The Liberated Bride (26 page)

A
S ON THE
night of Samaher's wedding, this time too the minibus pulled into the all-night vegetable stand with its colorful dolls that
made him think of Canaanite household gods. Its Arab owner, now revealed to be a Christian, recognized Rivlin at once. But it was Rivlin's wife whom he missed and to whom—after helping to load a sack of beans, a gift to the Abuna and his flock, onto the minibus—he sent a small bag of cherries as both an offering and a warning that, if she did not return as a customer, he might turn up as a plaintiff in her court.

At Yagur Junction, before turning left for Arab Nazareth rather than continuing on to Jewish Haifa, Rashid glanced at his passenger to make sure he hadn't changed his mind. In Nazareth's crowded downtown, they stopped to pick up some cartons of eggs and a crate of canned goods, a present from the Church of the Annunciation to the Church of the Temptation in Zebabdeh. Then, the engine purring softly, they glided down into the Valley of Jezreel with its good old Jewish farming villages laid out in neat arrangements of lights. They sped through Adashim Junction; passed Mizra and Balfouria; drove through the broad, deserted streets of sleeping Afula, which made no attempt to detain them; and headed south on an empty road to the whir of the sprinklers of Kibbutz Yizra'el. The lights of the Israeli settlements grew fewer, and the plastic frames of greenhouses alone gleamed white in the faithful moonlight that was prepared to cross the border, if such it was, together with them.

For now the Arab was saying:

“The army checkpoint is right ahead of us, Professor. Getting through it is no problem. It's just that if they see a darky like me with a high-class type like you, they may think you're being kidnapped. It's better to take a detour. It will add ten more minutes, but we have time.”

“What if I really am being kidnapped, Rashid?”

“Then it's only to Paradise,” the Arab laughed. “That's for your own good, Professor.”

The minibus turned right toward Mukibla and then left onto a harvested field, jolting lightly. Rashid maneuvered it slowly over a narrow ditch, reached a fence, switched off the engine, and got out. Several kicks and a section of fence was down. Shadowy in the moonlight, he wiped his hands and climbed back into the driver's seat. It
was the moment chosen by Rivlin to touch the shoulder of the messenger and ask, in the silence of the night, whether Samaher was really pregnant. The unexpected question, as though given urgency by the border they were crossing, made Rashid start. “That's what her mother says,” he answered, as evasively as before. This time, though, he added hesitantly: “Who knows for sure, Professor? Only God and the ultrasound.” He looked dolefully down at the floor of the car, as if having said too much.

“Then what keeps her in bed?”

“She's confused. It started before the wedding. Maybe her soul is looking for another body. But don't be angry at Samaher, Professor. She's always liked you, from the first day of her first class with you. I swear, she's in love with you.”

“Don't be ridiculous. . . .”

The Arab gave him a searching look, puzzled why this should make him angry. Starting the engine, he crossed the fallen border with his parking lights on. “We're in Zone C,” he explained, gesturing at the vagaries of the Oslo Agreement in the darkness around them. “Two kilometers from here we'll enter Zone B, and in Jenin we'll be in the middle of A. Then, on the way to Kabatiyeh, we'll cross back into B and come to Zababdeh, which is one half B, one quarter C, and one quarter none of the above, because a small Jewish settlement has squeezed itself in there.”

Jenin was full of life, a wild festivity of Ramadan lights. Its shops and markets were open despite the late hour, and a steady stream of cars and horse- and donkey-drawn wagons clogged the streets. Slow-moving men stood in groups; women, cloaked and uncloaked, hurried laughing through the smoke of charcoal grills. And children, no end of children, clung to the minibus, which Rashid steered with great patience, yielding right-of-way to all comers. The city seemed engaged in a great orgy of eating that took place in the dark passageway between one day's fast and the next. Two armed Palestinian policemen peremptorily flagged down their vehicle, but only to banter with the Israeli Arab, who was known and liked on this side of the border, too. The Jew was looked through as if he weren't there.

