Look for Me Page 3

  And then, as if out of nowhere, a demonstrator emerged from the darkness, walked over to the edge of the warehouse, to the side where there was no wall, where down below the soldier was pointing his submachine gun at us. I was sickened by the weapon, a weapon I had once held myself, but which was now pointed at me. The demonstrator looked down at the soldier near the barricade and shouted, Enough, already, enough! Five stun grenades had exploded by then, one after the other, and several more tear gas canisters. And now the soldier was threatening us.

  The words of the demonstrator, there in the dim crowded shelter, amidst the crying and fear, brushed against me like peacock feathers, the kind I used to play with when I was a child, and I wanted to shut my eyes and enjoy the sensation. Even after he’d spoken I felt the words moving softly around me, and I almost forgot to photograph him. I focused my lens: red baseball cap on a short black afro, white T-shirt, jeans, running shoes. His sign in one hand, his onion in the other. Enough, already, enough—

  Well then, come down, the soldier shouted back. It unnerved the soldier, that there were people up there; he felt exposed, afraid. He might have shot at us to get us to come down to the street, where the air was sharp and heavy with tear gas, but he couldn’t risk hitting someone from his own side, and in this way we protected the Palestinians with our bodies.

  The demonstrator turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” We made our way down the ramp and out onto the sidewalk, and the others followed us. The air stung my throat and I pressed the onion to my nose again. The street was deserted; everyone had run for shelter.

  “Are you all right?” he asked me.

  “Yes, are you?”

  “Fucking assholes …Your eyes are red.”

  “They don’t bother me.”

  “I’ve seen you before,” he said. “You always come, I’ve seen you many times.”

  “I haven’t seen you.”

  “You’re too busy taking photographs.”

  I smiled, and when I smiled he said, “You’re in bad shape.”

  I didn’t answer. I stared past him. People were slowly coming out of their hiding places, tired and upset.

  “You wrote me a letter when I was in jail,” he said.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Rafi Atias. And you’re Dana Hillman.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember. But how do you know me?”

  “I’m clairvoyant.”

  It was a stupid question: we all knew one another, we were the same people who showed up at these things, again and again. Apart from that, I was famous. Once a year, on the anniversary of Daniel’s disappearance, I placed a full-page advertisement in the newspaper, which read, I will never ever ever ever ever stop waiting for you, with the word ever multiplied so that it filled the entire page, and I was known for this annual plea. It cost me an entire romance novel, but I didn’t care. I had also been interviewed several times on radio and television, and I gave those interviews in the hope that Daniel would hear or see them and believe me and come back. I had recently placed my eleventh ad.

  I tried to remember what I’d written Rafi when he was in jail. Your courage … gratitude … refusing to fight … example to others—the usual clichés.

  “A girl had a seizure, they were rushing her to a transit—do you know what happened to her?” I asked him.

  “She’s okay, she’s in the ambulance. I’ll go check on her.” He disappeared into the crowd. People were buying fruit at a kiosk; it helped them feel in control again. Then we all sat down on the sidewalk, looked at one another, and said nothing.

  Daniel and I stayed indoors for three days. We were afraid to break the spell, afraid that the world outside might somehow rouse us from the sweet dream we’d fallen into, and threaten us with omens or actual misfortune. Granny was happy to have me there and tried to give me some of her jewelry. She was thin and very bent; her back had been broken in the camps. And yet she didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. Daniel told me that she had lost the ability to experience pain, which was actually quite dangerous, because she didn’t know when she burned herself or when anything was wrong with her. It was a rare but known phenomenon, he said, the inability to feel pain, and it had a medical name, though very little was understood about it.

  I couldn’t communicate with Daniel’s grandmother because in recent years she’d forgotten all her languages apart from Russian. Daniel, who had taken a few courses in Russian so he’d be able to talk to her, did his best to translate. He had also found a young Russian woman, Elena, who was willing to come over every evening and read to his grandmother. Elena was formal and prim, like a governess in a Victorian novel; according to Granny she was well educated and had a wonderful reading voice. They were now halfway through The Possessed, which Daniel was reading as well, out of curiosity.

  I phoned the base to say I was sick, but I didn’t have a doctor’s note, I had not followed correct procedure, and I was afraid to go back.

  Things were not working out for me in the army. My life after my father left had been easy; I was coddled and indulged. Flash floods of distress came over me only at night, as I lay stretched out on the temporary sofa beds of various surrogate parents, feeling slightly sick from too many homemade french fries dipped in hummus—my favorite food, and therefore always included in either the afternoon or late-evening meal. My mother would have been appalled by this diet, and I was slowly expanding out of all my clothes; they were ripping at the seams and I held them together with safety pins.

