A Wall of Light (21 page)

“Send me an e-mail when you get home. Do you remember the address?”

“Yes, I have a good memory. That’s how I found you, I remembered the license-plate number of the car you were driving.”

He finished his cigarette and pulled me toward him. I felt his fingers tracing the scars on my back. I lay very still, afraid to break the spell. Let this moment never end.

Then I realized that he was spelling a question mark on my back.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It was in Beersheba, I was studying there. I found a stray kitten in the morning and I brought her to class. She sat on my lap all day. When I was in elementary school I used to bring snails and lizards to class—I was very spoiled and the teachers let me do anything I wanted. I stopped eventually, it was too eccentric. But I guess old habits die hard, and that day I brought the kitten with me. It was a late-afternoon course, and she slept on my skirt and purred. But when classes ended and everyone began to gather their things and shout and so on, she got scared and dashed away. So I stayed behind to look for her. Everyone left the building and I was still going through all the rooms, looking under tables, trying to find her. Two hoodlums came in through a classroom window, they wanted to steal a computer. They were stoned—crack, probably, or some drug that makes you violent. But I survived. They didn’t kill me, I was lucky, I recovered completely. The only thing left are those scars, and I don’t even know what they look like—I refuse to look at them in the mirror. I didn’t read the newspapers, either, and I didn’t give the police anything. I just wrote ‘This is accurate’ on the medical report, without reading it. I never testified in court.”

Khalid didn’t say anything. His face was closed, his eyes were very still.

He took my notebook and wrote for a few minutes. Then he handed it to me. He’d written,
“I saw something like that when I was very young, eight years old. We had an outhouse then—you had to leave the house to use it. And once in the middle of the night I had to go use it, I had a stomach flu. I took the flashlight and went outside. I remember I had stomach pain and I thought I was moaning. Then I realized the moaning wasn’t from me, it was someone else. So I shut the flashlight instinctively and quietly I crept out, and behind the outhouse I saw a gang rape in progress. It was horrible. I will never forget it, ever. I was afraid of being caught, I was afraid that if I ran back to the house to tell someone, they would hear me. So I hid behind a fence where I could hear everything but I couldn’t see, instead of trying to save that person. I never told anyone. You’re the first person I’m telling.”

“How awful!” I said. “You must have felt so helpless, and guilty about feeling helpless. Like my brother, but worse, because you were there. But what could you have done? You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“I should have woken up my father and told him,”
he wrote, shaking his head.

“It was too late by then, anyway. And they might have heard you running. You have to trust the instincts that made you act as you did, Khalid. They protected you from harm.”

“That’s cowardice.”

“Not for an eight-year-old who sees something like that.”

“I was not the same person after that. I felt for years that I had a secret, and that no one knew what I was really like, the weak side of me.”

“It’s different for me—maybe because everyone knew, and felt bad for me. People think I was affected by what happened, but I wasn’t,” I said. It’s like having a cold and then getting over it. Nothing’s changed. I’m exactly the same.”

Khalid shook his head. “It’s impossible,” he said. Then he wrote it.
“It’s impossible. Everything changes us, everything. And especially something like that. I’ll tell you something else. I’m not sure it was a woman they had, it may have been a boy. All that happens to us stays with us.”

I sighed. I’d heard it all before—trauma, defense reaction, avoidance mechanism—but those things didn’t apply to me. You could control your responses to events, you could decide how to react. As far as I was concerned, the entire episode had been relegated to the realm of nonexistence; it had dissolved and vanished. Expressions of melancholy or pity annoyed me. I wanted my experience to remain flat and inert; pity inflated it.

Khalid wrote,
“If you were so not affected, you’d be able to talk about it, you’d be able to testify and to tell me, too. I wasn’t able to tell any person because I was deeply affected, and I knew if I talked I would feel it all again, go through the feelings again. I can’t control that.”

