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Fiction

Cinderella

By Sayed Kashua
Translated from Hebrew by Vivian Eden

Herzl Haliwa lets out a scream and jerks his head from the pillow in alarm. He comes to his senses very quickly—this had happened before—and lies still, gently inhaling and exhaling. Trying to quiet his thumping heart, he lets the body lying beside him twist a bit and return to the deep sleep of early morning. After making sure that the person—Anna von Something, he couldn’t remember at the moment—has drifted back into slumber, he slowly rises from the bed. He pulls on his trousers as though he were putting on pantyhose—slowly, patiently, noiselessly, first the right leg, and then the left—and holds the metal belt buckle so it doesn’t clank. He refrains from zipping up his pants. After buckling his belt, he dons his shirt and picks his shoes up off the floor. He tiptoes to the door, gently turns the handle, takes a last look at Whatsername, the pretty volunteer from Germany, and leaves the room.

It is still early and the corridor of the hostel is empty, as he imagined it would be. When he is at a safe distance from the room, he puts on his shoes, zips up his pants, buttons his shirt, and goes down to the lobby. The reception clerk is the same one who had met him a few hours earlier when he had arrived together with the von Something. He walks past the clerk, who smiles graciously and greets him in English: “Good morning, sir.” Nothing in the clerk’s behavior is reminiscent of the hostility that he had greeted Herzl with when he checked in. With a suspicious look, the clerk had addressed him in Arabic and forcefully demanded payment in advance for the night. He doesn’t recognize him now, and thinks he’s maybe a local, maybe a tourist. And this does not surprise Haliwa at all. “Good morning to you, too,” replies Haliwa in English, swallowing the words so as not to reveal his accent, and steps out of the hostel into the alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City, its Jewish quarter.

The sun has only begun to rise, and the light outside is bluish. A chill grips him and sends a shiver down his spine. He rubs his hands together and walks quickly, trying to remember the shortest way out of this place, which all of a sudden seems threatening to him.

He has no idea where he is going. Yet last night he had been an experienced local who led the German visitor from the pub in Sheikh Jarrah, in the safety of East Jerusalem—Arab territory—to the hostel in the Old City. He tries his luck, reminding himself that he should walk westward, away from the sunrise, and that he should look for the wider lanes, which are safer. It is still early on a Friday morning, but the sounds of the day’s first stirrings reach his ears even from the hidden courtyards behind antique doors. Smokers’ first throat clearings, crying babies, water flushing down toilets. He quickens his pace. He needs to get out of here before anyone notices him. He tries in vain to summon up even a little of the confidence that he felt when he came in here. Now he hesitates and decides to turn right.

He is almost running. Some of the shops are open and he speeds past them. These are mostly bakeries, and the warm fragrance beats against his nostrils. Noises come from behind him. Frightened, he glances back to discover a group of black-clad yeshiva students walking fast, but not as fast as he is. He has to get away from them. In the end, he is an easy target. He does not want to get hurt. He sees an exit out of the Old City.

Running will just arouse suspicion, so he walks fast, hoping that the Jaffa Gate is the one in front of him. In any case he walks quickly in that direction, to that large gate, to that opening, out of here.

What a relief. He walks slowly, relaxed, knowing that the Israeli Border Police are there behind him. He is the only person leaving the Old City at this time of day of whom the policeman don’t even think of asking personal details. He can now recall last night’s conquest. He pulls the pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and lights one. The morning’s first long drag fills his lungs. He smiles with pleasure, even though he really can’t stand the taste of the Imperial anymore.

How jolly it is to walk down Ussishkin, his street. The weekend newspaper is no doubt waiting for him outside his apartment. He skips up the steps two by two, then stops dead in his tracks. Noga is sitting there, her back leaning on the apartment door. She looks at him, her eyes red and swollen. All the joy in his heart dissipates instantly. “Hey,” he says, bending down to stroke her hair, and she angrily brushes his hand away. “Don’t touch me, you bastard,” she says, and stands up.

“Hey,” he says in a caressing tone. “I can explain.” She’d probably been sitting there the whole night, just waiting to prove something. She gets up and leaves, in tears. She mutters, “Bastard, you bastard.” He runs down the stairs after her, trying to grab her arm but she fends him off all the way down. “Hey Noga, you know that I love you,” he says and she runs out of the building.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He really does love her. Only her. It’s been two years now that they’ve been together. They met as interns at a law firm and all the staff there, especially the secretaries, knew from the very first moment that they were meant for each other. And it’s true. He can’t give her up. He’d do anything for her. He runs after her to the car, insisting that he loves her. “You bastard,” she says as she gets into the car. “Can you tell me where you’ve been until now?” Haliwa says nothing. She locks the car door and drives away.

He will have to tell her the truth. After two years together the time has come: she should know. But is there any chance that she will believe him? He gets into bed, his head in a tailspin. That was a lot of arak he drank last night, and before that he had drunk a bottle of wine at dinner with Noga. He knows he shouldn’t mix his drinks. But after midnight he is incapable of drinking anything but arak. He has a splitting headache. He knows that he won’t manage to sleep a wink. So what exactly will he tell her, what will he tell her? Of course, the truth and nothing but the truth, but where exactly should he begin? Maybe in the here-and-now, at the end, that, in fact, he turns into an Arab after midnight, exactly like Cinderella. Well, not exactly, but the point is clear. Yes, and Noga will believe this story right away; she’s completely gullible.

Or maybe rather from the beginning, from that Rosh Hashanah thirty-odd years ago, when he was born. And maybe even the previous Rosh Hashanah, the one before the war. He’ll start with how his mother, that pious and childless woman, about forty at the time, who was hoping for a child. Praying at the Western Wall, one of the landmarks that religious Jews revere most, she begged God for a son, even if he was born half Arab. What is he going to tell Noga—that his mother’s prayer was answered and every night at midnight he turns into an Arab? What are the chances that she will believe him? And if she believes him, what are the chances that she will keep loving him after she knows? After all, he has concealed this from her because his love for her is so strong. He fears that she would leave him if she knew.

