The Wanting (33 page)

Oh my father! If I could sit with you in the kitchen where you now are preparing your own tea as if the girls did not know how. You never let anyone do it, except for Mother. You never let me do even the smallest thing for your comfort.

They told me there is a wall between Heaven and earth, but you can break that wall. They told me that each of us is already written for Hell or Heaven, but you can break that destiny. All you need is a single act of martyrdom—a single, final, perfect act of martyrdom. Become a shahid and you will ascend! Shatter the wall between earth and Heaven! Write your name for Eternal Paradise! And yet I cannot break even the air between my father and myself, between my sisters and me. I yearn to speak to you, with a greater yearning than I have for Paradise, with so great a yearning that even the dead whom I have killed feel my anguish.

Look up! Look up! Let me see your face!

Oh, the lies they tell you to blow yourself to pieces! But they needn’t have lied. I would have done it anyway. I would have avenged Nadirah for less than a shekel. They said my mother, my father, my sisters, shall live in glory and my house will be a shrine for all Palestine and my name will be a beacon for all the youth of Palestine and the others that follow me shall speak my name in their final breaths. But my house no longer exists, and my father sits in his poverty like an old man who has forgotten how to wash himself. Outside, the crowd grows restless, and I can hear their whispers turn to shouts. Yet he sits there, like a willow flowing with the wind, unmoved. I swear I would have done it anyway, left my family to their poverty, allowed my name to disappear like the scent of apples carried off by the wind, been as nothing to no one, but when I see him sway like a broken twig in the cruel breeze of his sorrow, I regret. I do regret.

Father look up!

Dear You,

I don’t know what happened to me, but I realized I had to call Babushka, I mean I HAD to. And there is no phone where we are in this basement, and no one had a cell phone—only people like Pop have cell phones, and his hardly works anywhere anyway. He’s always complaining about it. But anyway, I suddenly had to call my grandmother because I had been thinking about Pop, and then I was thinking about the house, and then I was thinking about what I did in the house, and then I was thinking about—yes—my stupid mother. Why am I thinking about her? I NEVER think about her. But here I am thinking, thinking, thinking.

So I said to Shlomo, I have to use the telephone.

“There is no telephone,” he said.

“Then I have to go out and find one, because I have to call my grandmother. It’s critical.”

“Why didn’t you think of this before?” he said.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t.”

“We’re all supposed to stay in one place,” he said. “So no. And what’s so important anyway?”

“That’s my business,” I said.

“There’s something wrong with you,” he said.

I am beginning to dislike this guy, Shlomo. His shirt is always messed up. He’s fat. His side curls are greasy. When he gets close you can see he has pimples under his beard. Just looking at him makes me furious. So I pushed my nose up to his and said, On my dick,
habibi
! It sort of just popped out. And then I said, because
I don’t think he even knows what on my dick means, Yell all you want—I have to call Babushka! He turned completely red. All right, he said, what if I get her on the phone?

“What do you mean you?”

“I mean, give me the number, and I’ll call her for you.”

I said, “Why?”

And he said, “Why do you all the sudden need the telephone?”

And then it dawned on me. He thought I was going to tell on them.

So I said, “Where is Miriam?”

“I don’t know where Miriam is. What difference does it make? Just sit there like a good girl and be quiet.”

“I need Miriam,” I said.

“Miriam isn’t even in Jerusalem. It would take hours to get her here. We don’t have hours. You have to get ready now. What do you think she is, the Messiah? She can’t snap her fingers and be here.”

“I’m sorry, Shlomo,” I told him, “but no. She has to come.”

And then he just threw up his hands and stormed off.

I’m writing all this down instead of telling you my deepest thoughts, and I know that I should be writing my deepest thoughts, but I feel I must tell everything that happened, because everybody thinks that if you write down the deepest meaning of things you understand something, but I think the meaning of things is in the things themselves, not in what we say about them. Every little detail is itself a whole universe—otherwise, why would everything speak to me? Facts are not things. They are more like animals. They breathe. They get annoyed. They laugh. For instance, the fact that I am writing in my notebook and more or less hiding what I’m doing from Shlomo, this action is a giggle, but also a salty tear rolling down the cheek of my notebook, because while it is funny, it is also sad. Have you heard of Wittgenstein? “The world is composed of all there is.” That’s Wittgenstein. He means the world is composed of facts, but not like the facts in the news—
Oh, Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon today!
No. That is a statement, not a fact. A fact actually
tells
you something: what
did the road feel when the tanks rolled over it, and what did the tank feel when it finally had to do what it was made to do but maybe thought it could get away with not doing, and when the bombs started falling, where did the birds actually go? And let’s take the soldier. Fact, Private Roni Horowitz shot and killed two Hezbollah terrorists. Well, aren’t you curious how his eyeballs felt when they got sight of these Hezbollah guys who one minute were shooting at him and the next were lying in a pool of their own blood? I admit these are extreme examples, but don’t you think everything is extreme? I mean, what’s the point of anything if it’s not extreme? Look at me. I certainly am.

