A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

It was Plato on Socrates’ shoulders. Together the two pranksters formed a single nonagenarian dotard, who began to harangue, in the down-to-earth dialect of his native Iraq, imaginary Middle Eastern Jews on either side of him. Reproaching those on the left for forgetting they were Sephardim, he attacked those on the right for not remembering they were human, while simultaneously blessing members of the audience who jumped onstage to kiss his hand. But while the old kabbalist’s head was Plato’s, his arms and legs belonged to Socrates, and an amusing conflict ensued between the mouth that showered his petitioners with good wishes and the limbs that drove them off with kicks and blows.

The Iraqi dialect grew increasingly Palestinian, peppered with private jokes and innuendos served up with Hebrew gibberish and absurd Israeli military commands. Just as the huge but sprightly kabbalist was blessing an aspiring prime minister while handing him a nasty pinch, his robe opened, and out popped two more hands. Breaking into a dance to a raucous Egyptian pop tune, he whirled before the astonished audience with four-handed tai chi exercises. The cheering spectators rose to their feet, copying the Chinese movements.

Nor was this the end. As a stack of plastic basins collapsed in a corner of the stage, an actor jumped out of the disorder in an embroidered robe, a fake beard plastered to his face. Whipping out a pair of dark sunglasses from his pocket, he put them on, intoned the priestly benediction from the Torah, struck the giant kabbalist contemptuously, and cried in Hebrew: “He’s innocent! He’s innocent!” This was Shas leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whose favorite disciple, the politician Aryeh Deri, had been convicted on corruption charges. Losing his temper, the ancient fez wearer grabbed the rabbi, stripped off his sunglasses, and swallowed him in his robe with one gulp. But this did not go down well with the kabbalist’s digestion, for he immediately split into two halves — Plato, the lower half, in the form of a wheelchair, and Socrates as its occupant. He, too, now had a beard, long and unruly behind a colorful silk veil. The kabbalist and rabbi had vanished, their place taken by the crippled Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin of Gaza, who rolled his eyes heavenward and sang a dirty ditty in a squeaky voice.

And so it went. Talented mimics, the two seminarians used a small but well-chosen assortment of props to skip merrily from target to target, now a Palestinian one and now an Israeli one, each turning into and emerging from the others until all finally joined in one monstrous, pitiably conflicted figure — which, mumbling and grumbling in Hebrew and Arabic, sobbed and simpered as it struck and stroked itself and the audience called for more.

29.

IN THE DARK, hilarious room, in which plastic plates flew in all directions, Rivlin made out the gleam of his driver’s smile. “You’re back, Rashid? But where on earth did you disappear to? Come on, let’s go home!” “Home? Now?” “When, then? How long do you intend to stay here?” “But it’s too early, Professor.” “What do you mean, too early?” “Too early, sir. The workers aren’t up yet.” “What workers? What are you talking about?” “Did you forget, Professor, that I have to pick up workers and bring them to Israel?” “Oh, no, Rashid, my friend! I’m not waiting for any workers. You promised to take me home when I wanted. Well, this is it. I want to go home. You can pick up anyone you want to later.” “But it’s too late, Professor.” “What do you mean, too late? You just said it was too early.” “It’s too late to bring you back to Haifa and return to Jenin in time for the workers. I promised them.” “But why did you disappear?” “ I disappeared, Professor? Excuse me, but it was you who disappeared. It took a long while to find you here.” “Rashid, I’m disappointed in you. You’ve been bugging me all day.” “But how have I bugged you, Professor?” “Don’t ask me how. You just did. You and Samaher and her mother, all of you.” “But what did we do to you, Professor?” “I don’t know what. I only know I’m no longer in my right mind.” “Your mind is fine, Professor. Didn’t you enjoy the Lebanese?” “Yes, and now I want to go home.” “Wouldn’t you like to see those two clowns do Aryeh Deri?” “For God’s sake, Rashid, don’t give me Aryeh Deri. Don’t give me anyone. I’m tired. I’m old. Do you think we Jews are made of steel?” “Of course not, Professor. But you’re not old at all. And you’re a good man even if you’re not made of steel. Everyone is happy to see you here. What can I do? That’s the way it turned out. The night had a will of its own. Why fight it? You need a little patience, not even very much. Soon the sun will be up, and the partying will stop. If you feel you’re wasting your time, I can show you some old Jewish graves that were discovered near here. They’re from the time of your Temple, and now there’s a little settlement watching over them. It’s a good, clear night for seeing them…. No? Well, then, it’s best to go back to the Abuna. He’ll find a place for you to sleep. We’ll start out at sunrise.”

Having left the minibus at the church, they had to walk back up the hill. The Abuna, too worried about his Jewish visitor to go to bed, was wide awake. In brightly striped pajamas and a funny green turbanlike nightcap, he looked as if he were dressed for a children’s play. “Sweet Jesus!” he exclaimed in English. He was sweating, and his eyes would not stay still in their sockets. “What happened to you? I went to show Sister Suheir to her room, and you were gone when I came back. We were beginning to think the Islamic Jihad had taken you hostage. You need to be careful, Professor. Peace hasn’t broken out here yet.”

He led the Orientalist through the dark teachers’ room, placing a finger on his mouth to warn him that the nun, a light sleeper, was lying behind a partition, and brought him to a little alcove that was the headmaster’s room. There he swept some papers off a desktop and deftly converted a director’s chair into a cot.

“Are you planning to fast tomorrow, too?” he asked gently.

The Abuna seemed relieved to hear that there would be no more Jewish concessions to Islam. His night-turban nodding vigorously, he hurried to take out a thick, hairy blanket and a small pillow in a green pillowcase.

You haven’t been away from home for twenty-four hours, Rivlin mused, and once again your Israeli fatigue has met with the offer of an Arab bed. By day with Muslims in the Galilee, by night with Christians in Samaria. Off with thy shoes and onto thy cot, O weary Orientalist!

O distant woman, visibly invisible: are not the strange adventures of this day sufficient proof for you? Do you understand now, my sweet judge, that it is not disdain or condescension that you hear in my voice when I speak of Arabs, but freedom — a freedom burdened neither by feelings of superiority nor by those of hypocritical guilt? Call it a scholar’s simple, bluff intimacy with his subject, for the sake of which he is willing to lie down even on a narrow cot beneath a hairy and none-too-clean blanket.

And yet how will you fall asleep when your mind is full of songs and stories — French babies afloat on poisoned horses, Arab moons plunging into seas, enormous dancing tai chi kabbalists with the squeaky voices of fanatical sheikhs? There’s nothing for it but to reconvert the cot to a chair, move it to the headmaster’s desk, switch on the lamp, take some paper from a drawer, and doodle a big spark of inspiration with an original idea at the center of it and a few supporting facts in its cusp.

It was the naive yet genuine and blameless belief of Algerian soldiers that shedding their blood for France in two world wars would make them French, which belief, ultimately frustrated, gave birth, fifty years later, to an orgy of violence against their descendants.