Yasmine (26 page)

The cold air smelled good, the neighbourhood was waking up. On my brisk morning walk I met the early risers, the dustmen, the driver of the Tnuvah dairy truck and ten men going to the synagogue to form the morning’s first minyan. Like theatre ushers, these people opened the gate to the new day.

I returned to my flat and instead of the news listened to a Mendelssohn violin concerto. Having trained myself for years to listen to classical music, I had begun to enjoy it. Gradually I established regular times for listening – classical music in the morning, Arabic music in the evening. Like a pasha who maintains two beloved wives in separate palaces, I kept them strictly apart.

It was time to go to Katamon and my parents’ house. This was the day I planned to take Father to my office in Sheikh Jarrah. If Hizkel had been here I’d have taken him too, but he liked Efraim’s kibbutz and was staying there another week.

I went into Mother’s kitchen to eat breakfast. The corner of the ceiling, just above Mother’s Sabbath oil lamp, had a sooty black patch that seemed to be spreading and I thought I ought to repaint the kitchen before Kabi came home on leave. After the war, when he was fully recovered, he told me we had to take our parents out of the housing estate, buy them a new flat. He
left out our brother Moshi, “because he’s got his own family”. It peeved me that he still treated me as he did in Baghdad, where the eldest son is the commander-in-chief. I was even more annoyed at myself for continuing to obey him.

Mother brewed Noumi Basra tea for me and wondered aloud for the millionth time how I could start my day with such a sour drink, and then she spoiled it by sweetening it too much. She gave me two soft-boiled eggs, in which I dunked pieces of brown bread, enjoying every mouthful. I rarely succeeded in making such perfect soft-boiled eggs. To finish, she gave me a chunk of almond halva from Abu Salman. This Abu Salman had a small stall in the “Iraqi” alley in the market, and sold his special halva only on order and only twice a week.

Father was all set to go. His smoothly shaved cheeks smelled of lemony aftershave and he looked both solemn and alert, showing almost no trace of his heart attack. I was as tense as I would be if my Minister was about to visit my office, and hoped Father would like it. On the way we chatted about this and that, and I unburdened myself on the subject of Senator Antoine, who kept attacking us in the foreign press and who turned down all my requests to meet with him.

“Every lock has a key, son,” Father said. “I trust you will find it.”

When we reached Sheikh Jarrah I parked as usual at the top of the little alley and we walked down towards my office. It was then that we saw my neighbour Senator Antoine opening his garden gate.

“
Sabah al-khair
,” I greeted him, and this time added, “My name is Nuri…”

“Yes, I know who you are.
Wamin hadhirato
, and who is his honour?” he asked, looking at Father.

“My father. Will you not pay us the compliment of visiting us in my office? Or perhaps we could come to your place, if you will allow it. We are, after all, next door neighbours…”

He looked at us, surprised and embarrassed. “I’ll come to your office…” he said in a low voice, “after I’ve watered my flowers.”

“
Alf marhaba
, a thousand welcomes,” I said and walked on with Father, holding him by the arm, smiling that his optimism was so quickly to bear fruit. He knew what I was thinking and warned, “Did you notice his eyes, son? His hands? The Arab is courteous, with very formal manners. If you ask to come into his house it’s as if you ask for shelter. Your request honours him. According to their rules of hospitality he should have welcomed you in.”

Aliza greeted my father very warmly. I told her I expected the senator in a little while and said she was to show him maximum respect, and to leave the office door open till he arrived.

We went into my room. Father looked around, took in every object, and said with obvious pleasure, “So this was the office of Ahmad Shukeiry, the head of the PLO, may his name be forgotten!” He inspected the house, including the kitchen and the luxurious bedroom, which was now unused and said, smiling, “The man certainly knew how to live and take care of himself.” I hadn’t seen Father smiling for a long time.

