Sayed Kashua - Let It Be Morning

My older brother decides to go to services in the mosque. “What for?” his wife asks. “You can pray here. That’s a better idea. Who knows what could happen?” But my brother is adamant. “That’s precisely why. Because of the ‘who knows?’ At least if anything does happen, I’ll know I’ve fulfilled my duties to Allah.”

My mother stands up and pleads with him, “Pray at home, for God’s sake. Why leave the house now, in the dark?” But my brother turns a deaf ear to his wife and his mother. He takes his sandals and leaves. I lock the door behind him. My mother whispers a prayer for his safety, holding out her hands heavenward.

“Nothing will happen to him,” my father says. “The mosque is practically next door. What could possibly happen?”

It’s amazing how just a few days ago these were the noisiest hours in the village, the time when everyone would be outdoors. Loud music from cars and weddings was a permanent feature of our summer nights. Who could even hear the muezzin at such times? Nobody, despite the state-of-the-art loudspeakers on the minarets of the five mosques.

“I’m afraid he’ll get arrested,” my mother says.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Who’s going to arrest him? What’s got into you?” Father tells her off.

“How can I tell?” she says. “They keep an eye on anyone who steps inside a mosque. Maybe they’ll have a raid and take him too.”

My older brother’s wife grows increasingly agitated as she listens to this. “Of course,” my father says. “Your son is Bin Laden. Stop this nonsense right now. Nobody’s going to arrest anybody. He doesn’t even have a beard. What’s got into you? He’ll be right back.”

“Actually, he does look kind of suspicious. He hasn’t had a shave in four days,” my younger brother says with a chuckle.

I can still feel the wounds caused by this afternoon’s stoning; the scenes with the neighbors and the children and the crowd outside our house linger on. I feel a strong need to avenge myself, a strange urge to restore my dignity, which I lost in a flash. But what can I do? If only I had a weapon. I wish I had a gun. I wish I were connected to one of the gangs. Then nobody would dare come near me or my family. But I’d never pull it off. I’d never even be admitted into one of those groups. I hate myself now for being unable to prove I’m strong, frightening, a man with pride.

My father turns on the radio again. There’s a Head & Shoulders commercial in Arabic, followed by Chevrolet, Ship of the Desert. The newscast begins with coverage of the Egyptian president’s state visit in the south of the republic and a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a few new food factories. Then they report on the president’s wife’s tour of a Cairo hospital for children with cancer. The Voice of Cairo reports that the president congratulated the Palestinians and the Israelis on their fervent efforts to put an end to the crisis and expressed his appreciation for the historic role of the U.S. president in this process. Next came the recorded voice of the president: “Both sides have had enough bloodshed. We are on the threshold of a new era, an era of peace and cooperation, an era that promises peace for our children. Never again will they know the suffering that our own generation has endured.”

My younger brother laughs. Father says that on the day when the Voice of Cairo broadcasts the truth, we’ll know that the East is about to become the strongest empire in the universe. My father spins the dial rapidly to the news in Hebrew. It’s eight P.M. and there’s a special broadcast, longer than usual. On Israel TV too they’re talking about serious progress in the negotiations, and the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers can be heard complimenting one another in English.

What’s going on here damn it? Is this for real, the news we’re listening to? My older brother, knowing how tense things are, knocks softly on the door and announces, “It’s me,” to keep from frightening us. His wife rushes to the door and locks it again behind him. He says there’s nothing to be afraid of, there’s nobody outside and we might as well open the door to let some air in. “Do you want to die of lack of oxygen?” he asks. But the door stays shut.

I move to the kitchen and light up a cigarette. My younger brother joins me, gesturing to me to pass the cigarette over to him. He studies Father, and once he sees him immersed in conversation, takes my cigarette and draws deeply. He coughs and hands the cigarette right back to me. Father turns in the direction of the kitchen and my younger brother chastises me: “You’re going to choke us all to death with your smoking. Enough of your cigarettes!” He chuckles.

Even though things in the village have never been this bad, at least not since the war of 1948, news of the peace that’s about to prevail helps us keep calm. At least we know that nothing on the scale of a world war is about to descend on us. Maybe everything that’s been happening is actually nothing more than a tactic because of the efforts to arrive at a complete cessation of the tensions with the Palestinians. Maybe it’s really intended to prevent the Palestinian organizations that don’t believe in negotiating with the Israelis from undermining the progress of the peace process with some terrorist attack that could lead to a complete turnabout in the political position of the average Israeli. Maybe damn it, the Israeli side didn’t actually intend for the power and the water to be disconnected and it’s still just a stupid mistake. The power cut stops the water supply too, after all. All it takes, in fact, is one bulldozer or tank to hit the power line and this is what happens.

My mother is the first to go into my room. She lines up three mattresses on the floor. The children are using the double bed. She returns to the living room and announces that she’s going to try to take a nap. My older brother’s wife gets up too, says, “Good night,” and joins my mother. “I’ll go to sleep too,” my wife says, but before heading for my parents’ bedroom, she joins me in the kitchen and asks if I’m hungry yet. “No,” I tell her. She looks at me now the way she hasn’t looked at me in a long time. “Good night,” she whispers, and I feel that if there weren’t so many people around, she might even have given me a kiss. I feel the blood rush to my cheeks and my face becomes flushed. “Good night,” I reply, and keep my eyes fixed on her until she reaches the bedroom.

My father and my older brother enter the children’s room. My older brother stretches out in his boyhood bed, and my father uses mine. My younger brother quickly takes the opportunity to ask me for a cigarette and sits down next to me at the kitchen table. I reach out and fiddle with the saltshaker, an item that has never been replaced. My parents never bought a new saltshaker because there was never any need to. My mother always put a few grains of rice into it with the salt to soak up the moisture, so the salt didn’t become lumpy.

“You know,” my younger brother says, “normally I’d be out in the streets of Tel Aviv now with my friends. Whenever we finish an exam we go out drinking. We do the most drinking after exams,” he whispers, and turns around to check if the coast is clear. He continues whispering, even though I myself can barely hear him. “Tel Aviv is an amazing city, I tell you. After exams, we don’t just have beer the way we usually do. We go completely crazy. I’d waste four hundred shekels on booze right now if I could. I’d go for the pricey whiskey or Jägermeister. Do you like Jäger? It’s great with lemon, you know. I don’t really understand why you came back here. I don’t understand you. I’d never come back. No way. I’d stay in Tel Aviv for the rest of my life, or run away to some country in Europe, or to Canada. The Canadians are easy with visas. I’d marry someone local and become a full citizen. Sure, they have their xenophobes and the anti-Muslims, but I’m telling you, from what my Christian friends tell me, the ones whose brothers emigrated there, what they call racism in London, say, is about the same as what we would call left-wing opinions here. It’s a whole different world. The problem with London is that the pubs close at about eight P.M. I don’t get it. If I want a night out on the town with some friends, we only get started at about eleven or twelve.