She picks up the key that she wears around her neck, the key to the old house, kisses the rusty iron, and continues.
Then the Egyptians went into the streets and lay down on the roads and begged, and Nasser cancelled his resignation and went back to being president. But it wasn’t the same any more. He was sick and weak by then, and three years later, he died. Everyone went to Jamil’s café again — the prices there were in liras now, not dinars — to watch his funeral.
She takes a sip of her coffee, checks to see that everyone is listening, and continues.
And I’ll tell you what’s strange: now Itzhak Rabin is dead, the Rabin who finished off Nasser, the Rabin whose soldiers shot above our heads in ’48, the evil Rabin, Rabin the devil, and instead of being happy, instead of dancing in the street and clapping, I’m sad. Look at his granddaughter, a pretty girl, crying. She looks like her grandfather, the way Marwan’s Raoda looks like her grandfather. I can’t help it, I’m sad for her. All the leaders, they always have a bad end. And what will happen now?
*
When our teacher talked about Rabin’s murder, she had exactly the same expression she had when she told the class that Gidi had been killed, and right away it made me suspect that maybe that expression, the serious look in her eyes, the way she bit her lips, all that was just a mask she puts on when she thinks she has to be sad. When she finished, she sat on the edge of her desk and asked us to talk, to say what we felt. Like it always is in those situations, when you don’t know exactly what to say, everyone repeated what she said, except in different words. I didn’t raise my hand. I haven’t talked in class for a while. It started after Gidi’s shivah, when I came back to school and didn’t understand what they were talking about in class because I’d missed so many lessons, so I decided I’d rather be quiet so nobody would notice that I didn’t understand, and after that, I got so used to not talking that even if I wanted to say something — let’s say at the trial they had in Bible class for King David, when they got to the part where he sends Uriah the Hittite to war — the words stuck in my throat and I had the feeling that if I opened my mouth, I’d stutter. Even though I’d never stuttered in my life.
When Alon said that the murder was terrible and horrifying, and Rinat said that the murder was horrifying and terrible, I thought to myself — when you don’t talk, you have more time to think — that it was weird how my world had turned upside down in the last few days. Till the assassination, my world was made up of my house, where we weren’t allowed to listen to music or laugh, and everybody else, who tried to be really nice to me but kept doing their own thing, kept being happy when Beitar won on Saturday, or complained about the prices at Doga. And now everything had turned upside down. Everybody on the street is worried, they walk slowly, talk quietly, and in my house everything is as usual, they don’t turn on the TV, they don’t care. Like Mum said to Nitza Hadass last night, everyone cries over their own dead.
Does anyone want to add anything? the teacher asked and looked around at the class. My elbow started to rise on its own, but I forced it back down on to my desk. Why bother. They won’t understand anyway. And besides, I’ll stutter. I’ll be better off waiting for backgammon with Amir, he has patience with what I’m thinking, even if it’s weird. And he always has something interesting to say. The day before yesterday, for instance, I told him that I think people who die aren’t really dead, but they live somewhere up there in the sky and watch us down here. He said that the first time he was on a plane going to America and they flew above the clouds, he really did look for the souls of dead people up there, or for God. And he didn’t find them. But maybe he didn’t look hard enough.
*
A red Egged bus is racing through the streets with a dull roar. It doesn’t pull into bus stops, its doesn’t open its door. It’s three a.m. The driver is Moshe Zakian. His passengers have long since gone home to bed. Moshe is the only one in the bus, clutching the wheel and staring straight ahead. No one is taking out money to pay his fare. No one is asking if the bus goes to here or to there.
He leaves the neighbourhood, turns right at the Mevasseret bridge and starts driving towards Tel Aviv. The road is empty, the air is sharp and darkness swallows up the trees flying past. After the descent to the Castel, he steps harder on the accelerator. A truck coming from the opposite direction has its full beams on. His face grim, Moshe turns his up his too: I’ll show him. The miniature Beitar menorah hanging from the rearview mirror jumps around like a football fan after a win. He presses the radio search button. The Voice of Music. The Voice of Ramallah. There’s nothing he wants to hear. He settles on Non-Stop Radio, Hebrew songs all night, including the greatest hits of this year. And still, the words Sima shot at him that night keep sounding in his brain. ‘Forget it’, ‘Let it go’, ‘Over my dead body’. Over and over again. You’d think he’d suggested something terrible. All he did was say that they opened a nice kindergarten up the street. Half price, twice the hours, good food for the kids to eat. Two of his friends had already transferred their children, and they said the kindergarten was good. Menachem, in Tiberias, thought they should. It wouldn’t hurt the boy to absorb some Judaism. The education he was getting now was a disgrace. Not to mention that the money they’d save would help them buy a bigger place. With a room for guests to stay. But Sima’s as stubborn as a mule. What exactly had she said? ‘For you, religion is a house, but it’s a prison for me.’ A difficult woman, as difficult as can be. Moshe fans the flames of his anger and slams his foot down. The red bus hurtles from Sha’ar Hagai and Latrun zooms past. OK, she doesn’t want to go to the rally with him. And she wants Liron to stay in the kindergarten he’s in. But is that a reason to talk about splitting up? We can talk. Compromise. Make up. What’ll the children think when they see their father in the living room in his underwear? Lilach’s a baby, but Liron’s old enough to understand what they said. And why should it be him, Moshe, who has to leave their bed? He’s the one with a bad back, and sleeping on the hard living-room sofa will make his bones crack.
Wait, his brow furrows in a frown. They say there’s a camera here, after the turn. Maybe I should slow down.
From the airport control tower, a light flashes. Once. Twice. The miniature Beitar menorah is still. A passing plane illuminates a cloud in the sky. Suddenly tired, suddenly limp, he decides not to go into Tel Aviv after all, and he knows why. When he was a child, he wandered away from his parents on Frishman beach and waited hours at the lifeguards’ station for them to come and get him. It’s dark in the city now, and he could lose his way. Besides, he has to be back at the wheel at seven the next morning. He has to be alert and steady. And God knows how late it is already. He takes the Gannot exit and starts driving back. More and more of the songs on the radio are in Rabin’s memory: Shlomo Artzi, Aviv Gefen, Yehuda Poliker singing sadly about taking back terrible things he said. Overcome with shame, Moshe remembers things he said during the fight, before he ran out. It was out of weakness that he’d said what he said. Sima knows how to twist words, she comes out on top in every little dispute. He understands perfectly, but when it comes to talking, well, it’s not exactly his strong point. As he approaches Latrun, he starts missing her. He sees her in his mind: in the delivery room, her plump, contented face, holding Lilach in her arms and kissing her. She is home for him. And he can’t breathe without her.