LIGHT

that

FRACTURES
L. E. G osT

~1~

Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward

And see the light that fractures through unquiet water...
- T.S. ELIOT, THE ROCK

~2~

I. LONG
i. Dwarf Artillery
ii. The Nationality of Trees

II. SHORT
i. Outbreak of a Fiery Mind
ii. The Tenured Twitterer
iii. The Rhythm of Blood
iv. Young Love on the Black Sea
v. Snails Pace
vi. Swallows Nest

~3~

I
i. DWARF ARTILLERY
His unrest issued from him like a wave of sound: and on the tide of flowing
music the ark was journeying, trailing her cables of lanterns in her wake.
Then a noise like dwarf artillery broke the movement. It was the clapping of
that greeted the entry of the dumb bell team on the stage.

- JAMES JOYCE, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

CONTENTS
April Twelfth, 1999

April Nineteenth, 1999

10

April Twenty Sixth, 1999

16

May Third, 1999

22

May Tenth, 1999

26

May Seventeenth, 1999

31

May Twenty-Fourth, 1999

35

May Thirty-First, 1999

38

June Seventh, 1999

41

June Fourteenth, 1999

45

~4~

April Twelfth, 1999

JUSTIN

WHERE you sit is where you stand.

I heard my American history teacher say that last week. Im not sure
who said it originally. My teacher was talking about politics or something the Senate, or the Congress, I forget which - but I think the quote applies to
middle school cafeterias everywhere in the country, maybe even the world. A
student who recently moved to our town and started attending our school Eastborough Middle School in good old Massachusetts USA - from London
told us that cafeterias there are called canteens. My history teachers
quote may apply to canteens too, although I am not sure because I have
never been to England.
I am in seventh grade. I am sitting at my normal table in the Eastboro
Middle School cafeteria. (The ugh at the end of Eastborough is sometimes
dropped, for reasons I never bother to find out. Like the British exchange
student, I am not from here originally. However, he probably did not have to
take English as a Second Language like me.) As far as Im concerned, in
middle school there are only two types of tables: the cool tables, and all the
rest. The cool tables are all the same. There are three tables for the cool
kids, one for each grade in middle school: the cool kids in sixth grade, the
cool kids in seventh grade, and the cool kids in eighth grade. There is no sign
that says, Cool Kids Sit Here, but somehow all the cool kids gather in that
section. I wonder if the cool kids know we know those tables are for them?
There are three more tables in the cool section, filled with the second-tier of
cool kids, also one for each grade; they are substitutes for the first tier of
cool kids, in case one of the latter group gets sick, I guess. There are also
two completely empty tables in the cool section- thats how cool that section
is...
The rest of the middle school student body sits in the rest of the
cafeteria. There are about 20 tables in the non-cool section. Those tables are
closer to the area where you can buy the school food - our daily poison - and
as a result the students in the non-cool section pick up the smell of frenchfries and other cafeteria food on their clothes as they sit eating their lunches,
smelling worse than they already smell compared to the cool kids.

~5~

Each of the non-cool tables is miserable in its own way. There is the
table for the goths, pale students with black-and-white make-up who wear
long, black baggy pants, and have strange haircuts: their black spikes go
everywhere, like Einsteins hair, except they are no Einsteins. Theylisten to
heavy metal music, to different types of rock music that I find scary. One day
they will smoke: they do not smoke yet because they are too young (except
maybe Dan ORielly -- he is the gothest of the goth), but I bet they drink: I
bet Dans bottle right there, a few tables from mine, has vodka in it...
Then there is the table for the fat girls. There is always a skinny girl in
that table who is blonde and good-looking. She looks good because she is
surrounded by fat girls. Maybe that is her reason for sitting with them. The
good-looking girl always wears turtleneck sweaters that are different shades
of red, sometimes dark red sweaters, and on some days - if we are lucky she wears pink, and her yellow, golden hair stands out like a yellow
highlighter, a yellow sticker on her clothes. All the rest of the girls at that
table always wear weird shades of purple: large, almost baggy jeans with
purple shirts that reveal their layers of fat.
Then there is the nerd table: kids who play card games like Magic. I like
them and I heard someone say once that they will one day be my boss. I try
not to worry about those things - a job, a career - yet, so for now I ignore
them. Back at home, their parents probably smoke indoors and listen to old
tracks of Beatles music as their kids lock themselves up to play computer
games, hoping to escape life through fantasy.
Then there is my table, my prison - our prison: the immigrant table. At
present I try not to pay attention to the people at my table. I take out a poem
out of my backpack that my English teacher Mr. Barca himself wrote and
gave us to read as homework. It is the strangest poem I have ever seen:
A Moment of Genuine Clarity
All your life
as if out of religious duty
you promoted clarity: moral clarity,
clarity of vision,
clarity of thought:
"focus," you said, "focus":
and you died whispering these words
like a martyr for a life-affirming cause.
According to you,
you with your infinite yoga pose,

~6~

arms outstretched towards the heavens,

"focus" should have helped to clear
and cleanse us our thoughts
from the fog of war
of daily life;
And yet to us
your cries for everlasting clarity for focus
were at once both disingenuous
and quite obscene:
The screams and senseless cries
of the insane were the only
genuine moments of clarity
that I have ever seen.

My English teachers poem is so strange that I am forced to look back at

our table: a congregation of the rejected. As I compare my table to the cool
table, I notice that the first quality that stands out about my table is that we
are all guys. There is Michael, or Mike, Qin: he is a first-generation American
from China. His father recently went back to China, leaving Mikes mother for
another woman, somewhere in Beijing or Shanghai. Mike is one year above
me: he is in eighth grade and next year he will leave for high school. Who will
be his table-mates in the cafeteria then? Then there is Ran Ding: he is also
first generation from China and is also in eighth grade. Along with Mike, they
are the smartest in our table, academically at least. Then there is Sergei and
Vladimir Revzin: they are twin brothers, originally from Belarus, and they
recently moved from an adjacent town called Worcester. I am better friends
with Sergei, whose AIM chat name is Revshady and who is probably my best
friend at this table.
There is also Lev Gost, who was born in Ukraine but lived in Israel for I
think about eight years. I have a weird relationship with Lev: its mostly good,
but he never passes the ball to me in basketball and I think he does not like
me for some reason. He sometimes gets on my nerves, but I pass Mr. Barcas
poem to Lev to read because he is the only one interested in that kind of
stuff. Finally, there is Jewoo Yu: he is from Korea, South or North, one of the
two. In addition to the immigrants and the four empty chairs at our table,
there are two American-born middle schoolers who usually sit with us: Derek
McGee, thin, metallic circular eye classes; and Stephen Bailey, thick, plastic
circular eye glasses. Stephen hates being at our table, but he is a nerd, a
nerd in everything except getting good grades at school, so he is stuck at the

~7~

rejects asylum with us, I suppose. Stephen speaks mostly to Derek McGee,
or rather speaks at Derek. Derek never says anything, not a word, except
when the bell rings: then he looks up at all of us at the table, and says,
always in the same high-pitched voice:
Allllllrighty gents: shall we?
And off we go.

~8~

TOM

LOOK around the middle school cafeteria: it is filled with the smell of
good food and the chiming sound of chitter-chatter, which to me sounds like
the music I sometimes hear at Church on Sundays. So many students: they
are all happy in their own way. I am happy, too, I suppose. I sit in a smaller
section of the cafeteria: about six tables are filled with students. Then there
are two tables empty. I am not sure why they are empty.
I love the friends at my table, most days at least. There are ten people
at my table, divided in half between girls and boys. There are five girls, all
blonde but one. There is Kelly Thompson, Kristen Dorsey, Whitney Bombard,
Emily Silver, and Brenna Hanley, the non-blond one. In addition to me, there
are five guys at my table. My best friend is Brendan Moss. Then there is also
Victor Melfa Jr., Patrick Joseph Maloney (PJ, who is not-to-be-trusted), and
Michael (Mike) ODay. We sometimes call Mike Christopher because he
looks like Christopher Walken. He is a good sport about it and is okay with us
teasing him like that.
The five of us - the five guys - all play sports, and we usually play them
together: baseball, basketball, soccer. We are good at those sports. One day,
when our entire class is in high-school and I am in my junior year, we will
play together on the Varsity Team and take our school team to the Soccer
State Championships, where we will win and make all the students in our
school - including all the students who are not sitting at my table or in my
section - prouder than they already are to be students in Eastboro.
I think our school is the best school in the state, the country, maybe
even the world. First of all, it scores way, way up high in the MCAS, the state
examination which all schools in our state take. My parents tell me that our
school always does so well on those state exams because of income taxes, or
property tax, I forget which. They say that because we earn so much money
in Eastborough, the schools have more money to spend on things like
teachers, school buildings, chairs, desks, boards, and even the cafeteria. I do
my best to get grades: in high school sophomore year I will take the hardest
math class, Geometry with Logic (not just Geomatery: thats for the dumb
kids) and then I will take Advanced Placement Calculas and AP European
History and AP American History. Maybe Ill finish in the first or second place
of our grade, become the valedictorian. . . .

~9~

April Nineteenth, 1999

JUSTIN

IM sorry: I forgot to introduce myself. My first name is Justin and my last

name is Gupta, and (as you can probably guess) I am originally from India. I
came to the United States when I was only a few months old and I have no
memories of India. My parents, taught me British English; who learned British
English, taught that language to me; to this day I sometimes spell color as
colour and defense as defence. I have an older sister who is already in highschool. My relationship with her is not that good. I resent having an older
sister: I wish I had an older brother who told me how to behave around the
cool girls and the cool guys, or at least a younger sister, who wouldnt make
funny of me, whod look up to me, who Id call Phoebe. My sister, however,
has no idea about those things and she does not share any information with
me, not even about how girls brains work. One one day we will both live in
the same town far away from Eastboro and actually have a normal
relationship.
My parents -- and I havent told this to anyone yet except you -- met
through an arranged marriage. I have seen American films and TV shows and
I know that is not the tradition here. But remember arranged marriages
happened here not too long ago, and they still may be happening in the
South or the Midwest for all we know. Its a horrible tradition, absolutely
horrible -- for the kids above all else. My parents did not know each other
before meeting and it shows in the awkwardness at home, the silence in the
kitchen table. My parents have nothing to talk about and as a result most of
the time spend their time in different parts of the house; or sometimes my
father does work outside while my mother is the living room, and when she
goes back to her own room he comes back to the house. When my sister and
I sit at the kitchen table, she tries to lead the conversation, to involve both of
my parents, to no avail. My mother says a few things, my father is
completely silent. Whenever we do speak, we speak in English: that is my
native tongue, the only language Ive ever known. One day, after turning
finishing undergrad at age 22, I will go to live for one year in India and try to
learn Hindi...
Every morning, my mother prepares food for me. It is very sweet of her,
she does it with love and good intentions, and as a result my eyes swell up a
little bit when I admit the following truth, which Ive never admitted to
anyone before: I hate the smell of curry. I am in seventh-grade and that

~ 10 ~

smell, that immigrant smell, is ruining whatever chances I have of joining the
cool table, which is my long term goal.
This Monday was finally different: she gave me money to buy a school
lunch. On Sunday, I revealed to her that I want to try the cafeteria food at
school. I told her: Tomorrow you dont need to prepare me a lunch. Im going
to buy a lunch at school.
Oh really, she said. With what money? Then she put her hands on
both her hips and waited for my answer.
I looked down at the ground, pausing for a few seconds. I hoped that she
wouldnt make me explain my question, a question that took me years to
muster the courage to ask, not because I thought she will not give me the
money, but because it meant that I was giving up a part of my past that I
was used to, a past that I hated but one that was a part of me, that included
my mother, who I love despite everything.
I did not answer her question. Instead, I replied, Can you please, please
give me the $1.50 that I need for a school lunch tomorrow?
An unbearable pause followed. She looked into my eyes with a look of
surprise; her eyes searched for an answer, going from right eye to left, left to
right. Finally:
But why? she asked.
I had no good answer that I could utter, not to my mother. I did not tell
her that on many days of the week over the past year, Ive simply thrown
away the food if I thought the smell was too strong. By the end of sixth grade
Ive already started to realize that kids at school sometimes turn away from
me because of that smell. In one of the small pockets in my backpack, Ive
started keeping quarters, tucking them away, hiding them. On days that I
throw away my lunch, I use the hidden change in my bag to buy a snack at
school, like a blueberry pop-tart or a bag of pretzels and a bottle of coke.
In the weeks leading up to that Sunday, every single day at school,
every time I would open the lunch she prepared for me, I thought about how
much I did not want to bring her food which was on some days food from
where she was born, the food she had as a child, and on same days her best
guess of what American Middle Schoolers ate, like cheese with ketchup
inside white sliced bread to school: and how much I preferred to eat French
fries instead, like the other kids...
Her question kept ringing in my ear in the moments after she asked it.
And even now, in the cafeteria, in the back of my mind, her question is still
ringing in my head:

~ 11 ~

but why oh why oh why

I almost could not breathe when she asked it. I looked at my feet, my
hands, the kitchen table: anywhere but her eyes.
Finally, I mustered up an answer, the only one I could come up with, not
an answer I rehearsed, not an answer I expected to give.
Because all the cool kids buy lunches at school. None of their parents
gives them food to take to school.
She was about to say something, then paused. She looked at me, her
only son, with what looked like pity. A few years later she would say that she
looked at me with love and understanding. Perhaps it was a mix of all of
those things.
Anyway, I think she got my message, because this morning, Monday,
everything changed: in the place on the kitchen table where the brown bag
with the school lunch was always waiting for me to be picked up before I
would throw it in my back pack and run outside to the yellow school bus, this
morning, on Monday, April 19, 1999, at that spot lay something else: a
beautiful green, one dollar bill folded in half, with two bright, shining, silver
quarters that reflected the sun-light coming through the kitchen window. I
put the one-dollar bill and the coins into my pocket. The money sent alien
jitters hither and thither down my spine: I would no longer need to be
embarrassed by the smell of foreign food. I was ready to smell like French
fries (the smell of potato vomit), like the rest of the students in my middle
school.

