Текст книги "Let It Be Morning"

Автор книги: Sayed Kashua

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

4

Ithought I heard some shots, a few rounds. Must be a wedding, or maybe it’s the soldiers in Tul-Karm or Qalqilya, both close by. Even though it’s just a village, the noise in this place is much louder than in the city. It’s after midnight now, and the cruising cars never let up. You can hear them trying to go faster, revving up the motors, ignoring the makeshift speed bumps the neighbors put in, even though they’re just forty or fifty feet apart, but the young drivers won’t miss a chance to build up speed. The really loud screeching of tires, brakes being slammed and motors being pushed to the max are not quite as loud, since they come from a few blocks away, where there are no speed bumps and hardly even any buildings. That’s just how it is. It’s always been the younger generation’s favorite form of entertainment. In the intermittent silences between cars I hear a hodgepodge of noises, some from television sets, some from people talking. I could swear I hear the sound of children playing. What is it with them, being up at such an hour? I remember when we were kids how we’d always show off about how late we’d gone to sleep the night before. I remember I’d always gone to sleep early, or to be precise, I’d always gone to bed early.

Tonight too, I’ve been in bed for two hours already. I was sure I’d fall asleep as soon as I shut my eyes. It had been a tough day. Everything was supposed to be finished by today. Tomorrow is our official moving-in day. Tomorrow I’ll be sleeping with my wife and baby in our new house, together, the way families are supposed to. I don’t know whether the thought reassures or terrifies me. First thing in the morning, my wife and mother-in-law arrived at the new house and started cleaning. Mother joined them, and the three of them spent the next few hours scouring the floor, removing spots of paint, not an easy job. I was in charge of various small but tiring jobs, like putting handles on the doors or hooks in the bathrooms or hanging curtains. I didn’t get to the curtains, because the women needed me to dismantle windows and blinds so they could clean them and the frames underneath. Then I was supposed to put them back in. It isn’t easy to remember which part of the window goes in first. Make even a small mistake and all your work will be wasted. I hated the windows and I couldn’t understand why there should be so many in one lousy house.

Never mind, I’ll hang the curtains tomorrow. It’s just a matter of drilling a few holes and tightening a few screws. The tricky part is getting the measurements right and making sure the curtains are straight. Tomorrow we’ll all be sleeping together, tomorrow our normal lives will be getting back on track. The week we both took off so we could move is over, and in two days we’ll have to get back into our routine. Maybe that’s what we need most right now: a routine that will put our lives in order, that will restore the proper rhythm of things, the natural flow. My wife will be teaching at one of the schools in the village and I’ll be going back to the paper, half an hour’s drive away from here, forty minutes at most. Tomorrow I’ll take my wife’s brother, Ashraf, to our old apartment to pick up some boxes we left behind. It’s still ours. We paid rent on it till the end of the month, tomorrow.

5

My wife, my mother-in-law and my daughter arrive in the morning with Ashraf in the pickup he borrowed from one of his friends. By the time we get back with the boxes, they’ll have finished cleaning. There isn’t much left to do, just the floors, actually.

“Coming home?” Ashraf says, and sniggers. “Coming home to your birthplace, eh?” He and I get along pretty well, in fact. Not that we see each other very often. Every now and then he used to visit us and then stay for the weekend. Almost every time he came, we’d have a beer at one of the nearby bars. He finished college not long ago – economics – and after he gave up on finding a job in his field he started working in one of the mobile phone companies as a customer-service rep for Arab customers.

Dozens of workers are congregating in the village square, each holding a plastic bag. They lunge at every car that stops, hoping it may belong to a contractor or anyone else who’s looking for cheap day laborers. Ashraf’s pickup looks particularly promising. It reminds the workers of the contractors’ pickups. When we stop at the intersection, to yield the right-of-way to cars coming in the other direction, the workers converge on all the windows. I signal, with my hand and my head, that we’re not in the market for workers, but they don’t give up, and I hear them say things like, “Fifty shekels for the whole day. Please.” And, “Ten shekels an hour, any job you want done.” They don’t let go of the car till it lurches away and crosses the intersection. Ashraf goes on smiling. I think that’s how he overcomes the awkwardness of the situation. “Don’t feel sorry for them,” he says, and I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince – me or himself. “Now they’re begging, but deep inside they’re convinced that every Israeli Arab is a traitor and a collaborator.”

