Rashid stroked the animal’s unbridled neck. Gently gripping its intelligent head, he gave it an odd, quick kiss. Samaher’s mother opened the door of the large stone house. Either because of the holiday, or to distance herself from the Jewish professor who had acceded rather too quickly to her request, she was wearing a traditional peasant dress. Soon the sturdy, silent grandfather, his bald head no longer hidden by a kaffiyeh, was summoned to the scene too. Giving the Orientalist what looked like a Turkish salute, he unscoldingly led the friendly horse to its stable, as though it were a slow-witted but likable child.
By now, several women had congregated by the front door along with Afifa and the grandmother. Some young and some old, they greeted the visitor respectfully.
“Allah yehursak.”*
“Barak li’lah fik, ya mu’alim.”†
“Kadis!”‡
“Low kunt ba’aref ino ’l-yom Ramadan,” Rivlin replied, “ma kuntish bawafe’ bilmarra aaji el-yom la’indikon.”§
“But why not, Professor? Why let Ramadan stop you?” Afifa scolded him in a friendly Hebrew. “You’re not a Muslim, and Muhammad didn’t make the fast for you. And even if you were, it’s a free country….”
Samaher’s grandmother sniffed the flowers Rashid gave her. Kissing her eldest grandson’s hands, she blessed him for bringing “Samaher’s important teacher.” No one, it seemed, had really expected him to come.
8.
HE WAS LED to a spacious bedroom, in which stood a black lacquered chest, a closet, a large table, several smaller ones, and some chairs. Half-lying and half-leaning on pillows in a big bed, his student of many years looked pale and thin. Her hair was gathered in a net and traces of red polish from the wedding were still on her fingernails and toenails, which stuck out from beneath the blanket. He gave her a suspicious, pitying look. Expecting a child, he told himself, as though he had lately become an expert on false pregnancies, she was not. It looked more like a case of depression.
“You really came.” She blushed and smiled wanly. “Thank you. Thank you, Professor, for coming to our village.”
“Sad’uni,”* he said, addressing not only Afifa and the grandmother, who had followed him into the room, but the women outside in the hallway, “I’ve been teaching at the university for thirty years, and this is my first house call. Bil sitta ow marid.”†
“Tiwafakt bil’aml es-saleh.”‡
“Allah yibarek fik.”§
Meanwhile, the sable-skinned impresario was arranging the stage by plumping up the squashed pillow behind his cousin, bending down to retrieve a pair of slippers from beneath the bed, throwing some wrinkled napkins into a wastepaper basket, and handing the grandmother two dirty glasses. Turning to Samaher’s medicines, with which he seemed familiar, he restored some order to them before pulling out two notebooks and pens from the lacquered chest. All this was done deftly and knowledgeably, in a code composed of short, swift sentences, as if he alone knew the desires of the recent bride.
“How’s the new husband?” Rivlin asked cautiously, putting the question to no one in particular.
“Working hard for his father.”
“What at?”
“He’s a building contractor.”
Rashid now placed Suissa’s texts in their colored binders on the large table. At least, Rivlin thought with relief, he could take them back to Haifa with him.
The messenger was not yet done. Moving a large armchair close to the bed, he placed a small table next to it and spread this with an embroidered cloth just as a girl entered the room with a knife and fork.
“Min fadleku, la.”* The guest returned the silverware to the hands of the frightened girl. “Don’t serve me any meals now. We have plenty of time. And what’s this about food, anyway? N’situ Ramadan?”†
“Shu Ramadan? Kif faj’a nat lak Ramadan?”‡ The women laughed, amused by how easy the Jew thought it was to become a Muslim. “You have your Yom Kippur, Professor. What’s Ramadan to you? Er-ruz matbuh, u’lahm el-haruf ala ’lnar.”§
The Orientalist stuck to his guns. He was not eating now. He had already told Rashid. His wife had flown abroad early in the morning, as a result of which he hadn’t slept all night. If he ate now, he would need to sleep, which was not the purpose of his visit.
But why shouldn’t he sleep? The women took to the notion enthusiastically. “In fact, why don’t you do it the other way around, Professor, and sleep first? If your wife is out of the country, you’re in no hurry to get home. Have a light snack, and we’ll give you a nice, quiet room to lie down in. That way you’ll be fresh for the exam.”
“The exam? What exam?”
“The oral exam for Samaher’s final grade….”
But the Orientalist, well aware how Arab guile was concealed behind the innocence of the desert, was quick to squelch, even at the risk of his newly won popularity, the illusion of a final grade.
“I’m not giving Samaher any exam. She knows as well as I do that she’s still a long way from a final grade. I came here today to hear the oral summaries that she can’t write. And to take back the material.”
The messenger gasped. “You’re taking back the material?” So that was why the professor had agreed so easily to come to the village.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
It was an awkward situation. Rivlin turned to his student, who, though she hadn’t missed a course of his in five years, lay staring at him as though she had never seen him before.
“You can still finish your assignment,” he said to her. “Rashid can photocopy a new set for you. The poems you’ve translated aren’t bad at all. In fact, you’ve done a good job. In a minute we’ll see what you’ve done with the stories.”
There was a ripple of relief that the professor was not proposing to reject Samaher’s term paper. Fearfully, the young girl returned again to place a jug of cold water and an infusion of herbs in front of Rivlin. “Even the greatest saints,” Afifa assured him, “have been known to drink during the fast.” A small boy, dressed in a fez and a festive holiday robe, entered proudly bearing a narghile, which Samaher’s grandmother had ordered as an antidote for the Jew’s hunger. The growing acceptance of his determination to observe the fast caused Rivlin to fear that he might have to leave the village in the end on an empty stomach.
Meanwhile, Samaher, greatly cheered by his compliment, dismissed not only the women, but her cousin as well. Before shutting the door behind him, Rashid pulled down the colored blind on the window, leaving the teacher and his student pleasantly bathed in a golden Galilean gloom.
9.
“DO YOU HAVE enough light, Professor?”
“That remains to be seen.”
He leaned back in his armchair and smiled at his student, who removed her hairnet and shook her hair out with a brisk, free movement. Above her bed was a picture of an ancient dignitary, a patriarch belted with a dagger. How, he wondered, had she managed to lure him, first to her wedding, and now into her bedroom?
“Well?” He could not resist taking a dig at all the lies. “This pregnancy of yours — is it definite?”