Текст книги "Let It Be Morning"

Автор книги: Sayed Kashua

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

4

Igo back home. My wife is feeding the baby. “What happened?” she asks.

“Nothing. Some idiot tried to run the roadblock.”

“The roadblock? It’s still there? You mean you won’t be going to work today either?”

“You’d better stay home too.”

“What do you mean? I can’t. But I only have five classes today. I’ll be home early. What will you do all day? How about cleaning up a bit?”

“Yeah, we’ll see. But I’d like the baby to stay with me today.”

“Great. She’ll love it. Won’t you, sweetheart? Won’t you? You’ll stay with Daddy.”

In a way I’m happy they’ve continued the roadblock today too. It sort of saves me from the useless trip to the paper and from aimlessly roaming the streets. On the other hand, what the hell is going on here?

The baby smiles and finishes the whole bottle. My wife hands her over to me and goes to the bathroom. I’m so sorry I have a little girl. What a fool I was to decide to bring a child into the world in a situation like this. It wasn’t just the roadblock and yesterday’s events, but generally it seemed to me really inhumane to bring children into a world like ours in a region like ours. The problem is that my wife got pregnant before the present Intifada broke out. Everything seemed different then, and my own way of thinking was different too. I can even say I was optimistic. My career was going well and relations between Arabs and Jews were beginning to improve. Sometimes I think it all happened because of the baby, as a kind of retribution. Religious people would say God was testing us. I try to smile at the baby, as if to convince her that everything’s fine, that she’s living in surroundings that are just the way I’d planned for her. When I think about how quickly things deteriorated, it’s mind-blowing.

I’d rather the three of us stayed together today. That’s how I am when I have a sense that things are dangerous – I like to see all the people that I worry about sticking together, but I don’t have the strength to explain to her about how frightened I am and to persuade her to stay home.

We’re walking together and she says good-bye to the baby, I tell her to take care of herself, follow her with my eyes till she’s out of sight and go into my parents’ home with the baby in my arms.

5

My parents are getting dressed to pay a condolence call. My father pays condolence calls every time anyone in the village dies. He and two other adults in the family are regarded as the official condolence callers, and for decades the three of them have paid these calls on the second day of the mourning, after evening prayers. When the death isn’t natural, or when the deceased is someone important, or when a friend or someone young dies in his prime, the three relatives modify their standard procedure and don’t wait for the second day but try to make it to the funeral as well. My mother wears a kerchief and attends too. When they reach the road, they split up – Mother joins the women and Father walks along with the men. Many men and women are walking toward the house, trying to keep quiet, speaking in a whisper, the men walking on the right side of the road and the women on the left. I feel kind of sorry that I can’t join the funeral procession, which is bound to set out from the homes of the parents – the contractor’s and the workers’—toward the mosque, and from there to the cemetery. Too bad I offered to take the baby, because it could certainly have added some human interest to the story I’ll write for the paper. I’m still convinced I’ll be covering the whole chain of events once the roadblock is removed. If the closure is lifted tomorrow, I may still get the story written in time for this weekend’s supplement.

When my mother gets back, I’ll give her the baby and go out to see what’s happening, how people are taking it. My younger brother is back home, holding two plastic bags so heavy he can barely lift them. “Mother’s gone crazy,” he says, dumping the bags on the kitchen counter. Mostly they’re full of canned goods, corn, tuna, pickles, beans, peas, ful,chickpeas. He says the store was packed and that he practically had to hit this older woman who tried to get ahead of him. He says there were loads of people there and that some of the things that Mother had ordered were sold out already. He couldn’t find any flour, for instance.

My brother takes a seat in the living room, first beside me, stroking the baby’s head and smiling at her. She smiles back. Then he sits on the sofa farthest from us, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. “So, the folks have gone to a funeral?” he asks.

“Yeah. Since when do you smoke?”

“For almost a year. You know how it is at university, don’t you?” He smiles and adds in a more serious voice, “What do you say? Should I bother studying? Do you think there’s any chance I’ll get back to Tel Aviv tomorrow?”