At last, the senator arrived. He stood on the threshold, as if momentarily undecided. I bowed slightly as I invited him inside. We sat down in the conference corner, with its Damascene table and seats, decorated with the fresh flowers Aliza had picked earlier in the garden. The senator sat on the edge of an armchair, holding himself stiffly. His eyes toured the
room, suspiciously examining every object. Suddenly he stood up, changed his regular glasses for reading glasses and approached the wall. “I see that except for the pictures you have left everything as it was. I used to come here often. The head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Advocate Ahmad Shukeiry, was a friend of mine. He was at my house the night before he left al-Quds.”

“I am honoured by your visit,” I said.

“Al-Quds al-Sharif is lost, and the world is fast asleep!” the senator lamented, wringing his hands in despair.

“We shall pass away when our time comes, but al-Quds will remain for ever,” Father assured him.

Aliza came in, bearing a tray with coffee. “Here you are, your excellency,” she said as she served him. The clicking of her heels on the marble floor as she came and went reverberated in the tense silence.

“I have brought you the text of an interview that I gave to the
Washington Post
,” Senator Antoine said, putting the paper on a stool. His stomach was distended and now and then he pressed it with his hand and sighed audibly. “The world should be told what you are doing here. I am documenting all the crimes you are committing. Every scrap of information, every newspaper clipping, is kept in my archives. It is my duty to alert the world.”

His loud voice sounded shrill in my ears. Father, however, looked at the senator mildly and moistened his lips.

“Your love for al-Quds is very moving, Senator,” he said. “No one can understand it better than us. We waited and prayed for it for two thousand years.”

“What have you to do with al-Quds?”

“Senator, Jerusalem is mentioned in our Torah 667 times, and
the Land of Israel 4,584 times. On the other hand, Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Quran.”

“Then why did you demolish the Mugrabi quarter?”

“To let our Western Wall out of darkness into light, to enable the thousands of worshippers to approach it.”

“Why are you changing the character of the city?”

“It is the nature of war that it alters reality and creates a new balance of power. In 1948 you captured the Jewish Quarter and did whatever you wanted with it – you killed some of the inhabitants and deported others, and destroyed all the houses. Did that policy not change the character of the ancient Jewish Quarter?”

My nerves were wound as tightly as a coiled spring as I listened to their exchange. I was afraid that my father’s version of events would make the senator jump up and leave, breaking the fine thread of communication that had only just been formed. What was it about Father’s approach that enabled him to enter this sensitive area and emerge safely, I wondered.

“You are behaving like ruthless conquerors towards the people who have lived in this land for untold generations. Was that how you were treated by our brothers in Iraq?”

“We lived in Iraq for thousands of years. Then one day they expelled us.”

“Expelled you? You wanted to leave. You are Zionists, you were undermining the regime.”

“No, your excellency. They passed a special law forcing us to give up our identity cards, our citizenship. My hands shook when I handed over my card. The roots of seventy generations were severed at one stroke. I became a man without any rights, floating in limbo without anything under my feet.”

“That is exactly what is happening to us now.”

Father shook his head, as if saying that comparison simply didn’t apply. “Our family had land, thousands of dunams, whole villages, tractors and combine harvesters and modern farm machinery. Hundreds of Muslims worked on our land. We were the first Iraqis to export rice and grain to the West. The government of Iraq confiscated all our property, everything! They turned us into refugees.” Father was echoing the arguments he had rejected when Mother made them. He took out a cigarette, sniffed it and put it back. “Afterwards came the longings – for the house, the smell of the lemons, for the dates, even for the cemetery where my parents and forefathers are buried…I still have the keys to our house in Baghdad, your excellency. I keep them as a souvenir.”

Instead of responding to Father, the senator turned to me. “You people are behaving like
abadhai al-hara
, the neighbourhood bully. Why did you have to take over the office of Chairman Shukeiry? Have you no respect?” I ignored the personal attack and he went on, “People are complaining about the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Commerce, the Lands Registry…You do whatever enters your heads. Who gave you permission? Al-Quds is lost and the world is fast asleep,” he lamented again in a hoarse voice.

