Almost Dead Page 5

  Duchi’s first reaction was to laugh. ‘No way,’ she told the phone. ‘Come on, Dad, you’re putting me on.’ And then she said, ‘OK…OK…OK,’ and hung up and said, ‘My mother died of a heart attack,’ and only then did her eyes well up with tears.

  Duchi’s younger brother, Voovi, didn’t look too broken up about it. Her dad certainly wasn’t sorry. Before all of this happened Duchi once made me swear that whatever occurred between us–even if it didn’t work out eventually–we would never end up with the hate-hate relationship her parents had.

  Duchi’s father is called Noam Neeman. That’s ‘Pleasant Loyal’ in Hebrew, by the way: two gags for the price of one. He left Duchi’s mother after two kids and six years of marriage and went to Nicaragua with his second wife, whom he dumped after a few more years, kids and arms deals. He returned to Israel at the age of forty-six and married a girl half his age. Duchi was three years younger than her when they got married. She and her brother didn’t make it to the wedding. But I like Noam Neeman. A man with balls. Does what he feels like doing. Half the time he succeeds, half the time he tanks completely. Recently, for instance, he failed miserably with a start-up in which he invested a million dollars. He asked me, ‘If you had a million bucks in the bank, what sort of investment would you put it in?’ I said, ‘I’d put it in the bank.’ His seen-it-all eyes looked me over with bottomless disdain and he drew on his cigar till it crackled.

  ‘Duchi!’ he shouted. ‘Couldn’t you have found yourself someone a bit more serious than this?’ He punched my shoulder with his large suntanned hand. In the end he stuck his million into a new mobile phone company called Wa-Wa. A year later his million was in the sewer.

  In truth, Duchi’s parents did not share a hate-hate relationship. Ever since Noam Neeman left her, Duchi’s mother had been lost. She loved him in secret until the day she died. Loved? She worshipped the ground he walked on. She was completely obsessed with him, but she didn’t have him: all she had instead were his two children. And whatever move they made, whatever direction they set off in, they could be sure that Leah Neeman would be standing there, feet planted, wagging a warning index finger. Because Leah was a fountain of bitterness. She just didn’t like life. There was nothing she wasn’t suspicious of; there wasn’t a decision Duchi or Voovi could make, or even think about making, that Leah wouldn’t respond to with gloomy prophecy, biblical wrath, stricken horror; not a step they ever took without having to hurdle the leg she would stretch out to trip them up.

  I thought–and I believe many others thought the same–that there was something fitting in her pulling a heart attack on the eve of her daughter’s marriage. She deployed the ultimate weapon in her arsenal, her Judgement Day weapon. And it worked, God knows how or why. The ring I bought (‘Diamonds are for ever,’ said Duchi, ‘so don’t buy me one’) is still hunkered down at the back of some drawer, waiting.

  Anyway, I was standing there with my head in the refrigerator, lying it off. I tried to move the conversation on.

  ‘So how was your day, Duchki?’

  Her gesture said, leave it, don’t even go there. Another crazy day. In the last few months she’d been coming back home whacked from a case of insider dealing and fraud that was dragging on and on. She would curse the other lawyer, the fool Gvirzman, and the ill-tempered and exhausted judge and her salary and her boss Boaz, who after years of her working her soul out for him was still ignoring her hints about being made a partner.

  I ate cold pasta salad for a few minutes without speaking while she watched TV from the sofa. ‘Well?’ I pressed. She made a face and muttered, ‘That son of a bitch.’ ‘Who, Boaz? Gvirzman? The judge? Who now?’ She shrugged. ‘Yes. No. All three of them are huge sons of bitches, for sure. I don’t know; I don’t know what I’m doing. Why am I killing myself like this? Gvirzman asked to postpone again without consulting me and when I tell him out of court that it’s out of order, the son of a bitch tells me I’m an overgrown baby.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Sometimes I think Gvirzman’s right, but I don’t say so.

  ‘What does that mean, “oh, come on”?’ She was sharpening her claws for combat. I like her instincts.

  ‘You’re in a good company, on a good salary, you work with prestigious clients, handle big cases…’

  ‘That’s not the point, Croc. I’ve been stuck in the same place for a year. Even if you think it’s a good place–and it isn’t–I still haven’t made any progress for a year. This case…’

  I shook my head. How much can you moan? How much can you be unhappy with what you have when you have so much?

