Palestine

Palestine, then, was a dream.

Not peopled by Turks—who- and whatever they might be—but as in the days of the Bible, when tribes of white people, just like oneself—Westerners, in fact, he thought—roamed through a desert which might seem to us inhospitable, but which they found a comfortable home. The desert was home to them. Hot, but dry, during the day, cold at night, granted, but was not the one a welcome respite from the other? And could one, did one, not experience it as a comfort, wrapped in the rugs and hides, so warm, so light for transport, which made it home?

What did one need, finally, but the few things one could carry?

“I am of a wandering race,” he said. “The world is my home.”

Had not the Rabbi taught him, “Arami Avodi Avi …”? “My Father,” as the creed had it, “was a wandering Aramaean, who went down, with just a few, to Egypt, and, there, became a Nation.”

Each time Frank thought of this passage, he felt conflict.

He loved what was the first instance of his ability to appreciate Hebrew poetry, in the alliteration of the first three words, but he felt shame, as the word “Aramaean” conjured to him the image of a blond, a non-“Jewish,” finally, a Christian man—as if it were the purpose of the creed to claim, as he thought, more distinguished, or, more to the point, less “maculate” heritage.

“No. They’d have to be dark,” he thought, “for the sun was hot. To be light would be to be maladapted. What could that avail? Nothing,” he thought. “And my brief notion of life lived in the open must confirm the simple truth that it is better to be correctly adapted than to be in fashion. Who would see you there? And what is it but idolatry to crave fashionable appearance in the wilds; where not only is there no mirror but, yes,” he thought, “in the desert, and distinguished from ‘the woods,’ there is not even that stream or that accidental pond which would allow one to gauge one’s reflection.”

At this, he became frightened.

“Would that be, then,” he thought, “as if one did not exist?

“And what might that mean?”

He pictured an unhappy, discorporeal existence, which, in his mind, meant nothing but anomie, an existence consisting in nothing but panic, with no external manifestation of what might, for want of a better word, be called the world; and, at once, the complementary “happy” component of “not to exist,” which was a free-flowing animal consciousness of joy in oneself and one’s surroundings.

So he mused, picturing the desert. In his dream, it was a happy woods, on a low and rolling ground—much like the grounds at the Grand Hotel in North Carolina, where he and his wife’s family stayed summers.

That was the desert to him—a state of perfect balance, where he was neither hot nor cold, hungry nor full.

“But not a state of peace,” he thought. “One of ‘equilibrium.’

“But the sun would start to go down, then where would I be? I would gravitate to my camp—to my Desert Camp—where there would be a tent in the woods. This tent would be laid inside with fine Turkey carpets. There would be a fire. Within, a small ring of rocks, and a brass tripod over it, and a young girl cooking for me and the smell of coffee.

“She would look up to me as I entered, her eyes soft with submission, her eyes grave with love. ‘A woman of my tribe.’ Yes,” he thought. “Yes, I can allow myself to revel in that phrase. Who is to stop me? ‘A woman of my tribe.’ But,” he thought, “she would not have a hooked nose.”

The lights went out. He was alone in the dark, with the smell of sweat and filthy men’s bodies. At intervals, the wind would shift for a moment, and bring him a breath of the fields.

“I suppose that this filth is just another form of fecundity,” he thought, “but I can’t think so.

“Soon I’ll be asleep. Perhaps the Christians are right, and we should take all we have and give it to the poor. If they would, I would.”