4
Work was cozy. My employer was a German organization that kept up with Israel’s political situation and supported a few peaceful NGOs. In its Hebrewized English version, our mission was called Arab-Hugging. The organization—like many others—had perfectly integrated itself into the conflict. If the war was over tomorrow, we’d all be out of a job. No more bragging about living in a war zone to potential sexual partners in the bars of New York, London, Paris, or Berlin.
The team was small and no one worked particularly hard. Our day-to-day was divided as follows: read the newspaper, answer e-mails, drink coffee, e-mails, lunch, coffee, e-mails, online newspapers, kill the remaining hours. If I was actually working for a change, I translated correspondence and contracts that dealt with social injustice and the conflict. Then I went out to the street, sat down in my favorite cafe on Shenkin Street and ordered freshly squeezed orange juice. My coworkers always had lunch together, but I avoided them and at some point they accepted that I’d rather be on my own. The few lunches I’d joined had been quiet exchanges of well-thought-out opinions on protests and the latest political developments in between bites of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.
A translator was the last thing this organization needed. In truth, a good computer program would have been more than sufficient for their needs. But of course I didn’t mention that. My skills as an interpreter were needed only on the rare occasions that we had visits from German guests or requests from the head of the office, and even then I never had to prepare.
The assignments as an interpreter were nice field trips to the West Bank, past piles of trash and unsupervised children. I constantly had to ask the kids in Arabic for the way, because our driver, who had immigrated only two months ago from Siberia, was using a Russian-speaking navigation system and could read neither the Arabic nor the Hebrew street signs. Seen through the windows of an air-conditioned bulletproof jeep, the West Bank was beautiful. Even a bit like Greece, with the hilly terraced landscape, the olive trees, and the bumpy roads. After a while, though, we passed the deserted checkpoints, road signs in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. Those always came shortly before the Jewish settlements, which were as alien in the landscape as a UFO. In general, these work trips had the feel of a scientific excursion to an amusement park.
Mostly we drove to Nazareth. My colleagues—leftist white Israelis—were full of praise for Nazareth. They always said gorgeous town and amazing food, but that was just their political correctness kicking in to keep up the good mood. Nazareth was one big disappointment: a small town with lots of problems and a big street market. It also boasted a gigantic church with a much higher spiritual than artistic value.
From time to time I accompanied a German delegate to her meetings in Jerusalem, which took place either in some random committee of the Knesset or in a hotel lobby. There I whispered in her ear whatever her colleagues had just said in English about the weather. With my next breath, I whispered a potential English answer into my delegate’s ear—for example, a compliment on the air-conditioning. In almost all cases, my delegate took my suggestions and repeated them in a horrible accent. But at least it seemed authentic that way. Often I was haunted by the voices and facial expressions of my delegates for the rest of the day. I was sure that Windmill had intended this job as his revenge. But for the time being, I was content.