Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

*

After a suicide bombing, they usually put up a roadblock and don’t let us go out to work. And there are no surprises today either. I wipe the steam off the window and look out. Najib and Amin are trying to convince the soldier to let us pass. They show him all the permits, all the papers, but he keeps moving his head from right to left and smiling an evil smile. I told them it was a waste of time, but they’re stubborn. What can you do, hashaba , the boys want to make all their mistakes on their own. Now the soldier is fed up and he points his rifle at Amin and yells something at him. I can’t hear what it is, because the window’s closed. Najib and Amin fold their papers and put them in their pockets, turn around and jump into the car. Cold air rushes inside when they open the door, and I hug myself to stop shivering. They curse the Jews, the rayis and the rain. Because of the rain, the car keeps sinking deeper into the mud. I get out to help them push. The rain trickles in between my shirt and my neck, and a drop rolls down my back to my ass. Yallah , I say, trying to get Amin and Najib, who are getting tired, to push harder. They push a little more and the car starts to move. Good for you, ya Saddiq, they tell me when we’re back in the car, you have the strength of a young man. Shukran , I thank them, but their compliment doesn’t make me happy. Not even a little. On an ordinary day, it would, but not today. Today, the land registration certificate and the large key are in my bag. Today, I’m supposed to go into the house I was born in and take something that belongs to my mother. Today was supposed to be an important day. A special day.

And in the end — a roadblock.

And that word, roadblock, machsom . A Jewish word that the Arabs use all the time. As if we didn’t have a word for it in our own language. The same thing’s true of the words for fruit-picking and cream and the word for rolls, which I can see now on the right, written on the sign over a store: Manayish Rolls and Arabic Kubez . At least we use our own word for traffic light, ramzon , even though we only have one ramzon in the city, the one we’re stopped at now.

Shwaya, shwaya , take it easy, I tell myself when the light turns green and the driver tries to go around a puddle in the middle of the intersection. Be as patient as a sabra, ya Saddiq. You waited fifty years. You can wait another week.

*

The morning after the terrorist attack, the teacher came into the classroom, bit her lip and said, children, Daniel won’t be in class today because his brother was hurt in the bombing yesterday and he’s with him in the hospital. I am asking and sincerely hoping that all his friends will help him in the days to come and save him a copy of all the handouts I give you. Wait a minute, I thought, and took a good look at everyone’s face, was it like this when she told them about Gidi? Did Dor keep digging around in his ear? Did Maya keep on drawing those blue butterflies in her notebook? Did the teacher not say anything for a couple of seconds, and then ask, in her normal voice, for everyone to take out their bibles? Yes, I answered myself, and instead of feeling hurt, I actually felt good. As if a fat man who’d been sitting on my chest suddenly got up. Which made me think that if Daniel’s brother dies from his wounds, maybe Daniel will be the class’s new bereaved brother and everyone’ll feel sorry for him and whisper about him and watch him all the time to see how he acts, and they’ll finally leave me alone. Then I was ashamed for thinking that, it’s not nice to want someone else’s brother to die, but I knew that after school I’d go to Amir’s place and tell him exactly what I’d thought because that’s what’s so great about being with Amir, that you can tell him things like that and he doesn’t get all upset like my mother, who says her eyes are swollen from an infection, but it’s because she cries all the time, or like my father, who sleeps on the sofa sometimes, not in their bed, or like when they hardly talk to each other.

The teacher asked us to open to the First Kings, Chapter 21, about Naboth’s vineyards, that we’d started studying last week. ‘And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying: “Give me thy vineyard,”’ she started reading, and I asked Dor to put the book in the middle of the desk because I forgot to bring mine. ‘“Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house; and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.” And Naboth said to Ahab: “The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.”’ After those two verses, she stopped, closed her book and asked: who can explain why Naboth refuses to give his land to the king?

All of a sudden, without my thinking too much about it, my hand moved away from the desk and my finger was waving in the air. At first, the teacher didn’t notice. She was so used to my not participating that her eyes skipped over me. But no one else wanted to answer, and when she looked around at the whole class again, she saw me. Yotam?! she asked, looking like she was sure I was raising my hand just to scratch my forehead. Yes, I said, and started talking. Without seeing them, I could feel everyone turning to look at me. I said that Naboth can’t take the King’s offer because he was born and raised on that land, and giving up his home would be like wiping out everything his father and mother did, and then he would be violating the commandment to honour his father and mother, which is one of the Ten Commandments, like we learned, even though his parents might be dead already. I said all that without stuttering even once, and the words didn’t get stuck in my throat like I thought they would, and none of the letters got switched around. Very good, the teacher said when I was finished, you’ve raised an interesting and definitely original point. Maya, did you want to add something?

I didn’t listen to the rest. I was so tired from talking that I couldn’t concentrate. I wanted the lesson to end so I could go to Amir’s apartment. I knew he’d be really happy that I spoke in class. The last time I was at his place, after I beat him twice in a row in chess — once was the fool’s mate, he hasn’t been focused at all lately — I told him that I didn’t talk in the lesson because I was afraid I’d stutter, and he said he’d been like that too: every time he moved to a new city, a new school, he wouldn’t say word at first, he’d just watch how the other kids acted, like a spy hiding behind a newspaper. So when did you get over it? I asked and tried to imagine him as a kid my age. It went away by itself, he said and started setting up the white pieces for another game. Don’t worry, one day you’ll have something really important to say, and then you’ll talk. Meanwhile, you’re learning how to listen, which is just as important.

*

Listen, Amir,

How can I explain this to you. It’s like you’re driving in a car, and all of a sudden there’s a bump and the car leaves the road and floats in the air for a minute, and your stomach sinks and electricity flashes through your temples. Or like when you dive right in and kiss a girl for the first time, and you don’t know whether she even wants to. Or like … OK, enough comparisons, bro.

Yesterday

I

Bungee

Jumped!

Hold on. I know you’re not crazy about stuff like that. But listen for a second. Listen and then you can put me down. Yesterday, we came to a small town called Palacio, near the border with Peru. The minute we got off the bus, they shoved flyers at us with a blurry picture of the bridge you jump off. All those big operators had the same flyer with the same terrible picture. It’s incredible how they don’t have the slightest bit of business initiative here. Please, I said, and pushed them out of my face, talk to me the day after tomorrow. But the New Zealanders who got off the bus with me went wild about it. Where is it? How much does it cost? When does the shuttle leave? Seems they’ve been bungee jumping from the day they were born (did you know that bungee jumping was invented in New Zealand in the 1940s?), and they get their thrills collecting certificates saying they bungeed at bungee-jumping sites all over the world. Sick, yeah? I thought so too. But the next day, I went with them anyway because there was nothing else to do here and also because of Jenny, a very dark-skinned girl from New Zealand who I liked from the minute she got on the bus with a backpack that was twice her size.