About the Night (41 page)

In the shower she decided to use up all the hot water as a way of punishing them all, but there was barely enough for her to wash her own body. She got into bed and covered herself up to her neck. Her father was fighting with the television antenna, looking for the static picture of Lebanese television. Nomi was wide-awake and angry, but her body was tired and wished to sleep. Before she drifted off, she could hear the microphones being tested below, followed by Menachem Begin’s thin voice. Few people came to hear him, but he ignored the humiliation and spoke with passion. She raised herself to her knees to look at him through the slats of the shutters and caught sight of him waving his hands, excited and inciting others, his bald pate glowing in the spotlights, his short stature growing large as he filled with fire. Night had fallen, but it had not absorbed her grief. In the morning, when she would open her eyes, her disappointment would already have awakened.

Nomi continued to disappear on her friends in high school. They searched for her, surprised at this recurring behavior of hers and finding it hard to understand why she needed them to miss her and worry about her and find her. But sometimes she did not wish to be found at all, preferring to feel the sharp, painful blade of loneliness instead.

Nomi disappeared whenever she felt anger or anxiety or uncertainty, the feeling that some sort of abandonment was on the horizon. She disappeared on the men in her life as well. The high-ranking detonations officer, the guy on the motorcycle, the man she married. A wave of sorrow overtook her. She felt alone; she wished to hurt in private. The one she sent away until he agreed to get rid of all the other women in his life. She was willing to let him go, knowing that she might not mean enough to him to bring him back.

On the job, she could always pick out the children like her, the escapers, the ones who knew how to survive on their own.

The runaways always did it again. Something about running away was painful to the point of clarity and clarifying to the point of pain. It made the loneliness more intense and contained the desire to punish. Its companions were hunger and cold, emotional highs and lows.

She tended to disappear. She could have disappeared on Elias as well if he had not kept her in thrall and caused her to remove the layers in which she had wrapped herself. He had done this without intention, acquiring her attention and her trust, always present, never disappearing, needing her and placing himself in her hands, laying down his weakness before her as well as his yearning, and his love. With his compassionate eyes, he surrounded her with sympathy and tenderness, like the warm, life-giving fluid surrounding a fetus. In his presence she could return to herself, each time with less trepidation at what she might find in that hidden place, so that the pleasantness, the longing, and the tenderness long concealed deep inside her dared to make their presence known.

“You can turn your wipers off,” Munir said, and Nomi switched off their calming movement.

She wanted him to lead her around the garages of Wadi Joz, this valley of men with grease-blackened hands, where her father had felt he belonged and was respected.

“This is like my second home,” Munir told her, for once departing from his measured speech. “I still bring Elias’s Mercedes here, even though he doesn’t drive anymore.” Munir grew sad. “When a person stops driving, that’s the beginning of the end.”

Nomi wished to say that Elias would drive again, but she decided to say nothing. Suddenly, at a bend in the road, where the rainwater had gathered into huge pools of brown, she recognized the garage where Menash would bring her, and the car stopped on its own. This was where she would sit bored and restless among the cigarette smokers and the coffee drinkers, the men who disassembled carburetors and took apart exhaust pipes.

“You know,” she told Munir, her eyes bright, “I feel closest to my father when I’m in a garage.”

“Look to your right,” he said. “That’s the strangest place. A car cemetery.”

On a huge plot of land on a sloping bank of the valley were heaps of cars of every kind. They were flattened, crushed, destroyed, burned, crumpled, rusted, plundered, colorful, dead. It was a ghost town of large, metallic creatures. Peugeot, Citroën, Renault, Subaru, Mazda, Dodge, Chevrolet—all empty vessels whose pedigrees and glory had been taken from them.

“I like to come here,” Munir said. “I think about the new and shiny that becomes faded and ragged. About things you can’t do without one day and then suddenly they have no use the next. All these junkers were once the pride of their owners, but they’ve made way for others, and no memory of them is left behind.”

