Friendly Fire (14 page)

The various transmitters of this trait, continues the Ugandan archaeologist in his superb English, were not aware of what they passed along of themselves, nor what this transmission would lead to. They remained bound and loyal to their own kind, to their existence as apes of various species, most of which became extinct over time. But what they handed down continued under its own power, to develop or alter from transmission to transmission, now getting stronger and now weaker, sometimes clear and sometimes blurred—until through countless transmissions there gradually arose our primal direct ancestor, the first
Homo sapiens,
who was human in every regard.

And this development from the chimpanzee was not a highway but rather a road that branched into many byways, and there were relatives who strayed or were expelled from the main road and got stuck in dead-end streets. For example, three and a half million years ago, our family members known as the robust australopithecines, who included
Australopithecus boisei,
which was discovered right here in East Africa, were cut off from human evolution. They were, to put it bluntly, eating machines, or as they are more fondly known, nut-crackers. A million years ago they became extinct owing to their small and limited brains, which inhibited their culinary flexibility.

"Eating machines?" Yirmiyahu loves the expression.

"Yes, they had faces the size of dinner plates and huge jawbones, but they were vegetarians nonetheless."

Here the team leader interrupts the flow of his colleague's lecture before it strays farther still from the main path. The food is growing cold, and this communal meal must be concluded honorably. Later on we will be able to show our guest some of the fossils we have found.

The food suits the Israeli woman's palate, and she heaps warm praise upon the chefs and does not decline a second helping.

And at the meal's end, after the remains have been cleared away, the truths unearthed in this remote volcanic canyon can finally be made tangible for the visitor. On the table are arrayed not sweets but a dessert of highly significant fossils: A fragment of a huge lower jawbone, with two big teeth still planted in it. Two great eye sockets in a section of skull. A twisted hipbone from which a world of knowledge might be derived.

Now the Ugandan is joined by the Kenyan and Ghanian, who assist him in explaining the dramatic importance of the bones. Daniela senses, with pleasure, not only their desire to share this chance to show off their accomplishments to a stranger willing to express interest for an hour or so but also their hunger for mature, womanly,
motherly protection. She therefore takes pains not to miss a single word and to encourage the speakers with nods of agreement. And even as millions of years of anthropology are jumbled between the jaws of an eating machine, with the empty eyes of a prehistoric ape looking on in wide amazement, she steals a glance at her brother-in-law to see if he is working as hard as she is to follow the explanations. But the newly exposed skull of the old man is facing the fire, his eyes fixed on the flame, and his illuminated face wears an expression of sorrow.

Again the Tanzanian team leader is compelled to exert his authority. That's enough for now, he tells his friends. If we want our guest to remember anything, let us not burden her with too many dates and fossils. Although she is here for only a short visit, perhaps we will be fortunate enough to see her again. Daniela can sense the disappointment of the speakers, whose opportunity to impress a woman has been cut short, and therefore, before departing, she turns to them with a challenging question, but one surely in keeping with the spirit of the times: Here you are a purely African group, a team of black men, and this is an honorable scientific accomplishment; but why have you not thought to include a woman?

"We do have a woman among us," they protest, "an Arab paleontologist. Please, come and meet her."

They lead her to the infirmary tent, where Sijjin Kuang sits beside a cot on which lies a light-skinned young woman with delicate features. She is introduced as Zohara al-Ukbi, a North African Arab, and she smiles through her pain at the unexpected visitor, extending to her a fevered hand.

T
HE OFFICE IS
dark and locked, and when he enters, only the rich scent of tobacco lingers in the empty hall. He turns on all the lights and discovers that none of the employees has thought to return to work after lunch. This is something new, grouses Ya'ari to himself, upgrading dubious ancient history into a holy vacation. But it was he who decided to do away with the time clock and rely on the individual consciences of his employees, and he remains quite certain that the work will not suffer. Therefore, he's not going to stick around either. He checks his e-mail and finds no new signs of life from either his wife or his son. But tomorrow, according to plan, Yirmiyahu will take Daniela to Dar es Salaam, and there will finally be a real conversation.