At midnight he changes completely. He can’t explain it. You have to be there to understand it. But he knows for sure that at midnight he turns into a different person, with different feelings, different fears and different hopes. The only really obvious change is in the language. From midnight to sunrise he hardly knows a word of Hebrew, apart from “okay,” “shekel” and “roadblock,” because the Arabs also use these words as if they were their own.

A cruel buzzing saws in his ears. Every five minutes he calls Noga’s number, knowing in advance that there will be no answer. He will have to go to her place. But what will he say, how will he answer her simple question: “Can you tell me where you were all night?” After all, they’ve been going out for two years, and they’ve never spent the night together. For two years they have been together all day, loving at full strength, but he always finds an excuse to evade, to flee, to disappear before midnight.

He certainly is not going to tell her that he had spent the night in the company of a pro-Palestinian German tourist, a woman whose name he has already forgotten. He will not tell her about what usually happens when he becomes an Arab and meets with his friends from the movement to plan protest movements and actions against the occupation. His greatest desire between midnight and sunrise is to meet an Arab girl, and he entirely forgets his love for Noga, but Arab girls aren’t to be found after midnight. In the rare cases when he has any success at all, he has to make do with European volunteers who are hot for his political views.

He doesn’t became any old Arab, but a proud artist who refuses to go to West Jerusalem, Jewish terrain, because he is not prepared to suffer the humiliation and the selection entering it requires. Obviously, the change isn’t physical, but he knows very well that he turns into a different person. They recognize it too, he’s sure. Before sunrise, Israeli Border Police often stop him on his way back to Ussishkin. It’s something else, maybe a smell, maybe fear. Between midnight and sunrise more glances are sent his way. He knows and feels it. He feels looks of hatred and he is gripped by a sense of persecution.

But he loves Noga. There’s no comparison between her and all those meaningless foreign girls that cross his path once every few months. He isn’t prepared to give her up, not now. He has to tell her. She’ll understand, he’s sure. He tries to call her once again, in vain.

That evening he walks to her house. Her flatmate opens the door. Noga is lying face down on her bed, her head buried in the pillow and covered with the blanket. Leonard Cohen is singing loudly. Haliwa turns down the music a bit and sits down next to her on the bed. Noga clutches the blanket and pulls it more tightly around her head. “The time has come for you to hear the truth,” he says, stroking the blanket where, he assumes, her head is.

“Listen,” he begins. “First of all I want you know that I love you. Only you. And I’ve come here to give you the explanation you deserve. I know this will sound ridiculous to you, but in fact, I’m half-Arab.” As he speaks these last words he sees her body tremble, and he guesses that he was making her laugh. How he loves her, remembering how his sense of humor had always drawn her to him. She never gave up on him even though being together for two years and never spending even a single night together isn’t easy. He tells her about the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, about his mother and her praying. He tells her about his childhood, about the nights when he would wake up frightened, feeling something different, knowing that he had dreamt in a different language, one that he only understood at night and completely forgot by morning. He tells her how his mother papered over his feelings, selling him various strange stories. She took him to rabbis, witch doctors and even Arab clerics to expunge the Evil Eye from him. Nothing helped. Dreams of expulsion, war and refugee living: he did not know their origin.

Noga had begun to loosen her grip on the blanket. He gets the impression that she is listening, laughing from time to time and snuffling, but her face is still in the pillow and her head is covered. He tells her how his mother got him used to going to sleep in time and waking up after sunrise. How she never let him go to summer camp with the other children in the neighborhood, how she always prevented him from going on class trips and how she prevented him, as an only child orphaned of his father, from joining the army even though he longed to join a combat unit.

Noga turns over in the bed, pulls the blanket away from her face and leans back on the pillow propped on the headboard. Her eyes are red and swollen. She lowers her face, takes a tissue from the chest of drawers and blows her nose. The story amuses her. She knows this way of Herzl’s, and she hates herself for always letting his tricks work on her.

“Ah, and you don’t sprout a mustache at night?” she asks, laughing.

“No,” he says, “the changes are internal. When I was little I noticed something. Those nights when I got up to pee, I felt that it had gotten heavier down there, a little bigger than what I was used to in the daytime.”

Noga laughs aloud now. Her laughter grows louder when she looks at Herzl’s face and sees him pretending to be serious.

“I knew you’d believe me,” he says, “but if you want to be with me you have to believe this. ‘Tonight I’ll stay with youou,'” he warbles off-key.

“Okay Ahmad,” she says, and laughs aloud once more.

Noga is beginning to tire of this game. She begs Herzl to stop. They finally spend one whole night together and he insists on this idiotic game. Herzl does not understand a single word she says, and tries to speak English, but Noga feels a little silly and doesn’t want to play this game. Herzl had promised her in English to take her to his night places so she gets dressed to go out for the night. The two of them walk from Rashbag Street to Gaza Road, and wait for a cab at the bus stop. When the first one stops, Herzl sticks his head in the window and said “No thanks” in English to the driver. Noga doesn’t understand. He explains that this taxi company had avowed not to hire Arab drivers, so he is boycotting them. He ends with a curse, again in English, about these fascists who hate human beings. Then they head to East Jerusalem, the Arab sector of the city, which no nice Jewish girl has any business visiting.

Herzl is really uncomfortable with the fact that he has brought an Israeli Jewish girl along that night. Although some of the regulars at the pub are radical Jewish girls from Ta’ayoush, he despises them and feels that the activists’ motives have more to do with an internal Israeli conflict and don’t come from the right place. They have their own agendas.

He has no alternative; he will introduce Noga as a lawyer from the Association for Civil Rights. She nods when he gives the cover story, and nods again for him to stop it already, even though somehow she feels in her heart that this is his way of proposing to her. She does not doubt that it will happen tonight. Probably last night was part of the game too. There is nothing she could do about it—Herzl had always been a little weird.

