Niesha watched the gurney disappear in a swamp of white coats. These were the days of small shrouds: she had seen so many of them carried along the streets.
She suddenly recalled that she had forgotten to lock the door of her shop. She put her forearm to her eyes and wept.
74
The cameras in the blimp remotely swiveled and the lenses flared. Already helicopters were circling over Anata.
75
Down below, the shebab threw stones. They landed on rooftops, bounced against light poles, clattered against water tanks.
76
On the day Smadar was killed, the television cameras were there even before the ZAKA paramedics.
Rami saw part of the footage years later in a documentary: the outdoor restaurant, the afternoon light, the milling bodies, the overturned chairs, the table legs, the shattered chandeliers, the splattered tablecloths, the severed torso of one of the bombers like a Greek statue-piece in the middle of the street.
Even listening with his eyes closed was unbearable: the rush of footsteps, the sirens.
After the screening, he realized that he had clasped his hands so tightly together that his fingernails had drawn blood.
What he wanted the filmmakers to do was to somehow crawl inside time and rewind it, to upend chronology, reverse it and channel it in an entirely different direction—like a Borges story—so that the light was brighter, and the chairs were righted, and the street was ordered, the café was intact, and Smadar was suddenly walking along again, her hair short, her nose pierced, arm in arm with her schoolgirl friends, sauntering past the café, sharing her Walkman, the smell of coffee sharp in her nostrils, caught in the banality of not caring what happens next.
77
The sky was a radiant blue. The cobblestone street was crowded with September shoppers. Music was being piped from a raffia-fronted loudspeaker. The blasts ruptured the sound system. The silence afterwards was uncanny, a stunned interval, until the street erupted in screams.
78
In Aramaic, Talitha Kumi means: Rise up, little girl, rise up.
79
The bombers were dressed as women, their explosive belts strapped around their stomachs. They had shaved closely and wore headscarves to hide their faces.
They had all come originally from the village of Assira al-Shamaliya in the West Bank. It was, for two of them, the first time they had ever been in Jerusalem.
80
Jorge Luis Borges, when walking with guides through Jerusalem in the early 1970s, said he had never seen a city of such clean searing light. He tapped his wooden cane on the cobbles and the sides of the buildings to figure out how old the stones might be.
The stones, he said, were pink as flesh.
He liked walking in the Palestinian neighborhoods, around the souks where as a blind storyteller he was treated with particular reverence. There had always been a tradition of the blind among Arabs. The imam in the marketplace. Abdullah ibn Umm Maktum. Al-Ma’arri. Those who were basir, sighted in the heart and mind. Their ways of seeing, their ways of telling.
Crowds of young men followed Borges, hands clasped behind their backs, waiting for a chance to talk to the famous Argentinian writer, the rawi. He wore a grey suit jacket, shirt and tie, even in the warm weather. He had been given a red fez as a welcome present. He wore the hat unabashedly.
When he stopped, the crowd stopped with him. He enjoyed the sound of the alleyways, the flitter of laundry, the swoop of pigeons, the remnants of ghosts. In particular he liked the trinket shops in the Old City where he could pick small charms from the trays, attempt histories from the feel of them alone.
Borges sat drinking coffee in the small shops, amid the smoke and the bubbling water pipes, listening to ancient stories of larks and elephants, of streets that turned endlessly, of pillars that contained every sound in the universe, of flying steeds, of mythical marketplaces where the only things for sale were handwritten poems that scrolled out infinitely.
81
Being with you, and not being with you, is the only way I have to measure time.
~ BORGES ~
82
Sivan Zarka, fourteen years old, was blown into the air alongside Smadar. Her parents were French: she had lived once in Algeria. They had recently moved to Jerusalem where Sivan was studying, with Smadar, at the Gymnasia high school in Rehavia. Yael Botvin was also fourteen. She had just begun ninth grade at the Israel Arts and Science Academy. She had made aliyah from Los Angeles with her parents eight years before. Rami Kozashvili was twenty years old. He worked as a clerk in the Yehuda Bazaar, selling sports clothes. He had emigrated from Georgia in the Soviet Union. Eliahu Markowitz, an office clerk, a book lover, a pacifist, was forty-two. His family had come originally from the Black Sea coast of Romania.
83
To make aliyah: to ascend.
84
Markowitz was having lunch in an outdoor café with his eleven-year-old son. The boy was thrown backwards through the air but his fall was softened by a potted palm situated in front of the window.
85
So often, thought Rami, the ordinary can save us.
