Yasmine (27 page)

“We trusted them,” Hizkel replied. “They are Jews, after all.”

I decided to enter the discussion: “Before the Second World War there were ten million Jews in Europe, and two to three million would have been enough to establish the state the Zionists were hoping for. In the East, at that time, there were only about a million Jews, scattered among all the Muslim states. They didn’t know any Yiddish, and they were rooted in Arabic culture. The Zionist leaders didn’t know them and didn’t need them.”

“Nuri, my son,” Father said in an unusually thoughtful tone, “your uncle may be right. Revolution is blood, and these people had the hard heads of world-savers who believe only in their own truth and God himself can’t budge them from it. Like in your kibbutz, where the children sleep separately from their
parents. Can you imagine such a thing among us? Parents and children getting together for a couple of hours a day, like a committee meeting?”

“Let me tell you something that may astonish you,” said Hizkel. “Listen to a ‘prisoner of Zion’ who had plenty of time to think. Without Israel, the Arab world would have gone on sleeping for another hundred years. All the revolutions – Hosni al-Zaim in Syria and Nasser in Egypt – happened because of the Zionist revolution. They learned from us and envied us for what we achieved here. I keep on rubbing my eyes and can’t believe what I see. All that has been done here, the construction, the enterprise, the industry, the creativity –
mashallah
, God help us, is there such a thing in the Arab world, in the entire world?”

“It was a struggle for survival,” I insisted. “If we’d been here instead of the old pioneers we would have done the same thing.”

“We contributed too,” Kabi declared. “The state wouldn’t be the same without us. The trouble is, the old guard don’t give us a chance.”

“Maybe we ought to show more initiative, both in society and towards the Arabs,” I suggested.

“It won’t do any good,” Kabi argued bitterly. “The game has been fixed. The old guard and the Labour Party leadership have sewn up this state. They seized the high ground and left no room for us.”

“There is a difference between their soul and ours,” Father explained. “To make a revolution the way they did, you must have some ruthlessness in you.”

Kabi heard Father only partially and interpreted things his own way. “We’re no worse than the old guard!” he said angrily.
“Historical circumstances created this reality, and for now they hold all the power. You also revolutionised the life of the Jews in Iraq – you created a secret Zionist movement, some of your comrades were hanged, others died on the way, you sacrificed everything and here you had to start from scratch.”

“The one thing we can say for ourselves, son, is that we wanted with all our hearts to be in the Land of Israel, and we did it without any advance preparation, Now we must move forwards.”

“But don’t you see, Father,” Kabi protested, “we’re stuck in jobs that have to do with Arabs and Arabic, and in the minds of Ashkenazi Israelis these are marginal and temporary occupations without any prestige!”

“Kabi my son, don’t be angry with me…If you feel this way you shouldn’t have gone to Europe on this job, and you shouldn’t keep going with Arabic issues. We didn’t leave one exile to go into another. How is it that with all your gifts you’ve been left on the fringes? Maybe you gave up too easily, didn’t make enough effort to integrate yourself into Israeli society.”

“What choice did I have? If I hadn’t gone to work for the Mossad and travelled wherever they sent me, I’d have been unemployed. So I’m also doing something,” he concluded, looking at Hizkel.

“You should feel that the State of Israel is yours, that you are in your own house, and it doesn’t matter whether you work on Arabic issues or anything else,” Father said, looking at the fiery sunset holding back the night on the mountains of Jerusalem.

“How is it that with all your gifts you’ve been left on the fringes? Maybe you gave up too easily, didn’t make enough effort to integrate into Israeli society.” That’s what his father had said, and he was so hurt that he almost gave away the secret. But if he had he really would have been a failure.

But this silence was certainly costly. He would never be able to celebrate openly, really rejoice at having fulfilled his wildest ambition. He would never be able to utter cries of joy, as he would have liked to do, to share his profound satisfaction even with the people closest to him. Not one of them would ever know about the months he had spent in Khorramshahr, that remote corner of a hot and humid hell, without a home and without a woman, a monk among crooks and all sorts of dubious types.

