The Wanting (15 page)

Wow, I must have fallen asleep. I was lying in Pop’s bed writing in my notebook all the things that just came before this, but then—well, I don’t know, I opened my eyes and the notebook was right there in my hand, and my pen, too, but I wasn’t writing. Light was actually peeking through the slats of the Venetian blinds. I looked at my watch. Yikes! It’s already morning!! Yikes! But it’s OK. I’m
not going to school today. You know what? I’m going to put the words on paper: FUCK IT. Fuck it all! Yeah. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
!!! Why should I go to school? Who’s going to care anyway?

I have to say it was weird sleeping on Pop’s bed. I haven’t done that since I was a kid.

I just took a shower and changed my clothes. But the thing is, I got thinking about, of all people, my mother. Who knows why? I don’t like to think about her. I don’t like her, period. You will probably think that’s strange, and even sick. I can’t help it. It’s how I feel.

Anyway, I have to admit I reached under the pillow again, and there it was, that picture of my mother, the one I told you about. I think I was relieved it wasn’t Daphne, but why he would keep a picture of my mother under his pillow I have zero idea. I took my time looking at it, and at first I just got mad, because I always get mad when I think about her. But she was, I don’t know—all in her winter clothes, with the gorgeous fur collar and the silvery shapka (which is what Babushka calls every hat including a yarmulke!), a shapka made of extravagant and beautiful gray fox (because in Russia they don’t care about animal rights and ecology), and her face beneath the fur was tilted just a little to one side, and she had the slightest of slightest smiles, which I believe you would call coquettish, or impish maybe, a smile I hated the last time I saw this picture, but this time it seemed, I don’t know, like she was asking me something, or inviting me to come into her photograph, or there was a secret just between the two of us that both of us already knew. Of course, that was impossible—I wasn’t even born when this picture was taken. But still. Her lips were very thick and lush, and even in black and white you could tell she had on wads of red lipstick, kind of like that model, Angelina Jolie—I used to think fat lips were gross, and I couldn’t
imagine
my father kissing them, but now I saw: wow. And that’s when I turned and looked in the mirror on the closet door, because my own lips—And in the
photo her lips were parted just a teeny little bit, and you could just make out the space between her two front teeth—which is exactly the same as mine—we’re total teeth twins!—and even though I always hated that space between my teeth, for some reason right now, it was kind of, I don’t know.

The one and only photo of my mom

Anyway, that’s when I just had to see if my father kept anything else about her hidden in his room.

And so, OK, yes, I started snooping inside his drawers. I know, I know, I’d kill him if he did that to me. But that’s what I did.

And what did I find?

Nothing!

Pop is so boring! Underwear? Check. Socks? Check. Checks? Check. But secret journal? No way. Love letters? Forget it. Hidden reserves of cash? Well, yes, but I didn’t take any. (Honest.) I did find some notebooks, but they were only filled with architectural ideas and algebra and phone numbers of clients. So I plopped down on the bed to consider what to do next.

I mean, it was like both my parents were secret agents or something.

I
T WAS THE MAID KNOCKING
at the door that woke me. It was already nine thirty, which meant if I called home again Anyusha would be in school, but I called anyway and told her I’d be back by dinner. I had to use the hotel phone, because my cell was already dead. In those days they lasted only a few hours, and you had to take extra batteries with you. But of course I hadn’t. “We’ll go out,” I crooned into the phone. “In fact, we can go into Tel Aviv and do something special like Orna and Ella or Café Noir. We’ll get some sweet potato pancakes or schnitzel, okay? Big kisses, and don’t worry. Just be ready to go out and have a good time.”

I showered, went down for coffee, and found a shakshuka place. I hadn’t had shakshuka in a long time, and it made me feel very Israeli. It was so late hardly anyone was there, so I took my time, smoked my cigarette, read a newspaper. By the time I was done it was close to eleven thirty, and the place was filling up again.