When he pushes the pub door open to leave, she is certain that all their friends will be waiting there to shout, “Surprise!” But nothing happens. She walks behind this man, who speaks Arabic like he had taken it in with his mother’s milk, greeting people left and right, shaking hands and stopping at his regular table. When he hugs and kisses a few young men who look completely Arab, she stares at him. Something really has changed. Nothing in his appearance, but everything else has changed nevertheless. The conversation is becoming heated in a language she doesn’t understand. Now and then she hears “Gaza” or “Ramallah.” She feels lost and looks at her beloved, trying to remember the person who was there only an hour ago, but now she watches him sip arak and smoke cigarettes, something she’s never seen before. He doesn’t look at her at all, ignores her purposefully. When their eyes meet by chance, his spark with suspicion and revulsion. She does not want to remain there one minute more, but she does not want to interrupt and cut off the conversation. Who knows what the reaction would be?

They do not stay there very long, maybe an hour and a half. With hugs and kisses, he takes leave of his friends and goes out to catch a cab in Sheikh Jarrah. They do not speak at all during the ride to his apartment. The neighbor’s dog barks hysterically and Herzl curses it in Arabic. He takes his key ring and opens a locked cupboard, full of books in Arabic. He selects one of them and sits down to read it. “So?” asks Noga, in English this time, and her voice trembles a bit. “Are you from the Hamas or something?”

“How dare you?” he almost scolds her, insulted, knowing that to a Jewish girl, Hamas is a code word for terrorist. “Popular Front,” he replies. He reads the book until he falls asleep. Noga stays on the sofa, at a safe distance. She doesn’t shut an eye the whole night, and watches him sleep instead. Even as he sleeps he isn’t the same. He awakens, startled by the sunrise, and glances around to see that he is in safe surroundings. Noga watches him with a look of love. He smiles at her. “Good morning, Darling,” he says. She looks quite tranquil; this is the man she knows well.

“So?” she asks with a smile.

“What, Sweetie?”

“What’s going to happen with this whole Arab story?”

“If you ask me,” he says on his way to the bathroom, “they can all go up in smoke.”

 

English Hebrew (Original)

Herzl Haliwa lets out a scream and jerks his head from the pillow in alarm. He comes to his senses very quickly—this had happened before—and lies still, gently inhaling and exhaling. Trying to quiet his thumping heart, he lets the body lying beside him twist a bit and return to the deep sleep of early morning. After making sure that the person—Anna von Something, he couldn’t remember at the moment—has drifted back into slumber, he slowly rises from the bed. He pulls on his trousers as though he were putting on pantyhose—slowly, patiently, noiselessly, first the right leg, and then the left—and holds the metal belt buckle so it doesn’t clank. He refrains from zipping up his pants. After buckling his belt, he dons his shirt and picks his shoes up off the floor. He tiptoes to the door, gently turns the handle, takes a last look at Whatsername, the pretty volunteer from Germany, and leaves the room.

It is still early and the corridor of the hostel is empty, as he imagined it would be. When he is at a safe distance from the room, he puts on his shoes, zips up his pants, buttons his shirt, and goes down to the lobby. The reception clerk is the same one who had met him a few hours earlier when he had arrived together with the von Something. He walks past the clerk, who smiles graciously and greets him in English: “Good morning, sir.” Nothing in the clerk’s behavior is reminiscent of the hostility that he had greeted Herzl with when he checked in. With a suspicious look, the clerk had addressed him in Arabic and forcefully demanded payment in advance for the night. He doesn’t recognize him now, and thinks he’s maybe a local, maybe a tourist. And this does not surprise Haliwa at all. “Good morning to you, too,” replies Haliwa in English, swallowing the words so as not to reveal his accent, and steps out of the hostel into the alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City, its Jewish quarter.

The sun has only begun to rise, and the light outside is bluish. A chill grips him and sends a shiver down his spine. He rubs his hands together and walks quickly, trying to remember the shortest way out of this place, which all of a sudden seems threatening to him.

He has no idea where he is going. Yet last night he had been an experienced local who led the German visitor from the pub in Sheikh Jarrah, in the safety of East Jerusalem—Arab territory—to the hostel in the Old City. He tries his luck, reminding himself that he should walk westward, away from the sunrise, and that he should look for the wider lanes, which are safer. It is still early on a Friday morning, but the sounds of the day’s first stirrings reach his ears even from the hidden courtyards behind antique doors. Smokers’ first throat clearings, crying babies, water flushing down toilets. He quickens his pace. He needs to get out of here before anyone notices him. He tries in vain to summon up even a little of the confidence that he felt when he came in here. Now he hesitates and decides to turn right.

He is almost running. Some of the shops are open and he speeds past them. These are mostly bakeries, and the warm fragrance beats against his nostrils. Noises come from behind him. Frightened, he glances back to discover a group of black-clad yeshiva students walking fast, but not as fast as he is. He has to get away from them. In the end, he is an easy target. He does not want to get hurt. He sees an exit out of the Old City.

Running will just arouse suspicion, so he walks fast, hoping that the Jaffa Gate is the one in front of him. In any case he walks quickly in that direction, to that large gate, to that opening, out of here.

What a relief. He walks slowly, relaxed, knowing that the Israeli Border Police are there behind him. He is the only person leaving the Old City at this time of day of whom the policeman don’t even think of asking personal details. He can now recall last night’s conquest. He pulls the pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and lights one. The morning’s first long drag fills his lungs. He smiles with pleasure, even though he really can’t stand the taste of the Imperial anymore.

How jolly it is to walk down Ussishkin, his street. The weekend newspaper is no doubt waiting for him outside his apartment. He skips up the steps two by two, then stops dead in his tracks. Noga is sitting there, her back leaning on the apartment door. She looks at him, her eyes red and swollen. All the joy in his heart dissipates instantly. “Hey,” he says, bending down to stroke her hair, and she angrily brushes his hand away. “Don’t touch me, you bastard,” she says, and stands up.

