The Inbetween People (4 page)

Are you okay? He was beside me, gripping my shoulder.

I think so, I said, and he was pushing me to sit, turning my foot to the fire, examining the wound in the light from the flames.

Who leaves glass bottles lying around like that. It’s bad, he said. It’s a bad cut.

I’ll be fine. Now it was numb, I felt nothing.

He ran to his car, rummaged in the back of it, while my foot was beginning to throb, a dull pain. He came back and went about cleaning it, using pliers to remove the individual shards of glass; then he bathed it in alcohol and bandaged it up. It’s clean now, and I think I got all the glass out. But you can’t drive today, or tomorrow either. You should probably see a doctor in the next few days, he said.

Where did you learn to do that? I asked.

Oh, that’s nothing.

You had training for what you just did.

He turned towards me. Yes, I did actually, he said. I was a paramedic in the army.

You served?

Yes.

You chose to serve? Arab Israelis had a choice.

Yes, I chose to serve. He smiled. A lot of people serve in an army because they have principles, he said. Because they believe in a greater good, or in something at least. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have any principles. I don’t care about any of it. I served just to annoy my grandmother.

Did it work?

He laughed. I thought I would get more reaction than that, he said. Yes, of course it worked. You didn’t know my grandmother.

So I can’t drive? I’m stuck here on this beach.

Yes, he said, I’m cooking fish now if you want some. He began to move around the fire again, and presently the smell of fish came through the air. A mosquito landed on my arm, and I slapped at it so hard I stung my flesh.

I
T
IS
autumn now, or what passes for autumn here, and the evening air gets slightly cooler once the sun sinks in the sky. David is beside me.

That didn’t go well, he said. You probably heard.

Sorry, I say, I wasn’t listening.

My wife, he says, it’s breaking her heart that I’m in here. She wants me to carry out my service. She told her family I’m here and they’re upset about it.

We turn to look at Zaki, who is pacing up and down, talking on his mobile phone.

That girl, David says. Is she the reason you’re in here?

I glance at him. He has ideals, believes in what he is doing, someone like my father would have been at that age. No, she’s not, I say.

His hands are in his pockets, and he’s groping for leaflets, pulling them out, thrusting them at me. They are full of statistics. There are lots of soldiers like us, he says. Conscientious objectors.

Is that what I am? I say.

He turns to regard Zaki, who is striding away from us, each stride an exact measure, the same as the last one. David thrusts a cigarette towards me. You know what you are, he says. And though you keep yourself to yourself and don’t talk much, we appreciate you being here, we appreciate what you’re doing. His lighter is in his hands and he lights my cigarette.

I look at him, a stocky man of average height, a strong jawline and striking blue eyes that hit me with the force of their integrity every time he looks at me.

We know it’s not easy, he says. Almost one month, that’s the sum of your time here. The time you should be in the Reserves. He reaches out and puts his hand on my arm. Why not make things easier on yourself. If you need to talk, you talk. I need to talk all the time, he says. My wife, he says, she cries about this, she finds it hard to understand. You should serve where you’re told to serve, she says to me. She’s never been to Gaza. He laughs. But we’re a growing movement, he says. People are beginning to listen. He has another leaflet in his hand. This boy he says, this boy was eleven when he was shot. In Ramallah. Eleven. He points his cigarette at the picture.

I stare at the picture, I hold it in my hands.

Kids throw stones, he says, eleven-year-old boys throw stones. The greatest sign of strength an army can display is to show mercy, he says.

It’s windy, I hear the cypress trees whisper outside the window.

Avi, he says, it’s good to talk. We have meetings you know. We support each other, we’re all in this together. We all appreciate it’s not easy, and we know that everyone arrives at this point for different reasons. If you want to be part of things you talk to me; it doesn’t matter if your ideals or reasons are not the same as mine. We are all here to help each other. We know that you are here because of her.

Zaki is coming towards us, he pushes his hands against our backs.

Time to go back, he says. You, he nods at David. You were four minutes on the phone. That’s one minute off your next call. We notice these things, he says, don’t think we don’t notice.

When I am back in my cell, David calls out to me. Avi Goldberg, he says. Conscientious objector, he shouts.

The light has dimmed and suddenly night has descended. I lie on my bed for a time—I like the evenings in the desert, the bright light disappearing from the sky, the fingers of light that remain growing dimmer, darker, until night is upon me. The sun sets abruptly in the desert. For some minutes before it is swallowed by the night, it turns into a flaming fire, then it is gone. Night descends quickly, with little fanfare. I believe it is different elsewhere. Father told me of lingering twilights in England, a magical time between night and day, when the light is still in the day and the first stirring of darkness is creeping into it. He told me of long, glorious sunsets, explosions of light across the sky, the slow descent of night. The darkness comes quickly here, closes in relentlessly, descends upon us completely and absolutely—that is the way of the desert.