Here is a picture of the most important event in my life to date, minus the event of my birth.

So anyway, after Shlomo storms off, this other guy, Menachem, but everyone calls him Mutti, comes over, rubs Shlomo’s shoulders, and says to him, Let’s go for a smoke. Shlomo doesn’t smoke, but that’s OK, out they go, but when they opened the door and the scent of magnolia and jasmine came rushing in, I suddenly said to Yohanan, Should we go home?

“Why?” he asked. “Do you want to go home?”

“I don’t know.”

“Either you want to go home or not. Do you want to go home?” I thought about it. Then I said, “No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Totally sure?”

I looked up at him. “Why, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, so am I, so shut up.”

This is how we talk to each other.

Anyway, then Yohanan went back to his book, mumbling to himself as usual. But a minute later he looks up at me. What’s the big deal with Miriam anyway? I don’t know, I told him, just. He crossed his eyes as if to say,
Women!

And can I tell you the truth? I liked that very much. I did. My toes got itchy. I thought of asking him to scratch them, but I knew it would freak him out. He’s very proper, naturally, but I just can’t be. Why he likes me, I just don’t know.

By the way, Miriam doesn’t care how I dress. She says,
This is not the modesty I care about
, quoting Jeremiah. I repeated this to Yohanan just today. “It’s Isaiah,” he said.

One time Miriam told me something else from Isaiah. She was sitting very close to me, so I could smell the flowers that always seem to come off her skin, and also cardamom and sweet paprika. She closed her eyes and sang,
When you call, the Lord will answer. When you cry he will say, Here I am
. Then Miriam opened her
eyes and looked directly into mine. Her eyes are bright blue, like jewelry.
Here I am
, she repeated.
Here I am
. You see, Anna? It’s like picking up the phone, you dial and he answers. He answered you? I asked her. She smiled. Of course, silly, she said, and he will answer you, too.

That’s the trouble. As far as I’m concerned, nobody’s home. But at least I have the right number now. I know this because of everything that happened so far today, and especially with the way it got so quiet, and the way I can finally hear just the one thing that is in front of me. If you let in all the voices of all the world, how can you hear the one single voice of truth?

And then guess what? In comes Shlomo who announces, Here’s a telephone, satisfied? He had a cell phone the whole time! What an asshole. In Russian, Shlomo is Solomon, and in both languages, he is the wisest man who ever lived. Just goes to show you how unimportant names are.

“And what about Miriam?” I said.

“Just make your call.”

“Hi, Babushka!” I said.

“Where are you?” she said in Russian. “Why aren’t you in school? What happened?”

So I answered her in Russian, “School was half a day today. I’m just at a phone booth and wanted to ask you something.”

“So ask.”

“What was my mother like?”

“What?”

“My mother.” I spelled out the letters for her.

“What are you talking about?”

“What was she like?”

I could hear her thinking.

“All right, what’s going on?” she asked.

“I’m just curious.”

She stopped to think once more. “She was very smart and very pretty, like you.”

“No, more than that.”

“Like what more? What do you want me to tell you?”

“Was she a good person?”

This time the silence was much longer, and I could hear her wiggling in her chair. She sighed. “All right, what is this about?”

“Why won’t anyone tell me?”

“Fine. She was a good person. She had strong ideas, that’s all.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she did what she believed was right.”

“Isn’t everyone supposed to do what is right?”

“I suppose so, Sunshine. Yes, that’s true.”

“So what was it about her that was special?”

Babushka sighed again. “This is something to discuss with Papa.”

“But it’s too hard,” I said.

“All right, then, come over and we’ll talk.”

“I can’t right now.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t.” Now it was my turn to sigh.

“Sunshine, what is it?” she said. “Tell Babushka.”

“It’s nothing. I’m just being crazy. You know me.”

“All right, darling. But you can always tell Babushka anything.”

“I know,” I said.

But of course that was 100% opposite of true.

So I said to her, “Then you think it’s a good thing to do what you believe is right?”

“Of course,” she said.

“OK,” I said. “Bye.”

“Bye, darling.”

And we hung up.