“Sure, you’ve got to study for the exam.”

He takes a puff at his cigarette and tells me that in the beginning, when the security service knocked at his door, he thought they were rounding up the students they considered problematic, the political activists, the ones who showed up at campus rallies. But with him in the police car were students who were so good that they always made a point of keeping out of politics and just focused on their studies. My brother’s description takes me by surprise. I have the feeling I hardly know him anymore. I’d never imagined him as a smoker, and now he tells me he’s a campus activist. “And in what party are you active?” I ask him.

“I’m with the Communists.”

“The Communists? And just how did you wind up with the Communists?”

“Well, you know how it is. You’ve been, haven’t you? You meet people. Your friends are active in the party, so you decide you want to be active too, but it’s mainly because of how they treated me. Suddenly I see our problems. Suddenly I understand what it means to be hated, what racism and discrimination are. In the dorms, they make sure you’re put into the Arabs’ rooms, which are the worst rooms there are. One room for Arabs on each floor, to make sure there aren’t too many of us in any one place, to keep us in a minority status even on the floor. You know how there’s a single refrigerator for each two rooms? Well, the day I got there, I went into the kitchen to get a compartment for myself and my roommate from Djat, and this Jewish guy asked if I’d share a compartment with him. He said it was lucky I’d come because he was so worried he’d wind up having to share with an Arab.”

With my younger brother it’s hard to tell what he is, especially with his ponytail and his hard-rock clothes. Like most of the young people who join the Communist Party, my brother doesn’t know the first thing about Communism. They know it’s a party that aims at equality between Jews and Arabs, between the poor and the rich, but they haven’t a clue about its principles. We continue talking and I try to find out more about his Communism. I discover he knows who Lenin was but he’s never heard of Trotsky. He can curse the capitalists but knows nothing about the concept of a proletariat or the distribution of capital. The Communist slogans suited him, there were a few guys there from the law faculty where he studies, and that’s why he chose the Communists. He adds that there are some really cool Christian girls from the Galilee there too, not afraid to smoke in front of everyone, dressing right and joining the guys for a beer. It’s not that my younger brother is dumb. Not at all. He’s smart, and someday he’ll learn to tell the difference between them all. I don’t think I understood much about the different parties at his age either, or just what the conflict is all about. My brother asks me not to say a word to Father, ’cause he’ll kill him. Father’s motto has always been that if you want to amount to anything and if you want to do well at school, you’ve got to stay away from politics. Girls and politics. He makes me swear not to mention the cigarettes either, because Father is liable to make him stop school and come back home. I tell him he’s exaggerating, but promise not to say anything. My younger brother goes back to his studies, the baby begins to cry.

6

My little girl has fallen asleep and I put her down on my parents’ bed, the one they bought on their wedding day more than thirty years ago, the one they still sleep in. I go home, get the car keys and get in the car to listen to the news. The heat is overpowering, and it isn’t even noon. The radio dials are boiling. I try to turn them without getting burned, and pull away quickly. They’re playing the commercials now, the ones that come right before the news. Advertising air conditioners, savings plans at the bank and special deals on trips abroad or at local resorts. The news begins with an announcement that the government, in cooperation with the army, has decided to declare a general state of emergency. Officials in the security system are talking of the imminent danger of an Arab uprising and about red alerts related to certain people in the Arab sector who are planning to attack Jewish citizens and state institutions. Later, toward the middle of the newscast, they mention our village. The announcer reports an attempt to attack some soldiers who were conducting a routine patrol near the entrance to the village. “An attempted terrorist attack,” he says, “which ended without casualties thanks to our soldiers’ alertness.” He’s referring to the incident with the contractor and the worker in the pickup. Needless to say, there’s no mention of the Arab casualties, and it stands to reason they don’t have the facts anyway. There’s no way of communicating with people in the village, after all.

