The Lady from Tel Aviv Read online

‘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.

  ‘I fell in love with the guy, the moment I met him. After that, we emailed each other constantly. We built a bridge of letters and notes over which we sent all the important data about our lives. A few months later, I went to London to see him. We spent a lovely ten-day holiday there. Ten long summer days together. We went to the cinema a lot. We sat on every barstool, restaurant chair and park bench we could find. We fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and the ducks in Hyde Park. We smelled every rose there was to smell, and wandered from one museum and theatre to the next. We went to see Les Mis and loved it.

  ‘He took me out to dinner to his favourite restaurant, a Lebanese place on Edgware Road called Al-Dar. He had a close Arab friend from his English night school, who had taken him there once. The food was unbelievably good.’

  ‘I know this restaurant,’ I say. ‘I like it too.’

  She smiles, and continues, ‘We were walking to the restaurant and he whispered in my ear: “You Israelis are just like the Arabs. You love your hummus and falafel.” I whispered back: “I can’t wait to get you to Tel Aviv so I can stuff you with chickpeas!” Then I said, in English and then in Hebrew: “I love you. Ani aheevat.” He replied in Russian: “Ya lyublyu tebya.” I asked him to say it again, and he went on until I memorized it. “Ya lyublyu tebya.” Now we were lovers in three languages. Shortly after that, he moved to Israel.’

  A citizen in a land that never belonged to him or to his ancestors, I add silently; while I, who do belong to that land, have remained a refugee for decades.

  ‘But I utterly I failed in my attempt to get him to stay in Israel,’ she says. ‘I could not hold onto him, even though I personally brought him over from London. I stood by his side through thick and thin, throughout his time in Israel. I helped him escape the worst mess of all, when he found himself floundering about in the face of the Intifada that had begun to explode in the territories.’

  I nod, thinking of the soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and call them by their name: ‘You know, I like this guy. He reminds me of the refuseniks …’

  She looks at me and stops speaking, and then becomes lost in thought for a time without replying. Then, just like that, she throws herself into the world of cinema and acting, trying to change the whole subject as if seeking refuge there. She begins with an anecdote about being at the Eilat Film Festival with ‘other Israeli celebrities’ two years earlier: ‘It was risky for me even to participate, because it opened right as the war was starting against Saddam Hussein, and Iraq was all everyone wanted to talk about. The people in Eilat were surprised that we showed up at all, and then they made fun of us, saying that the only reason we came to Eilat was to escape from Tel Aviv before Saddam’s missiles came down!’

  My seatmate goes on talking as if we come from the same country. As if we share the same fears, the same constellations of film stars. As she recounts stories about the festival, my mind recalls televised scenes of the war—the live coverage of American attacks that sowed democracy across Iraq. The tonnes of ordnance that went into ploughing deep furrows across the burning old fields of despotism.

  I let her talk and wander off in my mind to Asqalan, where her boyfriend plays basketball. Majdal Asqalan is where the protagonist of my novel is from. His whole family is from there. If he, Adel El-Bashity could hear what she is saying, he would shout: ‘If only our conflict took place in stadiums! If only the shots fired were at goals, not on people, we would have already founded a Democratic State of Football that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, and there would be enough room for all footballers to live there in peace and harmony!’ Sometimes Adel’s optimism seems ridiculous to me, and it makes me chuckle to imagine that even football could peacefully coexist between the two sides in the foreseeable future. It would be more like El Salvador and Honduras in the 1969 World Cup qualifiers—when football led to war.

  She stops talking, and I don’t want to interrupt the silence. But she turns to me though realizing only now that she has gone on too long or shared too much. Coyly, she asks, ‘I’m sorry—where did you say you were from?’

  3

  The question surprises me. From the moment I sat down in my seat until the moment she asks the question, it has been bothering me. At first I am nervous, too unsettled to choose an answer. I could say, for instance, that I am Greek or Cypriot or Lebanese, or anything. I could pick any other nationality—anything but Palestinian. I am afraid someone might overhear and shout out: ‘Palestinian! This man’s a Palestinian!’ What if someone got up and made a public announcement, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: please be advised that there is a Palestinian on board!’

  If this had been my seatmate’s first question, I might not have answered it. But now, after getting to know each other, I am not in a position to ignore her. Whatever apprehensions I may have, they belong to the past. Still, I decide to play dumb. ‘Where am I from? You never asked.’

  ‘No, I’ve asked you twice now.’ And then wryly, she repeats it again.

  ‘I’m Palestinian. I have British citizenship, but I am Palestinian.’

