***
Underlying the allure of the past for Assaf was an irresistible fascination with the life of his dead uncle, Anna's brother David, who had been killed in Cairo during the Second World War. Unlike his father, whom Assaf remembered with great clarity, his uncle remained a mystery to him. Anna had often spoken of her brother when Assaf was growing up, giving the impression that he wasn't dead so much as distant, gone to live in another country. This was particularly true after Yossi was killed. But to Assaf the life of his father had a meaning and a finality that his uncle's never could have, because he hadn't known him.
From the mixture of admiration and love and small detail with which a sister remembers her older brother, her companion in childhood, Assaf knew a great deal about his uncle. He also knew that he resembled his uncle in appearance and that his manner often reminded Anna of her brother. Yet somehow Anna's recollections of her brother were so deeply personal, so given to intimate memories of their childhood together, that Assaf never quite felt he understood his uncle as a man. The house and the street and the neighborhood in Cairo which Anna sensed so strongly — all of this was foreign to Assaf. Now that he himself was a young man he couldn't picture his uncle as he wanted to: not as his mother's older brother, the boy his mother grew up with, but as a separate person one might meet or see anywhere.
What kind of man had his uncle been? In seeking an answer to that, Assaf turned to Tajar.
Ah well, said Tajar, I only wish I could tell you more. I didn't know David well and what I recall I've already mentioned at one time or another. He was serious and dedicated but he obviously wasn't meant for undercover work. I always had that impression of him. The demands of a double life made him uneasy. If he'd been able to stick with smuggling Jews out of Egypt it might have gone all right, but when he got involved with deeper things he was over his head. He didn't have the outlook or training for that sort of business. But then he got caught up, drawn in, and it was too much.
Did you know what the deeper things were? asked Assaf.
Not in any specific way, replied Tajar, but later in the war I came to have a vague notion of what had been involved. It was what we'd call espionage, no question about it, and that's how David got into trouble. You have to remember that Rommel and the Germans seemed very close to overrunning Egypt and seizing the canal, and the British were desperate. Many Egyptians favored the Germans from a nationalist point of view, to get the British out, and Cairo was crowded with refugees from Europe. So there were innumerable cells and obscure organizations all carrying on their own secret causes. Men moved back and forth in disguises and there were British and German penetrations everywhere and informers up and down the line. And the tank battles were very close, only hours away in the desert. The lines changed constantly and units were destroyed or disappeared. There was also traffic to and from Europe, especially Greece, fast boats and clandestine air drops. So what it amounted to in Cairo was chaos, a very dangerous kind of chaos for anyone involved in espionage. And of course it was easy to become involved without knowing it, which is what happened to David. He was on the edge of something. He wasn't really a participant himself, but through others he was connected to a maze, and somewhere in that maze there was extremely vital information. Or an extremely important agent, either to the British or the Germans, and as a result David was killed.
It seems hopelessly blurred and indistinct, said Assaf. I can't get ahold of it. Or of him.
True enough, replied Tajar. History is often that way. We only pretend it's clear in retrospect. There are always conflicting truths and especially that immense confusion, that chaos. Add to it the cross purposes of war where there are never two sides or a dozen sides but a hundred and a thousand sides from which people pursue their bewildering variety of causes, each one vital to them, each one worth enormous sacrifices, and then beneath those outward causes consider the conscious outwitting of others through pretense — what we today know as espionage — and you have the constantly shifting images of a tapestry we call history. Each of us, in fact, creates history. Each of us decides what was, what used to be. Anna knew David in a certain way and she clings to that and insists upon it and of course she's right, it's right, from her point of view. He was her brother and she grew up with him and David was this and that and such and so. For her, it's as simple as that. But it can't be that way for you or me or for anyone else. I have an impression of David which I recall from having seen him a few times in certain circumstances. But perhaps he was in a particular mood when I happened to see him. Or perhaps he was thinking about something I didn't know about. Perhaps his words and his manner had nothing to do with what I thought I heard and saw. Who can say? We know, well, so very few people in our lives.
Assaf frowned. Then he smiled.
You make it sound nearly impossible, he said.
Looking back, it is, said Tajar. Which of course is why the past, history, is so intriguing. We know how much it could explain to us if only we could unravel its secrets. Tell me, why is it that your uncle interests you so much?
Because Anna says I remind her of him, replied Assaf. And because if I knew more about him, then I'd know how I resemble him and how I'm different.
How you're unique? suggested Tajar.
Yes, I suppose that's really it, isn't it? It's another way to find out who I am.
So David seems to be the key to that precisely because he is such a mystery, said Tajar. And also, perhaps, because he was killed a quarter of a century ago in Cairo, a place and a time which are also a mystery to you. But what about your father? What of Yossi? Is he less a mystery to you?
It seems so, replied Assaf.
Why?
Because I feel I know him much better. Because everything about him is so familiar to me. Am I wrong, though? I was only eight when he died and you were his best friend. Do I see him clearly? Was he as I remember him?
Oh yes, certainly he was, said Tajar. I only wanted to point out that the apparent mysteries of the past are not always as enlightening as we like to think. My own feeling is that David, now, can't tell you what you want to know about yourself. Despite Anna's recollections of him, or my own.
Assaf laughed.
You're contradicting yourself again, he said. If the past is intriguing because it's important, why shouldn't I pursue it?
Tajar also laughed.
Exactly, he said. But can its mysteries ever compare to what goes on around us today? As for contradicting yourself, welcome it always as putting you closer to the truth. The tapestry shifts from moment to moment, just as the unchanging desert never stops changing.
SEVEN
I find it strange all the same, Tajar said to Anna later. Why should a vigorous young man with his whole life ahead of him be more obsessed by the past than a creaky, battered old camel like me? It's upside down, backwards. I urge Assaf to seize today and he nods sagely and goes on to ponder what was and what might have been. Does that make sense to you?
Anna smiled. I guess it has to, she said. He doesn't have a past or much of one, so naturally he peers in that direction to help him find his whereabouts. If you and I don't look back it's because we know what we'll see.
And also because we've already done that enough.
Tajar moved his crippled legs with his hands to a more comfortable position. As so often, they were sitting on Anna's balcony and gazing down on the courtyard crowded with flowers.
I suppose you're right, he said. Anyway, I've never been cut out to be a mother. I don't have the patience.
Anna laughed. I don't think God or the state ever intended you to be a mother, she said. But you do have patience, much more than most people. To me, the important thing about Assaf is that he's become so outgoing. He takes far more pleasure in people than he ever did, even before he was wounded. When friends of mine are here he wanders in and laughs and tells stories and is actually charming. People remark upon it.