Edeet Ravel: Look for Me

“I can’t,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. I lay on the bed, naked and miserable. I pul ed o the bedspread and blankets, and slid under the sheets and shut my eyes. In a few minutes I was asleep.

I slept for an hour. I woke up to the sound of purring; there was a black-and-white cat lying at my feet. Daniel was gone. He’d left a note on the table: Went to buy food, back very soon. Don’t go out, it’s dangerous. He underlined Don’t go out several times and added a tiny drawing to the note, the way he used to do when we lived together. His style had changed a lit le—it was more abstract. He’d drawn me sleeping and dreaming of a cat pyramid.

I found a dark green T-shirt in one of his drawers and I put it on; it reached my thighs. Then I climbed the spiral stairs to the upper story of the house. The wal s of his workshop were covered with postcards, clippings from magazines, cartoons from newspapers. I remembered some of the cartoons, and I remembered thinking that Daniel would like them. One showed a camp counselor who was al dressed up for hiking tel ing campers in a bunk, Today, children, we’re going to the balcony. In another, two storekeepers in a mal were laughing hysterical y at a robber who was holding them up with a gun. A mock headline about an actual poisoning incident read ARAB POISONED HIMSELF, CUT

INTO PIECES, COVERED WITH BREAD CRUMBS, SOLD PIECES TO JEWS. The headline was taped to a fashion advertisement showing a sexy woman suggestively checking another woman for bombs at the entrance to a store. Daniel had drawn a mustache on one of the women.

I went down to the ground oor and looked at the sculptures. Some were exactly my size, and some were very smal , set on tables that matched the kitchen table upstairs. I was shown in various poses, naked or wearing out ts I had once owned. The smal clay gures were painted in startling, wit y ways. There were at least fty sculptures in the room. I also found a stack of notebooks Daniel was in the middle of correcting. Student notebooks, compositions in English. My name is Marwan. I am boy. I go school. Last week I jump from window and break toe. In the end only it was paper bag went boom.

And Daniel’s comments. Very good work, Marwan. A new part of him.

I opened another notebook. My name is Leila. When I grow up I want to die for Palestine. Daniel had writ en, I hope you wil live for Palestine, Leila.

Palestine, Leila.

I read al the compositions. I am Muhammad. I have ve big brothers and when they mad at me I run to mother. I am trying to learn brave. Daniel wrote, You are already a very brave young man, Muhammad.

I heard Daniel’s key in the lock. I ran to the door and jumped on him when he entered. He was forced to drop his bags and hold me. I wound my legs around his waist and kissed him for a long time.

“See what you’ve been missing, you stupid idiot,” I said.

“Let’s make supper,” he said.

We went up to the kitchen and cooked in silence. It was just like the old days; we didn’t need to talk. We knew exactly what we were making and what to do. We made cabbage croquet es and bean salad and baked potatoes with melted cheese and a huge pot of couscous.

Then we ate. I was very hungry. I felt as if I hadn’t eaten in several years, and I kept heaping more and more food onto my plate.

“I’m a vegetarian now,” Daniel said.

“How come?”

“I got food poisoning three times from meat here, so I just quit. And I found I didn’t miss it. Once you get out of the habit, you lose interest.”

“What else has changed about you? Tel me everything.”

“I have a good friend, Wil iam. He’s an American-born Palestinian, and his Arabic is even worse than mine. We see a lot of each other—he comes over for dinner, we play chess. He’s a lawyer. He left a cushy life to come here, and he keeps asking himself how long it’s going to be before he has a nervous breakdown and goes back to Colorado. He’s a good guy, you’d like him. He thought I should contact you. So did El a.”

“Do you know any real militants?”

“Such a naïve question, Dana. It just shows how out of touch people on the outside are.”

“You don’t joke around the way you used to.”

“That’s true. I joke around with my students, though. They love to laugh.”

“Alex said you’d be dif erent.”

“Who else knows that you’ve found me?”

“Just Alex and another friend. I didn’t tel your family.”

I watched his hands as he helped himself to salad. I took one of his hands in mine and kissed it. “I love your wrinkled hand.”

He pul ed away. “Don’t,” he said.

“Okay, that’s new, that’s not like you … But I’l get used to it. I dreamed I could only have you if I was blind. And I was wil ing to be blind, if that’s what it took … What’s it like teaching here?”

“It’s hard, of course. Sometimes it’s more about just making it through the day. Tension and ghting inside the classroom, incursion hel outside the classroom, more tension and fighting at home … the kids are under unimaginable stress. You have to get used to compromising.”

“That reminds me of something. I was at a checkpoint, and you know how these Palestinian men just hang around al day, hands in pockets, just trapped with nowhere to go. I went over to take some photographs of them. Then one guy came over to me and said, ‘We have nothing to do, so we start ghting with each other!’ He was so desperate to tel someone and he had no one to tel , so he chose me. He was pleading with me, as if I had the magic key. I felt helpless, as usual.”

“You’re doing a lot. Just being there and taking photographs and showing you understand is immensely important. It has a huge impact.

Palestinians are very in tune with who their friends are.”

“What about the Migdal kil ing last year? Those Migdal people were on their side.”

“Yes, that real y was horrible. There are lunatics in every society, unfortunately.”

“What wil you do with this house now?”

“I’m not coming back, Dana.”

“You are. Because I don’t want to live here, for a mil ion obvious reasons.”

“People depend on me here, too,” he said. “I can’t desert them. I live here now. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to see men looking at you with desire. I don’t want to feel that they have a right to you and I don’t.”

“I never knew you were so paranoid. A nurse told me you only had second-degree burns on most of your body. Those kind of burns don’t even leave scars. Is that true?”

“I do have scars on my body, but not everywhere.”

“How did you know what you looked like?”

“I saw my reflection in the cutlery.”

“Why did you tel them you didn’t want to see anyone?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t tel the nurses you didn’t want visitors?”

“No.”

“How could the nurses lie to me?”

“They probably assumed you’d freak out.”

“That’s ridiculous. Maybe you said it while you were half-drugged.”

“Maybe.”

“You hurt me.”

“I know you see it that way.”

“I know you see it that way.”

“What other way is there?”

“Life hurt you. Bad luck hurt you. Not me.”

“I’m staying the night.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to sleep in your bed.”

“There’s only one bed.”

“Don’t force me to stay here forever. I don’t even speak the language. And it’s not like I can just come visit you three times a week. I’m lucky I made it in this once.”

“You are lucky. I was very worried.”

“Once I got past the checkpoints, I felt safe.”

“This isn’t a safe place for anyone. There’s constant shooting, people are get ing kil ed al the time. It never stops.”