A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“Not one student, Professor,” Rashid said. “Three. A person might think no one joined the GSS without first taking a course with you…”

And so on a gray, cold, misty morning, a big old jeep pulled up in front of the Rivlins’ building on the French Carmel. It was still full of hunting gear, including a harness seat, a large flashlight, some nets, and a partridge snare with a long, shiny knife in it. Although it had a sturdy top, Rashid covered the Orientalist with a woolen army blanket. “The canvas,” he observed, “isn’t windproof.”

The weather forecast had been taken seriously, for the road leading up to Jerusalem was almost empty. The snowflakes drifting down on the large cemetery at the city’s entrance were no sign that the storm was letting up. Unplowed snow caked the city’s streets, and Rashid shifted into four-wheel drive at Rivlin’s request, though even without it the jeep’s big wheels crunched easily over the white powder.

They talked little on the way. The blanket made Rivlin pleasantly drowsy, and Rashid, concentrating on driving an unfamiliar car in bad weather, was uncommunicative. He inquired briefly about Hannah Tedeschi, wanted to know how important the husband had been whose face he had covered with a sheet, and then lapsed into silence. He did not even respond when, as they started the ascent to the capital, Rivlin awoke and praised his double-brided production of The Dybbuk. Nor did he mention Samaher. The Rabbi of Miropol’s exorcism, the Orientalist thought with a grin, had worked. The jinni had been banished — and not only onstage…

Yet once he had killed the motor upon reaching the Civil Administration building in north Jerusalem, the Arab abandoned his reserve. Sitting with Rivlin in the jeep, in teeth-chattering cold amid European-sized snowbanks, he explained the bureaucratic obstacles that kept his sister from returning to her native village with her children. The officials, he said, acted as if they were dealing with an intercontinental border. And why? Solely to protect the rights of the sick father, who might miss his sons and complain to the Red Cross that he wasn’t allowed to visit them. “How odd,” Rivlin said. “I never would have imagined they’d worry about such a thing.”

“They don’t. It’s just an excuse to turn my sister down. You know Ra’uda’s husband, professor. He’s a sick old Christian who eats from a soldier’s mess kit. Does he look the type to complain?”

“But what should I say to them?”

“That you’ll be responsible.”

“For what?”

“For no one complaining.”

“How can I be responsible for anyone’s complaints?” Rivlin smiled and pulled the blanket back up over him. “I can’t always keep myself from complaining.”

But Rashid hadn’t come this far in order to back down.

“You could at least promise — to the GSS man, say, who was your student — to handle the human-rights organizations.”

“Human-rights organizations?” Astonished by the sophistry that went on inside the white building visible through the fogged windshield, he regarded the agitated messenger. “Don’t tell me the GSS is afraid of the Israel Civil Liberties Union!”

“They’re afraid of whoever they want to be afraid of.”

Yet on this snowy morning at the Civil Administration Bureau, not only was no one waiting in line, no one was waiting to receive anyone either. Even his old student had chosen to stay in bed. Rivlin, worn-out from the drive, followed Rashid down a long corridor in which the Arab knew every door. He tried opening them one by one while asking where everyone had disappeared to — which might have gone on forever had not a woman cried out a surprised hello. “What did I tell you, professor?” Rashid crowed. “They all know you here. I’ll bet that lady was a student of yours, too.”

The woman, who was roly-poly and henna-haired, came hurrying toward them up the dark corridor. Although Rivlin had forgotten her name, he was quite sure she had once taught introductory Arabic in Haifa. “What brings you here in a snowstorm?” she inquired. Pointing at Rashid by way of explanation, he was invited to warm up in her room. This did not look like a government office. With a sofa upholstered in flowery fabric and a large flowerpot with a dwarf tree that would, the woman said, bear fruit in the spring, it looked more like a comfortable residence.

Rivlin let his weary body drop onto the sofa with an odd relish, toasting his feet by the mock flames of an electric fireplace while signaling Rashid — who, standing in the doorway, seemed to be debating whether the woman could be of use — to join him. He now recalled, watching her put up a kettle to boil in a kitchenette, that she was an Egyptian Jew who had learned her Arabic in the streets of Cairo. He grimaced with the almost physically painful effort to remember her name, but in the end had to ask her for it apologetically. “Georgette,” she replied, wagging a finger. “How could you forget such a nice name?” Rivlin clutched his head.” “Of course,” he said. “My mind just doesn’t work well when it’s snowing so early in the day.”

The snow was piling up in thick, heavy flakes on the windowsill. Georgette, it turned out, had heard of Tedeschi’s death and of the conference that brought Rivlin to Jerusalem. While she had never studied with the Jerusalem polymath, she had had the greatest respect for him and was thinking of attending the closing session to hear the eulogies and meet old friends, some of whom she began discussing with Rivlin.

The Orientalist, however, mindful of his mission, was more interested in what Georgette did. The answer was that, having changed not her profession but only her students, she still taught Arabic. Yet her salary was better, for she was now paid both to improve the Arabic of the young GSS investigators and to teach them her linguistic methods for detecting lies in that language. A divorcée with children living abroad, she was so devoted to her work that she sometimes slept in her office. Hence, its resemblance to a private apartment.

Rashid just stared at her.

They chatted for a while before Rivlin disclosed why he had come and asked Rashid to produce his documents so as to be advised by Georgette as to who in the GSS might be suitably softhearted. Flattered and amused to be asked, she leafed through a packet of Palestinian birth certificates and tattered old Israeli passbooks in which Rashid and Ra’uda were listed as brother and sister. When she was done she said that although she was no expert on such things, she imagined that to turn little Palestinians into Israelis more was needed than a mother’s longing for her native village.

“Such as?”

An intelligent woman, she stopped to think. Did any of his sister’s children, she asked Rashid, have a chronic disease or rare health problem that called for treatment in Israel? A medical reason, she explained to the Orientalist, who nodded while stretching his hands out to the electric flames, was better than an emotional one, perhaps because the Jews thought their curative powers made the Arabs more trusting and less dangerous….

An enigmatic smile played over Rashid’s lips.

Rivlin turned to him. “Well?”

He shrugged. As far as he knew, both of his nephews in Zababdeh were healthy. If there were no other choice, however, he would try to find something wrong with them.

“The problems people have,” Rivlin sighed as the messenger gently shut the door and headed for the ground floor to obtain application forms for medical treatment in Israel. He took another sip of his tea.

Georgette shot him a distrustful look. “What do you want us to do, open the gates to all of them? Don’t we have enough of them already?”