Ishmael's Oranges (39 page)

‘Hey, Salim!' Tareq sounded furious.

‘What is it?' he called out. The door opened and his brother-in-law stood at the doorway, lips pursed primly.

‘It's your friend, this Jimmy.'

‘What about
him?'

Tareq's nostrils flared and he threw his hands up in the air. ‘I got a call from Elia. There's been an incident at the house.'

Salim felt sleepy and stupid. ‘What house? What are you talking about?'

‘The house, the house!' Tareq looked as if he wanted to shake him. ‘There was a protest. It started at the old Clock Tower, with some group making speeches about land rights in Jaffa, and then these people marched over to your father's house and painted the walls with this
Justice for Jaffa
nonsense. The police came and arrested some of them.'

‘That's incredible.' Salim had to look at his hands, to hide his secret delight.

Tareq shook his finger. ‘Incredible is not good. Remember what Elia said. When people see angry Arabs they don't think activist. They think terrorist.'

‘Jimmy is Rafan's friend,' Salim said. ‘I'll speak to Rafan. I'll make sure it doesn't get out of hand.'

That night, he watched the protest on television. The Orange House was unrecognizable. Red paint was splattered across its walls and a crowd blocked the gate with young and eager faces. One woman was gesticulating to the camera, speaking in Hebrew. She wore a Palestinian
keffiyeh
around her. Her skin and hair were as olive as Sophie's. The thought caused a stab of pain so vivid that he put his hand over his mouth and closed his
eyes.

The telephone rang, and Nadia came bustling in to pick it up. The newscaster had moved on to scenes of the riots they were starting to call the
Intifada
, and new emergency laws being passed in the Knesset. Something was troubling him, something not quite right about Nadia's voice behind him. Then he realized. She was speaking English.

He turned slowly and Nadia's eyes met his. She said, ‘Yes, I give you him now.' Slowly, she handed him the telephone.

Her voice was wary, but he leaned into the sound of it. ‘I hope it's an okay time,' she was saying.

‘It's fine,' he replied. She paused, a catch of breath that he knew so well. They'd not spoken since he'd left for Israel.

‘I heard your case is going well,' she said. ‘Hassan says you've had your first day in court.'

‘I didn't know you were still speaking to Hassan.'

‘I'm still speaking to everyone,
Sal.'

He closed his eyes.
Why does she call? Do we have anything left to say to each other?

There was another pause, and then she said, ‘Didn't you get my message?' He looked over at Nadia working in the kitchen. There'd been a message about Jude's call, left on his bed a few days ago. But he'd not found the courage to call her
back.

‘It's been very busy,' he said. ‘I'm sorry. What's going
on?'

‘For God's sake, Sal.' The tears in her voice surprised him. What had happened?

‘It's Marc,' she went on. ‘He's been expelled from the Royal Ballet School. He got into a fight with one of the students.'

Salim heard himself laughing despite his shock. ‘Marc, in a fist fight? I didn't think he had it in
him.'

Jude's voice was cold. ‘He scratched the boy's face, enough to draw blood, Sal. Actually, I think you had something to do with it. It was a Jewish boy and Marc said he made some crack about the Palestinians. When I picked him up from the infirmary he was raving about how you told him all about how the Arabs were always a joke and that he wouldn't be laughed at. Since then… I don't know.' He heard the strain in her voice. ‘I'm worried about him. He says he's taking his medicine but I don't think he is. Then yesterday the police brought him in for setting fire to that horrible old shack down the street. They said he threw a Molotov cocktail at
it.'

‘Wow,' Salim almost laughed again. ‘That place needed to be burned down. Good for
him.'

‘What's the matter with you?' She was almost shouting now. ‘It isn't funny. This expulsion, it's the end of a dream for him. A lifelong dream. God, Sal, don't you remember what it was like to have dreams?'

‘I had so many over the years,' Salim retorted, a hot wind sifting the embers of his pain and resentment. ‘This is just Marc's first one. Believe me, he'll get over
it.'

