The first week at the school was the toughest week of my life. Every day gave me new reasons to cry my heart out. I cried when I had to say good-bye to Grandma. “Just don’t talk politics,” she said, and kissed me.
Then Father drove me to the meeting place at the entrance to Jerusalem. The drive up the winding roads to Jerusalem scared me. What if Father didn’t make it back in one piece? It was raining hard, and a long row of cars was inching its way up the mountain. I prayed in silence that I’d miss the school bus and would have to go back home.
There was a row of tables where people gave each of us a name tag to hang around our necks. They misspelled my name. They gave us envelopes with a piece of paper that told us the color of our building and our room number. It took me a while to find the place. My three roommates had gotten there first and had left me the bed farthest from the window, closest to the door. Everyone said Hi, and one of them shook my hand and read the name on my name tag. I didn’t correct him.
That first week, I didn’t know what to do with my tray in the dining room. I didn’t know how to eat with a knife and fork. I didn’t know the Jews put the gravy on top of their rice, instead of putting it in a separate bowl. I cried when my roommates found out I’d never heard of the Beatles and laughed at me. They laughed when I said bob music instead of pop music. They laughed when I threatened to complain to Principal Binhas — instead of Pinhas. “What did you say his name was?” they asked, and like an idiot I repeated it: “Binhas.” They laughed at the pink sheets Mother had bought me specially. They laughed at my pants. At first, I even believed them when they said they really wanted to know where they could buy such pants. “Do they make special pants for Arabs?” they asked.
After English class, one of the students said I had the same accent as Arafat. As far as I knew, Arafat was the guy from the Aden Hafla cassette. Another kid said I looked like the blind kanoon player on TV. All through the first week, they kept calling me Abu Jamil el-Anzeh, the guy in the Arabic course on Educational TV.
That first week I also met Adel, the Arab who was a year ahead of me. I saw him in the dining room and recognized him at once. He was at a table with the girls, and he was eating his chicken with his fingers. I knew I didn’t want to look like him, but just seeing him there kept me going. Within two days, we’d moved in together. I had no problem persuading one of his roommates to swap with me.
Adel thought my sheets were really nice. He came from a village in the Upper Galilee, four hours away by bus. They’d made a film about him once for Israel TV. Showed him dribbling on the basketball court, to prove that Arabs and Jews can live together. Pinhas said about him in the film, “Adel brought his whole village on his back,” and Adel said it was a compliment. He was a good student and didn’t need to study much. He answered in class and wasn’t shy.
That first week I had to read more pages in Hebrew than I’d read in Tira all the way through to the ninth grade. I gave up and didn’t do anything. They also had a placement test in physics. Adel got a hundred, and I couldn’t answer a single question. One week was enough. It was obvious that I was going home for good.
When I tell my family what I’ve been through this week, they’ll never send me back, I thought. They’ll understand me. They’ll realize it’s a different world, and I can’t live there. I’ll tell them how out of place I felt during the Rosh Hashanah meal, how I don’t know a single word of their songs. I’ll tell them how I cry myself to sleep each night. And how I can’t stop thinking about my family, because I worry that something bad will happen to them: that Grandma will die or Father will have a car accident. I’ll tell them there are some bad kids at the school, with earrings, and the girls walk around in shorts. I’ll explain it has been the hardest week of my life, and they’ll let me stay home.
Polanski
When it was time to go home for the Rosh Hashanah break, I packed everything I’d brought with me and got on the bus. It was my first trip alone on a public bus, and if I hadn’t followed some of the kids who’d gotten on before me, I would never have known you have to pay the driver right at the beginning.
Adel and I took our seats on one bench. There was no one on the bench across from us, and Adel said maybe the girls from the our school would sit there, but it didn’t happen. All the kids from our school sat down in front, carrying on and making a hell of a racket.
I was petrified of the trip, afraid I wouldn’t make it home or that I’d get off at the wrong stop and be lost. My father had written it all down for me in a notebook:
Take the bus to the central bus station, get off with everyone else. Then he wrote: Bus 947, Haifa local, get off at the Kfar Sava stop. Walk as far as Meir hospital, then look for the Tira taxi stand. Take taxi to Tira.
Adel was supposed to go to his village, Nahf, which is a much longer journey. You go as far as Haifa, then take another bus to Karmi‘el, and there you can spend hours waiting for a bus that goes by his village. He said he’d probably walk from Karmi‘el. “It’s not that far, just half an hour’s walk.”
Adel didn’t want to go home. He was disappointed to have to leave after just one week. He asked the principal if he could spend the holiday break at school, but Pinhas said that was impossible. I invited him to Tira, and he accepted. I was glad to have someone to help me find the way, and he was glad to save time and money. He asked if we had any pretty girls in our neighborhood.
The bus leaves from the front gate of the school, and its first stop is just a few minutes away, at the Polanski Vocational School. The students there look different from the ones at our school, and Adel and I don’t look like any of them. The bus is full of students now, shouting and swearing, and girls in black high-heeled shoes and big earrings who spend the whole bus ride putting on makeup.
Three kids crowd into the seat facing Adel and me, and two others stand next to them, holding on to the metal bars. I feel stifled, dead. I tell Adel I’m getting off at the next stop. “Don’t be a retard.” he says. “I’m not going to pay for another ticket to the central bus station.”
I’m already sorry I invited him, sorry I ever met him, sorry I got on the bus with him. I can tell we’re in trouble, and within minutes my fears prove true.
One of the kids on the bench across from us asks Adel where he’s from.
“Nahf,” Adel says.
The kids laugh and turn to me. “And you?”
I put on the biggest grin I can muster, trying to be the most polite person in the world. They’re not going to hurt me. I was in Seeds of Peace. I know Jews. They’ve got to leave me alone. “From Tira,” I say. “It’s near Kfar Sava.” I try to keep up the smile, even though they’re already laughing at me. Quickly I whisper to Adel, “Let’s get off, I’ll pay for your ticket.” But he won’t do it. One thing’s for sure: I’m never getting on this bus again.
The kids across from us are whispering, laughing, repeating the names of our villages and deliberately mispronouncing them. They’re laughing at our names, and we don’t do anything about it. To take part in the general hilarity would be ridiculous, so I keep quiet. They start singing something that sounds familiar, but instead of “The Jew is dead”—the way we sing it — they sing “Mohammed is dead.” They sing loudly, and some of their classmates join in. I press the STOP button. The hell with Adel. I’m getting off. I pick up my bag, controlling myself, holding back my tears.