Almost Dead Read online

  Duchi disengaged herself from the embrace. ‘You’re saying I didn’t need to worry? I’m just hysterical? And paranoid?’ Her tone had changed: the tears weren’t there any more.

  ‘I didn’t say…’

  ‘How could you be so insensitive? Not to call just once more? You did it on purpose, didn’t you? To show me I’m just hysterical.’ Now there was anger, maturing like a good wine. ‘What do you expect me to think? It’s the bus you take every morning at that time! And I’m supposed to look at the little flame-thing on TV? What fucking flame-thing?’

  ‘You know, the, you know, the graphic of the map showing the bomb…Duchi, I didn’t do anything on purpose, I swear, I just…You know it was the same minibus that I was on? I actually talked to…’

  ‘Oh, you son of a bitch!’ She was whining now and wiped her big brown eyes with her forearm. She sat down next to the table and absent-mindedly grabbed a handful of chips.

  ‘Hey, go easy on the chips!’ I told her. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘What do you fucking think?’

  We sat in silence for a few moments. I took a bite of the Cannibal and she stole chips and stared at the corner of the table and eventually lifted her eyes to me.

  ‘Tell me what I’m going to do with you, Croc?’ she said.

  And then suddenly a thought struck me–until that morning I hadn’t known anyone who even knew anyone who’d been in a terrorist attack. A few weeks earlier the water-heater guy had come to do some work, and he said a cousin of a friend of his had been injured in a bomb in Petach Tikvah the week before. He was the closest, until Giora Guetta. But I didn’t really know Giora Guetta either. What does ‘knowing’ someone mean? Knowing the name? Saying hello when you meet? The person knowing you? The number of words you exchanged? I was still trying to puzzle it out when she got into bed.

  ‘Duchi?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Cannibal Is Hungry Tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Idiot,’ she said, and I climbed on top of her. She was satisfied. Then she climbed on top of me in return.

  In the morning she made me swear to take a taxi, though I’ve yet to hear of two bomb attacks happening in exactly the same place on following days. Somehow, despite this clear and logical statistical data, people are convinced that the terrorists tell themselves: ‘Ahmed, hey, it worked, let’s try again tomorrow in exactly the same place since there are bound to be loads of people there and no security.’ In practice, the army and police upgrade their security to maximum in the place that was hit, people avoid going to that area and family members become hysterical. I told Duchi all of this and she said, ‘But what about the No. 18 bus on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem in ’96?’

  ‘Those were a week apart,’ I said. But it was a pretty feeble point. So I ended up taking a taxi. A Little No. 5 didn’t blow up that morning. But so what? A real No. 5 didn’t blow up either, the whole time I worked for Time’s Arrow, miraculously. On none of the days I took Little No. 5s to the Dizengoff Centre did a real No. 5 get bombed. So: what? I mean: so what, exactly, Duchki?

  4

  Amr Diab is singing ‘Amarein’. It’s about two moons. He means the girl’s two eyes or her two…

  Someone’s playing this music for me, the two moons of Amr Diab, and I want to move my head but my head doesn’t move. If I’m dreaming, the dream is never-ending. But I’m not dreaming, I’m hearing the song; I can smell this smell, I can feel the fingers tearing into my muscles, the heels of the hands kneading my flesh. But my body doesn’t move and my eyes don’t open.

  After the two moons Amr Diab sings ‘Nour el Ein’–The Light in Your Eyes–and ‘Always with You’ and then Nawal Zuabi starts singing. It reminds me of the show Ya Leil Ya Ein on Future TV, the Lebanese TV station, with the dancing and the girls. Who’s playing this music for me? I can smell this good smell. Not Svetlana–Svetlana would never have been able to keep her mouth shut. Is the good smell you, Rana? Why are you quiet? Why is nobody talking? I listen, but all I can hear is the music…

  Where am I? If I’m in heaven, then where is Mother? Where is Grandfather Fahmi?

  If they’re not here, then I’m not in heaven.

  So where am I exactly?