  The army jolted me out of this epicurean reverie. No more french fries, for one thing, and the mashed potatoes in the mess hall were watery. All the same, I was hopeful at first. This would be a good chance to get back into shape. I was also excited by the prospect of living in close quarters with the other conscripts. When I was little, an only child in a seven-room flat that offered a view of the vast, theophanic desert from every window, I slept with a copy of the children’s book Madeline under my pillow. I’d imagine the two rows of beds in which the lucky girls at Miss Pavel’s convent school were safely tucked, and I’d transport myself to Paris, to Madeline’s dormitory. I often fell asleep clinging to this fantasy. I would not be Madeline herself; she was too extroverted for me. But I would be her best friend, and I would tell her my secrets. In school I had many friends, but no one became my true bosom friend, as they were called in the novels I read. No one knew more about me than I was willing to disclose.

  Now Madeline was coming to life, more or less: girls in rows of bunk beds above me and on both sides, putting away combs and makeup in the little compartments assigned to us, chattering, laughing hysterically at nothing. One girl laughed so hard she began to snort and the snorts made us laugh even harder. Then a male officer came into the barracks to say a few words. We couldn’t stop giggling, and he was embarrassed and confused and suddenly self-conscious, though he tried not to show it, and he would probably have succeeded if you weren’t looking hard, but I was. He told us to settle down, we weren’t in nursery school. When he left we all began to sing spontaneously. One of our sappy nationalist songs; I suppose we did it in order to calm down. Our homeland, O our homeland. Everyone in my barracks was nice. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe we had to be nice to each other because otherwise the whole experience would have been unbearable.

  But the pleasures of getting proper exercise and living with girls my age were eclipsed by the difficulties that beset me almost immediately. I didn’t like getting up early, and I didn’t like obeying orders, especially orders that felt like bullying, though I was told that my attitude was the problem, and I agreed: my attitude was indeed the problem. I lacked enthusiasm, I lacked patriotism, I was selfish and failed to see the larger picture, which was that you couldn’t have a good army if everyone slept in and the sergeant was a pleasant person— and if we didn’t have a good army, where would we be? One time my sergeant told me it was a good thing my mother had died so she wouldn’t have to see what a loser her daughter was, and I cried. My f
riends tried to console me, and one of them, Sheera, gave me a gold locket and told me to keep a photograph of my mother inside and wear it around my neck. I tried to reform, partly because I wanted to and partly to avoid cleaning more toilets, but I didn’t succeed. My heart wasn’t in it. Somewhere, it seemed, my parents had failed to instill in me the right values. Or so it was suggested. I was very hurt by the accusation, especially since my mother wasn’t around to defend herself, but they were right, of course. My parents were skeptics.

  So Daniel and I left his grandmother’s flat, finally, in order to set a date for our wedding. Armed with proof of an impending marriage, I returned to the base to clean some more toilets and collect my things. “You’re lucky,” the officer who released me said. “You’re lucky you found someone to take you off our hands. And maybe we’re lucky too … Well, congratulations.”

  I handed in my uniform and left the base. I was free again.

  I sat with my back against a storefront, next to two young Palestinian men. One of them spoke to me. “I can’t go anywhere,” he said. “I can’t move, I can’t work.” He was still hopeful, he thought things might improve, but his friend had given up entirely. His friend stared into space, his eyes set; he didn’t believe anything would ever change. I asked for permission to photograph them. They were an interesting pair: one of them energetic, ready to try new things, the other convinced that they were all doomed forever and amazed at the naïveté of anyone with faith in the future. I knelt on the sidewalk to get a good angle and took several photographs of the two friends. The angry man’s face was closed and still, but his friend smiled for the camera. I had rarely met a Palestinian who was uncomfortable in front of a camera. Palestinian men and children liked being photographed no matter where they were; the men stared straight into the lens, and the children lined up in front of me with smiles as soon as they saw my camera. Women preferred to be photographed indoors, though some women were shy even then, and would urge me to take pictures of their children instead.

  “What are your names?” I asked.

  “I’m Ismail. This is Fayez.”

  Ella, a journalist who wrote about Palestinian affairs, sat down beside us and handed out nectarines. Ella had won several international awards for her writing, though none here. She was a passionate person, but her articles were controlled and professional; she could have been reporting on fluctuations in stock prices. After all, the facts spoke for themselves. There was no need to do anything other than record them.

  “What’s happening?” I asked her.

  “I guess we’ll be going home,” she sighed, biting into her nectarine.

  “You’ve cut your hair.” She’d had shoulder-length hair for as long as I’d known her, but it was cropped now. Her new haircut made her look a little like Ingrid Bergman.