‘Like you got over your losses, you mean?' The sarcasm bit hard. He remembered Marc's eyes filling that day in the bedroom. He'd felt nothing then, but now a trickle of grief for his son began to filter through
him.

‘I'm sorry for Marc,' he said. ‘But what do you want, Jude? He doesn't need anything from
me.'

‘You're his father,' she replied. ‘His future's in the air, and he needs his parents. He's confused, Sal, and ashamed. One day he tells me he's going travelling, the next he's asking me if you're coming back. He wants you back, even if he can't tell you to your face. Shouldn't that make you happy?'

It should
. It could be so easy
–
just to say yes, to jump on a plane and surprise them. But then he heard the newscaster behind him, and remembered the red paint on the walls of the Orange House.
Justice for Jaffa!
He'd made a decision, he had a purpose. He could not give it up
–
not for Marc, not for anyone.

‘If you spoke to Hassan, you know I can't leave now,' he said. The words sounded harsher than he meant. ‘We're in the middle of a battle here. If I leave, it will be all for nothing. I have to stay. Do you understand? You have to explain it to Marc.'

She was silent, and he pictured her, the blue eyes wide and her face still so clear, like a glass of water. Then her voice came again, heavy and resigned.

‘I'm not sure that I can explain it, because I don't understand it myself. Your son needs you. What could be more important than that?'

‘I am doing this for him,' he said, over the guilt and frustration. ‘For his future, our legacy. He should care. He should understand.'

‘Okay, Sal,' she said. ‘You stay and fight your battle.' Her breathing was calm again. ‘I hope it brings you joy. You know where we are. Bye.' There was a click and then the steady tone signalled the end of the moment.

As he slowly dropped the receiver into its cradle he saw Nadia standing in the kitchen doorway. Her hands were folded over her plump chest, and her eyes were filled with reproach. ‘I don't understand you,' she said, her voice soft with sadness. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘What do you mean?' He was immediately defensive. ‘You of all people
–
how can you ask that?'

‘I mean you should not have come,' she said. ‘You know it, in your heart. The brother I knew would not have left his family. He would have protected them, first and before all things.' Her eyes were red and her hands trembling, as if terrified by her sudden courage.

‘How could you cry for her?' he shouted, clinging to his rage. ‘You don't even know her. You didn't come to our wedding, you hardly spoke to her all the years we were married. You never approved of her. So why cry for her now? Isn't it a bit late?'

‘I am not crying for her,' Nadia said, raising her face to his
–
a worn face of goodness unrewarded. ‘What kind of man are you, to care what other people think of your woman, of your choice? It's you I am crying for. Oh, my little brother.' He saw the tears running unchecked down her cheeks. ‘So much you had, so many good things. And look at you. You threw them all away.'

Many years ago, as a little child, Salim had been taken out on a fishing boat to learn how the nets brought home the catch. They'd set out in the pre-dawn light, when the sea and the sky were the same colour and the world had yet to draw its first breath. For more than an hour they'd hauled in the empty lines, while the wooden hull swayed. Salim had clung to the gunwale to steady his turning stomach, as the vast quiet rocked him into a nauseous slumber. Then, all at once, there'd been a shout. A net full of silver, flashing madly in the first rays of the sun, poured into the bottom of the boat. The floor at his feet exploded into motion
–
fish everywhere, leaping, flying, slicing into the air like a hundred little knives. And from above the silent raiders came, gulls plunging towards the deck to steal a morsel away, screaming when the fishermen lashed out with sticks to drive them
back.

When Elia called with the news about the court date, he felt it again
–
the thrill and fear of the mêlée as it washed over him. It drowned out his lingering guilt about Jude's call, and the nameless fears for Marc pricking his conscience.

‘The judge will hear both parties again one more time,' Elia said. ‘He has promised we will not leave without a judgment.' The date was set; on the twenty-first of December, in two weeks' time, the game would either begin or
end.