He had no one to blame but himself. He had chosen freely to work for the Mossad, nobody forced him. And there, in the outer darkness, he was doing something real, something valuable. Even Amram Teshuvah, the ultra-cautious,
tight-lipped
head of station, had a good word for him. Had he not searched out and freed Hizkel without authorisation he would have been given a commendation. Never mind, everyone in the Mossad was proud of him, pleased that he was able to liberate a “prisoner of Zion” they had all despaired of.

Amram Teshuvah made things very clear: “Your parents mustn’t know that you’ve been transferred from London to Khorramshahr, it will kill them with worry. Also you must not see Hizkel in the course of this operation. He might recognise you and that will be the end of him and you and our network over there. It could lead to a disagreement between the government of Israel and the Shah of Iran. Whatever happens, your lips must remain sealed!”

And what did Father know now? He knew his younger son Nuri was doing very well, and was disappointed that his eldest seemed to be stuck in a rut and left behind. You could not miss the satisfaction on his face when he saw a newspaper photo of Nuri with some VIP on a visit to East Jerusalem, or when his name appeared in one of the Arab papers. Nuri had replaced him in Father’s life; he was the one who helped him with everything, looked after him and Mother, enjoyed their high regard, while he – he was nothing. All they knew about him was that he was working for the Mossad in London. A headline without a story. And even when he achieved the unbelievable and freed Hizkel, no one knew about it and he had to bottle up his feelings.

On the other hand, he did not envy Nuri his work with the Minister, a rigid conservative Ashkenazi who hid behind the backs of prime ministers and behaved as if he was still in the pioneering days, as if the Middle East had frozen in its tracks. How could Nuri get on with such a man?

If he could only reveal the truth to Hizkel! If Hizkel only knew that he, Kabi, had been behind his sudden release, that his favourite nephew was his angel of deliverance. He would tell him all the details of the operation which turned his dream of liberty into reality after all those years.

Maybe he should do this anyway, he thought. What a conversation that would be! Why not? He would invite Hizkel to join him over a glass of good arrack, then drop the information on him like a bomb. Hizkel would laugh, cry, shake his head, pinch him, unbelieving, and demand to know everything.

Then he would describe his wanderings in Iran, tell him about Tehran, about Khorramshahr, where the choking stink of gas is overpowering, tell him about the slick Shahin Pur, the compulsive gambler he had met in the tea-house, about the moment he mentioned his family connection to the governor of the prison in Nograt Salman. Kabi would describe how from his first night in Khorramshahr he felt that this was one of the most important episodes in his life, perhaps
the
most important, and sensed that destiny had sent him there.

He would tell Hizkel about the long weeks of making friends with Shahin Pur, until he agreed to involve him, Kabi, in his smuggling business, then sending Shahin to Baghdad to persuade the embittered head of the prison service to collaborate with the Free Iraqi Forces based in London, a totally imaginary group that he’d invented for the purpose.

He would describe the exhausting process of finding out about Hizkel’s condition, the nights when he sat up, calculating and recalculating his resources till he concluded that financing the operation of smuggling his uncle out of prison and Iraq was beyond his means, then his agonising over the decision, whether to tell his superiors in the Mossad about it. The shortage of funds was not the only obstacle; Hizkel’s legal status, his passport and all the rest had to be taken care of. In the end he told Amram everything, and was severely reprimanded for acting on his own.

He would tell Hizkel how he, Kabi, left Khorramshahr two days before his uncle’s arrival there, and how at the height of the operation he confined himself to a room in a small flea-pit hotel in Tehran, where he sat and bit his nails and calculated the hours:
Now Hizkel is in the smugglers’ boat, now he’s in the hut in the grove, now he’s in Shahin Pur’s house, taking off the woman’s clothes, now our contact man has come to see him, now he’s on the plane to Tehran, now he’s in Tehran, now he’s on the plane and on his way home…

If he could also tell Father, expunge the scars of the torments he had endured ever since Hizkel was arrested. How Father suffered when his brother was seized and jailed, when he left Baghdad and immigrated to Israel, leaving Hizkel behind, how he grieved when Rashel had abandoned Hizkel too. The feelings of guilt never left him in all the years in Israel, and even now he could not look his brother in the eye. If he knew that his son, his own flesh and blood, was the one who freed his brother, it would make him feel so much better.