Sultan Suleiman Street was less grand and captivating than the way it had been preserved in her memory. Gone were the shops with desirable products, gone was the sated elegance of the people living and working there, the money changers, the coffee merchants, the chocolate importers, the Italian shoe salesmen. Now what Nomi could see was a sooty, faded street with sluggish commerce, smoky fast-food stands, and women in veils.

“Those are our offices,” Munir said, pointing to a splendid building. Nomi put her foot on the brakes, every cell of her body recalling the corner building and its proud antiquity as well as the tremor that would rock her body whenever she passed it and knew what others did not: that this was the building of Lila’s man, the man who placed letters to his beloved in her small hand, the man for whom Lila had waited for as long as Nomi could remember herself. It was from this building that his love billowed and never waned, to this very day, to the point where his love was the only living thing coursing through Elias’s body.

“Thank you for bringing me home,” Munir said with a smile. “Do you know how to find your way out?”

“It doesn’t matter where I am,” she told him. “I can always find my way out of Jerusalem.”

“Next week will you be visiting Elias again?” Munir asked.

“I’d like us to take him out of there,” she said.

“It depends on what the doctors say,” Munir said, clearly shaken by her statement.

“It depends on us,” Nomi said with confidence. “On you and me. A man of his age who spends week after week in the hospital grows steadily weaker, and his chances of getting out grow weaker, too.”

“But what can we do about it?” Munir said, his forehead wrinkling with effort.

“We’ll get him out.”

As was his way, Munir stood on the pavement waiting to make sure that no ill came to Nomi as she drove away from this Arab neighborhood. She was in turmoil, and with this turmoil, she drove across to the western side of the city, to the Jewish neighborhoods. Night was already falling, and people were wrapped in scarves and coats. She thought the men looked older than their ages, mirthless and bitter and depleted. They walked slowly; there was no light in their eyes, no vitality in their bodies. Something happened to men in this city.

She thought about her morning visit with Elias. His face had been ashen, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His fingernails were long and unkempt, not in their usual state. She wondered if this was the sickness, some nameless malady, or just a worrisome symptom that preys on the weak and the depressed. Before the doctors entered, she had read the medical chart hanging from his bed. Elias thought it was a waste of time, but she studied the pages carefully. They were a stew of words and expressions, a sea of estimations and hypotheses, of negations and samples, but there was not a single diagnosis. The rushed signatures of the doctors changed by the shift, as did those of the bleary-eyed nurses.

During the doctors’ rounds, one specialist said, “Mr. Riani, from one to ten, how much pain are you in?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Elias said, embarrassed. “I don’t know anymore.”

She believed that someone needed to make a decision, and not necessarily the one Elias was pushing her to make. She needed to get him out of there, shake him up, give him back his joy and his life, get him back on his feet, make sure his heart was pumping like that of someone who had been resuscitated while fighting for his life.

1967

The first to leave home, an hour before the curfew was rescinded, was Munir. He ran to Elias’s house to make sure that the Rianis were managing without him. He was sure they did not know how to handle a few simple things, like fixing a short circuit, plugging a leaky pipe, or changing a tire on the car. He found the door locked for the first time in years. Elias opened it, scrutinized him with surprise, then embraced him.

“Isn’t it dangerous to be running around outside like that?” he asked.

“I can’t stand being cooped up,” Munir replied.

“It’s so quiet outside,” Elias said. “There aren’t any sounds from the houses. It’s as if all of life has been muffled.”

“I came to make sure you’re all right,” Munir said, practical as ever. “You have food, water, electricity? Is there anything that needs fixing?”

“We’re fine,” Elias said, “lacking for nothing. Why don’t we drink some tea?”

“Truthfully?” Munir said. “I’m dying for a cup of fresh coffee. And I’d like to get over to the western part of town to make sure our buildings are there.”

“Buildings don’t move around,” Elias said, “but I still don’t have high hopes. They’ve probably been overrun.”

“Let’s wait a bit,” Munir said. “I’ll make the first visit over there, put out feelers.”