  My grandfather, Fahmi Sabich, arrived in Al-Amari in 1949. Most of the inhabitants of Beit Machsir who were driven out that year settled in the East Bank. But Grandfather wanted to stay close to his village. Close to the house he built. He was sure he would return to live in his home. He never did. Never saw his home or his friends or his cousins again. In Al-Amari there wasn’t room enough even to raise chickens, but he met Grandmother Samira there. She came from Dir Ayub, a village that doesn’t exist any more. The Jews didn’t even build a settlement where it had been. They just destroyed it and built a road.

  ‘Bidak turkusi birasi…’ Inside my head I want to dance…

  I can feel how loose my muscles are now and the oil on my skin and the cool air from the ventilator drying it off. I piss…oh, that’s good.

  ‘Wow,’ the idiot bitch of a nurse says, ‘look how much you’ve made!’

  One tube for piss, another for air; one tube for piss, another for air; one tube for piss, another for air…

  Father was the third of six brothers and sisters. Mother was the third of six sisters and brothers. She was born in Murair, the most beautiful place in the world. Grandfather Fahmi said that Beit Machsir was more beautiful still. Looking west, you could see the Mediterranean from it and on a clear day the houses of Jaffa. When I was ten I told him that from Murair you could see the River Jordan and the valley and the Edom mountains, and on a clear day the houses of Amman, if you were looking east. He laughed at that.

  Mother and Father met at Bir Zeit University, and after they got married they moved to Murair. Even in 1977 it wasn’t common for a village girl to marry a refugee with no property; or for the man to move into the house of the woman or for a father to leave land to his daughter. My mother and father didn’t care. Nor did my mother’s father. Dignity wasn’t all that important. Life was more important. But Grandfather Fahmi was more conservative. He believed refugees had to remain in the camps, even if they were crowded and uncomfortable, and he stayed in Al-Amari until he died. He said that leaving the camp would be giving up, would be accepting the situation. It would be an admission that we would never return to the homes which the Jews had stolen from us. My older brother Bilahl thinks like Grandfather Fahmi. My younger sister Lulu loves life more than an idea of dignity, like Father. I’m not quite sure whose genes I got.

  Grandfather Fahmi had a horse. On Saturday afternoons I used to go to the entrance to the village and wait for him: a distant dot turning slowly into a white dust cloud moving along the horizon. Soon I’d hear the horseshoes clattering on the road, and suddenly he’d be next to me on the grey horse, extending the strongest arm I have ever known and picking me up, and we’d ride home together, me hugging his broad back and breathing in the dust and the sweet sweat, both his and the horse’s. Once we were home he’d wash his face and go out to the terrace to drink the coffee that Mother made for him. From inside the house I’d listen to his laughter and smile.

  Grandfather Fahmi died ten years ago. Mother died last year. Bilahl moved from Murair to Ramallah five years ago. He was eighteen, and went to study at Kuliyat al-Iman, the faith school in A-Ram–Father and Mother weren’t too thrilled about it. He lived in the student dorms for a while and then he moved to Al-Amari, where there was a room in one of our uncles’ flats, because Bilahl believed, as his grandfather had, that refugees and the sons of refugees and the grandsons of refugees should always remain in the camps. Father and Mother did not agree…I was sixteen. They looked to me; they didn’t want to lose another son to the camp. But last year I moved in with Bilahl and Uncle Jalahl. I promised Father I would start studying in Bir Zeit University. I told him that I was just saving on the rent, that I wasn’t in the camp as my brother was, for ideological reasons. That’s not what I told my brother. I did
n’t really know what I thought, in my heart of hearts.

  Bir Zeit is still waiting for me…

  Someone switches the music off.

  ‘How is he doing?’

  Faint voices. It’s my father. I can smell his familiar old smoky smell. But why is he whispering?

  ‘Hello, son. How are you feeling today?’

  Not now, come on, I’m trying to remember something. Maybe you could come back tomorrow? Because I’m not here anyway. I’m floating in the sea. The stars are out and I can see the beach, but I can’t…

  The army erected a dirt ramp around Murair and blocked the entrance to the village. No explanations. The water tankers from Ramallah couldn’t get through to fill the main well, and cars couldn’t leave the village to go to the second well, on the other side of the ramp. The well dried up. Before it dried up, the water at its bottom got dirty. A virus developed in it. Many people from the village were infected by it, but they recovered. Mother did not. The doctor said she needed clean water to flush out her system and to compensate for all the liquid she was losing through sweat and diarrhoea.

