My Friend,
It’s drug mischief that’s brought you back … so painful. Or I would not trouble you. Again. It was so long ago. Another world. I betrayed you then, didn’t I … you couldn’t have forgotten that … wherever you are.
I see a boy walking diffidently up the curving hill of United Nations Road in Dar es Salaam, eyes fixed on the ground in front of him … Remember?
You would look away into the sun’s glare determined to avoid me, your face scrunched up, and when you could bear it no longer you’d turn your head back, just in time to miss me passing in that glorious blue Citroën like a princess in a chariot. But one day our eyes met. I had you. Do you want a lift? – I said. And the shy dark boy dripping sweat looked startled, allowed himself just one step closer and stopped just long enough to sink his eyes in mine … and spoke in a dry voice, No thank you, and walked on. What did you feel? Your heart went thump, thump, thump, I could feel it. I, who was insulted. The next day you were not there, and the whole week; my driver sneaking sly looks at me in the mirror as I shamelessly scanned the sidewalk. I who was the insulted party. You were teasing me? No. Shy, only shy; I was so embarrassed, you replied – when you did finally appear on that road and accepted my lift. Where shall the driver drop you? Just there, opposite the mosque is fine. Here? – or closer …? No – yes … You didn’t want me to see your home, did you? And I, naïve European girl, couldn’t understand why. How nervous you looked, each time we let you out, and without even a glance behind you ran as if for your life!
You’re so white; I mean – not pink. Is that what you first noticed about me? Not pink? No – that hair – no, before that – Yes? The car – it’s so majestic, the best car on the road. You noticed the car first and not me? But your hair – blazing, like a fire!
Flatterer. Yes, the brown head of curls, and the green eyes, how could you have missed them in the Citroën. The eyes are dimmer, but the hair is short and black, fashions change; and yes, dyed; and yes, thin too. You truly didn’t know where I came from; Sweden you mentioned once, and I pretended as if it were true; you didn’t know the flag on the car hood, the blue and white with the star in the middle that had been the badge of my people for so long, and how that endeared you to me. European, sure, but a Romanian refugee, smuggled through the border aged two.
I had not a friend in town, and this boy comes along; shy, serious, thoughtful. That’s the first thought that came into my mind when I saw you – what is he thinking in that head? And he’s had his hair cut. It looks funny. What is there to think about so seriously with that haircut-head of his? And dark, he doesn’t care about the sun roasting him, turning him darker. His skin will wrinkle sooner, Mummy might have said. I told her I had met this nice boy from the boys’ school who had agreed to teach me Kiswahili, and after some discussion she and Father agreed. You can bring him after school on Saturday … The first time you came to our house you fell from the rattan chair. I laughed, I cried, for you. Almost everybody fell off that ill-designed chair, how could you have known. I could have told you but didn’t. Forgive a girl her whimsy.
You taught me calculus, my friend, I taught you Shakespeare; you did my physics for me, I gave you tennis … And when I said let’s sit out in the sun and came out in my yellow bathing suit, your brown face turned maroon. I am sorry. But didn’t you borrow my mother’s Lady Chatterley; just to find out what the fuss is about, you said. Sure. That too. I told her a friend had borrowed it.
Sure there was the exotic to you; the dark. And I was lonely. Not that there wasn’t other game in town. Little, but there. Hofner, also from Israel; the American twins who arranged a tryst under Selander Bridge to do the dirty on us diplomats’ daughters. But you were my special; your name I’d say over and over at night, happily; a king’s name; no, an imam’s; … but precious music all the same, always, Hoo … ssen, Hoo … ssen …, until that Scud-firing monster came along and put his stamp on it.
The war came; the sixty-seven one. And we were non grata, more or less, because of my father’s job. He was a spy. African governments did not like us any more. And you never saw that Citroën again. I disappeared. No goodbye, no notice. How rude, how heartless. But not heartless, please believe me. I had no choice. Mother told me, What’s the point? You are going far away where he can never belong. And you are both young. Et cetera. What I might have told my own children later. And yours.
It’s the drugs, you see that have stirred you up like a genie from some dark recess of the mind … of the heart? … Yesterday I saw a boy blow himself up into shreds and here I am. I am well, just in shock, but it’s the drugs. The boy’s young face. And this precious thought: I wish I could send it to you, this thought of love and friendship; this sorry apology. I wish I could write it before it disappears. Again.
Tova
Tel Aviv