The Best Place on Earth (20 page)

It was Karin’s idea,
hitchhiking to Eilat for the last summer before army service. The last summer. It sounded romantic to Na’ama, like one of those old Israeli movies they played on cable Friday nights. A summer of firsts and lasts, of falling in love and saying goodbye, skinny-dipping in the sea and staying up until sunrise. In the movies, one of the characters was bound to die in the army, always the sweet, gentle one no one had imagined as a hero.

But there was nothing so dramatic in Na’ama’s and Karin’s future. The Gulf War had ended a few months ago, and for a brief, hopeful moment it seemed like there would never be another war. Karin was enlisting in September, predestined for the infantry corps, which was exactly what she wanted, to be surrounded by cute boys in uniform. Na’ama was due to report in November; she
was assigned to general basic training, which suited her fine since she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do anyway.

Eilat was the farthest they could go in the country, the farthest from their families and the memory of high school, of stuffy classrooms and textbooks and final exams. Neither of them could afford to travel to Greece, like some of the girls in their grade. They had been to Eilat several times that year. The summer before, Karin had filled in a ballot at the mall and won a basic scuba diving course for two at The Deep. Na’ama was reluctant at first. She remembered Eilat from childhood visits: the noise, the dirt, the crowds, the throngs of high school students and soldiers on leave who slept in packs under gazebos, drank beer and shandy at seawall cafés and picked up topless European tourists at the beach. But Karin said the diving club was outside the city, on Coral Beach, minutes from the border with Egypt, and that it was serene, beautiful. “More like Sinai.” And after two days at The Deep Na’ama was hooked. Coral Beach wasn’t Sinai, but it was close enough to trigger her body’s memory: the same red, jagged mountains towering quiet and majestic behind her, the same warm sea licking her feet. They had come back for Sukkot, Hanukkah and Passover, but always for just a few days, never for an entire month.

It was their first time hitchhiking. Karin said it would be cheaper and faster “and more fun” than taking the bus—a five-hour night ride from Tel Aviv, which dropped them in the southern city well before sunrise and left them wandering the darkened streets as they waited for the first bus to Coral Beach. In the end it took longer; they hadn’t accounted for the waits at the sides of dusty roads, and for losing rides to soldiers in uniform. Finally, they were picked up by a gold-toothed truck driver who chain-smoked Time cigarettes—the smoke swirling inside the cabin, clinging to
their hair—and who never stopped ogling Karin’s brown legs.

By late afternoon the Gulf of Eilat emerged in the distance, a surprising blue amidst the browns and yellows, like a fallen piece of sky wedged between the mountains and the city. Na’ama rolled down the window and inhaled the hot, dry desert air. She could feel her heart expanding, her breath softening, her muscles winding down. It was as though her body had retuned itself, resonating with an old melody.

Na’ama was born and raised an hour south of Eilat, in the Sinai Peninsula, in what was now Egypt. She was a child of the desert, her feet callused by hot, white sand, her eyes used to squinting through the fog of sandstorms, her body accustomed to moving slowly, preserving its energy on hot summer days. The small Israeli moshav she had called home was nothing more than a cluster of plain houses, a modest guest house, a dive shop and a grocery store, built on the Red Sea shore by a few dozen families and some young hippie drifters. Mira, Na’ama’s young, Tel Avivian mother, had been posted to Sinai during her army service, a couple of years after the peninsula was seized in the Six Day War. She had fallen in love with it—the remoteness, the simplicity, the unbearable beauty—and decided to stay, undisturbed by the fact that it was Egyptian land, taken over in an act of war. There weren’t many Egyptians living in the peninsula, just Bedouins, who lived in tents, adhered to tribal laws and didn’t care which government ruled them. The land itself didn’t change, they said. Egyptian, Israeli, it was all the same.

Her mother had named her after Na’ama Bay in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the southern tip of Sinai, where the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez—flanking the triangular peninsula like two fingers held up in a peace sign—both spilled into the Red Sea. Na’ama had visited
Sharm once with her mother; their friend Tariq had given them a ride in his pickup truck. On the way there, Na’ama sat crammed between Mira and Tariq in the front seat, the road, paved by the Israelis, glistening along the shore, her mom’s long hair flapping around like octopus arms. In comparison to their moshav, the small town of Sharm seemed a dazzling metropolis, with a promenade, restaurants, even an airport.