“But it’s not interesting, it’s not important. To repeat a story is to save it and honor it and keep it alive, give it relevance. Words give things life and some things don’t deserve to live. Those two don’t exist for me and that’s my victory over them. I don’t hate them because they’re not worth it. They didn’t even succeed in humiliating me. The only thing I’m sorry about is that they made my family suffer. I didn’t want anyone to find out for that reason, but by the time I got to the hospital it was too late. If they had any victory, that was it.”

Khalid wrote,
“It’s not a question of victory. You say that by not remembering you’re canceling them, but don’t you see, you’re canceling yourself. You were important for that story, just as I was important, hiding there behind the fence and vomiting.”

“It’s funny that you say that.… You know, when the janitor found me, that’s what happened to him, too—he was sick. It must be atavistic, some inherited instinct, that reaction to violence.”

“You are being so rational and distant, Sonya. I wouldn’t want to be so distant from my own experience, no matter how bad. My mother in such pain and suffering, my helplessness watching her, my father leaving, Debbie breaking it off, a cousin tortured in prison, what my people are going through, it’s all part of me.”

“Yes, it’s true, these things become part of us. Even your stories are already becoming part of me. You know, at the time, while it was happening, I was thinking about a photo I once saw. It’s a famous photograph, I think, these resistance fighters caught by the Nazis and about to be shot—someone had a camera. And you see this young woman’s face, held up high, facing death, refusing to be afraid, have you ever seen it?”

He shook his head. His eyes seemed darker.

“And I thought, I’m going to die but my death is useless, unlike hers. And I felt sorry for myself and begged, though I’d sworn to myself at first that I wouldn’t. Then suddenly they were gone, because one of them was afraid of actual murder, and he made the one who nearly killed me stop. I thought, They’re gone and I’m alive. I waited for someone to find me. In the end it’s nothing but chance. The drugs, the window, the kitten. They never found that kitten, though I asked everyone to keep an eye out for her. She was a tiny gray ball of fur, with a tiny little tongue licking my hand.”

My eyes filled with tears, thinking about the kitten. Khalid was sad, too, but in the lines of his mouth I saw the edges of anger. I looked into his eyes and I understood that even if he loved me and wanted me, there were parts of him I would never know, could never know. I longed to transform the moment into something else, something immutable and blessed, but I didn’t know how. Humans were clumsy creatures. Clumsily, we consoled each other as best we could.

N
OAH’S DIARY
, J
ANUARY
10, 1989.

In the news: man, we are in the mire.

D
ear Mom,

What would you say if you saw me now? You’d say, “Well, Noah, at least you’ve kept your own hands clean, even if you’re part of the criminal military machine.” You’d say, “Noah, you’re a stupid fool, trying to punish me by signing up. I’m dead, you can’t punish dead people.” You’d say, “I didn’t want to die. It’s true I didn’t hire a bodyguard, but who in this country doesn’t get death threats once they decide to fight the system?” You’d say, “Serves you right, the hard times you’ve had in the army.”

Actually, Mom, it hasn’t been so bad. It could have been a lot worse. The army isn’t evil, Mom. Training isn’t evil. It’s just stupid. All these kids come full of eagerness and love for their country and a desire to serve and give everything they have, and before long they’re nothing but deflated, bored, disgusted people in uniform, torn between wanting to do the right thing and saving their arse. The only exceptions are the good boys who will never stop trying to please whoever it is they think will one day approve of them, and the total jerks, who fall in love with it all and can’t wait for more because they’ve waited all their lives to bully people. Is that the idea, to separate the good boys and the jerks from the rest of us? So that they can run the army while the rest of us drudge along after them? No, it’s not that logical. Anyone looking for logic in the army will be disappointed.