  ‘Aha. A Palestinian, huh?’ she says. It is as if I had tried to put one over on her, or my answer is not good enoug
h. She plays with a strand of her hair. Under the faint overhead light, it has lost most of its golden sheen.

  Flatly, even coldly now, she asks, ‘Are you taking a tour of Israel?’

  ‘No, I’m visiting family in Gaza.’

  ‘Gaza?’ She actually gasps as she says it.

  ‘Yes. Gaza.’

  She stops playing with her hair and turns toward the window to hide her reaction. She rests her chin on her hand and stares out. The window has now turned into a small black mirror that casts shadows over things we may think but cannot see. All around us the jet engines hum in a din so constant it sounds like nothing.

  My seatmate turns away from her mirror and asks in a trembling voice: ‘Do you often visit Gaza?’

  ‘Not at all. This will be my first trip in thirty-eight years. The truth is that I haven’t seen my mother in that long.’

  She bolts upright in her seat. ‘My God! Thirty-eight years! How have you managed to stay away from your mother and family all these years? You’re not a negligent son, are you? You don’t look cruel, but … I’m sorry for your mother.’

  ‘The occupation is what’s cruel. Not me …’

  She does not comment. I begin to rattle on as my bitterness gets the better of me, ‘I haven’t been able to go back since 1967. I wasn’t allowed to go back.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I hadn’t thought of that. I’m really sorry. It hadn’t occurred to me that you were unable to visit … Gaza, huh?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going there with my new British passport. I just got it. Without it, I couldn’t go via Tel Aviv.’

  For some unknown reason, I begin to tell her my life story. She listens with interest and curiosity. She watches me without interrupting or saying a word, her head propped in the gap between our seats. She studies me as if I were spinning a fantastic yarn.

  ‘I was born in 1948, in Asdud. In the place you now call Ashdod. My family left during the war, we went to Gaza, along with so many others from southern Palestine. We fled there and settled. I spent my childhood and youth in the camps of Khan Yunis. I was educated in Gaza all through secondary school. When I finished, I went to study at Cairo University. After graduating, I wandered the world, a refugee standing on his own two feet—though one was made of exodus without end, and the other a journey without destination. I collected my exiles one by one, and labelled them according to the numbers of years I lived in each. I watch history in our part of the world and notice that it weighs our existence on a broken scale. For every Jewish immigrant to Israel, a dozen Palestinians are driven out.’ Then I add: ‘If it seems lopsided, it’s because the scale that measures us has never been balanced.’

  My seatmate takes refuge in silence. She does not put up any resistance to my last attack, which, in any case, was not one I had planned to make. Instead, she sends whatever anxiety she is feeling out into the night sky. She studies herself in the blank mirror. At the same time, her hand creeps over and gently clasps mine.

  Returning from her distant musings, she twists to face me. Her fingers send warmth across my hand. ‘I hope you have no delays in seeing your mother and that you have a good time together. I hope that there can be peace between us and the Palestinians. We’re tired of the situation, all of us. The problem is not the people, it’s the politicians. Our politicians and yours. Sharon doesn’t want peace, nor does Arafat.’

  As she speaks, she retracts her hand and shifts her weight onto the forearm that rests between our seats.

  The extremists on your side and the extremists on ours. They always say that when they want to parse the crime and reapportion blame for the shedding of Palestinian blood. Your extremists and our extremists. Fine. I’d love to answer her with a simple quote from Mahmoud Darwish: get out. Leave our lands. Evacuate our territories and quit our sea. Get out of our wheat, our salt, our wounds. Leave the vocabulary of our memory. Then—and only then—can you take care of your extremists while we take care of ours.

  I say none of this to her. What is the use of dredging up the entire Middle Eastern conflict in a fleeting meeting between two strangers sitting next to each other on a flight? When I do talk, I say something else entirely: I tell her that I hope Palestinians and Israelis might leave the battlefield behind them and learn to share a life together. I hope that one day she and I might walk together along a long road with no checkpoints between us. No assassinations and no suicide bombers, no soldiers and no militants, no Zionism and no Palestinian national liberation, no Intifadas and no settlements, no Sharons and no Arafats, no Abu Mazens and no Shaul Mofazes, no warlords, no settlers, no Apache helicopters, no F-16s and no car bombs. I hope that we could be just two regular passengers passing the night on any flight.

  After going over the last of my misgivings, I ask: ‘By the way, you haven’t told me your name yet.’

  ‘My name’s Dana. Dana Newman, but my friends call me Dana Ahuva.’

  ‘Dana Beloved. It’s got a ring to it. It reminds me of Dana International. Remember him—or, I mean, her?’

  Laughing, she comments: ‘Yeah. But unlike her, I’m not interested in a sex change.’

