A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

The Abuna led him to a large kindergarten full of colored blocks and old pillows, creatively refashioned into human and animal dolls. On the walls still hung pennants of the Israeli Border Patrol unit that, sent to pacify the village, had commandeered the room during the Intifada.

“And was the village made peaceful?” Rivlin asked curiously, fingering a doll to see what its shiny eyes were made of.

The Abuna’s eyes twinkled merrily. “Only toward the end, when the soldiers were too exhausted to pacify anyone….”

It was the hour for the late news on Israeli TV, regularly watched every night by Hagit. She liked the way its cultured, curly-headed newscaster did his smiling best to make the world’s sorrows more palatable before sleep. Here in the newborn Palestinian autonomy, however, sleep was out of the question, perhaps because the modest freedom won by its inhabitants was most apparent in the wee hours of the curfewless nights. And the Jewish visitor felt free, too — free enough to tease his hosts, assembled in warm welcome at the table:

“ Izan ya muhtaramin, il-muslamin b’yoklo fi ’l-leil, il-yahud fi ’n-nahar, u’intu in-nasara, kaman fi ’n-nahar u’kaman fi ’l-leil. ” *

The Christians laughed, pleased to belong to a religion so cunning as to dispense with the restrictions of both Judaism and Islam. Shy but beaming, they introduced themselves. Some wore clerical collars. There were women, too, laughing and vivacious in the middle of the night.

“But how did you know I was coming?” the Orientalist asked in bewilderment. “I myself had no idea that I was crossing the Green Line with Rashid until the last minute!”

Yet Rashid, it turned out, had telephoned the Abuna from Samaher’s home in Mansura to inform him that his gifts would include a Jew, a professor from Haifa who was a specialist on Algeria. Had the sable-skinned Arab so easily manipulated him? Rivlin wondered with a slight feeling of alarm, taking his place between Socrates and Plato — who, happy to be called by their sobriquets, asked what he was looking for in the North African folktales he had found in old publications.

“For warning signs of the insane brutality that later broke out in Algeria,” he answered with a smile, breaking off and putting in his mouth such a small crust of warm pita bread that one might have thought he was commencing another fast. The Abuna, not yet settled into his seat, put this answer into lengthy Arabic while offering Rivlin an unfamiliar purple sauce full of little leaves in which to dip the next piece of his bread.

“But what good will finding such signs do, Professor?” The Hebrew question, asked with a sigh, came from a teacher wearing a large golden cross over the cleft above her heart.

“None at all, Madam,” the Orientalist answered, his smile sadder this time. “ U’lakin min wazifti inno ma asa’id, bas a’raf .” †

“Know thyself…” Socrates confirmed in English.

“ Lakin leysh? ” *The Abuna put a positive face on it. “ Yimkin nit’alem ’an il-zawahir hadi, ya’ani min halno’a, hon fi Filastin…. unu’iti tahdir lalra’is. ” †

“ Le’min? ” There was laughter. “ ‘Njanet? Ahsan shi ma-nihkish ishi, la tahdir u’la il-Jaza’ir, hata ma-yurkubhinish afkar min il-Shaitan, la-samahallah.” ‡

But the academic brain, its gray curls now tilted at a downward angle, had no interest in the future, only in the past.

24.

THE LEBANESE NUN now made her entrance. She was dressed, not in angelic white, but in a plain brown habit, in whose deep pockets she kept her hands. Young and slim, she wore simple sandals and a small silver cross that hung down on a long chain to her bosom, which looked ample beneath the heavy cloth that covered it. Her face was framed by a white clerical collar and a wimple, from which a few strands of hair had escaped. Pale and delicate, she peered tensely at the company that rose in her honor. It was not a face that asked to be patronized. The Orientalist, intrigued by the hush that greeted her, which brought the Abuna hurrying excitedly to her side, put down his fork and got to his feet, too.

The nun hesitated at the sight of him. A slight bob of her head disclosed her concern that contact with a Jew, especially before a performance, might compromise the mission she had been sent on by her convent in Baalbek — namely, to spend the month of Ramadan in Jordan and the suffering Holy Land firming up the spirits of the diminishing faithful by means of the old Byzantine liturgy.

Muslims, too, had come to hear the voice of Paradise dwelling within the nun’s habit. Not that a Muslim had any reason to be dissatisfied with life on earth, where Islam was doing well. Yet there were believers in Allah, worried that the Palestinian autonomy might end up as a stale fantasy rather than as a viable state, who preferred keeping one eye on the higher spheres. And since the Abuna did not wish to arouse unwanted religious tensions in broad daylight, he had invited the Muslim audience for a midnight concert because that could not be confused with an actual mass and — even more important — because the Lebanese’s fainting fits were best kept in the dark.

As for the Jews, they had grabbed more than their share of the terrestrial Eden from the Arabs, the celestial one was not for them, and they were represented tonight by a surprise Orientalist. Naturally enough, therefore, the singing nun, now carefully sipping a beverage spiked with honey, averted her pretty eyes from a man who might cast an evil spell on her vocal cords.

Might he? Yet even if it was the witching hour, Rivlin was feeling quite rational. Indeed, after an adventurous day spent chasing the chimerical spark of inspiration in the Land of Israel and Palestine without a loving but critical wife to set him bounds, he was considering demanding a retroactive research grant. And in any case, the real wizard, who was now entering the teacher’s room and asking Rivlin with fatherly solicitude how he was, was his sable-skinned driver, whose protean identities also numbered enamored cousin, faithful brother, many-armed messenger, swift kicker of fences, and multidirectional crosser of borders.

Everyone knew Rashid and was in thrall to his enchantments. He, for his part, having eaten his fill of the childhood dishes cooked for him by his sister, was now ready for seconds from the Christians. “ Il-kenisi ’am-tint’li, ya uhti, ” he gently told the nun. “ Aju min Kabatiyeh u’min Tubas, hatta fi sharkas min Dir el-Balad, tarkin en-nom min shanik, kulhom bistanu il-leili l’al-mt’a ’l-k’biri. ” *

The nun smiled wearily at the Arab from Israel who had room in his heart for everyone. She shut her eyes and shook her head back and forth like a baby lulling itself to sleep.

“ Inshallah… ” *Her voice, heard by the Orientalist for the first time, had a striking spiritual presence. “ Inshallah… ”

The diners began hurriedly rising from the table to find a place in the church. Taking his passenger aside, Rashid whispered:

“Relax, Professor. You have a reserved seat. You’ll sit with the Abuna and the notables. The one thing you need to know,” he warned, “is that the church has no bathroom and this nun can sing nonstop for an hour or more. You don’t want to miss any of it, because she’s top-notch, and the aisles will be so packed that you’ll never get back in if you’ve gone out. So if you think you might have to… I suggest you take my advice… there’s a very clean bathroom right here…”

Rivlin thought of being led by Samaher up the narrow lane to her house on the night of her wedding. For a moment, his spirits flagged. He would have liked to go home, climb into bed, and pull a familiar blanket over him. But how was it possible, not only to miss the Song of Paradise, but to ask Rashid to drive him back to Haifa now? And on the other hand, was not this the test of Afifa’s promise that his driver would take him anywhere, anytime?