On our way out of the village, the pickup joins a long line of cars, dozens of them inching forward. “Another roadblock,” Ashraf says. “Got your ID on you?” I nod, and he says, “Is this what you’re returning to? Believe me, I don’t get it. How can you return to a place like this for no better reason than to own a bigger house? You don’t know what you’re coming back to, my man. This isn’t the place you left, when was it – ten, fifteen years ago?” He laughs again. “Did you hear the shooting yesterday?” Little kids in cheap old clothes surround every car that comes to a halt, some of them offering rags for sale, others chewing gum, lighters, sets of combs and scissors and packs of tissue. As they approach Ashraf’s pickup, he rolls up the windows and signals them to move away. “Do you have any idea how much money they make?” he says. “They put on that pathetic face, and instead of going to school they come all the way from Qalqilya and Tul-Karm on foot and beg. Every single one of them makes at least a hundred shekels a day. I don’t even make a hundred a day.”

The pickup plods along and we can see the policemen at the roadblock. Ashraf says the people on the West Bank are the sorriest lot in the world, and he chuckles. “Ever since the Intifada, they have nothing better to do than to call us at work and give us an earful. That’s how they pass the time of day, I’m telling you. They just call every service phone with a toll-free line. They can drive you crazy, and you have to be courteous, answer by the book, ‘Cellcom at your service. This is Ashraf speaking. How may I help you?’ Sometimes I feel like cursing them, cracking jokes with them, slamming the phone down in the middle of a call, but that’s out, because they’re always monitoring our customer-service calls. They keep dreaming up new ideas. This week, for instance, there was an onslaught of callers from Nablus. All of them want their phones to ring like one of Diana Haddad’s new songs. Where am I going to find them a Diana Haddad ring tone now? In Jenin, they figured out this week that you could set your mobile to call from abroad too. Thousands called in, as if anyone is really going anywhere. They can’t even get from Jenin to Nablus. They call just because they feel like it. Every time they hear there’s a new service, they all call.

“Once this little girl phoned in and just sobbed away. I could hear the heavy shelling in the background and the little girl told me she was alone in the house, her father was out and she didn’t know where he was. I have no idea how she wound up dialing my number. Maybe it was the last number her father had dialed. Makes sense. After all, they call Cellcom all day long. And there she is, crying, and I spend hours trying to reassure her. If they’d caught me, I’d have been fired on the spot, but I stay on the line with her till her father, or somebody, gets home when the shelling stops. I mean, you could actually hear the war in the background and you picture this kid all alone over there, scared to death, screaming, and me, like some military training officer, there I am telling her to get down, to take cover behind a wall, under a table. A military commander, that’s what I was for her, I’m telling you,” he says with a laugh.

As we approach the roadblock, we pull out our ID cards. The policeman glances at them and hands them right back to us. “Lucky they didn’t ask us for licenses, ’cause this pickup isn’t registered in my name and we’d never hear the end of it.”

“Does this have to do with yesterday’s shooting?” I ask. Ashraf laughs. “What makes you say that? They’re just looking for some workers. So you heard the shooting yesterday? It was right next to our house, from a passing vehicle. Gang shooting. What’s that to the police? They don’t give a damn. All they care about is security stuff. But yesterday some guys I know must have come back drunk from some club in Tel Aviv and drove around our neighborhood. I was awake. I was standing on the balcony and I saw them. Suddenly one of them pulled out an Uzi and shot a few rounds. He must have been very happy. You’ll get used to it.”

Ashraf goes on laughing the whole way, telling me about my village, his village, the new village I no longer know, and his disdain is unmistakable from the word go. As we continue driving, he explains the best way to behave to avoid getting into trouble. “You’re driving along a narrow road and a car comes in the opposite direction. There isn’t enough room for both of you. You drive right back, insha’Allah,even if he only has to back up two meters and you have to do one hundred. Always back up, ’cause it could end in a shooting, depending on who happens to be in the car. You’re driving along and two cars are blocking the road because the drivers are chatting through the open windows? Wait patiently. God help you if you honk. Just wait for them to finish their conversation. It won’t take more than an hour, insha’Allah.Just wait and when they let you pass, smile and say thank you.” Ashraf keeps laughing as he recites his survival lexicon. Then he explains that if they jump the line at the infirmary, I should just let it be. If I’m in line at the grocery shop and someone cuts in front of me, I should just stay cool. He swears that people have been killed in recent years because of things like that. Slowly his laughter dies down. “You have no idea what you’re coming back to, do you?” he says, and his tone changes.

