A Wall of Light (16 page)

N
OAH’S DIARY
, O
CTOBER
29, 1986.

In the news: U.N. resolution complaining about Israel, #1000001. Israel has to place all its nuclear facilities under international safeguards, now that Vanunu surprised THE WHOLE WORLD with his information. And we have to promise not to bomb other people’s facilities again. Israel will quickly obey ha ha.

T
hey got rid of high-school army training. Mom is really happy. She’s into demilitarization. I really liked some of that stuff, swinging from tree to tree, gliding, jumping from heights, all that. Anyhow, they decided to get rid of it but we had an option to sign up for a three-day endurance exercise in the woods, and Oren and I signed up. We had a blast, the girls were so funny. When seven of us were all alone in the woods, they said as soldiers-to-be we had to learn “rape impulse control.” So they all stripped and tried to tempt us—in order to test our control. I won’t go into details about how all that ended, except that everyone was pleased with the outcome. It’s a miracle from God that we weren’t caught. (It’s the first time I cheated on Ilanit, but I don’t think it really counts if you’re forced into it.)

L
ETTER TO
A
NDREI
, A
PRIL
14, 1957

D
earest, what a funny day we had today! I was called into the principal’s office at Kostya’s school.

I say “office” but you must imagine a room crammed from end to end with piles of textbooks—on the floor, on a long folding table, under the table—so that it looks more like a storage room than an office. In the corner are the janitor’s supplies (mop and pail and some cleansers) and a few chairs have been squeezed into the remaining space for meetings. Someone’s tea glass and tea bags are on the windowsill next to a plant, and the lost-and-found box doubles as a container for the school’s flute recorders. Things are so informal here! It’s a relief, I must say, after our rigid lives at home, where, I realize now, everyone lives in a continual state of paranoia. It becomes second nature. Here it’s the opposite! You never have to watch your back because everything is such a muddle, there is so much improvisation. And you feel that anyone could slip through any crack at all. It’s a good thing there are no truly evil people here, because they could slip through the cracks, too.

But now to the meeting. Kostya was also invited, and I was sure we were going to be told again that he is too outspoken. But no, this was an entirely different issue. It seems that the children at school, and maybe the teachers as well, don’t feel very comfortable with the name Kostya. As a result the children call him Vronsky. I had noticed that already, when they all play outdoors.

The principal feels this is inappropriate. First, because Vronsky in literature is not a very positive figure! Can you imagine? And secondly, because it makes a child feel less accepted if he is continually addressed by his last name. It isn’t good for his “psychological and social development.”

Therefore the principal, who is a very sweet and gentle person, put together a list of Hebrew first names for us to choose from, with some of the same consonants, so that Kostya may be renamed. People here change their names all the time, it’s the easiest thing to do. The principal said I need only fill in a form, go to the minister of the interior, and
voilà!
we have a new name. It is considered a little unpatriotic not to want to change your name, and all the other children, I was told, have Hebrew names. Why should my son stand out? the principal asked rhetorically. He said it wasn’t healthy for him or for anyone else.

Kostya didn’t say anything. He looked out of the window at the courtyard and seemed quite impatient to be outdoors again. I don’t think the subject interested him very much. I politely told the principal I would take the list home and consider the matter, as he’d clearly gone to a lot of trouble. Here are some of the names on the list, which he divided into categories to be helpful.
Biblical:
Yuval, Yoav, Ya’ir, Yona (Jonah), Yochanan, Yonatan (Jonathan)—as you see, it is now the fashion to name children after some of the minor or more troublesome characters in the Bible.
Modern:
Yaron, Yarden (Jordan).
Daring and original:
Dekel (palm tree), Narkis (narcissus!), Tal (dew) … and so on. It was a long list; he put a lot of effort into this and he’s really a very nice man—sensitive, intelligent, cares about the children. Please don’t think that he would ever impose anything on us! In fact, he sees himself as a friend, and seemed quite concerned about whether we had anywhere to go for the Passover feast, which is in two days. He invited us to join his family. I didn’t tell him this, but do you know I have had eleven invitations? Neighbors, people at the restaurant, my fellow actors—and, of course, Carmela. Everyone seems worried that I don’t have a seder (as it’s called) to go to. How can I explain to them how little I care for rituals and ceremonies? I suppose I inherited these feelings from my father, who as you remember always got angry when he heard that some Jews were risking so much in order to follow an antiquated, superstitious tradition, as he used to put it. Or maybe it’s my own rebellious personality, dear. In the end we decided that Kostya will join his freckled friend’s family, while I will be very happy to have a quiet evening to myself at home.