~ 12 ~

TOM

My name is Tom. Its a simple name and if I ever run for political office
Tom is a friendly-enough name that people would want to vote for me, at
least thats what my father told me and my mother confirmed. Its a name
that can be found everywhere in the United States. I remember once
travelling to Atlanta, Georgia with my parents (I think it was during my
fathers business trip, but I am not sure because I was too young) and
meeting another Tom there. And in Vermont, a few years later, when we went
skiing high up in the snowy mountains, there was a Tom at the hotel
reception, and even a Tom waiter at the restaurant on top of the mountain.
And also, when we visited California to see my uncle Jeff, I remember
meeting a few Toms there.
Thomas is my fathers name, so I am technically Thomas Jr. and if I ever
join his law firm I may have to use that Jr. as part of my title. For now,
though, everyone at school, and I mean everyone, including my teachers,
calls me - is free to call me, as I always say - Tommy, or Tommy D. I even
have a watch with the word Tommy D engraved on my back. My father
gave me that watch when I turned eleven, just last year, and it was a big
deal for me.
(While giving me the watch my father had a book open in his other
hand, his thumb holding back one of the pages; he was reading some serious
book, as usual, and as he gave me the watch he quoted something from that
book the name of which I didnt catch about the watch being the
mausoleum of all hope and desire.)
Others in the school noticed, too, and a number of my friends will later
get similar watches. I am a petit trend-setter.
Hey Tommy, Brendan asks me, as we start eating lunch, what do you
think of Emilys pink shirt?
Brendan is teasing Emily. Her shirt is pinker than pink, almost glowing,
and it has a small drawing of a white cat, its outlines thick, right in the
middle. And now that Brendan has teased her a bit her cheeks are also
turning pink, almost as pink as her shirt. I dip a couple of hot French fires in
cold ketchup and as I eat them for about ten seconds the table, if not the
entire cafeteria, perhaps the entire universe, hangs in suspense.
I like it, I finally say, kindly, gently, with a smile. Thats the expression,
the smile, I always give girls. Im nice.

~ 13 ~

He always knows what to say... Brendan says, with a hooked smile, to

Mike, or Christopher Walken, who is biting into his sandwich. Mike stops
chewing his sandwich and with a half-full mouths says, Tommy is... He
pauses to think of what word to say. Awesome. Hes just awesome.
Thanks guys.
To be honest, I dont know why they think Im awesome. In fact, I know
that I kind of stand out. I am the only red-head kid of the bunch. For years I
have felt different, and a bit embarrassed if Im being honest, because of my
red hair and my freckles, and I wonder if that fact makes a difference to
them, the non-red-headed kids. I have heard of bad things being said about
red-heads, jokes that were made on TV shows, even a few jokes made about
red-heads were made next to me, but Ive never heard anything bad said
about red-heads from my friends at this table... so Im awesome, I suppose: I
hope they dont look at me as different.
Hey Tommy, Patrick chimes in, who are you going to take to the
dance next month?
Its not next month, Mike corrects him, nibbling at his sandwich. Its
at the beginning of June.
The whole table goes quiet, including the girls, waiting in anticipation for
my answer: who will I take to the dance?
Im not sure. I havent thought about it yet. I dont want to respond to
Patrick now. I know that Patrick knows that Brenna likes me, and I know that
Patrick likes Brenna, because Emily told me that once. I am indifferent to
Brenna, who is probably the second most popular girl in our class after Kelly.
In my opinion, Brenna is prettier naturally, so I see why Patrick likes her. But
Kelly wears dresses that older, high-school girls wear: her legs show, and her
butt too, sometimes, and it is noticeable, and we sometimes tease her about
that. I often catch myself looking at Kelly during classes.
As I look around the table, I realize that I really do not care about who I
take to the dance: Kelly or Brenna, either one. Patrick is the jealous type and
if only to maintain the cohesiveness of our group, our team, our cafeteria
table, I want to respond to his question Kelly, so he can ask Brenna to the
dance, which I hear someone in the back of the table confirm is in fact at the
start of June. But,I also remember how Patrick once talked about me behind
my back. Vic told me that, a few weeks ago, Patrick said that I smelled funny,
or something like that. I am not sure why Vic told me that and I actually do
not trust Vic either, but Id rather be safe. I need to be tough - I cannot offer
Brenna to Patrick just because I heard he likes Brenna, just because I think it
will make him happy. I decide to give a vague answer.

~ 14 ~

I dont know, I reply. Whatever girl wants to go with me. I smile: all
the girls smile, and all the boys, except Patrick, nod.

~ 15 ~

April Twenty Sixth, 1999

JUSTIN

MONDAY. Another start of the week: things are improving slowly, step by
step, but I am still far behind my goal of maybe, possibly, joining the table
with the cool kids. I try not to think about it because I really do not know if I
will ever be invited there...
Last weeks change of food was not enough, though. Although I started
eating school lunches instead of home-made food, I think that the smell from
home, the steam from all of those... non-American stews, the curry, ended
up on my clothes anyways and I carried it to school. By my own count, a
smaller number of kids turned away from me this past week than last week,
but still a large number: enough to make me wonder if I still smell different
from all the other kids at school. I think I might be. In fact, I am sure I do: it is
the smell that often turns away people from me in the hallways, in science
class, and in gym class.
This past weekend, I convinced my parents to take me to a shopping
mall that is a half-an-hour drive from Eastboro, in a town called Natick. I told
them that I wanted to buy a gift for my sister Siyas birthday. Oh, what a
good younger brother, my mother said slowly, profoundly, with a broad
smile. Do you see what a good son you have? she yelled to my father, who
was dressed and ready to go do work outside, on cutting the tree branches
or installing a basketball hoop in the driveway, which he bought for me a few
days earlier, or whatever it was that he wanted to do.
I smiled back at my mother. Later in the day, Saturday, we drove to the
mall, without Siya, so I could buy her a birthday gift. I asked my mother for
$30. She looked surprised: it seemed a bit too much but she did not say
anything. The gift I was going to buy really cost $22, and the rest of the
money I was going to spend on two things: a special kind of body spray for
kids my age, and a special type of deodorant. The body spray that I was
going to buy was the one that I heard Vic say Tom -- or Tommy as I will one
day hopefully refer to him -- uses. I heard him say that in gym class,
although I pretended as if I did not: but I registered it in my head.
I always try to be next to Vic in gym class: he says things about people,
the cool group in particular, which I try to listen to, helpful stuff that I can use
later. The deodorant that I bought did not come from anything Vic said,

~ 16 ~

however. It came from a commercial on a TV sports news channel. I already

have two other deodorants, but none of them work.
At the mall, I found and bought the two things that I wanted to, the two
things that would change my life, as well as the stupid gift for Siya, which
she will probably throw away anyway. Later on Saturday evening, when we
got back from the mall, I started reading the directions on the bottles of
body-spray and deodarant. Not a lot of kids in my school use those things,
especially not the kids in my group, so I cant ask them for advice; the cool
kids do, however, at least Tommy does, from what Vic said. On Sunday, I had
to re-read the directions on the bottles I had bought the day before, and this
morning I woke up a little earlier to use the deodrant and the body spray. I
am now wearing both things at the cafeteria and as I expected, one of the
kids points out the new smell.
Duuude, Stephen addresses me. Stephen usually does not talk to me:
he is kind of a loser. What did you put on this morning? I can smell it all the
way from here... he says, twitching his face to make it seem like he is
disgusted. His thick-frames glasses wobble on his dumb nose.
Stephen is a disgusting kid, like the rest of the people at my table.
Earlier this year, as we were taking an exam in English class, he farted:
farted as loud as he could, right in the middle of the quietest silence that any
exam period ever had, the loudest fart I have ever heard. It even beat Dan
ORiellys fart at the end of sixth grade.
I cannot wait to leave this table, to leave all of them: Stephen and Derek
and Mike and Ran, with their pimples and their weirdly-shaped foods.
Stephen Bailey, sitting at my table a few chairs to the right, brings a lunch
box with crackers and cheese and cold ketchup and pepperoni: he makes
little cracker pizzas, right in front of us, like a fool. He seems to enjoy it, but it
looks disgusting. Who would want a cold pizza? Derek actually buys school
lunches, but he looks wierd, like a picture of Stephen King that I once saw,
except that he is shorter, shorter than me and not interesting and never says
anything. Mike and Ran both have sandwiches with bread that have little bits
of green and blue mold on them: disgusting.
I dont look at Levs lunch: once I looked and he said that where he
comes from it is rude to look into someone elses plate when they eat, and
he said it with so much anger that I stopped looking at his food ever since.
The one time I looked, Levs plate had pitta bread with ketchup and cheese
and I tried to imagine how that would taste but couldnt, but I think it would
taste disgusting. Sergei is the only cool one of the bunch: he buys his
lunches and I can actually talk to him.

~ 17 ~

None of your business, I finally respond to Stephen.

Dude, what did you use this morning? Sergei suddenly asks. He is
sitting from across the table from me. The smell is really, really strong.
Nothing, I respond, just some deodarant and cologne...
Cologne? Vladimir asks.
Ha! Lev laughs: He thinks hes in high-school! I hate that kid: I hate
Lev.
It was body-spray! I respond. I really hate them: all of them, including
Sergei, who continues probing me with endless questions in front of these
losers.
Hey. I suddenly feel someone tap my shoulder. Its Lev.
What do you want? I ask.
I was only kidding, he says. I read Mr. Barcas poem and wrote my
own. He puts his poem on top of my lunch tray. Why is everyone throwing
poems at me? Reading the poem allows me to temporarily escape the table
of rejects of which I am a member.
Neither Cohen nor a King
To dance salsa I know not; wont even attempt to sing
Beat Goliath without the shepherd's sling
Accomplished a lot but wear no bling
Friendly but don't care about your thing
Never lived in one place for too long
Haven't been taught how to rhyme or write a song
Said no to cigarettes but smoked from bongs
Like to see girls' panties but prefer the thong
Yea right, I think to myself.
Played basketball but won't make it to the NBA
Had a place called home but couldn't stay
Made jokes but never to an audience of more than six
Pinching girlfriends' asses was how I got my kicks
More like pinching something else, I think to myself, you carrot chafer!
Will wear thick-framed glasses in grade nine:

~ 18 ~

Failed in love but in life I did just fine:

Knew my name but for a time forgot,
And in that time I learned a lot:
Okay Lev, tell me what you learned.
I learned that
There is a higher intelligence but religion is a sham;
Some emails from "old friends" are just plain old spam;
Both communism and capitalism are different sides of the
same scam
Aikens loin and Amis lion both slept near a lamb.
What? I say out loud. But I dont wait for a response, I just keep
reading.
Nietzsche died but God still exists:
A girlfriend dumped me but love still persists:
Nothing is unattainable if you just insist.
I'm a lover not a fighter: you get the gist.
Where is the brown lunch paper bag? I think. The French fries I finally
started to buy with my mothers money are rising up my throat
Used to say that I don't care about the dough but now I do
If you ever leave me then so be it: forget you too
If you ever threaten me I will annihilate your whole crew
Never file your complaint with me: I don't want your boo hoo
hoo
As I finish his poem I suddenly miss Mr. Barca's dark poetry; but because
I'm shy and very nice I just ask Lev, "Who's Nietzsche?" and hand him back
the poem as I look away inquisitively into the hallway leading out of our
cafeteria. Lev mumbles something and I dont even pretend to listen.
I really hate my table: everyone is a reject, not like the cool table. I cant
wait to be able to talk to Emily, and Brenna, and Kristen, and Tommy, he
seems cool, he always says hi and always has a smile: itd be cool to just
be a teammate on his basketball or soccer team. Id do anything to have
Brenna as my girlfriend, and play on a sports team with Tommy. Anything...

