The Jewish Neighbor (4 page)

And
as if God was listening but had decided to ignore her, the kitchen floors
downstairs started creaking. Umayma had become hypersensitive to the slightest
sounds around the house ever since
Kamal
started
raping her. Without fail, he always liked to eat something before he came up
for her. Which meant the creaking kitchen floors was most likely him. She held
her breath and waited to see the terrifying sliver of light at the door when
Kamal
opened it.

A
minute passed.

Then ten.

Then thirty.

Until an hour went by with no sign of
Kamal
.
But she couldn’t sleep. Not even for a brief while. Eventually the effect of
the drugs wore off and Umayma had to cope with the pain stabbing both her body
and her soul.

§

A
week later,
Kamal
took the family to his house in
Cornwall. The twins were home for reading week—a chunk of time off given to
university students to revise for their upcoming exams. The Cornwall house was
small but intimate, on the west end of St. Ives, smack on the beach. Umayma
prayed
Kamal
would refrain from taking her during
this ten-day holiday for the sake of her healing ribs. Whenever his sons were
present,
Kamal
went out of his way to be even more
standoffish with Umayma. She figured it was a show of affirmation to his sons
she was just a maid to him rather than a replacement for their mother.

At
Cornwall,
Umayma’s
household responsibilities were
slightly decreased. Layal was shadowing her older brothers all day giving
Umayma time to reflect. Sitting by the water’s edge, she spent long hours reliving
what had happened to her.

She
had gotten close enough to death to smell its terrible stench. And it had
changed something in her. Killing herself was no longer one of her salvation
options. Life, after all, was worth living. Being captive under the crushing
power of the men who wanted to rape her had also shed a light on the absurdity
of her marriage to
Kamal
. He had planted a myth in
her head, convincing her she would be desolate without him and she had chosen
to believe him. He had wanted her to believe her only options were two
variations of hell: The life of a slave under his oppression, or shameful
retreat back to Syria. But a tiny hope began to flicker in her soul.
Maybe,
just maybe, there’s hope for me.
A way out
.

Throughout
her introspection, she never stopped thinking of Felix
Susmann
.
When the hysterical thoughts that had spurred her to shun him had subsided,
Umayma’s
rational mind started to kick in. She set his
faith aside and considered him purely on the merit of his character.
Let alone how he had made her feel.
Felix was the most
courageous, most gallant man she had ever come across. Very few men in this
world had ever gone out of their way to look out for her well being.
To protect her.
For as long as she could remember,
Umayma’s
sole purpose in life had been to please and take
care of others.

Her
marriage to
Kamal
was but a culmination of a universe
that had conspired to make her feel worthless, every day. And then someone like
Felix comes along offering a new script. But she chose to block him simply
because of the God he worships. She asked herself repeatedly, what if her
vision of life as nothing more but a state of slow torture and pure,
concentrated injustice was flawed? What if everything she thought she knew with
unshakable certainty, everything she held sacred, was suspect to doubt?
Including her knee-jerk reaction to Felix’s revelation he was Jewish.

Why
was her bias against Jews still so prominent in her heart, when all the other
supposed tenets spawned by the former regime in Syria had been exposed as
vitriolic lies? The impunity and disregard for the sanctity of human life by
which they allowed Syria to descend into chaos, showed they only ever cared
about one thing and one thing alone: Their survival.

Was
it possible this grand narrative about Jews, and by extension Israelis, being
the fundamental threat facing her country, was nothing more but a convenient
excuse for Syria’s heavy-handed autocracy to justify its own existence, and
keep plundering its people?

Umayma
had no past experience with any Jewish person. Until her encounter with Felix,
she had never even met one in the flesh. All she possessed to judge them was
the weight of the many years she had been brain-washed by sophisticated and
highly effective propaganda.

But
now somewhere from the deepest bends of her mind, a faint memory was surfacing.
A distant recollection of a grandparent or an older uncle
speaking of a time long gone when Jews were part of the national fabric, living
harmoniously with everybody else.
When being Jewish didn’t matter
any more
or any less than being anything else.
Which led her back to the fundamental dichotomy she was facing.
Umayma had managed to extricate herself from every other piece of
misinformation the regime had hard-coded in her. Why was her reflexive
antagonism to Jews the only exception? Umayma couldn’t find an answer to this
question.

§

More
time passed and the absurdity of the conspiracy theory she had spun about Felix
being a Mossad agent felt more shameful than credible. The more she thought
about what he had done for her, and how she had behaved in return, the more her
insides were corroded by a lethal combination of shame and guilt.

Then
one day she looked herself in the mirror and had an epiphany as clear as the
reflection of her face in the
Yarmouk
River on a
glorious summer day.
Umayma’s
reaction to Felix was
every bit as despicable as the two men who had tried to rape her. She had
judged him and condemned him based solely on her preconceived notions of his
faith and heritage. She had treated Felix with utter contempt. 
And
wasn’t that exactly what these two men had done to me?

Islam
regarded Jews as descendants of the same patriarch, Abraham, and referred to
them as people of the book, to be protected and respected. Muslims believed God
had sent his revelation first to the Jews through Moses, and hence there was an
important link between Judaism and their faith.

