Limassol (16 page)

“We'd already moved,” said Hani. “If I'm not mixed up. I didn't live here. It's all from stories. I was a baby after all.”

“Are you angry?” asked Daphna.

“I'm sad,” said Hani. And after some thought, he added: “That I should have to miss a place I never knew.”

We drove back to Tel Aviv through the flea market. The celebration of lunch vanished in the rush hour traffic jam. I set the radio on some medieval music, Daphna said that felt good. I helped Hani up the stairs, three flights, in fact I dragged him on my shoulder. “You're a good man,” he said to me when we got there. “I like you.”

In the apartment, a smell of burning came from the inside rooms. Daphna stood frozen in the doorway.

“Go to him,” she asked me. “I simply can't.”

I went down the short corridor and opened the door without knocking. Yotam was sitting erect with a syringe stuck in his arm, a cord blocking veins, and an expression of definite pleasure on his face. Got to try it once, I thought. I closed the door quietly and went back to the entrance.

Daphna looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Don't go in there,” I said.

“I can't bear it,” she wept and clutched my hand. “What should I do, tell me, what to do?”

“In the end, we'll take care of him, soon, soon, after it's all over,” I whispered to her, and she slowly let go, leaving red marks on my hand.

Hani was in the armchair where I had put him. “I'll go talk to the kid,” said the Arab man. His voice rose sudden and firm.

“No, don't go,” shouted Daphna and looked at me. “He can kill you.”

I wanted to get away. It had become too crowded in that crumbling apartment. But I forced myself to take one more step. “Maybe we'll get together tomorrow,” I said, bending over Hani. “Let's go to the movies.”

“Yes, why not,” the eyes of my new dying friend lit up.

 

The next day, Hani was waiting for me right on time. Avital Ignats's old clothes were hanging on him as on a hanger, the best men's fashions of the seventies. Daphna helped him down the stairs and I dragged down the folding wheelchair.

The chair was pretty rickety and one wheel squeaked. I pushed him slowly down the slope of Frishman Street, like a welfare aid worker from Albania who missed home. Hani felt like talking, more and more. He told how much he loved Tel Aviv: he'd had a good time here, a lot of friends, staying out till the middle of the night, interesting conversations, went to a lot of plays, performances. Asked if Dani Litani was still performing, he was his friend; he also remembered Zahuira Harpai, a wonderful and very funny woman. “Back then I started writing a story about Jaffa,” said Hani, “but I couldn't finish it.”

“Where did you live?” I asked, trying to get the broken wheel out of a crack in the sidewalk.

“Mainly with Daphna,” answered Hani, seated in the rickety chair as in a royal chariot. “Until Ignats would come. Ignats didn't like me being in his house. He was a very nervous man. Smoked a lot. Drank a lot. Couldn't make the movies he wanted, and took it all out on her. He didn't know how to treat her nice.”

We passed the large excavation on Frishman at the corner of Dizengoff. A big poster showed a drawing of the skyscraper that would be built there, luxury apartments for culture merchants. “You're always building,” he said. “Towers to the sky. Look what you've got and what we've got, the same land, the same ground, the same sand. You've got everything and we've got nothing. But you're nervous. You don't have the patience we do.”

Across the street, some woman I knew passed by, I didn't remember exactly where I knew her, maybe from the army, maybe from Sigi's work. She lingered a moment to look at me, looked to be in two minds about crossing the street to say hello, but went on. I felt embarrassed.

“I thank you very much,” said Hani, apparently sensing something. “Too bad we didn't know each other when I was healthy.”

“Why did you leave Tel Aviv?” I asked innocently.

“Oh, that was some story,” said Hani. His head moved from side to side under me. “Somebody denounced me. They took me for interrogation, I sat in jail a few days, they didn't treat me very nice. In the end they let me out on condition that I wouldn't go back in, that I wouldn't come visit you anymore.”

“Were you arrested?” I asked. “Why did they do such a thing to you?”

“Oh, nothing serious really, they gave me a few smacks, they didn't let me sleep . . . Really, I'm sorry I'm telling you that.”

