Friendly Fire (7 page)

In the parking lot a dust-covered vehicle is waiting, with shovels and hoes and earth-strainers strewn inside. The nurse is also the driver. Before she starts the engine, she hands the visitor a bag,
containing a thermos and a large sandwich, food for the journey sent by the brother-in-law, whose absence remains unexplained.

Daniela wearily removes the thick wrapper (which appears to be a page torn from an old encyclopedia), revealing a sort of giant pita, brown and thick, with sliced egg inside, layered with strips of eggplant fried with onion.

Sijjin Kuang maneuvers deftly between the cars scattered in the parking lot, at the same time studying the passenger, who gazes with amazement at the enormous sandwich.

"Jeremy said you would love it..."

Daniela's eyes sparkle. Yes, he's right. She and her sister always loved eggplant, maybe because this was the first vegetable that their mother, a finicky immigrant, had learned to cook in the Land of Israel. Despite the hunger rumbling inside her since she skipped the meal on her first flight, and which the sandwich and sweets at the airport had failed to quiet, she offers to share her pita with the Sudanese woman, who declines, no, this is meant only for you—a peace offering from a person who was afraid to come to the airport himself.

"Afraid?"

"That there would be with you other passengers from your country."

"Israelis?"

"Yes, Israelis."

"What is there to fear from them?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I am mistaken," the nurse corrects herself, "but I think he does not want to meet anyone from his country right now, not to see them, not to feel them, not even from afar."

"Not even from afar?" Daniela repeats with astonishment and pain the words of the Sudanese woman, who for all her thinness and delicacy displays great expertise in speeding the heavy vehicle down the dark road. "In what sense? By the way, on my plane there was not a single other Israeli."

"He could not know that in advance," the driver says with a smile, while her upright head threatens to bang into the roof of the car.

The guest nods slowly in agreement and adds not a word. In truth, she has come from so far away not merely to summon pain and memory but also to understand what is going on with her brother-in-law. And now this messenger may offer a first clue. She unscrews the cap of the thermos, carefully pours in the warm tea, and offers it to the nurse, who repeats and explains in good English, it is all for you, Mrs. Ya'ari, I have eaten and had something to drink, it is best for me to concentrate on driving, since the roads here are sometimes misleading.

The sweet tea refreshes Daniela, who pours herself a second cup and a third. Afterward she begins to bite carefully into the fragrant sandwich, and after swallowing the last crumb with great contentment, she receives permission and indeed encouragement from the Sudanese to enhance the good taste with a soothing cigarette, the last of the five or six she smokes every day. Only then, as the tobacco ash flickers in the darkness, does she turn to Sijjin Kuang and begins a polite and cautious interrogation.

O
N HIS WAY
home in the wind and rain, gray-faced from an exhausting day, the father phones his son to hear the technician's diagnosis of the winds in the tower. And who is this expert, anyway, whom Gottlieb showers with praise?

Moran sounds amused and excited. "No, Gottlieb's not exaggerating. You missed out on a magician and juggler. Right out of the circus."

"How old is she, anyway?"

"Hard to tell. She's a kind of child-woman, who at first glance looks twenty, but by the time I left she seemed over forty. The face of a child, huge eyes, nimble and a bit hyper. She worked for years in the regional auto garage at Kfar Blum, up north..."

"Whatever," Ya'ari says with a yawn. "What's the verdict with the winds?"

"Wait a minute. Listen, she has incredible hearing. First, imagine this, as soon as we start going up in the middle elevator, she can already tell that we replaced the original seal with a different one. You remember?"

"Moran, I remember nothing. I got up at three
A.M.
and lit candles with Grandpa, and I'm wiped out. Give me the bottom line. How are the winds getting in?"

"She claims that the shaft is cracked and pocked with holes in more than one place, which produces an unusual acoustic effect, like the sound from the holes of a flute or clarinet. She recommends that at three in the morning we shut down all the elevators and ride on top of one of them to locate the exact spot of the penetration."

"Forget it. Flute or clarinet, what does it have to do with us? The defect, just as I thought, is in the shaft, so we're not responsible. The tenants need to go to the construction company."

