And they were all excited and confused and anxious but they were pleased as well that I was getting to be a real expert mechanic. And Father took me aside and said solemnly, “Wait two more weeks and then ask for a raise. Promise me.” And that night I had a bath. And in the morning they were all awake extra early and Father fetched a wheelbarrow and he put the suitcase on it and we went to the bus stop.
I saw on the bus that morning that the workers were looking at me in a shifty sort of way. The news had already gone around the village that I was going to do a special job and they were all a bit jealous of me because is there anyone who wouldn’t like to leave the village and sleep in the town and not be awakened by the cocks crowing in the morning? The only one who didn’t care at all was Hamid. He just gave me a dry sort of look, didn’t say it was good or bad, just indifferent.
I got to the garage late because I had to carry the suitcase by myself and it really slowed me down. And he saw me and told me to wait on the side. And I sat there with my suitcase the whole day, it seemed strange to me that they were all working and I was sitting there on my own, and all of them watching me from the side. And I looked at the pictures of naked women, not many changes. Only the picture of that old woman who used to be Prime Minister was torn and dirty, someone had drawn glasses on the President’s face, only the ex-President was left as he was.
After work he took me to the old woman’s house and this time we went up the stairs and she opened the door, at first I thought it was someone else, she was so clean and nicely dressed and the apartment was clean and tidy, but it really was the same woman and right from the start I saw I was going to have problems with her, that, like I heard one of the Jewish workers in the garage say about somebody, she was going to fuck my mind up, and my spirits fell.
First of all, she started talking to me in Arabic and I don’t like it when Jews speak Arabic, they make so many mistakes and it always sounds like they’re making fun of us. Those are the Jews who think they know us best, damn them. The only things they know about us are the things they can make fun of and they never have any respect even when they’re pretending to be good friends.
Straightaway she opened up the suitcase to see what was inside it and she found the eggs and the vegetables on top of the clothes. I almost wished the ground would swallow me up for the shame that Mother was causing me in front of Adam, who thought I’d brought these things to sell. And then she told me to have a bath, even though I was very clean. Only dirty people need to wash all the time, Adnan used to say. And she seemed to think I might be bringing bugs into the house, though the last time I saw fleas was in her kitchen that night and there’d been a mouse too.
But I didn’t say anything and I went to have a wash, I’d had a bath in a Jewish house before and I wasn’t afraid but I felt offended all the same. Then I went and saw the room that she’d fixed up for me and it really was a nice room with a bed and a wardrobe and a view of the bay, nothing to complain about. But I knew I wouldn’t get any peace here, she’s such an old windbag, a real political old lady, every other word she says is something about politics, she’s a newspaper nut. Can’t understand how she ever went into a coma, her mind is the only part of her that works, the rest of her is like a big ball of fat, she can hardly move.
And Adam liked her, laughing at everything she said, laughing happily. And that irritated me, I didn’t see anything special about her. In the meantime she brought in coffee and some cookies that were really good. These Oriental Jews know how to cook, they learned it from us Arabs.
I decided I wasn’t going to have too much to do with her, it wasn’t for her that I came to live in the city but for Dafi. I want to see her again and get to know her and fall in love with her. And I wasn’t going to get too friendly with this old woman so I sat there quietly reading Ma’ariv and that surprised her, she thought it was odd an Arab reading a newspaper in Hebrew. Pity she never knew Adnan, he knew the papers by heart and he had answers to everything they said.
I’ll have to keep on my guard here, sit quietly and not get into arguments, otherwise things will be unbearable. I’m not here for politics but for love. And so I sat there quietly, pretending I didn’t care about anything, like Hamid, looking out of the window, thinking maybe I’d go to the movies if only I had some money. And at last Adam got up to go and the old woman went with him to the door and suddenly she started crying. Hanging on to him. Damn her.
So the evening began and she went into the kitchen to get a meal ready and I didn’t know if I ought to take the dirty plates off the table or not. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I was here to help with the housework, I’m just a mechanic lodging with her, but I saw she really was terribly old, hardly able to walk, and groaning with every movement, and the evening light made her look all white, like a corpse. She must be over seventy, Father is seventy, and I was afraid she might suddenly drop dead so I quickly got up and picked up the dishes and took them to the kitchen and she smiled at me, a dead smile, and said:
“Sit down quietly and read the paper and I’ll make you some supper.”
I asked, “Do you have any repair job that needs doing?”
She began to think, then she bent down, nearly crawling on the floor, opening cupboards and looking for something, then she got out a small stepladder and started climbing up it. I almost shouted, “Tell me what you want and I’ll do it for you.”
And she smiled with her toothless mouth.
“You really are a good boy.”
But I didn’t want her to start talking Arabic again and I said straight out, “You can talk to me in Hebrew, no need for you to make an effort.”
She laughed. “But then you’ll end up forgetting your Arabic and your father will be angry with me.”
“I won’t forget, there’re plenty of Arabs even in Haifa.”
Then she smiled her dead smile again and told me to climb up the ladder and look in the top cupboards to see if there was a good bulb to put in the socket in the dining room so we’d have more light and we’d be able to see what we were eating. And I went up the ladder right away and looked in the cupboard and there were maybe twenty bulbs there, all of them burned out. I don’t know why she kept them, maybe she thought she’d get a refund on them at the supermarket. I had to try them all before I found one that worked.
In the meantime she was cooking supper, mutton with rice and beans, great stuff, really tasty, Arab food. And she fussed around me all the time, not eating herself, going and fetching salt, pepper, pickled cucumber, bread. I kept telling her, “I’ll fetch it myself,” but she said, “You sit there quietly and eat.”
The last course was sweet sahalab. And she was walking slowly, dragging her feet. When the meal was finished I took the dirty dishes off the table and said to her, “All right, I’ll wash them.” But she wouldn’t let me, like she was afraid I’d break something. So I said, “O.K., at least let me take out the rubbish.”