Sayed Kashua - Dancing Arabs

My father says by the time I was four everyone knew I’d grow up to be a car thief and a junkie. He says that on holidays, when the Tira delinquents stole the fanciest cars, I’d sneak out of the house and wait for them at the entrance to the village with all the hashashin and the worst kids, to cheer the drag racers. My father says the holidays became a nightmare because he spent the whole time chasing me up and down the streets.

My mother says that every Saturday, when she went to visit her parents, she’d tie my foot to something so I couldn’t run away. She says that otherwise I’d have run off to chase cats, turn over garbage cans, knock on doors, and ring every doorbell along the way. She says I was the reason my father had to sell half a dunam of land and buy a car. Cars were expensive back then, but they had no choice; they had to find a reasonable way to take me to the pediatrician in Kfar Sava. Mother says the first bus ride was enough for her. When the driver stopped the bus and told us to get off because of something I’d done, she cried.

My older brother’s body is full of scars. My parents point to a scar on his stomach and say, “That’s from when you tried to operate on his stomach.” They point to some large ones on his legs and tell me they’re from when I decided to attach his left foot to his right leg and vice versa.

My parents say I broke three new television sets, and they had to buy new dishes almost every week. I broke the locks on the kitchen cabinets, I stopped up the toilet with sand, I slaughtered the neighbors’ chickens, I put ants in my cousins’ eyes, and I burned down half the mango grove. I had a complete stock of slingshots, but instead of stones I’d use nails, aiming at cars or at people who happened to be walking by.

My parents stopped going to relatives’ weddings because of me. They hardly slept in those days, for fear of what I was liable to do at night. People felt sorry for them. Everyone figured there was something wrong with me.

Nothing frightened me. I wasn’t afraid of kids or adults, belts or snakes. When they hit me I’d pretend to cry, and I’d apologize, promising it was the last time, and within two minutes something else would break, another calamity would happen. That was my biggest problem: I knew how to put on a good act. I’d writhe in pain and pretend I was dying, so they’d feel sorry for me and let me go.

My parents tried everything. They tried being nice, being tough, hitting me with a belt, with a stick, with their hands, spanking me, hitting me on the back, on the legs. They tried regular doctors and pills and sheikhs and medicine men, but when all is said and done, it was the bump on my head that did the trick.

It happened when our neighbor, Aisha, and her husband, Abu-Ibrahim, got divorced. That day she brought all her things from her house to our yard — a mattress and blankets, pillows and clothes — and waited for the truck. There was a whole pile of soft things there. When I saw the pile, I climbed up on building blocks I’d brought over from a construction site, grabbed hold of the water pipes, and used them to hoist myself up onto the roof. Then I tried to jump onto Aisha’s pile of bedding and clothes. I missed and cracked my skull. They thought I was dead.

Father’s shirt was soaked in blood, as he and Abu-Yakkan from the grocery store rushed me to the hospital. No one who saw me lying there on the stones, with the blood and everything, thought I’d make it. But me, I was like a monkey, back on my feet after a few days.

My parents say I didn’t remember hitting my head or anything else that I had done before that. They say the bump on my head turned me into a human being. I’d broken my skull, but my brain was intact. Lucky for me I had a head as hard as stone. For two days, I lay there unconscious, but when I came to I was a different person — a wonderful child, polite and quiet and smart. On my very first evening home from the hospital I put on my pajamas and brushed my teeth, and at six o’clock I kissed my parents good night.

The day I saw Jews up close for the first time I wet my pants. Mother was furious, because she’d asked us to keep our clothes clean. She’d dressed us in our best outfits that morning, because she knew that when she got home from work in the evening she’d barely have enough time to cook before the guests arrived. So she’d dressed me up and sent me off to kindergarten.

The kindergarten teachers had decided to take us to the soccer field that day. They brought sunflower seeds for themselves, sat on the bleachers, and started chatting. The kids romped all over the field, fell down, and played ball. The girls played in the sand and threw bags of sand and little stones at one another. The teachers went on cracking sunflower seeds and relaxing, and from time to time they’d pounce on one of the kids and yell at him.

I knew I shouldn’t join the games. I wasn’t going to get my clothes dirty, not today. I was wearing blue overalls and a white shirt underneath. White gets dirty very quickly. I knew it was my best outfit, my new one. If I got it dirty, they wouldn’t let me see the Jews who worked with my father.

I needed to pee, but I knew I could never pull down my overalls in front of the teachers and the rest of the kids. I saw other kids doing it, but I couldn’t. I held back a little longer. It started hurting. I never cried so hard in my life. I had wet my pants. I couldn’t hide it. Everyone saw.

One of the kids started laughing and ran off to tell the teacher. She didn’t spank me, because she felt sorry for me. I cried hard, I screamed, and I rubbed my eyes with my fists. To this day I can feel the tears and the runny nose, the stinging in my eyes and the wet lower part of my overalls, rubbing against my feet and making it hard for me to walk.

One of the teachers, a teacher’s aide in fact, dragged me by the hand back to school. She held her hand all the way out, to keep me as far from her as possible, and her expression was one of sheer disgust. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she told me. “You’re a big boy already.” My arm hurt. She took me to my older brother’s class, the first grade, and pulled him out of class. All the kids heard her say he’d have to take me home because I’d wet my pants.

My screaming grew louder as my brother grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him. He was happy to get out of school early. He laughed at me, glad I’d gotten into trouble. “The Jews from Father’s work will see you.” He laughed. “Mother will kill you.” As if I didn’t know.

I don’t remember whether I saw the Jews that day or not, but I don’t think Mother spanked me. I think she restrained herself. All I remember is that after they left, she unwrapped the present they brought. It was chocolates. I remember her saying: “Is that all they brought? And we’ve been preparing for a solid week!”

Five years later, when I was in fourth grade, the Hebrew teacher came to class with an ajnabi, a Westerner, a stranger — blond, tall, good-looking, not like us. The teacher translated the stranger’s Hebrew. He was from Seeds of Peace. We were in Seeds of Peace too from now on, and we’d be meeting with Jews. They’d come to us, and we’d go to them.

We liked the idea. Jews meant days off from school. And the teachers would behave better. They wouldn’t hit us, and they’d smile all the time. The Jews had more women teachers. We only had one, and she was old. The Jews were coming from Kfar Sava.

The Hebrew teacher told each of us who our Jewish friend would be. Our class was bigger than the Jewish one, so sometimes two kids had to share. I got Nadav Epstein. We were supposed to take our friend home.