But to get back to the names, in the end our Kostya said he does not want to change his name. I was very relieved. His name is one of my few remaining links to you, darling, here in this hot, odd place. Darling.

S
ONYA

S
everal men began explaining something to me. I couldn’t make out a word they were saying and there was no point telling them I was deaf, it would only confuse matters further. There are times when you can’t ask people to start writing things down for you, and this was one of those times. If I were able to read Arabic, that would have been fine, but asking them to write in Hebrew or English was too embarrassing and too complicated. They were not Israeli, despite their blue ID cards, and although they’d learned English at school, it was an imposition to ask them to translate what they had to say into a second language. I forced myself not to feel frustrated; whatever they were communicating would be clarified soon enough. I nodded as if I understood, and when they seemed to be asking me a question I nodded as well.

Finally I was ushered into a transit van for which the word “basic” was invented. The main thing was that there was gas in the engine and the van moved when you pressed on the gas pedal and came to a stop, more or less, when you pressed on the brakes. As for seats that held you reliably and didn’t seem about to come loose, or a smooth ride, these were merely details. I looked for a solid object to hold on to: there was nothing available other than the door, so I pressed the palm of my hand against the cold metal and somehow managed to stay put.

The other passengers were all male: three worn, persevering men wearing ageless suit jackets and in need of a shave, and in the seat next to me, a younger man in a very bad mood. The younger man had fine features and a short black beard, and for some reason he made me think of a medieval minstrel: I could imagine him, when in a better frame of mind, strumming a lute and singing, “Hey, nonny, nonny” (or the Arabic equivalent). I smiled at him, but he looked away; he didn’t want to be distracted from his bad mood. That occasionally happened with some of my students: they entered class in an extravagant sulk and clung to it with stubborn determination. But in their case a falling-out with a boyfriend or girlfriend was usually the cause. The young man next to me more likely had had a falling-out with a checkpoint.

The transit stopped and all the passengers got off, but the driver didn’t seem to expect me to disembark with the others. I remained in my seat and he drove on.

We continued for another fifteen bumpy minutes. Then the driver pulled over: clearly we’d reached the end of the journey. I gave him twenty shekels, which seemed to satisfy him; I had no way of knowing how much he’d asked for. He thanked me, wished me luck, and as soon as I was out of the van, turned and sped away.

I was alone in the middle of a town or neighborhood and I was facing another wall. But this one was the real thing, the final version, and it was impassable: it towered over me like a punishment from hell. In hell you’d be trying to reach your lover and you’d have to spend your life staring instead at this monstrosity. This was what the men had been trying to explain to me, and I’d not understood.
“It is your garden now, little children,” said the Giant, and he took a great axe and knocked down the wall. And when the people were going to market at twelve o’clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.
Not here.

A heavy metal door had been installed at the center of the wall. I looked around me: there was not a soul in sight. White stone apartment buildings with wide, empty windows rose over a variety of small stores. Ornamental Arabic lettering identified the stores; in some cases there was an English translation, either correctly spelled or close to it: Jouabeh Bakery and Sweets; Jimoom Comunication Ltd. The predominant color, apart from the white of the stone, was blue in all its variations: turquoise curtains behind glass panes; blue billboards advertising the Taj Mahal Fitness Centre; a poster of a smiling driver in a blue shirt holding the wheel of a car. Small black water tanks dotted the roofs of the buildings; from a distance they looked like the shielded heads of medieval knights.

In the midst of this ordinary community, the wall rose like a bizarre mistake; someone’s idea of a practical joke, which, like all practical jokes, would be evil only if it were real. One had merely to blink and the wall would be gone.

I peered more closely at the metal door. It didn’t seem to have a handle and I wondered how its locking mechanism worked. My curiosity aroused, I began examining it with my hands, pressing my fists against the cold rough metal. To my amazement the door flew open. So the wall wasn’t completed after all. This was my lucky day.

I passed through the opening. On this side the town was awake; people were up and about, walking along the sidewalks or congregating at storefronts. A knot of chatting schoolgirls passed briskly by. With their identical bell-bottom jeans, western knapsacks, white wimple-style head coverings, and striped tunics, they looked like a single moving entity, lively and impenetrable.

