Kashua Sayed - Second Person Singular

He shivered, put out the cigarette, and opened the book. There was something he wanted to check. Up on the top left-hand side of the contents page he found it again, written in a thin delicate hand, in blue ink, the name: Yonatan .

Yonatan is dead. I buried him last Thursday. I paid two Arab teenagers to carry the coffin. Aside from me, no one else came to the funeral. No one was invited. He was a twenty-eight-year-old man, just like me.

“He could die at any moment”—that’s what I was told when I first laid eyes on him. That was six years ago. I had just graduated from Hebrew University with a degree in social work and gotten a job at the east Jerusalem bureau for outpatient substance abuse treatment run by the Ministry of Social Affairs. I knew the place well; it was where I’d done my internship during my final year of school.

I was twenty-two years old and had spent the last three years living in the student dorms. After graduation, I managed to stay on for three more months, but in late October, when the new students started to arrive, I was forced to find someplace else to live. I took a number off a notice that had been posted outside the dorms — seeking third roommate, it said in Arabic — and called from a public phone.

That evening I turned my keys in to the dorm monitor and made my way to the Nusseibah housing projects, in Beit Hanina row 3, building 1, apartment 2.

“You’re right on time,” Wassim said. “I have to go to work. I got a friend to cover me until six. I’m leaving you a key, but make your own copy, okay? My shift’s over at nine and I’ll be home by nine thirty, so if you have to go out or anything leave me the key in the electrical cabinet downstairs.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” he said. “Welcome.”

The sun was setting and it was freezing in the apartment. I’d come with all my belongings. They were stuffed into three bags: one backpack, which had been used for school and then for work, and two identical gym bags with the emblem of the German national soccer team. They were the bags my mother had bought for me when I first left home.

In the bedroom, a neon light flickered continuously without ever coming to life. There was a damp, moldy smell, but I didn’t dare open the window. I buttoned my coat all the way up and tucked my head into the collar. It seemed like it was colder inside than out, and winter was just beginning.

The metal-framed bed groaned when I put my bags on it. Wassim had made sure there was a mattress for me, just as he’d promised over the phone, but it was smaller than the frame of the bed and it was very thin, the kind Arabs use for divans. I switched on the hot water heater outside the shower. The toilet looked as though someone had tried to clean it but it was still dirty and the water at the bottom of the bowl was black. I made a note to myself: get sodium chloride. From our phone conversation I had learned that Wassim lived in the apartment with his cousin Majdi, that they were both from Jat, that Wassim was a special-ed teacher, and that Majdi was in the middle of his internship at a law office. What kind of special-ed classes was Wassim teaching at this hour, I wondered.

There was a small heater in the living room, the kind with a screen and two electric coils. As soon as I plugged it in the lights in the apartment dimmed. The heater made a sizzling sound. I brought the heater with me and sat down on the wicker couch. The coils burned a pale yellow and I had to practically sit on top of it to feel any heat. I put my hands in front of the metal screen, which was blackened with dust and charred pita. The coffeepot on the table was flanked by two dirty glasses and the contents were cold. In the dorms at least there were radiators.

I did not call my mother. I’ll talk to her tomorrow, I thought. That was the longest the conversation could be put off. And anyway there was no phone in the house, and for all I knew no pay phones at all in Beit Hanina. Tomorrow, I told myself, I’ll call her from work.

Once I’d warmed up a bit, I went into my room and started to unpack my clothes. I didn’t have much, and most of what I had was dirty. It had been more than three weeks since I’d last been home and if I didn’t go back over the coming weekend, I’d have to find a laundry. There had to be one somewhere in the neighborhood.

I put the clothes in the closet without sorting them and went back to the electric heater. Once I’d warmed up, I returned to the room and unpacked my kitchenware: one plate, one cup, a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a fork, a knife, and a frying pan. I set it all out on the plastic table in the bedroom. Then I took out my sheets and the heavy comforter that my mother had insisted on buying for me. I hoped it would get me through the first night in the apartment. The next day, I decided, I’d buy an electric radiator. Call Mom, then buy radiator.

An hour after I’d turned on the boiler, I went to check for hot water. I tried the faucet with the red sticker, gave it some time, and then tried the other one. Nothing. I figured the water heater must need a little more time. In the meanwhile I took off my shoes, left my jacket on, and crawled under the covers. I shivered for a while but then felt the heat begin to spread through my body and my eyes begin to close.

I was startled awake by the sound of a door slamming and it took me a few seconds to remember that I was in the new apartment. I sat up in bed. A head and shoulders poked through the doorway.

“Hi, did I wake you? I saw the light was on and. .”

“No, no, I was just taking a little rest.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, still standing in the doorway. “I’m Majdi.”

I got out of bed and walked over to him, feeling the cold rise up from the floor, seeping through my socks and into my feet. I introduced myself and shook my roommate’s hand.

“Wow,” Majdi said, “I can’t believe we let you freeze in here like this. He didn’t tell you we have a heater?”

“Sure, I turned it on in the living room.”

“Not that one,” Majdi said, turning around and motioning me to follow. He walked through the kitchen and out to a little box of a balcony. “We’ve got an amazing kerosene heater. I can’t believe Wassim didn’t tell you.”

“He was in a rush to get to his shift,” I said, “and I got here late.”

“How did you survive in this cold? The house is freezing! We keep the heater on the balcony because it emits toxic fumes when you shut it off.” Majdi pulled a lighter from his coat pocket, leaned over the heater, unscrewed a little domelike lid, removed it, and then threaded his hand in from the bottom and lit the wick. “We’ll let it burn for a little while out here. It’s only really dangerous when you light it and extinguish it, that’s why we always do it on the balcony. This window stays open, too. Anyway, how are you doing?”

I nodded and Majdi pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offered me one.

“I don’t smoke, but it doesn’t bother me,” I said. He lit one for himself and looked over toward the bathroom. “What, he fixed the boiler?” The red light was still on.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I turned it on at around six and an hour later there was still no hot water.”

“Motherffff. .” Majdi started to say, walking into the bathroom. He turned the faucet on, let the water run, and then put his hand in to check the temperature. “That bastard,” he said, striding toward the door. I heard him knocking somewhere upstairs, and then the sound of his angry voice and the soothing tone of an elderly man.

Majdi came back to the apartment, still pissed off and still smoking the cigarette. “That son of a bitch said he was going to fix it today. For the last week we’ve been heating water the way they used to twenty years ago, on the stovetop.” He walked through the kitchen to the living room and returned with the kerosene heater. “I can’t believe you sat here without this thing. You must have been freezing.”