The Wanting (28 page)

She pushed me away and spit. “You want to dishonor me? In my own house? In the house of your brother? In the house my father made for me?”

She jabbed me with her sharp, hard fingers. “Who are you, you little pig, to speak to me at all? Look! Allah be praised! It’s still there! Go sell it to Grandmother Fatma! She’ll eat it up! Yum, yum, yum, yum!”

She jabbed me again, even harder.

I tumbled backward, slipping on the concrete floor.

She howled with delight. Ha ha ha ha ha!

She couldn’t stop. She laughed louder and louder.

“I’m telling!” I cried.

“What?”

“I’m telling.”

“Telling what, for God’s sake?”

She narrowed her eyes, but there was no understanding in them. I myself did not quite know what was coming into my mind.

“I’m telling Fadi you kissed me. He has the right to know.”

“Liar! No one kissed you. Who would kiss that mouth? Not me in a million years.”

“I’m telling Fadi! You’ll be punished! You know what happens to whores!”

I stood up, brushed the dust and bits of bread crumbs off my arms, ran my hand down my pant leg to smooth it out, tucked in my shirt, wiped something—her spit, I think—from my eye.

“Are you crazy?” she shouted, but I placed my right forefinger on the lower eyelid of my right eye, to say to her, You see? I’ve taken a solemn oath. It is upon my own head that I must do this.

“Are you crazy?” she shouted once more, but I was already out the door and into the yard and through the archway and into the alley and out onto the street.

Before I knew it, I was on Palestine Street. The rain had stopped, and the sun was trying to shine again. Have you seen Fadi? I asked. No, answered Ismail Sahlah, go look for him at Bouran’s. I went down to Bouran’s, and a couple of guys were there, drinking coffee and eating baklava, and Souri Hafez said, I think he’s with his guys, try over at the cultural center, so I ran over to the cultural center, but Walid hadn’t seen him all day. Maybe check the football field, they play rain or shine, he reminded me, and if no one’s there, you know, everybody has gone into Jabal, I’m just staying here because Kouri would fire me if I left, not that he ever comes around until after dinner. I swung by the football field, it was a graveyard of broken nets and December mud, and, just in case, I went by the basketball court, and then the market, which was finished anyway, and the place where they usually stood around and smoked all day, and finally I gave up and headed toward Jabal. In Jabal, of course, you could get anything, because there were millions of people all crowded in there, but every big place is also just many small places put together, and it didn’t take anything to find Fadi’s pal Awad, who looked strangely perturbed when I asked him, but he waved me on, just down there, down there, he told me, straight, straight, and I followed the line of his finger, still running, not even out of breath, and a few blocks later I reached the corner he had mentioned, Hebron Street. Now, all the buildings in this
part of Jabal were very big, six, eight, ten stories, and people were running back and forth all over the place, even more than usual, and even louder than usual. Sirens, cars, yelling. Honestly, I didn’t want to be there. But in that moment of my life (they say Allah, Great and Loving, forgives everything, if only you submit!), finding Fadi was the entire purpose of my soul.

Several boys, flush-faced, rounded the corner and almost knocked me off my feet as if I were invisible. Crying to one another in excited voices, they gathered themselves into a circle, spewed out a barrage of fabulous obscenities, patted one another on the back, bent down, hands on knees, caught their breaths, and whispered commands to one another. Obviously, a football game was going on, but who had time for this? Fadi was just around that very corner. I wouldn’t even wait for a break in the game; I’d just call him out and tell him about Nadirah. I imagined how Fadi would wave me off—Why are you bothering me? I’m playing! But I would insist and call him out again, and again if need be, until finally he would have to declare time out and trot over to me, irritated but also concerned—What happened? Did something happen? Nadirah? My father, my mother? My sister, Hafaz? I would force myself to speak. My voice, my eyes, my entire face overwhelmed with sadness, outrage, shock, empathy (for him!), grief, anger, compassion (for her!)—but even as I saw this playing out in my mind, instead of leaping onto Hebron Street, I found myself warily peering around the building’s edge.