~ 19 ~

TOM

LAST week I found out that Vic was right: Patrick was talking about me
behind my back. Its weird that he did that. Our fathers work for the same
law firm - they are partners in the same law firm, the biggest and most
important one in all of Eastborough, and they have been friends from
childhood. I wonder what Patricks father would think if he knew his son was
speaking about me behind my back?
He probably really likes Brenna, thats all, and I do not intend to take it
personally. The story about Patrick (or PJ, really), as I found out through
several of my friends, is basically this: he told Kristen, who is close friends
with Brenna, that Im really bad at kissing, that everyone on the basketball
team hates me even though they never say it out loud, and that I carry
deodorant and body-spray in my backpack because I am afraid that other
kids in the school think I smell bad. All of it was a lie: I know everyone on the
basketball team likes me, and I do not use deodorant or body-spray. Ive
thought about doing that but my parents told me that at my age I shouldnt.
Were too young for that stuff: high-school students use that stuff, because
by that point you have so much hair under your arm-pits that you have to
use it...
I guess thats Patricks way of making Brenna think bad thoughts about
me. Patricks method of communicating is not my mine and Im really
starting to hate him. Maybe I should just say that he can have Brenna, and I
will take Kelly. Kelly is considered the best-looking girl in seventh-grade
anyways, and she often goes to dances with older boys. I dont mind taking
her to the dance next month but I hate the fact that Patrick will get Brenna
by cheating, by lying, by talking about me behind my back.
During lunch today, I make sure that Patrick sits on the edge of the
table, all the way on the right, and that no one sits next to him besides me. I
do this by making my friends play musical chairs. We all laugh as I playfully
jump from seat to seat, pretending like I have no plan. Finally, I sit next to
Patrick, so that I can have a quick chat with him and sort it all out.
I first grab a few bites, pretending everything is normal. Then, after
about thirty seconds:
Hey PJ, I say, speaking across my right shoulder to Patrick, who is
eating his food. Aaaare... are you talking about me behind my back? I say
the last part bluntly, the words grow more powerful as the sentence ends.

~ 20 ~

What? he responds, his dumb eyes looking all scared. What do you
mean? he repeats his questions.
Are you, I repeat, slower now, talking about me... behind my back?
Patrick puts down his fork. I dont know what youre talking about.
Hes trying to look all innocent, but now its obvious, plain to see: Vic
was right.
The others at the table continue their conversation. I try to be quiet,
non-discreet. I tell him to be honest with me, that its fine, that I know why
he is doing it and I forgive him for doing it, as long as he admits that he
talked about me behind my back and agrees to stop doing that.
I really, really do. not. know what you are talking about, Patrick says
again.
He goes back to eating, looking at around the table. I try to listen to
what my friends are saying, but I cannot focus: the edges around my eyes
begin to water, my visions now blurred. Patrick really does not deserve a
seat at this table. I remember feeling like it was a bad idea when I first
invited him at the beginning of this year and now I regret doing that.

~ 21 ~

May Third, 1999

JUSTIN

ANOTHER Monday and the weeks are finally improving, at least outside
of my lunch group. Last week, on Thursday, I made sure that I am on Toms
team in gym class. We were playing basketball: Vic, the tallest kid in our
class, was the center; Tom was one of two forwards, Sergei the other; I was
the point guard, and Mike, a kid who looks like Christopher Walken, was the
shooting guard. Every time I got the ball I passed it to Tom - Tommy- except
one time, when I passed it to Sergei when Tommy was really not open.
Thanks for passing the ball, Sergei said afterwards, in the gym locker
room.
I did, I said, I passed it to you when you were under the rim, even
though you were there for over three seconds.
I know, he repeated: Thanks.
Now we are sitting at the lunch table and Sergei is arguing with his twin
brother Vladimir about something in Russian, and Stephen is talking with
silent Derek, and Mike and Ran are talking about homework, and I look at
Tommys table. Its only about fifteen feet away from our table: I, anyone,
can walk there in less than ten seconds and sit on the edge of the
table:.There are two open seats: one on the left, the other on the right. We
also have seats that are open (four to be exact), but they, or anyone, would
never come here. Thats the difference between us and them.
As everyone at our table talks, I strategize: This Thursday I have to make
sure that I am on Tommys team again in gym class, and I have to pass him
the ball. Even if we are just running around the auditorium, or stretching, I
have to sit or run next to him. Hopefully he will say something.
Hey guys, Jewoo Yu says, breaking the random, broken conversations
and thoughts we have spread out amongst our lunches.
Hey guys, he repeats, as we lean in slightly. Did you guys see Ms.
Hussons white t-shirt today?
Yea, Stephen says, I saw it... wow... really, wow...
What about it? Lev asks. He missed todays Science class because of
detention; he got into a fight last week with a kid who made fun of his

~ 22 ~

accent. Not really a fight: he got up in the middle of Ms. Hussons class and
picked up Dans chair and flipped it upside down after Dan imitated his
accent. I am not sure how Lev did it: must have been a rush of adrenaline.
Falling from the chair, Dan landed on his neck. Lev got sent to the principals
office. He missed a few classes, and had to stay after school, and now was
not allowed in Ms. Hussons Science class until further notice.
Her nipples showed through her shirt, Jewoo says with a smile, then
starts to giggle as no one laughs.
I saw it, Stephen confirms. I saw a part of her boobs. Derek smiles,
but does not say anything.
So what? Lev asks.
Dude, those are nice, Sergei says to Lev.
Theyre not that big, Lev says to everyone at that table. I remember
Lev saying that he thinks Ms. Husson was the hottest teacher, hottest
woman on earth - ever- in the entire history of mankind! I wonder why hes
arguing with the other guys.
She has a nice face, Lev explains, but those lets just say Ive seen
bigger.
Nice face. He probably heard that from his older brother.
My brother, Lev continues, picked me up last week and said that she
has a nice face, but he did not say anything about anything else.
Its true. Ms. Husson is beautiful: she looks like Elizabeth Hurley. Why did
we always talk about girls, women, but never got any? Maybe thats why we
talked about them: because we never got them; maybe we never got them
because all we did was talk.
The bell rings: we have five minutes to get to class.
Alllllllrighty gents, Derek says in his high-pitched voice, as usual: shall
we?
Like Becketts sun, we rise having no alternative from our seats, so
that we may shine on the nothing new.

~ 23 ~

TOM

THE bell rings and I pick up my tray to leave. As I look around, I realize
that I do not really like my table all that much. I used to like it for the first
half year, but now that I found out who Patrick really is, I really do not like it
at all. Patrick is ruining everything. Now all the people around me seem like
liars, and cheaters, and boring, too. Im starting to hate Mondays: they are
the beginning of a week with people who arent who I thought they were only
a few weeks ago.
They really are boring: all of them. They have been from the start. They
are all the same: white, suburban, blonde, stupid. I am the only red-head of
the bunch and I know I am different. They dont know the certain pride I take
in being different (when anyone asks me why I have freckles I dont tell them
its because I am a red head or Irish Catholic but because the sun loves me),
and they will never know because I will never talk about it, because they are
all blonde. Even Brenna the brunette acts blonde, and they smile, they
always, always smile, no matter what. Good news, bad news: everything is
good, everyone is always happy. But its not true: we are not all happy.
Obviously, we are not all happy because Patrick is not happy, so
unhappy in fact that he decided to talk about me behind my back and now
neither Kelly nor Brenna may go to the dance with me, and I was not even
thinking about the dance at the end of next month until Vic told me about
Patrick.
Why did they all continue talking and smiling at the lunch table? Why did
no one have the guts to say what was on everyones mind: that Patrick is a
liar. He probably talked about all of them behind their backs: they should
know that. I am angry, so angry.
Today during lunch I was a bit quieter, looking around, trying to
understand what people were saying at the far corner of the table by reading
their lips. Brendan noticed that I was quieter than usual and asked me if I
was alright and I responded that I am. We - in my group - are always alright
and I cannot not be alright. I wanted to tell him just how angry I was at
Patrick but no one in my group is ever angry or bitter or jealous, at least not
openly. We all get along, we always got along, and we will always get along
once I figure out what to do with Patrick...
I wonder how Patricks father would feel if I told his father that he talks
about people behind their backs. I should do that: tell them about PJs
behavior. It goes against Catholicism, it goes against Jesus teaching. The
Maloney family is coming over to my house on Friday: I can say it then. Or I

~ 24 ~

could do it in Church, on Sunday. The Maloney family usually sits next to our
family. I can tell it to his dad right there and then...
No, I cant do that. I cant become like Patrick. I need to come up with
some other idea, something else...
As I dump the remainder of my half-eaten lunch into the trash, I notice a
kid come up to do the same. He smiles politely, lets me go first. I do.
Thanks, I say.
No worries, he responds; an open smile reveals his crooked teeth.
As I walk back into class, I try to remember who he is, his name. He is
slightly darker skinned than the rest of us. Maybe he is from India. What is
his name? Dustin, I think its Dustin... I dont know him well but I think I
remember seeing him in gym class, we may have even played on the same
team at some point. Soccer? Or was it basketball? He seems kind of nice,
actually very nice. Hes always nice to me. I wonder if he is nice to other
people? We need someone nice like him in our group. Maybe I will invite him
to sit with us in one of the two open chairs at our table. . . .

~ 25 ~

May Tenth, 1999

JUSTIN

IVE started wearing polo shirts, or at least the one polo shirt I own: I
plan to buy more in the future. Over the past year, I noticed that Tom wears
a bright green polo shirt on Mondays. This past weekend, my parents and I
went to a different shopping mall, in Framingham. There are dozens of
shopping malls in this part of Massachusetts and all of them are big and all of
them beautiful and all of them allow you to forget home, to forget your past,
and they allow you to change who you are, for a few dollars.
At the mall I bought, with my parents money, the shirt that Ive wanted
to buy for some time, the type of shirt that Tommy wears, a polo shirt, with
that logo of a guy riding a big horse in dark navy blue embroidered on the
top left hand side. The polo shirt I bought was a slightly darker green than
Tommys; I bought a slightly darker green than Tommys because I did not
want it to look obvious that I was buying the shirt just to look like him.
When we came home, I put on the shirt. I do not normally look in the
mirror, but I liked the way it fitted me and I spent longer than usual looking
at the shirt in the mirror. This morning I woke up, put on the deodarant,
sprayed the body spray, and put on the green shirt. I do not normally care
about my looks, but I have to admit, I felt good when I looked in the mirror.
Cool Polo shirt, Vladimir says at lunch.
I like it, too. Do they have it for men? Stephen quickly asks. I really
hate Stephen.
As Lev begins to laugh at Stephens joke Derek starts laughing too, not
because Derek understands the joke he does not have the mental abilities
to do so but because he is a sheep, a robot, that follows. Stephen smirks. I
want to punch them all.
Filenes Basement, I respond to a question that was not asked, bitterly,
speaking only to Sergei. I bought it at Filenes Basement.
Why the hell we talking about clothes? I think to myself. How come we
never talk about girls?
You know, we are guys? I say.

~ 26 ~

Riiiight, Lev says, leaning forward, pressing me to say whatever next I

am going to say, waiting to knock it down.
And guys dont care about clothes, we shouldnt be talking about
them, I say. I feel stupid about what I just said but still, everyone falls silent.
We were just kidding, Sergei says.
And you Lev, I say, raising my tone, slightly trembling now, eyes filling
up with tears. Didnt you say it was rude to look into someone elses plate?
Well, stop looking at my shirt!
My reaction is over-the-top and it catches everyone by surprise. But I
really hate my table, the group of foreigners, immigrants, retards, rejects,
losers: all looking into each others plates, trying to see what food we all
have, comparing and ranking everything. Dont they see we are all part of
the same sinking ship? Or has our ship already sunk and at the bottom of the
ocean?
And I have it the worst out of all of them. I have a different skin colour. I
dont dislike it... I... I just hate the fact that Im almost the only one of my
skin colour in the entire school. There is one other Indian girl, but she is ugly
and I dont ever talk to her. I always turn away when she approaches me,
and sometimes I run in the opposite direction when she tries to say hi: it
feels like she is mocking me. There is also one black student with thickframed glasses that no one talks to. Unlike them, Ive made an effort to
befriend as many people as possible. And what is the result of all of my hard
work?
I get stuck with these... rejects. All boys, no girls. All disgusting, smelly,
wierd-looking boys.... I need to befriend the cool guys, the cool girls, so I can
get closer to the cool table, to Tommy, and to Brenna. I look at the direction
of their table and imagine taking the ten, twenty steps necessary to reach
their table, and just sitting down at one of the two empty chairs.
Those ten, twenty feet separating my table, the rejects asylum, and
theirs seem wider than the Atlantic Ocean. For now, I am stuck with these
rejects. Perhaps thats how it will always be. Perhaps I will be stuck with a
group of losers for all of my middle school years, maybe even all of high
school. Despite the deodorant and the body-spray, the polo shirt, I know in
my heart that things will not get any better than this: The cool kids, will
never invite me to their table, never allow me to join them. And why should
they? Besides, what would we talk about? I mean, if they actually invited me
to sit with them, and I still want that to happen, we probably wont have
anything to talk about, would we?

