After some months of intense study, tiredness became an additional factor, imposed on us by the daily grind of pursuing sources for the studies we were preparing, as well as by the very monotony of life inside the school. We would take our exhaustion with us to the library. In Luda’s office, there were two long, wide couches, which became temporary beds for secret siestas. I would sometimes go there, pretending to want to study, while in practice I would be watching Luda moving around the library stacks. I sacrificed a restful siesta in my room in the student accommodations for fear that Jamil might be alone with Luda.
One mild summer’s afternoon, I went to the library as usual, and headed straight for Luda’s office. I didn’t find Jamil there, and was happy. He didn’t get here before me, then! Luda, however, greeted me with her smile (a substitute for the kisses I didn’t get), immediately excused herself, and went out to work among the books. I was left alone, so I went to sleep, hoping to meet her in a dream; but instead I dreamed that Jamil appeared, carrying a thick stick and pursuing me down strange streets.
The three of us carried on like that, until a day arrived when a field trip to Leningrad had been arranged, during which we were to visit an agricultural kolkhoz near the city. It so happened that the trip was a shared one between the Israeli and Palestinian groups, even though we went in separate buses.
Just before leaving, Jamil and Luda stood near the door of the bus that was to transport the Israeli group, whispering quietly to each other, until the time came to move off. Luda planted two kisses on Jamil’s cheeks as he got onto the bus. Then she ran over to our bus, which had stopped behind the first one. I had already taken my seat. She came up to the bus window I was sitting beside. We whispered to each other for a time, until the noise of the engine got too loud, followed by the voice of our guide shouting, “We’re going now, comrades!” Luda hurriedly gave me two kisses, the same as Jamil had got, through the glass of the window.
On our last day in Leningrad, gripped in the heat and humidity rising from the Neva River as it meandered along its channels, Jamil and I made a tour of the city that lasted several hours, ending up in a large gift store. “Let’s take a look,” we said together at the entrance, then parted. We were separated by hidden desires, which sent us in different directions among the articles in the store. None of them caught my fancy, but eventually I found some plastic roses of various colors, chose a white one, and paid for it.
At the end of our shopping expedition, I met Jamil at the store entrance and we walked out together. He was carrying something in a wrapper similar to mine. He didn’t tell me what he had bought, and I didn’t tell him. Neither of us asked the other about the lucky girl he would be giving his purchase to. Maybe we each feared defeat. In a voice like a whisper, we just said to each other, “I’ve bought a small thing that I liked.”
Did Jamil have the same feelings that day as I did? Did he, like me, feel that the two gifts were to be given to one woman? I don’t know. All I know is that we had divided up Luda without our knowing if she considered us equals in her affections.
The day after our return, we visited Luda in her office at different times. I went after Jamil. I was late because I had a lesson in political economy, as I recall. Luda was looking at some papers connected with her work when I went in, my right arm behind my back. She left whatever she was doing, moved away from her desk, and hurried toward me to give me a hug and a kiss. I embraced her with my left arm and, as we separated, gave her my present—the white rose I had bought for her. She took it from me and kissed me again, then quickly went back to her desk. She reached over toward a glass vase, in which stood . . . a red rose. Luda put the white rose in the vase, picked it up, and came toward me, smelling each rose separately, and repeating, “Mmm, krasivo, spasibo, tovarishch Walid, i spasibo, dorogoi Jamil!” As I watched reality cancel out our secrets, she thanked both of us, said that both our roses were beautiful, called me comrade, and called him dear. Then she put the vase back on her desk, turned to me with a neutral smile on her face, and said:
“Your rose is as white as your heart, Walid. You’re a true friend.”
Luda’s message reached me clearly—as clearly as the truthfulness of my feelings. I realized that what was between her and Jamil was more than that between her and me. I felt alone in my defeat at that moment, but to reassure myself I told