"I'm not sure you're entirely right, Abba. Gottlieb was obligated to check the shaft carefully before installing anything and so were we as the designers."

"Now listen, Moran. The shaft is not our responsibility. Period. Cracks and holes can develop even after the installation is finished."

"She claims, according to the sounds, that these are old defects."

"
She
claims ...
she
says ... habibi, calm down. This little girl is not God around here. Anyway, we'll talk tomorrow at the office."

"And Imma, did you hear from her?"

"According to my calculations, she's still in the air, unless I'm wrong."

H
E IS WRONG
. It's remarkable that a practical man like him is unaware that East Africa is one hour ahead of Israel, meaning that the
beloved traveler is no longer in the air, but on the ground, on a dark and desolate mountain road—though her fate is in the capable hands of an intelligent driver, whom she is briskly quizzing about her life story.

In the bloody civil war of southern Sudan, Sijjin Kuang's relatives and many other members of her tribe were slaughtered because their skin color was blacker than that of their murderers. She, alone among her entire family, was saved. Her rescuer was a United Nations observer, a Norwegian, tall like her, who arranged for her rehabilitation and education in his country on the condition that when she received her nursing degree she would return to serve in a field hospital on the Sudan-Kenya border, where she could take care of the wounded of her tribe. But the hospital was never established, and while going around Nairobi looking for other work, she learned that
UNESCO
was funding an anthropological expedition made up solely of African scientists, whose goal was to discover, using their own research methods, the missing link between ape and man. She applied to the director of the mission, a Tanzanian named Seloha Abu, offering her services as nurse to the team.

"You are a Christian, of course," says Daniela, who is highly impressed by her personality and the details of her story. But Sijjin Kuang is neither Christian nor Muslim but rather an animist, as supporters call them, or
mushrikun,
as their opponents call them, or, in cultural-scientific terms, simply pagan.

"Pagan?" The Israeli is overwhelmed by such intimate contact, in the dark, with an idol worshipper. "Really? In what sense? This is so interesting ... because for us, pagans are only in legends..."

And the Sudanese, with a slightly embarrassed smile, explains very briefly the principles of her ancient tribal faith.

"Spirits? Winds?"

"Yes. Sacred spirits in trees and stones."

"And this kind of belief," Daniela inquires cautiously, "does not interfere with the rationality of the medical science that you studied?"

"No belief can interfere with care for the sick," the Sudanese declares. "Least of all animism, since any person may approach the spirits individually and according to his understanding, without any pope or ayatollah to do it for him."

"Marvelous..."

Daniela now wonders how a white person such as her brother-in-law was accepted to join a scientific mission composed only of Africans, all the more because he is neither a scientist nor a doctor and also is a citizen of a country not generally well-liked. But the Sudanese has a simple explanation. To prevent conflicts on sensitive matters among Africans who have joined the mission from all over the continent, it was decided that financial management and supervision of expenses would be placed in the hands of a white man, a foreigner yet an experienced person, someone familiar with the region and its ways. When a white widowed pensioner, a former diplomat in Africa, offered them his experience in administration and finance, and struck the members of the team as a reliable and objective person, immune to outside temptation.

"Temptation? In what sense?"

"Temptation that might prevent him from handling the accounts with honesty and precision. But soon he will explain this to you himself."

A warm summer wind streams through the open window of the car, scented by the thick flora. This is hill country, and the car climbs and descends the lower slopes surrounding Mount Morogoro, which appears periodically and then vanishes from view. The moon that accompanied her flight has disappeared behind the clouds, but its light is reflected by the lush roadside foliage that brushes the sides of the car. Not long ago, following a small road sign, the driver turned off the asphalt onto a dirt road. Although narrow, the road is tightly packed and free of potholes, and the engine maintains its powerful rhythm. But Daniela now has a bit of a problem. The huge sandwich she consumed and the great quantity of tea that accompanied it demand relief. Had she known about those in advance, she would not so blithely have passed up the chance to use the toilet at the airport. No choice now but to ask the kind driver to stop at a spot appropriate for both car and passenger and inquire as to whether there might be some paper handy; otherwise, she will have to open her suitcase.

