*
A nice couple, I say to Moshe after the students close the door behind them.
Very nice, he says, folding the lease and putting it into his shirt pocket.
But a little strange, don’t you think? I ask, pulling the lease out of his pocket and putting it into the binder we keep our documents in, where it’s supposed to be.
What’s strange? That they live together and aren’t married? he asks and helps me put the binder back where it belongs.
No, don’t be silly, that’s very common nowadays, lots of couples move in together before they get married to see whether they can get along, if they’re right for each other — not like you, who went and got married to your first girlfriend when you were twenty-one.
But it worked out great for me, Moshe protests, giving me a big smile.
OK, so it worked out for you, I smiled back at him, but I’m talking about the principle of the thing.
What principle? Moshe asks, reaching for the TV remote.
Never mind, I say, it doesn’t matter.
He turns on the TV. Sports. It looks like I’ll have to explain the principle to my sister Mirit. She has a lot more patience with gossip. There’s no getting away from it, women are women and men are men.
Sweetie, Moshe says suddenly, his eyes still on the game, do you remember that my brothers are coming on Saturday?
Yes, I remember. How can I forget? There’s so much to do before they get here. I have to make sure the dairy knives don’t slip into the meat knife drawer. Check that everything in the refrigerator is glatt kosher, because regular kosher isn’t good enough for them. Count the candles, and if we don’t have enough, go to the store to buy some more. Turn on the hotplate before the Sabbath starts. Look for my kerchief. Wash it. And everything has to be finished by Thursday night, because they always show up early on Friday. They’re afraid that a traffic jam — it doesn’t matter how many times I tell them that there are no traffic jams at that hour — might make them late for the beginning of the Sabbath. And God forbid that Menachem, his oldest brother, the big rabbi from Tiberias, should think that anyone here is a slacker and doesn’t come up to his standards. You don’t know him, Sima, he’ll make a big deal out of it, Moshe had explained to me all over again, every time Menachem came, for the past six years. And it made me mad all over again, every time. Who said it has to be like this? Why does Rabbi Menachem always have something to say about my clothes whenever we go to see them in Tiberias, and when he comes here, why do we all have to do whatever he wants?
But I don’t say anything. Not a word. I know how important it is to Moshe. And Moshe is important to me. I’m willing to do a lot to keep the peace. Almost anything.
*
On the first floor of Moshe and Sima Zakian’s house, which our apartment clings to like a fungus on a tree, there are three rooms, a father, a mother and two children. On the second floor, in what is left of the original Arab house, live Moshe’s parents, Avram and Gina, founders of the Zakian tribe: six children and almost twenty grandchildren. And on our first Saturday in the new apartment, we get to meet the whole clan. The occasion: a seventieth birthday celebration for the taciturn old grandfather. On Friday, the family arrives in dribs and drabs for the festivities. The first to make an appearance in their multi-doored pickups, dressed in black, are the Zakian children who have become orthodox and moved to Bnei Brak and Tiberias. After them, still well before the beginning of the Sabbath, come all the rest, with and without skullcaps. They all sit on plastic chairs on the small lawn made up of rectangles of pre-grown grass, the lines separating them still visible. They send Sima to ask the students to join them. No, thank you, we decline, we have papers to write. But Sima insists and takes hold of Noa’s hand: haven’t you heard, all work and no play … Noa doesn’t know what to say, so she goes along with her and I follow in their wake. Moshe gets two chairs for us, we smile in thanks and after Sima introduces us, she invites us to help ourselves to the food on the table: stuffed grape leaves, kubeh, rice made with a spice I don’t recognise, salads and all kinds of sweets. The children, with or without sidelocks, play hide-and-seek, and the conversation flows pleasantly. It turns out that Yossi, Moshe’s younger brother, is a photography buff, and Noa tells him a little bit about her classes — I notice that no one takes an overt interest in psychology — and when he asks her advice about what camera to buy, she explains the pros and the cons. The sun sinks slowly to the horizon between the rising Jerusalem hills and the conversation drifts to other subjects more closely related to family — problems, solutions, childhood memories. An occasional Kurdish expression is tossed into the conversation, kapparokh, hitlokh, ana gabinokh, and they translate for us immediately so we won’t feel out of it — sweetheart, light of my life, I love you. I make my way through the cascades of Noa’s hair to her ear and whisper, ana gabinokh, ana gabinokh, and I think, there’s an aura around us when we’re together, an aura that keeps out loneliness. She grabs my hand under the table and whispers into my neck with an optimism that’s rare for her, we got lucky with this place, didn’t we?
*
Do you love me, Amir?
Yes.
Why?
What do you mean, why?
I mean, what do you love about me?
Lots of things.
For example?
For example, the way you walk. I really love the way you walk.
The way I walk?
Yes, quickly, like you’re in a hurry to get where you’re going.
What else?
Now it’s your turn.
My turn? Hmm … I love the way you are with people. The way you know how to say something real to people that will touch them.
You’re like that too.
Not really, I’m harder than you are.
No, you’re not, you’re very soft, here, feel this. Yes, I really am soft there.
And in other places too.
Really? Like where?
*
I couldn’t decide whether to take that picture. I was afraid that the click of the camera would wake Amir, he sleeps so lightly. And the way he looked — curled up on the grass in front of our bungalow in Amirim, like a kitten, and his long lashes and sleep-soft cheeks — that made me hesitate too. It occurred even to me, a chronic photographer, that maybe not everything should be photographed, maybe I’d just leave things as they were for once, not document them, keep them burnt only into my memory. But the light, the magical twilight and the composition, the squares of the Indian sweater inside the squares of lawn, the three oranges growing on the branches of the tree, and the forgotten, torn basketball net that was just enough to keep the scene from being too idyllic — I couldn’t control myself.
And of course, he woke up.
But he didn’t complain the way he usually did. We were easy with each other that weekend, and with ourselves. We were good together. Not in retrospect, not out of nostalgia. Not in anticipation. But here and now good. Very good. I remember that in the morning we made love slowly and he touched every part of my body with his finger as if he were proving to himself that I was real, and it made me laugh and then it excited me. After we came, gently, and got under the blankets again, I told him about the Advil night. I’d never told any of my old boyfriends about it, not even Ronen, and we were together for almost a year. I was afraid it would scare them off, and only with Amir did I feel for the first time that I could let go of the secret, that he’d know how to keep it, so I put my lips against his chest, as if a chest could hear, and I told him. He listened quietly, didn’t get scared and didn’t give advice, just stroked my head over and over again, the way you stroke a child’s head. Until I fell asleep. When I woke up, he was already outside on the lawn.