“Did you take a lot of photos?”
“Four rol s.”
“Am I in any of them?”
“Yes, one.” I didn’t want to look at him, I didn’t want to think about him. He gave up and didn’t speak to me again.
The buses arrived at the park and by then everyone had to pee. We found bushes and trees. Ra was using a tree not far from mine. And when I rose and pul ed up my underwear I saw that he was looking at me, and not smiling, and not turning away.
My father met Git e when they were both sixteen; Git e’s parents owned a jewelry company with interests in South Africa and the family moved there for a few months. Git e and my father took violin lessons at the local music academy on the same afternoon, and my father began waiting until Git e’s lesson was over so he could walk her home. They fel in love, and after she left they exchanged passionate and frequent love let ers, until Git e stopped writing and nal y confessed that she had met someone else. In fact, so had my father, and he was relieved. He’d met my mother. The two of them tried to escape apartheid by moving to Israel, which later made them laugh at themselves.
“From the frying pan into the falafel,” my father used to say.
My father was an engineer, and he loved to sing classical choral music. He dreamed of joining a choir, but had to content himself with singing in the shower or providing vigorous vocal accompaniment to the Munich Bach Choir in our living room. He seemed particularly inspired when he washed the dishes. Denn al es Fleisch es ist wei Gras, und al e Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen. This was ne when I was very lit le, but he soon became a social liability and I gave him strict instructions to restrain himself when my friends were over. My father was not a demonstrative person; he was shy when he wasn’t singing, and he let my mother run the household and make al the decisions. But we read the newspaper together. From as far back as I can remember he would sit beside me on the carpet, spread the newspaper in front of us, and comment on the stories: “Unabashed corruption,” he’d say. “Shortsightedness, insanity.” He explained things in simple terms so I could understand them, and by rst grade I probably knew more about our parliamentary system (and its many defects) than any other seven-year-old in the country.
His brother was a doctor, and the two of them, my father and his brother, took me to refugee camps when they went to do volunteer work there. My uncle, an energetic man with a good sense of humor, would do the driving. He liked to sing too, though his specialty was drinking songs or folk classics like “Waltzing Matilda.” I would sit in the back and watch the view change from city to town to vil age and nal y to refugee camp.
No one I knew visited the camps, and I didn’t tel anyone at school that we went, because the one time I mentioned it, there was a big scandal. In third grade we had to write a composition on the topic “How My Family and I Contribute to the State.” My father suggested I write about our visits to the camps, and I took his advice, though I knew we were both being deviant: he in his suggestion and I in my compliance. I described the poverty, the living conditions, and what we did. My uncle saw patients and distributed medicine (which he stole from the State, but I didn’t mention that), and my father xed things that were broken. I played with the local children, who competed to have me visit their homes—a dizzying assortment of structures crammed together and piled up like boxes one on top of the other. In these neat lit le rooms I would stu myself with sweet baklava and empty my bag of toys on the oor. The Palestinian children spoke Arabic and I spoke Hebrew, but at that age language is mal eable. We spent hours exploring the possibilities of the treasures I’d brought: marbles, dol s, trucks, airplanes, cards, Pick Up sticks, dominoes. I gave a detailed account of these visits in my essay, and concluded, In this way we contribute to people who are under occupation, we show them that we are not al horrible, and we help the State see what it’s doing wrong.
My parents were cal ed in, and my mother, who was not in the habit of keeping her thoughts to herself, had a huge ght with the principal. She cal ed him an impotent, narrow-minded pimp, a poor excuse for an educator, a limp, spineless State puppet. She said she felt sorry for him and sorry that her daughter had to be exposed to his stupidity. Then she swept out of his o ce like a diva and slammed the door. I was sit ing in the hal way outside, and I felt both proud and dismayed. I admired my mother but I took after my father, who was averse to conflict.
I was happy about our move to the city; I had just reached the age at which smal towns become irredeemably boring. My mother’s death two years later left my father literal y speechless: for several weeks he walked around in a daze, confused and unable to concentrate on anything. When he nal y began speaking he was mostly incoherent, and he sat and stared into space for hours, a puzzled look on his face. I think he contacted Git e because the only life he could make sense of was one that had not included my mother. Git e was divorced, lonely, and excited to hear from him. Let ers with foreign stamps began arriving at our place; shortly afterward my father ew to Belgium for a week, and when he returned he announced that he was going to marry Git e, and that I would be happy in Belgium. I didn’t believe him.
He became convinced, later, that his anachronistic ight into the arms of love was irresponsible and that, like Anna Karenina, he had made a drastic choice. For as a result of the disorder in my life after he left, I did not graduate from high school. I failed al my subjects apart from English, which didn’t require any exertion on my part. I was bilingual, not only because my parents spoke English at home, but also because I loved to read novels about the mystifying world of adults and the best ones came from my parents’ bookshelves: I was particularly fond of
I loved to read novels about the mystifying world of adults and the best ones came from my parents’ bookshelves: I was particularly fond of Iris Murdoch and George Eliot, but I was also a Miss Reed addict.
He blamed himself, but I felt he’d made the right decision and I was happy for him. His let ers suggested an ideal life: a two-hundred-year-old house with sweeping staircases and secret panels; a place in the local men’s choir; close friends who came over for dinner and chess. He often spent his evenings reading by the replace or, when it was warm, on a patio facing the tulip garden; his French was improving and he’d picked up some Flemish as wel . As for Git e, she had not disappointed him. He said she spoiled him, and his let ers were ful of cassoulet and sou e a l’orange: his tone when he described these dishes was reverent. It was obvious that he and Git e were general y compatible. They both liked theater and books and conversation and, oddly, knit ing; my eccentric father had taken up knit ing, which he found “relaxing, touching, and spiritual y satisfying.” This late romance was the inspiration for one of my novels, though of course I had to change most of the details. My father was transformed from a slightly overweight, myopic engineer to a young, dashing horse breeder (who obviously did not knit). My mother became delicate and innocent, a ower taken in her youth. As for Git e, I had never met her, and so was free to invent her both in ction and in life. My father sent me a photo of the two of them next to their large house, but the photo was taken from a distance, and Git e is wearing a wide-brimmed hat which throws a concealing shadow over most of her face.
Benny was sit ing at my kitchen table when I came home from Ein Mazra’a. He lived upstairs from me and had