Avi Goldberg, shouts another prisoner, we salute you.

C
HAPTER
5

T
here is another beginning. Maybe I didn’t begin at the beginning. It’s hard to know; it’s not as exact a science as you believed, finding a beginning.

You are Saleem, firstborn son of Talibah. I do not know her second name, you never told me. Talibah, who married at seventeen, had six children, all boys, and died, aged twenty-seven, in childbirth.

Being the firstborn son of Talibah means a lot: that you are first to lick the spoon when she makes her sweet biscuits, the ones that melt on your tongue; that you are the first she kisses goodbye in the morning when you line up to say goodbye before school; the last one she tucks into bed at night, the last one to feel her soft kiss and her whispered blessing. It means that you understand things the other boys don’t, and that you get to do things they don’t because you are the biggest. It means that you know her best because you know her longest, and it means that you have to protect her—that you are home that day, sitting on the stairs, the back stairs that nobody ever uses.

You are sitting on the back stairs, on the marble stone leading to her room. A new baby is on the way. You’ve watched her tummy growing and Grandmother says the baby will arrive soon. She isn’t well, there is talk that this must be the last one.

She is suffering. You hear her moaning but you can’t go in; if they see you they will send you away somewhere to play for the day. Your knuckles are scratched and bleeding because you fought with your brother Karim when he threatened to tell your father of your plan to stay home. You tortured him into submission, but he got hold of your knuckles and scraped them along the concrete.

She calls out then and you want to answer her. You rise to answer, you stand up and walk towards the dark door. You know she lies inside in her great big bed, and you want to help her, bring her water, rub ice against her warm cheeks—something—but you sit back down again when you remember what will happen if your grandmother sees you.

The cries go on all afternoon, and you sit there frozen to the ground. After a while you creep down to the kitchen; it is deserted, so you open the fridge and start to eat cheese and olives. And then Grandmother appears and she is angry, very angry, her nostrils expand, opening and closing, and you stare at them.

Have you defied your father, she screams. Why you are not with the other children?

You don’t answer because you don’t know how to tell her about your mother and that you are frightened, and how you think that she and your father don’t love your mother, don’t really love her the way you do.

Go to your room, she says. We have enough going on here.

She takes your arm and pulls you up the stairs, into your room, nearer now to Mother and her moans. Nearer, nearer, so that all afternoon in the dead heat of August you lie on your bed trying to block your ears, but still hear her moans, deeper, deeper, until eventually there is silence, and then there is the piercing cry of a baby—your new brother. A mosquito is flying around your ears, leaving a whistling echo in its wake. But your mother is silent and you know she is gone, and you sleep then, deeply with no dreams, nothing but emptiness.

C
HAPTER
6

Daniel Goldberg

October 26th, 1985

D
ear Sareet,

It is late October now and the land is readying itself for winter. Perhaps you remember the Galilee at this time of year, and think of it sometimes, the way the hot wind blows, followed always by rain, the cooler days, welcome at first, until the evenings become too short to escape the fact that winter is upon us. Perhaps because I am a gardener I notice it more than most, regret the passing of the glorious summer displays the garden bequeaths us, and perhaps I panic more than other people at the suddenness of the short evenings. There is so much to be done, you see, and I notice that more and more each year. I detect autumn in peoples’ eyes too, the notion that another cycle is almost complete. I used to see it in your eyes, how you hated the coming of winter, and you don’t know how often I have smiled to myself at the irony that you live somewhere where winter is so much harder and colder than here.

I suppose I should explain why I am writing to you. I am writing because I am worried about our boy. It seems strange for me to use the word “our” in this context because it is four years now since you were part of his life, yet it is meant as a generous gesture, since I admit I must be doing something wrong.

It seems to me that Avi spends too much time on his own. It is difficult for me to write this, and for some years I vowed that I would not approach you regarding issues with the boy, yet I realise now that I have run into problems. It may surprise you that you are the most obvious person to share this with. I would like to assure you at this point that I try to include Avi in all aspects of my life. Certainly, he walks my gardens with me every evening. I tell him about the plants, their life cycle, the most suitable growing conditions for each plant, the factors that will most adversely affect their growth (or certainly their display!) and what they can expect of us now that winter is approaching. He is always attentive, I can’t fault him for that. He listens and he nods, and later if I ask him about it he remembers, and is able to tell me precisely what I said.

He is good at his lessons, his teachers tell me that he is never troublesome or rude, indeed he is most polite. He is well-mannered towards the other children, but he doesn’t play with them, or mix with them too much, they say. He is a good boy, they wish every child was like him, their job would be so much easier. And yet there is a kind of unease there, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it is as if they can’t understand him.