The situation has become unbearable. They’re up to something, it’s obvious by now, and they’re laying the foundations in Jewish public opinion. For two years now, politicians, ministers, members of Knesset and security experts have been talking about a “cancer in the heart of the nation,” an “imminent danger,” a “fifth column,” and a “demographic problem that threatens to undermine the Jewish fiber of the state.” What do they expect? What the hell do they expect? The Jewish public is already filled with hatred and a sense of danger. Just how far do they expect it to go? I look for the Arabic news on Voice of Israel. I know it’s the government propaganda channel – still, maybe they’ll give some more information – but their frequency has been cut too.

There’s a loud noise coming from the street, and I run back to see what’s happening. My younger brother is standing outside watching. It’s the funeral, judging by the noise, the largest funeral there’s ever been in this village. We can’t see it, but the cries of “Allahu akbar”reverberate through the village. A few women come out of their houses all excited and watch the funeral procession. They must have taken the bodies out of the mosque by now. My wife returns home and tells me that the high school kids came to the elementary school, entered each of the classrooms and announced a general strike and a demonstration. “I hope the younger ones go home and don’t get into trouble now, that’s all they need,” she says.

“I’m glad you’re back,” I tell her. “The baby’s fallen asleep and I’m going out to see what’s happening.”

“What for? What can you do to help?”

“It’s not for me, it’s part of my job,” I say, and feel the rush of the adrenaline that used to course through my veins when I set out to do a story.

“If things heat up, come back right away, do me a favor. Don’t be late, okay?” my wife says, and it reminds me of the days when I used to cover stories on the West Bank and it worried her. How I’ve missed her worrying.

The cemetery is teeming with people. Everyone is silent, allowing the prayer for the dead to be conducted peacefully. As soon as it’s over, the crowd cries out, “Allahu akbar,”and continues walking. Almost nobody goes home after the burial. The funeral has turned into a demonstration, possibly the largest the village has ever seen. A village that kept out of trouble even on Land Day and in the October events because it knew where its interests lay. The demonstration is being led by high school students repeating slogans they’ve heard from the Palestinians on TV. “With blood and might we shall redeem you, ya shahid.” They’d decided that the contractor and his two workers were shahids.The students march toward the council building. Some climb up on the roof, pull down the Israeli flag and burn it. The demonstrators whistle and boo and call out slogans against the State of Israel and against the prime minister – Swine, the Murderous Dog.

Very soon activists from the Islamic Movement join in, equipped with a pickup with loudspeakers and green party flags. Mostly they’re thinking of the political capital they can get out of it, and so are the Communists, who are waving red flags and singing their slogans and calling out the names of their leaders. The pan-Arabists are not far behind, with their yellow banners and the pictures of their leader stuck onto construction-paper placards. They all join a single procession at first, and call out the same slogans against the army and in support of the shahids. Very slowly the groups drift apart. The Islamic Movement activists lead the way, followed by the pan-Arabists, then the Communists, each group shouting different slogans, and then come the masses of demonstrators, ordinary people who’ve come for the funeral and decided to join in, to unleash their anger, show their solidarity and maybe do something to alleviate the grief of the bereaved families.

The demonstrators are marching through the village, and people keep joining them. Women take their place at the end of the procession, careful not to come too close to the men. The more neighborhoods they go through, the more demonstrators there are. Their faces are more angry than concerned. The shops, the offices and the restaurants close as a sign of mourning. It isn’t a strike. The demonstrators are making their way toward the exit from the village, toward the roadblock. I take my place in the rear, as close to the women as possible. I’m not taking any chances. If they fired this morning, they might fire now too.

The mayor and a large group of his young relatives are there, with their backs to the barbed-wire fence, waiting for the demonstrators, signaling them from a distance not to go any closer to the makeshift fence. The mayor hasn’t a chance of keeping them away. If the demonstrators were inclined to come closer, he couldn’t stop them. It just hasn’t occurred to them. Nobody’s willing to run the risk, and the procession draws to a halt at the roadblock. The demonstrators are shouting their tried and true slogans into their megaphones. The Muslims are shouting “Allahu akbar,”and “Khaybar khaybar, ya Yahud,”and that the Army of Muhammad will soon be back. The Communists are singing songs of solidarity and support of the Communist Youth Movement and the pan-Arabists are praising Nasser. Gradually the demonstrators begin to disperse, and soon there is nobody left facing the roadblock. In the distance, the soldiers can be seen getting up and putting down their weapons.

