She, on the other hand, had never been skeptical. She was willing to lie, to live in sin, to risk her good name, the name of her family, the future of her children, all for a love she could not get from her husband. For a fleeting moment the lawyer admired his wife for her courage but the admiration quickly faded into hatred and contempt. His wife — she wasn’t smart, the lawyer thought; at best she was a functioning airhead. A miserable little Arab woman whose guides in life were love songs and filth-ridden melodramas. Only the lower classes were capable of falling blindly in love after adolescence, the lawyer thought, only the poor, the uneducated and unenlightened, could fall helplessly in love. Like animals, the lawyer said to himself, acknowledging, not for the first time, that there was no bridging the divide between their backgrounds, between where he came from and where he had found her. You must have to be primitive in order to continue believing in the delusion called love. It’s a lot like religion, the lawyer thought, it’s easy for them, the down and out, to embrace it.
He surprised himself with these thoughts. If that’s how I perceive her, he thought, then she must be aware of it, and for a moment he practically condemned himself for her decision to seek solace in someone else’s arms. But that’s not how it is, he said to himself, cutting the chain of thought, by God that’s not how it is. He might be busy, he might not love her as he used to, but he did not ignore her or forsake her or make her life unduly hard. She was just as preoccupied with life as he was. How could she ever find time to think, strive, desire? Who even had time to cheat?
His wife had a good life, he concluded, and mine isn’t too bad either. It had been a little bit boring, but by no means dreadful.
A sign missing a few of its letters in Hebrew and Arabic welcomed him to Jaljulia. The lawyer decided to stop at the gas station at the entrance to the village. He’d never been to Jaljulia but he had known, ever since he had been a kid growing up nearby, that it was even worse off than the surrounding Arab villages, which were the kinds of places he learned later in life to call disenfranchised. In college, for instance, he had never once met a student from Jaljulia.
“Hello,” a middle-aged attendant said as he wiped his hands on a towel and walked out of his office. “Ninety-five unleaded?” he asked, and the lawyer nodded and said, “Yes, fill it up please.”
“How much does a car like this cost these days?” the attendant asked as he shoved the nozzle into the tank.
“Not sure,” the lawyer said. “A lot.”
“Great ride, though,” the attendant said. “You’re not from here, are you?”
“No,” the lawyer said, and he found himself adding, without much forethought, “Actually I came down here to look for an old friend from school. I haven’t seen him in six or seven years.”
“Who?” the attendant asked. “Someone from here? From Jaljulia?”
“Yeah,” the lawyer said. “His name’s Amir Lahab.”
“Lahab?” the attendant asked, screwing up his face. “You sure he’s from here? There’s no Lahab family in this village. Not that I know of.”
“No big deal,” the lawyer said. “Could be I got confused. I was just driving past and I thought of him. I might’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe he’s from somewhere else.”
“Baher!” the attendant yelled, turning his head toward the office.
“What?” a young man asked, coming out of the office and wiping his mouth with a napkin as he chewed.
“Is there someone named Lahab in this village? Is that what you said, Lahab?”
“Amir.”
“You know an Amir Lahab?” the old attendant asked just as the tank was filled.
“Ahh,” the young guy said, approaching the car. “Lahab? There’s that teacher, you know, the one from Tira, you know who I mean. .”
“Ah, yeah, yeah,” the older man said. “That’s her son he’s looking for?”
“Could be,” the young man said. “She had a kid in school. A few years older than me. He went to college. Could be him.”
The lawyer knew it was.
“What could someone like her ever do for someone like you?” the young man asked.
At that, the older attendant erupted. “Shut up and get out of here,” he hissed at the young man, then turned to the lawyer, afraid that somehow the young man had gotten them into trouble. “The kid is an idiot. I’m sorry. Don’t believe a word he says. I’m telling you, this village, may God forgive its inhabitants, they don’t let people live their own lives. I’m telling you that your friend was raised in a very good home. And if anyone in this village wants to tell you differently, then I’m telling you that he’s a liar and a son of a liar. No one will tell you that they ever saw that boy’s mother do anything wrong.”
“I’m sure. He was always a great kid,” the lawyer said, “that Amir.”
“What did I tell you?” the attendant said, shutting the gas tank. “Anyway, she rents from um-Bassem. Go up the hill,” the attendant said, pointing straight ahead, “and take a right by the Maccabi health clinic. There’s a sign with a Magen David on it, you’ll see it; anyway, take a right there. Go about a hundred yards more and ask for um-Bassem’s house.”
All the Arab villages look exactly the same, the lawyer thought to himself as he cruised through the streets. The local councils usually invest money on the entrance to the city and let the rest of the place rot, their main concern that there be a nice place for the head of the council to take his next campaign picture. All Arab villages have some kind of traffic circle near the entrance to the village and there’s always a pale-looking palm tree rooted there. The deeper into the village you go, the narrower the streets, until they turn to dirt, thin and dusty in summer and thick and oozing with mud in winter. The lawyer followed the gas attendant’s directions, driving slowly, attracting stares from the pedestrians. He stopped alongside a neighborhood convenience store. Two older men sat outside. He took off his sunglasses and opened the window. “Salaam alaikum,” he said, playing up his country accent. The lawyer didn’t need their help but he figured he’d talk to them to quiet the neighbors’ unspoken apprehension and curiosity.
“Alaikum a-salaam,” the two elderly men answered in unison.
“I am looking for the home of the haja um-Bassem.”
“Um-Bassem, may Allah have mercy,” one of them answered. The lawyer tried to hide his embarrassment at the fact that he hadn’t known he was looking for a dead woman’s house.
“Take a right down there,” the second one said, pointing at the next turn. “The house is on that dirt road. Not the first, not the second, but the third house. That’s hers, Allah have mercy.”
“Ta’ish,” the lawyer said, as though he were a family member accepting condolences.