Feeling naughty, and girlish again, she steps off the road and follows that same steep path into the gorge, escaping back to a time she sorely missed.
It is as it was. The Arab houses still stand. And she pictures—a flash of memory—the speed with which the gazelles raced off when she and her friends would arrive. Religious girls, they used to pretend—hardly a reach—that this green spring-fed place was the Garden of Eden, and that they were the first ever to walk the world, the houses erased from their view.
The General, always with her when he was living, had not moved far since he’d gone. She stands at the foot of the pool in which she’d swum, and she remembers one of the numberless late nights at the General’s official residence, all but her, and his bodyguards, sent home.
He had come in from the patio to find her in his office, closing things up for the day. “There is a visitor coming,” he’d said. “It’s very last-minute, I know, but I don’t want to wake anyone to cook.”
She had scolded him, saying, “If you are asking me something, please ask it.”
“Could you put something together—as a favor to me? Something simple for a guest.”
“It will have to be,” she’d said, frustrated, as she knew the pantry was as empty as it ever got, a big order coming the next day.
She’d gone through the kitchen, and there were eggs and peppers and some vegetables in cans. There were fruits and a watermelon, and some cheeses and a good loaf of bread. There was a tub of hummus. And she knew she could make do.
She started on a shakshuka, and warmed day-old burrekas, and began chopping cucumbers for a nice Israeli salad, only sorry she had no parsley or mint to put on top.
She’d set out pickles and olives, and if the meal were to have a theme, she’d call it a late-night breakfast spread.
While she was still cooking, in came the General, and with him, she could not believe it, was Arafat at his side.
There he stood in his uniform and his famous kaffiyeh, the tail of that scarf set carefully in the shape of greater Israel, Palestine resting on his lapel. She rarely felt silenced, but him—she’d never met Arafat before.
The General, in good spirits, made introductions. He’d said, “My favorite enemy has stopped by for a chat.”
Then Arafat had addressed her, in that high voice she’d only ever heard on the radio and TV. It sounded just the same, coming—nice to meet you—from the man’s full lips.
The men did not move out to the General’s office or the dining room, or to sit in the center patio, where so many visitors were entertained. They sat down at the kitchen table, and the General said, “Ruthi, enough time has been wasted by both sides. We’re here to make progress. And where more efficient than the kitchen to set out food?”
She’d offered to excuse herself, before the rest of the cooking was done.
The General, seeming sincerely hospitable, insisted she stay.
And so she’d remained, cooking and serving, hurrying back and forth, shuttling the finished plates from the counter, pouring drinks and refreshing. A fly on the wall.
It was not business, not politics, not the future of the peoples that they were yet discussing. While she ladled shakshuka, the two reminisced over all the times they’d tried to kill each other and failed, all their accidents and close calls, all the times they did not die.
“When my plane crashed in the desert,” Arafat said, “and I walked away.”
“When I was a young man, shot in the gut at Latrun.”
“When you had me in your sniper sights in Beirut.”
“You know about that?” the General had said, beaming.
“I have seen the photo. And if I did, you must have wanted me to see it too.”
“We should have pulled the trigger.”
“It would have saved you the price of this dinner,” Arafat said, as he took a pickle from the dish. “Why didn’t you? I’ve always wanted to know. Russian pressure? American?”
“Only because it wouldn’t have been right,” the General said. “The Devil so enjoys having us both around.”
She was good at reading her boss. She continued to dawdle in the kitchen, puttering around, helping contribute to that informal tone. She listened as they moved on to the point that seemed to have spurred this late-night meet.
The Palestinians are willing to sacrifice many things, Arafat had said, but they must at least be able to save face. On the right of return, they need a symbol. Not just a state outside those borders, but a return to someplace within.
What easier population for the Israelis to absorb, and what better place to rebuild than the tiny village of Lifta, a gem over which their broken hearts never mend?
And what else should Ruthi remember as she stands among those vacant stone houses, climbing the gorge on both sides?
Toward the end of that meeting, toward the end of that meal, Ruthi approached with feta and watermelon on a serving platter. Sweet and salty, a favorite of the General’s until the start of his endless end.
He’d openly balked at Arafat’s request. The General would swap more territory, closer in. He would talk about taking more refugees, a bolder number, in a place farther away.
And, just then, Arafat turned to her. He’d touched a hand to her arm, as if she’d been part of the conversation the whole time. “Is it not beautiful, our Lifta? You must have seen?”
“I have,” she’d said, and she’d answered not in Hebrew or English, but Arabic, and Arafat had smiled. “It is beautiful,” she’d said, and set the platter down before him.
It was this that they then argued. Repeating how willing they both were to compromise, they both, on this, stood fast.
“A right of return,” Arafat had said. “A few houses, already built, standing empty at the bottom of Jerusalem, low down. You will have the advantage of height and position should it ever again come to war.”
“It is not the bottom of the city, but the top of Israel, and you know that. Jerusalem is the Jewish head, and Lifta sits at its throat.” The General put his finger to his neck and did not need, for effect, to pull it across.
“Give us that,” Arafat said. “We should not have to ask for what’s ours.”
“If it were yours already,” the General had said, “you would not have to come asking at my door.”
2014, Gaza Border (Israeli side)
The care one must take in a relationship not to say the things that won’t go away. She had insulted her love grievously the last time she’d seen him face-to-face.
They were having dinner in Amsterdam when he’d told her he was flying straight from there to Gaza. He was being sent as an emissary to bury the hatchet and reunite the Palestinian people. He would broker a different kind of deal from the one to which they’d dedicated their lives. The mapmaker was going to wrangle a lasting peace between Palestinians and Palestinians, between Fatah and Hamas.