I knew that Amir Hasan’s village was near Bethlehem, one of several villages that found themselves squeezed between the overflowing refugee camps, the burgeoning Jewish settlements, and the old Christian city. I pulled the Fiat out of the car park, took out my map, and placed my finger upon the words
BEIT IBRAHIM
. And I even remembered a street: Armenia. They’d moved there after their own house was ripped down.

I felt in my pocket for my knife, put the car in first, and went on my way. I got onto Route 60 and then turned at the sign for Beit Ibrahim and within minutes found myself on the edge of the village. It sat in a small valley surrounded by olive groves and rough
hillsides. Once it might have been a beautiful town, but now it had grown out of its old clothes and become a kind of anemic sprawl dwarfed by the refugee cities to the north and the dark clouds that seemed to emanate from them. To the south and west were the first inklings of desert, but atop the hills the bright circles of Jewish homes with their red-tiled roofs and golden stucco walls preened like peacocks.

A few meters up, the soldiers waved me over.

“What’s your business here?”

“I’m going to see an old friend.”

“A friend.”

“From the days before.”

They clucked in understanding. Who had not had Arab friends? Who had not done their shopping in Arab towns? Had their tailoring done there, their furniture made, their shoes mended? Who had not found time to sit and drink coffee, sit and play chess?

“You should be careful,” one of them said to me. “It’s dangerous.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“What happened to you?”

“Oh, the face? Car accident. Not this car. I wasn’t driving. It was a bus actually.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s nothing.”

“Most people travel this road by caravan. It’s not good to drive alone anymore. Are you sure you want to proceed?”

“They’re expecting me. Nothing will happen, I’m their guest.”

“All right, then. Be safe.”

“I will. Thanks.”

They saluted me, and I drove off toward the village as if I knew where I was going.

Of course I didn’t, so I just wandered around a bit looking for street signs, but there weren’t any that I could make out. There were two or three main arteries; I went up one and down the other. The houses were a mix of old stone and new concrete, a few apartment buildings, a slew of shops and a market that was mostly
empty, a mosque or two. Wherever I went, eyes followed, and I began to lose my nerve. Finally I stopped and asked a kid where Armenia Street was, and he said I was on it, and I asked him where Abdul-Latif Hamid was, and he said in his few words of Hebrew, “Oh, for car!” and pointed down a side road.

“Down there?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. Down. Down.”

“Straight ahead?”

“Straight, straight.”

And to the other kids around him he said something in Arabic, and I understood him to be explaining that I needed my car repaired, and then I drove off in the direction toward which he had pointed. The road curved away from the center of town down a winding, ever-more-narrow and broken pathway, till the pavement gave out completely and turned to dirt and scree. Down below I could see a kind of stone shack with a corrugated roof and a wide driveway in which several pickups and old, worthless cars were abandoned helter-skelter among the weeds and trash. I pulled up to the open garage and shut off my engine. Inside, all work had stopped, and three men were staring out at me.

A wiry fellow emerged, wiping his hands upon a filthy rag. He spoke a very good Hebrew, and he said, “Shalom aleichem,” and I responded, “Alaikum salaam.” I looked about and saw the gang of boys watching from the top of the hill and inside the garage two men hesitating before returning to their labors. One of them was very large and bearded. The other was thin and wore a stupid expression.

But the man in front of me could not have been other than Abdul-Latif. He said, “What’s the trouble with the Fiat?”

“Tune-up,” I said.

“You came all the way out here for a tune-up?”

“I got your name from someone. He said to come to you.”

He put the oil rag into his back pocket. “We don’t get Jewish cars anymore.”

“You won’t work on a Jewish car?”

“I didn’t say that. I said we don’t get them anymore. Who sent you here?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember. It’s just I had your name written down as the best mechanic. Maybe it was years ago someone told me.”

“I used to work on a lot of Jewish cars. Now I don’t. But I have a lot of Palestinian cars, which I didn’t use to have. They honor me with their cars, whether they need work or not.”

“That’s nice,” I said.