Ishmael's Oranges (40 page)

As the sun went down that evening, before Jimmy arrived to take him to the last protest meeting, Salim watched his family on Tareq's old projector.

He'd brought all the reels with him from Kuwait to England and now here. Each one was carefully marked.
The Creek. Il-Saraj
.
Sophie's birthday party
.
Marc's garden
. He watched them flicker through the years, growing and changing, their faces full of silent laughter. Lines gathered around Jude's eyes, Sophie's hair lengthened, Marc's frail body stretched and filled. And then with a flick of a switch he reversed time, winding them back into childhood and innocence. Jude smiled up at him from the beach, freckles on her cheeks. Sophie skipped around the fire and Marc ran to join her, his arms vanishing into the golden light.

Again and again he played them, searching for some lost truth hidden in their faces.
When did it all turn upside down?
Back then, his only dreams were of oranges and the warm sea. But the oranges had gone and the sea was surrounded by concrete. Now he wanted to dream of Jude's golden hair, of Sophie's eyes, of Marc leaping through the air. But his nights were silent, and when he awoke they left no trace behind.

Jimmy picked Salim up after sunset. The flyer for the night's entertainment read:
Justice for Jaffa
.

Salim sat watching the fields and gas stations roll by, wondering at his deep foreboding. He felt like a man who'd fallen asleep while driving, waking to find his hand no longer on the wheel.

Jimmy cleared his throat. ‘Salim. I have a surprise waiting for you tonight.' His huge hands clamped to the wheel. ‘An old friend. I think maybe he can be good for us, perhaps for the elections to come.'

Salim was instantly suspicious. ‘Who are you talking about?'

‘Mazen. The Al-Khalili
boy.'

His hair stood up on his arms and his stomach clenched as if an iron fist had punched it.
Surely he's joking.

‘Why would you think I want to see Mazen?' He raised his voice and Jimmy turned to look at him, the eyes unfathomable under his deep cheek folds. ‘They were the ones. They betrayed
us.'

‘Wait a moment there,
habibi
.' Jimmy's voice had a chilly edge to it. ‘Let's remember who betrayed who. It was the Jews who made this whole mess. Everyone else just did what they had to. I've spoken to Mazen
–
he's very sorry about the past. Now that his father's buried, God rest him, he doesn't have a lot of money. It turns out that the Al-Khalilis are not very good businessmen. But he's old Jaffa and once we clean him up, he'll do very well.'

‘Do very well for what?'

‘For us. For Jaffa, for the elections. We need an old Jaffa man beside you, a man who can get some public opinion behind him. You and Mazen, you're boyhood friends,' Jimmy repeated. ‘All they need is to see him next to you. After all,' he looked kindly at Salim, his eyes like pools of black ice, ‘I did a favour on this one, for your brother. We should all get something out of this,
no?'

They arrived at the hall on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. It was where the old Manshiyya district used to be, before the tanks razed it to the ground. Inside the low doorway, nameless young people shook his
hand.

Halfway down the row of faces, there he was. Salim stopped in front of him and Mazen blinked slowly, his feet shifting.

The tight black curls were the same, but the rich rolls of fat hung empty and loose around his stomach and cheeks. The full redness of those curling lips now looked bruised, bitten. His clothes reminded Salim not of the suave Abu Mazen, but of his own father and his shabby suits marked with the sweat of uncertainty.

‘Salim Al-Ishmaeli,' Mazen said. He cleared his throat and stuck his hand out in a gesture that smelt of embarrassment. It was a second before Salim, under Jimmy's careful gaze, could bring himself to shake it. Mazen's palm was moist and
soft.

‘Who would have thought, after so long? I heard you went to be the big man in London.'

‘Not a
fellah
these days,' Salim heard himself saying.

Mazen laughed, but his eyes were anxious as they flickered towards Jimmy. ‘
Ya
Salim, I can't believe you remember all that.'

Salim could not look away from him. ‘I remember everything,' he said, the words rising up on the heat of his heart. ‘Even that day in Tel Aviv.' He had the satisfaction of seeing Mazen turn a defiant
red.