If here, too, Rivlin thought, not for the first time, the Arabs stay up all night partying, who, really, will look after us Jews by day? Not sure how Rashid would respond to such a reflection, however, he watched in silence as the latter excused himself politely and drove as far as the city's last street lamp, whose light fell on a macadam road that had once been part of a British Mandate highway running the length of Palestine. The bright Israeli man in the moon had now been transformed into a cloud-veiled Palestinian woman—who a few kilometers further on bared her face to shine on two more armed Palestinians wearing camouflage suits and carrying black Kalachnikov assault rifles. This time Rashid was grilled about his passenger before being allowed to head southeast for Kabatiyeh, a town notorious during the Intifada for the long and cruel curfews imposed on it. Perhaps this was why its inhabitants, refusing to go to sleep, were still up and about with pots, trays of food, and holiday gifts, vanishing and reappearing in the lit doorways of shops and houses and sometimes thumping the Israeli vehicle with a jovial or hostile fist. The minibus made its way through twisting side streets, emerged in a cool, dim valley, and climbed a hilltop to a village whose houses were half hidden by trees behind empty streets. At the top of the hill, in front of a drowsing iron gate that opened on the courtyard of a church, Rashid stopped and pulled a rope that rang an old gong.

The gate creaked. Slowly, laboriously, it was opened by a boy of about ten, who must have been waiting for them all evening. He threw his arms around Rashid and clung to him tightly while a second child leapfrogged over him to embrace his beloved uncle and a third, materializing from nowhere, shouted something and pushed his brothers aside before a quickly crawling black baby could reach them across the white flagstones of the courtyard. There being nothing left of her uncle to grab hold of, the baby clutched at Rivlin, who was peering through the open door of the church, past rows of empty pews, at a crucified Jesus made of light-colored wood—a rugged, thoughtful, rather likable young man hanging from a cross behind a handsome altar decorated with fresh branches and lit by a reddish light. Now a plump priest wearing a cassock and eyeglasses appeared.
This was the Abuna, who came hurrying out of the church in the moonlight that shone through a gap between two Samarian hills. Using one hand to free the Jew of the infant clinging to his feet, he offered him a hearty handshake with the other, while babbling in English as if he had just met an old friend.

“We've been in touch with Mansura and know everything about you, Professor. How wonderful that a Jew should come to our church at the end of a fast day during Ramadan! I assure you, you haven't come in vain. Our prayers have been answered, and Sister Suheyr feels well enough to sing a mass for us tonight. You'll see for yourself, sir: it's not to a church in Zababdeh that you've come, but to Paradise. And not just to Paradise, but to Paradise on a night when an angel is giving a concert.”

P
RIOR TO ENTERING
Paradise, however, it was necessary to pass through the purgatory of a basement apartment at the rear of the church, which consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. In the innermost room, beside a crib, lay the sick Christian husband. The outer room had a low table, set for a meal and surrounded by cushions on the floor. While the two older boys continued to grip their Israeli uncle to keep him from escaping, the younger one, having no Arab to take hold of, lifted the baby onto his shoulders and bashfully reached for the hand of the Jew so as to lead him to his dark-skinned mother—who, on this night of dreams within dreams, proved to be none other than the woman Rivlin had seen in the album.

She looked taller and more robust than in her photographs. Overcome by emotion, she buried her face in her hands, hiding her tears from the younger brother freshly arrived from the place of her nativity. Rashid gave his sister a staunch, comforting hug and deftly slipped, like a reverse pickpocket, several bills of money into the unprotesting pocket of her gown.