Between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon, they were permitted to leave home to stock up on supplies, but even when the curfew was rescinded, the shops remained shut. Nothing helped, not the vehicles fitted with loudspeakers, nor the emissaries; the stores did not open, the metal blinds were not raised, and the streets were silent. Fear was more potent than the need for food and other necessities. The Arab mayor of town walked the streets escorted by an Israeli officer, urging local shopkeepers to open, but most merely peered through closed blinds.

Eventually, with great hesitation, the stores finally opened, though some never did because their owners had fled, never to return to the city.

Trucks carrying bread arrived from the western part of the city. It was the first time in days that people could eat fresh bread. Elias’s mother had tried baking during the war, but the dough refused to rise. She would place it in a bowl and cover it with a towel as she always had, but nothing happened. Elias had said it was like the Jews’ Passover matzo. Nadira explained that she had heard of such a thing, that bread would not rise because of fear.

Elias regarded her with an expression of doubt that turned to understanding.

“Have you noticed,” she asked, “that you can’t smell bread baking in any of the homes around here?”

It was as if East Jerusalem had been holding its breath for several days.

Elias said to Munir, “We’ll go out this evening.”

And they had their first postwar walk after dark. The weather was wonderful; the beginning of summer had arrived gently instead of in a harsh and sudden manner. To his surprise, Elias was elated at walking the streets, healthy and free and able to breathe fresh air. The new reality and the accompanying fears had been pushed to the side. Elias was grateful for what he had at that moment.

Elias and Munir walked to Mount Scopus, from which the lights on the eastern side of the city looked shabby in comparison to those of the western side. When the shops and offices closed, a cloud of darkness descended on Jerusalem, but Elias liked his city the way it was, that simple division between day and night.

Several Israelis in uniform stepped out of a van. One was holding a map and asked what the name of the street was.

“Are you lost?” Munir asked.

“This map of yours,” the Israeli answered, “isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.” He showed it to Munir, a map with Arabic street names left over from the Jordanian regime. Munir told them the name of the street.

Elias did not utter a word. He was present but apart, regarding the scene like an observer, his hands in his pockets.

“We’re changing the street names,” said the Israeli, looking past Munir to silent Elias.

“Really?” Munir asked, astonished.

“Really,” said the Israeli.

“All of them?”

“Nearly all.”

“And what will you call this one, ours?” Munir asked.

“There’s a committee for deciding that,” the other Israeli told him, marking an X on the map. “Why? Does this street belong to your old man?”

“Good evening,” Munir said in a way that only Elias could detect the hoarseness in his voice.

They continued walking, but something heavy had settled on them. When they reached Elias’s home, he said, “They change the mayor on you, and the currency, and your passport, and even the language you speak, and now the name of your street. Let’s drink something. We need to clear our throats.”

Munir wished to eat alone at his own home, but something in the atmosphere of the Riani home made him stay. A tension, a wariness; perhaps Elias’s loneliness. A man with a wife and children can be even more lonely than someone like Munir, who had none.

As they were eating, Munir noted, “Nasreen has not sung in quite some time.”

“That’s how it is with her,” Elias said, mixing white rice with parsley salad until it turned green.

“Maybe she’ll start singing again now,” Munir offered.

“Maybe,” Elias said.

Nasreen had changed since coming to live with the Rianis as a young newlywed. Back then, she had sung and laughed aloud and blown life into the ghost that Elias was. Now she was thirty-seven but looked far older. She wore her hair gathered to the back and pinned; she wore dark dresses over her sturdy body, a gold cross around her neck, and a wedding ring that a jeweler had suggested cutting off, since her finger had swollen. Her best color was green, the same as her eyes, which were usually downcast in modesty.

Munir thought, The war silenced her. Life became less stable, more wobbly and anxious. He wondered whether Elias saw everything that was happening. He believed he did. The arak they had been drinking gave both men a softer, more forgiving feeling.

Nasreen told Munir and Elias, “The girls sent a postcard. They went with their boarding school to a town called Chester.” Elias smiled in relief. As long as they remained in peaceful England, walking in thick forests, expanding their knowledge in a venerable educational institution, his heart was tranquil. She cleared the dishes, then sat in the living room to pen a response to their letter.