“Hey,” he says in a caressing tone. “I can explain.” She’d probably been sitting there the whole night, just waiting to prove something. She gets up and leaves, in tears. She mutters, “Bastard, you bastard.” He runs down the stairs after her, trying to grab her arm but she fends him off all the way down. “Hey Noga, you know that I love you,” he says and she runs out of the building.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He really does love her. Only her. It’s been two years now that they’ve been together. They met as interns at a law firm and all the staff there, especially the secretaries, knew from the very first moment that they were meant for each other. And it’s true. He can’t give her up. He’d do anything for her. He runs after her to the car, insisting that he loves her. “You bastard,” she says as she gets into the car. “Can you tell me where you’ve been until now?” Haliwa says nothing. She locks the car door and drives away.

He will have to tell her the truth. After two years together the time has come: she should know. But is there any chance that she will believe him? He gets into bed, his head in a tailspin. That was a lot of arak he drank last night, and before that he had drunk a bottle of wine at dinner with Noga. He knows he shouldn’t mix his drinks. But after midnight he is incapable of drinking anything but arak. He has a splitting headache. He knows that he won’t manage to sleep a wink. So what exactly will he tell her, what will he tell her? Of course, the truth and nothing but the truth, but where exactly should he begin? Maybe in the here-and-now, at the end, that, in fact, he turns into an Arab after midnight, exactly like Cinderella. Well, not exactly, but the point is clear. Yes, and Noga will believe this story right away; she’s completely gullible.

Or maybe rather from the beginning, from that Rosh Hashanah thirty-odd years ago, when he was born. And maybe even the previous Rosh Hashanah, the one before the war. He’ll start with how his mother, that pious and childless woman, about forty at the time, who was hoping for a child. Praying at the Western Wall, one of the landmarks that religious Jews revere most, she begged God for a son, even if he was born half Arab. What is he going to tell Noga—that his mother’s prayer was answered and every night at midnight he turns into an Arab? What are the chances that she will believe him? And if she believes him, what are the chances that she will keep loving him after she knows? After all, he has concealed this from her because his love for her is so strong. He fears that she would leave him if she knew.

At midnight he changes completely. He can’t explain it. You have to be there to understand it. But he knows for sure that at midnight he turns into a different person, with different feelings, different fears and different hopes. The only really obvious change is in the language. From midnight to sunrise he hardly knows a word of Hebrew, apart from “okay,” “shekel” and “roadblock,” because the Arabs also use these words as if they were their own.

A cruel buzzing saws in his ears. Every five minutes he calls Noga’s number, knowing in advance that there will be no answer. He will have to go to her place. But what will he say, how will he answer her simple question: “Can you tell me where you were all night?” After all, they’ve been going out for two years, and they’ve never spent the night together. For two years they have been together all day, loving at full strength, but he always finds an excuse to evade, to flee, to disappear before midnight.

He certainly is not going to tell her that he had spent the night in the company of a pro-Palestinian German tourist, a woman whose name he has already forgotten. He will not tell her about what usually happens when he becomes an Arab and meets with his friends from the movement to plan protest movements and actions against the occupation. His greatest desire between midnight and sunrise is to meet an Arab girl, and he entirely forgets his love for Noga, but Arab girls aren’t to be found after midnight. In the rare cases when he has any success at all, he has to make do with European volunteers who are hot for his political views.

He doesn’t became any old Arab, but a proud artist who refuses to go to West Jerusalem, Jewish terrain, because he is not prepared to suffer the humiliation and the selection entering it requires. Obviously, the change isn’t physical, but he knows very well that he turns into a different person. They recognize it too, he’s sure. Before sunrise, Israeli Border Police often stop him on his way back to Ussishkin. It’s something else, maybe a smell, maybe fear. Between midnight and sunrise more glances are sent his way. He knows and feels it. He feels looks of hatred and he is gripped by a sense of persecution.

But he loves Noga. There’s no comparison between her and all those meaningless foreign girls that cross his path once every few months. He isn’t prepared to give her up, not now. He has to tell her. She’ll understand, he’s sure. He tries to call her once again, in vain.

That evening he walks to her house. Her flatmate opens the door. Noga is lying face down on her bed, her head buried in the pillow and covered with the blanket. Leonard Cohen is singing loudly. Haliwa turns down the music a bit and sits down next to her on the bed. Noga clutches the blanket and pulls it more tightly around her head. “The time has come for you to hear the truth,” he says, stroking the blanket where, he assumes, her head is.

“Listen,” he begins. “First of all I want you know that I love you. Only you. And I’ve come here to give you the explanation you deserve. I know this will sound ridiculous to you, but in fact, I’m half-Arab.” As he speaks these last words he sees her body tremble, and he guesses that he was making her laugh. How he loves her, remembering how his sense of humor had always drawn her to him. She never gave up on him even though being together for two years and never spending even a single night together isn’t easy. He tells her about the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, about his mother and her praying. He tells her about his childhood, about the nights when he would wake up frightened, feeling something different, knowing that he had dreamt in a different language, one that he only understood at night and completely forgot by morning. He tells her how his mother papered over his feelings, selling him various strange stories. She took him to rabbis, witch doctors and even Arab clerics to expunge the Evil Eye from him. Nothing helped. Dreams of expulsion, war and refugee living: he did not know their origin.

Noga had begun to loosen her grip on the blanket. He gets the impression that she is listening, laughing from time to time and snuffling, but her face is still in the pillow and her head is covered. He tells her how his mother got him used to going to sleep in time and waking up after sunrise. How she never let him go to summer camp with the other children in the neighborhood, how she always prevented him from going on class trips and how she prevented him, as an only child orphaned of his father, from joining the army even though he longed to join a combat unit.

Noga turns over in the bed, pulls the blanket away from her face and leans back on the pillow propped on the headboard. Her eyes are red and swollen. She lowers her face, takes a tissue from the chest of drawers and blows her nose. The story amuses her. She knows this way of Herzl’s, and she hates herself for always letting his tricks work on her.

“Ah, and you don’t sprout a mustache at night?” she asks, laughing.

“No,” he says, “the changes are internal. When I was little I noticed something. Those nights when I got up to pee, I felt that it had gotten heavier down there, a little bigger than what I was used to in the daytime.”