6

My wife gets into bed in the second-floor bedroom after putting the baby down in her crib, and I stay downstairs to watch TV, zapping till the news begins on the Israeli channel. I’ve got a satellite dish like everyone else around here, one hundred and ninety channels, more than ninety of them in Arabic, and one of the Israeli channels. The whole business of the Arab channels is pretty new to me, and I’m intrigued. I’ve never come across it before. When I left the village they were still using antennas, the kind that barely pick up the Israeli channel, and with any luck, a Jordanian one. I get a kick out of zapping, back and forth. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than five minutes watching the Arab channels. It’s pretty amazing. There must be a dozen music channels with clip after clip showing half-naked Lebanese belly dancers. At first I can’t believe Arabs would dress like that, just like on MTV. The songs come as a shock to me too, all of them seem the same and sound the same, about love, mostly, the same words, changing only slightly from one song to the next, the same rhymes, the same annoying melody, a pounding beat that I don’t like at all. But still I stare at the dancing women, with their skimpy getups and undulating pelvises.

I keep on pressing the button with the up-arrow on it to switch channels. MTV is showing Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire?and Abu Dhabi has The Weakest Link. Soon enough I start skipping right over the religious channels. At first I thought they were cool, but now I see through them right away. Soon as I spot a sheikh with a head-cover, I know he’s preaching or giving a religion lesson. There are countless channels like that, where they spend the whole day reading from the Koran and discussing what Islam does or doesn’t allow you to do. I hate the look of the announcers, I hate the way they stress their k’s when they talk. It’s something called Kalkala. I remember they told us about it in the seventh grade. You’re supposed to enunciate the kvery clearly when you’re reading from the Koran, it’s supposed to come straight from the throat like you’re about to puke kkkkkk. In one of those lessons, the teacher wanted to tell us about the heretics. “Who are the heretics of today?” he asked. Some students answered they were the people who put their faith in al-asnam(the idols), some said they were the sun worshippers, or those who believe in cows, or the murderers, or the Jews, but our bearded religion teacher didn’t like any of those answers. In the end, he turned to the blackboard and wrote in gigantic letters: KARL MARX, and asked one of the kids to read what it said. The student overenunciated the ksound in Karland the teacher gave him a beating to help him remember. Nobody understood what the hell Marx was. There are some channels, especially the official Saudi one, that are beneath contempt. Everything there seems different – the graphics, the music, the jingles. It’s like the programs I used to watch on Jordanian TV a decade ago. It’s amazing that in the age of cutting-edge television and state-of-the-art studios like Al Jazeera’s and ones in Lebanon, they still have these backward channels with moderators who don’t know the first thing about modern broadcasting. Everyone watches Al Jazeera when there’s a new war on. Later, people get tired of it, because all the wars on television look the same lately. Someone had better come up with something new in the next war. We can’t take it anymore, it’s too boring staring at a black or green screen.

I’m not too crazy about Al Jazeera. From the little I can see, they spend hour after hour talking with experts and commentators, broadcasting news that everyone’s heard already, news that most of the Arab world is used to hearing and likes to hear. They never mention the names of Arab leaders, never do any investigative reporting about rulers or important figures in the Arab world. They don’t want to upset anyone, least of all the oil magnates in the Gulf, with all their money – the money which, when all is said and done, pays for these channels. It’s pretty pathetic, really; the big name that the channel has made for itself is a hoax. It may be a revolution in the area of news coverage in the Arab world, but it still doesn’t amount to real journalism.

