Ronit Matalon - The Sound of Our Steps

THE CHILD SAW it: in his way, Maurice boiled with rage. It wasn’t the mother’s kind of boiling — the brink of an explosion about to pour over her and somebody else — it was the dull rage of the final, empty sobs of a baby who despaired of its mother’s coming, of a fatuous expectation, his face turned blue in humiliation. He repeated this word several times—“humiliation.” He sat on the mother’s porch with red eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for two weeks, trying to light a cigarette with a lighter that refused to light: “What a humiliation. They humiliated them like dogs, worse than dogs,” he said.

He turned up the day after the end of the war, dropped in for half an hour to see how we were, and actually to borrow a few lira from Sammy. He was waiting for him to come back from work. The mother served him coffee but he didn’t touch it. He forgot. After a couple of minutes he asked, “Did you make me coffee ya Lucette?” Corinne sat next to him, at the table. She didn’t raise her eyes from the book without a cover the child had left there, The Diary of Anne Frank , and the mother leaned against the doorpost and watched: “What, are you in mourning?” she said. “Yes, I’m in mourning,” said Maurice, “I really am in mourning for what happened and what’s going to happen.” Corinne raised her eyes. “What happened?” she asked drily. Maurice took off his horn-rimmed glasses for a moment, wiped the lenses with the hem of his shirt, and said nothing. After a while, when his voice came back, it sounded as if it were coming from under the earth, hoarse and crushed: “The way they keep on showing how the Egyptian soldiers ran away without their shoes, they show it again and again, humiliating the other in his defeat. They can’t see that there’s a tomorrow, that you have to talk to the people you humiliated. Some leadership.” The mother turned on the sprinkler, moved it a little so it wouldn’t splash on the porch, and got wet herself; her whole dress was soaked through, sticking to her stomach and her buttocks. She went inside to change, wringing the hem of her dress on her way. “What’s wrong with the leadership? What have you got against them? Would you have done any better?” Corinne spat out, and turned over the book, which was completely wet. “Leadership”—Maurice drew the word out—“great leadership. That dictator Dayan, and that Abba Eban, when he speaks Hebrew he reminds me of the British Mandate. They’ll have to give back everything they conquered, every inch. What a catastrophe!” He stood up and started pacing the porch, almost slipping on the wet tiles, hanging on to the back of Corinne’s chair. She recoiled sideways; she was cooking something up. The child looked at Corinne’s face and knew that something was cooking: her face was twisted, from chin to forehead, hollowed and flattened at once, as if it were made of Play-Doh that had been kneaded any old way, with no shape in mind. “Whose side are you on, ours or theirs?” she demanded in a hostile tone. “Neither side”—Maurice raised his voice—“I’m on the side of justice and logic and against all these victory celebrations, that’s what I am.” Corinne jumped off her chair, threw the book onto the lawn, and suddenly bent down, half-crouching and holding both hands between her knees as if she were trying not to pee: “You’re an Arab, not a Jew, that’s what you are, an Arab. Get out. Pick yourself up and get out of here, you traitor,” she yelled. The mother came out onto the porch: “What? What?” she asked, looking from Corinne to Maurice. He took his black bag with the zipper off the table, tucked it under his armpit, and left, receding up the path with slow steps that tried to hurry, the little hump at the top of his back hiding the nape of his neck.

The mother stood barefoot and looked at him, her toes digging into the groove between the paving stones. “Now he hasn’t got a penny for the bus,” she said, went inside, and took two banknotes out of her bag. “Run after him. Give this to him,” she said to the child.

ON THE FIRST day when the fighting broke out in our last war, the Sinai Campaign, I went to present myself at my IDF unit and complained that I hadn’t received a call-up order. Being a simple soldier in the infantry I was sent straight to the quiet front with the Jordanians. The relative quiet on the Jordanian front gave me an opportunity to keep my ears open, to follow events, and to think seriously about the situation and the possible solutions. This led me to the conclusion that Ben-Gurionism, as a main factor in the Sinai war, had missed the chance and the most auspicious opportunity to obtain peace or make headway toward it.

This conclusion was confirmed with time and I remain convinced of it to this day. The analysis leading to this conclusion is plainly objective and logical to anyone who understands the Arab mentality in general, and President Nasser’s mentality in particular .

After the announcement of the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Nasser knew that he was entering into an open conflict with the interests of two great powers, England and France. We had no interests in the Suez Canal like those of the English and the French. So what should we have done? Adopt a militaristic policy? Or perhaps plan a different policy at this auspicious opportunity that would lead to peace with Nasser? The Ben-Gurionist policy was and remained militaristic in spirit and purpose. This fact led me to conclude that the Sinai war distanced us from the way to peace when it was within our grasp, and brought us closer to the next war .

In the light of history and the evidence of the facts, the Sinai Campaign was a catastrophic political failure for all those who participated in it. It only increased the revulsion, the anger, and the hatred of Israel on the part of the Arab nations and particularly the Egyptian nation and its leader, Nasser. I dread to think of the results of this anger and hatred in the war to come. Our Ben-Gurionist propagandists never stopped boasting and ridiculing, in all the avenues of propaganda, the Egyptian army, the Egyptian nation, and its leader, Nasser. In exaggerated ways and a humiliating manner, we kept on describing the cowardice of the Egyptian solider who ran away barefoot leaving his shoes behind him. This contempt wounded the souls and the honor of all the Egyptians and the Arabs profoundly .

To my regret, we are continuing the same arrogant and contemptible vein of propaganda to this day. It seems, too, that we have learned nothing from the political cunning of our allies in this war, the English and the French. They were able to transcend their military victory and put it behind them, thereby proving themselves superior to us in political maturity. They were not slow in denouncing the war and those who led them into it, and who paid the price in their political careers for this superfluous war. Thus relations improved between these two powers and the Egyptians and political and economic ties between them were renewed.

And here in Israel? All we can do is go on arguing about the battles of the Sinai Campaign, reminisce fondly about the stories and legends and battles of the war, and invent more and more dubious facts about that war. Which shows that we are still worshipping the golden calf of the militaristic Ben-Gurionist doctrine that will lead us to the next war .

THE CHILD WANTED Nona to tell her more and more about herself. “Tell me more,” she begged, especially when the two of them went to town to sit in Café Milano almost every Tuesday afternoon, because Nona had to have a change of air. “Let’s get a change of air,” she said to her at two o’clock in the afternoon on a blazing khamsin day, setting the tub in the middle of the room, and taking off her slip, naked with the door open. “People can see you,” cried the child in alarm, “they can see everything.” “Let them see”—Nona tested the water in the tub with the toe of one foot and then the other—“What’s there to see already? Didn’t they see what I’ve got on their mothers when they were born?” With her silver hair gathered into a flat bun on top of her head, her vast hips, shiny-white and silky, the long neck rising from her chest, her breasts spreading out and rounding at the bottom — she looked like a huge china jug set on an unsteady surface and wobbling slightly. Afterward she sprinkled herself with half a bottle of eau de cologne, sneezing as she did so. “You’re putting on too much scent,” scolded the child, who also scented herself with eau de cologne, but the way Corinne did it: behind her ears and on her wrists. “That’s because I haven’t got my eyes,” explained Nona, who sat in the armchair dressed and combed, her handbag on her lap, and waited for the appointed hour, the four o’clock bus.