“Salvation will not come from the outside world, your excellency,” said Father. “The question we, the sons of Abraham, must solve is whether to continue the conflict between Isaac and Ishmael, or learn to compromise and live side by side. There is a story in our holy book about a family quarrel between the shepherds of Abraham and the shepherds of his nephew Lot. Abraham said to Lot, ‘We are brothers. The whole land lies before us. Separate yourself from me – turn to the left and I will turn to the right, or you take the right and I will take
the left.’ That was the solution of our mutual forefather, Abraham al-Halil, the friend. Why can’t we act like him?”

“You invaded our country.”

“Forgive me, your excellency. We have always been here, we went away and returned. Sometimes we were the majority, sometimes the minority.”

“You are disrespectful. Your governor summoned our Mayor, Ruhi al-Khatib, and scolded him as if he were a street urchin.”

“In this instance you are right, your excellency. Western people are ignorant of the Arab rules of courtesy and respect,” Father said, and touched the senator’s hand in a friendly gesture. The old man’s eyes softened, and he leaned closer to Father.

“We lived together for hundreds of years until the Russian Zionists came and spoiled everything. We and you are their victims – they lit the flames of hatred, they turned us into enemies.”

“Your excellency,” Father said in a moderate, relaxed tone that aroused my admiration, “surely you remember that there were attacks on the Jews before then? Even in the time of the Prophet Mohammed Jews were slaughtered, and I don’t need to tell you about the pogroms that the Christians inflicted on the Jews. The facts are widely known. Is it not time to stop the bloodshed?”

“What was taken by force will only be restored by force,” the senator repeated Nasser’s slogan. “How can you seek peace and boast about your democracy when you are committing international crimes?”

“Your excellency, in 1941, in Baghdad, on the feast of Shavuot which celebrates the giving of our holy Torah, Muslim gangs attacked us, slaughtering people, cutting off babies’ feet to steal
their gold anklets, and they raped women, set fire to houses – just because we were Jews. So you see, in this contest over murder and expulsion we can’t even begin to compete with you.”

Silence fell. Father took a cigarette from the Damascene box and before lighting it offered the box to the guest. “‘Does your excellency smoke?”

“Yes. That is, no…” the senator replied vaguely, and again said mournfully, “Al-Quds al-Sharif is lost, and the world is fast asleep.”

“Your excellency, it is time to continue the dialogue begun by King Faisal and Chaim Weizmann, Allah have mercy on their souls.”

‘‘Weizmann underrated us, Herzl thought we were barbarians with an inferior culture. They were both agents of the West, and Zionist ideas are European, alien to this region, to its culture. That is why you will be defeated in the end.”

“We are aliens? This is our home, your excellency. Half the Israelis are children of Arabia, from Asia and the Maghreb, speakers of Arabic and products of its culture. It is time to turn over a new leaf. We offer you good neighbourliness, we court you the way a cousin courts a cousin. Why do you not respond?”

“Because we understand exactly what Zionism wants,” said the senator.

“We also understand exactly what your people want,” Father responded.

Their exchange, though prickly, fascinated me. No wonder this society respects the old.

“
Ibni
,” said Father after the senator left, “for this conversation
alone it was all worth it. To face on an equal footing a senator of His Majesty Hussein bin Talal bin Abdullah al-Hashemi, to debate with him on equal terms like a pair of sparring partners – everything was worth it to reach this moment.”

At last Kabi had some time off and came home to celebrate the release of Uncle Hizkel. Now the whole family could rejoice, something we hadn’t done for a long time. Moshi, his wife and their children came from their co-operative village and picked up Efraim on their way. Sandra also came, and every time I saw her I felt a twinge that Yasmine was not with us.

Mother, with the energy of ten horses, toiled the whole of that week, shopping and cooking, and preparing all the sabbath dishes we had loved since we were children. It was many years since she’d had all of us around her.