Noga laughs aloud now. Her laughter grows louder when she looks at Herzl’s face and sees him pretending to be serious.

“I knew you’d believe me,” he says, “but if you want to be with me you have to believe this. ‘Tonight I’ll stay with youou,'” he warbles off-key.

“Okay Ahmad,” she says, and laughs aloud once more.

Noga is beginning to tire of this game. She begs Herzl to stop. They finally spend one whole night together and he insists on this idiotic game. Herzl does not understand a single word she says, and tries to speak English, but Noga feels a little silly and doesn’t want to play this game. Herzl had promised her in English to take her to his night places so she gets dressed to go out for the night. The two of them walk from Rashbag Street to Gaza Road, and wait for a cab at the bus stop. When the first one stops, Herzl sticks his head in the window and said “No thanks” in English to the driver. Noga doesn’t understand. He explains that this taxi company had avowed not to hire Arab drivers, so he is boycotting them. He ends with a curse, again in English, about these fascists who hate human beings. Then they head to East Jerusalem, the Arab sector of the city, which no nice Jewish girl has any business visiting.

Herzl is really uncomfortable with the fact that he has brought an Israeli Jewish girl along that night. Although some of the regulars at the pub are radical Jewish girls from Ta’ayoush, he despises them and feels that the activists’ motives have more to do with an internal Israeli conflict and don’t come from the right place. They have their own agendas.

He has no alternative; he will introduce Noga as a lawyer from the Association for Civil Rights. She nods when he gives the cover story, and nods again for him to stop it already, even though somehow she feels in her heart that this is his way of proposing to her. She does not doubt that it will happen tonight. Probably last night was part of the game too. There is nothing she could do about it—Herzl had always been a little weird.

When he pushes the pub door open to leave, she is certain that all their friends will be waiting there to shout, “Surprise!” But nothing happens. She walks behind this man, who speaks Arabic like he had taken it in with his mother’s milk, greeting people left and right, shaking hands and stopping at his regular table. When he hugs and kisses a few young men who look completely Arab, she stares at him. Something really has changed. Nothing in his appearance, but everything else has changed nevertheless. The conversation is becoming heated in a language she doesn’t understand. Now and then she hears “Gaza” or “Ramallah.” She feels lost and looks at her beloved, trying to remember the person who was there only an hour ago, but now she watches him sip arak and smoke cigarettes, something she’s never seen before. He doesn’t look at her at all, ignores her purposefully. When their eyes meet by chance, his spark with suspicion and revulsion. She does not want to remain there one minute more, but she does not want to interrupt and cut off the conversation. Who knows what the reaction would be?

They do not stay there very long, maybe an hour and a half. With hugs and kisses, he takes leave of his friends and goes out to catch a cab in Sheikh Jarrah. They do not speak at all during the ride to his apartment. The neighbor’s dog barks hysterically and Herzl curses it in Arabic. He takes his key ring and opens a locked cupboard, full of books in Arabic. He selects one of them and sits down to read it. “So?” asks Noga, in English this time, and her voice trembles a bit. “Are you from the Hamas or something?”

“How dare you?” he almost scolds her, insulted, knowing that to a Jewish girl, Hamas is a code word for terrorist. “Popular Front,” he replies. He reads the book until he falls asleep. Noga stays on the sofa, at a safe distance. She doesn’t shut an eye the whole night, and watches him sleep instead. Even as he sleeps he isn’t the same. He awakens, startled by the sunrise, and glances around to see that he is in safe surroundings. Noga watches him with a look of love. He smiles at her. “Good morning, Darling,” he says. She looks quite tranquil; this is the man she knows well.

“So?” she asks with a smile.

“What, Sweetie?”

“What’s going to happen with this whole Arab story?”

“If you ask me,” he says on his way to the bathroom, “they can all go up in smoke.”

 

הרצל נעלם בחצות

 

הרצל חליוה פלט זעקה וזקף את ראשו מהכרית בבעתה. הוא התעשת מהר מאוד, הרי זו לא הפעם הראשונה, ונאלם דום, שואף ונושף אוויר בעדינות, משתדל גם להשתיק את פעימות לבו, נותן לגוף השוכב לידו להתפתל מעט במיטה ולחזור לשינה עמוקה של בוקר מוקדם. לאחר שווידא שמי שלידו, אנה וון משהו, הוא לא זכר עכשיו, חזרה לתרדמתה הוא מתרומם אט אט מהמיטה, מושך את מכנסיו, כמו היה משחיל רגליו לגרביונים, קודם רגל ימין – לאט, בסבלנות, בלי רחש, אחר כך רגל שמאל – מחזיק באבזם המתכתי של החגורה שלא ירעיש. הוא נמנע מלכפתר את המכנסיים והאבזם, עוטה עליו את חולצתו, מרים את נעליו מהרצפה, צועד על קצות אצבעותיו עד הדלת, מושך לאט בידית, מביט בפעם האחרונה במה-שמה, המתנדבת הגרמנייה, דווקא יפה, ויוצא מהחדר.

 

השעה עדיין מוקדמת והפרוזדור של הספק בית מלון ספק אכסניה היה ריק, כמו שחשב. כשהיה במרחק בטוח מדלת החדר שבו בילה את הלילה נעל את נעליו, רכס את מכנסיו, כיפתר את חולצתו וירד במדרגות לקומת הכניסה. פקיד הקבלה הוא אותו אחד שפגש כמה שעות קודם לכן כשהגיע לכאן בלוויית הוון משהו. הוא עובר על פניו וזה מחייך בנדיבות ומברך אותו באנגלית, “בוקר טוב, אדוני”. שום דבר בהתנהגות הפקיד לא מזכיר את העוינות שבה קיבל את פני האורח בהיכנסו. אז פנה אליו הפקיד בערבית, מבטו היה חשדן ודרש בתוקף שישלם תוספת מראש על הלילה. הוא לא מזהה אותו עכשיו, חושב אותו לדייר, אולי לתייר. וזה בכלל לא מפתיע את חליוה. “בוקר טוב גם לך”, עונה לו חליוה באנגלית כשהוא בולע את המלים על מנת לא להסגיר את מבטאו ויוצא את המלון לסמטאות העיר העתיקה.