I was about to set off in search of yet another person who could direct me when I realized, quite suddenly, that I was utterly exhausted. I couldn’t take another step without resting first. I sat down gratefully on a cement block by the side of the road.

I was not only exhausted: a profound pessimism, entirely out of character for me, was luring me into its dark cavern. How quickly the sad, oppressive atmosphere had penetrated my emotional state! Oppression, with its harsh instability, was physically draining: my shoulders ached with tension and I had to breathe deeply a few times. A spasm passed through my body as my muscles unclenched themselves. I saw that the skin on the palms of my hands had been scraped by the climb over the first wall; in normal circumstances I would have noticed something like that immediately. I was glad there was no one nearby: I didn’t feel presentable and needed a few minutes to collect myself.

I had lost the thread of my journey, the certainty that what I was doing made sense. Instead I felt a surge of panic. What if Khalid was dismayed to see me? What if I found him surrounded by a brood of children, with a wife peering at me from behind his shoulder? What if he became furious with me for tracking him down—what if my presence here compromised or harmed him in some way? I felt stupidly conspicuous in my inappropriate clothes. Everyone would notice me: everyone would know where I was going. I was carelessly and clumsily invading Khalid’s privacy. I knew nothing about his life, and the idea that I could coordinate this unknown life with the events of the morning now seemed absurd. From this setting, our encounter in my luxurious bedroom in Tel Aviv loomed as remote as a theater piece about another society in another universe.

Yet it was impossible for me to go home without seeing him, or at least trying to see him. I loved him. Love wasn’t reasonable, and it wasn’t altruistic. You couldn’t afford to imagine that your needs were not identical to those of the person you loved: the idea was too painful to consider. I refused to leave before I knew, one way or the other, how he felt. That was another thing about love. No matter how pessimistic you were feeling, or how deep your fear, love meant that you were also hopeful.

From behind another stone block, a skinny orange cat peeked out at me with cautious eyes. I had a few cat treats in my bag and I took them out, set them on the ground. Purring loudly at this unexpected boon, the cat fearlessly came out of its hiding place and gobbled up the treats. I reached down to stroke its bony back and it brushed against my leg. If I moved out on my own I would be able to have a cat. At this thought my mood lifted and I began picturing my new flat with a kitten curled up on the bed.

Because I didn’t hear it coming, I was startled to see a patrol car pulling up beside me. When you’re deaf, things really do appear out of nowhere. A soldier called out to me from inside the vehicle. I went over and said, speaking softly, “I’m deaf, so there’s no point shouting. I can speak but I can’t hear. I’m here to visit someone but I’ve never been in this neighborhood before and I’m not sure how to get there.”

The soldier tossed his head sideways in the Middle Eastern sign for
yallah
—that humbling term, applicable to both humans and livestock, which means “This way, let’s go.” I climbed into the military vehicle. It smelled of metal and stale rolls.

There were several questions I would have liked to ask but I didn’t want to annoy him; I was lucky enough that he was helping me. He was probably being cooperative because I was deaf. On rare occasions it was advantageous to be considered handicapped.

“Where are you going?” the soldier asked, spreading his hands apart in the sign for “What do you want?” It always interested me to consider the signs used by hearing people in these parts:
yallah
, what do you want, come over here, wait, go, I don’t know/care, don’t you dare/you listen to me,
mea culpa
, are you insane/what the hell are you doing, yes, no (two signs), hello/good-bye, calm down, in two seconds I’m going to hit you, screw you, I love/want you (the one sign that relied on eyes only). Was it possible that all human discourse could be more or less reduced to these elemental transmissions?

I showed the soldier Khalid’s address.

It was his turn to wish he could ask me questions: Why was I going to see this person? What was it all about? But he shrugged; he didn’t really care. I could see that he was tired and cranky and lonely. People in uniform didn’t usually look lonely, but this particular soldier looked as if he’d just discovered that he was the last human on the planet.

He turned down one street, then another, and stopped in front of a two-story white stone building with arched windows on the ground floor and small square windows higher up. He pointed to indicate that we’d arrived. I stepped down and he drove away quickly, as if hoping to distance himself from what he’d just done, in case something went wrong and he’d be blamed.

The white stone house had three doors; Khalid’s was the middle one. I went up to the door and knocked.