Olga Grjasnowa - All Russians Love Birch Trees

I lived on the top floor of an old Bauhaus building. I had gotten the apartment through my job and had signed the lease, sight unseen. It was an annex on the roof, barely insulated and with bad wiring, but it had two small rooms and a deck. My bedroom windows were open most of the time and looked out onto a two-star hotel. The windows of the hotel were open as well, showing different people doing the same things day after day: beach, shower, sex. Couples never showered together. It was always one waiting for the other to finish. Often the one waiting leaned on the rail of the balcony and looked into my bedroom. Vacation guests have no shame. They stare straight ahead, eager to satisfy their curiosity. Men who travel alone have a tendency to take pictures of women who live alone in their bedrooms. I put a bar stool in front of the deck railing to get a view of the sea. The planes were flying so low that I could’ve thrown tennis balls at them. But mostly I preferred to aim those at the hotel guests. I sat on my deck or my bed, smoking pot, unsure how long I would stay. Maybe forever, maybe just a few months. Decks in Tel Aviv were worth a lot, and the neon sign of the hotel at least offered a point of reference.

Work was cozy. My employer was a German organization that kept up with Israel’s political situation and supported a few peaceful NGOs. In its Hebrewized English version, our mission was called Arab-Hugging . The organization — like many others — had perfectly integrated itself into the conflict. If the war was over tomorrow, we’d all be out of a job. No more bragging about living in a war zone to potential sexual partners in the bars of New York, London, Paris, or Berlin.

The team was small and no one worked particularly hard. Our day-to-day was divided as follows: read the newspaper, answer e-mails, drink coffee, e-mails, lunch, coffee, e-mails, online newspapers, kill the remaining hours. If I was actually working for a change, I translated correspondence and contracts that dealt with social injustice and the conflict . Then I went out to the street, sat down in my favorite cafe on Shenkin Street and ordered freshly squeezed orange juice. My coworkers always had lunch together, but I avoided them and at some point they accepted that I’d rather be on my own. The few lunches I’d joined had been quiet exchanges of well-thought-out opinions on protests and the latest political developments in between bites of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.

A translator was the last thing this organization needed. In truth, a good computer program would have been more than sufficient for their needs. But of course I didn’t mention that. My skills as an interpreter were needed only on the rare occasions that we had visits from German guests or requests from the head of the office, and even then I never had to prepare.

The assignments as an interpreter were nice field trips to the West Bank, past piles of trash and unsupervised children. I constantly had to ask the kids in Arabic for the way, because our driver, who had immigrated only two months ago from Siberia, was using a Russian-speaking navigation system and could read neither the Arabic nor the Hebrew street signs. Seen through the windows of an air-conditioned bulletproof jeep, the West Bank was beautiful. Even a bit like Greece, with the hilly terraced landscape, the olive trees, and the bumpy roads. After a while, though, we passed the deserted checkpoints, road signs in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. Those always came shortly before the Jewish settlements, which were as alien in the landscape as a UFO. In general, these work trips had the feel of a scientific excursion to an amusement park.

Mostly we drove to Nazareth. My colleagues — leftist white Israelis — were full of praise for Nazareth. They always said gorgeous town and amazing food , but that was just their political correctness kicking in to keep up the good mood. Nazareth was one big disappointment: a small town with lots of problems and a big street market. It also boasted a gigantic church with a much higher spiritual than artistic value.

From time to time I accompanied a German delegate to her meetings in Jerusalem, which took place either in some random committee of the Knesset or in a hotel lobby. There I whispered in her ear whatever her colleagues had just said in English about the weather. With my next breath, I whispered a potential English answer into my delegate’s ear — for example, a compliment on the air-conditioning. In almost all cases, my delegate took my suggestions and repeated them in a horrible accent. But at least it seemed authentic that way. Often I was haunted by the voices and facial expressions of my delegates for the rest of the day. I was sure that Windmill had intended this job as his revenge. But for the time being, I was content.

The asphalt smelled of rain and was just as gray as the sky. I was waiting for the bus to Jerusalem. On Friday night everything shut down — the Shabbat was holy and no work was permitted, without exception. The seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death , it says somewhere in the Torah, if I recall correctly. Because everything would lurch to a halt in an hour, the Tel Aviv bus station was packed. The rain was really pouring down by now and travelers pushed into the humid concourse. Across from me was a young woman in uniform, painting her nails. On the chair next to her lay a small purse and a machine gun. To her right was a man in royal blue shorts wearing a white yarmulke that was affixed to his ginger curls by two big hair clips. Behind me, two Thais of indeterminable age were having a loud conversation. The bus pulled up and all of us got on. The air inside the bus was hot and stale, the windows fogged from the inside. As on most Israeli buses the mood was tense. Everybody watched everybody. Women and children were mostly innocuous, as were older men. It was mostly the young guys who might strap on a bomb. Every hint of a paunch was suspicious.

On the seats in front of me a couple in uniform sat down. She was taller than he, blond, slender, and meticulously made up. He had an alert, intelligent gaze and a heavy body, which he maneuvered gracefully along the aisle. She laughed at the little stories that he whispered to her in Russian. After every comma, they kissed. I was so jealous that my heart ached. I couldn’t remember ever laughing that hard at anything Elisha told me, and for that, I felt I’d done him an injustice.

They were waiting in front of the bus terminal. Ori ran toward me. He hugged me and gave me a brief kiss on the mouth. There was a lighthearted and trusting quality about him, that of somebody who had not yet been betrayed. Maybe it was his age. He was twenty-two, had just finished his military service, and was under the impression that life meant well for him.

“So glad you could make it,” Ori said. “This is my sister, Tal.”

Tal extended her hand and I shook it a little longer than necessary.

Ori took my bag, slung it over his shoulder, and waved over a cab. I kept looking back over to Tal. She had long dark-blond curls and green-brown eyes that reminded me of sandpaper. And in her face I saw something that was in mine, too, and it didn’t bode well.

We ate in the old town. En route we saw Orthodox Jews dressed up in shiny coats and furred hats for Shabbat.

The restaurant was big and simply furnished, light marble tiles on the floor and walls, a lot of flaked-off fake gold and small plastic flower arrangements on the tables.

Our waiter was a scraggy man with a thick mustache and golden canine teeth. Reluctantly, he wiped off the table with a not-quite-clean cloth and then threw menus down in front of us. When I thanked him in Arabic and asked about the homemade lemonade, his eyes lit up. Ori and Tal were just as surprised as the waiter. He asked whether I was a 1948 Arab — a Palestinian who had remained in Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. I said that I wasn’t. His long, bony, reddish face looked at me questioningly.