Kabi looked back at the hospital as if to say goodbye and good riddance. “That’s it, come on! I can’t wait to see the old people, to get the smell of home in my nostrils.”
“And then we’ll go to the Galilee?” Sandra suggested hesitantly.
“Good idea. We’ll swim in the Sea of Galilee and wash away the memory of the yellow dust and those white beds.”
I wondered if Sandra was pressuring Kabi to get married the way Yardena pressured me. Sandra fitted Kabi like a ring on a finger, but she had none of the sabra-style assertiveness that pushes a man into a corner. On the contrary, her good manners and gentleness strengthened the relationship. Mother liked her, and urged Kabi to buy her presents, to bring her home, to take her to Eilat, and on the few occasions she came to the house she pampered her like a daughter.
In the car she turned on the radio, which was again broadcasting the song “Jerusalem of Gold.” Kabi grew serious and listened attentively. “What a song!” he said, visibly moved.
“Nationalist kitsch, more suited to our Arab cousins,” I teased him.
“Little brother, this is our song, the longing for Zion, the anthem of the mass immigration which has bought a right to this place with blood.”
“Big brother, the song was composed by a privileged sabra, born in Kibbutz Kinneret – what’s she got in common with the mass immigration?”
“The Jewish soul,” Sandra interjected.
“Bravo,” said Kabi and stroked her arm, in a rare demonstration of affection. “Did you know that Sandra has translated Agnon’s
The Doctor’s Divorce
into English?”
“Really?”
“The story is in Kabi’s kitbag. You’re welcome to read it,” she said, embarrassed but pleased.
Sandra always surprises me. She’s only been in Israel six years and already she can translate Agnon. Kabi, on the other hand, has had an awkward relationship with Hebrew. He wasted years in the Arabic section of the Israeli Broadcasting Service, a stifling, overcrowded colony of journalists and entertainers totally absorbed in the Arab world and isolated from Israeli life. If he’d mixed with native Israelis he would have breathed different air. When I spoke about it he would tease me, “Yes, my little sabra,” or, “All right, my little kibbutznik.” I wasn’t sure that he had found his place in the Mossad, on the dark side.
A bizarre thought occurred to me. Could it be that my new appointment has shaken him? In Baghdad he was seen as destined for great things, and I lived in his shadow. When Father bought us new shoes Kabi would put them on at once, delighted, and show off. And as for me, I would put them aside and wait for a special occasion, enjoying the mere fact of having new shoes. I admired him, but didn’t want to be like him or to compete with him. I wanted to follow my own path. Only here in Israel, starting from the kibbutz, did I discover a new world, and it kept growing bigger. Who’d have thought it?
We reached the suburbs of Jerusalem and drove straight to Katamon, to 422 Antigonus Street, Apartment 1.
“Wouldn’t you like to rest in my place for a few days?” Sandra offered, looking at his bandaged shoulder.
“Thanks, but I want to be with Mother and Father. In two days we’ll take a trip together and see the Golan Heights.”
She stood by the car, waiting for him to invite her in, but he didn’t. “All right then, I guess it’s a family occasion…” she said softly and drove away.
“Why didn’t you invite her in?” I asked.
“Forget it, it’s not the right time. Mother with her tears and father ill.”
Yardena would have chucked me if I’d treated her this way. But the truth is, I had also been looking for excuses to avoid commitment.
Father jumped out of bed, hugged and kissed Kabi for a long time, but seeing his bandaged shoulder he shook his head at me reproachfully.
“What’s happened to you, God save you?” Mother asked and fell into his arms, her sobs expressing both anguish and relief.
“A piece of shrapnel scratched me, that’s all.” But Mother didn’t let up till he told her exactly where and how it had happened and if it hurt and who looked after him and what the doctors said and how soon he would be well. He replied briefly, as if anxious to move on to a more important question.
“And you, Father – what’s all this about your heart?”
“Thank God, they must love me in heaven. They sent a warning.” He laid a hand on Kabi’s arm. “The main thing is that you’ve all come back safely. And you, Nuri, you shouldn’t have worried him with my problem.”
I smiled to myself, because at that moment, like a contradictory echo, Mother scolded me, “Why didn’t you tell us he was wounded? The kibbutz spoiled you.”
