7
In 1935, two weeks after British police had violently broken up Arab protests in Jerusalem, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam gathered his people and announced a jihad. He told them to prepare to leave that same evening, said goodbye to his wife and children and went with his followers to the mountains around Jenin.
Every one of his men carried a small Koran in his pocket. During the days, they studied the Koran. At night they were soldiers. One of those nights, a guard named Mahmoud Salam al-Mahmuzi ran into a Jewish patrol. He shot the commander of the patrol and killed him. Another policeman in the patrol ran to report the incident and, having done so, he ran home, to his wife.
The British retaliated fiercely. A large force was mobilised from all round Palestine and sent to Haifa. The next day five hundred British soldiers set out to catch Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. After a bloody battle which lasted all night, Sheikh al-Qassam was killed and became one of the first of the great martyrs, the shuhada, in the long struggle. He planted the seeds of revolution against Zionism and imperialism and inspired a generation to follow him.
The policeman who ran to report the incident was Duchi’s grandfather. Her mother was born nine months later. My father was born in the same year, 1935, in Maryland, USA.
I took a Little No. 5 home. As far as I was concerned, the cooling-off period was over after one morning. The journey was quieter than usual; the drivers swore less over the radio and committed fewer traffic violations. Even the Jumbos seemed to drive with respect for the sorrow of the minibus drivers.
‘How did you get home?’ asked Duchi.
‘Taxi,’ I said offhandedly.
‘Liar,’ she said.
‘Liar? What reason do I have to lie?’ I said, and really, what reason did I have?
‘Honestly in a taxi?’ She came and gave me a kiss. I opened the refrigerator, looking for something quick. No, not really in a taxi, Duchi, in a Little No. 5. But do you think I’m going to tell you the truth? You think I fancy an argument now?
‘Word of honour.’
Nothing is as it was before September 11th. Everything changed that day, and yet, life went on. The summary: Duchi and I live together for four years, we decide to get married, the date we set is 11 September 2001. Duchi’s mother gets a heart attack and snuffs it a day before the wedding, the wedding is cancelled, and since then this word–‘wedding’–is never heard in our vicinity. It’s as if there are blockades and checkpoints that this word can’t penetrate, as if there’s a lock-and-siege on it. As if they’d sent a whole army to hunt it down and it had vanished and holed up in some abysmal cave, not even bothering to send us a ‘what’s up’ from time to time. It seems that we’re treating the whole thing as if it were a sign from God–or worse, from Duchi’s mother–that we shouldn’t have decided to marry. She sacrificed her life on the altar of this message. The medium was her message. I guess that’s the reason we don’t talk about it. I’m only guessing, though, because we haven’t talked about it. She keeled over and it was as if a valve holding back an immense pressure had blown and all the attention leaked away from the wedding to the funeral. And it’s not as if any of that other stuff helped.
Duchi’s first reaction was to laugh. ‘No way,’ she told the phone. ‘Come on, Dad, you’re putting me on.’ And then she said, ‘OK…OK…OK,’ and hung up and said, ‘My mother died of a heart attack,’ and only then did her eyes well up with tears.
Duchi’s younger brother, Voovi, didn’t look too broken up about it. Her dad certainly wasn’t sorry. Before all of this happened Duchi once made me swear that whatever occurred between us–even if it didn’t work out eventually–we would never end up with the hate-hate relationship her parents had.
Duchi’s father is called Noam Neeman. That’s ‘Pleasant Loyal’ in Hebrew, by the way: two gags for the price of one. He left Duchi’s mother after two kids and six years of marriage and went to Nicaragua with his second wife, whom he dumped after a few more years, kids and arms deals. He returned to Israel at the age of forty-six and married a girl half his age. Duchi was three years younger than her when they got married. She and her brother didn’t make it to the wedding. But I like Noam Neeman. A man with balls. Does what he feels like doing. Half the time he succeeds, half the time he tanks completely. Recently, for instance, he failed miserably with a start-up in which he invested a million dollars. He asked me, ‘If you had a million bucks in the bank, what sort of investment would you put it in?’ I said, ‘I’d put it in the bank.’ His seen-it-all eyes looked me over with bottomless disdain and he drew on his cigar till it crackled.
‘Duchi!’ he shouted. ‘Couldn’t you have found yourself someone a bit more serious than this?’ He punched my shoulder with his large suntanned hand. In the end he stuck his million into a new mobile phone company called Wa-Wa. A year later his million was in the sewer.