7

The atmosphere in the village has changed. More and more people are worried. The grocery stores, the bakeries and the restaurants that reopened after the demonstration have never seen so many shoppers. The stores were more crowded than on a Saturday before the Intifada, when Jews used to arrive from all around Israel.

There are one or two grocery stores in each neighborhood, a total of fifteen in the village as a whole. At the entrance, very close to the roadblocks, are the larger stores, for people arriving from the outside. The owners of those outlets used to be considered very lucky. Many Jews preferred shopping in the village, because they were sure the Arabs charged less, which wasn’t really true. The fact is that most of the villagers actually shopped in the city and saved quite a bit.

Despite the heat wave, the streets are full of kids and teenagers standing around in groups and talking about the demonstration, about the casualties, the soldiers and the roadblock. Everyone is convinced that Israel is about to drop an atom bomb on Iraq or Iran. Some of the youngsters are even swearing that they heard it on broadcasts from the Arab states. They’re saying that American and Israeli forces have launched an all-out offensive against the Arab world, and they’re afraid that we, the Israeli Arabs, will undermine their efforts by photographing targets for the Iraqis. Others swear they heard the Egyptian army has conquered Beersheba by now and is quickly advancing toward Tel Aviv, and that the Israelis have decided to hold us hostage.

Men and women are marching down the road, perspiring and carrying home large bags of food. As for me, I seek out the least busy-looking grocery so I can buy candles, batteries and maybe another pack of cigarettes. I’ve figured out that the food I bought can feed the whole family for at least a week, so that even if my older brother doesn’t manage to buy everything on our mother’s list, we’ll be okay. The thought that I’ve saved my family, so to speak, gives me a sense of victory. I quickly curb the feeling.

The older people who normally spend all their time at the entrance to the mosque aren’t there. They’ve taken their seats in the mourners’ tent. Two neighbors are standing in the doorways of their homes talking about an episode in an Egyptian series that was on TV last night. One of them says she doesn’t know what she’ll do if the power doesn’t come back on by nightfall. She’ll go crazy if she misses the next episode. I know the series they’re talking about. My wife has become addicted to it too and I myself try not to miss the story of the textile merchant who was once poor and has turned into one of the richest men in Cairo. He takes four wives. Three of them get along well, but the fourth is a wicked woman who is only after his money. Slowly I make my way home, and decide to enter the neighborhood grocery store despite the crowd inside.

A bunch of women are standing in line to pay. Some of them have come from other neighborhoods. The shelves of canned goods have been swept clean. There are no bags of rice or flour left either. One of the neighbors comes into the shop and screams at the owner to bring out the merchandise he has in his storerooms. The owner swears that he doesn’t even have any left for himself. He’d meant to keep a bag of rice for himself, but it’s all gone. He swears by all that’s holy. The neighbor gets even more annoyed and looks at the strange women standing in line and goes on screaming at the owner that he shouldn’t be selling to strangers, that he should be responsible enough to keep his merchandise for his regular customers, the people in his own neighborhood, his faithful clientele.

Practically the only things left in the grocery store are candy, snack bars and condiments. The furious neighbor, sporting a hat with the logo of a local transportation company, makes the rounds of the grocery, wringing his hands and saying, “What’s the matter with everyone? Have people gone crazy or what?” and then leaves.

They’ve hardly touched the candles or the batteries. I take two packages of each and get in line. The owner recognizes me and signals that I can leave. He knows I’ll be back to pay later. On my way out I ask if there are any cigarettes left. He bends over and pulls out two packs of a local brand from under the table. “They’re the last ones, want them?” The woman facing him is holding a few bills in her hand. She looks in my direction and lets out a hiss that makes me feel uneasy. I say yes, take the two packs and get out of there.

