An hour after I’d turned on the boiler, I went to check for hot water. I tried the faucet with the red sticker, gave it some time, and then tried the other one. Nothing. I figured the water heater must need a little more time. In the meanwhile I took off my shoes, left my jacket on, and crawled under the covers. I shivered for a while but then felt the heat begin to spread through my body and my eyes begin to close.
I was startled awake by the sound of a door slamming and it took me a few seconds to remember that I was in the new apartment. I sat up in bed. A head and shoulders poked through the doorway.
“Hi, did I wake you? I saw the light was on and. .”
“No, no, I was just taking a little rest.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, still standing in the doorway. “I’m Majdi.”
I got out of bed and walked over to him, feeling the cold rise up from the floor, seeping through my socks and into my feet. I introduced myself and shook my roommate’s hand.
“Wow,” Majdi said, “I can’t believe we let you freeze in here like this. He didn’t tell you we have a heater?”
“Sure, I turned it on in the living room.”
“Not that one,” Majdi said, turning around and motioning me to follow. He walked through the kitchen and out to a little box of a balcony. “We’ve got an amazing kerosene heater. I can’t believe Wassim didn’t tell you.”
“He was in a rush to get to his shift,” I said, “and I got here late.”
“How did you survive in this cold? The house is freezing! We keep the heater on the balcony because it emits toxic fumes when you shut it off.” Majdi pulled a lighter from his coat pocket, leaned over the heater, unscrewed a little domelike lid, removed it, and then threaded his hand in from the bottom and lit the wick. “We’ll let it burn for a little while out here. It’s only really dangerous when you light it and extinguish it, that’s why we always do it on the balcony. This window stays open, too. Anyway, how are you doing?”
I nodded and Majdi pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offered me one.
“I don’t smoke, but it doesn’t bother me,” I said. He lit one for himself and looked over toward the bathroom. “What, he fixed the boiler?” The red light was still on.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I turned it on at around six and an hour later there was still no hot water.”
“Motherffff. .” Majdi started to say, walking into the bathroom. He turned the faucet on, let the water run, and then put his hand in to check the temperature. “That bastard,” he said, striding toward the door. I heard him knocking somewhere upstairs, and then the sound of his angry voice and the soothing tone of an elderly man.
Majdi came back to the apartment, still pissed off and still smoking the cigarette. “That son of a bitch said he was going to fix it today. For the last week we’ve been heating water the way they used to twenty years ago, on the stovetop.” He walked through the kitchen to the living room and returned with the kerosene heater. “I can’t believe you sat here without this thing. You must have been freezing.”
“No, I was fine.”
“By the way, the guy I just spoke to is the landlord. Have you met him?”
“No.”
“The asshole lives on the top floor. He owns a few apartments in the building. He tried to tell me he didn’t know it hadn’t been fixed and that first thing tomorrow he was going to have a talk with his handyman. In the meantime, do you still have your hundred dollars for the rent?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, reaching for my wallet.
“Good. Keep it. Don’t give him a cent. I told him that if tomorrow morning the boiler isn’t working, we’re going out to buy a new one with the next month’s rent. If he asks you for it, don’t pay him, okay?”
“Okay, sure.”
Majdi put out the cigarette and went into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open. “Don’t tell me you didn’t eat anything either,” he yelled from the kitchen.
“No, I wasn’t hungry.”
“What, are you crazy? It’s after nine at night. You were just being polite. Ayouni,” he said. “Make yourself at home, what kind of place do you think this is? I’m making dinner right now. Wassim will be back any minute, and then we’re sitting down to eat.”
THE COMMUTE
We used to leave the house together at seven fifteen. Those early-morning hours were pretty much the only times I saw my roommates. Majdi interned at the law office until the afternoon and from there he went to the Sheraton, where he worked as a cashier until nine or ten in the evening. Wassim taught in the morning, came home, and then headed out again at four thirty for his other job, as director of a hostel for the mentally ill in Shuafat. Sometimes I got home from the clinic in time to see him, but usually he had left the apartment before I got back.
I was the first one up in the morning, but Wassim was first to get out of bed. He’d boil water for coffee before even going to the bathroom. Then I’d get up and use the bathroom. Only when the coffee was ready did Wassim go back and wake Majdi. They were the same age but it seemed that Wassim was the responsible adult, a kind of older brother to his cousin Majdi, who, unlike him, had managed to get into law school.
Majdi was the last one into the bathroom and the last one dressed, but he was never late. Probably thanks to Wassim’s badgering. “Come on, are you up?” he’d say. “Let’s go, the coffee’s getting cold.” Or, “Come on, no time for a whole cigarette, we’re late, smoke on the way to the bus, yallah, let’s go.”
I liked those guys better than my old dorm roommates, and was glad to be rooming with them. Each morning we’d walk up the path through the projects and out onto the main road that linked Jerusalem and Ramallah, looking for a ride heading south. Our apartment was on the right side of the checkpoint that was within municipal Jerusalem.
Wassím and I liked the Ford Transit share-taxis. They were faster than the buses. But if they pulled over and only had a spot or two then we waited for whatever came next, van or bus. Majdi preferred the buses, liked their color and their ambience. They were old clunkers that the Israeli bus company had retired. The Palestinians bought them, painted a coat of blue over the red, and turned them into the main source of public transportation in the eastern part of the city. I thought they were awful. Loud and slow, unheated in winter and uncooled in summer. There were hardly any seats that weren’t broken, wobbly, or with springs jutting out. But Majdi loved them. As soon as he got on and paid the driver, he lit a cigarette. “It’s an experience,” he’d say. “Not only can you smoke, but the driver’s usually too busy lighting up his own cigarette to take your fare.”
Nearly all the men smoked on the bus. It was a sort of ceremony. The windows were always open, winter and summer, and hands would dangle out, cigarettes clasped between their fingers. “Palestinians,” Majdi used to say, “smoke more than any other people in the world.”
It’s not far from Beit Hanina to downtown east Jerusalem but the traffic in the morning was some of the most brutal in the country. The cars inched forward. A five-minute drive took half an hour, and that was on regular days, when there were no surprise checkpoints.
Majdi used to say that the green signal at the traffic light for the Arab cars from Beit Hanina and Shuafat was the shortest in the city. The settlers’ cars got five minutes of green for every half minute they gave us. One hundred thousand people waiting in line for a few settlers from Ma’ale Adumim, Neve Yaakov, and Pisgat Ze’ev. Each morning Majdi used to swear that the first thing he was going to do when he passed the bar was file an appeal against that fucking traffic light in the High Court of Justice. “It’s a sure win,” he’d say. “They’ll cover it everywhere in the Arab press. All I need is a good suit for the cameras and I’ll be the number-one lawyer in east Jerusalem. You’ll see. If you will it, it is no dream.”