The office is located one flight up in a quiet residential building, in the heart of Tel Aviv. Outside the streetlights are on, and the lovely windless evening carries the bright chatter of passersby in through the window. Hanukkah is a holiday beloved by all. If Daniela were here, they'd go see a movie at one of the shopping malls or would be invited to the homes of friends. For a moment he considers calling his father, but decides he should limit his presence over there. Best not to encourage the Filipinos to depend on him too much.

If his son were by his side, it would be easier to bear the absence of his wife. He turns off all the office lights, and as he is about to lock the door the cell phone suddenly sounds its melody, and he pounces on it in the darkness without first identifying the caller. No, it's not the soldier confined to his base. It's the old lady in Jerusalem, Dr. Bennett, whose voice quivers at him in the darkness. Finally she has caught him and will not let him go until he reveals how she can reach the original Mr. Ya'ari who installed the elevator in her home and promised her a guarantee for a lifetime—the elevator's and hers.

Yes, she knows that his father has long since retired from the business, and that he is unwell, but she considers herself a special case. An old friend, for whom, she is certain, the real Ya'ari will rise from his sickbed and come to her with all that is required, with spare parts and technicians.

"No," Ya'ari patiently explains, "we are a design firm and not a service center, we have no parts and no technicians, we only sit in front of computers and think. Have you heard perhaps of the Yellow Pages? There you will find the help you need."

She is familiar with the Yellow Pages and also how to use them. But his father made her swear to call only him should anything go wrong. For this is an internal elevator, personal, his own original invention, and only he knows how to maintain it.

"And when was the last malfunction?"

Not for many years has there been any serious problem. That's because the elevator always received regular care and maintenance. Whenever his father was in Jerusalem, he would come over and tend it.

"Strange, he never told me about either you or your elevator."

Perhaps there were other things he never told him.

"Could be," Ya'ari softens, "but my father, Mrs. Bennett, for all his good intentions, can no longer come and see you. He is ill now. He has Parkinson's."

So what?

"What do you mean, so what? His hands and legs are shaking and he can't repair anything."

So he should at least come and give a diagnosis. She has good friends who also have Parkinson's, but their minds still work.

"Yes, his mind still works, but not for your elevator."

Now the woman from Jerusalem stands up to this man who is behaving so unfairly. Why does he speak for his father and not allow his father to decide for himself? How dare he infantilize his father to her—she remembers him, Amotz Ya'ari, as a child.

"Me? As a child?"

Yes, at her own house, in 1954, not so long after the State was established, when they installed the elevator. His father brought him along, to show his son to her. She thinks he was seven then.

"Eight."

And she gave him a whole ice cream. Maybe that will help him remember.

"A whole ice cream? I don't remember, but I believe you," Ya'ari says, laughing and surrenders. "If I got a whole ice cream from you at the age of eight, then tell me, what exactly do you want from me now? I don't think I'll be able to fix the malfunction."

But she has already told him what she wants. She needs his father's telephone number. There are several Yoel Ya'aris in the Tel Aviv–Jaffa phone book, and she is an old lady who cannot begin calling them all.

"But I warn you that speaking is not easy for my father either, so please make it brief."

Of course, very brief. She belongs to a generation that prizes actions and not words.

I
T IS THE
Land Rover that leads the small supply convoy home. Sijjin Kuang tracks their way across the desert plain, the two pickup trucks following closely. Now that the food containers are empty, the off-duty cooks, no longer on guard, can curl up contentedly, but the aroma of food still clings to them, and gleaming eyes still follow the convoy in the darkness.

In the front seat, Yirmiyahu's head bobs as if freed from the will of its owner, and sinks on its own as he falls asleep. But in the backseat his sister-in-law is wide awake.

"How can you manage to navigate in this darkness?" she asks the silent driver.

"From the bends in the road, but the stars also help."