“
Bikafi, Ra'uda. Mish ajeina lahon minshan d'mu'eik. Kaman jibtilak deif m'him k'thir. Bikafi tibki, ahsan yuhrub min hon. Ana jit aakol
andik. U'ana ju'an k'thir, u'izza b'tittahri, b'yohod il-deif abuna. Leish il-buka, ya uhti? Hada 'id, hata il-yahudi hada sam min shana l-yom.
”
^*

She looked at the guest with wonder. Getting hold of herself, she wiped the tears from her hypnotic, coal black eyes and apologized in Hebrew:

“Forgive me—and welcome. How can I not feel sad when I know you're coming from Mansura? How can I not cry? My whole family is there, my grandfather and my grandmother and everyone. And Israel, it won't even let me visit her, because it's afraid my children will come too. . . . Maybe you know someone. . . .”

“
Bikafi, bikafi
!” her brother interrupted. “
Mish bidna nirja lal'awal.”
^†

“But how come your sister knows Hebrew?” Rivlin asked.

“Why shouldn't she? She lived in Israel until she was married at the age of fifteen. She even went to high school there. Tell the professor, Ra'uda, what you learned in Hebrew class.”

“The poems of Bialik.”

“You see? She studied Hebrew poetry. And she practices speaking so that she can convince the authorities she's Israeli and should be allowed to return. When there were Israeli soldiers in the village, she used to talk to them all the time. She would translate their orders for the Abuna.”

“They should have stayed,” Rashid's sister said despairingly.

“Don't even say it! They might hear you and come back,” Rashid joked, urging his sister to serve the soup before the Abuna came and snatched them away as guests for his dinner.

“But I'm not hungry,” Rivlin protested.

“You have to eat something,” Rashid said softly. “It's for her honor. You'll shame her by not tasting anything.”

“Don't be bashful,” the woman told Rivlin, returning from the kitchen with some serving dishes. The three boys were already tucked
in at the table with big spoons in their hands. Even the black baby, wearing a little apron, was standing at one end of the low table, watching her mother ladle out red lentil soup from a large pot. Speedy Rashid, having already washed up and changed his shirt, attacked the soup as voraciously as if he had come all the way from Mansura for it.

The sick Christian husband now appeared from the back room, too. A pale, gangling man with long hair, an unshaven face, watery blue eyes, and hands marked by sores, he shook a weary head as he took his seat and produced from his pajama top a shiny mess kit, left behind by the Israeli army, that he handed to his wife to be filled. Tasting a spoonful of the soup, he made a nauseated face and inquired of his jet-colored brother-in-law if their visitor was the dreamed-of Jew who would return Ra'uda to her family in Israel.

A
ND NOW THE
Abuna descended to the basement to thank Rashid for the gifts sent by the Christians of Israel. He was especially touched by the Galilean piglet, which, shorn of its bristles and tail, was about to be put in the oven. Yet he was unhappy, the Abuna was, to find the Orientalist in the basement, staring at a bowl of soup, when up above in the teachers' room all was ready for a feast that was to be attended by Socrates and Plato, two seminarians thus nicknamed because they had studied in Athens.

“Who could object to being called Socrates even in jest?” the Abuna asked, spreading his arms with a cross-eyed twinkle. Taking the baby's spoon, he tasted the soup and praised it highly, a necessary preliminary to receiving permission from the lady of the house to spirit away her Jewish visitor.

The Abuna left with Rivlin in tow. On their way, to demonstrate that the midnight oil was burned on Ramadan in Zababdeh too, they made a moonlit side trip to a classroom. There, seated at small desks, was a group of female students, who immediately straightened up and veiled themselves. The Abuna patted their heads and showed their notebooks to Rivlin, who was asked to approve the penmanship of these poor Muslim girls from a village near Nablus. They had been
sent to the Christian school after Abuna promised to display no crosses or icons—he had these replaced with colorful posters extolling the universal virtues in English and in Arabic.

Next, the Abuna lit a pocket flashlight and led Rivlin down a corridor filled with scaffolding, to show him his dream: a new wing of the school, unfortunately still unfinished because “We Greek Orthodox are stingy, like you Jews, but also poor.” From there he took him to the roof and proudly pointed out a valley below, spectral in the light of the moon. “It's the Vale of Issachar,” he said. “Zababdeh is the Issachar of your Torah.”