I had become used to these reproaches, especially since the fiasco of that Yom Kippur when I brought them an obviously non-kosher, headlesss cockerel from the kibbutz and insisted it had been slaughtered according to religious law. Since that time Mother had taken to calling me “Abu Fairytale”.
Once again, she brought out the lead pellets, melted them into a bowl of water that she held over Kabi’s head, and rubbed him with the water. Later she wrapped the piece of melted lead with a little salt and stuffed it into his pocket, a talisman against the evil eye.
We sat in the kitchen where delicious smells wafted from the saucepans on the stove. Kabi got up, took a meatball from a pot, blew on it and swallowed it quickly so as not to scald his tongue. Mother whispered to Father, “If he’s sticking his head into the pots it means we don’t need to worry about him,” and she smiled for the first time since we came in.
“Mother,” said Kabi, noticing her smile. “Tomorrow, how about making your pilau bejij?” This dish of rice with chicken and chickpeas, seasoned with fried onion, almonds and raisins, was his favourite.
“Why didn’t you bring Sandra?” she asked, and when he did not reply she said, “That’s not nice” and wiped her hands on her apron.
Father had something on his mind but he waited until after Kabi had taken a shower, Mother’s cure-all, before asking, “Will you go back to Europe?” Kabi nodded, and Father looked down as though he’d been rejected.
“Father, I’m new in this business and must make my mark. I’ll
come to see you as often as I can,” Kabi tried to reassure him.
“You’re fretting already, Abu Kabi?” said Mother. “Enjoy your son, he isn’t going anywhere yet. The wound has to heal first.”
With the authoritative manner of the eldest son, Kabi changed the subject. “Well, what do you think? Your son Nuri has been made advisor to the Minister and the head of his office in East Jerusalem. He’ll have an official car and already has a telephone at government expense.”
In Arabic it sounded much grander than in Hebrew, and Mother ululated as if it was my wedding day. “May you both become viziers!” she said.
“Nuri, let me remind you again,” Kabi continued in his masterful tone, “to keep a journal. These are historic times, you hear!”
“You’ll have coffee?” said Father, an earnest expression on his face. Kabi and I exchanged smiles. An invitation to coffee meant a serious talk. Father brewed coffee even the Bedouins admired. In his hands it was an art form. He could take dull grocery coffee and make it superbly fragrant and tasty – two or three sips would bring you back to life. We sat together in the narrow kitchen around the bulky standard-issue table, on wooden stools that Father had made and Mother fitted with homemade cushions. The coffee boiled and Father used a small spoon to skim the foam, divided it equally between the cups and poured the coffee on top.
“So, son,” he turned to me. “What will you do in this job?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll try to be a mediator between the two worlds.”
“Son, do you remember,” Father asked Kabi, “what I said to you when we sat day and night in front of the jail in Baghdad, worrying about your uncle Hizkel?”
“How could I forget? You said if we were fortunate and made it to Israel, we were to treat the Arabs here the way we wanted the Arabs in Iraq to treat us,” Kabi replied fluently, as though it had happened the day before.
“You hear, Nuri? You were small and we spared you the pain we suffered when your uncle disappeared into the clutches of the Department of Investigations.”
“Don’t worry, I told him everything,” said Kabi. “I wanted to impress him.” We both laughed.
“Fortunately we won,” Father went on. “Nuri, now that you’re the
wali
, the ruler, treat them with respect. Give them what is due to them with an open hand, so they won’t feel you’re doing them a favour. And don’t let it go to your head. Remember that power and domination are passing things, like the smell of this coffee.”
“And talk to them gently, damn their eyes. You know the proverb, a soft tongue breaks the bone,” said Mother, who was ironing.
Kabi clenched and unclenched his hand to regain the muscle tone in his injured arm. “It’s not a simple matter, Father. And I also want to remind you of something. You remember I worked as a mechanic in the police force, before my national service?”
“Of course I remember. Your mother and I were so pleased you got into the police.”
“But it was hard. There were some Arab workers there too, from those villages in the north which make up the Triangle. There was a lot of tension. They suspected me and I didn’t feel safe with them.”
“I remember,” said Mother from behind the ironing board. “They thought you were from the
mukhabarat
.”