  ‘Don’t make that face. You’re not going to convince me I’m having a wonderful time at work–though you’re making this great effort to convince yourself. You could just be a tiny bit understanding and supportive, couldn’t you? I deserve a little support from my boyfriend after a day like this.’

  A day like this. Wow. They asked to postpone without consulting her and called her an overgrown baby. Dear oh dear oh dear. She deserves support. She always deserves it. She’s so pitiable sometimes her tone can really flip my switch.

  ‘You know, I did take the Little No. 5, not a taxi.’

  Why did I say that? Maybe I needed to have a row.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Liar? What reason do I have to lie?’ Apart from the obvious.

  ‘Croc.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re having me on, right?’

  This was the point of no return. I could have hushed it all up and lied my way out of it, or remained loyal to the truth–not something I insist on day to day–and start the world war that was dying to be declared between us.

  I gave her a heavy-lidded look (my crocodilian look) and said: ‘Not right. I am not having you on. I went on a Little No. 5.’

  Duchi’s hair is brown and her skin is a colour I used to call caffè latte in the days when we still found the time to lie side by side, stroking each other for hours. The coffee is from her Yemeni grandmother–the one from the night of the incident in ’35. The milk comes from her grandfather and father. When Duchi is on the brink of explosion, the skin on her face grows visibly darker and her luminous eyes cloud over, but it’s not the colour so much as her expression, like a child’s in the second before it cries–only with her it’s not tears but fury.

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you take a taxi like I asked you to?’

  ‘Because I had this weird premonition that I wasn’t going to get blown up. And you know something? I wasn’t blown up! And you know something else? I didn’t hear on the news that any other Little No. 5 was blown up today either.’

  ‘Not the point.’

  ‘So what is? You wanted me to ride in a taxi for a specific reason. I thought you were wrong. I was proved correct. And now I don’t understand what we’re arguing about.’

  ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You really, truly, honestly travelled on a Little No. 5?’

  ‘Of course! Why take a taxi?’

  ‘Maybe because I asked? That’s not a reason?’

  ‘Not if there’s no sense behind it.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  I took a chair from the dining table and sat in front of her. She lowered the volume on the TV, which was on Channel 2: Danny Ronen rambling on and on, his eyebrows conspiring together like a couple of sidekicks pretending to be shrewd.

  ‘What reason do I have to lie?’

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she repeated. ‘Tell me, is there nothing left between us? Not a little appreciation? A little consideration? A little trust?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘What it’s got to do with it?’ She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She said, ‘I should have listened to Uri a long time ago.’

  Oh, here we go: Uri. I was beginning to wonder when his name would crop up. Her therapist. Duchi told me a long time ago that he thought she shouldn’t stay in our relationship, although he would never co
me out and say it directly. I argued with her then. She quit therapy and we decided to get married. A few weeks after the wedding that never happened, though, she went back to him. And now he’s telling her the same thing once again.

  ‘Uri doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘He knows more than you think he does.’

  ‘How could he know anything on the basis of your stories alone?’

  ‘But what’s important is the way I see and experience things.’

  How many times have we had this conversation?

  ‘But he’s talking about your relations with me. The experience belongs to both of us, no? How could he say anything truthful about it after hearing only your side? I know how you distort things sometimes. The version he gets depends on the way your mood swings on the day you tell him. And your mood’s about as reliable as Danny fucking Ronen! You…I can’t…How can you believe a single word of it?’

  After that neither of us said a word for several minutes. She turned up the volume. Danny Ronen was saying that the security forces had some leads pointing in the direction of Nablus. Terror cells in Nablus had targeted Tel Aviv in the past and they were the only ones with the capability to stage such a destructive attack. That was what a senior military source had told Danny Ronen. The explosive belt used by the suicide bomber, Shafiq somebody from Nablus, weighed 25 kilograms. The IDF was preparing an operation in Nablus in response.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the TV. ‘Ten people died.’ ‘Eleven!’ ‘Eleven. And you were on that bus.’ ‘Not a bus.’ ‘I don’t care what it is! It could have been you! So I was worried, OK? I got scared. My whole body was shaking. So I had a simple request to make. You think it was irrational? You think it was stupid? Fine. But I asked you. Your partner asked you to do something which in your opinion is irrational–to travel, for one day of your life, in taxis. So why do you do the opposite on purpose? What is it in me that makes you want to fight? That makes you incapable of respecting me? Do you hate me? This is hatred. I ask for something and you piss on it. What is that if it’s not hatred? So the question is: if you hate me so much what are you doing here at all? Why do you stay?’

