The day shift with Yonatan was not particularly tricky either. After breakfast, which consisted of the same jar of food and shot of jelly, I would put Yonatan in the shower, which was never easy but had gotten significantly less difficult, and wash him with liquid soap and a soft sponge, hitting spots that I don’t even touch on my own body. Lifting his head and cleaning his neck, cleaning behind his ears,
in his crotch. I would even bend over and meticulously clean his bottom through the hole in the chair. I’d wash his hair with baby shampoo. Then I’d pat him down with a towel until he was completely dry because Osnat told me that anything less would guarantee bedsores and all sorts of funguses. I dried him everywhere, even tugging the towel back and forth between his toes. When he was good and dry, I would rub a special cream on his body, occasionally massaging his muscles as I had seen Osnat do.
Then I’d transfer him to the bed, diaper him, dress him in clean pajamas, put him in the wheelchair with the headrest, and move him over to the window. Sometimes I’d turn on the radio to Galgalatz, which offered a constant medley of popular music and traffic reports.
Soon enough I realized that Yonatan had more than one frozen expression — sometimes he smiled, or did something that looked like a smile with his lips, and sometimes he made noises. I could tell by the sounds he made when he was pleased or upset. When he was tired of sitting by the window, I knew it, and I moved him back to the bed, and when he was tired of his position, I rotated him.
Even though it wasn’t easy, I learned how to change his diaper and keep the bed clean. He had to be pushed over onto his side with one hand, held in place so that he wouldn’t flop back down, and then with the other hand you had to take off the diaper, wipe him, sprinkle talc on his bottom, and then lay the new diaper out so that the straps were open and ready, and only then allow him to flop back down on his back. Then you could close the diaper, inserting two fingers to make sure that it was not too tight or too loose.
All this was done with latex gloves and immediately afterward I washed my hands with soap. Still, when Yonatan went to sleep I would go back into the bathroom, scrub myself up to my elbows, dig my fingernails into the bar of soap, and disinfect my hands for a very long time under a stream of hot water.
The thing I tried to avoid most was Yonatan’s stare. I liked it better when his eyes were shut. There was something scary about them when they were open. Everything about this limp creature seemed so healthy: his straight, light brown hair, which was cut every two weeks by a barber who came to the house; his smooth, pale face, electrically shaved by Osnat once every three days; and those wet brown eyes. Everything was as it should be. Yonatan was a good-looking guy.
Sometimes, after he went to sleep, I’d sit down at his desk, turn on the lamp, and leaf through his books and CDs. There was a big white yearbook that said Jerusalem High School for the Arts. Several years had passed since his picture was taken, but Yonatan hadn’t changed. He even had the same serious expression on his face. The big somber eyes that never really focused anywhere. The only difference was that in the picture he was standing on his feet and there was a camera hanging around his neck, held in his right hand. You could see that he had used his index finger to take a picture of himself in the mirror. Under the picture, in a sloping sprawl, it said, Yonatan, we looked everywhere, but couldn’t find a better photographer to take your picture. Stay safe and good luck taking pictures for the army, you jobnik. Lots of love! P.S. Don’t be so serious all the time — it’s okay to smile for the camera every once in a while.
Sometimes I’d sit at his desk and halfway expect to find him leaning over my shoulder, looking down at me as I touched his things. It seemed to me that he was completely capable of getting up and that he was deceiving everyone, lying in bed, aware of everything, not actually felled by infirmity. His body bore no sign of illness, no scratch or scar that spoke of an accident. He looked exactly like the picture in the yearbook on the shelf.
The main problem up in the attic was figuring out how to pass the time from when Yonatan fell asleep till I got tired enough to go to bed. I’d try my mother’s technique, shutting my eyes and initiating yawns, but I was never able to go to sleep before midnight. I had five hours to burn in that attic. After getting the okay from Osnat, I started listening to Yonatan’s music. Aside from the stereo he also had a separate CD player with small Sony earphones. “I don’t know if you’ll like his music, though,” she said, “he has really weird taste.”
I didn’t know any of the albums that he had, so I decided to start from the top of the stack and work my way down. At first it had nothing to do with enjoyment; I listened to Yonatan’s music in order to pass the time. I sat on the couch, opposite Yonatan, with an album cover in my hands and listened, trying to remember the name of the band and the song. When the album cover came with the lyrics, I tried to read along. Osnat was right — he really did have weird taste. The music he liked was nothing like what I had listened to up until then, and I don’t mean Wassim’s and Majdi’s music or the Egyptian pop my dorm mate used to play. His CDs were nothing like what I used to hear over the radio on the Israeli buses, either.
The first album I listened to was by a band called Sonic Youth and their songs, the first time around, sounded like they’d been recorded in a carpenter’s workshop. But I listened to it all the way through, and then again, and then I felt tired and was able to fall asleep.
SPOON, LEMON WEDGE, LIGHTER
Walid didn’t waste any time getting Leila an active case and he asked me to accompany her on her first house call, to the Old City. At the time the Old City was one of the main drug centers in Jerusalem. All by itself it could have kept two outpatient clinics in business, but no one wanted to work there and only a few of the addicts actually wanted anything aside from their income support.
Leila showed up on time, at exactly eight thirty, half an hour after me. I tried to cover the awkwardness by rifling through the paperwork and shoving a sheaf of papers that I hadn’t really looked at into a folder. I kept my head down and said, “Okay, if you’re ready to go, we should head out.”
I knew I felt something when I was with Leila. I didn’t know if it was the same tension and shyness that I felt around all Arab girls or if it was something different. Either way, I tried to stifle it. I didn’t want to be like all those other men I knew, drooling over every woman they saw. That’s not who I am, girls don’t even really interest me, I told myself, and I knew that it was precisely the other way around.
“You’re walking too fast,” Leila said. “We’re not late, are we?”
“Sorry,” I said, turning around. I hesitated for a moment, my eyes focusing in the general vicinity of her face, and then looked her straight in the eye. I blushed and felt my face burn and hated myself for it, wanting to run away.
“You’re so shy,” Leila said, smiling.
Where the hell did she get that from? I thought to myself. But I liked it. I saw it as a kind of understanding, a sense of trust, a lack of fear. Sometimes, when I heard my colleagues or even Majdi talk about girls, I was sure that if I was a girl I would be terrified of every man in the world. I walked slower, but still one step ahead of Leila so that no one would think we were together. I could’ve led us through the side streets and alleys that link Wadi Joz to the Old City but I chose to take the main road so that there’d be witnesses, so that we wouldn’t be alone. We got to Salah al-Din Street and from there to Musrara. I tried walking slowly, at her pace. As we prepared to cross the street from Musrara to Damascus Gate, we stood close to one another and she said, “You’re different from all of the rest of the guys in the office.”