It was Na’ama and Mira’s last journey in Sinai, a goodbye trip before they had to pack up and leave. Israel’s final withdrawal from Sinai was weeks away, following the peace agreement with Egypt: Begin and Sadat shaking hands in pictures that made history, raising hope for a new Middle East. On their way back from Sharm, nobody spoke. The sun sank behind the mountains, the world a muted pink. Tariq drove too fast, his kaffiyeh stiffly fluttering, while Mira leaned her head out the open window—wet trails on dusty cheeks—and took in every curve in the road, every rock and mountain and lagoon, as though creating a mental inventory, a catalogue of home.

It had been nine years since they’d left Sinai. Some moshav members went back to visit regularly, but Mira never had. Na’ama understood. She too was afraid of disappointment, scared to find the place a faded version of her childhood home.

The plan was to get a job
behind the counter at The Deep, filling air tanks, signing out diving equipment. They also had some money saved from working at a movie theatre over the past few months, and the hostel—a damp, dark one-storey with a row of dorm rooms and two mouldy communal showers—was dirt cheap. But when they got there, there were no jobs: a leggy blonde was working
the counter alongside a guy with dark curls and intense green eyes. Everyone called him Samir, even though Na’ama was pretty sure he wasn’t an Arab. He looked up when they came in, followed them with his gaze.

“Plan B,” Karin whispered and waved at Ari, the owner, with whom she’d been having an ongoing affair since last summer. He had let them use the equipment for cheap before, join some dives he led, and had even given them a special deal for their certification dives during Passover. Ari’s face broke into a smile when he saw Karin; he strode over and picked her up by the waist, spinning her around. Karin squealed. Ari was twenty-seven: a real man, with big, tattooed arms, a shaved head perpetually shadowed with new growth, and a patch of curly chest hair. Na’ama was intimidated by him, envied Karin for being so comfortable around him, around men in general. She often felt as if she was Karin’s plus-one at The Deep, the same way she felt when they waited in club lineups in Tel Aviv. Now Karin threw her head back laughing, her black curls bouncing like a shampoo commercial. She punched Ari in the arm, and he rubbed it as if it hurt. She gave him a peck on the cheek, turned to face Na’ama and grinned. Ari slapped her butt and she lurched forward, then flipped her hair back and sauntered away. He stared at her hips.

Their room smelled of salt
and wet bathing suits and coconut sunscreen. A little window framed two shades of blue. Karin claimed the top bunk, flinging her sunglasses and purse onto the mattress. Two other beds were already occupied, backpacks stuffed under the frames and toiletries lined up on the bedside tables.

“What do you think of the guy behind the counter?” Karin asked as they zipped open their backpacks.

Na’ama shrugged.

“He’s cute. You should do it with him.”

“I haven’t even spoken to him!”

Karin laughed. “Then go talk to him.”

Na’ama shook her head.

“What?” Karin gave her a little nudge with her hip. “You should be thanking me. You’d never do it if I didn’t harass you. You need to take the initiative.”

For weeks Karin had been telling Na’ama that she had to lose her virginity before the army. And this was the place for it: Na’ama’s first kiss had been in Eilat, her first make-out session. She could trace her sexual history along this shore.

Na’ama pulled out her toiletry bag and her diary, a leather-bound notebook with a floral design she’d bought last summer. Some photos tumbled out of it onto the floor, and she bent down to retrieve them. They were all a variation of the same image: her mother’s girlfriends from the moshav holding Na’ama as a newborn baby, displaying her to the camera in awe and delight. She blew the dust off the last photograph as she picked it up: Tariq was sitting in his galabeya on a frayed rug with Na’ama in his arms, his shoulders hunched as if to protect her. The photos were grainy, yellowed and faded, as though desert sand had coated the lens. She had found the stack a few days ago while rummaging through her mom’s closet for a backpack. She’d never seen them before; her mother hadn’t kept photo albums for the same reason she owned little furniture: such things made picking up and moving at a moment’s notice more difficult. The only picture Na’ama had had of Tariq was taken when she was five or six, the
two of them sitting on the beach, backs to the photographer, both looking over their shoulders.