  Bilahl and I travelled to the village through the mountains, bypassing all the roadblocks, but it wasn’t enough. You could only get over the ramp on foot, and how much water could you carry on foot? Lulu was with her all the time, and Mother’s sisters, holding her hand and praying. But everybody was thirsty and the water we’d brought was finished immediately. I told the soldiers guarding the entrance to the village that my mother was dying and she needed water. They tried to contact their commanders. Time passed, and they got no response. They told us to stop nagging them and go home. An hour later they’d still not received an answer–‘It’s Saturday, there’s nobody to talk to.’ ‘My mother’s dying, why do you need to talk to someone? She needs water.’ ‘It’s very complicated. There are roadblocks on the way. It’s not in our power to authorise a trip.’ ‘Who has the power?’ ‘We don’t know. We’re trying to get hold of our commander to ask.’ One of the soldiers gave me a bottle of water. The next morning I asked if we could take Mother to hospital. She was in a bad way. The soldiers were angry, told us we weren’t the only ones, everybody was thirsty. The soldiers were talking on their mobiles and shouting at villagers who were begging them for help. They shot out the tyres of a tractor and arrested the driver.

  The soldier who had given me water the previous day did not remember me.

  ‘What d’you want from me? I’m on the phone to headquarters at my own personal expense! I’m trying to find out what happened to the tanker, OK? I know you’re thirsty. I know you want water. We’re trying to sort it out and whining at us isn’t going to help the situation. So go home and a tanker will come and fill up the…Hello!’ he shouted into his phone. But I wasn’t asking for water by that stage; I was asking for an ambulance.

  ‘All these troubles, my son. They’re all standing outside. Shouting. “The Croc, the Croc…” Something about the Croc. “Switch the machines off!” What have you done? Do you want me to have a heart attack?’

  What are they saying about the Croc? I know him.

  Where was I? You interrupted right in the middle of…I was right in the middle of something, Father. Come on…

  An ambulance arrived to take Mother away. Lulu and I got into the ambulance but at the entrance to the village they told us to get out. Only the driver, the paramedics and the patient could stay. Mother said it would be all right. She was on a drip and feeling much better. We hugged her and she blessed us, but when the ambulance started moving I broke down and cried uncontrollably, unstoppably, for minutes, while Lulu tried to soothe me. She was only thirteen and I was over twenty, but it was me who was crying and her doing the comforting. The soldiers, still on their mobiles, stared at us. The ramp that encircled the village lay like a ligature of dirt across the yellow fields. Mother died in hospital. She was forty-two. A week later they got rid of the ramp.

  5

  Jimmy Rafael in the meeting room. Five foot four of solid muscle. His shaved dome gleaming as if it had been massaged with olive oil. Maybe he did massage it with olive oil.

  ‘Morning, everyone! I don’t need to tell you we have no extra time so let’s get right to the point. I’ve known Dmitry for many years; we’ve shared a few important seconds in the Time Management Unit in the air force and in time engineering studies in the US. He’s going to talk about what he’s doing. About how saving a couple of seconds can change everything.’ I glanced at Ron. His eyes were making no comment, but to me they were saying, ‘Jimmy’s time talks: what a waste of time…’ I smiled to myself.

  ‘I am a certified time engineer and a senior traffic-light technician,’ Dmitry began. He was very tall and was wearing a cheesecloth shirt of the kind you never saw at Time’s Arrow. ‘I work for a private consulting firm in Hadera. My role is to find dead seconds. This story is about how I have found seven superfluous seconds in Rabin Square.

  ‘I don’t need to describe the spot: a square surrounded by four roads from two to four lanes wide. Between one and four thousand cars use the square pretty much every hour of the day. My goal was to leave it as empty as possible, and specifically to relieve a permanent congestion at the corner of Ibn-Gvirol and Zeitlin streets.’