  Ella smiled. “Lice. It was driving me crazy, the shampoos didn’t work, so I got up in the middle of the night and chopped it all off.”

  Ismail heard us and said, “Stay away from me!” and the three of us laughed. His friend, Fayez, wanted to know what we were laughing about, and Ella repeated what she’d said in Arabic. Fayez nodded, and though he didn’t smile, his eyes relented a little. He was amused in spite of himself.

  The organizers announced that the demonstration was over and we would be going home. Ismail cried out, “Why, why!” He wanted us to stay, try harder. After all, we were citizens, immune from danger; surely there was something we could do: throw ourselves on the soldiers, maybe, or sit on the road and refuse to move, even if it took days and weeks, until something was done.

  I looked at him helplessly. He saw my distress and tried to console me. “At least we have no dead this time, thanks to you.”

  His friend grumbled something in Arabic.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  Ismail was embarrassed. “He’s asking me what I expect you to do. Don’t listen to him. He’s in a bad mood.”

  “The girl who had the seizure, is she all right?” I asked. Rafi had vanished; I didn’t know whether he was still in the ambulance or merely lost in the crowd.

  “Yes, she made it.”

  Ella said something in Arabic, and we all shook hands good-bye. Ella’s words seemed to have had an uplifting effect on the two friends. “What did you say?” I asked her as we walked away.

  “Just wished them well.”

  Ella and I walked with the group through Ein Mazra’a to the stone field. We took a longer route this time, and the Palestinians gave us cold water to drink. When we reached the borders of the town they said, Well, that’s it, we can’t go further, our IDs are orange. Thank you for coming, they said. God will bless you. Thank you for your courage. We want to be your brothers, and to protect you.

  We crossed the field to the road, where our large solid buses were waiting for us. They looked like alien spaceships in their incongruous complacency.

  Ella and I were on separate buses. “Take care, Dana,” she said.

  Everyone climbed onto the buses and sank down on the cushioned seats, sweaty and satisfied. This was the way it was: we left the Palestinians behind, we left them in hell, but people were laughing and talking, because you had to survive and you did it by contracting into your own narrow life, your own personal life, distinct from the conflict and the deaths and the suffering. And besides, the event had been a success, within the confines of goals that were also narrowed and thinned down: there had been a demonstration, even if we had not reached Mejwan or seen Idris. We had walked side by side with the Palestinians, we had shown that it was possible. And at least the activists who’d stayed overnight had visited Idris. He was in constant pain, they said, and money had to be raised for a stay at a rehabilitation facility in England. He’d been a sports instructor and youth leader before he was shot. The army had promised an investigation, but nothing ever came of such promises.

  Through the streaked bulletproof window of the bus I watched the last demonstrators put away their signs. I was keeping an eye out for Odelia. Rafi sat down next to me.

  “I’m saving this seat for my friend,” I said.

  “Odelia? She’s on the bus behind us.”

  “Oh. okay, then. How’s the girl?”

  “She’s fine. Now let’s see what the orders are for today.” He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket. It was covered with notes, handwritten in green pen.

  “Things I have to do,” he said, smiling. “My wife makes lists for me.”

  I looked out the window again; I tried to ignore him.

  But he said, “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time.”

  I turned toward him. “I have seen you, come to think of it. You had shorter hair. You had no hair at all.”

  “Yes, my hair grows fast, I’m due for another haircut. Where do you live?”

  “Opposite the City Beach Hotel.”

  “Really? The manager there is a good friend of mine. We were in the same unit. Coby, do you know him? Tall, dark hair, glasses?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen him around. I use their fax machine sometimes.”

  “Give him my regards.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Did you take a lot of photos?”

  “Four rolls.”

  “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. Rafi was using a tree not far from mine. And when I rose and pulled up my underwear I saw that he was looking at me, and not smiling, and not turning away.

  My father met Gitte when they were both sixteen; Gitte’s parents owned a jewelry company with interests in South Africa and the family moved there for a few months. Gitte and my father took violin lessons at the local music academy on the same afternoon, and my father began waiting until Gitte’s lesson was over so he could walk her home. They fell in love, and after she left they exch
anged passionate and frequent love letters, until Gitte stopped writing and finally 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 alles Fleisch es ist wei Gras, und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen. This was fine when I was very little, 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 all 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 first 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 village and finally to refugee camp.

  No one I knew visited the camps, and I didn’t tell 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 fixed 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 little rooms I would stuff myself with sweet baklava and empty my bag of toys on the floor. The Palestinian children spoke Arabic and I spoke Hebrew, but at that age language is malleable. We spent hours exploring the possibilities of the treasures I’d brought: marbles, dolls, 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 all horrible, and we help the State see what it’s doing wrong.