Kashua Sayed - Second Person Singular

My colleagues came to work at ten, except on the rare Thursday when the special advisory meeting took place. On those days they came in at eight. Sometimes they’d even get there before me. Walid, the department head, was usually the second one in. He was also the first to leave, always before four, the official closing time. “I have to make a house call,” he would announce, “and then I’ll just head home from there.” The right-hand column of his time card was lined with his handwriting, house call .

Walid was joined by Khalil, who had taken on a sum total of zero cases since I’d arrived. Other than his job with social services, he held two other part-time positions, shuttling between them in his squeaky clean, bright red Peugeot 205, a CD of his beloved Gypsy Kings spinning from the rearview mirror. He and Walid were the only ones with a car. Shadi, who was one year older than me, used to come to work in jeans and designer T-shirts. He wore a gold chain around his neck with the first letter of his girlfriend’s name hanging off the end. He was always talking about a club — the Underground — and about how he had befriended the security guard, who let him in every Thursday. Sometimes he’d shut the office door and show us some of his new moves.

Like everyone else at the office, Shadi hated being a social worker. He used to say that he aspired to other things, that he’d studied social work by mistake, and that the college entrance exam, “the psychometric,” was engineered to screw Arabs. He had just enrolled in an accounting program at a private college, and showed up for work with his new textbooks, and that was pretty much all he ever did at the office.

Not that that was a problem. With the caseload being as it was, all employees were free to pursue other endeavors. They would show up at the office, sit down at their desks, and swivel the chairs toward the center of the room, sipping coffee and gossiping, mostly about girls they had known in college. I hadn’t heard of any of the girls they talked about, all notorious, all Arab, all sluts who had slept with half the guys on campus.

Hebrew University remained central to my colleagues’ lives. It was the reason they had left their villages and come to Jerusalem, and it was the reason that they had stayed. Aside from me, they were all somehow tied to the university. Walid was a teacher’s assistant at the School for Social Work, and was looking for a PhD thesis advisor. Khalil, whose grades were too poor to continue on in social work, had just begun a master’s in criminology, which made no difference at all to him, because “an MA in criminology gets you the exact same three-hundred-shekel raise.” Shadi, not wanting to waste money on rent, had settled on the floor of his cousin’s dorm room, splitting the rent three ways with him and his roommate.

At eleven, they’d each hand me ten shekels and send me to get them hummus from Abu-Ali on Salah al-Din Street, a five-minute walk from the office. I was more than happy to run the errand, pleased to get out of that wretched office, and I made the journey to Abu-Ali a little like a tourist, taking in the stone houses, the shops, the trees on the side of the road as though seeing them for the first time.

Soon enough, I didn’t have to say a word to Abu-Ali. Once we’d exchanged pleasantries, he’d make the usual — three orders of hummus with fava beans, one with chickpeas and spicy sauce; one plate of sliced tomato, cucumber, onion, green pepper, and pickles; one plate of falafel balls; and four glass bottles of Coke. He’d arrange it all on a brass tray and I’d carry it back to the office. When we were done eating, they’d all make fun of me for having to bring it back. What they didn’t know was that Abu-Ali always offered to send one of his boys to deliver the food and pick it up, but that I refused, cherishing my few minutes away from the office every day. That was why I also volunteered to go out again at two thirty to get schnitzel sandwiches in a pita from Abu-Ilaz’s stand near the Orient House. I ate mine alone, taking little bites as I walked, ever so slowly, back to the office.

ROTARY TELEPHONE

After lunch was over, Walid left on his so-called house call, and everyone else left soon after. I closed the door, sat down at Walid’s desk, picked up the old yellow receiver, and dialed. I waited for a few rings and then she picked up.

“Mom.”

“Hi, ya habibi, how are you? Inshallah, everything is okay. Please, tell me, how are things?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“I miss you. I’ve been waiting for days for you to call. I was really worried about you, habibi. Inshallah, everything is okay? Did you get your grades yet?”

It had been two weeks since I’d last called home. During our last conversation I had told her that I was waiting for a final grade on a term paper and that once I got it I could start working as a social worker. She knew nothing of the new apartment; as far as she was concerned, I still lived in the dorms. The last time I had been home, more than a month prior, I had told her that I was going to stay in the dorms during exams.

“ Alhamdulillah ,” I said. “Everything’s fine, I got the degree.”

“Congratulations, congratulations,” she said, her voice rising with excitement. “And the grades, with God’s help, they were good?”

“Fine.”

“So you’re happy?” That was her standard question. Are you happy? Are you content? Are you doing well?

“Absolutely, Mom,” I said.

“Congratulations, congratulations.”

I cut her short because I knew what was coming — her asking me when I was coming home. And I knew that, having moved into a new apartment, I had no choice but to disappoint her. Above all else my mother wanted me to graduate and to come home, to live with her so that we could wage our battles together.

“Mom, listen. My grades were really good. My average was up above ninety, which means that I made Dean’s List and they’re going to announce that at the graduation,” I said, preparing her. I could hear the excitement in her voice and I knew that she was already planning to tell all the people she knew about her son’s grades. I am successful, she would be saying. Despite all, I raised a successful son. Up to that point, I’d told the truth. “Mom, listen. One of my teachers, the one I wrote the term paper for, a professor, took me aside this week and suggested that with my grades I should continue on toward a master’s.”

“That sounds great.”

“Yeah, I was really happy. If I do that, I’ll be able to advance much faster and who knows, maybe I’ll even keep on going with the studies from there.”

“Wonderful, I am so happy.”

“Yeah, me, too, but the thing is, this master’s, it’s a prestigious track, one that will allow me to treat patients privately, too, but in order to be accepted I need experience, not just grades. I mean, I have no problem in terms of grades, but I need work experience, too.”

“How much experience do you need?”

“With my grades, I only need two years. But the professor said he’d make sure that they counted my internship as one year, so I’ll be eligible already next year.”

“Great. You know you’ll find work right away in the village. I already spoke to some people and from what I understand there’s a constant shortage of social workers around here. I talked to someone from the local council and she said you could probably start right away.”

“That’s the thing, Mom. I thought the same thing, but when I spoke to the professor, he said that I had to have two years in the same field, in the same place. If I work for the local council in the village then I’d have to do two full years, and I was thinking. .”