Something
else continued to puzzle her about her encounter with Felix. When he had
rescued her, her head scarf had been pulled away from her by her attacker. But
she had woken up on Felix’s couch with the scarf neatly tied on her head. Felix
had thought about what the veil meant to her, and how she wouldn’t have wanted
a man other than her husband to see her hair exposed. Even as she lay
unconscious at his mercy, he had the decency, even humanity, to respect her
beliefs and traditions.
Precisely what sort of ‘enemy’ behaves like that,
Umayma?
What sort of ‘heathen’ goes to so much trouble? Her own husband, a
devout and practicing Muslim, had shown no such consideration for her well
being.

Felix’s
religion began to matter even less in
Umayma’s
mind,
and she started thinking of him simply as a man. One she was rather attracted
to. His understated masculinity and his magnetic presence had made her quiver.
Still makes her quiver.
The memory of him squatting on the
floor to put her shoes back on so she wouldn’t hurt her ribs played vividly in
her mind.
And when his fingers first touched the soles of her feet,
those tiny electric waves of pleasure travelling through her tired, abused
body,
had reignited a shimmer of desire in her. Even when
she had stepped out of her element and did something sexually forthcoming with
her feet, there was nothing dirty about how he reacted. He hadn’t behaved like
any other man she knew who would have wasted no time to take advantage of her
yearning and show of weakness. With little words and fewer actions, Felix had
shown her what a real man looks like. Protecting and caring for a woman. She
craved his orbit. A chance to go back in time and relive that critical moment
when he revealed he was Jewish.
And for Umayma to behave
differently.
To show him in no uncertain terms she didn’t care one bit.

§

Every
day after dropping Layal to school, Umayma would walk back slowly and loitered
in front of Felix’s house. At times she would pretend to be adjusting the
stroller or checking her mobile phone, waiting for a chance encounter with the
man who had dominated her dreams at night and her thoughts by day. To see him
coming in or out of the house so she could have a word with him. She had even
rehearsed a little speech, and vowed to focus on his eyes and absorb every
detail of his features knowing it could be the last time they spoke.

But
this chance encounter never happened.

§

The
bitter winter months eventually surrendered to spring. But the passing of time
did nothing to dent
Umayma’s
burning fantasy to
serendipitously run into Felix. If anything, her desire to see him clutched
deeper at her heart. Having something to long for was transformational. She was
no longer constantly miserable or feeling helpless. Whenever
Kamal
scathed her, she withdrew into her own little world
and experienced again the brief intimate minutes she shared with Felix. Even
when
Kamal
came to rape her, in her mind she would
replace him with their neighbor and it would hurt far less.

§

Spring
was no longer tentative, but there was still no sign of her benevolent
neighbor.
Umayma’s
chores at home were expanding and
taking a toll on her physical well-being.
Kamal
was
involved with a group of men organizing to support the rebels in Syria. Twice a
week, a dubious group of her compatriots, Egyptians, Tunisians, Saudis, and
Pakistanis convened at home, and Umayma was expected to cook up a feast for
them on each occasion.

The
extra work required of her wasn’t the only thing troubling about these frequent
encounters. Something unsettling about these men and their secretive business
with
Kamal
rubbed Umayma the wrong way. None of them
came across as benign politicians or neutral supporters of the Syrian people.
Every one of them appeared to be part of some sort of rabidly radicalized
Islamic faction.

Umayma
was all too aware how the rebellion in Syria first started as a grass-roots movement
of idealistic young men and women, only to be corrupted and infiltrated by
fanatic groups, just as intent as the government was to take the country to the
brink. Al Qaeda had seen an opportunity to meddle in the mud, and was running a
ruinous and dirty campaign in Syria. 
Why is
Kamal
associating with these types?

Umayma
was a simple woman, but she wasn’t an idiot. She kept her eyes open and ears
alert to what was taking place at these meetings. While she hardly interacted
directly with
Kamal’s
male guests, she worked hard to
pick up on what was being said behind closed doors. Despite the paranoia and
discretion by which
Kamal
managed these events, every
so often, the men would let their guard down, enough for Umayma to slowly and
over time build a clear narrative of what they were up to simply by
eavesdropping.

This
was a war council.
Kamal
and his friends were
funneling money into Syria to fund rebel operations against the government.
Terrorist acts to be precise. Heinous explosions aimed at maximizing collateral
damage to terrorize the public and further discredit the government. Not that
the government was playing any cleaner. Two sides of one murderous coin.

Umayma’s
interest in
Kamal’s
affairs with these shady men was at some level motivated by her concern for the
wellbeing of her country. But it was far more inspired by her hatred for her
husband. Back in Cornwall when she had decided she deserved a better life than
what he was giving her, a seed was planted which was starting to bear fruit. Her
strategy to escape
Kamal
was based on identifying any
weakness in his character or way of life and exploiting it.
To
stab him in the back.

§

As
summer exposed its tentacles,
Umayma’s
attempts to
coerce fate to bring her into contact with Felix hadn’t progressed one iota.
The need to see this man had gone beyond wanting to thank him and apologize for
how she had reacted.

What
she really desired was to be near him again. To experience her heart racing and
her stomach fluttering just like the first time they met. Was it just a
juvenile fantasy she had built around this man simply because of the kindness
and respect he had extended her, or was there something deeper about her
yearning? Like a chemical reaction resulting from an uncontrollable physical
and emotional attraction to Felix. Umayma didn’t feel the slightest bit of
guilt she was coveting someone other than her husband. It had been many years
since a man made her feel this way.
Kamal
had
decimated her dignity to the point where she never again thought it was
possible to crave a man inside of her.