At last I finished those disgusting meatballs. I’ve never eaten anything like them before and I hope I never will again. I asked them what they were called so I could avoid them if ever I fell into a Jewish house again. They smiled and said, “It’s called gefilte fish. Would you like some more?” I said, “No thank you,” in a hurry. And the woman said, “Don’t be shy, there’s plenty more,” but again I said quickly, “No thank you, I’ve had enough,” but she’d already got up and gone to the kitchen and fetched a full plate and again I said, as firmly as I could without offending her, “No, really, I’m full, no more, please.”
And she gave up and took away all the plates and I thought that was the end of the meal but since I was still hungry I quietly ate more and more slices of bread, too damn sweet also. And the woman was in the kitchen busy with the dishes and the girl was watching television, it was an Egyptian film with belly dancers, she was interested but she didn’t understand what they were saying, and Adam was reading a paper and I was eating slice after slice of bread and suddenly I saw that I’d eaten all their bread.
And then the woman came in with new plates and a dish of meat and potatoes. So the meal wasn’t finished after all, but what a mixed-up way, every man for himself. And I’d noticed that Adam and his wife, who now I knew was called Asya, never really looked at each other when they were talking.
So we sat down to eat again and this time the food was better, there weren’t enough spices in it but at least it wasn’t sweet, and there was brown bread as well. The girl ate only a little bit and her mother said something to her. Adam filled his plate and started eating in such a hurry you’d think he hadn’t eaten anything all week, taking a look every now and then at the newspaper that was folded on the table. This silence at meals. Such loneliness.
Suddenly he remembered something and turned to me.
“Tell me, somebody was saying in the garage that one of the terrorists in the attack on the university was your brother, or something like that …”
The woman and Dafi put down their knives and forks looking like they were really shocked. I blushed bright red, trembled, now everything was going to be ruined.
“What terrorist?” I pretended I didn’t quite understand. “The one who killed himself at the university?”
And they smiled a bit at the idea that Adnan might really have gone to the university just to do away with himself quietly.
“He was a distant cousin of mine,” I lied. “I hardly knew him, he was a bit sick, crazy I mean.” I smiled at them but they didn’t smile.
I picked up my knife and fork again and began to eat, staring down at the plate, suddenly seeing Adnan lying under the ground with his eyes closed in the rain. The other three looked at one another and went back to their food. The meal went on. Dafi said something about a friend of hers and her parents and what the maths teacher said to her today. And again the plates were changed and they brought in little dishes of ice cream, left over from the summer maybe. I ate this too, what the hell, with a slice of bread.
And then the meal was over and Dafi sat down in front of the television and they sat me down too in one of the armchairs in my pyjamas and the girl’s slippers. I’d already forgotten to be shy. I felt like one of the family. I even went to the bathroom and came back on my own. Now it was Jewish programmes on the television, first they sang songs and after that there was a discussion and then more songs, songs for old people this time. And still I didn’t know anything about the job tonight, you could say I’d forgotten about it, maybe he’d forgotten about it too. That’s the way it seemed. Adam was watching television and reading the paper, actually he wasn’t doing either, he was dozing a bit. And the girl was talking on the phone, she’d already been there half an hour and the woman was in the kitchen washing dishes and so there was just me sitting by myself in my pyjamas in front of the television that was playing old songs from the Second Aliyah, there was one of them I knew the words to.
I could hardly keep my eyes open, in the end I dropped off to sleep, I was so tired after this strange and wonderful day. At eleven o’clock I saw their smiling faces in front of me and the television was already dark and the lights in the house had been turned down. They helped me up and led me like in a dream to a room full of books, put me in a soft white bed and Adam said, “Soon I shall wake you and we’ll be off,” and he covered me with a blanket.
So there is a job tonight after all, I thought, and went back to sleep.
At about two o’clock he woke me. The house was all dark. At first I was so confused I spoke to him in Arabic. He laughed and said, “Wake up, wake up,” and he gave me my clothes, which were dry and stiff. And I got dressed in the dark while he watched me. He wasn’t wearing his working clothes but clean clothes and he had a woolly hat on his head and a big fur coat, he looked just like a bear. We left the dark house where there were just the two candles still there on the empty table and even then I began to suspect there was going to be something criminal about the job.
The street was empty and it was a cold night, a light rain was falling and I didn’t know where he was driving to but I guessed we were going down all the time towards the lower city. In the end he pulled up in a little side street, stopped the engine and got out of the car telling me to wait inside, he disappeared for a moment and then came back and told me to get out. I followed him and he seemed tense now, looking from side to side like a thief or something, I didn’t know he went breaking into houses at night, I thought he made enough profit from the garage, and then we went into a little deadend street and he stopped opposite an old Arab house that was all dark, then he grabbed hold of me, pointed to a window on the second floor and whispered, “Climb up there and open the shutter and get inside the apartment, don’t put a light on, go to the outside door and open it for me.”
So this is what it was all for, the meal and the pyjamas and all the nice talk. I could have wept from misery, if my father could see me now. One son abroad, the other a terrorist and the youngest a housebreaker. A fine family. But I didn’t say anything, what could I say? Too late now. He gave me a big screwdriver to bend back the bolt of the shutter and said, “If anyone comes I’ll whistle and you must try to escape.”
“What will you whistle?”
“Some little tune … what do you know?”
“‘Jerusalem of Gold.’”
He laughed. But I was serious, standing there rooted to the spot and not saying anything, watching him nervously. Then he said, “Don’t be afraid, there’s nobody here, this is the house of a friend of a friend of mine who went to fight in the war and I must find some papers of his …”
Still I didn’t say anything because the lie was so stupid I felt really embarrassed. Then he said sternly, “Go on …”
And I went. He stood on the other side of the street watching. I started searching the wall for crevices for my hands and feet. The wall was wet and slimy. A crumbling old Arab house. After I’d gone a little way I caught hold of a rusty old drain pipe and began to climb it, slipping back a bit but making progress. It wasn’t easy at all, I could have slipped and fallen and broken something and the rain was getting heavier but after yesterday rain won’t ever scare me again. And so at last I reached the window and stood up on a little ledge. I looked down at him and he was watching me. I thought maybe he’d call it off at the last moment but he signalled to me to carry on. I tried to open the shutter that was the same kind as the ones in our house. I pushed in the screwdriver and easily lifted the bolt but as soon as I started moving the shutter there was a loud creaking noise, like an alarm going off, maybe it was a thousand years since they’d oiled the hinges. Slowly the shutter opened. The window was closed but not locked, looked like they’d closed it in a hurry. Another second and I was inside the dark apartment. I looked down into the street but there was no sign of him.