“What’s the worst?”
“You have a rip in your T-shirt. You don’t brush your hair. You hide behind your camera. That’s it.”
“I don’t like buying clothes Daniel won’t get to see. I do brush my hair, but it gets tangled right away. I take photos because I like shapes and textures and contrasts. I like capturing things people might miss or forget otherwise. I like al the strange things that happen al the time, everywhere.”
“How did you get into photography?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I like long stories.”
“Wel , right after Daniel vanished I began having trouble with my eyes. I couldn’t see properly. I had blurry vision, I had trouble seeing distances and also up close—they thought I had a brain tumor. I went to al sorts of specialists but nothing helped. Final y they said I needed a shrink. They made an appointment for me with this old religious guy. At rst I thought it wouldn’t work out, because he was religious—I thought the barrier between us would be too great. But since I wasn’t the one paying I didn’t have a choice, I had to take whoever they gave me. As it turned out, we got along real y wel . He said the country was cursed at the moment. He cal ed it the curse of the golem, when people can no longer think and see and understand. He said Daniel would come back to me when he was ready, and not before, and that in the meantime I should just go on helping other people. He said that in the Bible, Daniel was associated with al sorts of miracles, and that maybe there would be a miracle in this case too, but until then I had to look after myself and after people who were su ering, because I would understand them. I told him about my eyes, and he asked me to bring in photos of di erent people so we could look at them and see whether looking at them and thinking certain thoughts would help. And when he saw my photographs he said I was talented, and that I should take a photography course, and he also had a feeling that photography would cure me. Maybe it was a coincidence, but the problem did go away soon afterward. I wanted to continue seeing him, but he said he’d done al he could for me. I loved him, and he loved me too.”
“That story wasn’t too long. Do you just photograph people?”
“No, but when I photograph the landscape I try to show the things people have done to it, the clues it gives you about who lives there and what’s going on. Just like clothes. Clothes are clues, too. The Palestinians are incredibly neat. I was at a checkpoint, the new one in Oreif, and the kids were waiting to go to school. They were so neat. Every hair in place, even the knapsacks didn’t have a speck of dust on them.
They looked scrubbed, their clothes looked scrubbed.”
“Yes, they have a lot of self-respect. That’s probably why they’re constantly worried that they’ve hurt your feelings. They assume the other person has the same self-respect.”
“Do you speak Arabic?”
“A lit le.”
“I’ve always wondered how they feel when they watch American sitcoms—al the rules are di erent, the whole family structure, the relationships. Are they shocked?”
“Of course not. They just nd it funny. Everyone can relate to those feelings, even if you’re not al owed to express them yourself. Probably the more repressed you are in your own life, the more you like watching people on television act goofy. And as you know, not al Palestinians are traditional.”
“I can’t come over. I can’t come for dinner. Please thank your wife for me.”
“Enjoying this conversation too much, Dana?”
“That’s a mean thing to say. You said you wouldn’t hurt me and already you’re being mean.”
“I’d apologize if I believed you.”
“Oh, fine, fine. You win,” I said.
“Great. I’l pick you up at seven.”
“Can I bring my neighbor?”
“Of course.”
“He’s very, very crabby and unpleasant.”
“We don’t mind.”
“He’s in a wheelchair, with his leg stumps exposed.”
“He’s in a wheelchair, with his leg stumps exposed.”
“Sure, bring him. Why not?”
“We can’t discuss politics or any of our activities in front of him, it would hurt him.”
“Okay.”
“Wil that be a problem for your wife?”
“I sometimes wonder whether she knows who the prime minister is. She lives in her own world, Dana.”
“Al right, I’l come. We’l come. But no other guests, please.”
“Here’s my phone number in case there’s a change of plan.” He wrote his number on the back of his matchbook and handed it to me.
“Does that guy need special transportation?”