In truth, Duchi’s parents did not share a hate-hate relationship. Ever since Noam Neeman left her, Duchi’s mother had been lost. She loved him in secret until the day she died. Loved? She worshipped the ground he walked on. She was completely obsessed with him, but she didn’t have him: all she had instead were his two children. And whatever move they made, whatever direction they set off in, they could be sure that Leah Neeman would be standing there, feet planted, wagging a warning index finger. Because Leah was a fountain of bitterness. She just didn’t like life. There was nothing she wasn’t suspicious of; there wasn’t a decision Duchi or Voovi could make, or even think about making, that Leah wouldn’t respond to with gloomy prophecy, biblical wrath, stricken horror; not a step they ever took without having to hurdle the leg she would stretch out to trip them up.
I thought–and I believe many others thought the same–that there was something fitting in her pulling a heart attack on the eve of her daughter’s marriage. She deployed the ultimate weapon in her arsenal, her Judgement Day weapon. And it worked, God knows how or why. The ring I bought (‘Diamonds are for ever,’ said Duchi, ‘so don’t buy me one’) is still hunkered down at the back of some drawer, waiting.
Anyway, I was standing there with my head in the refrigerator, lying it off. I tried to move the conversation on.
‘So how was your day, Duchki?’
Her gesture said, leave it, don’t even go there. Another crazy day. In the last few months she’d been coming back home whacked from a case of insider dealing and fraud that was dragging on and on. She would curse the other lawyer, the fool Gvirzman, and the ill-tempered and exhausted judge and her salary and her boss Boaz, who after years of her working her soul out for him was still ignoring her hints about being made a partner.
I ate cold pasta salad for a few minutes without speaking while she watched TV from the sofa. ‘Well?’ I pressed. She made a face and muttered, ‘That son of a bitch.’ ‘Who, Boaz? Gvirzman? The judge? Who now?’ She shrugged. ‘Yes. No. All three of them are huge sons of bitches, for sure. I don’t know; I don’t know what I’m doing. Why am I killing myself like this? Gvirzman asked to postpone again without consulting me and when I tell him out of court that it’s out of order, the son of a bitch tells me I’m an overgrown baby.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Sometimes I think Gvirzman’s right, but I don’t say so.
‘What does that mean, “oh, come on”?’ She was sharpening her claws for combat. I like her instincts.
‘You’re in a good company, on a good salary, you work with prestigious clients, handle big cases…’
‘That’s not the point, Croc. I’ve been stuck in the same place for a year. Even if you think it’s a good place–and it isn’t–I still haven’t made any progress for a year. This case…’
I shook my head. How much can you moan? How much can you be unhappy with what you have when you have so much?
‘Don’t make that face. You’re not going to convince me I’m having a wonderful time at work–though you’re making this great effort to convince yourself. You could just be a tiny bit understanding and supportive, couldn’t you? I deserve a little support from my boyfriend after a day like this.’
A day like this. Wow. They asked to postpone without consulting her and called her an overgrown baby. Dear oh dear oh dear. She deserves support. She always deserves it. She’s so pitiable sometimes her tone can really flip my switch.
‘You know, I did take the Little No. 5, not a taxi.’
Why did I say that? Maybe I needed to have a row.
‘Liar.’
‘Liar? What reason do I have to lie?’ Apart from the obvious.
‘Croc.’
‘What?’
‘You’re having me on, right?’
This was the point of no return. I could have hushed it all up and lied my way out of it, or remained loyal to the truth–not something I insist on day to day–and start the world war that was dying to be declared between us.
I gave her a heavy-lidded look (my crocodilian look) and said: ‘Not right. I am not having you on. I went on a Little No. 5.’
Duchi’s hair is brown and her skin is a colour I used to call caffè latte in the days when we still found the time to lie side by side, stroking each other for hours. The coffee is from her Yemeni grandmother–the one from the night of the incident in ’35. The milk comes from her grandfather and father. When Duchi is on the brink of explosion, the skin on her face grows visibly darker and her luminous eyes cloud over, but it’s not the colour so much as her expression, like a child’s in the second before it cries–only with her it’s not tears but fury.
‘Why the hell didn’t you take a taxi like I asked you to?’
‘Because I had this weird premonition that I wasn’t going to get blown up. And you know something? I wasn’t blown up! And you know something else? I didn’t hear on the news that any other Little No. 5 was blown up today either.’
‘Not the point.’
‘So what is? You wanted me to ride in a taxi for a specific reason. I thought you were wrong. I was proved correct. And now I don’t understand what we’re arguing about.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You really, truly, honestly travelled on a Little No. 5?’
‘Of course! Why take a taxi?’
‘Maybe because I asked? That’s not a reason?’
‘Not if there’s no sense behind it.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
I took a chair from the dining table and sat in front of her. She lowered the volume on the TV, which was on Channel 2: Danny Ronen rambling on and on, his eyebrows conspiring together like a couple of sidekicks pretending to be shrewd.
‘What reason do I have to lie?’
