About the Night (34 page)

She knew what was holding her back: she had been dreaming of this encounter for nineteen years, picturing it in her imagination, scripting it, posing it like a photographer. But what if this encounter turned out to be a disappointment? What if they could not find the words and met only with a dull heaviness, a malaise? After all, hopes may be nurtured over long years, but it takes only a moment to make them disappear, leaving behind a vast emptiness. She wanted to go there and see if there was light in the window, if there were shadows behind the curtains. She wanted to see him and his face. She could not imagine what he looked like now.

The passengers in the bus were excited, moving from one side of the vehicle to the other so as not to miss anything. For many of them, it was the first time they had left the city on the route to Bethlehem, and they were viewing sights they had not been privy to all these long years. “There’s the Mar Elias Monastery,” someone said, and Lila started. “Bethlehem hasn’t changed at all,” said one of the travel agents, astonished. “I swear, it’s stayed exactly the same.”

The bus stopped in the very center of the city, and they disembarked with some measure of trepidation. They walked around as a group at first, until they felt safe enough to disperse. One thing was clear: they were not the first to arrive there. While they were clearly in some sort of shock, the locals were nearly blasé and were quite ready to do business. The smell of commerce was in the air; the smell of a passion for buying and selling gave an air of normal life, as if there had never been a war, as if only days earlier Israeli armed forces had not entered the gates of the city. Instead of gunfire and explosions, the sounds now were those of busy, noisy life and church bells and flutes and drums and ouds, the din of a city eager to receive guests. There were carts filled with fresh pretzels topped with sesame seeds, hyssop seasoning, tamarind juice, and fresh clusters of dates.

If things were awkward at first, the ice broke quickly. The manager of the travel agency dragged out his long-forgotten Arabic and went around shaking hands, sniffing prosperity. He ordered tea for everyone, which came with a plate of sweet
kanafeh
pastry that piqued nostalgia. There were shops and souvenirs, the scent of hookah pipes and cardamom, sweet
malabi
milk pudding in rosewater. It was all so familiar and pleasant. The men went for a shave and a haircut, which Monsieur Hubert found repulsive.

“What about hygiene?” he said with a grimace. “What about sterilizing those blades?”

The women fingered embroidered cloth and beads and gems wrapped in newspaper, which they bought with liras. The Israeli currency had been adopted at once, bouncing from hand to hand as if skipping over foreignness, animosity, and the distance of years. The art of bargaining, both on the side of the buyer and the side of the seller, was dusted off and returned to the stalls and was as smooth and as enjoyable as ever.

Israeli military vehicles passed by and gave the Israeli tourists a feeling of security. The soldiers stopped to eat lamb kebab that immediately sent up the aromas unique to the Arab kitchen. Grilled half onions on a bed of fresh coriander leaves, chickpeas hand-crushed in a copper mortar, the healthy appetite of the conquerors, the hospitality of the conquered, the rising smoke on a midafternoon—all these created a new reality, the uplifting of spirits and an unvanquished national strength.

On the bus en route back to Jerusalem, faces were glowing, and everyone was sated. A pleasant light surrounded the bus from every side. Plastic bags filled with mementos crinkled as the bus passed over bumpy roads, and a travel agent tried to charm the hair washer with a string of
misbaha
beads he had received from an Arab colleague.

Rita, who was dozing on Lila’s shoulder, sprang awake when the bus stopped suddenly and jolted its passengers. Before them passed a nearly forgotten sight, an Arab shepherd slowly walking with his flock. What did he care that this was a road?

Rita, now fully awake, shook her blonde curls. She whispered to Lila, “The driver is making eyes at me.”

“He’s got good taste,” Lila said with a smile.

Rita said, “My husband takes me every night.”

“What do you mean, he ‘takes’ you?” Lila asked.

“He takes me,” she said. “At night.”

“You mean—”

“Yes,” Rita said, cutting her off. “Every night. Is that normal?”

“How would I know?” Lila asked, uncomfortable. “I’m not married.”

“But maybe you hear things from your clients.”

“But what if you’re not in the mood?” Lila asked. “Does he take you then, too?”

“Every night,” Rita said. “He couldn’t care less if I’m in the mood or not. Janette says if he doesn’t take it from me, he’ll take it somewhere else.”

“It’s complicated,” Lila said, trying to stay on safe ground, “what goes on between men and women. You’ve got to do what your heart tells you is right.”

In her own heart, Lila felt a pang. Not of jealousy exactly, but a pang of desire for that warm place where love gets the conditions it needs to thrive: sleeping with your man, waking up next to him, drinking the first cup of coffee of the day together, watching him as he shaves, smelling his scent, waiting for him in the evening beside a bowl of soup and a glass of wine, snuggling into his embrace when it’s cold, warming in his eyes as he gazes at the naked body he loves.

