“Actually, he does look kind of suspicious. He hasn’t had a shave in four days,” my younger brother says with a chuckle.
I can still feel the wounds caused by this afternoon’s stoning; the scenes with the neighbors and the children and the crowd outside our house linger on. I feel a strong need to avenge myself, a strange urge to restore my dignity, which I lost in a flash. But what can I do? If only I had a weapon. I wish I had a gun. I wish I were connected to one of the gangs. Then nobody would dare come near me or my family. But I’d never pull it off. I’d never even be admitted into one of those groups. I hate myself now for being unable to prove I’m strong, frightening, a man with pride.
My father turns on the radio again. There’s a Head & Shoulders commercial in Arabic, followed by Chevrolet, Ship of the Desert. The newscast begins with coverage of the Egyptian president’s state visit in the south of the republic and a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a few new food factories. Then they report on the president’s wife’s tour of a Cairo hospital for children with cancer. The Voice of Cairo reports that the president congratulated the Palestinians and the Israelis on their fervent efforts to put an end to the crisis and expressed his appreciation for the historic role of the U.S. president in this process. Next came the recorded voice of the president: “Both sides have had enough bloodshed. We are on the threshold of a new era, an era of peace and cooperation, an era that promises peace for our children. Never again will they know the suffering that our own generation has endured.”
My younger brother laughs. Father says that on the day when the Voice of Cairo broadcasts the truth, we’ll know that the East is about to become the strongest empire in the universe. My father spins the dial rapidly to the news in Hebrew. It’s eight P.M. and there’s a special broadcast, longer than usual. On Israel TV too they’re talking about serious progress in the negotiations, and the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers can be heard complimenting one another in English.
What’s going on here damn it? Is this for real, the news we’re listening to? My older brother, knowing how tense things are, knocks softly on the door and announces, “It’s me,” to keep from frightening us. His wife rushes to the door and locks it again behind him. He says there’s nothing to be afraid of, there’s nobody outside and we might as well open the door to let some air in. “Do you want to die of lack of oxygen?” he asks. But the door stays shut.
I move to the kitchen and light up a cigarette. My younger brother joins me, gesturing to me to pass the cigarette over to him. He studies Father, and once he sees him immersed in conversation, takes my cigarette and draws deeply. He coughs and hands the cigarette right back to me. Father turns in the direction of the kitchen and my younger brother chastises me: “You’re going to choke us all to death with your smoking. Enough of your cigarettes!” He chuckles.
Even though things in the village have never been this bad, at least not since the war of 1948, news of the peace that’s about to prevail helps us keep calm. At least we know that nothing on the scale of a world war is about to descend on us. Maybe everything that’s been happening is actually nothing more than a tactic because of the efforts to arrive at a complete cessation of the tensions with the Palestinians. Maybe it’s really intended to prevent the Palestinian organizations that don’t believe in negotiating with the Israelis from undermining the progress of the peace process with some terrorist attack that could lead to a complete turnabout in the political position of the average Israeli. Maybe damn it, the Israeli side didn’t actually intend for the power and the water to be disconnected and it’s still just a stupid mistake. The power cut stops the water supply too, after all. All it takes, in fact, is one bulldozer or tank to hit the power line and this is what happens.
My mother is the first to go into my room. She lines up three mattresses on the floor. The children are using the double bed. She returns to the living room and announces that she’s going to try to take a nap. My older brother’s wife gets up too, says, “Good night,” and joins my mother. “I’ll go to sleep too,” my wife says, but before heading for my parents’ bedroom, she joins me in the kitchen and asks if I’m hungry yet. “No,” I tell her. She looks at me now the way she hasn’t looked at me in a long time. “Good night,” she whispers, and I feel that if there weren’t so many people around, she might even have given me a kiss. I feel the blood rush to my cheeks and my face becomes flushed. “Good night,” I reply, and keep my eyes fixed on her until she reaches the bedroom.
My father and my older brother enter the children’s room. My older brother stretches out in his boyhood bed, and my father uses mine. My younger brother quickly takes the opportunity to ask me for a cigarette and sits down next to me at the kitchen table. I reach out and fiddle with the saltshaker, an item that has never been replaced. My parents never bought a new saltshaker because there was never any need to. My mother always put a few grains of rice into it with the salt to soak up the moisture, so the salt didn’t become lumpy.
“You know,” my younger brother says, “normally I’d be out in the streets of Tel Aviv now with my friends. Whenever we finish an exam we go out drinking. We do the most drinking after exams,” he whispers, and turns around to check if the coast is clear. He continues whispering, even though I myself can barely hear him. “Tel Aviv is an amazing city, I tell you. After exams, we don’t just have beer the way we usually do. We go completely crazy. I’d waste four hundred shekels on booze right now if I could. I’d go for the pricey whiskey or Jägermeister. Do you like Jäger? It’s great with lemon, you know. I don’t really understand why you came back here. I don’t understand you. I’d never come back. No way. I’d stay in Tel Aviv for the rest of my life, or run away to some country in Europe, or to Canada. The Canadians are easy with visas. I’d marry someone local and become a full citizen. Sure, they have their xenophobes and the anti-Muslims, but I’m telling you, from what my Christian friends tell me, the ones whose brothers emigrated there, what they call racism in London, say, is about the same as what we would call left-wing opinions here. It’s a whole different world. The problem with London is that the pubs close at about eight P.M. I don’t get it. If I want a night out on the town with some friends, we only get started at about eleven or twelve.
“Tell me,” my brother asks, looking straight at me, “why are things like this? Do you ever ask yourself why we have to be this way? And the problem is that it isn’t only us, it’s all the Arabs. Why?” He takes another drag, rubs his eyes hard because of the smoke that gets into them and continues. “Sometimes when I see all those music festivals on Cairo TV, or Beirut or even Jordan, you know, I tell myself, isn’t it great, how those people have festivals with the best Arab singers? You just buy a ticket and go to a performance. I’ve always dreamed of going to a concert in some Arab country or to celebrate Id el-Fitr in Damascus, say. Wouldn’t that be great? The whole country celebrates it, like an official holiday. I mean, it’s not like here, where they won’t even give you a day off to celebrate your holidays…. But I find myself feeling sorry for those people, know what I mean? All those kids dancing at concerts or celebrating Ramadan. Every time I remember what kind of a regime they have, I feel sorry for them when I see them dance, and I don’t understand why nothing changes in their situation. How could it be that all the Arab countries are like that?”
I look at him, and he smiles, giving off a kind of “Hmmmm.” I continue playing with the saltshaker and don’t say anything, though he’s expecting a response. “I never think about those things,” I tell him after a while.