~ 27 ~

I really cant blame them: I am not as white as they are, I am not as

blonde as they are, I am not as good at sports, I do not smell like flowers and
strength like they do; their teeth are as white as snow-capped hills. I really
cant blame them: I wouldnt invite me if I were one of them either.

~ 28 ~

TOM

IT took a week to figure out what I will do with Patrick. I cant believe it
took that long - the answer had been right in front of me for weeks! One of
these days, Patrick is not going to come to school; he might be injured from a
sports game, he might be sick, whatever. On that day, I am going to invite
Dustin Gupta to join our table.
Why not? He looks good, he dresses like us, he smells good. Most
importantly, hes nice. He always says hi, and Ive noticed that in gym
class he isnt selfish - he always passes the ball to his teammates. I like that;
Dustin is a team player. Hell do well in our table. He wouldnt talk about me
behind my back like Patrick...
I glance over at Dustins table for a second. Everyone there looks
happier than us as they eat and talk to each other I wonder what they are
talking about...
But first I have to introduce Dustin to the group indirectly... especially
the girls. The key is to get the girls to like him. Once they like him, they will
say nice things about him and at some point they will want to invite him over
to our table during lunch. If I execute my plan correctly, I will not even have
to invite him to our table myself: they will invite him. Maybe Ill introduce him
to Emily somehow? We all have Science class with Ms. Husson.
As I draw my battle plan, I look around my table. Everyone is eating and
chatting. Brenna is talking to Kelly about Mariah Careys new CD; Mike is
showing Brendan his brand new, revolutionary 32MB MP3 player; Patrick and
Vic are laughing about something, but I cant hear what theyre saying... Is
Patrick talking to Vic about me? I hope he is: Vic is a good friend of mine and
I know Vic will tell me if Patrick says more stuff about me behind my back...
Will he?
We - they - are so fake. I cant stand it anymore! I cant stand beginning
another Monday with this group, at this table. I decide that I am going to
leave earlier than everyone else and not wait for the bell to ring.
Ill see you in class, I say to Brendan as I rise to leave, my lunch
untouched. I didnt even eat one stale potato tot.
Everyone at the table looks at me in surprise as I rise to leave.
Where you going? Mike asks.

~ 29 ~

Ive... I pause, not knowing what to say. Im not... I tremble, slightly,

trying to pick up my bag and hold the tray at the same time. Im going to go
to Ms. Hussons room, to see if shes there and say ask her something about
the homework... I whisper conspiratorially to Mike, just loud enough for
Brendan and the other guys to hear. They all smile, except for Patrick, who
glares at me. I pause for a split second, during which it seems like Patrick is
staring me down. Never in my entire life has anyone stared me down,
especially not one of my friends.
I walk towards the trash area scared, chilled to my bones by the look
that Patrick gave me with his dark green eyes, his mouth straight, with his
fat, pale, expressionless face. It wasnt just a stare; it was the scariest stare
Ive ever seen.
I walk past Dustins table as I throw away my trash and head out of the
cafeteria. He smiles and says hello to me. As the dumb bell rings, I hear
someone, a kid named Derek I think, squeal: Allllllrighty gents, shall we? He
sounds funny, like Steve Urkel, and as I hear his funny voice I start to feel
better. I open the cafeteria door and walk out.

~ 30 ~

May Seventeenth, 1999

TOM

ANOTHER Monday, another start of the week.... I really hate Mondays

now, hate Mondays before they even become Mondays, before the bell rings
at 7AM. I hate eating at this table, with this group of people. But no one
knows it: I dont show it.
Last week, on Thursday, I noticed Dustin speaking to Emily in Ms.
Hussons Science class. I try to sit across from Emily at the table during lunch
today to find out what she thinks of Justin: if she likes him, it would be easier
to replace Patrick with Dustin.
Hey Em, I say, with confidence. Whats up?
Hey! she responds, smiling. I notice that she hasnt touched her food.
She is really cute: blonde hair, beautiful dark eyes. She is Jewish, goes to
Bnai Shalom Synagogue on East Main Street and my gut feeling tells me
shed be perfect for Dustin.
What do you think of Dustin? I ask. I make sure to address only her
and the other girls at the table. The guys are talking about something, I try
to ignore Patrick, avoid eye contact with him. She seems confused by the
name. I slyly point with my finger at Dustins table until she gets who Im
talking about, which feels like an excruciating amount of time.
Oh! she finally exclaims. You mean Justin hahaha hm, I dont
know, she responds, smiling. He seems nice, I guess... She laughs quietly,
looks at the other girls all of whom seem to be lost in their own
conversations then picks the fork to pretend like she is eating but does not
take a bite. Why? she asks after a few seconds of silence, curious.
Yea, why do you ask? Kristen chimes in. All the girls look at each other,
then me.
Just wondering, saw you talking to him in science class, I say. Thats
all.
Does he like her? Brenna asks. He wants to invite her to the dance,
right? Youre such a sweet guy, Tommy.
I dont know, I respond. They all look at each other. Maybe, I add,
almost not believing that word has come out of my mouth. I know why I said

~ 31 ~

it, but I didnt really think twice before saying it, and it felt frightening saying
that short maybe, like uttering a lie, becoming like Patrick, as if Patricks
soul transplanted itself into mine and made my mouth say it.
Justin likes you, Brenna says, almost too loudly.
Hes cute! Kelly exclaims.
Who is? Nicole asks. She is usually silent. The fact that she is now
involved in the conversation is a good sign.
Justin, Emily says to Nicole with a smile. But I dont think he likes
me She looks at others at the table.
Oh, hes really cute! Nicole says.
Really? Emily asks, Ive never thought about him... in that way...
Then adds, with a bit of laughter, Or in any way...
I quickly say: If he asks you to do the dance, would you go with him?
Emily looks surprised at my question. She glances at Justins table, then
back at me, pushing my shoulder away. She says: I really havent thought
about that. Do you have to ask me in front of eeeeveryone? The girls at our
table start giggling: hehehe.
Emily is blushing now, her pink face turning red. Again, she glances over
to the table about 10 feet away from ours, to where Justin and his friends are
sitting. She steals another quick glance at Justin, then looks at me, her
girlfriends, smiling...
Ive accomplished what I needed to, I think to myself. All the girls are
talking, thinking about Justin. Now, all I have to do is wait for Patrick not to
show up at school one day, then offer his seat to Justin. Patrick always sits
between Mike and Vic: now Justin will sit there. There will still be two open
seats, but they will be next to the girls, blocked off by Nicole and Kristen.
Patrick wont want to sit at that edge, he wont want to be the only guy in
that corner. Eventually, hed have to leave, find another table.
In my mind, I imagine myself writing it on a stone tablet: next time that
Patrick isnt here, I will invite Justin to join us at our table in the cafeteria.

~ 32 ~

JUSTIN

Another Monday and I am feeling better than earlier in the semester. I

am still stuck with my old family, at my old table, but I am no longer confined
to the prison of other peoples insecurities. Last week, on Thursday, at Ms.
Hussons class, Emily said hi to me. Im not sure why. Was it the
deodarant? The body-spray? The polo shirt?
I am feeling more confident about myself. I am starting to like school a
little more, except my table, of course. It is still filled with rejects, losers, and
I am slowly becoming their king.
Hey guys, Derek speaks, for the first time out of his routine. Everyone
is curious. Did you see the new Star Craft game came out?
Everyone at the table gets excited.
Im going to get my parents to buy it immediately, says Vladimir.
Definitely, it looks awesome, Sergei quickly adds.
My parents have already ordered it, Stephen quickly says.
They all continue talking about the stupid computer game. My thoughts
drift to the cool table... To be honest, I dont think Emily looks that great. I
mean, she is blonde, but whatever. Brenna is not blonde but she is waaaayyy
better looking than Emily. And Kelly Thompson, well: she is out of my league.
But, Brenna I could definitely getWait, did Emily just look at me? As I was looking to my right, pretending
to be part of the conversation at my table, I swear I saw in the corner of my
left eye Emilys blond hair, her face look in my direction- but when I looked at
her she was looking away. I also thought I saw Tommy point in my direction:
but there is noooo way. Why would they look at my direction? It cant be: it
didnt happen.
The conversation at our table continues but all Im thinking is about
Emily when suddenly the bell rings and Derek screeches Allllllrighty gents,
shall we? screeches Derek through his blocked nostrils, blocked quite
possibly by the eyeglasses that seem to be clipped if not stapled to the top
of his nose. I cringe: the sound of his voice is painful and takes away from
the pleasure of thinking about Emily.
We shall, we shall, I think in my mind with a tired voice, bending the
words in my mind sarcastically, adding my fathers Punjabi accent to them,
then my mothers.

~ 33 ~

~ 34 ~

May Twenty-Fourth, 1999

JUSTIN

ANOTHER Monday: another funday.

How are you, buddy? Sergei asks. Vladimir looks at me, as well.
Not great, I answer in tired honesty. I hate that term: buddy. Some of
my answers at our table have become curt. I look at the food in front of me,
just below my chin, mocking my nose, making me feel nauseous: these same
potatoes are making me sick. I really cant stand it anymore: the dark polo
green shirt, the deodorant, the body-spray, the everything about me that Ive
changed and every Monday it feels like I am back at square one. There cant
be a worse reality than mine. I look depressed, everyone at the table notices.
One day you will find out about the beauty of chafing the carrot, and
will be happier, Ran says. Almost everybody laughs, including Derek and
Stephen, Mike and Jewoo, Sergei and Vladimir, even kids sitting in nearby
tables who heard what Ran said: they all laugh at Rans joke.
Ran speaks! Lev exclaims over the laughter, the only one immune to
the dirty joke. Although I hate Lev, his comment mocking Ran saves me.
Still I would leave them all in one second: I can leave them all, go talk to
Emily. She is sitting right there: just fifteen feet away.
Last Thursday, for some reason Tommy asked me to pass her a note. We
were sitting in Ms. Hussons science class, my desk in between theirs. Tommy
wrote something on a piece of paper and crumpled it up into the tiniest ball
of paper Ive ever seen. Then he gave it to me and pointed for me to pass it
to Emily. Emily was looking straight ahead at the board and to grab her
attention I had to tap her shoulder, which I did while Ms. Husson was writing
on the board. My whole body shuddered when the tips of my fingers touched
her and when she turned to look straight at me, and I literally shivered when
I placed the tiny ball of paper, the note, into her warm palm: I pretended like
it did not affect me but when the tips of my fingers touched her palm my
entire body felt electric.
Back at the loud cafeteria my mind begins to drift: I am now thinking
about that moment, being in between Emily and Tom, between two cool
people. I imagine and re-imagine that moment many times in my mind.
Suddenly the universe seems splendid.

~ 35 ~

Suddenly the clouds gather, the rainbow disappears, and I hear Vladimir
say,
Hey guys, I think Im going to ask Ms. Husson to marry me! Mike, Ran,
and Stephen all laugh. Sergei does not: he cant laugh at his brothers jokes.
Vladimirs nave comment breaks my daydream. What a dumb idiot, I
think.
Shes probably, Lev says, in his slow, usual monotonic blablabla voice,
going to marry Mr. Barca. Mr. Barca is the seventh-grade English teacher.
Levs also an idiot.
I should leave them all. Itd be easy: one week I have one group, the
next week I am part of another group, another team. Why not?
When Derek says, Allllllrighty gents, shall we? I imagine punching him
in his teeth, the blood splattering all over his Styrofoam lunch tray, all over
our white, clean, never-decomposing Styrofoam lunch trays.

