A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

And so Jamal bin el-Maluh decided to invent an absurd Arab to balance the absurd Frenchman. If everything was absurd, let the absurdity be equal. His story, a parody of Camus’s novel, began in almost the exact same words: “Today my father died. Or maybe it was yesterday. I can’t remember.”

“In The Stranger, it’s his mother,” Rivlin mused.

“Yes, I noticed that, Professor. But here it’s the father, because it would be hard to imagine a young Arab who didn’t mourn the death of his mother. A father is something else. The character’s name, Musa, even sounds like Marseault. He lives in Algiers, and he puts his dead father in a car and takes him to his village to bury him without feeling any grief. That same night he returns to the city for a date at the movies with his girlfriend. And the next day he takes off from work and goes swimming, just like the character in Camus. But he doesn’t go for an afternoon walk on the beach, because who can take the midday sun in Algiers? He waits for it to be evening — say, like now — and then strolls on the sand looking at the waves. After a while he approaches a nice French couple, a boy and a girl sitting on a bench, and asks how they are and what time it is. They tell him the time but not how they are and go on talking to each other. He’s standing near them, staring at the moon rising over the bay. It’s like a big egg yolk, and it scares him, and he can’t take his eyes off it. And so he decides to wait for the two French to start kissing in the moonlight. That’s what the French like to do, and he thinks it will calm him. But they just go on talking, and he gets more and more scared, because now the moon is overhead and could fall on him at any minute. So he goes over to the couple and asks in French, ‘What do you think of that moon?’ ‘It’s a very nice moon,’ they say. ‘You don’t think it will fall on me?’ he asks. That makes them laugh. Let them laugh, Musa thinks, at least they’ll die happy. And he takes out a big knife, slits their throats because it’s absurd, and goes home for a nap.”

“For a nap?” Rivlin asked. He couldn’t tell whether that, too, was part of the story or one of Samaher’s embellishments.

There was a stir in the room. From a corner of it, the coal black eyes of the messenger signaled his readiness to set out and at the same time stole a glance at Samaher’s husband — who, seated on the edge of the bed, was as curious as anyone to know whether the Arab murderer would stick to his absurdity in court or come up with explanation for his deed.

The shrewdly ironic Jamal bin el-Maluh kept his hero faithful to the absurd. Like Camus’s stranger, the Arab refused to say he was sorry or ask the court for mercy, and blamed it all on the moon. The one difference was that in the Arabic version, the judge, too, was so affected by the spirit of absurdity that he acquitted the defendant. And so, Samaher concluded triumphantly, Jamal bin el-Maluh proved that the Arabs could be even more absurd than the French.

The room laughed at the French defeat.

“But how could he have acquitted him?” Rivlin chided her, as if Samaher had made the whole thing up. “Are you sure that’s the end?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said, with a complacent smile. “I can’t help it, Professor.”

The Jewish Orientalist felt a tremor of delight. Though weakly and dully perhaps, the spark of inspiration promised by his Jerusalem mentor was beginning to glow like a dusty coal. He rose, took a cup of Turkish coffee from a tray brought by Samaher’s sister, downed it in a gulp like a shot of brandy, and asked the jet-colored messenger if he could locate Jamal bin el-Maluh’s wonderful and important story in the photocopied material waiting in the minibus.

“Of course he can,” Samaher answered for him. “I told you, it was he who found it.”

The young ladies bowed their heads, fearful of being blinded by the dazzling light of illicit love that flashed past the tired husband.

19.

“DID YOU MANAGE to eat?” Rivlin asked his driver, who stepped on the gas as they left the village.

“There’s plenty of time for that, Professor. Don’t worry about me. During Ramadan I eat all night. After I return you to Haifa, I have to pick up some workers in Jenin and bring them to their jobs in the morning. Have you ever been to Jenin, Professor?”

“Maybe once, thirty years ago. After the 1967 war.”

“I have a sister not far from there, in a village called Zababdeh. I’ll drop in on her tonight too. That’s the custom. On the nights of Ramadan, a brother visits his married sisters and brings them gifts. Money, food, whatever he can…”

“That’s something I never knew.”

“For sure. It’s to keep her from feeling low that she has to be with her husband’s family and not with her own kin on the holiday. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a pig for her tonight….”

“A pig?”

“A wild boar. There’s a forest after Elkosh where I want to stop, if you have no objection, and look for some hunters.”

“Pork on Ramadan? What are you talking about?”

“Relax, Professor. My sister is a Muslim, but she lives with a Christian. Most of Zababdeh is Christian. They’ll eat anything you bring them: chickens, pigs, sharks, frogs, you name it. The pig isn’t for her. It’s for the school run by the Abuna, the Christian priest. She works as a cook there. He’s a good man, the Abuna, always ready to lend her a hand, because her man is sick and not so young anymore. She had to raise the children by herself, away from her family. She doesn’t eat pork, but she’ll cook it for the Abuna.”

“But where is she from originally?”

“Where should she be from, Professor? She’s Israeli, born in Mansura. Her bad luck was to marry someone from the West Bank twenty years ago and lose her Israeli ID. Now Israel won’t let her back in. We’ve filled out forms and begged Knesset members to intervene — nothing helps. They won’t even allow her to return with just the children, without her sick husband. They say she has to leave them behind, too. You’d think they were lepers or something. How can she leave them? You tell me, Professor. But that’s the West Bank for you. It’s a trap. The poor woman walked into it and can’t get out…. After Elkosh, if you don’t mind, we’ll take a dirt road, half a kilometer at most. It goes to an old grave that’s being renovated because it’s some rabbi’s from the Torah. We’ll see if there’s a pig or not. It won’t take more than half an hour. But only if it’s all right with you. If you’re in a hurry or feeling tired, just say so. I heard in the village that you slept for a while….”

“For a while?” He grinned at Rashid’s tact. The driver must have heard of his marathon. “It was more than a little. It was four whole hours — and in your bed…”

“It’s an honor, Professor.” The Arab lowered his head almost to the steering wheel and murmured, “My bed is your bed.”

Rivlin’s head throbbed, as if the gentle but powerful erotic force that had lifted Samaher from her bed, grazing the pimples on her face, might make demands on him too.

The windows were open. The dry fragrance of the summer night filled the minibus, which took the curves swiftly but surely, braking before the turn-off to the dirt road. Newly blasted, to judge by the red soil still seeping from the rock on either side of it, it wound to a small structure awaiting the pouring of a concrete dome, its venerable sanctity’s seal of approval. In the meantime, while the ancient rabbi’s new home was under construction, a large jeep was parked beside it.

“There they are!” the Arab cried happily. “You can either wait for me here, Professor, or climb that hill up ahead with me. Take it from me, it’s not far, one hundred and twenty or thirty meters at the most.”