And Daniela lifts her eyes and sees skies such as she has never known anywhere. There are stars she has never seen and will likely not see again. This pure emerald glow, when has she ever experienced it before? When has she ever contemplated nature alone? Even in the distant past, in the summer camps of her youth movement or during
military service, her contact with nature was accompanied by human chatter. And after that Amotz was with her. She married him at a very young age; she had barely finished her army service. He trapped her with his love and quickly furnished her with a comfortable nest.

The young black scientists here have moved her. Not for some time has she felt so needed, desirable in this way. Maybe it's the dearth of women, along with her foreignness and the whiteness of her skin, that drew them to a woman more than twenty years older than they.

Despite the twists in the road engraved in her memory, and despite the helpful stars, the Sudanese woman is not always sure of her way across the monotonous plain. Now she stops and waits for the other two drivers to stop also and get out of their trucks to consult with her about the right direction. The three speak quietly, in tones of mutual respect. One of the men bends to sniff the ground, and his friend stretches out his arm and points to the sky. Yirmiyahu straightens up and yawns, glances indifferently at the drivers' conference, in which he takes no part, and says to his sister-in-law that it is always in this exact spot that they deliberate about the remainder of the drive.

And the guest sits behind this standoffish man thinking that she has not yet come anywhere near the ultimate purpose of her trip. On the contrary, in the two days since she set out on her journey, she has only grown more serene. Tomorrow, in Dar es Salaam, she will hear the live voice of her husband, and she expects no special news from him. She trusts him to watch over the family.

Yirmiyahu looks behind him and yawns again, apologizing. Yes, sometimes they exhaust him with their stones and monkey bones, but all in all these blacks are very gentle people.

"Just a minute, tell me, so I won't be confused ... they don't get insulted when you call them blacks?"

"Why should they be insulted? They know that beyond the first millimeter of black skin they're exactly the same as us. The whole difference is that we're
muzungu,
and they're not."

"What?"

"We are
muzungu,
white people. Not actually white but peeled. Our black skin has been peeled from us."

"Peeled? This is the difference?"

"So I hear."

A bicycle rider who suddenly emerges from the darkness settles once and for all the quiet debate among the drivers, and the caravan makes a full U-turn and follows him until the moon bursts into view beyond the hills and illuminates the wilderness.

Yirmiyahu goes back to sleep. The air is cold, and Daniela zips up her sister's windbreaker. She hugs herself with both arms, and her thoughts wander to Tel Aviv. Did Amotz go tonight to light candles with the grandchildren again, or did he manage to cajole Nofar to come home? Now here again are the stream and the huts; the caravan picks up speed. The elephant shed is surrounded by torches and a sizeable crowd. Daniela has an urge to go back and look again, alone, at the miracle of the giant eye. She taps Sijjin Kuang on the shoulder and asks her to stop for a few minutes.

Unescorted and fearless she hurriedly makes her way through the African crowd. When she reaches the entrance to the shed, the elephant's owner has already recognized the white woman and sees the return visit as a sign of respect for the elephant and for himself. He therefore does not ask for an admission fee, but she takes a few dollars from her purse and sets them on his table.

And at this late evening hour, she sees the same sad wisdom revealed in that enormous eye. Daniela asks herself if this genetic defect will remain an oddity and eventually be lost, or if perhaps by some pathway not at all understood something of it will be transmitted into a new human evolution.

A
S HE OPENS
the door Ya'ari hears water running in the shower. If so, Nofar is already home, he thinks, and that pleases him, though he is nervous about meeting her new friend.

Yes, the friend is here. Not a lover or a boyfriend, just a friend, who nonetheless is not sitting and politely waiting but rather taking the liberty of sauntering around the living room as if he belonged there. This time, a new twist, it's not someone young like her, but rather older. His cheeks are unshaven and his temples are flecked with gray. A man who has met the request of a young friend to come with her, just as a friend, to light candles at the home of her father, who has been left alone on the Hanukkah holiday.