I switch just in time to the news on Channel One, Israel TV, which begins with another item about a cell of Israeli Arabs who’ve been picked up on suspicion of helping a Palestinian suicide bomber get to Tel Aviv. Maybe my editor will ask me to do a story about it tomorrow. I feel like they’ve been phasing me out lately. Ever since the cutbacks and the decision that I’ll go freelance and no longer be on the editorial board, I’ve hardly gotten any assignments. Maybe this time they’ll need me, because everyone else is afraid of going into Palestinian villages, not only on the West Bank but in Israel too. I’m glad that cell got caught. Maybe it’ll earn me something this month.

The doorbell rings. It’s my mother and my two aunts, my father’s sisters. “They’re here in honor of our new house,” my mother says.

“Welcome,” I say. “My aunts are here,” I answer my wife. The doorbell has awakened her and she wants to know who it is.

“Congratulations, mabruk, ma-sha’Allah,may this house be filled with children,” they say, and drag their big selves inside. I pull along the two bags of presents they’ve brought us.

My wife comes down, trying not to show how annoyed she is at the unexpected callers. I hate it when she makes those faces, as if it’s my fault, as if I want people to come visit us. “Where’s the little one?” the older aunt asks her. “Asleep already? I was hoping to get a look at her.”

“She’s in her crib, you can take a look.” My aunts follow my wife up the stairs. The two of them have trouble climbing, and the older one has to rest every other step, grasping the railing, panting, muttering, “ya Allah,”and taking another step or two. The younger one pauses every fourth step. Both of them complain about the stairs. Once they’ve taken a quick look at the baby, they slowly make their way back down and settle into the armchairs in the living room, wiping their brows with the white kerchiefs they’ve been wearing, and trying to catch their breath. It takes quite a while till the older one manages to say, “She’s adorable. Looks just like you,” and the younger one adds, “May God bless her with a brother. Is there anything on the way? You need another one, and it’s better for a woman to give birth while she’s still young. I stopped having children at twenty-eight after I’d had eight. It’s better for the woman, ’cause you never know when she’s going to stop getting her monthly.”

“Insha’Allah,”my wife says diplomatically, and heads for the kitchen to get our regular guest kit, the one that all the villagers serve. A bowl of fruit, some nuts, cold drinks. Then she’ll urge them to please help themselves, the way she’s supposed to, and they’ll have to eat or drink something, and toward the end of their visit she’ll offer tea or coffee, a cue that it’s time for them to leave. Tea and coffee must be offered even if they get up to go before you’ve had a chance. You’re always supposed to say, “What? Leaving already? You haven’t had your tea yet.”

Nobody wants to mess with my aunts. You’ve got to make sure everything is done by the book. Otherwise, the attack will be particularly brutal. My wife knows this, and she’s careful to do things the right way, except for that scowl that has me worrying that my aunts may catch on. “You needn’t have bothered,” they say, the way everyone does.

“The fact that you’ve bothered gives me strength,” my wife replies, and passes the test with flying colors.

They’re tough ladies, my aunts. Everyone in the village knows it, and tries not to do anything that might make them angry. They’re first-rate gossipmongers, great at bad-mouthing and criticizing anyone they don’t like. In many ways, their impression of our house and of us is crucial to us.

After a few ritual exchanges and comments about the color of the kitchen cabinets, the railing and the sofa, my aunts get on my mother’s case for letting my father, their brother, spend time in the café. “How do you allow it?” the younger aunt asks my mother. “He’s a grandfather already, and still he spends time in cafés?”

“What can I do?” Mother says. “He goes there to spend time with his friends.”

“What do you mean, what can you do?” my older aunt asks. “Stop him. What are you, a little girl? A man of his age and in his position? What does he think – that he’s still eighteen? Sitting around all day playing cards and shesh-besh. I’ll have you know that people have told me he gambles. They swore he plays for money. I wanted the earth to swallow me right then, I was so embarrassed. That’s all we need – for worthless people to come and humiliate me because my brother spends his time playing cards in cafés. Why would he be playing cards when he has a good wife at home? My husband, Allah yirhamo,never spent a day in a café from the day we were married till the day he died.”

“Instead of going to religion lessons at the mosque in the evening,” my younger aunt says, “instead of sitting with good people, reading the Koran and praying, he’d rather sit around and smoke, drink coffee and play tawlah. What’s missing in his life? Look at me. I recite verses from early evening until I fall asleep. Can there be anything better than reading verses to drive the demons and the evil eye away from your home and your children? It’s all your fault, you make him run away.”