Father became a happy grandfather delighting in his family. There was no trace of the withdrawn, despairing man who had broken down before our eyes after our arrival in Israel eighteen years before. He took a warm interest in everything and everybody, including Sandra – whom Kabi for some reason was ignoring – and even played a little on the oud I had bought him in the Old City. The memory of the notes remained in his fingertips, and his favourite Arabic songs carried him back to his youth. To these he added, in honour of this family sabbath, a special encore, the Hebrew children’s song
Agalah im susah
– “A Cart with a Mare” – which he’d picked up somewhere. “To please the little ones,” he said, smiling, half-embarrassed. For
years I had agonised over the change that befell him when he failed to put roots down in Israel and collapsed with his dreams, broken and helpless by the roadside. Now I understood that he had recovered and found some peace, even though he had never realised his ambition to grow rice in Israel.

What amused the children more than the song, though, was listening to their grandparents’ speech. The little sabras, who knew only Hebrew, were entertained by the patois of Iraqi Jewish-Arabic blended with elements of Hebrew, like a new dialect. In one sentence the verbs might be in Arabic and the nouns in Hebrew, sometimes with comical results.

Kabi was more taciturn than ever, withdrawn and intense. He had hugged Hizkel tightly for a long time, but hardly said a word through the entire day. I too had cause for restraint, and with good reason. When my youngest brother Efraim announced his decision to take the plunge and become a
fully-fledged
kibbutz member, Father and Mother took the news as calmly as if it was the most natural thing imaginable. I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t forget or forgive the way they had been so opposed to the kibbutz when I was there. The pressure they put on me to leave was so relentless that eventually I gave in. I left the kibbutz, humiliated and ashamed.

In the evening, when Efraim and Moshi and his family had left, Father suggested visiting Hebron the next day. “In Baghdad I dreamed about two places – Jerusalem the holy and Hebron, the city of the Patriarchs. God be praised, now that Hizkel has been freed from prison and Hebron has been liberated, let’s go and see it.”

Mother prepared a big basket filled with good food, as she used to do in Baghdad when we made the pilgrimage to the tomb of 
the prophet Ezekiel. She took out Father’s festival clothes – a starched white shirt, a new suit, a tie and a hat.

“A suit?” Father looked at her, appealing for a reprieve, but Mother ignored him. Father had long ago given up thinking about clothes. The elegant tailored suits, worn with striped ties and a flower in the lapel, were long forgotten. He wore the standard “utility” men’s outfits, khaki trousers with a white shirt on weekdays, and on holidays gabardine trousers with a pale blue shirt. But Mother, who since the war felt that a new chapter had begun, bought him shirts in East Jerusalem and had an Arab tailor make him a bespoke suit.

At the door she examined him carefully, as if he was a child about to embark on his first day at school, made sure he had his pills, both dark and reading glasses, and when she was finally satisfied that we hadn’t forgotten anything she agreed we could set out, kissed the mezuzah, and locked the house.

On the way to Hebron I thought about the change in Father. His behaviour reminded me of a serious argument we’d had a couple of years ago, and made me reconsider what he’d said at the time.

A tall, slender young woman from the Sociology Department at the Hebrew University had come to our housing estate. She said she was researching the question, “To what extent are the new immigrants satisfied with their reception in the country.” She asked to interview Father, and I was sure he would refuse – why risk another bout of depression, dwelling again on his shattered dream? But Father invited her in, and while I made her sugarless coffee with milk, as she requested, Father brought her a tray laden with biscuits and oranges. She sat on the bed, took out a long questionnaire and began to fire questions at
him. In fact, it boiled down to one question asked in various ways – “Are you content in Israel?” Father said that he did not regret having come here, that he would have done it again, that he was content, his integration in the country was satisfactory, and so on.