But Kabi was bound by the constraints of the Mossad. Hizkel and Father, Mother and Nuri were all around him, his heart was overflowing, but his lips remained sealed.

“Hello, Nuri. Yes, it's me. Yes, thanks, I'm all right. I heard you were looking for me at Al-Hurriyeh. Yes, I'm out of hiding…Of course, I'll be glad to meet you for coffee this evening. No, not at Al-Hurriyeh, it's closed for renovations. How about the Imperial hotel? You know it? Fine, then I'll see you there at seven.”

That was Yasmine on the phone, and my heart soared like a bird. I hurried to finish some urgent work, dressed warmly and left for the Imperial. Outside it was dark and the wind was howling, and by a quarter to seven I was in the hotel lobby. I didn't want her to wait for me.

I examined the photographs on the walls, which revealed something of the history of the old hotel and the important people who had stayed there. Ten past seven. Yasmine was usually very punctual. I thought of Abdel Wahab's song, “You were a minute and a half late, not a minute…” I ordered a beer. I kept glancing at the entrance. A pair of young tourists came in, talking noisily in French. Twenty past seven. Where was she? Had the heavy rain delayed her? Maybe she couldn't find a parking space. I finished the beer. I thought back to our short telephone conversation. Did she perhaps say eight, not seven? I asked a waiter to bring me a newspaper, to pass the time.

The wall clock showed seven-thirty-five. I began to worry. Had something happened to her? The French couple kept on laughing loudly, getting on my nerves. What was keeping her? Couldn't she phone the hotel and leave a message? I glanced around the lobby – no desk there, the phone would be in reception. Come on, trade unionist, I told myself, take it easy. They'll call you if anything…Still, I went along to reception and asked them to let me know if there was a call for me. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Meeting in a hotel might seem compromising even to a Jewish woman, let alone an Arab one. Someone might see her. The hotel proprietor was probably a friend of her father's.

Five to eight. Now I was feeling offended. Did I have to hang around for a whole hour, waiting for her? I ordered another beer. I needed to go to the lavatory but stayed put – she might turn up just when I was in there. At ten past eight I got up, went to the lavatory, and when I came out she still wasn't there and there was no message. I'd had enough.

Hail was beating down outside, heaps of tiny beads of ice edged the road. I drove slowly to avoid skidding, back to my little flat, all the while seeing Yasmine's face – her sensuous curved lips, her all-seeing eyes. I had become intensely alert to every flutter of her eyelids and felt the thrill of intimacy, a desire to know her, listen to her, hear her inhaling the smoke of her cigarette. She had entered my bloodstream. Was this the immediate, instinctive love, the kind you can't resist? They say that every person has a halo around his head, a small sun, which dazzles, creates a sweet illusion, an addiction. When two such haloes touch, love happens. Was her halo responding to mine? And where would it lead?

How would Abu George react if this relationship developed? Would he feel that I had taken advantage of his daughter? I was walking through a minefield – one wrong step and it would all blow up. One evening I sat with him in his newspaper office, we drank vodka and he told me about his anguish when they had to flee from their house in 1948. By the time we left we were both drunk and propping each other up. I staggered with him to his Dodge and he said, swaying, his hand on my shoulder, “Nuri, life is short. Who knows when my hour will come. There is no cure for what ails me, and I am teaching myself to look for the good in the bad.” He glanced round and chuckled. “There is even some good in your conquest – we got Yasmine back. You will never know how grateful I am to you. You saved my daughter for me.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and climbed into his car. Yes, the situation was complicated, but it was not entirely hopeless.

My phone rang at nine. Yasmine. She apologised. Just when she was going out to meet me her father had felt so unwell that she had taken him to Hadassah. By the time a doctor had attended to him, and she felt she could leave him to phone the hotel I had already left. She apologised again and said they were still at the hospital. I asked if I could visit her father and she promised to let me know when he felt well enough.

In the morning I asked Aliza to get me Shamluk of the Shin Bet.