  Good question. Arguing’s a matter of wanting. You can argue about almost anything and you can not argue about almost anything. In my American family we never rowed at all. With Duchi, it’s the opposite; we have rows all the time. About anything. It’s a permanent row. Perhaps it’s compensation after suffering years of row deprivation with my family. Or merely something in her that gets on my nerves. She complains about my family, I do about hers. She’s stressed, I’m relaxed. She thinks that if there was a terrorist attack on a Little No. 5, there’s going to be another one soon; I disagree. But I don’t enjoy the arguments. I don’t know why they happen. I assume it has to be her. It must be her. She’s a lawyer, after all: their life’s work is arguing. The difference between me and Duchi, in one sentence, is this: I say, things will be all right, and if they aren’t, that’s all right too. Duchi says, things will not be all right, and if they are, that’s not all right either. OK, two sentences.

  ‘I don’t respect you?’ I said. ‘Sorry, I think you don’t respect me. You don’t respect my reasoning–which has been proved to be correct!–in selecting the particular mode of public transport vehicle in which I travel home.’

  ‘Don’t shout.’

  ‘I’m not shouting!’ I mean, it doesn’t bother me at all that there are differences between us. Everybody has differences, every couple; everybody should. What bothers me is the way living together turns nice people into mini-dictators. Criticism of the partner’s conduct becomes the basis of all communication. Improving the partner’s conduct becomes the primary goal. Intimacy is the policing of the other’s conduct.

  ‘You are! You always end up shouting! You—’

  ‘Wait, Dooch, wait…shut up! Turn it up! Turn it up!’

  On the screen there was a photograph of a familiar face.

  ‘Giora Guetta, twenty-three, has been identified as the last victim of the Tel Aviv suicide attack. In Guetta’s parents’ house in Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem, there were calls for the government to retaliate with maximum force.’ A man was saying, ‘…They must do something! This government is abandoning our sons. We’re letting them turn our lives into a circus…’

  Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem. That was where I needed to go. Duchi looked at me, seeing that my attention was elsewhere now. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I have to go there. To Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem.’

  ‘You’re not going to any Jerusalem. Are you crazy?’

  ‘I have to,’ I said. I kissed her forehead; I was already gathering my bag and phone and jacket. ‘I have to go. He talked to me before the…he asked me to deliver a message. I have to.’ I was all ready to go. ‘Don’t worry, Dooch. I’ll be in touch,’ I said, and in my heart I added–maybe.

  I was taking the steps two at a time and already a floor down before I heard her voice so I couldn’t hear what Duchi said, only her tone; only her anger and despair echoing down the stairwell behind me.

  8

  ‘Fahmi…’

  Lulu? Lulu. Oh, Lulu, how I love your voice…

  ‘How are you, Fahmi? I’ve missed you. You…you look well. You…’

  What, Lulu? Why did you stop talking? Keep talking, Lulu.

  ‘I saw Bilahl. Dad and I went to the trial. In the end they delayed it. He’ll probably get about four hundred years, but he doesn’t care. Fahmi, when are you going to come back to me? I rode the horse I was telling you about.’

  With the guy. I told you to be careful of him. You’re too young for that sort of thing.

  ‘You probably would have said I’m too young for it. Uhh…yesterday I saw Noah’s Ark on TV. It was great. You’d have loved it.’

