A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

But Rivlin did not want to look foolish in front of these nocturnal Arabs. This was not the opera house in Tel Aviv, after all, in whose great auditorium a tear could be concealed, but a simple village church, brightly lit to keep the Muslims from complaining that the Christians were stealing their souls in the darkness. Resolved to keep his tears to himself, he turned his glistening eyes to the nun, whose robe was girded by a rope belt. With a long, piercing cry she strove to subdue an audience that was increasingly confusing the Passion of God with the passion of Um Kulthoum. Rivlin feared that his night out in the Palestinian Authority was ending in another of his infatuations. He leafed through the program notes with their thumbnail biography.

“Sister Suheir Sharuan was born in Dir el-Amhar, Lebanon. She has degrees in religion and musicology, with a specialization in Oriental and Occidental song, from St. Joseph’s University in Beirut and the Université de Saint-Esprit in France. For the past ten years she has studied Byzantine and Gregorian chant in Lebanon and Athens and has performed with choral accompaniment in the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre in Paris. A member of the Basilite Order, she spends summers on evangelical missions to the Christian communities of Jordan and Palestine.”

27.

GET A GRIP on yourself. You’re not the only one awake on this long night. So is your eldest son, studying for another pointless exam behind his heavy green door. So, perhaps, is your youngest son, patrolling his mountain fastness to make sure that the signs of war and peace are read correctly. Even your wife — who knows? — may be tossing and turning. You have nothing to complain about. The spark of inspiration, though still not trapped, is flickering closer, and you have heard the Arabs’ Song of Paradise and even passed the test of their acceptance — no small achievement for a pedantic Jewish Orientalist.

And now, in the courtyard of the little church, you are surrounded not only by the Abuna and his flock, but by young Muslims who, having heard the music of the Christians, wish to know what the Jews have to say. Why draw boundaries in the first place, they want to know, if the peace they bring is an illusion?

As you try to reassure them, you are approached by Rashid’s sister. Before you know it she is on her knees, begging you in Bialik’s Hebrew to use your Jewish influence to help her retrieve her ID card so that she can return to her native village.

“ Bas ma’a l-ulad, mish bidunhum, ” *her brother warns her, struggling to pull her to her feet.

But the dark woman strikes her head despairingly and insists:

“Even without them!”

“ Abadan la !” Her brother loses his patience. “ Kif b’tihki, ya majnuna. Bifsadu aleiki !” *

He yanks her up violently, then regrets losing his temper, embraces her, and compassionately leads her back to her basement at the rear of the church.

The soft, autonomous Palestinian moon vanishes in nebulous folds. A fresh night breeze cools the blood warmed by Paradise. The door is locked on the darkened church. In the parking lot reclaimed by the murky night, Christians and Muslims crowd around the nun, whose bell-like voice has not a trace of faintness. You, too, would like to thank her for a moving experience, but you don’t wish to be pushy, a Jewish stranger deep in a long-destroyed kingdom of vanished Israelite tribes. And so while you wait for Rashid to return, you wander off to a fence with a view of the Vale of Issachar. A lone car heads down a dirt road toward a Bedouin encampment, beside which two tall horses graze in profound tranquillity.

The old anxiety has you in its clutches.

Stop! Give it up, you stubborn fool.

Whether he knows or not, understands or not, is stuck or not, protests or not — let him be. Leave him alone. It isn’t you who will release him from the net of lost love he is thrashing in.

Yes, Hagit. You knew better than I did.

Set him free even in your thoughts.

See how far I’ve come tonight to free you, Ofer.

Will you laugh at this story of your father’s?

Are we, too, knowingly or not, to blame for the breakup of your marriage?

Five years. What are you protecting yourself from, my son? The disgrace? The humiliation? The error? The betrayal? Look around you. It’s a vulgar, shameless striptease of a world that can’t wait to confess what never happened even in fantasy.

And you won’t give an inch.

Stop! Let him be….

For the thousandth time….

How often did you have to be told? He’s his own person. Let him live his own life. Set him free.

Give it up.

You too, Galya. You too, O bride of pain. Set him free, lost bride….

There. It’s done. I swear by the stars above. No more imaginary illnesses. No more visits to the hotel. No more inquiries, questions, lies. But you, too, my son, for the love of God, stop being so sad and depressed. I don’t want you, wild and wretched, in my dreams anymore.

28.

RETURNING TO THE basement, Rivlin was surprised to find the metal door locked. Rashid had vanished into thin air.

He hurried back to the courtyard of the church. It was empty. The Abuna and the nun were gone. Two sole figures, young men with long hair, remained by the gate. They supposed the Israeli Arab must have gone to see the skit about the Jewish kibblelist.

“About who?”

“The kibblelist. Rabbi Whatsis, that holy man of yours who wears a fez. The one without teeth who’s always laughing. Here in the village, we like to laugh with him.”

One of the young men had a pistol strapped to his waist. A bit worriedly, the Orientalist asked the two if they were Christians or Muslims.

“That depends what holiday it is.”

“How about Ramadan?”

“Then we’re Muslims. But only at night when we can eat….”

They both laughed.

“Where do you know Hebrew from?”

“Nablus prison.”

Yet they seemed to have taken a fancy to him, for they now insisted that he come see the skit with them. “It will be cool, man. And you don’t have to worry about us. Don’t worry about your driver, either. Your Arabs in Israel won’t ever leave you.” They chuckled slyly. “Come on, it’s not far, man. Nothing will happen to you. After that little tearjerker from Lebanon, don’t we deserve a few laughs? The Arabs get theirs, too. Those two Christians, Socrates and Plato, don’t give a shit for anyone. They do all the big shots in the PA, even Arafat with his shaking hands and his lips that go gul-gul-gul-gul-gul-gul. Just like the comics on your TV. You don’t happen to have a hundred shekels on you, do you?”

“For what?”

“Expenses. Costumes and all that jazz. It’s a contribution for the actors. No shit.”

And so, parting with a hundred shekels for “expenses,” he let himself be taken captive by two Palestinian hipsters. They walked down the hill from the church, turned into some narrow, deserted streets, and came to a structure that had served, so he was nostalgically informed, as a hideout during the Intifada. Now, it was a warehouse for plastic utensils. A small audience sat squeezed amid various sizes and colors of plastic plates, bowls, and basins, filling the dim room with purplish smoke. Rivlin recognized some of the faces from the church. Most belonged to unemployed youngsters, out of work and out of luck — who, having slept away their despair by day, had turned out for a night’s entertainment in front of a small stage concealed by a red curtain.

The Arabs quickly made room for the Jew in the front row. They were so pleased to see him, though they would gladly have cut his throat in this same place several years ago, that they even turned down the Egyptian pop music blasting from an old transistor in order to enjoy his university Arabic. Waving to him from a dark corner in which, no longer droning, they sat smoking and drinking, were Suheir’s four accompanists. Perhaps the Abuna was hiding somewhere, too. Yet before Rivlin could look for him, the lights went out, and the curtain was pulled to one side. Holding a candle on a small improvised stage was the kabbalist, Rabbi Kaddouri, the venerable icon of the Sephardic Shas Party. Gigantic in a loud robe and a red Turkish fez, he greeted the audience with a toothless and shyly endearing giggle.