“That’s right. I often heard them talking among themselves.
Father, their main theme was that their Arab brothers would defeat us and take back the land that we stole from them, and an Arab takes revenge even after forty years, and another forty years. And all those slogans: – ‘
Lu blad bladnah, wil yahud klabnah
’, – The land is ours and the Jews are our dogs.”
“You hear, Abu Kabi,” Mother intervened. “It’s what I always said, there’s no trusting them.”
“There was one, Asad, a real clown, who kept on saying, ‘
Kalam fadi
, nonsense! All you need is patience and an active prick, and we’ll win.’ He used to laugh and say, ‘Whenever I screw my wife I get twice the pleasure – once for screwing her, and once for screwing the Jews by making another Arab child.’”
“You’re right, son. I’m not denying it. We’re in for a difficult time, a testing time. The victory itself could become an obstacle…Why don’t you come back here,” he went on. “There will be a lot of opportunities for someone like you.”
“I know. Some Information Department types came to the hospital and tried to recruit me for some kind of project – ‘selling’ democracy, freedom of expression, the status of women to the people in the territories,” Kabi scoffed.
“They think they can reconstruct the heads of the Arabs, eh? Make them into Englishmen?” Father chuckled and took out his beads.
“They’ll never understand the Arabs. I admit that I don’t always understand them myself,” my brother went on. “Who’d have thought that when Nasser resigned, after leading them to such a defeat, they would pour into the streets, wailing as if the Prophet Mohammed had just died?”
“
Yallah
, enough of politics. Tomorrow morning you have to go to the synagogue and say
HaGomel
,” Mother told him. She emptied Kabi’s kitbag, and dumped his clothes in the laundry
basket. “Kabi, Friday evening I want you to bring Sandra here for dinner. How much longer are you going to keep her dangling – till the rope breaks? Come on, my son, you and Nuri are weighing heavy on my heart. Don’t I deserve a little happiness?”
“What’s this, woman? You’re starting again? It’s bad for your eyes.”
“It’s not the eyes,” she said, wiping away her tears. “It’s the heart.”
I felt it was time to leave. I didn’t want to get involved in another marriage discussion while there was nothing I could say in my own defence. But I thought about it on the way to my little flat. Mother dreamed of having us marry wealthy
high-class
Iraqi girls, but did not insist. Today she gave her approval for Kabi to marry Sandra. She didn’t judge Yardena by her origins either, only saying, “She isn’t for you, son. She’s too hard.” Perhaps she was right. How suddenly Yardena had walked out of my life. All at once a door had slammed! Not even a single phone call after the war.
I turned on my bedside lamp and stood in the dimly lit room looking out at the flat opposite. My Orthodox neighbour was walking about without her kerchief. Her shaved head excited me. It was the first time I’d seen her like this and I watched her entranced, my mouth dry. I got into bed and stared into the dark, my body burning. It had been weeks since I’d been with a woman.
In the morning I opened the wardrobe and wondered what I should wear. How could I call on Arab dignitaries dressed in my ordinary clothes?
I went to a clothes shop on Ben Yehuda Street where the salesman, a thickset Iranian, made me try on a number of suits till we both gave up. At the door he stopped me. “Tell me, young man, do you have a wife?”
“No. Why?”
“It shows. If you can’t choose a suit, how will you choose a wife?”
Then I went to OBG in the Generalli Building, under the statue of the lion. I’d often wanted to venture inside but never before had the nerve. The salesman saw that I was unsure of myself and asked what I did for a living and what the suit was for. When I told him that it was my first suit and that I needed it to represent the government in East Jerusalem, he recommended merino wool. “It’s good for the demi-saison, and for summer and winter. How about ties?”
“One will do.”
“All right, first try on the suit.”
In the fitting-room he held his head to one side and told me to turn around. “The jacket fits you very well. We’ll just shorten the trousers a bit,” and went off to consult an elderly man who was sitting behind a desk at the far end of the shop. Returning with a number of ties over his arm, he said “You had better take two. It will enrich your appearance.”
“And impoverish me,” I said.
“Don’t worry, I’ve arranged for a discount of twenty per cent in two payments, and one tie is on the house,” he said. “I told the owner it was your first suit.”