The Book of Disappearance: A Novel

A Man and a Memory

Dayan was more than eighty and his hair was hoary, but neither his memory nor his health were weak. Shock turned him into a statue watching TV. He couldn’t believe what he had heard and seen on Channel 1: empty houses and ghost streets in Arab neighborhoods.

Did he lose the opportunity forever? Why had he waited and never knocked at the door of that house? It was only ten minutes away by car. What will he do now? Will the catastrophe be repeated? It wasn’t a catastrophe for him. Were it not for the pinpricks of his persistent conscience, things would be fine.

Thoughts swirl in his head like a trapped fly that keeps hitting the glass of a shut window. His thoughts keep him awake at night. For more than sixty years now he’s been waking up many a night, drenched in his sweat. He sees her as clear as day and still remembers that night. The Arabs had decided that they didn’t want them. Could they have lived here any other way? He repeated those thoughts and then voiced them out loud, as if fearing they would escape. A thread of doubt about that night revisits him every now and then.

What could he possibly say about what took place? That night hunts him. He wanted to apologize, just to get it off his chest, and rest; maybe she would too. But who says she’s tired. She must be? No? He should have gone to that accursed house a long time ago, but he couldn’t. Her silence hunted him. What he did that night hunts him. He feels that everything around him is not his. No, he doesn’t feel that, but something around him is not his. Something disturbs his happiness. He should have gone to her house. To say what? She has been sitting in front of her house every day and grinding the mortar for more than sixty years saying, “I chose you, Hasan.” Is Hasan her husband? Where did he go? What can he do? He asked a young Arab he knew to accompany him, and stay close to her to listen and translate what she said. She spoke of many things he couldn’t understand. He didn’t know if the translation was bad or there was some other reason. What does “I chose you, Hasan” mean? Who is Hasan? These Arabs say many meaningless things. He sighed deeply as if this last thought had appealed to him more than before. Yes, yes, these Arabs talk a lot. But why can’t he forget? Why did she have to go now, before he could talk to her?

Sometimes he dreams that he is tongue-tied and he cannot untie his tongue. He sees himself inside his mouth trying to untie his tongue. He speaks in the dream even when he’s tongue-tied and no one understands what he says. He cannot take the nightmare within the nightmare. It disappears for a long period, only to return and haunt him again. When he joined the organization they told him they were defending the last spot they had left in the world. What can he do today? He survived everything except that black place in his memory, which is stuffed with nightmares. It grinds him from time to time. He didn’t want to be weak. Maybe he hated the Arabs because they were weak like him. No, no one is like them. He will say that what happened to them never happened before, nor will it happen again. He didn’t want to do that, but they forced him. And he didn’t say no!

It was raining, unusual for springtime. They had “cleaned” one of the neighborhood in al-Lid. That’s what they termed what they did. Dayan didn’t go into the houses with them. He stayed at the beginning of the street with the others who guarded the entrance to neighborhoods. Moteh told him that cleaning was only meant to scare the Arabs, nothing more. “We have to show them our fangs. We don’t want Israel to become another Europe.” He didn’t ask what “cleaning” meant.

It was raining heavily on the way back to Tel Aviv from al-Lid. Moteh said he was hungry and what he’d eaten in al-Lid was not enough. Dayan didn’t understand what he meant. Moteh said that the Pin gang was in Jaffa that night. He was going and they all had to go along. Everyone agreed. He was afraid to ask. He tried to leave and claimed he was tired, but how can a fighter claim to be tired? Do fighters ever tire?

They went to house no. 10 on Ayn Street in Jaffa. The address was carved in his memory, because Moteh kept repeating it, as if it were a song. It was a beautiful house with three rooms, yellowish stone walls. On that rainy night, guards from the Pin gang stood outside. They only let in those who were part of the group and knew the password. When he went in, he stumbled on a flowerpot. There were many of them throughout the courtyard and the guestroom. He still remembers the sound of rain falling that night. It was knocking at the high windows.

When they walked into the house they saw a spacious room with a carpet and a man in the middle. Was it this Hasan she keeps calling? He was lying facedown to the floor, and his pants were down to his knees. Moteh said, “Whoever wants to should go ahead. Come! His dark ass is tight. If you don’t like the tail, there is a woman’s hole next door.” Dayan couldn’t believe his eyes. One of them slapped him teasingly. Moteh took Dayan by the hand to the room next door. She was there crying. Her skinny body was naked and they were taking turns.

“Why are you standing there like an idiot? Aren’t you a man? Go ahead and show her who the real men are. Go on, I said . . .”

He moved forward quietly and didn’t say anything. As if he were numb. He wanted to be numb. He stood before her, looking at her skinny body. She was weeping. Moteh moved closer and screamed at her to stop crying and laugh instead. To call out to him and say, “Come, I want you.” If she didn’t do that he was going to take her out to the street and fuck her in front of everyone. That’s what he said. She opened her eyes, and looked into their faces, and spat at him. Moteh struck her on the face and told Dayan, “Show her.” She didn’t scream. Why didn’t she? Had she screamed, they might’ve stopped raping her. She did scream a bit, but they stopped her.

He no longer remembers whether she screamed or not. As if her voice couldn’t exit her throat. Her eyes were full of fear. “Fear” wouldn’t be the exact word. They were full of horror. When Moteh lowered Dayan’s pants, yelled at him that he has to be a man, he lay over her, pretending to have an erection. He was moving on top of her. He could smell the odor of the bodies that had taken turns. He didn’t smell her scent. They stood around her laughing and saying that his ass was snow white. “Show this Arab. Show her!” said Moteh again, his laugh like cawing.

They left the house. Later he learned that she didn’t escape and had decided to stay. He doesn’t know if the man died or what became of him. Perhaps he was still there, but he didn’t see him. Moteh said he didn’t want to kill them. He wanted them to live to tell the others so that fear would spread among them.

She stayed there saying things in Arabic that no one understood. She sat outside the house every day talking to herself or to passersby. She never looked people in the face. Always looking at the sea. He would pass by but stay at a distance. He sees her, but she doesn’t see him. Perhaps she does, but doesn’t want to see him. He passes by and thinks of going up to her and apologizing, but he cannot do it. What good will it do? His voice stays muffled in his throat. As if it is her voice, muffled inside his own throat. The voice that never comes out. Maybe it does, but he cannot hear it. What will he do today if she disappears like the rest? To whom will he apologize? To whom? Her voice is a shard of glass standing in his throat:

I chose you, Hasan . . .

The sentence and her voice in his throat haunts him. A shard of glass. Her voice is a shard of glass. Tonight, he hears it clearly for the first time in so long. He hears her voice clearly tonight. Is it her voice he is hearing? He hears a voice . . . a voice made of glass shards.