But mostly, when he was out there sitting, Farid simply was. It was the only time he managed to shut off. He’d always thought meditation must be like prayer without God. But, sitting on the edge of that lake of an evening, he’d come to understand it was something like this.
On quiet nights, when there was a little wind coming up, barely enough for him to read the ripple on the water, he’d watch the boats rock in their moorings and listen to the perfect sound of those halyards hitting against the masts, and ringing out like bells.
Since the start of the last Intifada, in the long months since the Israelis began leveling Gaza and the West Bank, Farid would come to the water near daily just to breathe and to try not to feel guilty for the wonderful, peaceful life he’d built. He thought of his brother fighting the fight, and all the young warriors by his side on the front lines, and of all the good and peaceful people whose lives were upended. Farid had always taken comfort in the part he played from afar. And he’d turn red, and turn hot, at his hubris and greed, at all he had ventured, the free money of the tech boom wiped away in an instant. And now, when he was needed most, he had nothing to give.
On nights like this, when thoughts of the uprising—and the attempt to crush that uprising—would not leave him by the lake, when thoughts of his own extraordinary missteps would not abate, he’d make a game out of his hopes, like a little boy. A fact by which he was embarrassed and a little bit ashamed.
He’d pretend the path from the street down to the water, running between the two grand houses, was a right-of-way between the dry hills of the West Bank and the beaches of Gaza. That’s what peace would be like if there ever were two states.
If he was feeling momentarily heartened, he’d dream of a complete Palestinian victory, of the Zionists driven out and back to wherever it was they came from. What heights would Jerusalem reach, he would think, if it were ever united under a green Hamas flag? He need look no farther than his adopted city, than beautiful Berlin. There was no end to what a city could achieve without East or West, but thriving as a singular, vibrant whole.
2014, Limbo
The General is startled by the shot and looks back over his shoulder, at the patterned wall hanging behind him. Something Lily has hung. Many-colored, woven of yarn, some sort of local craft, like an unfinished coat. Whether Indian or Mexican, he does not know.
It is not the weaving he has twisted his head around to see. It’s not to peer out the window at the burn barrel smoking at the edge of the fields and clouding the view beyond.
Perplexed, for he cannot recall why he has turned, he finds himself staring at the hardy ficus in the corner of the room. Healthy, healthy, with its green, thumb-fat leaves. His Lily could make anything grow.
He is frozen staring at that plant, struggling to recall something, his head still turned, the tendons of his neck stretched taut. What he remembers right then is the Latin. A ficus is the same family as the fig tree.
And the General finds himself looking back into his lap. Beneath the paper, balanced—a bowl of salted almonds.
A bowl of fat figs.
There is a gun missing. That’s what he’s been looking for, why he again cranes his neck. It’s the sound of the shot that has reminded him. That old embossed prize of an antique gun, and the wrought-iron brackets that hold it affixed to the wall, empty, above Lily’s weaving.
Where has it gone, his treasure?
The gun was given to him right after the war, a Janissary’s rifle, a trophy retrieved from the Syrian front.
Such craftsmanship he’d never seen before in a weapon, the vernacular tradition at its murderous best. This one had an octagonal barrel, the stock sheltered in ivory, and a five-sided brass butt end, inlaid with polished stones. All that fanciness, and still simple. The barrel bands looked, at first glance, to be of gold thread, but—and he thought it a lovely bit of restraint on a weapon so ornate—upon inspection, they were made of some sort of sturdy twine.
As soon as he’d been given it, he’d walked his visitor out to the gate of his ranch, and, without going back into the house, the General climbed into an Egyptian jeep that he’d driven back from the Suez, another keepsake. With the rifle as his passenger, the General raced over to the blacksmith who did all the ranch’s ironwork and shoed all the horses in his stable.
“What can I do you for, General? Something broke off that jeep?” They are old friends, the General and the blacksmith. The blacksmith is also an orthopedist in Be’er Sheva when not living his country life. He and his neighbors all wear multiple hats, their identities defined by the uniform of the day.
The General runs around the front of the jeep with his heavy, thumping plod. He reaches into the passenger side and brings the rifle to the blacksmith, who wipes his hand on the pair of fatigues he wears under his leather apron. “Magnificent,” he says.
“I want to hang it,” the General says. “In the living room or the den. Something pretty for the wall.”
“You could have just called to tell me you wanted to put up an old rifle,” the blacksmith says. “No need to lug it.”
The General, not one you’d ever call sheepish, turns his eyes down and says, “I wanted you to see.”
For the blacksmith, it’s a simple request. He already has two perfect brackets ready. But he wants his friend to be happy—a hero, a legend now for the ages. And a modern blacksmith owes spectacle to his patrons. Everyone wants to see the searing metal hit the bucket and hear the hiss of steam. He pumps his bellows and starts the show.
If this wasn’t the dream of Israel incarnate, the General thinks, watching. Here is this man, hammer to the anvil, the socialist dream, the hot sparks flying, the iron embers sitting red, sticking like mosquitoes to the leather of his bib. In perfect complement, two French-built Mirages come screaming overhead, the jets’ wingtips marked with the Jewish star.
They are heading south to the Suez, the Sinai ours up to the edge of the canal. Suddenly there is a country big enough to justify a flight to get from one place to another. A country whose perimeter can’t be patrolled on foot between breakfast and lunch. Now they are a nation with defensible borders, not too skinny at the neck, with that head always begging to be lopped off.
Here these Jewish pilots, Israeli pilots, flying those Mirages down across the desert—some of the most advanced technology in the world. And the General down on earth, caught up in this ancient practice, smithing in an ancient Jewish land—revived.
There were new words for everything in their dead language put back to use. New words for the jets and their radar systems. New words for the tanks and the radios inside. But for this, for the hammer and beat of the forge, the Bible still sufficed.
2002, Berlin