“I want to stay in the tea business,” Elias said, fearing he might have to find employment elsewhere. “Tea brings people together. It closes the distances, blurs the gaps. It consoles and appeases. Tea demands that the people who drink it be worthy of it.”

“In a few weeks,” Munir said, assessing the situation, “we’ll know where we stand.”

Elias opened the kitchen cupboard, where he found eighteen dark tins each containing a different blend. This was his daily ritual: he opened each tin and waited for the aroma to surprise and tempt him. Each evening he repeated the ritual, since every time he performed it a different feeling reached his nose. This time he selected a Ceylonese Hay Forest and took out two thin glass mugs. He poured a little hot tea into his own mug and then into Munir’s, his own and then Munir’s, again and again until he was certain they had both attained the same color, taste, and quantity. If he did not succeed, then Elias would stand over them, looking at them from various angles, adding tea and comparing. When satisfied, he would smile.

Elias awoke before anyone else. He made himself a cup of coffee that he took outside to drink in the garden under the lemon tree he thought of as his place of tranquility. When people were watching him, he was unable to think deeply, but there, in this hidden corner, passersby could not see him, nor could residents of the house. Once a day he positioned a chair so that he could soak up the rays of the sun rising in the east. He loved the sun, especially in the early hours of the day.

He was surprised to have slept well that night. Little but well, four hours of deep, uninterrupted slumber, more than his usual in recent years. This morning he had awakened into a fuzziness of did-it-or-did-it-not really happen, and in the blink of an eye it became apparent that something
had
happened, and the truth of it was overwhelming. Lila was in his thoughts, in his bones, his heart, his skin, renewing his marrow and his blood vessels, his muscles, his cartilages, pouring into him what had leaked out: life itself.

He had brought her back into his life with the knowledge that major forces would align to keep them apart. But once he had understood that he must find her and bring her back, something in the molecules they shared awakened from a long slumber and began to move around: storehouses of iron and zinc and hormones and proteins and muscles and everything else that encourages the body and the spirit. The song of Lila began to play inside him as if no other had ever been there. Only the night before, they had stood together in the manager’s office of the hotel, and at once his soul, as if acting from within a deep coma, began to thrum and sharpen. That which had been resting was awake. That which had seemed extinguished caught fire. That which had faded now shone.

In his eyes, she had grown more beautiful than ever. He had told her something like that, though perhaps not exactly those words. Hers was a beauty that brought him to a state of astonishment because every part of her face was arranged exactly to his liking, with the proper distances between her chin and that marvelous dip that led to her lips, soft and ripe as they appeared to him. Her face displayed nothing of worry or anger or frustration or difficulties, only a great longing, and sadness.
Hüzün
, she had called it, the Turkish word for the bittersweet melancholy that lodges itself in people born in Istanbul who have left the city. Her scent confirmed the fact that this was the woman he loved. In his arms he could feel the sturdiness of her body, how in the first moments it was tense but then melted into the warmth of longing.

He had feared that she would not come; that she had overcome her tendency to harden and keep her distance when in pain made him appreciate her efforts all the more. His tempestuous Lila, who, when they had quarreled, would catch fire until, in his arms, the flames abated and became merely a pleasant warmth. He would be eternally grateful if only she would allow him to come close enough to see whether she had remained as he remembered her.

He was consumed with curiosity, and his nerves were frayed, and when he could no longer contain himself he decided to push himself physically, walking for hours, silencing the length and breadth of his fears.

From what sort of home had she made her way to the InterContinental? Apparently, the apartment on the roof, the one he once knew, since the letter he had left for her—with nothing more than “Cassuto” printed on the unstamped envelope—had reached her. For him, that had been a clue: same apartment, same mailbox, same name—it all added up to the same life, a life with no husband or children. But perhaps there actually was a husband; there were children. Perhaps she had done what other women did: marry, give birth, feel empty, look for ways to fulfill themselves, grow tired, give up. Lila, however, did not look like that. He saw in her eyes a vitality, and passion. Her body and spirit were intact.