was going to kill Rip.”

She sounded as though she was sniffling on the phone, or maybe I imagined it. Anyway, for a moment I felt sorry for her.

“You’ll not get much commitment from Rip. He’s committed to the Progress Project.”

There was a silence. In the background, I could hear music on the radio—a woman singing blues.

“That’s the other thing I wanted to ask you. This Progress Project. What is it, exactly?”

“Didn’t Pete tell you?”

“He did, he talked about it endlessly. But he wasn’t very good at explaining. I somehow couldn’t get it.”

“It
is
quite complicated.”

“But then with Rip it was just the same. All those big words. I realised it must be me who’s a bit thick.”

She gave a little self-deprecating giggle that was quite endearing.

“Er…hold on a minute. I’ve got written it down.” Where was that bit of paper? I rummaged in the desk drawer. “Here it is.” I read aloud. “The human race faces unprecedented challenges as we enter the millennium of globalisation. We need to iterate new synergies if we are to make progress in meeting the aspirations of the developing world, while clearly understanding at the same time that nothing shall prejudice the economic achievements of the developed world.”

There was another pause. The woman blues singer let out a long throbbing moan.

“That’s it?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Well, sort of, I suppose. What does it mean exactly?”

“Why don’t you ask
him?
”

She made that sound again on the end of the phone. It could have been a sniffle, or a giggle. I put the phone down.

§

Grabbing my secateurs, I pulled on my gardening gloves and stomped out into the garden. The sun was shining, but my head was full of dark clouds. Still fired up with thoughts of Rip and the Scarlet-mouthed Slut, I hacked away pitilessly at the ugly laurel bush—Wonder Boy’s favourite haunt—grinding the fallen leaves into the mud. What gave her the right to ring me on a Sunday morning to cadge sympathy? Snip. Still sort of involved! Snip. I believe in commitment! Snip. Snip. I should have just put the phone down as soon as I heard her voice, instead of letting myself get drawn into conversation. Now I felt so wound up and angry that all thoughts of peace in the world had evaporated like water in the desert. And yet I had felt a frisson of fellow-feeling, and I was secretly glad to discover that despite her big scarlet mouth and her slut stilettos, it was the Progress Project that was his real mistress. After an hour or so the phone rang once more. I carried on snipping and let it ring until the answering machine clicked on. Then a minute later it started ringing again. And again. This was some persistent bastard. I put the secateurs down and went to answer it.

“Hello, Georgina, I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

That voice. I shivered as though a cool hand had touched my bare skin. It was the first time we’d spoken since the episode with the poem and the Velcro handcuffs. “Have you got a minute? I just wanted to let you know that I’ve heard back from the Land Registry about Canaan House.”

I took a deep breath. Despite my resolution, I could feel that warm red-panties glow coming over me again. I mustn’t let my hormones take over.

“And…?”

He explained that the house was unregistered, and that if Mrs Shapiro wanted to sell it she would need to register it, for which she would need the deeds. I had to force myself to concentrate on what he was saying.

“What about that son you mentioned, Georgina? The son in Israel? Maybe he knows where they are.” He was still angling for information.