Yitzhak Goren - Alexandrian Summer

“I love you Mademoiselle Emilie, I love you with all my heart and soul!”—“My parents would never have it, Yusef. Never!”—“But why?”—“Because you aren’t Jewish, Yusef my darling …”

“Come on, what’s the point in pretending?” David was deep in the fever of the stride, bouncing on the saddle, unable to stop. “Everybody knows you’re a Muslim!” he spat, his cheeks flushed with rebellion.

“Besides, we’re leaving Turkey for Alexandria!”—“I’ll follow you wherever you go, my Emilie. We’ll find a rabbi in Alexandria”—“A rabbi?”—“A rabbi, a rabbi to convert me and let’s be done with it!”—“You’re willing to… for me? Oh, Yusef, Yusef!”

“David!” cried Emilie.

Joseph chuckled to himself. So this is what it’s come to — his delicate wife has to defend him against his own son. In the past, Joseph would have beaten his son to a pulp for much smaller offenses. This time he stayed seated, almost laughing, luxuriating in his own impotence.

“Nobody would have slaughtered you, ya baba . You would have yelled ‘ Allahu akbar ’ and they’d leave you be.”

“This is how you treat us, Yusef my son? Your father, your mother, leaving the religion of your ancestors for a woman? Allah will punish you! Don’t you fear Allah?”—“No, Papa.”—“If you do so you are not my son anymore, Yusef, go. Go to your Jewish woman, and never come back …”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Joseph mumbled in a far-off voice, as if asking with detached curiosity, as if this were an argument for the sake of argument.

“Allah will punish you!”

“Because I’m sick of it! I’m sick of dieting and being afraid. I want to eat, you hear me? I want to eat!” he screamed, and turned to the servant who rushed in at the sound of shouting. “Salem, go to the bakery and bring me half a dozen cakes!”

“Allah will punish you! Allah will punish you!”

“What kind of cakes, ya sidi ?” Salem asked quietly and politely, as if not noticing the storm he’d just stepped into.

“Baba au rhum,” spoke the ridiculing voice of Robby’s sister. She appeared in a bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, fresh, her cheeks blushing.

“Baba au rhum, ya sidi ?” Salem awaited David’s confirmation.

“No, don’t go, Salem. No! I don’t want cakes. No …” He turned to his father and dropped to his knees, put his head in the man’s lap and called, “Papa, I’m sorry. I’ll stick to a strict diet, I’ll train and next Sunday, I’ll win. I promise you, I’ll win!”

“You have to, ya ibni . You have to win. And you will win! We’ll work on it together, you and I, together, and you’ll be victorious hazben ‘annu ! In spite of it all! I’m so tired.” He chuckled with some vindication. “Tired.” Then he got up and went to his room. His eyes reflected an exhaustion beyond words and deeds, and a sort of yearning. You aren’t Jewish . His son said these words to him, clear as day. And what did he do? He laughed. You aren’t Jewish …

He heard the voice of the muezzin from the top of the minaret, and the faithful chant curled up to him with tender trills. Yusef stood still and listened for a moment to the faraway cantillation, the words and sounds pricking his heart.

“Allah will punish you!”

He walked to his room, stooped and broken. All eyes were on him, and were then lowered once the door closed.

At that very moment, the front door opened and Victor barged in, wearing a bathing suit and sounding the battle cry of a savage.

The yellow marble rolled on the carpet, heading toward the red marble, which was lying peacefully, unaware of its approaching fate. Crystal touched crystal — a tap. Robby jumped for joy. He’s never been a good shot, which is why any hit was a victory. Victor was a lot more skilled than he was, and Robby attributed this to his friend being a year older. The marbles in their pockets collided joyously with one another.

Outside, eastern winds grunted and the sun was veiled with haze, like an eye plagued with trachoma. David and Joseph were out practicing on the tracks. Emilie tried to dissuade them from going, due to the heat wave, but her husband looked at her with contempt and dragged his son along. Ever since his loss in the match, father and son had been working ceaselessly, with fervent zealotry. David maintained a strict diet and weighed himself any chance he had. Still, he did not lose any weight. Allah’s ways are wondrous and mysterious! His father was the one to lose weight. His cheeks were sunken, his hair graying, his eye sockets slowly turning black. Only the eyes burning with an alien fire hinted at the hidden treasures of raging life within this dead man’s skull. “David must win!” he repeated to himself, as if possessed. As if this were a matter of life and death. He barely spoke at home. His usual taciturnity became crushing speechlessness.

Grandma sighed and said, “Did you see Emilie? She’s so worried, the poor thing.” She liked Emilie and was sad to see her husband treat her so badly, all for that horse racing nonsense. Had Robby’s father not strictly prohibited her from interfering, she would have spoken her mind to Joseph Hamdi-Ali ages ago.

“What’s that Emilie got to be so worried about?” Madame Marika said impatiently. Once more, Emilie Hamdi-Ali managed to get everyone’s attention, as if the entire world revolved around her. “Big deal!”

“Wouldn’t you worry, Renée, if Vita stopped eating all of a sudden?”

“Vita, stop eating? That’s not a concern. He’d never give up food.” She burst out in fat-jiggling laughter. “He eats and eats and never gets fat. And I fast and fast and never get thin!” Another series of loud jolts. Then she said with contempt, “People are experts in making mountains out of molehills!”

“And over horses, no less!”

“She tried to get him to go see a doctor …”

“Did she?”

“You should have heard how he answered her. I’ve never heard him speak to her so rudely!” Grandma sighed.

“Those men …” Alice said with a heavy sigh, shifting her large behind in her seat. “Each and every one of them, without exception, is bound to suddenly lash out at you with the whip of his anger, and you never know why and what for … It’s so hot today … this girdle is killing me!” She looked around her, watching her friends as they formed a sort of wall of flesh to protect her from her husband Isidore’s hotheadedness.

“Only my late husband was different,” Aunt Tovula said unexpectedly. The other women waited on alert, not wanting to encourage her to tell yet another story they’d heard many times, and which always ended with a river of tears. But their efforts were for naught. “He never said a bad word. Never.” Already she was on the brink of tears. None of the women said anything. Any talk would only serve to prolong things. Even Madame Marika held back from making a statement such as, “Your husband didn’t have many chances to say anything to you, good or bad,” hinting at how in his final years he lived in Jerusalem, far from his wife and children, working as a night guard at the Anglo-Palestine Bank, where he died in the great explosion on Ben Yehuda Street. Once in a while, Robby heard about his aunt taking the train to Palestine to see her husband. She’d return full of stories and experiences, but with few keepsakes and purchases, as fit her meager earnings. She stopped making the trip in 1948, because her husband was no longer alive, and the border was closed.

“My husband never said a bad word about me!”