Rivlin nodded in agreement while stealing a glance at his watch. It was eleven-thirty.

Where are you now, my beloved wife? Did your cotravelers take good care of you today? Have you made your peace with your hotel room, or are you still huddled beside an unopened suitcase, yearning for your bed and the man you think is in it? And yet, light of my life, I am not. I, too, have been condemned to spend this night in a strange land, though nearer to home than you. Our unslept-in apartment must be wondering what to say, should anyone come looking for the addled Orientalist now dutifully following the flashlight of a stout and jolly Christian priest.

The Abuna led him to a large kindergarten full of colored blocks and old pillows, creatively refashioned into human and animal dolls. On the walls still hung pennants of the Israeli Border Patrol unit that, sent to pacify the village, had commandeered the room during the Intifada.

“And was the village made peaceful?” Rivlin asked curiously, fingering a doll to see what its shiny eyes were made of.

The Abuna's eyes twinkled merrily. “Only toward the end, when the soldiers were too exhausted to pacify anyone. . . .”

It was the hour for the late news on Israeli TV, regularly watched every night by Hagit. She liked the way its cultured, curly-headed newscaster did his smiling best to make the world's sorrows more palatable before sleep. Here in the newborn Palestinian autonomy, however, sleep was out of the question, perhaps because the modest freedom won by its inhabitants was most apparent in the wee hours
of the curfewless nights. And the Jewish visitor felt free, too—free enough to tease his hosts, assembled in warm welcome at the table:

“
Izan ya muhtaramin, il-muslamin b'yoklo fi 'l-leil, il-yahud fi 'n-nahar, u'intu in-nasara, kaman fi 'n-nahar u'kaman fi 'l-leil.
”
^*

The Christians laughed, pleased to belong to a religion so cunning as to dispense with the restrictions of both Judaism and Islam. Shy but beaming, they introduced themselves. Some wore clerical collars. There were women, too, laughing and vivacious in the middle of the night.

“But how did you know I was coming?” the Orientalist asked in bewilderment. “I myself had no idea that I was crossing the Green Line with Rashid until the last minute!”

Yet Rashid, it turned out, had telephoned the Abuna from Samaher's home in Mansura to inform him that his gifts would include a Jew, a professor from Haifa who was a specialist on Algeria. Had the sable-skinned Arab so easily manipulated him? Rivlin wondered with a slight feeling of alarm, taking his place between Socrates and Plato—who, happy to be called by their sobriquets, asked what he was looking for in the North African folktales he had found in old publications.

“For warning signs of the insane brutality that later broke out in Algeria,” he answered with a smile, breaking off and putting in his mouth such a small crust of warm pita bread that one might have thought he was commencing another fast. The Abuna, not yet settled into his seat, put this answer into lengthy Arabic while offering Rivlin an unfamiliar purple sauce full of little leaves in which to dip the next piece of his bread.

“But what good will finding such signs do, Professor?” The Hebrew question, asked with a sigh, came from a teacher wearing a large golden cross over the cleft above her heart.

“None at all, Madam,” the Orientalist answered, his smile sadder this time. “
U'lakin min wazifti inno ma asa'id, bas a'raf
.”
^†

“Know thyself . . .” Socrates confirmed in English.

“
Lakin leysh?
”
^*
The Abuna put a positive face on it. “
Yimkin nit'alem 'an il-zawahir hadi, ya'ani min halno'a, hon fi Filastin. . . . unu'iti tahdir lalra'is.
”
^†

“
Le'min?
” There was laughter. “
‘Njanet
?
Ahsan shi ma-nihkish ishi, la tahdir u'la il-Jaza'ir, hata ma-yurkubhinish afkar min il-Shaitan, la-samahallah.”
^‡

But the academic brain, its gray curls now tilted at a downward angle, had no interest in the future, only in the past.