"You will have to open your suitcase," Sijjin Kuang says, laughing, and slows to a halt.

She cautions the traveler not to try to seek privacy in the bush, where she is likely to arouse the interest of some small creature. You can simply stay on the road; you can see there is no traffic here, and even if a car should happen to pass by, no one will remember you.

But Daniela is uncomfortable being exposed in the moonlight, even in front of this licensed nurse, who in the meantime has shut down the engine and got out to stretch her legs and light up some sort of long pipe, thin and black like its owner. So she goes off to a bend in the road. Even there, despite Sijjin Kuang's warning, she is reluctant to crouch on the road, and blazes herself a trail a few steps into the bush.

Under the whispering branches of an African tree she pulls down her trousers with great emotion. The senior schoolteacher at ease with herself—the wife, veteran mother and grandmother—is visited by the memory of a mortified little girl who at a family outing at the Yarkon River, while basking in the love of aunts and uncles and cousins, suddenly lost control, and whose soaked panties threatened to destroy her happy world. But neither her mother nor her father had been aware of her distress, and her older sister had rushed to shield the crying child and discreetly take her to the riverbank, to a clump of bushes not unlike the one where she squats now, and with kind words wiped away her shame, soothed and consoled her, until she smiled again.

And now, with her pants at her ankles, by the light of a hidden moon whose movement in the sky speckles the surrounding foliage, free of the controlling love of her husband, who could not
begin to imagine how far the arrow has flown from the bow drawn at the airport at dawn, she surrenders to the agony of losing a beloved sister, who always knew how to comfort her but had not succeeded in comforting herself. She lingers in her crouch, drinking deeply the grief that floods her, and slowly, slowly consoles herself, stands up, and straightens her clothing, but does not leave the place until she gathers a few stones to hide what she has left behind.

Total silence. As she returns to the dirt road, the Israeli briefly loses her way to the car that holds her suitcase and her travel documents, but she does not lose her nerve, and loudly calls the full name of the nurse: Sijjin Kuang! Sijjin Kuang! Sijjin Kuang! Three times she repeats the name of the tall idol-worshipper. And the animist, who is probably at this very moment seeking the blessing of the wind and trees and stones for the successful continuation of the journey, switches on the headlights and honks, to show the white woman the way back.

L
ATE IN THE
evening, Ya'ari collects the newspaper that was flung onto his doorstep at dawn and turns on the lights in the clean and polished apartment. With amused curiosity he looks for innovations made in his absence. Their veteran housekeeper, whom Daniela respects and even admires, has carte blanche to run their home as she sees fit, which is truly a great liberty, since besides cleaning and cooking she often whimsically rearranges furniture, closets, and bureaus so that the owners, returning home after an evening out, may discover that an armchair has moved to the other side of the living room, underwear and socks have migrated to foreign drawers, and a plant that has forever dwelt peacefully on the porch is now a centerpiece on the dining room table. Some relocations are happily accepted, others rejected and reversed, but out of respect for the housekeeper, never a comment is made.

Today there are no changes at home. Only in the Hanukkah menorah, cleansed of last night's wax, the housekeeper before leaving work has stuck two new candles and the shammash, for tonight's lighting. But Ya'ari has no intention this evening of reciting the blessing alone over more flames, so he adds a fourth candle, for tomorrow night, and moves the menorah to a corner of the kitchen.

From the quantity of food sitting still warm on the kitchen counter, he guesses that the housekeeper has not quite grasped that in the coming week only one person will be eating here. As he samples each dish with his fork, he flips through the TV channels to make sure that no plane has crashed today. His brother-in-law warned him that communication between the base camp of the dig and the wider world had to run first through Dar es Salaam, but Ya'ari was adamant: That may be so, but since I'm sending you a woman who for many years has not traveled abroad by herself and who, since her sister's death, has become even more dreamy and scattered, I must receive a sign of life within twenty-four hours. If not her voice, then yours, and if not yours, at least an e-mail to the office.