 

השמש רק התחילה זורחת, והאור בחוץ עדיין כחלחל. צינה אוחזת בו ומעבירה צמרמורת בגופו. הוא משפשף את ידיו וצועד מהר, מנסה לזכור את הדרך הקצרה ביותר ליציאה מהמקום הזה שהתחיל מאיים עליו.

 

אין לו מושג לאן הוא הולך. ודווקא הוא היה אתמול המקומי, בעל הניסיון שהוביל את האורחת הגרמנייה מהפאב בשייח ג’ראח לאכסנייתה בעיר העתיקה. הוא מנסה את מזלו, מזכיר לעצמו שעליו לצעוד מערבה, להתרחק מהזריחה ושכדאי לחפש את הסמטאות היותר רחבות, כך יותר בטוח. יום שישי ועדיין מוקדם, אך קולות התעוררות מהחצרות המסתתרות מאחורי דלתות עתיקות מגיעות לאוזניו. כחכוחי בוקר מגרונות מעשנים, בכי תינוקות, מים מורדים באסלות. הוא מחיש את צעדיו, חייב להסתלק מכאן בטרם מישהו ישים לב אליו. הוא מנסה לשווא להיזכר ולו במעט באותו ביטחון שלבטח חש כשנכנס לכאן. עכשיו הוא מהסס ומחליט לפנות ימינה.

 

הוא כמעט רץ, כמה מהחנויות פתוחות, הוא חולף על פניהן, לא מסב את מבטו לעברן. אלה בעיקר מאפיות, והריח העז מכה בנחיריו. איך מתחשק לו פיתה עם זעתר עכשיו. רעשים מגיעים מאחוריו, והוא מביט מפוחד ומגלה קבוצת תלמידי ישיבה לבושים בשחור צועדים מהר, אך לא מהר כמוהו. הוא חייב להתרחק מהם. בסופו של דבר, מי כמוהם משמש למטרה כה נוחה. הוא לא רוצה להיפגע. הוא רואה את הסוף של העיר העתיקה, לא נעים לו לרוץ, זה אך יעורר חשד, הוא צועד מהר, מקווה שזה שער יפו לפניו. בכל מקרה הוא יצעד מהר לשם, לשער הגדול הזה, לפתח הזה, החוצה מכאן.

 

כמה הוקל לו עכשיו, הוא צועד לאט, נינוח, יודע ששוטרי משמר הגבול נמצאים שם מאחוריו. הוא היחיד שיוצא בשעות כאלה מהעיר העתיקה בלי ששוטר אחד יחשוב אפילו לבקש את פרטיו. הוא יכול עכשיו לנסות ולהיזכר בכיבוש של ליל אתמול. הוא שולף את קופסת הסיגריות מכיס מכנסיו ומדליק אחת. שאיפה ראשונה ארוכה מסיגריית הבוקר ממלאת את ריאותיו. הוא מחייך, נהנה, למרות שעכשיו הוא ממש לא סובל את הטעם של האימפריאל.

 

כמה שמח הוא לצעוד באוסישקין, הרחוב שלו. העיתון של סוף השבוע בטח מחכה לו בפתח הדירה. הוא מדלג במדרגות שתיים שתיים, עד לקומה השנייה ונעצר מסומר. נוגה יושבת, גבה שעון על דלת הדירה. היא מביטה בו, עיניה נפוחות אדומות. כל השמחה שבלבו נמוגה בבת אחת. “היי”, הוא אומר, מתכופף ללטף את שערה, והיא מרחיקה בזעם את ידו מעליה, “אל תיגע בי, בן זונה”, היא אומרת וקמה מהמדרגה.

 

“היי”, הוא אומר בנימה מלטפת, “אני יכול להסביר”. היא בטח ישבה שם כל הלילה. היא רק חיכתה בשביל להוכיח משהו, ועכשיו היא קמה והולכת, בוכה. מסננת חרש “בן זונה, בן זונה”. הוא רודף אחריה במדרגות, מנסה לאחוז בזרועה והיא מסלקת אותו מעליה כל הדרך למטה. “היי נוגה, את יודעת שאני אוהב אותך”, הוא אומר והיא רצה החוצה מהבניין.

 

פאק, פאק, פאק. הוא באמת אוהב אותה. רק אותה. כבר שנתיים שהם ביחד. הכירו בתור מתמחים במשרד עורכי דין וכל העובדים שם, בעיקר המזכירות, ידעו מהרגע הראשון שהם נועדו זו לזה. וזה נכון. הוא לא יכול לוותר עליה, הוא יעשה הכול למענה, הוא רץ אחריה עד לאוטו, מתעקש שהוא אוהב אותה.

 

“יא בן זונה”, היא אמרה כשנכנסה לאוטו, “אתה יכול להגיד לי איפה היית עד עכשיו?” חליוה השתתק, היא נעלה את דלת האוטו ונסעה משם.

 

הוא יהיה חייב לספר לה את האמת. אחרי שנתיים ביחד הגיע הזמן שהיא תדע. אבל האם יש סיכוי שהיא תאמין? הוא נכנס למיטה, ראשו מסוחרר. הרבה ערק הוא שתה הלילה, ועוד קודם לכן שתה בקבוק יין בארוחת הערב עם נוגה. אסור לו לערבב הוא יודע. אבל אחרי חצות הוא לא מסוגל לשתות שום דבר מלבד ערק. כאב ראש אכזרי מכה בו עכשיו. הוא יודע שלא יצליח לישון לרגע. אז מה הוא יגיד לה בדיוק, מה הוא יספר לה? כמובן, את האמת ורק את האמת, אבל מאיפה בדיוק להתחיל? אולי מהסוף, שהוא בעצם הופך להיות ערבי אחרי חצות, בדיוק כמו סינדרלה, זאת אומרת לא בדיוק, אבל הכוונה ברורה. נכון, ונוגה תאמין לסיפור הזה מיד, הרי היא פתיה גמורה.