The whole family is at my parents’ house. They’re outside this time, seeking comfort in the shade of one of the few trees in the yard. “Look at him,” Mother says. “He thinks of everything. Who else thought of buying candles?” My father laughs at me for buying so many batteries. “What do you think, that we’ll never have electricity again?” Everyone’s laughing now. Even my nephew, who doesn’t understand any of this, manages a smile. My wife has already told them about my shopping spree yesterday, which she discovered when she went into the storage room.

“So?” Father says. “I see you’ve decided it’s going to be a long war.”

My older brother comes to my rescue and tells us that he’s hardly managed to buy anything. “And what if things go on this way? Nobody really knows what’s happening, so I’m glad you did what you did,” he tells me.

My mother goes into the house and returns with a bowl of potatoes and two peelers. I say at once, “Mother, why waste the potatoes? The things in the fridge are about to spoil. Let’s eat those first.”

Father laughs out loud and coughs. “Yes, the potatoes should be kept for the tough times of the war. By tomorrow we’ll have nothing to eat, after all,” and he continues coughing.

My wife says I’m right. It really would be a waste. They’re going to be cooking all the meat in the three families’ freezers today, so there’s no need for potatoes. My mother puts them back and says in a ceremonious voice that we have so much meat we won’t be needing bread today either. I go inside, enter my parents’ bedroom and look for the battery-operated radio. It’s the one we used during the Gulf War, when all of us moved into the sealed room at night. I put in the batteries. The official Israeli channel has no reports of casualties. They’re just talking about the new situation, what they call a general state of emergency, and the moderators, assisted by security officers, government officials and experts from academe, are trying to analyze the implications. There’s nothing on the radio about an attack either, nothing on Iraq or on Syria. There’s no mention of terrorists, except the story from this morning about an attempt that was foiled by our soldiers. Everyone agrees it’s important not to take any chances, but nobody says a thing about roadblocks.

Outside, they’ve decided to roast all the defrosted meat. My mother says that’s in bad taste. “This is no time for a barbecue. People might think we’re celebrating when two families in the village have just come from burying their loved ones. Think of the contractor’s mother. She kept fainting. Her son was the backbone of the family.” Mother says she’ll use a pressure cooker to prepare the meat. “It’ll be much tastier, soft as a doughnut.”

Father insists that the contractor was a complete idiot, only a fool would run a roadblock that way. “What was he thinking, that it’s a game? What’s a soldier supposed to think when a pickup comes charging straight at him? Isn’t he bound to shoot?”

A car stops in front of the house and everyone stares at it. A young man gets out, one of the mayor’s nephews. “Salam aleikum,”he greets us, and informs Father that the mayor has invited him to a meeting with the heads of all the families in the village, in the council building.

It’s the first time they’re having such a meeting. Normally, decisions are taken by council members without consulting the villagers themselves. Before the mayor’s emissary has a chance to get back into his car, my father wants to know, “Has he decided to set up a security cabinet?”

Our family may be one of the smallest in the village, barely a hundred people, but my father has always been among the mayor’s supporters. The two of them belonged to the Labor Party. The mayor followed in the footsteps of his father. His family is the largest in the village and the other heads of families had never succeeded in uniting and gaining power. When it comes to the local elections, the Muslims and the Communists and the nationalists don’t stand a chance. The only thing that counts is the family. They all turn to their families, and what’s good for the family is good for them.

The mayor has always been good at providing positions for the right people in the competing families, and ever since the state was established, there have only been two mayors, the father and the son. And like the father, the son began his party career by driving sanitation workers to the Labor Party headquarters. Somehow they joined up with the right people, who realized that whoever was in charge of transportation belonged to one of the largest families, and that with a small amount of money they would succeed in bringing in thousands of votes. When the father was elected, he bequeathed his pickup and the sanitation workers to his eldest son, and when he died, he bequeathed his position as mayor.

