He observed Dallal. She barely said a thing. Sa’ira did most of the talking, while Dallal occasionally confirmed her sister’s words by nodding along. She seemed distracted. Perturbed, even. Her eyes wandered over the schoolchildren, as if she were looking for something to hold on to. She paused her gaze over the girls, examining them with curiosity, their short pants and fair thighs, but, finding no respite, she quickly resumed scouring the group. Occasionally, her eyes glazed over and she lowered her gaze, mindlessly toying with one of her copper-colored curls, before looking up again and searching for a foothold. Finally, she locked eyes with Tamir. She immediately lowered her eyes, but then looked up again and fixed her gaze to his. They looked at each other for a prolonged moment, which seemed to Tamir to last an eternity. He felt as if he were plunging into a black lake resting at the bottom of her eyes, a broad black lake, expanding without end, shoreless and bottomless.
Sa’ira’s voice emerged from a distance. Me and my sister, she said, we love poetry, we talk to each other in poems.
We have a special language, Dallal confirmed. A language of poems.
I would like to teach you a song that the children here all know, Sa’ira said. It’s not hard. Listen. Your teacher can translate:
The hoopoe forgets, the heron takes flight,
The kingfisher submerges, the pelican sleeps tight,
The ibis hides in the thicket, the pigeon sits for all to see.
Only the stint remembers,
But the stint flies out to sea.
Sa’ira’s voice was mellifluous and sweet, but even sweeter was the lake in Dallas’s eyes, sweeter and deeper than anything he had dared imagine until that day; how lovely it felt to be immersed in its waters. From a distance, further away than could be fathomed, from the imagined shore he had left behind, Tamir thought he could hear the Arabic teacher thanking the twins. Now everyone will leave, he thought to himself, and he will stay there, forever submerged in the depths of this enchanting lake. It’s fine, he thought, everything’s perfectly fine.
c. Adolescence
The kids grew up fast. They wiped the golden mist off their brows and stood upright in the hard summer air. They were into sports now, competitive and physical. The games were rough and violent: they played ‘circles and flags’, wherein a flag was placed in a circle, and the objective was to be reach and obtain it at all costs. The quick and the strong were strikers. The slow were defenders. Tamir was a defender. Always, a defender. But even defenders needed a certain degree of pace and strength. Tamir had neither. Binder, you look like a little Jew out there, one of the older kibbutz members scoffed. So there he was, standing like a little Jew— not in the forest, nor by cabins in the Carpathian Mountains, but in a patch of trampled fallow weeds in the fall heat, between the ruins of the Arab village Damun and the tamarisk thicket bordering the Bedouin village of the Arab al-Ghawarneh— anxiously waiting for someone to suddenly pounce him. And it was always sudden. No matter how prepared he was, it always happened all at once, like a blow, like an insult. Someone would emerge as if from the belly of the earth, erupting like a storm, brushing one defender off, steamrolling another, and running towards him. Tamir was chubby, so he gave off the impression of being a firm child, but everyone knew he was afraid of violence. The kid running at him would yell, move, Tamir, move! At first, he did move. But he would then be yelled at that he had abandoned the flag, that he was a coward, that he was undependable. The girls would laugh, the sound of their laughter resonating in his ears like the sound of the saws in the carpentry workshop on the outskirts of the kibbutz— high-pitched, dissonant, unbearable.
But this time, he wasn’t going to move. He would prove himself and hold his ground. He stood in his spot and watched the kid running furiously towards him. That kid was named Ronen Schwartz. He was a year older than Tamir, athletic, tall, powerful, quiet, and mean. He ran effortlessly, as if he were gliding on air. Tamir stood rooted to his spot. He was shaking all over. In fact, he should have been running to try and block Ronen’s path, but he couldn’t move. He felt an eerie weakness pervade his body. He had decided that if Ronen reached him, he would hold his ground— but he could do nothing beyond that. That decision alone was enough to sap the energy from his body. He stood still. Ronen could have easily run around him, but that would have been too easy. He ran towards him and stopped directly in front of him, mere inches away, towering above him.
Well, Binder, aren’t you going to stop me? he said mockingly. His eyes were foxlike, yellow.
I… Yes… Tamir managed to say, practically in a whisper. He strained to utter the words.
Yes, what? Ronen Schwartz laughed.
Yes… Stop you.
It doesn’t look that way, Ronen said. Why’d they put you out here in the first place? It’s a sad sight, really. If I so much as blow in your direction, you’ll fly like a dandelion seed.
He didn’t say a thing. Why didn’t Ronen simply pass him by and go