“Shamluk, you won't believe this – the Messianic Age is at hand! Senator Antoine has finally recognised us. A few days ago he actually came in person to my office and we had a long chat.”

“Bastard!” Shamluk hissed, totally oblivious to my hope that the news would cheer him up. “We sent him warnings, told him
to tone down his public statements. Nothing doing! We should lock up his mouth.”

“He's just a toothless old man, sick and utterly confused,” I argued. “Don't turn him into a martyr.”

“He can go to hell, he doesn't know what he's got coming to him. If he didn't listen to the words of Moses, he will listen to the whip of Pharaoh.”

A few minutes later Aliza came in. “Yasmine Hilmi is here.”

“Give me two minutes to get organised.” I emptied my pockets of all the things they were stuffed with – bits of paper, a notebook, a handkerchief or two and a wallet – a bad habit left over from my childhood. I went into the bathroom and in front of the mirror tucked in my shirt and tightened the knot in my tie, combed my hair and splashed on aftershave. My face felt hot. What had brought her here, I wondered anxiously. Was her father all right? Hadn't she sworn that she would never enter my office, this symbol of the occupation?

I went out to the waiting room and found her huddled in a chair, her big dark glasses hiding her eyes and a scarf tied round her head. Aliza relieved her of the umbrella and raincoat, and she stood before me in a long black skirt and a long-sleeved brown sweater, as if she was visiting someone in the ultra-Orthodox quarter. I led her into my office and asked after her father.

“He's better,” she said and sat down wearily, tucking her legs under the armchair. She took out her slim cigarettes, lit one and inhaled loudly. Slowly she took off her dark glasses and looked around the room. I guessed that she would prefer to leave the important stuff to the end of the visit, following local custom.

“It's good to see you. I think about you a lot, and…” I stopped there. “Have you finished writing your dissertation?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“I have news for you, Yasmine. I've located Edna Mazursky. About eight months ago, after the war, she went to join her sister in New Jersey. Apparently for good.” I gave her a note with Edna's address and telephone number.

“New Jersey?” her eyes clung to mine.

“Her husband fell in the battle for Jerusalem.”

“Oh God!…Where did it happen?”

“In al-Mudawara, the place we call Ammunition Hill. As she is a war widow I was able to locate her through the army.”

Her hand slipped down from the arm of the chair.

“Has she any children?”

“No.”

“What awful news. Jesus.” Her face was very pale. “It's hot in here,” she said and took off the scarf and sweater, revealing a short-sleeved beige shirt. She shook out her hair and ran her fingers through it. Seeing her breasts rising and falling made me hot too. I wanted to sit beside her, caress and hug her, sink into her…I took one of her thin cigarettes, lit it and inhaled deeply, but I looked away so she wouldn't see what I was feeling.

“What good angel brought you to me?” I asked in a low voice.

“My father sent me to see you urgently.” Looking tense, she replaced the cigarette in the ashtray. “It's about Senator Antoine. Last night he came to the hospital, badly shaken, and told us he heard a rumour that he's about to be deported because of some idiotic interview he gave the
Washington Post
. He says, ‘The Israelis took my words out of context.' Father asks if it's not too much trouble, if you could find out if there is any truth in the rumour, and what can be done about it.”

“Have you seen the interview, Yasmine? He says some very harsh things. He compares the Israelis to the Nazis. It's not a case of taking words out of context. It's a difficult business. The question is, would he be willing to soften his statements, apologise, explain…”

“We have a saying,
Kif intale lehmar min al-wahle
– How do you get the donkey out of the mud? I've known the senator all my life. He's like a kindly grandfather to me. His head is made of stone, but he's not a bad man. Expelling him from his home and his country would be like a death sentence, especially at his age. He's also unwell.” She looked at me and dropped her eyes.

She was obviously tired and worried. She took a small mirror from her handbag, tidied her hair, then smiled. “I dressed up a little, didn't want to be recognised coming here. I look terrible.”

“You look beautiful.”

“I slept very little last night,” she said and rubbed her leg absentmindedly.