  Noah’s Ark on Channel 2. I know it–I’m always on it. Again and again…

  ‘Israel’s number-one programme, with television’s brightest star, Tommy Musari!’ booms the announcer, and Tommy Musari says, ‘Fahmi Omar Al-Sabich?’ and I say, ‘Yes, good evening.’ ‘Good evening, Fahmi. You decided to follow in the footsteps of your grandfather and shoot Israeli cars in Bab al-Wad.’ ‘Right.’ ‘And you’ (my partner in the Ark is a Jew) ‘you shot and killed a twelve-year-old boy in the Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah for making an indecent gesture at you.’ ‘Right,’ says the Jew. The audience applaud and we both smile and Tommy Musari smiles too, with his one non-glass eye. ‘Fahmi,’ he says, ‘tell us why you decided to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps.’ ‘I always admired Grandpa,’ I say, ‘and he loved me. His name was Fahmi too. He used to tell us how he hit the Jewish convoys going to Jerusalem in ’48.’ The audience applaud. ‘Well, I wanted my life to be worth something too.’

  ‘Come back to us, Fahmi. I’ll come again next week. Goodbye, brother.’

  No, Lulu, don’t go…don’t leave me here! I want to talk to you but this fucking body won’t move. Lulu! I can’t open my eyes…

  ‘Fahmi? What is it? Fahmi! Nurse! Nurse! Fahmi, can you see me?’

  No, don’t call that fucking little fool. Stay here…

  ‘What happened? Oh, he opened his eyes? OK. No, no, it does happen from time to time. It doesn’t mean he regained consciousness. I’m very sorry. Were you alarmed at all?’

  ‘Not really. I was hoping…’

  ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps it’s time to end today’s visit. Maybe it’s a bit of a burden on him.’

  Oh no, you whore, no, don’t send her away…Please! Don’t leave me floating out here, with these fragments of memory…

  ‘Goodbye Fahmi. You hold on in there for me…’

  Lulu…

  The early morning news on Channel 2 with Danny Ronen the clown. The security forces think the attack came from Nablus. Who’s more of a clown, Danny Ronen or Shaul Mofaz? Not an easy question.

  A smoky smell of winter and a hard morning frost on the mud in the alleyways. Now that the rain had stopped, wome
n were hanging out washing, and the muezzin was calling. Bilahl would have made me go to the mosque if he’d been there. He was pushing me to study in his college, Kuliat Al-Iman, the faith school in A-Ram. Not a chance: Dad would have gone nuts. And I still meant to go to Bir Zeit. Uncle Jalahl recommended electrical engineering at the Hebron Polytechnic, but how could I ever have got there? So in the meantime, I was waiting. Helping Jalahl with his electrician’s jobs when he needed it. Watching TV. Al-Manar. Future TV. Al-Jazeera. Channel 2. Egypt, Lebanon, Dubai. The world at my fingertips. In The Mission on Al-Manar, Ehab Abu-Nasif asked contestants to name the Palestinian village in the Ramle region which was destroyed in 1949 in order to make way for the town of Yavne. Yibne. I got it right off. The shahid Amar Hamud was nicknamed…Too easy: Sword of the Shuhada. For which organisation did the shahida Wafa Idris volunteer? You’re kidding–the Red Crescent. The Jordanian contestant only won four million liras. The Weakest Link on Future TV: which painting was stolen from the Louvre in 1911? The Mona Lisa. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? from Egypt: where is Martin Luther King’s birthplace? Tough one. Charleston. Atlanta. New Orleans. Little Rock. Atlanta. Yes. After The Mission, Al-Manar started showing Terrorists and there it all was again, the children bleeding to death in Jenin and Gaza, the bodies ripped to pieces by missiles, the shattered houses in Chan Yunes. I zapped to a rerun of Ya Leil Ya Ein–music and pretty girls on Future TV. Music and girls on Future TV…

  Bilahl and I went on our way that evening after the prayer at the setting of the sun.

  We met near a shed at the back of an old house we used as a hiding place. The two rifles were there, and spare clips which we divided between our backpacks. Bilahl made a phone call and we waited, leaning against the wall. Five minutes later a yellow taxi arrived. I put the rifles in the boot while Bilahl spoke to the driver. We drove to Bidu. The driver was listening to the news. The Jews had attacked Nablus and destroyed Shafiq’s family home. The driver said, ‘Why can’t these Nablus pricks get it into their heads that they’re only causing trouble? Every time it happens we all get fucked! Every time there’s a bomb I know I’m not going to have any work tomorrow. Nobody wants to poke his nose out. They’re all waiting for the retaliation.’