“That's awful,” I said. “Why did they do that to you? Why did they act like that with such a nice man as you?” I almost blurted out an hysterical laugh at my silly questions.

“I wasn't connected to anything, but they thought I was a terrorist. After they understood I wasn't a terrorist, they wanted me to spy for them in Gaza. Maybe I'm agreeable, love Jews, but I'm not a traitor. They told me I wouldn't get out, they'd give me ten years for knowing members of the PLO. I was with them for five days, I came out five years older.”

“How come you don't hate us?” I asked. My shirt was covered with spots of sweat from going up the concrete ramp of the square and the hard work of pretending.

“Why should I hate?” laughed Hani and turned his face up to me. “I'm a weak man, I can't hate. Maybe I'm not a man. Can't take revenge, that's how I am. There are wicked people among you, but for Daphna, I'd give my life.”

Up in the square, the fountain was revolving and the music player wasn't working. We went down the other side. A damp orange light poured over the city through the spaces between the buildings. A group of girls in shorts came toward us, giggling, and Hani smiled at them. The guard in the door of the center checked us casually, he didn't check the wheelchair at all, you could bring twenty pounds of explosives in it loaded with nails and whatever you want.

I parked the chair before the movie posters. I hadn't been to the movies in years, maybe since the child was born. Hani hadn't seen anything either since the golden years of the American cinema in the seventies, so the two of us wanted to choose carefully. We argued a little: he wanted to go to a romantic French film and I explained to him that he was making a bad mistake, they always fail with their films. In the end, the two of us decided on a film that won the last Oscar.

I bought a big box of popcorn and two Cokes. We ate from the same box. I moved him slowly from the wheelchair to a seat on the aisle. The air conditioning was excellent. When the light went out, I gave a sigh of relief—what a joy, now I could shut up and cut myself off from the world—and I saw that he was also smiling with joy like a child. Five in the evening, the whole world is running around, going nuts, and we, at long last, are sitting in the movies.

We weren't disappointed. The movie really was good. The two of us fell in love with the star, Jennifer Connolly; the story was convincing, we sank into it for two hours and were sorry when it ended. “No more movie?” laughed Hani when the titles came up at the end. On the way out, I saw him looking longingly at MacDonald's; I understood that he must never have eaten their crap. I ordered him a Big Mac; he left almost the whole thing on the plate, but said politely that he liked it a lot. We talked about the film. Hani said the one thing he regretted in his life was that he wasn't born in Hollywood and hadn't made films like those.

“Nobody's born in Hollywood,” I said. “You get there.”

“But nobody from Gaza gets there,” he laughed.

Hani said he'd try to walk, the film made him feel better, but after a few steps, he collapsed into my arms. I wheeled him back along Dizengoff. We passed the place where the Number 5 bus blew up across from the shwarma stand—I got there back then along with the body collectors—I almost blurted out something because we were so close, but I kept quiet. The street was full of sooty traffic, an Eastern trance accompanied us for a moment from a passing sports car. Sadness and self-pity grabbed me, and almost made me cry. A bad smell rose from him, apparently his bag had filled up.

He asked if I had a wife. I told him I had a wife and child, and she had gone to work in Boston. He said in that case both of us were alone. Only I'm still alive,
habibi
, and walking on my own two feet, and you're very close to going down, I said to myself.

Now I was getting hungry and I suggested we sit down in a café and have something to eat. Why not, he said politely, I'd be very happy to do that. We sat down in an Italian-style café on the corner of Gordon Street. I maneuvered his chair to the bathroom and through the door and made sure he'd manage with all his arrangements.

“Everything's shit,” he laughed when he came out of there and sat down in the chair. Suddenly he had the face of a bastard Arab, like the ones I could shake down for some small secrets about friends and relatives.

The waitress had beautiful skin and her face was beaming. The two of us noticed and looked at her the same way, with an admiration that will go down into the grave with us. I ordered a Milano style sausage sandwich, and to my surprise, Hani asked for pasta. As if he had decided to reward himself on our outing for all the years of hunger in Gaza. I finished my beer before the food came and ordered another one.

