32

Ariel

The memory of white, and the memory of black. Does a place have memory? What if we were to place a person who knew nothing of the place’s history, not even its name or geographic location. If we were to take him, and have him walk in the city or place, would he feel the place’s memory? Which memory? Ariel wondered this while remembering arguments he had with Alaa about this subject. He was looking at street signs and names. He was counting the important landmarks of the avenue: the architecture, houses, and stories he had read or heard. This city has the largest number of Bauhaus buildings, the style fascism banned. Bauhaus found its freedom here: creative architecture, whose philosophy broke free from complexity to combine form and function. This style of architecture found a home in this tiny country after it fled fascist Europe, Ariel thought as he looked at the buildings. But he couldn’t hide his admiration of the ones designed by Yehuda Magidovitch, whose original style one recognizes in many houses on Rothschild. Ariel laughed when he remembered the story he read about Churchill’s visit, and how Dezingoff, then the mayor, took big old trees from adjacent areas and spread them around so they would appear as if they had been there for a lifetime. But one tree fell down and embarrassed him. Laughing, Churchill said, “Without roots nothing will grow here.” Ariel imagined Churchill’s laugh and heard it roaming the avenue, but he wondered about the veracity of this story.

When he reached the intersection of Rothschild and Balfour he remembered how Alaa once told him that he felt someone was whipping him when he walked and saw these street names. He said he had memorized the map by heart without names, so he wouldn’t look at street signs. Sometimes he took the longer way home so as not to go through streets whose names whipped him. Was Alaa a prisoner of the past? Why all this thinking about the past?

On one of his visits to Alaa’s apartment, Ariel found a large number of signs of street names that Alaa had removed and brought home. He’d painted them over in black and wrote other names on them in green. He crossed out “Rothschild” and called it “Sharabi Street.” He loved Hisham Sharabi, had read everything he had written, and believed that he deserved to have a wide street named after him.

Was Ariel’s mistake that he sometimes listened to Alaa and tried to understand him when he spoke about these things? Why couldn’t Alaa just enjoy living in a modern state with all this freedom anyway?

He remembered how Alaa erupted in anger when he heard him say that. Ariel told him he understood that mistakes were made, and that Palestinians needed more rights, but he had to acknowledge that this state gave him so much. His situation is much better than the refugees in Lebanon, for example, or Arab countries. Alaa laughed out hysterically.

Ariel was crossing the intersection of Balfour and Ehud Ha‘am and felt a certain anger within. He wondered out loud, “Where are you, Alaa? What did you want? That we change ‘Ehud Ha’am’ and call the street ‘al-Qassam’? You should’ve stayed. Perhaps the day will come and you can then change whatever you want. Where are you now? What kind of game is this?”

“Shut up you son of a bitch. We want to sleep,” said an angry voice coming from an open window on a ground floor apartment. Ariel shot back, “Go to hell. You are the son of a bitch,” and continued toward Allenby.

Night itself was awake, as if it, too, was waiting to know what had happened. It was past one o’clock in the morning, but many of the lights in the houses he was passing were still lit.

Ariel walked Feierberg, Melchett, Ayn Fered, and Straus streets, as if leafing through pages in a book. His thoughts reached out to touch street names as if honoring the persons who brought this city into being from nothing. Yes, we arose out of nothing, didn’t we? What was here before except orange groves and villages?

Ariel recalled how Alaa once erupted in a spot nearby when he asked him to stop saying this was Jaffa and its villages. He told him that he had to be a forward-looking, modern person, and not let the past hold him back. Many cities are destroyed and are rebuilt. He should look forward, if he wants to catch up. Alaa was furious like never before and screamed:

“You’ve never heard of al-Manshiyye, Shaykh Muwannis, il-Mas‘udiyyeh, and all of Jaffa’s villages? What does it mean for me to be modern? To just bend over for you to violate me while I applaud you? When will you understand that Tel Aviv is the lie that everyone believed? By the way, Jaffa wasn’t just groves! Even if it was just desert, this lie you all wanted to believe doesn’t grant you the right to kill us and expel us. Even if we were the most backward people in the world, that doesn’t give you the right to displace us. Nor to kill us. Go and fight the Europe which expelled you and killed you . . .”

While Alaa kept yelling at Ariel, some passersby had stopped.

“Let’s go now. No need for these comparisons. It’s painful.”

“I’m not comparing. What comparison? I listen and listen and listen. You guys talk all the time and we listen. We try to get you to understand that something is wrong in the equation. Sometimes we try to speak quietly, and we often stay silent. We are afraid and get upset. We hate you and get close to you or love you as humans. We mimic you and believe you, but we know that we are lying to ourselves, first and foremost. We tell ourselves they will understand, but you don’t listen to us. Everything we say is lost in translation. Even when we speak the same language. We realize that nothing will make you listen to us and hear us unless we scream at you. Unless we throw our drizzle in your faces so you stop and hear what we are saying.”

“What do you want now?” Ariel asked in anger, but Alaa didn’t pay attention and yelled at those who had gathered around.

“If you don’t gather the wreckage of what you broke, these shards will explode in your faces even if you bury them underground and build above them. Why are you looking at me as if am crazy? Palestinians will return from every corner. Your nightmare will come true, unless you hurry up and burn us all and finish everything. You can cry for us after that.”

One of those who had surrounded Alaa yelled as he was coming forward confidently,

“What are you talking about you idiot? We returned to our land. You are the occupiers. Go to the Arab countries!”

Ariel pulled Alaa away saying, “We have to go. We have to go before they eat you alive.”

They didn’t talk for two weeks after that incident, and they avoided talking about politics, or at least about the place’s history and memory.

Ariel reached the end of Allenby. The opera building was on his right and the sea in front of him. He turned left and walked along the beach to Tsfoni Café, his favorite place on the beach. Alaa loved it too. They used to meet there to chat, drink beer, and swim.

He greeted the waiter who appeared to have just finished smoking a joint and had a stupid smile on his face. The café had chairs and tables directly on the beach where he liked to sit. There were only three customers sitting at a table, playing cards. He didn’t take much time to decide where to sit. He took off his shoes and walked on the sand toward the first row of plastic chairs. He settled into the chair. Nothing but darkness and the sea before him. He toyed with the sand with his right foot.

Would the Palestinians have developed the place like this had they established their own state? Ariel wondered as he looked at the timid lights of Jaffa on his left. What if the state hadn’t been established? What if we didn’t gain independence and they had their Palestine? What would’ve happened? How would this country be? How would we be? He felt the need to look behind to the giant buildings extending along the beach.

He moved closer to the big lamp next to his table and took out the red notebook from his bag and put it on the table. Before starting to read, he looked at his cell phone. No one had called in the last three hours. He felt at peace. He ordered a cheese sandwich and local beer for the first time in a while. He picked up the red notebook. He forgot the page he’d folded so he leafed through and settled on a random page. He leaned back in his chair, brought the lamp closer, and gazed at the sea before beginning to read.