86
When Rami came back from the Yom Kippur War—long-haired, blue-eyed, exhausted—he began work as a graphic designer, drawing posters for the right wing, the left wing, the center too. He was a maverick. He didn’t care. If they wanted fear, he would give them fear. If they wanted glamour, he would give them glamour. Controversy, nationalism, pessimism—anything at all. Schmaltz too: no problem, he could easily deliver a bouquet of bullshit. A raised fist for the new Israel. An expansive border, the Nile to the Euphrates. A wide-eyed child. A sinister stare. A wounded dove. A long elegant leg. Anything at all. Make it smart, make it crude, make it rude, he didn’t care, he had no politics. No party allegiance. No safe alignment. To have a house, a family, to be undisturbed: an Israeli life, that’s what he wanted. A good job, a mortgage, a safe street, leafy, no knock on the door, no midnight phone calls. What he wanted was the spectacularly banal. The worst of it would be a long line at the falafel joint, a shortchange at the cheese store, a mistake by the mailman. Rami did what he did best: drawing, sloganeering, provoking with paintbrush and pencil. He started his own firm. Advertising and graphic design. He delighted in ruffling feathers. Most everyone liked him—if they didn’t, he laughed it off, always the clown, the joker, the man at the edge. He met Nurit: she was a beauty. Fiery. Red-haired. Liberal. She didn’t care what others thought. Smart as a whip. From a good family. A general’s daughter, a pioneer, an original, she went generations back. She took the oxygen from the air. He was rougher-edged, raw, more working class, but she liked his charm, his wit, his ability to turn on a word. He was reckless. He made her laugh. He wasn’t going to let her go. She had the brains, he had the instinct. He courted her, wrote her letters, drew pictures for her. She was a peacenik. He sent her red roses. She returned them for white. He was smitten. He had served as a tank mechanic in the army. He fixed her father’s car. The General approved. They were married in Nurit’s house. A rabbi held the service. Together they broke the glass. Mazal tov rang around the house. They had their eighteen minutes of yichud, it was tradition, why not? The years tumbled on. They had kids: one two three four. Beauties. Whippersnappers. A little wild, all of them. Especially Smadar. A ball of energy, a magnifying glass: she was all focus and burn. The boys too—Elik, Guy, Yigal—all of them had their mother’s eyes. Tiger eyes, he called them, something to do with an English poem he couldn’t quite remember. They were extraordinary years. Rami was sharp. Witty. A little sardonic when he needed to be. He knew politicians, artists, journalists. He got invited to parties. Jerusalem. Tel Aviv. Haifa. He played the jester. He developed a taste for motorbikes. Bought himself a leather jacket. Came home bearing colorful dresses and scarves as presents for Nurit. She laughed at his poor taste, kissed him. She let her hair fall. At parties he could hear her talking to her professor friends. Occupation this, Occupation that. Ah, my wife, the liberal, the beauty. She wrote articles. She didn’t hold back. She said what she wanted. It thrilled him. She brought him to the edge. His lungs were bursting. There were more wars, yes, but there were always wars, weren’t there, this was Israel after all, there always would be another war, this was the price the people had to pay. Somehow he was able to slide through it all, one eye open, both closed. Vigilance. That was the word. Vigilance. He knew the routines even if he didn’t like them. Watch for the dark face on the buses. Always know where the exit is. If the Arab bus is beside you in traffic pray for the light to be green. Measure the roll of the accent. Look out for cheap shirts and tracksuits. Flick a quick look for dust on the shoes. He wasn’t prejudiced, he said, he was just like everyone else, he was logical, he was practical, he simply wanted to be tranquil, to be undisturbed. He read the papers, he said, in order to ignore the news. It was the only way to get by. He didn’t want to be pinned down. He wanted to maintain his freedom. He could argue anyone, at any time, in any corner. He was Israeli, after all: he would argue against himself if need be. It was all about appetite. He developed a double chin, filled out his shirtfronts. He didn’t fly flags, but like everyone else he stood stock still every Memorial Day. His work sustained him. He was doing well. His fees were large. He doubled them, tripled them. The more he charged, the more work he got. He was surprised when he won awards. Silver decanters. Cut-glass bowls. Trophies. They lined the shelves of the house. Half the billboards around Jerusalem were designed by him. The phone didn’t stop ringing. The kids grew. The boys were full of pep. Smadar was a pistol, a firecracker. She loved to run around the house. She danced on the table. Cartwheeled in the garden. Skinned her knees. Knocked a tooth out. Girl stuff. Time sauntered on. High school degrees. Theater. And then came military service—Nurit didn’t like it, but Elik, the oldest, went anyway. Shined his shoes and twirled his beret on his finger. It was the done thing. To refuse to serve was to isolate. To isolate was to lose. To lose was un-Israeli. It was duty, pure and simple. Rami recognized it: he had done it and his sons would do it, and eventually his daughter too. Rami took photos of Smadar in her grandfather’s army fatigues and her brother’s red beret on her head and they laughed as she marched, keystone-style, around the room.