 

ואולי דווקא מההתחלה, באותו ראש השנה לפני שלושים ומשהו שנה כשנולד. ואולי אפילו ראש השנה הקודם, ההוא שלפני המלחמה. יתחיל מכך שאמו, אותה אשה מאמינה וחשוכת הילדים שהיתה אז בת ארבעים, קיוותה לילד, ובתפילתה לכותל התחננה לפני האל לבן אפילו אם ייוולד חצי ערבי. מה הוא יספר לה לנוגה, שתפילותיה של אמו נענו במלואן ומדי לילה בחצות הוא הופך לערבי? מה הסיכויים שהיא תאמין? ואם תאמין מה הסיכויים שתמשיך לאהוב אותו לאחר שתדע? הרי הוא הסתיר את הדבר מפניה בשל אהבתו העזה והפחד שתלך מעליו לכשתדע.

 

בחצות הוא משתנה לגמרי, הוא לא יכול להסביר את זה, מוכרחים להיות שם על מנת להבין. אבל הוא יודע היטב שבחצות הוא הופך לאדם אחר, עם תחושות אחרות, פחדים אחרים ותקוות אחרות. אבל הדבר היחיד הבולט בשינוי הזה הוא השפה. מחצות ועד הנץ החמה הוא אינו מכיר כמעט מלה אחת בעברית, מלבד “בסדר”, “שקל” ו”מחסום” כי גם הערבים משתמשים במלים האלה כאילו היו שלהם.

 

זמזום אכזרי מנסר באוזניו. מדי חמש דקות הוא מצלצל לטלפון של נוגה, יודע מראש שלא יקבל מענה. הוא יהיה מוכרח לנסוע אליה. אבל מה יגיד, כיצד יענה על שאלתה הפשוטה, “אתה יכול להגיד לי איפה היית כל הלילה?” הרי כבר שנתיים שהם יוצאים, והוא מעולם לא נשאר לישון אצלה. שנתיים שהם אוהבים ביום במלוא העוצמה אך תמיד הוא מוצא תירוץ להתחמק, לברוח, להיעלם לפני חצות.

 

הוא בוודאי לא יגיד לה שבילה את הלילה בחברת תיירת גרמנייה פרו-פלשתינית ששכח את שמה. הוא לא יספר לה על מה שהולך בדרך כלל כשהוא הופך לערבי ונפגש עם חבריו מהתנועה לתכנן צעדי מחאה ופעולה נגד הכיבוש. אמנם באותן שעות שבין חצות עד הזריחה תאוותו הגדולה היא לפגוש בחורה ערבייה, ובאותן שעות הוא שוכח כליל מאהבתו לנוגה, אך בנות ערביות אין למצוא לאחר חצות ובמקרים הנדירים שיצא לו בכלל, הוא היה מוכרח להסתפק באותן מתנדבות אירופיות שמתלהבות מהשקפותיו הפוליטיות.

 

לא סתם ערבי הוא הופך להיות, אלא לאומן גאה שמסרב לבלות בעיר המערבית כי אינו מוכן לסבול השפלה וסלקציה. אמנם שום דבר חיצוני אינו משתנה אצלו בחצות, אבל הוא יודע היטב שהוא הופך לבן אדם אחר. מזהים אותו, בכך הוא משוכנע. לא פעם עצרו אותו שוטרי משמר הגבול בדרכו חזרה הביתה לאוסישקין לפני הזריחה. זה משהו אחר, אולי ריח, אולי פחד. הוא בעצמו יודע, מרגיש שבין חצות לזריחה יותר מבטים ננעצים בו. הוא מרגיש מבטי שנאה, אוחזת בו תחושת רדיפה.

 

אבל הוא אוהב את נוגה, אין מקום להשוותה עם כל אותן זרות חסרות משמעות שמזדמנות בדרכו פעם בכמה חודשים. הוא לא מוכן לוותר עליה, לא עכשיו. הוא חייב לספר לה, היא בטח תבין. הוא מנסה עוד פעם אחת לצלצל אליה, לשווא.

 

באותו ערב הוא צעד אל ביתה. שותפתה לדירה פתחה את הדלת. נוגה שכבה על בטנה במיטתה, ראשה טמון בכרית והשמיכה מכסה את ראשה, ליאונרד כהן שר בעוצמה. חליוה החליש מעט את המוסיקה וישב לידה במיטה. היא חיזקה את אחיזתה בשמיכה והידקה אותה לראשה. “הגיע הזמן שתשמעי את האמת”, הוא אמר מלטף את השמיכה במקום שבו, הוא שיער, ראשה נמצא.

 

“את שומעת”, הוא התחיל את דבריו, “קודם כל אני רוצה שתדעי שאני אוהב אותך. רק אותך. ובאתי לתת הסבר שאני חייב לך. אני יודע שזה יישמע לך מופרך אבל אני בעצם חצי ערבי”. באומרו דברי סיום אלה הוא רואה שגופה רועד ומנחש כי דבריו הצחיקו אותה. הו, כמה שהוא אוהב אותה, נזכר עכשיו איך ההומור שלו החזיק אותה תמיד קרוב אליו, איך לא ויתרה למרות שזה לא קל שנתיים בלי להיות ביחד ולו לילה אחד שלם. הוא סיפר לה על הימים שבין ראש השנה לכיפורים, על אמו ותפילתה. סיפר על ילדותו, על הלילות אז, בהם התעורר מפוחד, מרגיש משהו אחר, ידע שחלם בשפה אחרת שהוא הבין אותה בלילות ושכח ממנה לגמרי בבקרים. סיפר איך אמו טייחה את תחושותיו, מכרה לו סיפורים שונים ומשונים. לקחה אותו אל רבנים, מכשפים ואפילו אנשי דת ערבים שיוציאו את עין הרע. כלום לא עזר. חלומות על גירוש, מלחמה, פליטות שלא ידע את מקורם.

