And I answer her quietly, the tears are already dry. Making a great effort. Not moving from my seat, afraid of breaking something. I’ve done enough damage already. I tell her everything I know, everything I haven’t forgotten, careful not to annoy her. Looking only at the woman, not daring to look at the girl, who now I know is called Dafi not Dafna. She sits beside me all the time, staring at me hard, her eyes covering me like a hot wind, sitting and listening and smiling a bit. And so the conversation goes on and on and I see they really know nothing about us, they don’t know that we learn a lot of things about them. They don’t realize that we really are taught Bialik and Tchernikhovski and other saints and we know all about the Bet Midrash and the destiny of the Jews and the burning shtetl and all that.
“Poor things,” said the girl suddenly, “what have they done to deserve that?”
But the woman told her to shut up and laughed and I didn’t know if I was allowed to laugh as well so I just smiled a little twisted smile and kept my eyes on the floor. And suddenly it was quiet and I was afraid there’d be nothing more to talk about so I went on in a low voice without even being asked.
“We learned poetry by heart as well and I can remember … would you like to hear?”
And quietly I began to recite — “No pride of young lions shall hide there the eye of the desert nor the glory of Bashan and his choicest oaks fallen in splendour by the sombre tents sprawl angry giants amid the golden desert sands.”
And they were so impressed they nearly fell off their chairs. I knew they’d be surprised, I don’t know myself why I suddenly had to start reciting. I just felt like it. I wanted them to know that I’m really not stupid. And Dafi jumped up out of her seat and ran to call her father to come and hear and he came straight out of the bathroom in a dressing gown with his beard wet and stood there staring with his mouth open like I’d grown another head.
Because I carried on, all excited — “We are heroes! The last generation to bondage and the first to deliverance our hand alone our mighty hand did cast off from our neck the heavy yoke and we raised our heads to the heavens and they were narrowed in our eyes … and who shall be our master?”
And the girl Dafi shook with laughter, running to her room to fetch the book to check if I’d got it right. Then in a cracked voice I went on a bit further — “In spite of heaven and its wrath see we have risen in the storm.”
Already it was dark outside, and in the room it was warm and quiet. I saw now how quietly they lived. And they played with me like I was a toy. And I can tell when people like me just by the way they look at me. I’m not exactly ugly and the girls in the village sometimes look at me for no special reason, thinking that I don’t see them looking. But in those red pyjamas with the tassels and the imitation gold buttons I didn’t know if I was just weird or a bit cute as well.
The girl fetched her slippers and put them down beside my bare feet. And they all smiled at me happily.
“What did you say your name was?” the girl asked suddenly. She hadn’t caught it the first time.
“Na’im,” I said.
DAFI
Mommy of course could’ve killed me even though she was laughing herself but she quickly turned serious and took him into the living room, the tears still streaming down his face, made him sit in a chair and started asking him questions to distract him, an old trick from the days when I used to cry. Asking him about his village and his family, about his school and what he’d learned there and he answered seriously, his head bent, sitting on the edge of the chair.
I sat behind him and didn’t take my eyes off him. This little Arab really took my fancy. Daddy had brought us some entertainment for the Sabbath, Friday nights in our house are usually so boring with all the heaps of newspapers. Sitting there in his pyjamas, combed and clean and fragrant, his cheeks rosy. Suddenly he looked small, reminding me of someone, not ugly, there’s lots of boys uglier than him.
Mommy frowned at me, because when she saw me staring at his face like that she was afraid I might be trying to annoy him or make fun of him, like sometimes when I sit and stare at one of the old women who come to visit us. But I didn’t mean to do anything like that, this Arab really interested me. He soon recovered himself and started giving clear answers, talking about himself, about his village, his family, about what he’d learned in school, they’d taught him Bialik and Tchernikhovski and all that boring stuff of ours, how strange, the swine, inflicting that crap on them as well.
Then I said quietly, “Poor things … what have they done to deserve it?”
And Mommy scolded me and the Arab was a bit puzzled too, because it seemed he really enjoyed Bialik, and straightaway, without anyone asking him, he began to recite some lines from Bialik’s Dead of the Desert. I nearly fell off my chair. A young Arab, an assistant in Daddy’s garage, reciting Bialik, unbelievable. If that’s the general standard in the garage no wonder business is booming.
I ran to my room to fetch the poems of Bialik to see if he was reciting it properly or just making it up. I called to Daddy too to come out from the bathroom and listen, maybe he’ll give him a raise. And Mommy was impressed too. All three of us stared at him. And he decided to impress us some more and quietly and without a mistake he began reciting that bit that Shwartzy’s crazy about and sneaks in at every opportunity whether it’s appropriate or not. “We are heroes, the last generation to bondage and the first to deliverance, our hand alone …” sitting on the edge of the chair with head bowed, still not looking at us straight, in a low voice. And I watched Mommy and Daddy seeing how they stared at him open-mouthed and suddenly it hit me, it came to me in a flash. Of course. This boy looks a bit like Yigal, there’s something about him, some similarity, and they don’t realize it, they don’t understand. They don’t see what it is that draws them to him. Daddy doesn’t know why of all his workers he decided to send this boy here to fetch the briefcase, or why he chose him for the job tonight. And if I tell them they’ll say, “Nonsense, what do you know about Yigal, you never saw him.”
And so in the stillness and the darkness of early evening I watched the quiet little Arab, his eyes bright with happiness. Now we were the ones who bowed our heads, seeing his swarthy bare feet on the carpet. And suddenly I felt like giving him something and I went and fetched my bedroom slippers and put them down beside him. Just for one evening let him wear a girl’s slippers. Then I realized that I didn’t actually know his name and I asked him and he looked at me straight, no longer evasive, and told me.
I didn’t know they have such simple names.
NA’IM
At last we sat down to eat. Since morning I hadn’t eaten anything and I was weak with hunger and maybe that was why I got a bit mixed up in the poem as well. And there was a white cloth on the table and two candles and a bottle of wine. I didn’t know they were religious. But they didn’t even pray, just started eating right away. I sat beside the girl, being very careful not to touch her, and the woman brought in the food. To start with it was sort of grey meatballs, so sweet they made me feel sick. Looks like this woman doesn’t know how to cook, she puts in sugar instead of salt, but nobody else noticed or maybe they thought it wasn’t polite to mention it. And I forced myself to eat it too so she wouldn’t be offended like my mother, who’s offended if you don’t eat everything. I just ate a lot of bread with it to try and kill the sweetness. And that Adam ate so fast, I hadn’t had time to look at the food and he’d already finished it all. They brought him some more and he gobbled that up too. And I was eating slowly because I had to be careful to eat with my mouth closed and luckily the girl was eating slowly too so the grownups didn’t have to wait only for me.