My mother, experienced with such harangues, restrains herself as always, and makes do with nods and short replies, promising to do whatever she can. She will always pretend to agree with every word they say. She knows perfectly well that she has no choice and that no matter what she does they’ll never think well of her and will never stop making fun of her or criticizing what she does.

My older aunt tells us about another man she knows who “brought a bride from the West Bank.” The brides from the West Bank are a subject of conversation, and they mention a long list of middle-aged men who “brought brides from the West Bank.” “An eighteen-year-old,” my older aunt says of her new neighbor. “Adorable, sweet, white as an angel, not like the monster he had who just kept getting fatter and fatter.”

The younger aunt agrees. “I wish my sons would each bring a bride from the West Bank. There’s nothing better than having children, and today’s girls don’t want to have so many.” It takes me a long time to realize that taking a second wife from the West Bank is becoming the norm in our village. Because the girl is from over there, they can disregard the Israeli prohibition on polygamy. “It’s just because they don’t want the Arabs to multiply,” my older aunt says. “It goes against the teachings of Islam.” As far as the young brides from the West Bank are concerned, marrying an Israeli Arab, no matter how old, is a chance to escape from poverty, especially since the mohargift the Israeli grooms are willing to pay is a windfall for the relatives who stay behind.

My aunts crack sunflower seeds, and the more the conversation picks up, the faster they crack them. Their talk is animated, as they review the village gossip and compare versions. They talk of a man who stabbed his brother last night. One of them heard about fifteen stab wounds; the other, who insists that her source is more reliable, heard it was eighteen. They talk about men who cheat on their wives, about how they were caught and where and when. They talk about homes that have been robbed recently, how much was taken from each house, who the suspects are, what weapons they used – an Uzi, a.36 or a.38—like regular small arms experts.

My mother must have heard my aunts’ stories already. My wife shows some interest, and every now and then, whether out of politeness or out of genuine concern, she gets in a question of clarification like, “Are you talking about the brother of so-and-so?” My wife knows the people around here much better than I do, and her reactions give the impression that she’s not surprised at the shocking stories that come up in the conversation and takes them in stride. I’m the only one who sits there and can’t believe things like that are happening around me. My aunts go on to describe how children are being kidnapped for ransom on their way home from school, how people get shot, even when they’re just sitting in a café. How a week ago a guy drove up on a motorbike and walked in with his helmet still on and a pistol in his hand, and shot someone. “And what would have happened if my brother had been sitting there that minute?” my younger aunt asks my mother. They talk about little children who’ve been raped, businesses that have been burgled and youngsters who’ve been arrested.

My aunts stay for a long time, and finally say, “Y’Allah,”and get up to leave. My wife urges them to have some tea. First they say they can’t but she skillfully insists and makes them promise not to leave before tea is served. They stay seated on the sofa and I can tell by the look in their eyes that they’re satisfied with my wife’s behavior.

By the time the tea arrives, I have heard more stories – about usurious moneylenders using thugs who don’t think twice about shooting anyone who’s behind on his payments, about a whole army of criminals who exact protection payments from businesses and rape the wife of anyone who turns them down, or force them out of their vehicle in the middle of the village and confiscate it in broad daylight like the tax authorities, and about one poor guy, owner of a grocery store, who balked and dared to cross them. His store was sprayed with submachinegun fire and now he pays them like everyone else does.

When they leave, they kiss my wife and again wish her well in the new house, and say how they hope Allah will sow blessings in her home and in her womb. My wife clears away the refreshments tray. I turn the TV on again and watch an Arab news channel. Before my wife goes back up to the bedroom I ask her whether those stories are true. She sniggers and says that it’s all they talk about in the teachers’ room all day. “What would you know? Just coming back here to sleep. You don’t work here like me. I’m the one who got screwed by moving back here. What do you know about things anyway? You still think the teachers hit the pupils, don’t you? Don’t you understand it’s the other way around now, that the teachers are scared, even in elementary school? That teachers have been stabbed? You’ve brought me back to a place where you ask kids at school what they want to be when they grow up and without batting an eye, half the class say they want to be gang members.”