The front door and his mouth closed together, and tension spread through the house. Basim walked toward the middle of the room and stood there, furious. With his hands, he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. With his fingers, he tried to clean his face of the unhappiness that had stuck to it. He let out a long breath. With what remained of his emotion—which was finally subsiding—he said, “Of course, if I were like . . . ,” then hesitated.
“Calm down, Basim, my love! It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last,” Jinin said, and then used his continuing hesitation as an opportunity to enquire maliciously, “Like who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Fine, it’s obviously Samir Badran. Can’t you let it go?”
Samir Badran had lived for a time with an Israeli friend of his called Hayyim Anbari, who was a member of the singing band Tseva’Ehad (One Color), the best-known group among Tel Aviv’s gay clubs. It was Jinin, alone among Palestinian authors, who had borrowed his story for a short story she had published on the Qadita website. She had been one of the first to surf the site on the day it was released. “This website has brought together the country’s homosexuals,” she had remarked to herself bitterly at the time (overheard by Basim), “but ordinary people can’t find anyone to bring them together.”
Basim muttered something in response, then turned around and walked toward the kitchen. Jinin reckoned he must have gone to the window and looked at their neighbor, for she could read the contentment on his face when he returned a few minutes later. She knew that Basim felt at peace when he stuck his head out of the window and saw their Jewish neighbor, Bat Tzion. He would go into a trance of contentment as if he were taking a siesta on a hot afternoon. He would watch Bat Tzion busily finishing a new painting, or progressing on a piece she had started on a previous occasion, as she sheltered beside the wall of her house, which was near the entrance to the cooperative in the small courtyard between the houses in the Old Citadel.
Basim had known Bat ever since he had married Jinin and moved to her small house in the Citadel. One calm summer’s morning, Basim had stood at the same window, leaning on his elbows against the window sill. He had started to watch Bat, who had soon raised her head and caught him staring at her. It didn’t disturb her; she simply said good morning to Basim, calling him a handsome young man:
“Boker tov, tas’ir yafeh!”
Then she had introduced herself: “I’m Bat Tzion!”
“Shalom, gvirti, ani Basim!” Basim had replied. Of the four words, three did not require any knowledge of Hebrew: one was his name; the second (ani) was shared with the Palestinian dialect; and the third (shalom) needed nothing to turn it into Arabic except to change the shin into sin and the o into an a. The fourth word, gvirti, Basim struggled to select from among the dozen or so Hebrew words that were all he knew of the language.
Basim called on Bat frequently. Every time, he bore her a bouquet of fine words as befitted her. He often expressed his sincere admiration for her ideas and paintings in Jinin’s presence, saying that her lines had the language of a poet, and her colors had the shape of truth. But he never used the old lady’s full name, Bat Tzion. He had never done that, not once since they had become friends despite their different ages. He contented himself with calling her Bat, in what the old lady thought was a sign of affection. Even Jinin thought that Basim was flirting with their neighbor. But it wasn’t like that at all; Basim simply hated the other half of his neighbor’s name. Even to hear it provoked him.
One evening, he whispered to Jinin, “Everything about our elderly neighbor is wonderful except for her name, which brings together all the unhappiness in the world and distributes it to us. I’d like to change it; no, I don’t just want to change it, I want to change it whether she likes it or not. I’m just not prepared to call her Bat Tzion, as if I were addressing the Zionist Movement and its offspring. I want to call her Bat Shalom!”
“Mmm,” said Jinin. Basim’s impetuosity, affected by his emotions and the summer heat, made her laugh. As if to savor the effect of the new name, she said: “Bint Salam, uh-huh, why not? It’s very nice, and it suits her.”
So Basim started to call their neighbor Bat Shalom. The old lady liked the name so much that she started to wait for Basim to walk through the quarter or appear near the window. She would pretend to be busy, so that he would call her and she could hear her new name spoken either by him or else by Jinin, who had taken a fancy to it in turn, because, as she told her the first time she used it to address their neighbor, “It makes me feel that there are people in this country who love peace, even though looking for them is like looking for a black hole in the universe!”
When Bat didn’t see Basim or Jinin for a couple of days, she would tease herself, saying: “Come on, Bat Shalom!,” “Get your food ready, Bat Shalom!,” “You must finish your latest picture, Bat Shalom!” It made her happy, and she came to believe it as if it were the truth.
Basim came back into the drawing room as if he hadn’t been upset by the decision of the Ministry of the Interior or even heard it. Jinin smiled at him, saying, “You’re right, Basim, my love, the officials in the Interior Ministry are sons of sixty-six prosti—”
She thumped her fist
