Raba'i al-Madhoun - The Lady from Tel Aviv

She smiles. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll eat whatever they bring me.’

I dive into my food and do not repeat the invitation. When her meal arrives, she does the same.

I finish eating and the stewardess comes by to collect the trays. She puts mine on the cart and moves on to the next row. I fold my table tray back up into the seat in front of me. A few minutes later, my seatmate finishes hers and does the same. I lean back into my seat and close my eyes.

Some time later, I am woken by the whisper of soft sobbing. I look over at my neighbour. She has covered her head with her hands and is quietly crying. She gets a hold of herself, stops, and then bursts into tears again.

Of their own accord, the fingers of my hand reach out toward her, and then I turn to her, as if to shield her sadness from the world. Why am I doing this? No answer.

I pat her shoulder gently. ‘Are you OK, miss? Do you need any help?’

People try to console each other’s sadness in so many different ways. You might try to calm a colleague at work. Or even a stranger who sits down next to you on the train. You might pat their arm or back. You might even hug them. We all need to feel the touch of another person sometimes. Even if that person is a total stranger.

But I’m not her colleague and no mere stranger. I’m the Other, aren’t I? I’m that kind of person whose being shakes her whole existence. And hers shakes mine. We’re not in a position to console each other. She’s Israeli, her accent proves it. No doubt she served in the military. Maybe she did her service in the Occupied Territories. Maybe she has shot at Palestinians. Maybe she played a role in the murder of my cousin, Falah. Maybe she has stood at checkpoints … My seatmate might be all this, or she might not.

My mind begins to spin. I start to have second thoughts about what I am doing. But my hand still rests lightly on the woman’s shoulder, as if it belonged there.

My seatmate wipes her tears with the back of her hand. I rush to offer her a Kleenex. She politely refuses it, saying: ‘No thank you.’

So what? What’s the use of being so polite? She said no, and that’s that.

Suddenly a wide smile appears on her lips and my Kleenex disappointment vanishes. I am relieved. Why? I take my hand from her shoulder and settle back into my seat. My seatmate bends over to reach something on the floor.

‘Would you like some?’ She takes a large chocolate bar out of her bag and offers me half.

I ask for only one small square, but she hands me two. I thank her and devour them in two bites, mumbling as I chew: ‘Mm. This is good chocolate.’ Piece by piece, she eats the rest.

She must be in heaven by now. There are women who receive genuine chemical pleasure from chocolate. They eat it anytime and anywhere, knowing that it will give them an endorphin high. Then there are women who eat chocolate either because they want to do without men or because they must do without men. It could be that my seatmate has just been dumped. Maybe she is missing a man who once filled her world with love. In any case, her sadness totals half a bar of chocolate, no more. Perhaps she will wipe away her sorrows now. She really does look more relaxed now than she did when she first sat down.

‘May I have that Kleenex after all, please?’

I give her the same tissue she just refused — and in doing so, her rejectionist stance is banished and so are my hard feelings.

She gently pats the chocolate off her lips. In doing so, she wipes away the rest of her sadness. She places the tissue in the little seat pouch in front of her.

‘You know, your British accent is charming.’

She glances at me from the corner of her eye before turning to look at me directly, before I have a chance to say anything.

I laugh, making fun of myself while staring back at her. Her eyes have begun to sparkle. I finally reply, astonished, ‘My British accent?’ That’s odd. She can’t really like my English — it’s mongrel, made up of lots of odds and ends, none of which have much to do with England. Or is she trying to figure out where I’m from?

‘Um, I don’t know. I mean, I like the way you speak. Each letter comes out so pronounced.’

The way I speak? Pronounced? I’ve never met anyone who liked my accent before. Is she really being sincere when she says she likes it? ‘You really like it, huh?’

‘Mmm.’ As she murmurs, her eyes flash with hesitation. It makes me want to go ahead and talk to her. It makes me want to carry the conversation far away from me — to talk about her and her world.

‘You know, when you asked me about the seat number, I was hoping it was going to be yours. I said to myself, I’d be a lucky man if this good-looking blonde sat down next to me.’

‘Thank you. What else were you saying to yourself?’

She is not only attractive, she is greedy . ‘Well, I was thinking you were probably a model or an actress.’

‘I am an actress!’ she blurts out with a smile.

As she opens this door onto her world, I breathe another sigh of relief. I want her to keep talking about herself, so I ask, ‘So you live in Tel Aviv?’

‘Yes, so do my parents.’

‘You live with them then?’

‘Not at all. Well, in the same neighbourhood as them,’ she adds with a laugh. ‘They live close to me.’

‘Do you live by yourself?’

‘I’ve got a friend who stays with me now and then.’ She says nothing for a moment. Then she whispers, like she is telling a secret meant only for me: ‘Ehud is waiting for me right now, actually.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Ehud? He’s a basketball star. He plays for Elitzur Ashkelon at the moment.’

‘Majdal Asqalan.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Sorry. I was saying that Ehud must be lucky. You too.’

She smiles. ‘He isn’t “the one”,’ she says.

‘Oh, no? Does anyone have this honour?’

She pauses and looks away briefly, then back at me. The circle I cracked begins to open wider: unexpectedly, she begins to unfold her story.

‘My relationship with Ehud hangs halfway between friendship and love, as if each of us is so terrified of the other that we want to flee in the opposite direction. It is like I only have half a heart, even though each time I do want to surrender all of it. All my affairs end in midstream. In the middle of the road, halfway there. Why am I like this?’

To my surprise, I am not taken aback by this sudden intimacy, this torrent of very personal details. ‘Perhaps you’ve never experienced true love, or met someone who can keep your heart,’ I reply.

She pauses again, for longer this time, then continues: ‘Actually, I did have this kind of relationship. A wonderful love. It’s the reason I was sad just now. It’s the reason I came to London, and it’s the reason I am returning, too.’

I lean in closer, listening intently, but all she says is, ‘He lived in London. He was from Ukraine.’

‘What happened?’

‘It ended abruptly …’

‘You had a long-distance relationship?’

‘Not quite. In fact, I brought him to Tel Aviv.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Well,’ she replies. ‘He was Jewish, so …’ She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. As a Jewish person, he would have the ‘right of return’, the right all Palestinian refugees have been denied since the Nakba in 1948.

I remain quiet, and she continues:

‘I was in London on my way back to Tel Aviv after visiting my grandfather in New York. I was spending the night with Sarah, a close friend of mine. She threw a party for me and invited a bunch of her friends. She introduced me to this good-looking guy, who had just got here. For the rest of the night, we never left each other’s side. We kept drinking and drinking the marvellous wine that Sarah always serves. And we kept dancing and dancing until dawn, when he and I ended up at his flat in Hammersmith.