  Then she turns to me and asks me what my name is.

  ‘Walid Dahman,’ I say.

  She repeats my name after me, as if she has heard it before, ‘Walid. Walid.’

  ‘Do you know me, Ms. Dana?’

  Reluctantly, she lets out a laugh, ‘Not at all. I’m just listening to the music of your name. Walid.’ Each time she murmurs it, she stretches it out. Then she wonders aloud. ‘Tell me about yourself, Walid. What do you do?’

  She smiles and her clear eyes sparkle. As I respond, she clutches her arms around her chest and listens intently.

  ‘I’m married to an English woman, and we have two boys. I’m a journalist. I work for Akhbar al-Arab, it’s an international Arabic newspaper out of London. I also write different kinds of things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I write about politics and culture and the arts. I’ve published three novels—I’m working on my fourth right now.’

  ‘Have you finished writing it?’

  ‘I’m not happy with the title I’ve chosen, and I haven’t given it a proper conclusion. In any case, I’m going to revise some of the scenes. I might add a number of details.’

  Before we get into some kind of ‘chat-with-the-author’ discussion, I add: ‘I’ve given it a number of titles actually, but I haven’t been able to decide on one yet. Here are some: Via Israel. Land of Transgression. Shadow Homeland. Twenty More Days. The Story of Adel El-Bashity. I’ve thought about giving the novel the kind of ending that precludes any sequels. Or the kind of conclusion that looks like the beginning of another. Or the kind of ending that leaves the door open to all sorts of speculation about what just happened or what might happen next. Or maybe I should leave it up to readers to decide how the story ends.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Dana.

  ‘Of course, of course. I haven’t given you a sense of what the novel is about and who the characters are. Luckily, we’ve got a long night ahead of us … We’re riding in a caravan, suspended in the sky—by pillars of illusion! The best I can do is mention some of the highlights of the book. Just give me a second.’

  I get out of my seat and stand in the aisle amidst a chorus of breathing souls. Here and there, I make out whispers amidst the loud sawing of snorers. I swing my arms and legs a bit and take a few steps down the aisle and come back.

  ‘There. That’s much better. Let’s get back to the story. Do you still want to hear it?’

  ‘Of course I do. Please begin.’

  ‘Adel El-Bashity is a Palestinian with German citizenship. He works in a branch of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. He returns to Gaza thirty years after going abroad for his education. He goes via Ben Gurion Airport, then through Erez crossing. When Adel was nineteen, he was in love with the girl next door, Leila Dahman. In reality, she’s based on one of my relatives. All the Dahmans in Gaza are related to us. Bac
k when he enrolled in the university in Frankfurt, he’d promised himself that he’d marry no one but Leila. For her part, she promised to wait for him to finish his studies and return. But Adel never did return. The ’67 war breaks out and Gaza falls under occupation. He doesn’t come back. He decides to continue his studies and gets an MBA.

  ‘Leila’s now forty-eight years old. She awakes after a long sleep inside the heart of this man who is just over fifty. And this man’s heart now itself awakes after a long sleep and begins to beat again.

  ‘When it becomes possible for Adel to return, he decides to go to Gaza and search for Leila. We need each other now. There’s enough life left in us for this love to last. These are the words he murmurs to himself the day he walks out of his apartment on his way to Frankfurt airport.

  ‘In the airplane to Tel Aviv, Adel meets Arna Katsoff. She’s an Israeli woman in her fifties, a professor of political science at Hebrew University. She tells him that she’s just spent a few days in Washington DC, delivering an invited lecture at Georgetown University. Her talk was about the latest developments in the Middle Eastern conflict, and prospects for peace in the region. She’d come to Frankfurt for only a couple of days during which time she’d visited the Jewish Museum and the Judengasse Museum nearby. She came to Frankfurt as part of a programme she’d arranged for herself to visit sites in the history of anti-Jewish persecution.

  ‘Arna tells Adel about what she saw in both museums, and about the life of Jews in the Judengasse, one of the oldest Jewish ghettos in Germany. She talks to Adel about how Frankfurt’s Jewish community suffered during the Holocaust. Adel feels that Arna has chosen from the outset to talk to him primarily through the lens of Jewish suffering, even though neither he nor his forefathers had anything to do with this history—except insofar as he and his family, like all other Palestinians, were themselves transformed into its indirect victims. When he speaks to her, he tells her about how the immigration of European Jews created multiple tragedies for Palestinians, tragedies that culminated in the Nakba of 1948, and the expulsion of his family and their relocation to the refugee camps of Gaza, and then again, in the occupation of the rest of Palestine, which has gone on for thirty-eight years.