~ 36 ~

TOM

AS I sit at my table, I stare at Justins. Everyone at my table is

murmuring meaningless things, pretending to be happy, but I no longer
believe that they are all happy: its just pretend. For the first time I think
about the other tables in our cafeteria. I wonder how the kids there are? I
mean, they all look different than us, but do other kids talk behind their
friends backs? What if I become a goth? I wouldnt mind: Id wear white
make-up, black baggy jeans, spike my hair, anything to get away from this
table.
I look over at Justins table. Its an unusual table, very different from
ours. They have two eighth-graders, and four empty chairs. They all look
different, very different than us. They all look happy, unlike us. Justin looks
similar to us, except his skin colour. Who is he in their group? I wonder if he
ever thinks about ours. If I invite him to join our table, would he take it?
Would he take Patricks seat? Would he even want to join us?
Thinking about Justin, I recall Ms. Hussons science class last Thursday. I
gave him a note to pass to Emily, on purpose. I hope he will talk to her by
himself at some point this week. I hope that he asks her to the dance coming
up in a few weeks. I hope he gets close to her -- and therefore my group -- so
I can finally get him to replace Patrick.
Unfortunately, after passing the note to Emily, Justin did not continue
talking to her, or me, for that matter. When the bell rang at the end of
science class, he quickly ran out. On Friday, at English class, I tried hinting to
Emily, and later to Nicole, that they should talk to Justin. I think they were
willing to, but Justin kept staring out of the window. When Nicole whispered
his name he pretended not to hear her; maybe he really did not hear her. I
am not sure why. He did say hi to me when we came into class and when
we got out, but not another word. How can I get him to ask Emily to the
dance in a few weeks?

~ 37 ~

May Thirty-First, 1999

JUSTIN

THIS weekend I bought a watch: a cool blue plastic watch. It looks

similar to the watch that Tommy wears, that I noticed him wearing earlier.
The shape is the same, the colour similar, but the company different: I do not
want to make it too obvious. Besides, his watch seems too expensive. His is
Nautica. Mine is too embarrassing to share.
As I sit at the lunch table, I try to show-off my new watch. I hit Vladimirs
arm with my elbow.
Hey, check this out.
I rotate my wrist. Nothing, no response. He looks at it, half-surprised: he
may have been talking to someone, Stephen, but who cares.
Oh, Vladimir says. Cool watch, man. Right? You were talking about
the watch?
I nod. Yea, its new.
He pauses, not sure whether to go back to the old conversation or stick
with this one. He looks at Stephen, then back at me. He decides to keep
talking to me. Where did you get it? he asks.
Can we talk about clothes? Sergei quickly asks, and starts laughing.
He is sitting across the table from me: I am sort of cornered by him and his
brother. He was also talking to someone else just a few seconds ago but
when he heard his brother talk to me he decided to chime in: he is always
competing with his twin brother. I sometimes hate him: he remembered the
conversation about my polo shirt from a few weeks ago.
A watch is technically not clothes, I reply.
I think it is, Stephen says. Great, now hes part of the conversation. I
think its part of the wardrobe.
Let me ask you a serious question, Vladimir says, then pauses, to
magnify what he is going to say next, which I know isnt going to be good.
Are you gay? The three of them burst into laughter, even Sergei, who
usually does not laugh at his brothers jokes publicly, afraid that he will lose
some imaginary ground.

~ 38 ~

I try to see if anyone besides Vladimir, Sergei, or Stephen notices: they

do not. They are too dumb: they are talking about computer games. I try to
smell the smell of the body spray and deodarant that I bought a few weeks
ago; the smell of cafeteria French fries overwhelms it. I am happy with that:
Id rather be sprayed with the scent of French fries than pick up the smell of
curry from food back at home- Id rather blend in with the smell that
everyone else smells like, Id rather not stand out. Id even rather smell like
hot potatoes later this week during the dance than smell like home.
I glance over at Tommys table. Hes talking to Emily now, and for a
moment they seem about to look at my direction, but they dont. They are all
so cool there. Girls talking to boys talking to girls talking to boys... They will
go play a sport outside after school today: What sport will they play? They
will probably get a car earlier than I will: what car will it be? A Nissan? A
Toyota? A Subaru? Ill have to follow whatever they buy, whatever else they
wear. I will probably need to get a job to afford some of that stuff, the
clothes. But a car? I probably wont be able to afford one, probably not until
senior year of high-school, when Ill buy a used, second-hand Hyundai
Whatever, in an ugly dark green colour: Ill make sure the colour is at least
the same as the colour of Tommys car: I should be able to afford that: the
cars colour.

~ 39 ~

TOM

MY friends are talking. I am observing Justin at the other table. I

expected him to have already asked Emily out to the dance after passing him
the note, but he hasnt. He hasnt even really spoken to her again.
Maybe I need to find someone else to replace Patrick. What about that
group over there? Who are they: the nerds? They are all so different. They
are probably happier than me, than all of us, at this table. They must only
think about computer games: such a happier reality.
I look back at Justins table. Justin is only one of a handful of non-white
students at the school. I wonder whether he cares about it. No, he must not:
last week we learned about the civil rights era and the fact that we are all
equal, all born equal: its self-evident. Im sure its not a big deal for Justin,
having darker skin than other kids at school.
I look back at my table.
Hey Tommy, Mike asks, did you sign up for any sports this summer?
No, I havent, I respond. The guys look at me, waiting for a longer
answer.
I was... I hesitate: I was thinking about doing baseball.
Yea, Vic says, I was thinking about that, too. They all agree, besides
Patrick who remains silent. I hope, I pray he will one day eat his silence. Even
Christopher, who rarely speaks, says a word, one word: Done, as if he had
already signed up for baseball.
Again, I start thinking about Patrick, who refuses to get sick or injured
and miss a day of school. I am angry thinking about him. I wonder how many
times he has spoken about me behind my back since that one time. I
remember sharing some secrets with him last year, in sixth grade: Did he tell
the others about them? Did he tell them to the girls?
I cant stand my table. I finish the disgusting french-fries, sip the final
slurps of strawberry milk, and stand up. I pick up my backpack. I dont pick
up the tray: I dont intend to throw the trash away. I just simply walk out, a
few moments before the bell rings.
On my way out, I hear the bell ring and someones voice screeching like
the ringing bell Allllllrighty gents, shall we? and wonder if that kid
always says that at the end of lunch.

~ 40 ~

June Seventh, 1999

JUSTIN

BACK at square one: Monday. Sitting at the same cafeteria table as

always: that loud, smelly cafeteria, at the table by the door that leads
outside and onto another building with classrooms. Like prisoners we are
stuck in this jail: the only time we can breathe the fresh air and see sunlight
is in the five second walk between the cafeteria and the second building of
our middle school, where we have most of our classes.
Last Thursday evening we had a dance in the middle school. I went there
with all of the guys, the losers at my table, except for Mike and Ran: they are
a year older so they didnt go, that was their excuse, although there were
other eighth graders there...
On the way into the gym, where the dance was held, I noticed Tommy
and his friends: they were standing near the entrance all smiling with their
blonde teeth. Surprisingly, all the guys in Tommys group said hi to me and
gave me high-fives. It felt great. I stood there for a few minutes, next to
them, but I couldnt hear their words: the music from inside the gym was
louder than what they were talking about. I didnt mind not hearing anything
or them not saying anything to me either, as long as I got to stand next
them. It felt good just to think Im part of their circle.
I thought I heard Tommy ask me something about Emily when I suddenly
felt someone tapping my shoulder from behind. I did not want to turn
around: whatever it was, whoever it was, it could not have been better than
this. Then the taps got more powerful, and finally I had to turn around. It was
Lev: surprise, surprise.
Hey, he said, with a broader smile than usual (probably because he
was nervous), have you seen the other guys? He looked at Tommy, who
was now behind me. I hated him for ruining my moment with Tommy and the
cool kids but all I could answer, over the music, was:
No, I havent seen them.
Well, we should go inside and find them.
You can go... by yourself.
He paused. Okay, and off he went.

~ 41 ~

After a few seconds I realized that I really should go and find the guys,
so I can hear Britney Spears singing that she wants to be hit one more time,
expressing what some girls at our school and the majority of guys at my
table secretly want, physical pain allows us to escape our collective
emotional misery.
I tapped Toms shoulder and said, Im going to go inside. See you
there.
Alright, see you inside! he replied. Everything he said was always
cooler.

***
Those few moments last week, outside the gym, were some of the best
Ive had this whole year.
Now, sitting at my table on Monday, not only am I back at square one,
but bad news is about to come my way. I am waiting for the principal to call
my name. The day after the dance, on Friday, I confronted a kid named Ryan
Uhlman about him hacking into my e-mail account. Ryan is a goddamn, semiidiotic imbecile; he admitted that he hacked into my e-mail to his friend Mike
Sklut (I asked Mike to do this, and was in the hallway around the corner to
hear Ryan say that); and afterwards, as we were waiting by the yellow school
buses to take us home, I grabbed his glasses, snapped them in half, and
stepped on them. (It was the worst thing I could do; I should have punched
him in the stomach so there wouldnt be any evidence.) Then I walked onto
my bus and left home. Happiness quickly turned into fear on the drive back:
what will happen to me on Monday when the principal finds out?
Gupta! I suddenly hear someone scream my name across the
cafeteria, looking around to find me. Gupta! I hear an old mans voice yell
again. I hate hearing my name in this school, Eastborough Middle School: I
am the only one with that last name. Before turning around I already know
who he is: I thought hed come earlier, I think to myself. Why did Mr. Walsh,
the fat vice principal who wears suspenders, have to scream my last name?
I can see from the corner of my eyes my friends look at me. I can feel
the entire cafeteria looking at me. I pick up my tray, dont look at any of the
other students and like a convict start walking towards Mr. Walsh.
At least I dont have to hear Derek McGees screech today, I think to
myself as I walk to the principals office.

~ 42 ~

TOM

THAT was cool: breaking Ryan Uhlmans glasses like that. I saw Justin do
that last week on Friday, and I am looking at him being dragged by the elbow
by the principal out of the cafeteria.
Who else would have done it at school? Who else would have had the
guts to break someone elses glasses at Eastborough Middle School? No one,
definitely not anyone in my group. Then again, none of them probably would
have been picked on: Ryan would have been too scared. Still, I gotta respect
Justin for doing that.
I wonder if I should do that with Patrick? He is the only one in our group
with glasses. If I break his glasses like Dustin I meant Justin Patrick will
probably go home crying to his mother.
Although I respect what Justin did Im afraid that it will ruin my plans of
bringing him to our table. Im afraid that the others will be scared of him.
Suddenly, I hear Brenna telling Patrick: That was really fun last week,
thanks for taking me out.
Youre welcome, he responds, with too much confidence.
Thanks Kelly, I quickly say, for going to the dance. Did you have fun?
I did, she says, that was cool.
Why did Justin leave us so quickly? Emily asks, suddenly.
I dont know, I respond.
Did you guys hear about what he did? asks Patrick, the goddamn fool.
Yea, Brendan says, for some reason responding to Patricks question.
He shouldnt: Brendan is my best friend. He broke someones glasses.
I saw it, Mike adds. It was awesome. Mike starts to laugh. He just
grabbed the kids glasses, snapped them in half, threw them on the ground,
stepped on them, and got on the school bus. It was hilarious.
Who was the kid? Patrick asks. The kid with the glasses?
PJ, it was Ryan, Brendan responds. Ryan Uhlman. Jeez, dont you
know anyones name in our school? Good, Brendan is still on my side.
What Justin did, says Emily, that was really mean.
Oh no, my fears are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

~ 43 ~

Yea, Brenna says, thats really, really bad. You cant do that stuff at
our school. Maybe other schools, but not Eastborough Middle School.
She says our schools name like its the goddamn Roxbury.
What? Brendan says, That was awesome! He stood up for himself.
I agree, Mike says, It was awesome.
Maybe, Emily suddenly says, with a smile.
Yea, well Brenna hesitates. I dont know.
Why did he do it? Kelly asks.
I heard that the kid hacked into his e-mail, Vic says. He always hears
things and passes them to other people, free-of-charge, the kind and caring
soul. But this is good: the table is turning in Justins favor. This is good and
funny, too, because Patrick raised the issue first but doesnt know my plan. I
can now invite Justin to our table.
What I wouldnt do to have Justins guts, so that I can break Patricks
glasses, snap them in half, throw them onto the ground, and walk onto the
school bus without care: detention or suspension, come what may...
The bell rings. I look towards the table where Justin sits - where he
normally sits, before he was called out by the principal today. I try to hear
what they are talking about: probably saying how cool Justin was. As the bell
rings, the only word I catch is Allllllrighty.