Not, she pondered, just some man, anyone, so you can be part of a couple, not someone simply for safety and security or comfort. Only with Elias, no one else. Once, in the salon kitchen during a lunch break, Janette had recounted that if she slipped into bed after showering, her husband went crazy from her refreshing scent and peeled her nightgown off in seconds.

“So,” Janette explained with a laugh, “if I’m not interested, I know exactly what not to do.”

“You don’t shower!” Hava said. “With my husband, I’ve got to raise the dead, or it isn’t going to happen.”

The girls wanted details.

“You know, raising the dead, resurrection,” Hava said. “Let’s call it handiwork. Didn’t they teach you that stuff in beauty school?”

“So what happens when he finally comes back to life?” they asked.

“Ah,” Hava said. “It’s not long before he shoots a round and goes back to being a toy gun.”

Miriam spoke up. “I’m willing once a week, and even that’s only to keep the peace.”

“Always the same day of the week?” someone joked.

“Yes,” Miriam said. “And when it’s over, I’m so happy because I’ve just bought myself another week of peace.”

It was hot on the bus, the air close and stuffy. Lila pulled out a fan and shared the breeze with Rita. “You kill me!” Rita said, laughing. “You come on a tour with a fan. You’ve got to be long-lost royalty!”

The tour guide announced it was still early and since their bus driver—“a real pal”—had agreed, they would take a trip around the Old City. Everyone clapped hands and shouted.

The guide said, “We’ll park on the main street and walk around outside the walls for a little bit. Don’t feel the need to buy every little thing in the shops; let’s leave something for the next group that passes through!”

Lila panicked. Her legs shook, and her stomach turned inside out, distress signals that only grew worse.

Rita asked, “Is everything all right, princess?”

Now her head was spinning as well, and hot flashes scorched her throat. “Water,” Lila sputtered.

Rita called out, “Who has water?” and someone brought a canteen from the driver.

Lila drank a little and doused her face. She prayed that they would not stop in the Old City because she wouldn’t be able to take it.

Everyone shouted with glee when the bus turned into Sultan Suleiman Street and stopped in front of the Damascus Gate. The women from the salon disembarked at once and bought bottles of Pepsi and packets of Kit Kat, the likes of which had never been seen in Israel.

“So, sweetheart, what about you?” said the driver into the mirror as he gazed at Lila, the only passenger still in her seat. “After two thousand years, we’re at the Old City of Jerusalem, and you’re just gonna sit there?”

Lila forced herself to get up and disembark. The steps were high and her legs were heavy, or at least that is what it seemed like to her. She had a feeling that was something between fainting and blindness, a long moment that was smeared before her eyes, blurry and dazed.

“Take a sip,” Rita said, offering Lila her bottle of Pepsi. “Or perhaps her highness doesn’t share bottles?”

The sugar awakened her, and she was stunned at the sight of the wall, how close it was. Israelis were touching the stones as if longing for some beloved object that had been taken from them and now returned. They posed in front of the ancient stones for a first photograph. Her eyes wandered, like a sharpshooter’s, from the Damascus Gate to the beautiful building.

Her body reacted first, before memory or thought. Her knees buckled and her heart rate increased and she felt disengaged from everything taking place around her. There was his building.

The high windows, the stunning balconies, the wrought iron railings, the arches, the graying stones—they were all so familiar and at the same time completely alien. The building was only three stories tall, but it seemed to her like a skyscraper growing higher and taller while she herself was shrinking. Was she really standing there, or was she merely imagining it all in her desperation? Would his image appear in one of the windows?

“What are you looking at like that?” Rita asked, linking arms with Lila. “You’re less talkative than a fish today.”

From the moment that the guide pointed to the Damascus Gate and began lecturing about “Bab el-Amoud, which was the most important gate during the Roman period,” and until Monsieur Hubert called for them to board the bus, she was closer to him than she had been for years. She was in his territory, where she had not been able to set foot, and now she was within touching distance of his world. She had a strange feeling of being an infiltrator, a malaise that stemmed from thinking that the big moment might take place by virtue of some silly tour the salon took. What she had been awaiting for nineteen years and had built up a mountain of stories around had suddenly turned into something unwanted and threatening. This was not how she had imagined their encounter.

It did not occur to her to enter his building, the stairwell, to look at the mailbox, to climb the stairs to the second floor and then the third, to knock on the door. She merely trailed along behind the group, disengaged and distant from them, dangerously close to losing control and falling apart. While her colleagues were amazed at the price of a Kenwood mixer in the local shop, she, like dough, felt herself banging against the sides of the mixing bowl.

She climbed the stairs of the bus like someone climbing a cliff. It was a refuge to her, and she was consoled by the roar of the engine. It was nearly sundown when the bus made its way back to the western side of the city.