Sayed Kashua - Dancing Arabs

On Independence Day, my wife didn’t feel well, and I took her to the hospital. Camouflage efforts that had lasted for years were shattered in an instant. The soldiers at the entrance to the village asked me to stop by the side of the road. Me they’re stopping? The youngest Arab ever to learn to pronounce a p ? I have almost no accent. You can’t tell by looking at me. I’ve got sideburns and Coke-bottle sunglasses. Even the Arabs mistake me for a Jew. I even speak Hebrew with the housekeeping staff. It must be my wife, I think to myself. She’s somewhat Arab. Sometimes, when we go to a shopping mall or places like that, I hope people will assume she’s Moroccan or Iraqi, and that I’m a western Jew who likes eastern women.

The soldier asks for our papers, and I tell him I used to have a Jewish girlfriend, I studied with Jews, and all my friends are Jews. I know all the Jewish expressions, even army slang. I shut up, and hand him my vehicle license and my driver’s license. Cars pass me, some with flags and some without. The people in the cars look like they’re sorry for me, and I feel so ridiculous with my sideburns and glasses. On the radio, the military station is blaring Hebrew songs, and I feel like such an idiot for believing I’d done everything to make sure I didn’t look suspicious.

I hurry to get past the barricade, turn off the radio, and mutter a few swearwords at the police, at the Jews, at the State, at Tira, and at my wife. I decide I shouldn’t be taking it out on her. Poor thing. She must be in pain, and the last thing she needs now is for me to be carrying on. I’ll be good.

I ask how she’s doing and she says everything’s fine.

There are only Arabs in the emergency room. Women who seem older than they are, with head scarves and plastic thongs, drag themselves through the corridors. Sometimes they bite on the edge of their scarves. They seem lost, not knowing where to go. Why the hell do they have to look like that? Why do they even go out of the house? And why are those plastic thongs still being sold anyway?

Just don’t let anyone think I’m one of them or that I’m like them. Just don’t let them call out my wife’s name when it’s her turn, or announce it on the PA system. Sometimes, when that happens, I don’t get up right away, as if it isn’t really my name, or as if it might be my name but they’ve copied it wrong in reception. So wrong in fact that it took on a new religion and nationality.

My wife doesn’t know the first thing about any of that. She doesn’t give it a second thought, which surprises and annoys me. She’s capable of talking to me in Arabic even inside a crowded elevator or at the entrance to the mall, when we’re being processed through the metal detector. She plays with the baby in Arabic in public places. I don’t understand why she insists. The baby doesn’t understand a word anyway, whether it’s in Arabic or in Hebrew.

My wife goes in to be examined and I wait as far away as possible, at the end of the farthest bench. I take out a book in Hebrew that I keep for situations like this, and start reading. It’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew, not just any book. If a doctor happens to pass by, he’s bound to be impressed. And I don’t open the book at the beginning but toward the end. The last thing I need is for them to get the impression that I just started reading it now. I stare at the book, not only to conceal my identity but also to avoid eye contact with the others. That’s all I need now — for some creep to arrive, someone who went to school with me once, in a button-down shirt and clutching his keys, his mobile phone, and his cigarettes all in the same hand. All I need is for him to decide on a sudden display of emotion and kiss me. I look down, and from time to time I cross my legs and turn the pages.

“Excuse me,” someone addresses me. She’s young, dark-skinned, and fat. Behind her are two more women. They all look the same. Must be sisters. Their religious garb hides some of their ugliness. The woman stresses the words wildly: “She is in a birth condition,” she says, and I don’t know where to hide.

What should I tell them now? Maybe I should answer in Hebrew. I do that sometimes. Arabs turn to me in Hebrew, and I answer them in Hebrew, because how should I know they’re Arabs? True, you can tell, but if they didn’t recognize me, maybe I could pretend not to recognize them either. Then again, with those three, you can’t miss it. They’re Arabs from head to toe. Maybe I ought to give my “I haven’t the faintest idea” shrug? Because I really don’t have the faintest idea what they want from me. Why me? Why not someone in a white coat? Is it the book? Did they think I was a doctor on his break?

I lower my voice and whisper to them in Arabic that they should speak with the nurse, and I point toward the nurses’ station.

“Ahhh,” the younger one says, and shouts out in Hebrew, “Because she is in a birth condition!”

I can feel my face on fire, and I try to conceal it with my book. When my wife comes out, I’ll murder her. She’s the only reason I find myself in this situation. As if I have the strength to deal it right now. When she comes out I’m going to make such a face that she’ll never dare take me to a hospital again.

The road to Tira stretches between two rows of cypress trees. They run close together, two tight rows. Then, all of a sudden the cypresses disappear, the fields are divided by a straight horizontal line, and beyond those are the unruly rows of houses, uneven and menacing. Bakeries, restaurants, vegetable stores, garages, spare parts outlets, watchmakers. Everything looks cheap and crowded and empty.

The Jews driving through Tira on their way to Tsur Yigal and Kokhav Yair don’t stop to shop anymore. There’s a war on. Some of them are scared, and some are getting their own back. So much of Tira was built to cater to them, but they’ve run away. You don’t see them anymore, not even on Saturdays. You don’t see their women with the short shorts or the girls with the tube tops. For years they overran the village every Saturday, so you could hardly move. Only the store owners would come out of their homes on weekends. Everyone else stayed out of the way. The older kids would come to the souk to watch the Jewish girls. Sometimes I’d do the rounds myself. The Jews have all disappeared now, with their shouting, their plastic bags, their potbellies, their cars, their keys, their hats, and their sandals. Now, at least, there are no more traffic jams.

We don’t need them anymore. The people in Tira have become rich enough. They’ll get through this war, they won’t starve. They build another floor, and another, and they buy expensive cars, jeeps, and trucks and computers for their kids. They send their kids to extracurricular classes too. Some people even send their kids to Jewish extracurriculars. And one neighbor even built a swimming pool outside his home and bought his younger son a Ferrari convertible. It’s all thanks to the Saturday earnings. Some people in the village had only worked Saturdays, and that was enough for them to live like kings. Now it’s only the Jewish druggies and pushers who dare come to Tira to shop.

The Hebrew textbooks still speak of the small village. One of the questions goes like this: “What do the people in your village do for a living?” and the right answer is still: “They’re farmers.”

People continue to get married and to have children. The wife of my older brother — the one who’s named Sam for the SAM missiles — is expecting. My younger brother, the one who’s two years younger than me, has bought tiles for his bathroom. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll finish his shell and get married within a year. There’s one shell left.