~ 44 ~

June Fourteenth, 1999

TOM

ITS the last week of school, the same Monday but finally different:
Patrick Maloney is gone!
I ask Brendan, Hey, have you seen PJ today?
As hes about to respond, Vic chimes in: I heard hes sick.
Mike adds: I heard hes got the flu.
Vic turns to Mike and asks: How did he get the flu?
Hes got something, Mike responds, irritated.
I havent seen him today, Brendan responds. I like Brendan much more
when Patrick is not around: he answers my questions directly.
Now theres an empty seat: a golden throne waiting for a king. Is it
worthy of Justin, the only kid in the entire school with the guts to break
another kids glasses?
The conversation continues for a couple of minutes. I calculate in my
head how to invite Justin over. Suddenly:
You should ask Justin to join, Emily says. I am surprised that she says
it. At first Im scared: Ive waited for this moment for weeks and now that it is
about to happen for some reason I freeze. Its harder than asking a girl to the
dance.
Yea, hes a cool kid, adds Kelly, looking at Emily.
Kind of a dork, says Brenna, but hes cute.
Hes not a bad point guard, adds Vic, a bit more seriously, as if hes
planning a position for him on the basketball team. And hes tall enough to
be a small forward.
What do you think? I ask Brendan. I am more relaxed now that people
at my table express their approval of inviting Justin they still havent
forgotten how cool he was for breaking Ryans glasses.
He seems cool, Brendan responds, shrugging his shoulders. I decide to
act quickly. The bell might ring in a few minutes: five, ten, Im not sure: I lost
count when I realized that Patrick wasnt coming.

~ 45 ~

I get up from my seat and start walking towards Justins table.

~ 46 ~

JUSTIN

I look at my school lunch, crumbs of half-eaten French fries fill its

Styrofoamed sides.
Thats it, I think to myself, sighing. Around me I hear the claustrophobic
chatter of my friends; their voices feel like objects, closing around me. Their
chatter bounces off the table, delivering their thoughts into my ears. If I was
lucky, the echo created by the cafeteria walls would deliver the laughter of
the cool group.
Has the final week of school really just begun: the final Monday?
Ive put in so much effort, so many weeks into making the cool group
like me, into making them think that I am one of them. But, as I expected,
they cannot, they will not accept someone like me. Its probably because
they think that I still smell bad, and because Im different: Im dark-skinned,
darker than they are. I cant change that. Im not going to change that for
anyone.
As I think these thoughts, an image of Tommy appears to be walking in
my direction. I close and open my eye-lids: Tommy is actually walking in my
direction, but I tell myself: No, he must be walking outside, leaving the
cafeteria. I look at Sergei, right across the table from me, pretending not to
notice Tom.
He approaches my table, slowly, confidently, until he stands behind
Sergei and Vladimir, between both of their shoulders. He looks directly at
me, his red head, his white skin, his white teeth glow around the dimness,
the darkness of my group: he smiles even as he speaks, his words like pistol
shots drawn from the hip.
Hey Justin, he says. I really cant believe he remembered my name,
cant believe hes addressing me. Theres a seat open at our table... Do you
want to sit with us? he asks.
I look at his table. I notice theres an empty seat where PJ usually sits. I
dont know how to respond: I am too surprised to even ask myself whether
he came here because of the body-spray or the deodrant or the polo shirt...
As Tom asks the question, I notice Sergei looking down at his tray, then
his backpack. The entire table is silent, as everyone - including Lev- pretends
that they did not hear what Tom had just asked. They pretend to ignore his
words, looking at each other or at their plates: but I know, I know theyve
heard, and I hope they realize and remember what they have just heard and

~ 47 ~

realize that it was the result of my, my effort. I know they see Tommy from
the corner of their eyes and I know they, my group, will see me in a new
light, will know Im cooler than them, if they are lucky to see me ever again,
because I intend to say yes! An inner voice bellows I want, I want, I want. I
knew I was cool.
As I think of the best way to respond to Tom, I notice Sergei laying his
backpack on his knees: he takes out a magazine, an almost laminated
journal about cars, moves the tray away from him, pushes it towards mine,
places the magazine on the edge of the table nearest him, and starts
reading. As a result of him pushing his tray towards mine, my tray almost
falls on me. I fumble and barely manage to save it from falling: as I try to put
my tray atop Sergeis, I look again around me, and a fear, unlike any fear
that Ive faced before, grips me. For a second I am afraid that Tommy is
already gone, but when I look he is still standing there, waiting... I look at
Derek, whos looking at Stephen. Mike and Ran are looking at each other.
Vladimir is looking at Sergeis magazine... Finally, I know, or think I know,
what to say. As the words begin escaping from my mouth I cannot believe
that I am actually saying them:
No, I respond, then pause. No, thank you. Maybe another time.
Tom looks surprised.
Are are you sure? he asks, maintaining eye contact with me. Then,
for a few seconds he looks around the table, then back at me. His eyes
pierce my entire being: my soul splinters into a thousand pieces: fractures
into the infinite fears Ive had about myself this year, and the one before,
and the one before that. Will I be the same next year? Will I confine myself
to the same table in the cafeteria again, and again, and again?
Im... Im okay, I say, my voice trembling a bit. Thanks, though.
Tom shrugs. Okay, if you say so, he says, the sentence like a million
paper-cuts across the tips of my fingers. You sure? he asks again. I nod my
head to confirm.
As he walks back to his table - the cool table- everyone at my table - the
born-to-lose table - goes back to talking or staring at their plates. A few
people murmur something: Are they talking about me? Nah, they are
probably thinking about Ms. Hussons boobs, or some computer game, or
whatever else it is that rejects think about.
Youre stupid, Sergei suddenly says, slowly, looking up from his
magazine.
What? I ask, surprised. What are you talking about?

~ 48 ~

Youre an idiot, he says, firmer than before: each word like a dagger,
especially coming from him, my best friend. You should have gone to their
table.
But... what about you? I ask. How... how would you make it with
these- I pause. I am about to say losers when a fear grips me again: these
losers could, in theory, kill me. If I said yes to Tom they probably would
have branded me a traitor: How could I have looked them in the eyes
tomorrow? The next year? I can think of them as losers, in my mind; I can
treat them like losers, within the confines of our table; but to walk away? Or
to publicly declare that they are losers? No... no: I cannot risk being labelled
a traitor, not for Emily and not for Brenna or for Kelly or for Tommy! For all of
my hatred towards these... rejects, these losers that sit across from me and
to my side, who speak words out of context and talk about the dumbest
things, these people, these friends are all Ive got. I realized that in that flash
of an instant when Tom asked me if I wanted to go to his table: all the pieces
of the puzzle came to me and showed me the light.
Excuses, Sergei says, as if reading my thoughts. He continues: Those
are your excuses. You were afraid. I get it, but dont drag me- us - into it. I
wouldve been fine, we wouldve been fine without you. Each word leaves a
scar.
You should have gone with Tommy, Vladimir adds.
His name is Tom, I respond, angry. I dont know why everyone calls
him Tommy! I normally have thick skin, but for the first time I feel like Im
about to start crying.
I glance at Toms table. Hes sitting back at that table, the cool table; all
the guys and girls there, blonde with happy hair and white teeth, teeth like
daggers, smiling, talking, murmuring: they were probably talking about how
cool I am. I said no to them! Im cooler than they are - look at my polo shirt,
come here: smell it!
Emily glances at me, for a second, then looks away. Ive seen that
glance before, from the corner of my eye, a few weeks ago. Did Tom tell her
that I said no? What did he say?
I look around my table: after a few minutes everything is back to normal,
as if Tom did not just ask me to join his table, as if the most incredible,
unexpected thing in the world did not just happen right in front of their eyes,
as if they dont realize just how much cooler I am. Mike is talking to Ran;
Stephen is saying something to Derek, who is eating his plastic fork, about to
devour his Styrofoam lunch tray; Vlad is talking to Lev: oh, how I hate that
Lev! I hate him- hate, hate, hate him! I should go back to Tommy, say yes!,

~ 49 ~

and sit in Patrick Maloneys seat, and be part of the cool group: and during
the summer I will hold Emilys hand, and maybe even get a kiss- I no longer
care about Brenna, I will take Emily - Ill be the first one of my old group to
kiss a girl.
I sit at the edge of my chair, gripping with both hands my tray. I am
ready to pull the trigger, I am ready to make the jump, take the leap: its not
a risk, I keep telling myself. I may become the biggest loser at the cool table,
but its better than being the coolest kid at the losers table... Or is it? I no
longer know what is what.
My mind tells me that I am no longer afraid of the thought of joining the
cool group, they are not as great as I thought they were: they are middleschoolers, just like me. I know it, I know it in my heart, I know, know, know it:
none of us are stronger, none of us are better than the rest, and I can deal
with being part of a cooler group. They are not even worth it, me. My mind
tells me all those things, epiphanies blossom like flowers past and around the
scars left by my best friends words, by Toms are you sure? and above all
my own response... I am pressing my tray with both of my hands.
But my knees hesitate, and suddenly I cant feel my feet. My breathing
stops. Every heartbeat engulfs the edges of my eyes with black color, and it
feels like someone is squeezing my eyeballs in a cruel rhythm; the black
appears and recedes with each heart-beat, heart-beat, heart-beat. My hands
press onto the tray stronger than before: I am about to embark on a new set
of friendships, move on to a new reality, become part of the cool group.
Ohers will be jealous of me, I may have a girlfriend, and eighth grade will be
a breeze. But, for a few seconds more I hesitate: one second, two seconds,
three seconds... A thought crosses my mind: Id rather be a king among
rejects than a reject amongst kings. But Im not sure if thats right. I make
the decision to walk over to their table. Time stands still: the moment
freezes.
***
Suddenly, the bell rings, sounding as loud as an ambulance on a quiet
Sunday afternoon.
I finally exhale. I close my eyes and wait for Dereks line- but nothing
happens. I do not hear his voice. Instead, I hear feet shuffling around me. I
want Derek to say his stupid line but today for some reason he doesnt. After
five seconds I open up my eyes, the tray is still in my hands. I look around.
My group, including Sergei, is walking away from the table.
Under my breath, my eyes filled with tears, I whisper quietly to myself in
my fathers accent, so that no one can hear: Allllllrighty gents... shall we.

~ 50 ~

~ 51 ~

ii. THE NATIONALITY OF TREES

EARTH is pressing against us, trapping us in the final passage...
We end the hymn with our flesh.
Here we will die. Here, in the final passage.
Here or there, our blood will plant olive trees.
- MAHMOUD DARWISH, PALESTINIAN POET
HERE they stand, a living tree next to a dead one
and a sick tree next to one with sweet fruit,
and none of them knows what happened.
And all of them together, not like human beings
who are separated from one another.
- YEHUDA AMICHAI, ISRAELI POET
THERE is no nation of you, there is no nation of me
Our only nation lives in lucid dreams.
- FRANZ FERDINAND, SONG

I
ON A HILL outside the house stood an olive tree. Behind the tree stood a
fence, black and metallic, with barbed wire perched on it like tumbleweeds.
Yonah remembered first becoming aware of the olive tree at the age of four.
He was sitting on top of his fathers shoulders, the palms of his hands
pressing against his fathers head, stabilizing his weight. His father took him
close to the tree, and with the palm of his small hand he felt the rugged top
part of the trunk and the branches of the tree.
Yonah was eight now, having started the first day of second grade only
two months earlier. Yonah always saw the olive tree on the way to
school. The tree was relatively young; his mother told him that the tree was
planted in the ground before he was born, before their family moved to the
house where they currently lived. Yonah never walked close to the tree by
himself, as if there was something sacred about it; but today, after school
ended, his feet drew him to the olive tree. His brain did not tell him to do it;
he simply walked up to it, as if he had rehearsed for this moment for years.
When the school bell rang at two in the afternoon, Yonah began walking
home. All day the wind was whistling loudly the strong winds first gathered

~ 52 ~

steam in August so much so that when the kids were playing outside, their
little red rubbery ball at the center of the grey playground, their internal
universe, had blown away; they had to run to get it, laughing all along at the
randomness of the balls movement, laughing at their lack of control over an
inanimate object; but now walking home by himself Yonah noticed that the
wind had calmed down and that the dead, dry leaves that were hovering
above the ground earlier had now settled on earthly soil.
Rather than walking along the trail that would lead home, Yonah walked
along a path that ran parallel to the barbed wire fence. As he walked by the
path he lightly dragged his fingers against the chain-links. He sometimes
thought about the fence but had never bothered to ask: Why is there a
fence? He never felt the same about the tree: the tree, planted by humans,
seemed natural; the fence, although also planted by humans, did not. He
never asked, perhaps, because he felt that grownups knew the reason, and
when he would be a grownup he would know the true meaning of the black
fence.
While dragging his fingers through the metallic chain-links, Yonah kicked
at rocks and pebbles that populated the trail. Only a few of the rocks that he
kicked made it past the one, two, three kicks of his shoe, but there were
plenty of little rocks on the ground and all that mattered was that there
would be something on the ground to kick as he moved forward towards the
tree.
Along the path Yonah noticed a split in the earth, like a scar. One part
of it started on one side of the fence and the other part ended on the other.
Yonah had never been on the other side of the fence. Am I forbidden from
going to the other side? He wondered. His parents never told him that.
Sometimes he felt like there was hushed discussion by the adults about that
fence.
No one he knew ever went to the other side of the fence.
The scar in the road was wide enough to fit one thin branch of a tree,
two at most. Now he was only a few away from the tee. The ground was bent
upwards, and there were two hills: one small, one large. The smaller hill led
to the larger one, which was a bit farther away. Yonah had never noticed the
smaller hill, only the larger one where the olive tree stood. But closer to the
tree now, he noticed that there were two hills like the humps of a camel.
As he began walking up the smaller hill, Yonah suddenly heard a whistle
and a loud yell. He turned his head and looked beyond his right shoulder.
Shhhhw-shhhhwt! an old man whistled loudly from the other side of
the fence. For a second Yonah thought that the old man was whistling at him,

