Sayed Kashua - Dancing Arabs

When I get myself a lover, I won’t know where to take her. All the places I’ve thought of seem too dangerous, too visible. There are Arabs in all the cafés and all the bars, and working in just about every restaurant in town. Maybe someone will recognize her? Maybe someone has seen me sometime in the past? If I can work up the courage, I’ll take my lover to the Jerusalem forest. We’ll find a quiet spot or park the car and walk down to one of the side paths. We’ll sit there, talking and looking at the view. When it gets dark, we can make out in the car. Just once, I’ve got to make out in a car. Maybe she’ll bring her husband’s BMW. Maybe he has a Volvo. But me, I’d never risk going into the forest. What if they stole my car? It’d take us five hours to walk back to town. And what if we’re killed by some Arab? Nobody will feel bad about the mistake, not even the Arabs. They’ll say it’s an omen. God wanted to expose the criminals and punish them. Better die by hanging in the groves of Tel Mond than get shot as a Jew by mistake — and with a lover, no less. How would they be able to tell we were Arabs, sitting in the forest and making out? I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be wearing a veil.

It’s not that I’m good-looking. My wife says I’m okay. She says I have no neck and my head is too big. She says I’ve got to stand up straight when I walk, because it could add five centimeters to my height. At the pharmacy she bought me a device that’s supposed to support your back, but it bent out of shape within a week. I’m not fat, but my cheeks are too big. I look in the mirror and see the bulges I should get rid of. They really are ugly, and no matter how much weight I lose they won’t go away. My wife says it has to do with the shape of my skull, and nothing is going to change it. I try not to eat too much, and if I do, I try to throw up as much as possible. I never leave the house, even just to the grocery store, without throwing up first. My wife says my proportions are all wrong. My body’s thin and my head’s enormous. I’ve got to gain some weight.

I need a lover quick. How much longer can I last with the same woman? I’m not to blame. They keep talking on TV about the chemical substance of love that stops working after four years with the same person. So according to science, I’ve been walking around for two and a half years without the chemical substance. Sometimes I think that’s why I throw up.

My wife says that unless I change I’ll never find a lover. I’m too lazy. I don’t even take the trouble to empty an ashtray. I’m too immersed in myself to be able to invest in a lover. “You’ve got to invest,” she says, but I don’t know what that means. And she explains, “It means to invest emotionally, but you’re not capable of that. As far as you’re concerned, anything goes. Ahalan wa-sahalan. I wish you had a lover. She’d suffer like hell. At least there’d be one more person who knew what you’re like. Maybe she would help me with the baby and the house.”

Sometimes my wife says I have a good heart. I’m the kindest person in the world, she says. And sometimes she says I’m as mean as they come, so mean I have no idea what love is all about, and the best thing I could do would be to stay drunk. Now she remembers how I seemed to her back at the beginning. How she liked me then. How I used to go to the supermarket on Fridays to buy tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers, to make salad and fry cutlets for her. Now she laughs at herself, for ever believing I really was different.

My father always says I have no love in my heart, that I’m not made for love. My wife agrees with him. She’s never met anyone as indifferent and inconsiderate as I am. She says I don’t even see the other person. As far as I’m concerned, I’m in the center, and the whole universe revolves around me. She says she hates me, that I have no idea how much she hates me. She’d love for them to find I had cancer, so I’d die as soon as possible. She can’t stand the sight of me anymore. I’m the most repulsive thing in her life. She wishes I’d die — amen! She won’t wait long after I die. She’ll remarry quickly. I was the one who made her forget the joy of living. I destroyed her, I shattered her, I turned her into a depressive old lady in her twenties. If only I’d have a traffic accident and get killed. She doesn’t want me to wind up disabled. She wants it to be final, wants me to die on the spot. Actually she wouldn’t mind if it took me two days to die. Quite the contrary, she’d be pleased if I suffered. Or I could be unconscious, and she’d stand at my hospital bedside, cry, and hold my hand as all the people came to see me for the last time, but when we were alone she’d be happy. She’d be sure I knew how happy she was. She would give a voiceless chuckle and whisper in my ear, “It’s what you deserve, you sonofabitch.”

How Samia cried when we slept together the first time. The sheet in the dorm room was covered in blood, and she didn’t stop crying the rest of the night. She sat on the bed, her knees pulled up, leaning her head on them between her arms, and cried. I was sure she’d cry herself to death. I could tell that something horrifying was about to happen, and there was nothing I could do. I just sat there facing her, helpless, frightened, and kept promising I’d marry her if she wanted. I was prepared to marry her then and there. So what if I was nineteen years old?

She can’t leave now. After losing her virginity. They’ll kill her, they’ll kill me. Nobody will ever marry her. If it isn’t me, there’ll never be anyone else. Women without their hymen intact are kicked out. What a disgrace. Damaged goods, they have to be discarded. I wouldn’t do that to anyone. I’d never let her suffer on my account. I was the one who did it to her, and I’ll take responsibility.

“It was a black day,” my wife says. “God, what an idiot I was. Damn the circumstances that made me stick it out with you. You animal. Did I say animal? Even an animal has more feelings than you do. I hope you die. I hope I finally get rid of you. There’s no point making an effort to love you anymore.” And again she curses her parents and her family. They’re the reason she can’t just dump me. If she had the strength, she’d kill me. She’d grab me by the neck and never let go. She lashes out and slaps the air by way of showing me what she means. She’d like to bang my head against the wall again and again till it broke. She says I have no idea how much she hates me. Even just looking at me makes her sick. “I hate you, I hate you! You dog. You animal.”

Sometimes I think I ought to just throw my clothes in the car and take a few books I read long ago, books I know I used to love, though I can’t remember why. I’d fix the car radio and drive off. For a few days in Eilat maybe. I’ve never been to Eilat. If I had the courage to cross the border, I’d go to the Sinai. And if it weren’t for the baby, I’d never come back.

When I grew older, I realized I’d been duped. An Arab girl’s hymen wasn’t as holy and pure as people said it was. Samia had been doing a number on me. She’d been taking advantage of my naïveté. She’d been exploiting the fact that I didn’t know much and filling my head with honor-or-death ideas. Those were years of being afraid, of hiding out. Sometimes I went through an entire night in Nahlaot without sleeping a wink, even though nobody in that neighborhood knew me anyhow. I was sure they’d find me, and once they did it would be the end of me. I never left the door unlocked and never slept with the window open. Not that it would have saved me. If anyone had wanted to get to me, nothing would have stopped them. But I had to try to stop anyone who was likely to arrive on the scene. I had to be there to shout it out: “I’m willing to marry her right away!”