‘You don't remember how it really was.' There was a wheedling tone in his voice. ‘We were prisoners in Jaffa after the Jews came, like sheep behind barbed wire. While you were living in that nice flat in Nazareth, we had to shit in holes because there were so many of us the drains overflowed. There was nothing to be done, except what they told us to do.' He looked up at Salim. ‘The Israelis tried to turn us against each other.' Jimmy nodded in heavy agreement. ‘It's right we should stand together
now.'

‘Okay, enough, it's time,' Jimmy said. ‘Finish the reunion later. They're waiting.'

After Salim had finished speaking that night, Jimmy brought Mazen up to spin his own tale. When Mazen held out his hand to Salim, under the eager gaze of their young audience, Salim found himself taking it to the sound of cheers. Mazen smiled through his sweat and Salim felt their hands slide apart, leaving a slick trail of wetness behind. And he remembered how the Frères used to treat the boys to a puppet show every Saturday morning. He would sit by Mazen and Hassan, and laugh at their rictus grins and jerky little dances. For a moment he imagined himself down there among them, looking up at himself with scornful
eyes.

It was nearly midnight by the time Jimmy pulled up outside the Nazareth apartment. They'd been silent all the way back. Salim wiped his hands together, but he could still feel Mazen's sweat.

‘What's up, Salim?' Jimmy asked him. ‘You're nearly home. Every journalist in Tel Aviv is confirmed for the press conference tomorrow. The day after, you'll get your judgment. Then the real work starts. What could be wrong? It's all going to plan.'

What could be wrong?
‘All my life I wanted Mazen to pay for what he did,' Salim said slowly. ‘But tonight I shook his hand. What does that make
me?'

‘It makes you smart,' Jimmy said. ‘Listen to me, my friend. You don't see wires and checkpoints here like in the West Bank. But we are still a people under siege. We can't afford to fight each other for things in the past. You did the right thing,
habibi
. And tomorrow you will
see.'

The long walk up the stairs was full of whispers, reaching out of the darkness to urge things, important things
–
but they stayed just beyond the edge of hearing.

Weary, he pulled out his key and opened the door to Nadia's flat. A figure rose quickly from the armchair opposite and turned to face him. Salim froze in the doorway. Standing there, gaunt and tense, was
Marc.

Salim was dumbfounded. The television was still on and it was as if Marc had stepped out of it, a living fragment of memory come to haunt
him.

His son looked almost skeletal. A pair of jeans hung from his hips and a black t-shirt dangled loosely from wire-thin shoulders. His arms were taut and finely muscled and his head tipped upwards on a long neck. The dancer's
pose.

‘Surprised?' the boy said. He was oddly motionless except for his fingers, long and pale as they closed and flexed repeatedly.

Salim stepped towards him, saying, ‘Marc…' But he stopped dead when Marc said, ‘Don't. Don't. I didn't come for that.'

Salim tried to take in the sight of this stranger in front of him. The tall bones and wild eyes belonged to a young man he'd never met. There were only traces of the child he remembered from just months before. He flinched at the sight of them, the bitten lips, the frail wrists and the soft whiteness of his
hair.

‘Then why did you come?' he asked, dreading the answer. ‘Does your mother know you're here?'

‘She will,' Marc said. ‘I had to take some money from her.' His laugh was a bark. ‘It doesn't matter what I do now. I guess she told you what happened? I failed. You were right after all. Aren't you happy about that?'

Salim groped for the words. ‘That was never what I meant.'

‘I did it for you, you know,' Marc went on, his body framed by the refracted light from the stairwell. ‘I thought he was my friend, but then he said Arabs were dogs and he had a look on his face, so I
knew
he meant me. I stood up to him, like you told me to. Now I'm fucked. They'll never take me back.'

Salim felt the familiar rise of his hackles. ‘Don't blame me for that, Marc. You made your own choice. Maybe it was the right choice, if someone insulted you. There'll be other ballet schools, won't there?'