  He made a sketch of the intersection on the drawing board, wrote the street names, and marked the point of the jam. ‘A traffic-light cycle, meaning the time between one green light and the next, is between twenty-four and a hundred and twenty seconds. The seconds are divided meticulously between pedestrians, traffic in all directions and the gaps between. But, as every driver knows, not every direction receives the same time. Traffic-light technicians divide the time at every location according to need. Short greens in city centres are ten seconds long. The longer ones, in less stressed locations, usually take around eighty seconds out of a cycle of a hundred and twenty. In Rabin Square I discovered that the south-eastern corner had traffic lights which were simply throwing time away.’ Ron’s eyes were keeping up a constant commentary. ‘Must have been a programmer’s mistake. One of the phases in the process took ten seconds when it needed only three!’

  Jimmy tossed his smile around the table. ‘Seven seconds!’ He beamed delightedly.

  ‘Yes. I had seven seconds available in various different locations around the square, meaning that if I could clear one side, I’d be able to unblock the rest. Perhaps you remember that until a few months ago the whole square was blocked during the morning rush hour? At this zebra crossing,’ he made some marks in one of the corners, ‘scores of pedestrians would accumulate.’

  ‘Yes, I remember!’ I said, into a tableful of surprised faces. Dmitry looked at me silently for two point five to three seconds.

  ‘I retimed the whole day–pressure periods, post-pressure periods, after an accident, after a demonstration. I made an appointment with a municipal technician, we opened the control box and he logged in with his laptop and uploaded my new definitions. The traffic was pretty heavy at the time. Yet minutes after we’d run the program everything started flowing with perfect smoothness. The technician went back to his office and I celebrated on my own with a well-earned glass of wine at a bar.’

  ‘Which bar?’ asked Talia Tenne. Talia Tenne likes bars.

  Dmitry didn’t remember.

  After the lecture, Bar sent his numerological reading of Dmitry. It said: ‘Dmitry = kind bollocks scrambler’. It’s an old Hebrew habit or superstition, doing numerologies, but Bar uses a piece of software he wrote while he was supposed to be working on programming for Time’s Arrow to calculate his. Among his favourite numerologies are ‘Rafi Rafael = bald for no reason’, ‘Rafi Rafael = tough midget manager’ and ‘Time’s Arrow = a total waste of time’.

  Our business in Time’s Arrow is saving time. Not seven seconds–for us seven seconds are an eternity. We work for years in order to save a second or two. Not from traffic lights on a square but from the conversation time of each and every call made to directory enquiries: 1
44 in Israel, 411 in America, 118118 and so on in the UK, 104 in Japan…And why do we need to save a second from conversations to a call centre? Take, for instance, these clients of ours who provide the service in Manhattan. They’ve got a couple of thousand operators in New York answering calls coming in non-stop–5.5 million phone calls a day in search of telephone numbers. If we can save one second from each call we save 5.5 million seconds a day, which is 63 days, or almost three working months of an employee. Our software can save a company like that around $10,000 a day.

  These numbers were my job. I was the Croc of Numbers! The Belgian company whose representatives Jimmy and I were going to meet takes 44 million calls a year, or more than 120,000 a day, with 300 operators working at any given time. I worked in sales, selling the product to national or private phone companies, landline or mobile, or companies providing directory assistance, DA for short. Recently phone companies have been springing up, or being privatised, all over the place. And every one of these companies needs DA. The market’s worth $145 million this year: next year it’s projected to be $200 million.

  Pearls from Jimmy’s tireless mind: ‘Time’s Arrow is the Fed-Ex of the twenty-first century. Fed-Ex saved days, we save seconds.’ Or: ‘We’re not only living in a world where every second is worth money, but every hundredth of a second.’ How do we save this time? Software and consulting. Our software replaces the operator for certain parts of the conversation: it replies, asks for name and location, auto-completes names, searches and finds results in optimal time, reads out the number and dials it. Theoretically, it’s also got voice recognition, but that’s not perfect (yet), and conversations are still shared between software and operators.