When she had finished and I closed the door behind her, I couldn’t stop myself asking: “Father, why did you mislead her?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said everything was all right, that you had no regrets,” I repeated his words in a mocking tone. “How? You realised your dreams? You started a rice-growing farm in the Hula Valley, as you’d dreamed of in Baghdad? Didn’t you live in a tent, then a canvas shed, a tin shed, and a wooden hut? Didn’t you wait seven years for this dream palace – a 43 square-metre flat in an immigrant housing estate in the up-market neighbourhood of Katamon Six? When did all this become so perfect all of a sudden?”

Father lit a cigarette and stood up. “Will you have coffee, son?” – his signal that a serious conversation was about to start. He went to the kitchen and prepared the excellent coffee that only he knew how to make, returned to the room and poured it for both of us.

“My son,
behiat iuni wa-iunek
, I swear by my eyes and yours, I did not say to the student one single word I did not think. I thank God that we came to Israel, where we have freedom, independence, and where we’re in our own state…”

“But what have you achieved?” I interrupted.

“You think I dreamed of becoming Prime Minister? I immigrated for the sake of your future. Here you and Kabi graduated from university, Moshi has his own farm in a
co-operative
village, Efraim is being educated on a kibbutz. Thank
God you are all nicely established and have a good future before you.”

“But Father, the woman was asking about you, not us.”

“It is true that I had a dream, and things happened to me…and now I am out of work. But if we’d stayed there we would have been hostages, and under their boots.”

I knew that Father had immigrated to realise his Zionist dream, not because he was thinking of us, his children, and his wife who did not want to leave Baghdad anyway. I had no doubt that before emigrating from Iraq he was not thinking in bourgeois terms, “for the sake of the family”, or “for the sake of the children’s future.” He was an idealist who stuck to his beliefs without considering his immediate family. But now, looking at the stubborn man who had turned into a kindly grandfather, I understood something I hadn’t before – Father had changed, and not only in his appearance. At some point that I’d failed to notice he had decided not to remain entrenched in the feeling that his sacrifice was in vain, and he began to appreciate his children’s success. Interesting how a man justifies and even believes in his present existence in spite of his old dreams.

The delapidated road leading to Hebron was crammed with cars. Jews were driving from village to village, eager to buy up everything in sight, as if they too, like the Arabs, assumed that Israel would quit the West Bank in a matter of weeks. Burnt-out vehicles stood beside ruined adobe houses, clouds of dust rose from the roadside, out of which appeared herds of cattle driven by fellahin, and here and there someone sat on a low divan with a crate of apples or plums for sale. The land seemed sunk in sleep, neglected, backwards and beaten. This must have been the overall state of the country that greeted Sonia, my kibbutz
mentor, and her comrades, revolutionaries of the early twentieth century, full of faith, seeking redemption, hungry for action. That was how I imagined them – sowing and planting and building, drunk with dreams of changing nature and man. And indeed they moved mountains and performed miracles, while here you could see the opposite, the frozen continuity of the age-old past.

We stopped beside a stall selling Hebron glass and Arab pottery jars. Mother admired the blue glassware, and Father bought her a big bowl for fruit, a big open-mouthed jar for pickling and some vases. “For your flowers,” he said, smiling.

When we entered Hebron, the city of the Patriarch Abraham, our excitement grew. A small boy rolled an iron hoop on the narrow road, unimpressed by my impatient toots on the horn. He continued to run after his hoop, as if to declare, “This is my place!”

“That’s how you boys used to play in Baghdad,” said Hizkel.

We left the car and walked through the town. The market was crowded and filthy, with heaps of rubbish and dark, narrow alleys that twisted like the hooks, laden with their hunks of fresh, bleeding meat. Everything was dilapidated and patched, and stinking open drains ran through the centre. Eyes full of suspicion peered at us from the doorways and windows.

We went up to the Machpelah Cave, the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Hundreds were gathered there. Old and young, religious kippah-wearers and secular types who put on
head-covering
for the occasion, touched the walls lovingly with their fingertips, eyes awash with yearning. The shrine had been forbidden to Jews for centuries.

