“What’s going to happen?” my wife wants to know. “War?” I wish she’d come back to bed because I’ve just begun undressing the first female combat pilot.
From the neighborhood up the hill above us we can hear the noise of Jews. Under the streetlights along their road I can see them advancing toward our house. The crowd is growing larger. They’re marching down the road above us. The house we’ve rented is pretty isolated. It’s the closest to the Jews. The landlord, who lives above us, knocks on the door and says, with a flashlight in his hand and tension in his face, “The Jews are attacking.”
The Jewish voices grow louder. Under the streetlights along their streets I can see them streaming toward our house. It’s becoming dangerous, so the landlord invites us to stay in his parents’ old home in the center of the village. We’ll be better protected there.
My wife starts crying, and I say, “We’re going home.” I take the baby out of her crib. She screams. I wrap her in her blanket, and we’re off. I hope they haven’t blocked the exit yet, but if the police cars are there already, I’ll tell them I’m a citizen and that I’m only renting here. I’ll show them my ID. I got it at the Ministry of Interior in Netanya. I’m not really Palestinian. I’ll tell them the baby’s sick.
I heave a sigh of relief as we reach the lit-up part of the city. They’re not going to recognize me. I’m counting on the fact that I look like a Jew. Let’s just hope they don’t see my wife. Couldn’t I have picked someone with a lighter complexion? She speaks softly to the baby, trying to calm her, and I shout at her to shut her trap if she wants to come out of this alive. The Jews haven’t reached the entrance yet, and the ones we meet peer into the car suspiciously, but when they see me they let us go. We’ve got to get out of here right away. Lucky I’m not one of those who hang prayer beads on the mirror. Lucky I don’t have a hamsa or letters in Arabic. I’ve got a pretty Jewish car, a Subaru, not the typical Peugeot or Opel Ascona. I’ve always known how to make myself inconspicuous.
I turn the dial, skipping over the Arab stations, and select the IDF channel. Then I turn up the volume till we’re out of the city. They’re burning down mosques. They’re shooting at villages and cities. People have been killed. There’s a strange pain in my joints. My arms and legs feel hollow, full of cold air, paralyzed.
I drive down the road out of Jerusalem much faster than usual. I’ve never gone at such speed with my daughter in the car. I’m afraid of crashing on the slopes. The roads don’t look any different. Every now and then, there’s the light of a passing vehicle and my eyes seek out the trucks carrying the tanks covered in heavy netting and green tarpaulin. I usually speed up once I reach the bottom of the hill, but I’m careful this time, because even the traffic police could be dangerous. That’s all I need now, for some cop to ask for my papers and find out who and what I am.
On Days When There Are Terrorist Attacks
On days when there are terrorist attacks, my wife says we’ve got to start saving. We should stop paying for cable. We could use the money to buy something new each year. Instead of watching TV we could be buying new sofas. She says what we have can hardly pass for a sofa. Besides, we need a new stove. We need a microwave oven to heat up the baby’s food. She doesn’t want expensive furniture. Even the least expensive will do. She’s seen some nice sofas at Golan Furniture in the Talpiyot neighborhood. In any case, since we move every year or two, there’s no point buying anything expensive, because the movers ruin the furniture. Last time, they broke the handle off our fridge and never managed to reassemble the cupboard.
My wife says we shouldn’t buy good things until we move into our own home in Tira. All we have there for the time being is the shell of a building, but with my parents’ help we can finish it within a year. Her father will buy the appliances. That’s how it is. The husband builds the home, and the wife buys the appliances. He bought very expensive ones for her younger sister. He’s stingy, but he feels compelled to make a good impression on strangers, like I do.
Unless I return to Tira now, my younger brother will get all my parents’ savings. He’s finished school and he’s coming back to the village. He’ll join my older brother, who got married six months ago and lives in a house of his own already, behind the one my parents live in: a spacious nice-looking house with a garden. There are two identical shells alongside it — one for me and one for my younger brother. My wife can’t understand what I like about being in Beit Safafa, when we’re surrounded by the scariest Jews — from Gilo, and the Patt neighborhood, and the Katamon projects. At least in Tira you don’t hear shooting or helicopters overhead, and they don’t disconnect the electricity every time they shell Beit Jala. She figures she’ll work in the municipality. Because she’s fed up. Every time there’s a terrorist attack, nobody at work will talk to her. She knows they need social workers in Tira. There are plenty of problems and not enough staff.
Before my younger brother got engaged, he asked if I was planning to move back home, because if not, he’d prefer to take over the shell they built for me. It could save him a lot. He wanted to get married quickly. He was engaged to a girl from Karra who went to university with him, and he was finding the distance oppressive. I told him that as far as I was concerned he could have them both, because I was never coming back.
I can’t figure out where my father got the money to build three shells. I didn’t think he had any money. He’d always complained about the cost of my tuition. He said if I’d been studying something useful he wouldn’t have minded so much, but I was just wasting my time. I started working right from my freshman year. I didn’t want to live in the dorms, and my father said if I wanted to rent an apartment I’d have to get a job.
We have to save the way your parents did, my wife says. Where do you think they got the money? Sometimes she calculates the value of the property that my parents own — the homes and the land — and says it’s worth more than a million dollars. She says I should stop being so naïve. Since my brother’s wedding, less than a year ago, they must have saved fifty thousand already. Unless I make a move, I’ll be left with nothing. My parents will never just come out and offer me some of it.
When a helicopter hovers over our home, I feel my wife has a point. Maybe it really is time to go back to Tira, to forget about Jerusalem and turn over a new leaf. If I don’t go back now, I’ll have to wait till they marry off my brother in a fully furnished home. This is my chance. My life there could be better, more focused. My wife says I don’t have anything to hide from anymore and nothing to conceal. My drinking and smoking is something my parents know about anyway. And besides, she never could understand why a married man of over twenty-five is afraid his parents will find out he smokes. It wasn’t until the day my wife gave birth that I asked my father to lend me a cigarette.
The alcohol I can hide in the cupboard, according to my wife, like my father. He drinks a lot, and there’s always a bottle of whiskey waiting in the bedroom. I don’t dare help myself, even though I’m often tempted. Once, when Grandma still had the strength, she would look for his bottles and flasks and break them outside. She’d rock the whole neighborhood with her screaming about my father and his irresponsible behavior. Wasting his money on alcohol instead of saving for his children. Who would send them to the university? Who would build them homes? She’d scream till she was red in the face, her voice almost choking. It’s all my mother’s fault, Grandma would say. She doesn’t know how to domesticate her husband. She sits around with him, glad that he drinks. She doesn’t care about the children. She spends everything on clothing and restaurants. Instead of every bottle he drinks, instead of every blouse she buys, they could be buying another chicken for the children.