We were sitting in the living room watching Wheel of Fortune with Erez Tal and Ruth Gonzales, and things were really peaceful. We hadn’t voted for her in the contest, but she was adorable on that programme, with her curls and her accent. She looks good, that Gonzales, I said to Moshe, and he said, yes, but not like you, and gave me a kiss on the shoulder, and I said, you’re a riot, not everyone has to compare with me, but inside, I was glad he still said that, even though I have given birth twice, and my hips have spread and my hair doesn’t shine much any more, like they say in the adverts, and I even have some small wrinkles around my eyes when I laugh. I stroked the back of his neck as a reward, and I combed Liron’s hair with the fingers of my other hand. He was sitting on my left and reading the letters on the screen out loud to show that he already knew the whole alphabet by heart, even though he got confused sometimes between letters that look alike. Lilach was awake, but quiet, completely hypnotised by the TV. The students weren’t making noise with their music. Avram and Gina didn’t come to the door with biscuits. No one called from one of those polling companies to ask what our political position is after the assassination (ever since that time I said I’d answer their questions, they never leave us alone). There was a bowl in the middle of the table with two bunches of grapes in it, black and green. Every once in a while, someone took a grape.
When you’re living your everyday life, you don’t think about the good things you have. You’re almost always too busy thinking about what you don’t have. But right then, I remember thinking: look at how beautiful this is, Sima. You have your small family. A whole family, like you dreamed you’d have when you were a girl. And then, just when an engineer from Yavneh won a refrigerator worth four thousand shekels, the sound of the megaphone broke into the victory music. What’s the junkman doing here now? I muttered, still full of the pleasant feeling my thoughts were giving me, and Moshe turned down the sound on the TV and said, that’s not the junkman, Sima, listen. ‘All neighbourhood residents are invited! Bennie Elbaz, in the square in front of Doga!’ the megaphone shouted. And Moshe filled in the rest: there’s a big rally, the whole neighbourhood’s going. The great rabbi will be there, and all the heads of the movement. It’s going to be something special. Terrific, I said, grabbed the remote control and made the TV louder. The engineer from Yavneh also won two plane tickets to London and a chance to be in the finals. Wanna go? Moshe asked. Why, what do I want with them? I answered. We were both looking at the TV, we didn’t dare look at each other. Then, all of a sudden, he got up from the sofa so fast that I couldn’t believe it was him, stood in front of me and blocked the screen. I don’t understand you, Sima. It wouldn’t hurt us to listen to some Torah. To learn a little Judaism. It’s far better than sitting here and watching this rubbish on TV. Daddy, Liron said, jumping up, I want to go to the rally with you. Absolutely not, I cut in before Moshe had time to agree. It’s late and you have to go to sleep. I don’t know why you don’t have your pyjamas on yet. Brush your teeth, put on your pyjamas, and go to bed. Get a move on. Liron walked to his room, but didn’t hide how much he didn’t want to. Move please, you’re blocking the screen, I told Moshe. He moved aside slowly, on purpose. The megaphone, which had already moved away from our street, was coming back. This time, not only music was coming from it. OK, I’m going anyway, Moshe said, looking at me expectantly. I didn’t say anything. And when I get back, he added in that same puffed-up tone that his brother Menachem uses, I want to talk to you. And if you don’t come home, my dear husband, should I go and look for you in Bnei Brak? I asked without taking my eyes off the TV. Yes, in Bnei Brak, Moshe repeated just to annoy me, and then he put on his warm jacket, went out and slammed the door.
Lilach started to cry. I picked her up. Don’t worry, sweetie, it’s just the wind, I lied to her. I was cross with myself for lying. So what if she doesn’t understand, you don’t have to get her used to lies from the time she’s little. Look, I pointed to the TV, it’s the finals. I took a green grape and put it in her mouth. She shoved it away with her hand and pointed to the black grapes. No problem, have a black one, you don’t have to throw it on the floor, I said, and pulled some black grapes off the bunch for her. She chewed them happily, one after the other, then went back to watching Wheel of Fortune with me. In the finals, the engineer from Yavneh won a Mitsubishi, free petrol for a year and a music system for his car.
*
I remember the day Nasser resigned like it was yesterday — that’s what Mama says when we’re sitting in front of the TV watching the programmes in memory of Rabin. Everyone knows that she’s going tell the same story we’ve heard already, but we still want to hear again, because she always adds new details that would be interesting even to people listening to it for the hundredth time. Sometimes, when she’s in a good mood, she makes little digs at us, her children.
Everybody had gathered around the TV in Jamil’s café, she starts, and I make the sound lower on our set, out of respect for her. It was an ugly brown TV with a tall aerial like a tree and terrible reception, she goes on. Every few seconds, a big white stripe would move across the screen from top to bottom, and the button for the sound was broken, but it was the only TV in the village and no one wanted to miss out. People were standing on the tables with their backs up against the wall, anything as long as they could see. HaShabab, the boys, she says, giving me an accusing look, were standing so close to the young girls that some of them took advantage and touched places they shouldn’t, may Allah show them the right path, and Jamil ran around in the crowd with plates of hummus and beans and bottles of fizzy drinks. People had big appetites before Nasser talked. Ya’ani, everyone knew from the rumours and Jewish newspapers that the war was lost, but no one thought he would … just like that, out of the blue. Everybody thought another one of his great speeches was coming, like the ones he gave that made your whole body shake when you heard them. Oh God, he knew how to talk, that Nasser. Raising his voice and lowering it, choosing the words like a poet. But that day, the minute he walked on the stage, you could tell from the expressions of the people standing behind him, his advisers, that something was wrong. His face was as white as noon, and his forehead was sweating so hard that even on Jamil’s poor TV, you could see the drops, and all of a sudden the café was completely quiet. It’s hard to believe, but even Marwan — she looks at my brother, who’s talking to his wife, Nadia — was quiet. Nasser went up to the microphone and started reading from the page in a weak voice: Brothers! he said — I remember the first sentence perfectly — we always speak frankly to each other, both in victory and in hard times, when the moment is sweet and when it is bitter, only in this way can we find the right path. Then he explained how the Americans helped the Israelis in the war, how the Israeli Air Force attacked first and the Egyptian soldiers fought like heroes, and the Jordanian soldiers also fought like heroes, and finally he said that he, Jamal Abd al-Nasser, was to blame and was resigning from the presidency, and, beginning tomorrow morning, he would be placing himself at the service of the people. When he finished and picked up the pages and walked off the stage, you could see one of his advisers wiping tears from his eyes with a handkerchief, and then, all together, the men in the café wiped the salty drops from the corner of their own eyes with their little fingers, even the biggest, strongest men, Najh Hasein, Allah Yerhimu, who’d been in a Jordanian prison for ten years, and Husam Mernaiya, who was the boxing champion of Ramallah three times in a row, and even your father, the hero — and here she looks at my father, who looks down — you have nothing to be ashamed of, that’s how it is, when they give a person hope and then snatch it away from him, it’s harder than if they hadn’t given you anything to begin with, and that Nasser, with his laughing eyes and beautiful words about the great, strong Arab people — he was like a father for us, a father who made us believe that there was light in the world, that before we went to heaven, we would go back to our village, to our land, and our heart would not be like the seed of a bean cut in half, and we would stop wandering from place to place like gypsies.