Hani told about the friends he had in Tel Aviv, mentioned names of cafés that had closed and books that were forgotten and people who had faded to nothing or had died; he talked about Daphna, who, whenever and wherever she appeared, was like a princess. “We're weak and ugly humans,” he said. “But she's like the ocean, a force of nature, she's a diamond.”

I took a picture of the child out of my wallet, not a recent picture, and put it on the table next to him. Hani looked at it up close and said he looked like me, but you can see he has a beautiful mother. He dropped food on the picture and the sauce stained it. He was very apologetic and tried weakly to wipe it off with the napkin. The child was entirely covered with oily sauce. I took the picture and buried it back in my wallet.

Hani looked very tired. I asked if he wanted to go home. His plate was still full. “You must miss your child,” said Hani. I had to bend over to him to hear. “I remember my child when he was like that. The whole world I would have given for him. Afterward, you can't protect him. The world is stronger than you are, the world is bad . . . ” Now he had tears in his eyes.

“How long has it been since you've seen your kid?” I asked. My muscles were tense, I hated the feeling of pressure before the crushing question, like a gorilla before the battle of his life. I wanted to go on talking with him man to man, without striving for any purpose.

“Almost six years,” Hani replied. “Ever since he got out of jail.” He told me the son had been imprisoned in a prison camp in the desert for two years, and after he got out, he left the country, couldn't find anything to do with himself in Gaza.

“Where is he now?” I asked.

In a person's look there is a blend of all kinds of things, and in Hani's look there was now also a percentage of suspicion. But only a little. I got beyond that barrier safely.

“Wandering around,” said Hani, and sharply pushed away the plate of food. “God knows where he is now.”

I knew exactly where he was. Haim had briefed me that very morning. The man had returned from Iran to Syria.

“And your daughter?” I asked, to allay suspicion.

“The daughter is in her house. She's got a good husband and good children.”

“Because I thought . . . ,” I began. “Listen, I've got quite a lot of money. I did very well in business in recent years. I can help you get together with your children. If they can't come here, maybe we'll arrange something outside. We can travel to a nearby place, Cyprus for instance. It shouldn't cost too much. You'll see the children for the last time. Think about that, Hani. I'd be glad to help.”

Hani's response was strange. He started crying, simply bitter weeping. I had to get up to calm him down, stroke his gray hair. The beaming waitress came and asked if she could do something to help, maybe we wanted coffee and dessert.

Hani calmed down. There was silence between us. I was afraid I had exposed myself, that I was too coarse. An enormous moon rose in the distance, above the Azrieli Towers. Only when we got to her house, which was dark and stood like a ghost building among the renovated houses, did he say beneath me, from the squeaking wheelchair: “I want to go. I want to see the children. I hope you can arrange that.”

Don't believe! I shouted inside myself. Refuse! But at the same time, the enormous joy of the hunter closing in on his prey exploded within me.

When I got upstairs with him, I was out of breath. Daphna was on the phone, feverish, gnawing her fingernails. She managed to tell me that Yotam had disappeared from the house two days ago and she had no idea where he was.

“Call me,” I signaled to her after I had dragged Hani to his sofa, where he lay helplessly. On the round table in the kitchen was a big stack of pages, written in an intelligent hand; I picked up a few bright sentences, she was progressing nicely with her book. For a moment, Daphna came very close to me. Her eyes were somewhere else. My hands almost moved to embrace her waist. She moved away quickly and continued talking on the phone. What do you think you're doing! Don't you dare!

I stopped at the big supermarket on the way to Ra'anana, stood in the express line with my bedtime supplies: a bottle of Arak and a chocolate bar, almonds and red grapes.

 

Hani's son had been moving around the world for a few years now unknown to us. We hadn't noticed him until people started talking about him with respect. They relied on him. They gave him big sums of money. He came to Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. Moved to Damascus. Then he was sent to Iran to organize courses, arrange shipments of weapons, meet with senior operatives in the revolutionary guard. He was thirty-two years old, a serious man, a methodical worker.