Father and son looked very much the same. The father I know mainly from stories and from a black-and-white photograph I used to see all through high school. The high school was named after the late mayor, the current mayor’s father. There was a large sign with his name and picture that greeted everyone who arrived at the school, and the same picture was positioned over the blackboard in every classroom, facing the students. I remember very clearly the day when the principal’s father died, and the principal, who came from the second largest family in the village, one that supported a different Zionist party, removed the sign with the name of the late mayor and replaced it with one announcing that from that day on the school would be named after his father. A few minutes later a few of the mayor’s relatives arrived. First they shot at the new sign, and then they took it down and replaced it with an even bigger sign bearing the name and picture of the former mayor, Allah yirhamo.Were it not for the intervention of some members of the Knesset and notables from the nearby villages, a feud would have broken out between the two largest families in the village. The compromise solution included naming the sports field for the principal’s father. The principal refused at first, mainly because the village sports field is a patch of sand and the goalposts are nothing more than stones that the students keep replacing. The next day, the mayor installed proper goalposts, with nets. I remember how happy that made everyone, me too.

My father comes inside to get dressed for the meeting. He is always very careful with his appearance. I offer to drive him to the council building. Some of the grocery stores have closed already, having been cleaned out completely. My father looks through the window at the groups of people milling about in the streets, then looks at me and asks:

“Does it look serious to you, this whole thing?”

“I think it’s scary.”

“Yes, but it’s just the second day. Why jump to conclusions? I bet the mayor’s going to tell us he’s been informed it’s all over.”

“I very much hope so.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I have no idea, Father.”

I park outside the council building. Hundreds of people have gathered near the entrance, waiting for some news. Cars blasting music at full volume are cruising back and forth. I turn off the engine and stay in the car, light a cigarette, inhale and turn my head to blow the smoke out the window. A big new BMW pulls up and suddenly stops beside mine. There are four men inside. I don’t recognize them, but I’m sure they’re looking me over. The driver turns down the music, leans over the steering wheel and calls out my name. “ Wallah, it’s you. How’ve you been? It’s been ages,” he says, and smiles. Now I recognize him. He’s Bassel, who was in my class.

I force a smile. I feel out of breath but stifle a cough. “You’ve started smoking, eh?” Bassel says, with a smile that hasn’t changed at all. “It’s bad for your health, you know,” he goes on. “Salamat.”Slowly he starts the engine and turns the music back up.

Over my desk in the children’s room, they still have the framed picture from our class trip. I remember how I did everything I could to get Bassel to agree to have his picture taken with me. My God, what an idiot I was. By seventh grade, all the kids knew everything. They’d huddle together in groups during recess, whispering to one another, blushing. I was never accepted. I never managed to become one of the gang. Bassel was the leader. He talked more than anyone, and he was always the one who managed to get the other boys to listen. He had them in his grip. He could fascinate them and he could make them laugh. We’d have long lessons together in carpentry shop, and the teacher almost always gave us something to do, planing or woodcutting, and then he’d leave us alone. In the carpentry shop there were only boys. The girls took home economics in a kitchen. They cooked and baked cakes all year round. In the carpentry shop the boys allowed themselves to talk freely. Sometimes I’d hear words like erection, hair, mustache, pain in the chest. They’d raise their arms and compare armpits, some of them already had black hair growing there. Sometimes they’d pull down their pants and break out in laughter or shouts, which they quickly muffled before any of the teachers heard them. They’d pinch one another’s chest and cringe.

In seventh grade there were three boys who were already shaving their mustache. Bassel was the first, and the other two imitated him. Everyone waited eagerly for the day they’d find black hair growing beneath their nose, and I was horrified at the thought that I would have to shave someday too. I don’t want to do it, I told myself, I wish I never had any hair at all.

When I’d get home and find myself alone in my room or in the bathroom, I’d pinch myself in the nipples and convince myself that I couldn’t feel a thing. Hair started growing in all sorts of places on my body, but it was still sparse. It scared me to death. What the hell does it mean? What are they talking about in class? And what is it about this change that they enjoy so much? Why do I find the new ache in my throat so disturbing? And what about the strange, broken voice I hear whenever I talk? It’s as though I’m not me, as though it’s the voice of some other guy I don’t want to be, not yet. I don’t want to be like everyone else, I’m not like everyone else, and things like that must never happen to me. Things like that happen to boys who get into trouble.