I leaned back in my chair, loosened my tie and closed my eyes for a moment, struggling with myself. The office was so quiet I could hear her breathing. She's so near, I thought. I wanted her to stroke my forehead, my face, I wanted to take her hands, smell them as you smell a baby, kiss her fingertips. My heart was beating fast.

“Are you all right?” she asked a little anxiously.

“Yes, a little tired. I've missed you…” I avoided her eyes.

“I'm tired too. Finishing the dissertation is exhausting me, on top of the regular work at the youth village.”

“How is it going? Are you getting on all right?”

“I like the work, it's varied, very professional. There is a lot to do and people to work with. There are about two hundred children and it's both a treatment centre and a home for
disabled and retarded children, but it also takes children who have simply been neglected. I work as a diagnostician. I see all the new arrivals and assess their condition. I'm very careful about classifying any child as retarded, to avoid damaging those who are not, so that they can be transferred to other institutions where they could develop better. It's important to me,” she emphasised, “so from time to time I give repeat tests to all the children in the village, and sometimes we discover children who can be transferred gradually to the normal systems. Of course, there is counselling too. I advise the instructors and nurses and also treat children individually. That's the main satisfaction in the work.” She took a deep breath. “That's it, more or less. I'm glad I went to work there. Maybe now is the time to say, Thank you, Nuri.” She stood up and quickly put on the sweater and the headscarf.

“You're going already?”

“Have to. Father is waiting for me at the hospital.”

“Don't forget to give him my regards and best wishes for a quick recovery.”

I always enjoyed the matter-of-fact clarity of her speech. At the same time I wished that she wouldn't insist on speaking to me in English, which she spoke so much better than I did. Sometimes what she said sounded like a complex mathematical equation and I often felt tongue-tied when speaking to her. I could understand why she did not want us to talk in Hebrew, though when working at the village she sounded like any Jewish Israeli woman. But why couldn't we communicate in Arabic, which was our mother-tongue, hers and mine? Why did she set up this language barrier between us, like a throw-back to the days of the British Mandate? I remembered her quoting Franz
Fanon: “Speaking a particular language means, above all, adopting a culture.”

I had to move quickly – the conversation with Shamluk was a bad omen. I rang Levanah and asked to speak to the Minister. I told him briefly what it was all about.

“Nuri, the man is an anti-Semite. I read the interview you sent me.”

“And what are we, Arab-lovers?”

“Look here, even if I agreed with you, it's not in our hands.”

“Sir, the policy of deporting people is causing resentment and giving us a bad name throughout the world. We must enable them to let off steam,” I insisted. “We must give them a chance to soften. We can bring them closer, build a bridge for reconciliation. It can't be done by force and under compulsion. Please!”

After a brief silence he drew the conversation to a close. “Thou shalt cast out the evil from thy midst – so says the Bible,” he intoned with an air of finality.

I sank back in my chair like a deflated balloon. Perhaps I should have gone to see him, talked to him face to face instead of on the phone. I still did not know what moved him, how to touch his heart. “Appeal to his good side,” Levanah always advised me, but deep down inside me I rebelled. This is a national issue, and I'm his advisor, dammit!

“Aliza, please get me Aharon Amitai, it's very urgent!” Amitai was my last hope. I had to speak to him, even though it meant circumnavigating my Minister and acting against his wishes. It took Aliza a whole hour to get hold of him.

“Aharon, does the name Senator Antoine mean anything to you?”

“The die is cast,” he replied crisply.

“Please, won't you reconsider? It's a mistake which will harm us. Why use a sledge hammer to swat a fly?”

“Not every fly is simply a fly, Nuri. Some are poisonous flies that can kill you.” I heard him puffing on his pipe. “How're things otherwise?”

“Just fine!” I snapped, flinging my pen down on the desk. I put on a raincoat and walked out, seething.

“Where are you going? It's pouring out there. At least take an umbrella!” Aliza urged, running after me to the door.

To hell with it, I fumed, what's the point of my job, if I can't show them that a different approach is possible? The Minister thought I loved Arabs. He paid no attention when I quoted something Charlie Chaplin once said: “I hate the sight of blood, but it's in my veins.”