She felt the familiar tug of memories threatening to pull her in like an undertow. It wasn’t just the photos—this happened every time she visited Eilat. She missed Sinai, now more than ever, and she missed Tariq, who had been a big part of her life growing up. Na’ama used to perk up at the sight of him: his tall, narrow frame, the loose galabeya hanging like a tent from his broad shoulders. Everyone at the moshav was fond of Tariq, and not just because he supplied them with smuggled hash, the smell of which frequently wafted across the beach, as much a part of the place’s aroma as sea salt and desert dust. He knew everyone by name, stopping to ask about their day, share a cigarette or a coffee. On cold nights he told stories around the fire with a dramatic tenor and expressive gestures, and when he burst into his belly-deep laughter, everyone wanted to join him. The men chatted and played backgammon with him, the kids chased him around, begging him to let them ride his camel, and the tourists, whom he guided to the Santa Katarina Monastery in his pickup truck, took pictures of him, regal in his galabeya.

“Who’s this?” Karin snatched the photos from her hands.

“Tariq.” Na’ama watched her careless fingertips on the print. “From Sinai. He used to babysit me sometimes.”

“Seriously?” Karin raised her eyebrows. “Your mom let a Bedouin babysit you?”

“He was our friend,” Na’ama said. “It was different over there.”

Karin browsed through the photos quickly and stopped at one of Mira, sitting cross-legged on a bed, wrapped in a tie-dyed sarong, her long, straight hair parted in the middle, her eyelids heavy, smoke curling from the cigarette she was holding up to her lips. She looked
like a seventies movie star, an olive-skinned, voluptuous beauty, with long, thick eyelashes, defined cheekbones and a dimpled smile. It was a cruel genetic injustice, Na’ama had always thought, that she looked nothing like her mother. Her own features were too large for her narrow face; her skin was the colour of sand, and her body angular, boyish, with jutting hip bones, a flat chest, and sharp, triangular shoulder blades that didn’t make for good cuddling.

Karin handed the photos back to Na’ama. “Your mom is so awesome,” she sighed.

Na’ama squared the stack of photos and put them away, saying nothing. From the very first time she had brought Karin home, Karin had been enthralled by Mira, mesmerized by their home: the emptiness, the quietness, the femininity of the decor. The three-bedroom apartment in Shikun Lamed in Tel Aviv was their fifth try at a home since leaving Sinai. Before that, with the compensation money the Israeli government had paid them for evacuating, Mira had bought and sold apartment after apartment the way some mothers discard old clothes. With every move, Na’ama grew more restless, more resentful of her mother, envious of her classmates who lived in apartments filled with photos and memories, packed with old, heavy furniture, door frames etched with proof of their growth. Na’ama became adept at moving, until the act of packing and unpacking, claiming space by arranging books on shelves, laying down frayed rugs on tile floors, became her idea of home.

“So what’s the story with your dad?” Karin had asked the first day she visited Na’ama’s home. They were swinging on two straw hammocks Mira had hung on their fourth-floor balcony, out of place in the urban setting, facing a smoky city view.

Na’ama had kicked the wall with her foot, rocking her hammock. “He was a Spanish tourist my mom met in Sinai,” she said. Mira
had no photo, no address, just a name: José Luis, one of many tourists, eccentrics and nudists who had flocked to their moshav, staying for weeks or months or years, working with her mother in the guest house the moshav residents called the Holiday Village.

“Wow.” Karin leaned her head back, her eyes glazed. “Your mom is so cool.”

“How is that cool?”

“I don’t know, moving to Sinai on her own, having random sex with hot Latin lovers. My mom is like the opposite of cool. Must be nice to have a mom you can actually talk to about boys.”

Na’ama fingered the rope over her head and watched the city roofs sway back and forth. She didn’t tell Karin that her mother was the last person she would ever seek relationship advice from, because Mira hadn’t been able to hold on to a man for longer than a year, a track record that mirrored her meandering career path and frequent moves. She didn’t tell her about the dreams she used to have as a child, where her father came back from Spain to find her and take her back to live with him. Or about the nights Mira had spent crying behind her bedroom door after Na’ama had tried to probe her for information about her father. Na’ama had stopped asking, eventually. Her father became an empty pit she learned to walk around.