~ 53 ~

but then the old man yelled, Khaled! Khaled! and a few seconds later
Yonah saw a boy running toward the older man. The old man smiled. Many of
his teeth were missing; his smile looked like a miniature white Stonehenge.
Yonah had never seen the older man, but by his clothes he knew who he
was, or he thought he knew who he was. Yonah had heard people at home
and in school and on television refer to people who wore that those clothes
were Bedouins, or Arabs, or sometimes Arab Bedouins. He was not sure who
they were but knew they were from a different community. He knew that
they were all different.
Below the pink keffiyeh the old mans face looked rugged, penetrated by
deep lines, so deep that they formed semi-shadows. The lines on the old
mans face seemed as natural as the cuts on your fingers or the scars in the
ground. They formed painlessly and effortlessly on the old mans face over
the decades. His olive skin complexion was a testimony to a life spent under
the scalding, angry sun of the Mediterranean.
Yonah knew nothing of the old mans history. He kept walking and
kicking the ground but his hand was no longer dragging the chains in the
fence and he was no longer look downward. Yonahs eyes became fixed on
the old man.
The old man wore an old blazer. The blazer was originally blue when his
son, Khaleds father, had given it to him as a gift. But over the years, years
which quickly turned into decades, the jacket had lost its original color and
was now grey. The old mans beard was also grey but a different shade,
having originally been black, not blue. Over the decades even the old mans
eyes had become greyer, like marbles that had lost their inner hue. Under
the coat the old man wore a thin, black sweater, and an old pair of blue
jeans. Even though it was a warm day - the Mediterranean remained
relatively hot even throughout the fall and the winter - and despite the fact
that the old man was working outside during much of the day, there was not
a single drop of sweat on his face or his body, as if the sweat had
disappeared into the shadows or crevices of his face.
Khaled gave his grandfather a hug. Smiling, the old man patted the little
boys head with the palm of his left hand. Behind the old man and Khaled
was an old and frail-looking donkey; the donkeys head was bent downwards,
seemingly in search of water or grass (neither was nearby), or perhaps it was
afraid. In his right hand the old man was holding a rope that was tied around
the donkeys head and mouth.
Yonah watched the boy and the old man and wondered who they were.
When he finally reached the olive tree he put his palm on it, felt the outer-

~ 54 ~

most ring of the tree, as if he had just finished a relay race, much like he did
when he was a child of four on top of his fathers shoulders. Although his
hand touched the olive tree, through the fence his eyes were still fixed on
the old man and the boy.
From the corner of his eye the old man noticed Yonah standing atop the
hill. And along with the boy and the donkey the old man began walking in
the direction of Yonah, whose body having seen them walking towards him
suddenly froze.
Hello little boy, the old man said gently, speaking through the
fence. The old man said his words in Hebrew, slowly, with a rugged voice and
a gracious accent.
Yonah did not know how to respond except to say with a slight stutter
hello shalom back to the old man.
This is my grandson, the old man continued, in Hebrew, slowly. His
name is Khaled. The old man put his hand on Khaleds shoulder. Then he
paused and looked at the donkey, and then back at Yonah. And this... he
paused for a few second, imitating the look of a man in deep thought, this is
a donkey, he said, laughing loudly at his own statement, a laugh that came
from the stomach. Yonah smiled and looked at the boy and the donkey.
What is your name, little boy? the old man suddenly asked, as if it was
Yonahs turn to speak. The old man inspected the kippa of the little boy
beyond the fence briefly, and noticed the long tufts of brown hairs running
down alongside the boys ears like a set of circular staircases.
Yon... yon-ah, he replied, with a slight stutter. The old man smiled as
new lines emerged on his face.
Nice to meet you Yonah, the old man said kindly. I have a special
request for you, a request that only someone like you could fulfil. He paused
to look straight into Yonahs eyes. I have to go to that store, the old man
said, then paused and pointed down the hill at store off in the distance. Do
you see it?
They were all on a hill and from his side of the fence Yonah could not see
the store but he nodded his head anyways to indicate that he saw it, or more
correctly that he was paying attention to the old man and understood what
he said.
The old man continued:
I have to buy a few things a few things for Khaleds family and for our
home. Do you mind playing with Khaled while I am gone?

~ 55 ~

Yonah was surprised at the old mans question. He hesitated for a few
seconds. He did not know how or what they could play across the fence.
Besides, although the boy could not express it in words, he felt like there was
something sacrilegious about talking to this man, playing with the boy across
the fence, and Yonah felt like he should run back home at once.
But, it was too late now. Yonah had already said hello to the old man and
had given his name. He hesitated speaking more, lest they conclude, if they
had no already, that he stutters. Yonah nodded his head to indicate that he
would stay.
The old man noticed Yonahs hesitation.
Do you have to be back at home? the old man asked.
A few seconds passed. Yonah was gathering his thoughts. Only whwhen my mother co-comes back, Yonah replied.
The old man and Khaled now both noticed Yonahs stutter. Yonah
stuttered from a young age. He stuttered in school and at home when he was
nervous; he would always stutter around strangers and he knew he would
stutter with the old man and Khaled. He did not stutter around friends, or
people who he thought were friendly, at first, but after speaking for a long
time he would begin stuttering around them too, as if his mouth and mind
were muscles at the end of a lengthy workout, no longer able to make the
exertion necessary to complete a thought.
When does your mother come back?
Yonah looked down and took a deep breath. In one hour, he replied,
without a stutter.
Excellent, I will not be gone for more than an hour. Then he paused,
and added: I promise.
The old man pulled something from his jacket pocket a little black
rectangular box- and handed it to Khaled. In Arabic, he told his grandson to
teach Yonah how to play the game, and that he would be back in one
hour. Khaled nodded. The old man looked across the fence at Yonah again
and wanted to put two of his fingers across the fence to shake Yonahs hand,
but decided against it. He left with the donkey: they walked together slowly
down the hill. Yonah kept looking at the donkey, as its outline grew smaller.
Without a pause, Khaled moved close to the fence and sat down on the
ground. He crossed his legs and began taking out the pieces of the game. A
bit confused, Yonah slowly followed Khaleds lead and did the same thing, so
that he was sitting down with the olive tree behind his back, with Khaled on

~ 56 ~

the other side of the barbed wired fence in front of him. Khaled placed the
domino pieces on his feet and used his hands to pull his body closer to the
fence, so that there was a little space between him and the fence, but not
too much. Yonah quietly did the same thing.
This game is called dominos, Khaled began to speak, in Hebrew,
without any distinct accent. Yonah knew that Khaled was not one of us as
his parents would say, but he did not think much of Khaled speaking in
Hebrew. Have you heard of the game?
Yes.
Have you ever played it?
No. I have never played it.
Khaled looked up from his dominos and thought for a few seconds.
Okay, I will teach you. He told Yonah to bring his palm to the fence and
through it Khaled pushed a few ivory-like domino pieces so that they dropped
into Yonahs palms. They felt smooth and clean in comparison to the rough,
rocky ground where they were both sitting. Over the course of the next hour,
Khaled taught Yonah how to play with the yellow-white pieces, what the
blacks dots on the two sides of the lines meant, and they managed to play a
few complete games, finding a way to form a small rectangle through the
fence. One boy would put the domino pieces through the fence and the other
boy would add it to the rectangle. As the game went on, Yonahs initial
hesitation disappeared and he became focused on trying to win the game.
After about an hour, Khaleds grandfather, along with the old donkey,
approached the two boys. He looked at the ground where they were still
playing and laughed at how the two young boys had figured out how to play
dominos through the fence. The boys were so focused on the game that they
did not hear his laughter or notice him standing next to them.
How does he play? the old man asked loudly in Hebrew, speaking to
Khaled.
The two boys looked up. The sun was shining around the darkened figure
of the old man. His shadow started on Khaleds side of the fence and ended
on Yonahs territory.
Hes a good domino player, Khaled replied in a serious tone. One of
us.
The old man laughed, and said in mock reprehension, Never teach
someone how to play better than you! The old man laughed again, now at
his own words.

~ 57 ~

Yonah looked down at the black Casio calculator watch on his wrist. It
was three-fifteen. He realized that he had lost all track of time learning how
to play dominos. He quickly got up, picked up his school bag, and started
running home. After a few seconds he paused and looked back. He knew he
had to say something, but was not sure what to say. Bye! he finally yelled,
then turned around and continued running to his house, which was not far
away.
Khaled, still sitting cross-legged on the ground, picked up a stick and
pulled the domino pieces and brought all of them back to his side of the
fence. He put all the pieces back into the little box and handed them over to
his grandfather.
Was he really good? the old man asked.
Honestly, he wasnt that good, Khaled replied, in a serious tone, but I
let him win a few games. The old man laughed.
Good, the old man said, That was the right thing to do. Then he
looked at Khaled and said, Clean yourself. You got dirt all over your clothes.
With his palms, Khaled dusted off the sand that was on his knees and on
the front of his shirt. His grandfather dusted off the sand off one of Khaleds
arms, then the other. Then they walked back home.

* * *

Yonah reached the door to his familys home. On his neck he wore a red
plastic necklace with two pairs of keys for the door, one for the bottom lock
and the other key for the top. At school, Yonahs nickname was Trin Trin,
because of the noise the keys made as they bounced against each other
when he ran through the hallways. It was a noise that he and others could
always count on hearing in the narrow hallways of their school or while
playing soccer outside. It was a repetitive noise, like his stuttering, out of his
control.
Through the door Yonah heard the noise of the television inside. Yonah
could have knocked on the door but he knew that his sister, who was
watching the television, would not open it. So, he took the keychain off his
neck and opened the door. Stepping inside the house only his sister, not his
mother (who was in the kitchen), heard him. His sister also noticed him from
the corner of her eye, but she did not turn her head or acknowledge his

~ 58 ~

presence. He slammed the door behind him, loudly, so that his mother could
hear.
There he is! she exclaimed, her voice emanating from the kitchen.
Thats the sound of my boy. She wiped her hands on her apron and walked
to her son, who stood by the doorway. She held his small head in her hands
and gave him a kiss on top of his head. She did this forgetting that he asked
her to not do that because he was no longer a small child. Now, she said,
why did you come late?
He nodded his head from side to side in a motion that told her that he
did not want to answer her question. His mother looked at him straight in his
eyes, her eyes gazing his much like the old man outside looked at him, trying
to decipher what he was thinking inside.
After a few seconds of looking at him intently, her mouth hanging open a
bit, she let him go to his room. It was one of the privileges of being a
stutterer, at least at home. If he nodded his moved his head back and forth
in a 180 degree motion, usually (although not always) his parents would let
him go. He could avoid questions that he did not want to answer.
His parents knew how difficult it was for Yonah to speak. He told them
that speaking felt like trying to write with a pencil or a crayon that kept
breaking: every time a word would break he would have to run get another
pencil to finish writing it. His mother remembered that analogy, and when
speaking to her friends in search for advice or solace she would
paraphrase his words. He told me that speaking feels like trying to write
with a pen that has no ink. Her friends understood what she meant. One of
them, a woman of Ukrainian-Jewish heritage named Olga, or Olya, who in
Hannahs mind was rather emotional, had tears in her eyes later when she
was at home, as she thought about how frustrating it must be to have
thoughts and stories but not be able to share them.
Yonah walked into his room and closed the door behind him. He lay his
backpack down on his bed, even though he was not supposed to do that
because the backpack was dirty and the bed was clean and his father had
told him a thousand times before not to do that. But, it was easier to get all
of his things out of the bag if it was on his bed. He took out all of his various
notebooks and textbooks from school and put them on the small desk across
from his bed. The room felt at once too large and too small to Yonah, as most
things still feel at the age of eight: immense, unbearably large and everexpanding but claustrophobic at the same time. But, it was his own private
room, as his mother reminded him often, and Yonah liked having his own
room. Two years earlier they lived in another house on the religious
settlement in the territories, where his family had a much smaller house. He