Jimmy was also busy with his own preparations. His organization was catching fire, he told Salim with delight. ‘You're a natural speaker, a natural,' he said, munching into a giant pita sandwich of falafel and pickles. Red harissa sauce spilled over the corners of his mouth and dripped onto his collar. ‘Where've you been hiding,
habibi
? If only the municipal elections were now, I would have you standing for one party or the other. But
ma'alish
. At least we have you for now, and anyone we pick for the vote in two years will just have to take a few lessons,
sah
?' He wiped his folded chin, and Salim imagined himself disappearing down that enormous gullet.
The giant of Jaffa. He eats me and shits out a seat on the municipal council.

Jimmy had worked out a demonstration schedule leading up to the final hearing. ‘It's just enough and not too much,' he said in his jovial bass. ‘The kids are full of energy, God bless them. I left them in Jaffa, painting tents to tie to the top of their cars when they drive around. Why tents, I asked them? You know what they said? It's a symbol of displacement. After they drive them around for everyone to see the slogans, they untie them and hold what the Americans call a
sit-in
. They plan to camp outside your house! Advertising and protest prop! It's the Jew kids who came up with it. That's the problem with us, Salim. We can't think further than a stone or a bomb. The Jews are more sophisticated
–
that's why they won in the
end.'

Jimmy was as good as his word. The movement in Jaffa was swelling. Every other day, Salim was wheeled down in one of Jimmy's cars to parade his story to his progressives and marvel at how keenly these young Jews and Arabs listened. They looked alike to him in the way that the English say foreigners do
–
a jumble of tanned faces and lanky limbs,
keffiyaat
slung with equal nonchalance across men and women, the girls in downbeat uniforms of jeans and loose tops, the men's hair either casually long or brutally short. They were all young
–
but the Jews were both the youngest and the oldest among them. All the eighteen year olds were away on national service, decked in the green colours of the Israel Defence Forces learning to shoot at strange Arabs in the occupied territories.

Salim saw the tents on television one night, wobbling precariously along the streets of Jaffa and Tel Aviv atop a long line of cars. Loudspeakers blared and he saw his name written in Arabic and Hebrew on one out of every three. The programme cut quickly to a sharp interview with Shlomo Lahat, Mayor of Tel Aviv for more than fifteen years.
Hooliganism
, he boomed, his blonde hair sweeping up over his forehead in an indignant quiff and his white eyebrows waggling. He went on to assure the interviewer of the many great things planned for Jaffa and the investments scheduled for the slums of Al-Ajami. His eyelids quivered at the suggestion that Israel's courts were not interested in justice. ‘Whoever wants to keep Jaffa in turmoil, these people are not interested in justice,' he
said.

The grand finale was planned for a Sunday, the day before the final court judgment. Salim would speak at a press conference in front of the Orange House. ‘Trust me,
habibi
,' Jimmy told him, ‘it will be the perfect moment.'

On Saturday morning, Rafan called. Nadia handed the telephone to Salim, her nose wrinkled in dislike.

‘I'm glad Jimmy is doing such a good job, big brother,' the crackling voice said. ‘Even in this big farmyard over here, we are getting some news.'

‘Jimmy has been a great help. Thank you for introducing
us.'

‘No thanks needed, big brother. You help me, I help you. And round and round it goes.'

That's what Salim was afraid of. ‘I'm sorry you're not enjoying Jordan more,' he said, casting around for a way to get Rafan off the telephone. ‘It's a shame you can't be here.'

‘You may not have to be sorry for that much longer.' Salim heard the grin across the hundreds of miles of wire. ‘It's my big brother's big day. How could I miss
it?'

Salim thought again of the birds, diving from the sky with their claws and beaks. There was nothing he wanted less at this moment than for Rafan to come back. But maybe he was already here in spirit, with Jimmy and his progressives and their secret plans.

‘Don't risk coming across the border,' he said, in the reflex of panic. ‘You said the Israelis had marked you. Why would you take a chance?'

‘For you?' Rafan laughed. ‘Anything for you, big brother. You took the first step, getting this thing moving in Jaffa. I'm telling you, there's a lot we can do with it. So don't worry. Jimmy's not the only Palestinian with more than one face.
Insha'Allah
, I'll see you tomorrow.'