Marc laughed again, but something happened in his eyes, a plane shift from one emotion to another
–
perhaps from anger to tears. In the light, it was impossible to
tell.

‘Mum said you'd come back when it happened. She still thinks you care. She's deluded. I told her. You don't care at all, you never have. But I'd like to know
why.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Come on, you can admit it now. You were never happy with us. Was it because of the Arabic lessons? Or because you couldn't hold down a job for five minutes? Or were you just too angry about everything to love us? Poor old Dad, and his poor old house that the wicked Jews took.' Marc's voice was hoarse.

‘You're crazy,' Salim said, half in worry and half in anger. ‘Marc, you're not well. You should go home. There's nothing for you here.'

Marc lifted his head as the light from Nadia's doorway seemed to shine around his throat. His eyes were closed, but his fingers still flickered.

‘Nothing, I know. You're right. But I wanted to see you. To tell you something.' His words were so rapid that they seemed to spill from him. ‘After they expelled me I was trying to work it out
–
why I was never happy. I just can't remember that feeling. I think, it was only when I danced
–
then it was like nothing could catch me. But now I know why. Shall I tell you? Do you care?' Salim heard his voice catch.

‘Tell me then,' he said. ‘If it means so much to you.' In the dim room his son's blue eyes were darker than his own, black as the
void.

‘It was because of you,' Marc said, and a hollow place inside Salim ached in sympathy. ‘You never wanted us to be a happy family. You always wanted to be somewhere else. I tried to make up for it. But it wasn't enough for you. Of course you were right, Dad. I wasn't nearly enough.'

A moment of silence passed between them. Then the boy lifted a large backpack off the floor and hoisted it onto one shoulder. Its shadow merged into his on the wall behind him, a trick of the light at once monstrous and threatening.

‘They said you have a press conference tomorrow,' he said. ‘At the famous house.'

‘That's right,' Salim said. ‘I'd say come, but I guess you don't want
to.'

Marc shrugged. ‘Maybe I'd like to see this place. What did you call it? Your legacy. That's perfect. It was always more your child than I
was.'

Somewhere deep in the recesses of memory Salim heard his voice screaming, heard the words he'd thrown at his own father in that same apartment.
It's your fault. You made us miserable. You did everything wrong.
They rang in his head as Marc pushed past him in the same haze of pain and bravado.

It was instinct that made him seize his son's arm, the sudden overwhelming urge to throw everything else away, to convince his son that he was loved, that they were all loved, that they could find a new place to begin. Marc's face was half-turned towards him, half in the shadows, and he paused for the briefest moment. But it was too quick; the surface of Salim's mind was still full of press conferences and plans, and the words he needed were buried so deep they could not find their way
out.

Marc wrenched his arm away and walked through the door. The last thing Salim saw was his hand, clutching his bag as he disappeared into the dark of the stairwell. ‘'Bye, Dad,' he heard. And then, like a dream, Marc was
gone.

The last day bloomed bright as a rose in Jaffa. By noon the Orange House was wrapped in a blaze of light under a radiant winter
sky.

Salim stood at the end of the track. It was like looking through a frame, as if the house lived only in a picture, set apart from the racing world.

Creepers tumbled over the closed garden walls, moving softly with the sway and fall of the cool December air. The arching windows of the top floor were wide eyes looking out to sea. Their gaze sped over the top of the dirty new Jaffa, through the softening light of the harbour over to the glorious old
city.

Around the house, it was pandemonium. Mobile tents painted by Jimmy' progressives swelled on the scrubland like unripe melons. The front gate was guarded by two police officers. More stood beside police cars blocking the street. Their sirens waved silently, flashing white and blue into the
air.

A crowd was arriving for the spectacle. They came in huddles, people with nothing to do on a Sunday morning. Most kept their distance, standing linked arm to arm behind the cordon of police cars, whispering to each other. Others, the bolder ones, came laughing into the arena of tents, pointing at the placards and taking pictures.