O Allah! Most Merciful! I am dead, what good can these visitations do?

There was no football. Instead, I saw a squadron of soldiers at the end of the block and, opposite them, a gang of shouting boys had formed a rough line, one, two, or three deep, not a line even, just an undulation of boys lurching forward a few steps, then falling tentatively back, then rushing forward again and letting go slings filled with stones or tossing bottles or pieces of rubber, whole sides of corrugated aluminum, a tire iron; whatever they could throw, they threw. The Jewish soldiers hid like babies behind their jeeps and armored cars and shot in the air, and everyone ran
into some doorway or around some corner. But when they saw none of their comrades had fallen, the boys emerged from their holes, reloaded their slings, and surged forward again. I saw some kid running with nothing more than a cardboard box that landed at his feet when he finally unleashed it. Fires dotted the avenue where boys had doused tires with kerosene, while others were busy building barricades of junk, shouting, “Victory! Victory! Victory over Israel and America!” and “Remember Karameh! Revolution! Revolution until victory!” Music was blaring from portable players,
In Sabra a wound is bleeding! In Shattilla the rose is plucked! You will never live in my land! You will never fly in my sky!
and the announcer cried out, “Come, my brothers and sisters! To Hebron Street! To Amman Square! The revolution has begun!”

Through all the smoke and madness I could barely see, but one boy screamed, “Damn you bastard sons of whores! Lick my dick! A thousand dicks in your mother’s cunt!”

“Fadi! Fadi!” I called to him. “Fadi!”

The soldiers fired in the air once again. I grabbed my ears, fell to my knees. But the boys laughed from their hiding places. Now they flowed once more from the doorways and alleys, their pockets heavy with stones and bottles. Yowling like young jackals, one by one they cast their missiles, shook their fists, shouted their slogans. Fadi—his black shirt, his black pants, his black shoes, his black headband, his face black with soot, flung his stones and howled with glee. A soldier fell! The other boys yelped in joy, ran up, flung more bottles; the soldiers buried their heads in their arms—another down! Screams of happiness!

“Fadi! Fadi!” I rose to my feet. “Fadi! Over here! Fadi!”

And now, pressing a stone into his sling, he turned.

He narrowed, studied, blinked, and then a smile of sunlight burst through the soot of his face—“Amir!”

Smiling, he dropped to one knee and then to the ground.

All the boys scattered again. But Fadi remained on the pavement, his legs crushed beneath him, his eyes facing Heaven, and his fingers tangled up in his sling. Only then did I hear the shots ring out.

•    •    •

Now the guns have gone quiet. The boys no longer rush forward. I have moved a little from my corner, not much, just a little, inching toward my beloved Fadi as if his open eyes are two great magnets. Unconsciously, unwittingly, I reach out my hand and, driven by the deep confusion in my heart, shove my head forward. Now I am standing on Hebron Street, looking down at Fadi. It is just Fadi and I, the burning tires, the overturned Opel; and at the end of the block, an Israeli soldier also stands and focuses the wrath of his rifle upon me. I look at him, this Jewish soldier, not in hate or anger, but in bewilderment, in wonder, in awe, and at the gun he has pointed at me. I look at him, and I see he is looking at me, also without anger, and with the same bewilderment, wonder, and awe. Yet in his eyes I see something else that I myself am not feeling, and that is hopelessness. He lowers his gun and waits for me to retreat behind the corner wall. Fadi is still breathing, but I know that this is my only chance, and the soldier has given it to me for a purpose neither of us can quite fathom, and so I do retreat, cover my eyes, and begin to weep.

And in this new silence, I hear a cry. I turn. It is Nadirah. Falling to her knees, she tears her precious blue jeans and curses the land to which she was born.

“Y
OU WILL THINK IT STRANGE
,” A
BDUL-LATIF SAID
to me, “that we take care of a Jew.”

“Yes.”

“Lie still. Drink water. In the old days, I had Jewish customers.”