That’s why you turn yourself off—so you won’t be bothered by the absence of logic, and you figure later you’ll turn yourself back on, but it turns out not to be so easy. A sort of emotional fatigue takes over, because a person gets tired of caring, just tired, that’s what it is. But now I wonder whether it stays with you forever, that tiredness—maybe you think it’s going to be temporary but then you realize it’s who you are now. I don’t know, I guess I’ll have to wait and find out. The real problem isn’t the army, Mom. The army is just a neutral thing. The real problem is that all we do in this country is fight and die and fight some more. And along the way we’re becoming brutes. The things that are going on in the intifada … if you were alive, Mom, you’d have a nervous breakdown. A million lawyers wouldn’t be enough for all the cases coming up now. I just try to block it all out. You can’t survive otherwise.

Mom, I’m sorry I took your chocolate crêpe and gave you the cheese, I know you were just giving me yours to be nice. I’m sorry I never told you what I thought about what you were doing. Most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t defend you to my friends and their parents. I’d defend you now, but since you died no one’s said anything against you, at least not to me. I wish they would, but they just get embarrassed if I bring the subject up.

You should have agreed to that trip, even though I’m not sure it was such a great idea. Can you imagine the four of us in a hotel in Venice? Dad would be planning our day second by second, you’d fight with him because you’d want to wander aimlessly down the streets, Sonya would want to spend about six hours staring at one fresco, and I’d just want to sit in a café and soak up the sun and maybe strike up a conversation with someone interesting.

Still, Dad wanted it a lot and you should have made the effort.

I’m forgetting what you looked like, it’s weird. Sometimes I had the feeling you didn’t like Sonya, that you resented the way she came into our family. You once told Dad she was spoiled, I overheard you. But you were always so careful to hide what you felt, you were so careful with what you said. You were like Dad that way, but for different reasons. He’s careful because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and he wants what he says to be the right thing. You were just secretive, Mom. Did you become secretive because you were a lawyer, or did you choose to become a lawyer because you were secretive? Is that why you worked alone, because you didn’t trust anyone? If you hadn’t worked alone, maybe you’d be alive now. I remember once you had a fit of laughter, I don’t even remember why. You laughed so hard your jaws hurt and you were clutching your stomach.

That’s all I have to say. I miss you and I’m also sorry you had to miss out on the rest of your life. I think you’d want me to get justice done and find your killer, but Dad refuses to tell me what he knows. I begged and begged but you know how stubborn he is. He says you wouldn’t want me to get involved. I think he’s wrong but we can’t ask you, can we? I’m still a bit mad at you, Mom.

L
ETTER TO
A
NDREI
, J
ULY
1, 1957

D
arling, I am now more worried than I have been in a very long time, for it’s been three months without a word! I’ve made many friends here, because you know everyone is friendly. Even when you go on the bus, within seconds perfect strangers strike up conversations with one another, revealing their life stories or complaining about a hundred things. I cannot imagine a more plaintive people! Complaining is a national sport. So different from what I’m used to, and I must say it’s very amusing.

But even though I meet so many people all the time, no one truly understands me, and only you are in my heart. Sometimes I laugh and everyone thinks I’m happy. They don’t know that my heart is breaking. When I sing, though, at the café, all my longing comes out and it infects the entire room. Oh, our Russian songs are so sentimental!

Our play is now in repertory. We take a month off, then go on for a month, and so on. It’s not always uniform. It depends on so many things, too silly and complicated to get into. There is always squabbling in the arts. I suppose there is squabbling everywhere. Rivalry, jealousy, gossip, petty resentments. Feingold now has several enemies, for he is not always diplomatic. I stay away from it all.

My greatest joy is our Kostya. He is so responsible and kind-hearted. I think I forgot to tell you in my last letter: he won three top prizes at school. In this small country, where there is such a need for people to fill all sorts of roles, he could do anything he wanted with his life. He could go into politics or law or medicine or the humanities—every day he reminds me more of you. No matter what happens, I will always have you with me, in this way. That is the great gift you and fate gave me. My love. I am filled with dread. Where are you, my Andrusha?