I woke, to find myself contemplating the opposite area, where the driver said that Deir Yassin was situated, but I could see only forests and a distant settlement — perhaps the Giv’at Shaul B they were talking about, or some other nearby settlement in the area. Immigration was creeping forward and swallowing things up everywhere, and the Palestinians were no longer able to keep up with or remember the names of the settlements. The settlers’ advance had no end.
I turned right again, and finished my route by winding around, until I came back from the other direction to where the four drivers had been sitting. I remembered their eagerness for a passenger like me—a “Hajj,” as they had called me. I could only find one of them, so I asked him to take me to the Ramada Renaissance hotel, and he welcomed me as his four colleagues had done.
8
Jaffa
As she embraced and kissed her on both cheeks, Julie told Jinin that she was more beautiful than in the novel I had introduced her to, with all its characters and events.
“Of course. I’m the one who created Jinin,” replied Jinin, who was clearly pleased. “I can’t allow her to please the readers more than I do.”
As the digger resumed its work, I interrupted to suggest a change of scenery, telling Julie and Jinin that I didn’t think a cup of coffee in Dina’s was worth this noise. They both agreed with me. Jinin suggested that she should take us in her car—which she had left near the street corner—on a tour to acquaint us with the principal sights in Jaffa, then take us to the fishing port. After that, we would go to the Citadel, where we would visit her house, before going to sample a Jaffa fish lunch—“which won’t yet have come out of the sea when we arrive,” as she put it—at the Old Man and the Sea restaurant.
Our tour around the streets of the city didn’t last long, for there was not much to stop at, apart from Clock Square, the crowded flea market, the Abulafia restaurant (which had become one of the city’s main attractions, its fame overshadowing nearby Tel Aviv), and the al-Bahr mosque. We also stopped for a little while at the fishing port, before wandering through the lanes of the Citadel, many of whose houses and inside alleys appeared to have undergone restoration.
At the end of a stone staircase, we came to a blue iron gate, which shut off an area no more than a meter wide, while forcing a man of medium height to stoop. “We’ve arrived!” exclaimed Jinin when we reached it. Julie and I looked at where we’d come to.
A tall man with a pale complexion, apparently in his forties, who had retained much of his youthful handsomeness and agility—like the smile that he at once put on his lips—welcomed us from behind the blue gate. Jinin addressed him by name: “This is Mark Rosenblum, a Jewish millionaire. He bought this small complex, and wrote on the gate ‘Private Property.’”
He opened the iron gate and welcomed us. “Welcome, guys,” he said in English.
We shook hands with Mark, who introduced himself as being an artist and a sculptor, as well as a novelist. He led us to a small courtyard, the details of which seemed slightly familiar to me. A stone floor, of no particular geometrical shape and crooked edges, surrounded by a number of old two-story houses. Mark pointed to one of them and said, “Come, I’ll show you my little house inside. Come on, come on, it’s wonderful, you’ll like it a lot.”
I went up to Jinin. “And where’s your own house?” I asked her.
“Not so fast, cousin,” she replied. “I’ll take you there in a while.”
Mark pointed to some apartments on the upper floor and others downstairs. He said that painters, sculptors, and other artists lived there, that the place was his, and that he had turned it into a residential area for creative artists.
It looks as if these people have carved up the Jaffa Citadel among themselves, I said to myself, anticipating some imminent disaster.
“This is a residential area, in fact,” Mark continued, “with families living in it, one here,” he pointed to an upstairs apartment, “and another family there. This unit is used as a gallery, a small exhibition space. Anyone who wants to live here has to be an artist. It’s an artists’ colony,” he explained, using the English expression.
“You mean it’s a settlement?” I interrupted.
“I’m sorry,” he corrected himself. “I meant to say ‘artists’ community.’”
“And, of course, they’re all Jewish? Could someone like me live in a small apartment in this community? Or would I have to be a millionaire to get one?”
“You don’t need to be a millionaire to live here,” he replied.
The three of us wandered around with Mark. The place seemed quite extraordinary, and twice made Julie gasp in admiration. We then went over to his own apartment, on which he’d fixed a beautiful old door. He said he’d spent several years searching for one with its artistic specifications, until he’d come across one on a trip to India and brought it back from there.
Inside the apartment, Mark had distributed a number of his extraordinary artistic works: a metal chandelier, sculptures, and other curiosities. Some large, rusty old keys had been thrown with an artistic touch on the edge of a stone seat beside the bed. As our eyes wandered over the things exhibited in the room, Mark gave us several pieces of information about the place and its contents.
I examined the whole place, accompanied by the same strange feeling that I’d had ever since we’d crossed the small courtyard below. I felt sure that I’d already visited this house and wandered around it. My God, was I going mad? Had I really visited this place? Was I dreaming?
The courtyard was just like the courtyard that Jinin described