“Yes.”

“Someone you know was kind to remember me. Please, lie still.”

I tried to tell him it was insane of me to come here, but all that came out was a kind of whimper.

“The boys in the town, they are angry. The intifada is over, nothing is accomplished, except that Arafat has returned, but what did he have to do with it? It was all the boys. And now … now … well. So you see, you are not welcome here anymore. Not like in the old days.” He seemed to look around the room for something but couldn’t find it. “The girls will bring you some food. It’s not much. They don’t know how to cook. My wife. She’s not here.”

“Where?”

“This is not even my house. My house no longer exists. She lives with my cousin and his son’s widow. I rented this. She can go wherever she wants, but not the children. Two of them are gone anyway, and two are still unwed. They stay with the father.”

“Four daughters?” I recalled he had only three.

“Yes. Why do you seem surprised?” He held the water in front of me, then put it down. “What happened to our house? Bulldozed.”

I moaned.

“Yes. Is this not the most ironic? I care for you, and they bulldoze my house.”

I tried not to look at him. It seemed to me his thin, hawkish face was on the verge of cracking open.

“My child is a martyr, all praise to Allah and his servant,
salla allahu ’alaihi wa sallam
. Only six weeks ago. Look how you shake. Must I pour water down your throat?” He shrugged and placed his hands on his chest and turned the palms toward me. “It had nothing to do with me. I knew nothing about it. I’m not sure about his mother. If she knew, she kept it to herself. To protect him.” At this, he laughed quite bitterly.

“I’m so sorry,” I tried to say. “I’m so sorry for you.” But I doubt I actually said it.

“I don’t believe in any of this shit,” he went on. “But look what they’ve done to me anyway. Why do they destroy my house?”

I didn’t know, really.

“You, you come here from where? I don’t think you’re a sabra. Somewhere far away. Russia, probably. South Africa. Who knows? Did they blow up your house? Did we?”

I shook my head.

“But mine they blow up.” He took a deep breath, I think to try to calm himself. “And my wife? She’s gone completely crazy, that’s all. She is taken care of by the Fatah bullies, and she is now herself one of them. Probably I shall be, too.” He stopped his ranting and studied me carefully. “It looks like they did blow you up, anyway. Oh wait, no, a traffic accident, right? A bus, yes?”

I nodded.

“A bus also killed my son.”

We sat there together for some minutes. His thin arms hung by his sides like broken wings.

“You have not asked his name,” he said. “Why is that? Don’t you want to know his name? His name was Ami. That’s what we called him when he was a baby. Ami. Later he took other names. I myself hadn’t called him Ami since he was three or four. Since he was three or four we did not really speak as father and son anyway.
Not since he was six, probably. He hated me for what I am. He wanted something, I don’t know what.”

Perhaps he got what he wanted, I thought.

But maybe I said it aloud, because Abdul-Latif shrugged, sighed, coughed, brought up phlegm, spit into a little jar that he carried with him, and said, “If that is what he wanted, then praise be to God. Do you have a son, Mr. Guttman?”

I shook my head.

“But a daughter.”

I nodded.

“And do you speak to your daughter?” He did not wait for me to answer him. “Then speak to her, Mr. Guttman. Excuse me, I don’t mean to lecture, but my heart is broken, my heart is broken. Ah, here is your meal. Marya, do not be afraid, bring it here.”

Marya was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, pretty enough beneath her headscarf. Her fingernails were painted pink, and I thought of Anyusha and all the crazy colors she liked to paint her nails when I let her. Thank God I would never have to worry about Anyusha the way he had to worry about Amir or his girls. I would only have to worry that one of
them
might do her harm. Marya did not like me; I could see that. If her father were not there, she would have stabbed me with her own hands or perhaps just called her brother’s comrades, and they could do the job. She handed me a small tray upon which was a little lamb stew and yogurt.

“Is it all right, the meat with milk?” asked Abdul-Latif. “Very well,” he said. “We shall leave you.”