After a while we entered a little restaurant, where the owner recognised Father’s Iraqi accent. “I worked in Baghdad for five years,” he said sociably.

“
A’al
, that’s good, we’ve come to the right place then. And how was my city? Tell us, please,” Father said.

“
Wallah
, what can I tell you? After they hanged King Faisal and the Regent Abdullah and Nuri es-Sa’id, the city of the Caliphs became the city of hangmen.” Father and Hizkel exchanged glances.

A skinny Jew with a long neck and a weird look in his eyes came in and asked the owner about a local furniture dealer. The man, probably suspecting him of being an agent of the
mukhabarat
, evaded the question. Then the Jew explained that he owed that merchant money from a transaction they had made before the ’48 war, and he wanted to repay it. Mother looked at him admiringly, and said to him that ten Jews like him would hasten the coming of the Messiah. The owner of the restaurant thought for a while and overcame his suspicion. “That furniture dealer you asked about,” he said, “he opened a business in Qatar, but his son lives in Ramallah.” Then he thought a moment longer and promised to obtain the son’s address.

The restaurateur turned to Father and said, “Allow me to tell you in all frankness, you people are scrambling my brain. We thought you were not human, that you were demons, devils, that you would slaughter us and rape our wives and rob our properties, and here you are…a tiger that does not devour. You behave like noble sheikhs. I am confused and do not know what to think.”

Father leaned back in his chair and a smile spread over his face. He was remembering how in Baghdad he used to listen to knowledgeable insiders and search in their conversation for clues to the future behaviour of the Iraqi government. Here, in Hebron, this Arab was searching for answers in what he had to
say. And he, Salman Moshi Imari, was
al-wali
, the sovereign. All praise to His Name. He looked straight at the restaurant owner. “
Ya akhi
, brother, we do not want to hurt you, God forbid. On the contrary, we want to live with you in peace, and we are waiting for your leadership to shake our outstretched hand.”

After we left the restaurant Mother went to a fruit and vegetable stall and returned smiling. “So cheap you wouldn’t believe. These are not like the Muslims in Baghdad – these are innocent and humble as sheep.”

“They’re in shock,” Kabi suddenly broke his silence, “as we were in the immigrant camp. When they recover, that’s when the bloodshed will begin.”

“Hebron is more run-down and even poorer than the Abu Saifin quarter in Baghdad,” Father said. “Tell me, son, what have they been doing here all these years?”

“Dreaming about
al-awda
, the return,” Kabi replied.

“But we were refugees like them,” Mother said, “and now, thank God, we lack for nothing. All thanks to the Labour Party – it did everything quickly.”

“I’ll tell you the difference,” Father went on. “The Arabs smoked narghiles and waited for a miracle, while the founders of Israel drained the marshes and tilled the soil, changed the face of the country and of the Jewish people.”

On the way back to Jerusalem Hizkel suddenly spoke up. “I want to say something that maybe you won’t like. I’ve been thinking and thinking, and I’m not sure that we orientals would have been capable of building this state.”

“How can you say such a thing?” I protested.

“After what we saw today, and after twenty years in prison with Muslims, I’ve come to know them and us. Our culture is
not a culture of revolutions. We are also fatalists, like the Arabs. We sat under the palm trees and waited for the Messiah. We lamented ‘by the rivers of Babylon’ while the Jews of Europe got up and did something. They came from the incandescent world of the Bolsheviks. Such people are irreverent, they have no God, they have decided to become the Messiah themselves. If there is a mountain in their way, they move it. We see a mountain and we stop. That’s the difference between East and West.”

“I’m not sure you’re right, brother,” said Father. “We thought of the Land of Israel as the Temple, a spiritual focus, an object of longing. They saw it as a place in which to build a state.”

Kabi objected: “It’s terrible, what you’re saying. In what way are we inferior to those Ashkenazis? Look how we fought in this war, and how many border settlements we have built! The problem was that they never took us into account, and you allowed them to do everything without you, you didn’t even demand to be represented in the Zionist congresses!”