‘I don’t believe this,’ she repeated. ‘Tell me, is there nothing left between us? Not a little appreciation? A little consideration? A little trust?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘What it’s got to do with it?’ She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She said, ‘I should have listened to Uri a long time ago.’
Oh, here we go: Uri. I was beginning to wonder when his name would crop up. Her therapist. Duchi told me a long time ago that he thought she shouldn’t stay in our relationship, although he would never come out and say it directly. I argued with her then. She quit therapy and we decided to get married. A few weeks after the wedding that never happened, though, she went back to him. And now he’s telling her the same thing once again.
‘Uri doesn’t know anything.’
‘He knows more than you think he does.’
‘How could he know anything on the basis of your stories alone?’
‘But what’s important is the way I see and experience things.’
How many times have we had this conversation?
‘But he’s talking about your relations with me. The experience belongs to both of us, no? How could he say anything truthful about it after hearing only your side? I know how you distort things sometimes. The version he gets depends on the way your mood swings on the day you tell him. And your mood’s about as reliable as Danny f*cking Ronen! You…I can’t…How can you believe a single word of it?’
After that neither of us said a word for several minutes. She turned up the volume. Danny Ronen was saying that the security forces had some leads pointing in the direction of Nablus. Terror cells in Nablus had targeted Tel Aviv in the past and they were the only ones with the capability to stage such a destructive attack. That was what a senior military source had told Danny Ronen. The explosive belt used by the suicide bomber, Shafiq somebody from Nablus, weighed 25 kilograms. The IDF was preparing an operation in Nablus in response.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the TV. ‘Ten people died.’ ‘Eleven!’ ‘Eleven. And you were on that bus.’ ‘Not a bus.’ ‘I don’t care what it is! It could have been you! So I was worried, OK? I got scared. My whole body was shaking. So I had a simple request to make. You think it was irrational? You think it was stupid? Fine. But I asked you. Your partner asked you to do something which in your opinion is irrational–to travel, for one day of your life, in taxis. So why do you do the opposite on purpose? What is it in me that makes you want to fight? That makes you incapable of respecting me? Do you hate me? This is hatred. I ask for something and you piss on it. What is that if it’s not hatred? So the question is: if you hate me so much what are you doing here at all? Why do you stay?’
Good question. Arguing’s a matter of wanting. You can argue about almost anything and you can not argue about almost anything. In my American family we never rowed at all. With Duchi, it’s the opposite; we have rows all the time. About anything. It’s a permanent row. Perhaps it’s compensation after suffering years of row deprivation with my family. Or merely something in her that gets on my nerves. She complains about my family, I do about hers. She’s stressed, I’m relaxed. She thinks that if there was a terrorist attack on a Little No. 5, there’s going to be another one soon; I disagree. But I don’t enjoy the arguments. I don’t know why they happen. I assume it has to be her. It must be her. She’s a lawyer, after all: their life’s work is arguing. The difference between me and Duchi, in one sentence, is this: I say, things will be all right, and if they aren’t, that’s all right too. Duchi says, things will not be all right, and if they are, that’s not all right either. OK, two sentences.
‘I don’t respect you?’ I said. ‘Sorry, I think you don’t respect me. You don’t respect my reasoning–which has been proved to be correct!–in selecting the particular mode of public transport vehicle in which I travel home.’
‘Don’t shout.’
‘I’m not shouting!’ I mean, it doesn’t bother me at all that there are differences between us. Everybody has differences, every couple; everybody should. What bothers me is the way living together turns nice people into mini-dictators. Criticism of the partner’s conduct becomes the basis of all communication. Improving the partner’s conduct becomes the primary goal. Intimacy is the policing of the other’s conduct.
‘You are! You always end up shouting! You—’
‘Wait, Dooch, wait…shut up! Turn it up! Turn it up!’
On the screen there was a photograph of a familiar face.
‘Giora Guetta, twenty-three, has been identified as the last victim of the Tel Aviv suicide attack. In Guetta’s parents’ house in Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem, there were calls for the government to retaliate with maximum force.’ A man was saying, ‘…They must do something! This government is abandoning our sons. We’re letting them turn our lives into a circus…’
Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem. That was where I needed to go. Duchi looked at me, seeing that my attention was elsewhere now. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I have to go there. To Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem.’
‘You’re not going to any Jerusalem. Are you crazy?’
‘I have to,’ I said. I kissed her forehead; I was already gathering my bag and phone and jacket. ‘I have to go. He talked to me before the…he asked me to deliver a message. I have to.’ I was all ready to go. ‘Don’t worry, Dooch. I’ll be in touch,’ I said, and in my heart I added–maybe.
I was taking the steps two at a time and already a floor down before I heard her voice so I couldn’t hear what Duchi said, only her tone; only her anger and despair echoing down the stairwell behind me.