Majdi was first off the bus, at the Sheikh Jarrah stop. From there he took an Israeli bus to the center of town. I got off right after him, at the district court on Salah al-Din Street, and walked from there to the welfare office in Wadi Joz. Wassim took the bus all the way to the last stop, Damascus Gate, and from there he took a share-taxi to the school in Jabel Mukaber.
METHADONE
I was conscientious about getting to work on time. I always punched in before eight, even though the only other person in the office at that hour was the janitor. In general, there was not much to do at the office. I’d been far busier and far more stimulated as an intern. There were hundreds of addicts who had opened files in our office but only a handful of them were “active” cases, users who actually wanted to kick their habits. The rest just showed up to collect their income support, which they were eligible for only if they could prove that they were in treatment. And we did not make it difficult for them. We filed our reports to the Ministry of Social Affairs, renewing the welfare payments and the income support even if they didn’t come to a single meeting. It was the path of least resistance.
One year earlier, as a student intern, I’d come to the office twice a week. In order to get my BSW from Hebrew University I’d had to handle a minimum of four cases a year and the office manager, who was my supervisor, made sure that I met the requirement. Now I was a full-time employee, and four cases a year was too much to hope for. Full days passed with nothing to do. I had one active case, a forty-year-old addict who had seemed to want treatment but even he was starting to show the usual signs. It turned out that he was only going through the motions because his parole officer had insisted on seeing results.
The addicts mostly followed the same route: they came in, filled out a few questionnaires, talked to a social worker, took a urine test, and opened a file. They’d come back once a week and the few who actually seemed interested in rehab would be invited to a special advisory meeting attended by a social worker from the office, a municipal psychologist, and a district supervisor.
The addict would be sent to a methadone clinic and told to wait for an opening at the rehab center in Lifta, where there was only one bed allocated for the Arab residents of the city. When it became available, he’d be sent there for a two-month stay, with the main objectives being detox and the twelve-step program. They always came out of there happy and drug-free, swearing that they were new men, kissing the social workers and treating them like the parents they never had. Over the following weeks they would continue to come to the NA meetings, which were held downtown, and then, within a few months, they’d be using again. The sole success story, one that had achieved mythic status, was of a father of five, a fifty-year-old man who managed to stay clean for nearly a year. Aside from him, the east Jerusalem office had not managed to keep a single addict clean for any significant period of time in its fifteen-year history.
My colleagues came to work at ten, except on the rare Thursday when the special advisory meeting took place. On those days they came in at eight. Sometimes they’d even get there before me. Walid, the department head, was usually the second one in. He was also the first to leave, always before four, the official closing time. “I have to make a house call,” he would announce, “and then I’ll just head home from there.” The right-hand column of his time card was lined with his handwriting, house call.
Walid was joined by Khalil, who had taken on a sum total of zero cases since I’d arrived. Other than his job with social services, he held two other part-time positions, shuttling between them in his squeaky clean, bright red Peugeot 205, a CD of his beloved Gypsy Kings spinning from the rearview mirror. He and Walid were the only ones with a car. Shadi, who was one year older than me, used to come to work in jeans and designer T-shirts. He wore a gold chain around his neck with the first letter of his girlfriend’s name hanging off the end. He was always talking about a club — the Underground — and about how he had befriended the security guard, who let him in every Thursday. Sometimes he’d shut the office door and show us some of his new moves.
Like everyone else at the office, Shadi hated being a social worker. He used to say that he aspired to other things, that he’d studied social work by mistake, and that the college entrance exam, “the psychometric,” was engineered to screw Arabs. He had just enrolled in an accounting program at a private college, and showed up for work with his new textbooks, and that was pretty much all he ever did at the office.
Not that that was a problem. With the caseload being as it was, all employees were free to pursue other endeavors. They would show up at the office, sit down at their desks, and swivel the chairs toward the center of the room, sipping coffee and gossiping, mostly about girls they had known in college. I hadn’t heard of any of the girls they talked about, all notorious, all Arab, all sluts who had slept with half the guys on campus.
Hebrew University remained central to my colleagues’ lives. It was the reason they had left their villages and come to Jerusalem, and it was the reason that they had stayed. Aside from me, they were all somehow tied to the university. Walid was a teacher’s assistant at the School for Social Work, and was looking for a PhD thesis advisor. Khalil, whose grades were too poor to continue on in social work, had just begun a master’s in criminology, which made no difference at all to him, because “an MA in criminology gets you the exact same three-hundred-shekel raise.” Shadi, not wanting to waste money on rent, had settled on the floor of his cousin’s dorm room, splitting the rent three ways with him and his roommate.
At eleven, they’d each hand me ten shekels and send me to get them hummus from Abu-Ali on Salah al-Din Street, a five-minute walk from the office. I was more than happy to run the errand, pleased to get out of that wretched office, and I made the journey to Abu-Ali a little like a tourist, taking in the stone houses, the shops, the trees on the side of the road as though seeing them for the first time.
Soon enough, I didn’t have to say a word to Abu-Ali. Once we’d exchanged pleasantries, he’d make the usual — three orders of hummus with fava beans, one with chickpeas and spicy sauce; one plate of sliced tomato, cucumber, onion, green pepper, and pickles; one plate of falafel balls; and four glass bottles of Coke. He’d arrange it all on a brass tray and I’d carry it back to the office. When we were done eating, they’d all make fun of me for having to bring it back. What they didn’t know was that Abu-Ali always offered to send one of his boys to deliver the food and pick it up, but that I refused, cherishing my few minutes away from the office every day. That was why I also volunteered to go out again at two thirty to get schnitzel sandwiches in a pita from Abu-Ilaz’s stand near the Orient House. I ate mine alone, taking little bites as I walked, ever so slowly, back to the office.
ROTARY TELEPHONE
After lunch was over, Walid left on his so-called house call, and everyone else left soon after. I closed the door, sat down at Walid’s desk, picked up the old yellow receiver, and dialed. I waited for a few rings and then she picked up.
“Mom.”
“Hi, ya habibi, how are you? Inshallah, everything is okay. Please, tell me, how are things?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“I miss you. I’ve been waiting for days for you to call. I was really worried about you, habibi. Inshallah, everything is okay? Did you get your grades yet?”