 

הוא סיפר לה, לנוגה, שהתחילה מרפה את אחיזתה בשמיכה והשאירה אצלו רושם כי היא מקשיבה, מדי פעם צחקה ומשכה באף, אך עדיין פניה בתוך הכרית וראשה מכוסה. הוא סיפר לה איך אמו הרגילה אותו לישון תמיד בזמן ולהתעורר תמיד אחרי הזריחה. איך היא מנעה בעדו לנסוע למחנות קיץ עם שאר הילדים בשכונה, איך תמיד מנעה ממנו את הטיולים השנתיים ואיך היא מנעה ממנו, בהיותו בן יחיד ויתום מאב, להתגייס לצבא על אף שהוא כל כך רצה יחידה קרבית.

 

נוגה מתהפכת במיטה, מסירה את השמיכה מעל ראשה ומשעינה את גבה על הכריות בגב המיטה. עיניה אדומות ונפוחות, היא משפילה את פניה, לוקחת נייר מהשידה ומקנחת את האף. הסיפור שיעשע אותה. היא ראתה בו סיפור חנופה ובקשת סליחה. היא הכירה את דרכו זו של הרצל, והיא שונאת את עצמה על שהתרגילים שלו תמיד פועלים עליה.

 

“מה, ולא היה צומח לך שפם בלילה?” היא שאלה, צוחקת.

 

“לא”, הוא אמר, “השינויים הם פנימיים, כשהייתי קטן שמתי לב לדבר אחד, באותם לילות כשהייתי קם להשתין הרגשתי שנהיה יותר כבד שם למטה, קצת יותר גדול ממה שאני רגיל אליו בימים”.

 

נוגה צחקה בקול עכשיו. צחוקה התגבר כשהיא הביטה בפניו של הרצל וראתה כמה הוא מעמיד פנים רציניות.

 

“ידעתי שלא תאמיני לי”, הוא אמר, “אבל אם את רוצה להיות אתי את חייבת להאמין. הלילה אתך אני נשאר”, הוא מזייף כשהוא שר.

 

“בסדר אחמד”, היא אמרה, ושוב צחקה בקול.

 

לנוגה כבר התחיל להימאס מהמשחק הזה. היא הפצירה בהרצל להפסיק, וכי עד שהם נשארים לילה אחד ביחד הוא מתעקש על המשחק הדבילי הזה. הרצל לא הבין מלה ממה שהיא אמרה, וביקש לעבור לאנגלית, רק שנוגה הרגישה קצת מגוחך ולא רצתה לשתף פעולה עם המשחק. הרצל הבטיח לה באנגלית לקחת אותה למקומות הליליים שלו. היא התלבשה לקראת יציאה ושניהם צעדו החוצה מהרשב”ג לרחוב עזה וחיכו למונית בתחנת אוטובוס. מונית ראשונה עצרה והרצל תחב את ראשו לתוכה ואמר באנגלית לנהג, “לא תודה”. נוגה לא הבינה והוא הסביר שמדובר בחברת מוניות שחרתה על דגלה לא להעסיק נהגים ערבים, לכן הוא מחרים אותם. וקינח בקללה באנגלית נגד פשיסטים שונאי אדם.

 

הרצל הרגיש ממש נבוך מהעובדה שהוא מביא אתו הערב בחורה ישראלית יהודייה. אמנם מגיעות לפאב הקבוע כמה מתעאיוש אבל הוא שנא אותן, הרגיש שמניעי הפעילים הם סכסוך וויכוח פנים-ישראלי ושהם לא נובעים מהמקומות הנכונים. לא תהיה ברירה, הוא יצטרך להציג אותה בתור עורכת דין מהאגודה לזכויות האזרח. נוגה הינהנה בראשה כשהוא נתן לה את גרסת הכיסוי, ושוב התחננה שיפסיק כבר, אף שאיכשהו בלבה היא הרגישה שזו הדרך שלו להציע לה. אין לה ספק זה יקרה הלילה, בטח גם הלילה הקודם היה חלק מהמשחק. מה לעשות, הרצל היה תמיד קצת מוזר.

 

כשהוא דחף את דלת הכניסה לפאב היא היתה בטוחה שכל חבריהם מחכים שם ויצעקו “הפתעה”. אבל כלום לא קרה. היא צועדת אחרי הגבר שהתחיל לדבר בערבית כאילו ינק אותה, מברך את היושבים על שמאל ועל ימין, לוחץ ידיים ומגיע לשולחן הקבוע. הוא מתחבק ומתנשק עם כמה צעירים שנראים לגמרי ערבים והיא מביטה בו, משהו בו באמת השתנה, אמנם כלום לא השתנה במראה אבל בכל זאת, הכל השתנה. היא מרגישה אבודה בשיחה שהולכת ונעשית מתלהמת בשפה שאינה מבינה. מדי פעם היא שומעת עזה או רמאללה, מביטה באהובה, מנסה להיזכר בזה שהיה לפני שעה, מסתכלת בו לוגם ערק ומעשן סיגריות שהיא רואה בפעם הראשונה. הוא בכלל לא מביט בה, מתעלם ממנה במופגן, וכשמבטיהם מצטלבים בטעות, היא מרגישה שעיניו משגרות חשד ורתיעה. היא לא רוצה להישאר שם עוד דקה אחת אבל היא לא רוצה להתערב ולקטוע את השיחה. מי יודע מה תהיה התגובה?

 

הם לא נשארו שם זמן רב. אולי שעה וחצי. הוא נפרד מחבריו בנשיקות וחיבוקים ויצא לתפוס מונית בשייח ג’ראח. הם לא דיברו כל הנסיעה אליו לדירה. הכלב של השכנים נבח בהיסטריה, והרצל קילל אותו בערבית. הוא לקח את מחזיק המפתחות וניגש לפתוח ארון נעול, מלא ספרים בערבית. לקח אחד וישב לקרוא בו. “אז מה?” שאלה נוגה, באנגלית הפעם, ובקולה אחז רעד מה, “אתה מהחמאס או משהו?”

 

“איך את מעזה?” הוא כמעט נזף בה, נעלב

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