A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“That’s just it,” Afifa said excitedly. “I’ve brought another story. It’s time to give Samaher her grade.”

“ Shwoy-shwoy. Kul shi biji fi ’l-nahayeh. B’halmuddeh stanini hon. Bad shwoy bantihi ’l-jalseh u’nu’ud b’il nisbi lal-hakayeh. ” †

He returned to his office, sank pleasurably into his armchair, and declared with a deep sigh:

“I’d be the last to deny that Miller is a solid and independent-minded scholar who’s up on the latest approaches, which may yet — who knows? — turn out to have value. That isn’t what bothers me. The problem is something else. I must say that I don’t understand what Miller is doing in our department. When I look at the bibliographies of his publications — and they’re very impressive, very up-to-date — I can’t help asking, where are the Arabic texts? Where are the original sources? I’m concerned about the systematic absence of such references. Does he think that nothing written by Arabs is relevant to what he writes about them? After all, one has to assume the man knows some Arabic. I don’t mean that he knows it like Akri — none of us do, not having had the good fortune to be born in Iraq. But he must know how to read it, and perhaps even to write and speak a bit. Why, then, doesn’t he do something with this knowledge? Does he find Arabic texts so tedious and uninteresting that he prefers to rely on second- and thirdhand Western translations of them? Perhaps he thinks the Middle East is not the subject of a separate discipline but simply grist for his theoretical mill. He’s even implied as much in his conversations with me. For his purposes, any other area — Southeast Asia or South America or Africa — would do just as well.”

“And suppose it would,” the political scientist said crossly. “What of it?”

“Nothing. It’s perfectly legitimate. The only question is why he needs to be in our department. Here, take this article of his. It appeared in a journal that’s apparently reputable, though it’s one I’ve never heard of. It actually contains an Arabic quotation — full of errors. Have a look…”

He handed it to the associate professor from Bar-Ilan.

“That’s not so serious in itself. But it’s typical of a certain kind of scholarship. You might call it the global approach. I don’t say it isn’t important — but it belongs in a different department, in political science, say, or sociology or international relations. It’s more interdisciplinary, and less appropriate for a historically oriented department like our own. Here in Near Eastern Studies we deal with pedestrian topics like ‘The Political Strategy of the Wakf Party in Egypt Between the Two World Wars,’ not with theoretical models.”

“Just what are you suggesting?” the political scientist asked.

“I’m suggesting that, for Miller’s own good, we return his application to the dean with a request to appoint a new committee, or at least a new chairman for this one. Let him be promoted somewhere else, perhaps in political science. After all, he speaks your language.”

“I’d grab him immediately,” the political scientist said eagerly. “I just don’t have an available slot.”

“Then why not work something out with Sociology? I’ve heard they have a part-time slot in their B.A. honors program. You might look into it. And there’s always the possibility of a position in our foreign-students program. You could create a genuinely interdisciplinary track…”

The secretary felt the ground slipping out from under her. “But what will we do?” she asked in alarm. “Start the whole process all over?”

“Why all over? Miller’s file is complete. It has all his recommendations, or at least all those that will arrive. It simply needs to be transferred to another department.”

The political scientist exploded. “Hold on there! We’ll just lose him that way. He’ll leave us for Beersheba.”

Rivlin clapped his hands in pious distress.

“How unfortunate! Still, it’s not a national tragedy, seeing that Beersheba is part of the state of Israel. I understand your concern. But you have to realize that we in Near Eastern Studies don’t have many positions and have to think of the future. I’m not so young anymore. My retirement is approaching, and some little heart attack or stroke — I had an in-law who recently went in a day — could keep me from reaching it…. And then what? Be left without a North African specialist? I have nothing against Miller. Not that I always know what he’s talking about, but that’s no doubt my own problem. But a promotion would give him tenure and leave our department full up. It’s my obligation to think of a successor for myself. Take our greatest Israeli Orientalist, Professor Tedeschi, who died a week ago in Jerusalem. His mind was at rest, because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that I would carry on in his place. But Miller isn’t really interested in the Arabs. He’d never waste his time like the two of us here — two Orientalists of the old school — on such drudgery as examining old religious court records from Algeria or ink-stained stencils of the harangues of Sudanese imams. That’s the truth. Which isn’t to say that my colleague from Bar-Ilan and myself may not be old fogies for believing that dull spadework is crucial for the advancement of science…”

4.

HIS COLLEAGUE FROM BAR-ILAN joined him in recommending that Miller’s file be transferred from the department. The meeting was adjourned, and Rivlin hurried to invite Afifa into his office.

“Have some cookies,” he said. “Perhaps there’s some juice left, too.”

She shook her lovely head, from which the silk shawl slowly dropped. Without warning, as on her previous visit, she let out a hot, overwrought groan.

Rivlin said nothing, curious to see how deeply her distress stirred him. Cautiously, he offered her a box of tissues. She took one, wiped her eyes with it, and left it soggy with tears on his desk.

“Did Rashid bring you?”

“Rashid!” She waved Samaher’s cousin away with both hands. “He’s too involved with the family. They’re all like that, those Arabs who…”—she groped for the right phrase—“… who lost their villages. They don’t know who they are or where they belong, and they don’t let a body be. He’s always fretting about Samaher, as if she didn’t have a husband to do that. And about that sister in Zababdeh he wants to bring back to Israel…. Even Grandmother, though she cares about that sick Christian, too, told him, ‘Enough, give us some peace! Shu hada? Hada zalameh hatyar u’nus, musn, leysh lay’kun l’halo?’ ” *

“The man’s a jinni,” Rivlin said, half to himself, as if remembering.

Afifa’s big, bright eyes shut unhappily.

“ U’shu ’l-aaher? ” †He switched gently back to Arabic. “ Rah el-habl, ow yimkin inno ma balash b’il-marrah?” ‡

“The doctors were wrong.” She resisted the intimacy of switching to her own language. “We thought having a baby would bring her some peace of mind, so we believed it…”

“Never mind. Min nahitkun el-iman k’tir kwoyis. §But where is Samaher? At home?”

“Yes. She’s still resting. That’s why I’ve brought you the last story, so that you can give her — but really, Professor — her final grade. It’s terribly important to her husband’s father that she get her degree.”

Her broad, clear face moved him to compassion. Pleased with having blocked Miller’s tenure, he thought languorously of bathing in her tub in the Ramadan twilight. He glanced at his watch. “All right, let’s begin,” he said, trying to sound impatient despite his smile.

This story, too, was a strange one. Outwardly, it was an animal fable, one of a series written during World War II by an Egyptian veterinarian named Shauki ibn Zamrak. Invited to Algiers by the Vichy government after the fall of France to serve as a consultant for a new zoo established for the amusement of French children, Ibn Zamrak, who called himself “the Arab Dr. Doolittle,” also wished to educate young Arabs about the animals brought in cages from the interior of Africa. And so he began publishing stories in the local Arabic press, in which, being a broad-minded man, he did not shrink from describing even the most dislikable beasts. His fable of the snake and hyena who became friends, translated into Hebrew by Samaher and typed up, was now held by Afifa — who, putting on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that gave her a rather intellectual look, insisted, as if the Orientalist were illiterate, on reading it to him.