3
We bounced in our seats as the car rumbled in and out of potholes. “We should’ve taken the donkey,” Ismael said and put in an old cassette tape. Bob Dylan. Ismael drummed the rhythm on the steering wheel. Barely one song in we were stopped by a road block. Two guys in bulletproof vests pointed the barrels of their guns at us. The Palestinian policemen were even younger than the Israeli soldiers, sixteen years old at most. We handed our passports to them through the windows before they ordered us out. They kept us in sight. Ismael asked one of the two whether he liked belly dancing. Once they finally dourly handed us back our documents, we continued on our way. From then on, we only listened to Fairuz.
We stopped in a small village and sat down in a restaurant with green plastic chairs that served shawarma. Once again I was the only woman in the room.
The wall across from the restaurant was full of graffiti. Somebody had written in green “Allahu Akbar,” and another one “Sister, fear Allah—don’t take off your hijab.” Next to that in unsteady handwriting, “F*ck Israel” and “F*ck PA, F*ck Hamas.” Farther down someone had added with a Sharpie, “F*ck me, if you want.”
Ismael followed my gaze and pointed toward the house in front of us. “Do you see the water tanks on the houses?”
I nodded.
“Israel fills them twice a week. And that’s it. If you use up the water too quickly, that’s your problem. No one will help you.” Ismael looked at me. “I hope that’s not too much for you to take in?”
“We didn’t have water either.”
“What?”
“In Baku we had a maximum of one hour of water per day, and not even regularly. In that hour you’d fill everything with water: tanks, tubs, bottles.”
“OK, you win.”
A swastika was etched into our table. I traced the lines with my fingers.
“So I was a part of Hamas,” Ismael said all of a sudden. “So what?”
I lifted my head. Our eyes met. I downed my glass of water and Ismael refilled it.
“But they didn’t help me either. You want to know how it all started?” Ismael didn’t wait for my answer. “Soccer. I played soccer. Two times a week. First we ran after the ball, then we ran after God. Religious school was introduced after the training. And suddenly I had a beard—it grows a lot faster with Arabs than you’re probably used to with European men. On the other hand, you’re from Azerbaijan. That’s more like here. I was wearing a long white robe and a hood.” He turned to me and laughed. “Fooled you! I never wore a robe, but I was devout. Always averted my eyes when there was a woman on TV. And my mother. We fought a lot. Now I regret it, but then I looked down on her because she didn’t wear a hijab.”
“I’m Jewish.”
Ismael fell silent. Shaking his head, he ran a hand through his hair. He fished a pack of dented Marlboros from his pocket, lit a cigarette, smoked it, threw it onto the ground, and crushed it with his boot.
“At least that’s not contagious. Let’s go.”
Ismael insisted on paying, despite my protests.
As we drove, I looked out the window at the passing landscape. Arab villages, Israeli settlements, mountains. We listened to music. Mashrou’ Leila. I got drunk on the music and the beauty of the scenery and I thought that the first Zionists to come to Palestine when the British Mandate had been in place must have been drunk on the landscape, too. Ismael lit a cigarette. Israel or Palestine, I didn’t care. I’d had enough.
“Are you Israeli?” he asked.
“I don’t even speak Hebrew.”
“I do. I’ve worked construction in Tel Aviv. Before the wall. Why didn’t you emigrate to Israel?”
“I wanted to, but my parents were against it.”
He abruptly turned toward me: “Are you f*cking with me?”
“When did you leave Hamas?” I asked.
“After only half a year. There were long discussions. They even came to my house with presents once. Like the three kings, in case you know your Bible. They wanted to convince my parents, but my parents were Communists. Nothing doing. A friend who had stayed with Hamas declared a fatwa against me via Facebook. That’s when I knew I’d made the right decision.”
Ismael lit another cigarette.
“My parents were Communists, too,” I said.
“You know, when I was a kid, I always had to recite the Communist Manifesto as a punishment,” Ismael said and laughed.
“Shit.”
“Exactly. But now my father’s into religion. Prays five times a day and is on the lookout for a second wife. My mother is still a Communist. She even ran in the last election. There were posters with her name and face all over the city. A great honor. My father told everyone he wouldn’t vote for her. And he didn’t.”
“Did she win?”
“Who’s going to vote for you if not even your husband will?”
We were silent for a while.
“You know, I went to Germany once. Good country, but they won’t let you smoke anywhere. I missed Palestine. As soon as I got back I lit a cigarette. I hadn’t even left the bus.”
Ismael was steering with only one hand. In the other he held a cigarette.
“But one thing I still don’t get,” he said. “Why did your father marry a Jew?”
“He just fell in love.”
Ismael grinned at me for a moment too long.
“What do you believe in?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“God?”
“No.”
“Culture?”
“Nope.”
“Nation?”
“You know, when I was a kid everyone kept a packed suitcase. Precautionary measure. With us, it was my grandfather’s old briefcase. In it there was fresh underwear, family pictures, silver spoons, and gold crowns—the capital they were able to accumulate in a Communist regime. The Armenians had already been driven out of the city. Many were executed. My grandma, who had witnessed the Shoah …”
“OK, I got the hint!”