"You're so sure I tell him everything?"
"Has anything changed?"
She studies him sourly and does not answer. Yirmiyahu turns to Sijjin Kuang and surprisingly, in his limited English, summarizes the last few sentences spoken in Hebrew. The Sudanese woman regards the two of them with puzzlement, and before locking the medicine cabinet asks if anything else is needed of her. A sleeping pill, requests Daniela, you've got me worried about getting up early and I'm afraid I won't be able to fall asleep. But sleeping pills are not popular among Africans and are not to be found in the medicine cabinet. Like a magician the Sudanese produces another white aspirin between her long black fingers and gives it to the woman who is fearful for her sleep.
"Maybe you should really go now and get some rest instead of hanging around here," says Yirmi to his sister-in-law, in the patronizing tone of an older brother. "On Sunday nights, before returning to the dig, the team has a custom of holding a fancy dinner in the style of a 'high table,' and they'll surely insist that you be there."
"High table?" She laughs. "What is this? Oxford and Cambridge?"
"If they feel like honoring themselves in such a fashion, what's wrong with that? So go on, take a nap, so later you won't yawn in their faces."
Again she senses his clear desire to keep his distance from her, maybe because he feels he has already got carried away and doesn't want to be dragged any farther. But she says to herself that if she gives up and doesn't hear the end of the story, she'll be guilty of disloyalty to her sister, who was kept in the dark about her husband's desperate adventure. So she takes off her shoes and plants herself on the bed and directs a penetrating gaze at her brother-in-law, who stands at the threshold of the inner room, half in the light and half in darkness. "Yirmi, what do you mean, a lesson in Judaism?"
"In Jews."
"And who, may I ask, was the teacher — the Palestinian landlord, or your pharmacist?"
"Neither one. The pharmacist was afraid to come to the meeting that he himself had arranged. Someone warned him at the last minute that despite his blue Israeli ID card, he might be prevented from getting back into Jerusalem from the West Bank if he was caught. His absence worried me at first and even frightened me, because I had put my security in his hands. Although he was a Christian and not a Muslim, he was held in respect as a medical man. But I realized he would not be coming only when I was already sitting on the rooftop waiting for him, and by then there was no retreat. It was a winter night, very cold but dry, and this time there was no laundry flapping on the clothesline, just a few old armchairs, and the middleman, an Israeli Arab with two wives, one in Israel and the other in the territories, sat me down and said, Coffee will arrive right away, sir, and in the meantime enjoy the air, which is cleaner here than where you live, and disappeared. I sat and listened to the sounds of the city, which were different from the sounds of an Israeli city, and I tried to absorb what Eyali heard in his last hours. I sat alone and waited, and no one came up, and then I knew that if they were to kill me now, or kidnap me, I absolutely deserved it, because I was tempting fate and provoking a humiliated enemy."
"At least you were aware of this."
"Apparently I was slightly infected by their suicidal impulses."
"And how did it end?"
He has finally understood that his sister-in-law, like a hunting dog, will not let him go, and he brings a chair from the other room and places it beside her bed.
"All right. So when the landlord saw that the pharmacist wasn't coming, he didn't know what to do with me and sent me his daughter — the young and pregnant one I met when I came with the army officer."
"The student of history with the mellifluous Hebrew."
"You don't forget a single word."
"A single word of yours. So don't worry about Amotz, he'll hear it all from me."
Her brother-in-law falls silent, as if upset that his words will not remain between the two of them in Africa but will be reported in Israel. But he recovers quickly and continues.
"So this young woman, the student, arrives on the roof, followed by her mother, fat and jolly as ever, presumably there to protect her. The student is now huge, almost ready to give birth, but her face is fresh from all the rest she gets under curfew and closure, glowing with imminent motherhood, and her black hair spread on her shoulders. And the mother brings coffee on a tray."
"So they won't be tempted to kill you if you fall asleep," she jokes.
"An unarmed old man like me they could slaughter even if I am awake; even a woman could do it. No, they brought me the sweet coffee so I could sit and explain with a clear head what I really wanted from them. Why I kept coming back there. And when I saw that pregnant student — whose studies at the Ruppin college had been interrupted by the intifada and would not likely be resumed, and whose husband, so I gathered from her, had run off to one of the Gulf states to look for work and would not soon return — who knows, maybe he was the wanted man they were staking out — when I saw her coming to sit down quietly beside me, I had this revelation, that it was in fact she who had drawn me to risk my life and return back here. Yes, it was her sympathy I was looking for. I wanted to hear from a well-educated young woman, in her gentle Hebrew, that even if, like the others, she saw us as enemies, she was still capable of sympathy for a naïve and stupid soldier, who risked his life so as not to leave filth for his enemies."
"She knew what had happened?"
"Of course."
"And you got from her the sympathy you wanted?"
"No. On the contrary. It was the student who was the toughest of them all. She began with a rebuke based on the history she had learned at an Israeli college. Why is it you Jews can penetrate all sorts of foreign places and settle into other people's souls? Why is it so easy for you to wander from place to place without forming bonds of friendship with any other people, even if you live among them for a thousand years? Because you have a special god who is yours alone, and even when you don't believe in him, you are certain that because of him you have the right to be everywhere. In that case, who will love you? Who will want you? How will you survive?"
"This is all familiar stuff."
"Yes, but there on the roof in Tulkarm, through the bottomless bitterness of this pregnant young woman, it took on a new coloration. Maybe because she was soon to give birth, maybe because her husband wouldn't be there at the delivery, maybe because of her studies that had been cut short, she felt she had nothing to lose with me, that I was laid bare before her, a stubborn old Jew. What are you doing here again, she asked, what can a man be looking for at night among his enemies? Why are you bothering and frightening my father? What do you want from me? That I'll offer you compassion for your soldier? Why should I feel sorry for a soldier who invades a space that does not belong to him and doesn't care about us, who we are and what we are? Who takes over a family's roof in order to kill one of us, and thinks that if he does us a favor and leaves us a clean bucket, washing away the evidence of his fear, we'll forgive him for the insult and humiliation? But how can we forgive? Can we be bought with a clean bucket?"
"That's how she explained it to you? As an added insult? That's crazy."
"No, Daniela, don't make life easy for yourself. She's not crazy. She's strange, but not crazy. Idiosyncratic, but not crazy. She spoke with clarity and logic. We are sick and tired of you, she said. You took land, you took water, and you control our every move, so at least give us a chance to join you. Otherwise we'll all commit suicide together. But you, for all of your ability to bore your way into other people, you are closed up within yourselves, not blending in or letting others blend with you. So what's left for us? Only to hate you and pray for the moment that you will move away from here, because this will never be a homeland for you if you don't know how to blend into everything that's in it. So go on, she says, pick up your walking stick again and get out of here. Even the baby in my belly is waiting for it."