~ 59 ~

had to share his room with his sister and they fought over every inch of
space.
Lunch is ready! he heard his mother yell from the kitchen. He knew
that he had another five minutes until lunch would actually be ready and he
did not want to hurry into the dining room, where he as always, and not his
sister Sarah, would be the one to put = the forks and knives and plates on
the table.
Yonah sat down on his bed. His mind drifted to the olive tree. He thought
about Khaled and the old man and the frail-looking donkey. The donkey had
looked sick; it had pink patches all around its body. He wondered where
Khaled and the old man were now and whether they too were sitting down at
home, about to have lunch. He tried to imagine what food they would have
but could not for some reason. He wondered where they kept the donkey and
figured the donkey had a small home too.
Yonah! his mother yelled for a second time from the kitchen. Lunch is
ready!
Yonah opened the door to his room and went into the kitchen. He knew
where the placemats were for the table and where the forks and knives and
plates were. He also knew where his sister was: lying on the couch watching
cartoons on the television. As he walked by her on the way to the kitchen he
did not look at her.
The soup is the first plate, his mother said.
Yonah was about to reply, to say okay, but he just nodded his head
and proceeded to put the utensils on the table mechanically. He placed three
green rectangular mats on the table first. Then he took out the knives, forks,
and large spoons for the soup. On top of each mat, he put the spoon for the
soup on the left side, separate from the knife and the fork, which he placed
on the right side. He then took out the plates and put one the in middle of
each mat. He took out the napkins and tucked them under the plate on the
right side, so that they were held there by the plate and by the fork and
knife. He took out three bowls for the soup and brought them to his mother.
Hannah filled one with soup a chicken broth, with vegetables and a
piece of white chicken meat and Yonah carried the bowl of hot soup to the
table, slowly, as if he were walking a tight-rope, so that the soup would not
spill on the way. He repeated this two more times and then sat down. A few
minutes later his mother sat down with him, still wearing the apron, and
yelled in the direction of the living room, Sarah! Turn off the TV. Lunch is
getting cold. Sarah turned it off and walked listlessly to the dining area and
sat next to her brother.

~ 60 ~

Excuse me, Hannah said, looking at Sarahs hands.

Sarah got up and went to the kitchen. She washed her hands and made
the requisite prayer, then walked back to the table. Did he wash his hands?
Sarah asked, speaking about her brother.
Im sorry, her mother replied, but I dont think that concerns you.
Her mother paused, then continued. Arent you going to say something to
your brother?
Hey, Sarah said, looking at her brother, who had already started
eating his soup, which was still warm but not hot.
Yonah brought the spoon down so that it hovered slightly above the
soup, then said, Hey. Then he brought up the spoon again and continued
eating his soup.
And? his mother asked, speaking to Sarah.
Thank you for arranging the table, Sarah said to Yonah, who was
focused on eating the soup.
Good, Hannah said. Now you may start eating. Hannah had a mental
framework of how the family should run; she believed in a certain system
and adhered to it.
Yonah was going to say you are welcome but it would have been too
difficult for him, to speak words through his stuttering, for Sarah. She was his
sister and if his mother would tell him to do something for her he always
would; but, most of the time, he minimized having any contact with his
sister. He just nodded his head now to indicate that he heard his sister, and
then continued eating.
When they finished eating the soup, Yonahs mother looked at Sarah and
with her eyes told her to pick up all the bowls on the table and carry them
back to the kitchen. Then Hannah got up and brought a big plate with hot
meat and vegetables and potatoes. The food was still sizzling, an aroma
rising and filling up the dining room and the house, as she brought the plate
to the table in the dining area; the delicious smell filled the noses of her two
young children.
Standing up, Hannah divided the food, first giving a portion to Yonah,
then to his sister, and finally to herself. When the second plate was finished,
Yonahs mother put some water in the kettle and turned it on. As the water
began boiling, she took out a small chocolate cake Yonahs favorite from
the oven and put it on top of a wooden board and carried both to the dining
room table. Meanwhile, Yonah brought three small dessert plates from the

~ 61 ~

kitchen to the dining room and his mother cut three pieces of the cake and
placed one on each plate.
As Yonah and Sarah began eating dessert, their mother went to the
kitchen and poured the hot water from the metallic kettle into a small
porcelain teapot, enough for three cups of tea. She added two tea-bags into
it: one Lipton black tea, one green. She brought the porcelain teapot to the
table and asked Sarah to bring three glasses for the tea from the kitchen. As
they all drank tea and ate dessert, Yonah answered his mothers questions
about school and his homework. He did not mention meeting Khaled or the
old man.
After lunch was over they all cleared the table; Sarah went back to
watching television and Yonah went to his room to do his homework. He was
still learning basic Hebrew, grammar rules, expanding his vocabulary bank.
He was still learning the system of communication, which he could write with
his hand but which eluded his lips and his throat. He enjoyed reading and
learning in part because he was smart, but also because he could do these
things without involving other people. There was no expectation, no pressure
on him to finish a sentence on time. With writing, there was no chance for
him to go wrong, as long as he took his time.
After he was done with his homework he lay on his bed and wondered
whether the old man by the olive tree was a bedouin. Are not bedouin
shepherds of goats? He also wondered how old Khaled and his grandfather
were, and how old the donkey was too. He fell asleep in his bed thinking
about them and the two hills shaped like the humps of a camel and the olive
tree on top of the hill.
Yonah! he suddenly heard someone say his name. He was not sure
whether he was still dreaming or not. Then he heard four loud knocks on the
door, then his name again.
Yonah, can I come in? he heard a familiar voice as he slowly opened
up his eyes.
As he was about to respond, the door opened. His father came in,
closing the door behind him. He sat down next to Yonah, gently tapping
Yonahs head.
How was school today? his father asked.
Yonah told him that it was good, and then sat down on the bed, his back
against the pillow, his legs stretched out, and then asked what time it was.
Its six in the evening, his father said. Dinners ready. We should go
eat in a second. Then his father paused, hesitating. He looked at Yonahs

~ 62 ~

blanket, then around the room. Finally, he continued: Tomorrow evening, I

want you to come to the synagogue with me. Well go at five, before sunset
and before dinner. I want you to meet someone important, the chief rabbi of
our settlement. You met him before, when you were about three or four years
old, and he was there when you had your brit mila. He remembers you even
if you do not remember him. No matter: tomorrow you will meet him again.
Okay? His father spoke in a deliberate fashion.
Yonah nodded his head. Okay, he said, obediently.
Lets go to eat dinner, before it gets cold, his father said. They got up
and Yonah quickly washed his face with cold water in the bathroom and
came into the kitchen. The mats and the utensils were already on the table
and Yonah wondered who put them there. Probably father, Yonah thought to
himself. They all washed their hands as they said the blessing, and when
they sat down they said the prayer for the food and began eating.
The soup was different this time. Yonah did not want to eat his soup that
evening but his father told him that he must and that they would not be able
to move on to the second plate or dessert until he ate his soup, and do you
really want to miss dessert? Slowly, after many painful gulps, Yonah finished
most of the vegetable soup.
What do you plan to do about the demonstration on Thursday?
Hannah asked her husband. He laughed loudly, a laugh that was not unlike
the laughter of the old man, Khaleds grandfather.
What do you plan to do? She asks, Michael said semi-mockingly.
Attend it. What else does one do when there is a demonstration?
But what if it leads to violence? You know how much they dont like us,
Hannah said. And some of the men on this settlement... she paused, and
hesitated. They are, to put it mildly, rabble-rousers, of the worst kind.
Yonah suddenly felt terrified: were they speaking of Khaled and the old man?
Ignoring the latter part, Michael said: What do I care about whether
they like us or not? Shame on them, shame on the liberals, the seculars, for
treating their brothers like strangers in their own land. Yonahs parents were
speaking about the same subject but past each other. When she spoke of
rabble-rousers, Hannah was referring to some of the religious settlers. But
before she could say that, Michael continued:
Remember the commitment we made when we moved down here,
remember what we said when we were in New York. This land is not just land:
it is history, thousands of years of history. They cannot take away our land
from us, they cannot take away our history, and give it to the Arabs. He was

~ 63 ~

speaking mechanically, as if repeating words and thoughts originally uttered

by someone else. He continued eating. Hannah had a concerned look on her
face.
And what about him? she asked, looking at Yonah.
He wont come, Michael said. At least not this time. Maybe in the
future he will, but not this time.
Outwardly Hannah pretended to be relieved, but inside she was not. Yes,
they made a commitment to the cause. Yes, they had made a promise to
others, to themselves. Yes, they had believed in what they were doing. And
yes, she knew that it was important. But there was no reason for her son to
go to the demonstration, to any demonstration.
They finished dinner, drank tea, and finished dessert, what was left of
the chocolate cake from lunch. After that, Hannah cleaned the plates and the
forks and the knives and the spoons while Michael and the children gathered
by the television to watch the news. At around nine it was time for Yonah and
his older sister to go to sleep. They each went to their respective rooms and
Hannah tuck them in. To Yonah she told an old bed-time story that he liked.
As Hannah finished tucking Yonah in, she heard the sounds of piano notes
playing quietly and gently outside.
I know who is playing that piano, Hannah said in Yonahs room as she
tucked him in. It is one of your classmates mothers. I heard that she
teaches students how to play the piano. Would you like to learn how to play
it? he thought for a moment and then whispered yes into the pillow.
Okay, Hannah said, I know that she has several young children, girls and
boys around your age. Maybe I can teach one of them math and in exchange
she will teach you how to play the piano. She was talking both to Yonah and
herself.
As he fell asleep, Yonah mumbled okay into his pillow again. His
mother got up slowly and quietly exited the room. A few minutes later Yonah
was asleep, dreaming about the hills and the old man and the olive tree. In
the dream there was a fence and the frail donkey was on Yonahs side of the
fence, even though Khaled and his grandfather were on the opposite side.
Khaled was crying and yelling that he wanted the donkey back and shaking
the fence. As the noise of in the dream became louder, Yonah woke up,
confused. The memory of the dream disappeared after a few minutes, but
when he tried to fall back asleep he could not. He tried counting sheep but it
did not help. He turned in his bed several dozens of times. Then, at around
five in the morning, as the light purple of the rising sun lit his room, he finally
fell asleep from exhaustion.

~ 64 ~

II
Yonah and his sister were sitting down for breakfast. Their father had
already left the house. Yonah poured the milk into the bowl of cereal. The
milk was in a jug that had been standing on the table for about half-an-hour.
His mother did not allow Yonah to drink milk straight out of the refrigerator
lest it make him sick. After pouring the milk into the bowl of yellow cornflakes
Yonah quickly ate his breakfast before the flakes got too mushy. After
finishing his cereal he was all dressed up to go, and Hannah gave him and
his sister brown lunch bags. It was generally unusual in Israel to put kids
lunches in brown paper-bags (zip-locked bags, for some reason, were
preferred), and the brown-paper bags that Hannah gave her children was a
relic of their former lives in the United States.
Yonah and Sarah put their lunch bags in their backpacks and went out.
They walked for about ten minutes on the same path, Yonah a few steps
ahead of his older sister, as if he was about to run away. Sarah preferred not
to walk next to her brother, and as he walked a few feet in front of her, he
thought to himself, She is probably embarrassed to be near me because I
stutter. After ten minutes of walking this way, they reached a fork in the road
and continued on separate paths. She mumbled good-bye as she took the
path leading to the left, and he replied bye as he continued walking
forward on the same path, the same road he would walk on for thousands of
Mondays and Tuesdays and week-days to come, until his brain was as sharp
as a kitchen knife.
Yonah reached his school, five minutes later the primary school for
young boys living in their settlement. It was similar to other schools
scattered around the ultra-orthodox settlements that dotted the West Bank,
or as the settler community called it, Judea and Samaria. Since all of the
settlers were religious the schools were religious as well. Yonahs older sister
Sarah went to an all-girls-seminary, where their dark-colored clothes covered
much of the skin on their body except for their hands and faces.
Yonahs school was a boys-only religious seminary. Although there were
other classes, at the core of their curriculum was the study of ethics:
interpretation and re-interpretation and re-re-interpretation of codes of
conduct set out plainly, or sometimes hinted at, in the Old Testament. All the
boys wore black pants and white shirts, under which their tzitziyot showed.
They all wore black kippas on their heads and many of them, like Yonah,
grew the long hair on the sides of their ears that twirled in the shape of a
circular staircase, in the shape of Yonahs necklace. Some of the more

~ 65 ~

rebellious students wore kippas that had a drawing of something that they
considered cool: an orange basketball ball, or a white baseball, or teenage
mutant ninja-turtles. They kept these kippas in their pockets and only wore
them at school when they played outside during break, to impress their
classmates. While it was technically forbidden, the primary teacher of
Yonahs class, a kind old man in his early fifties with a long grey beard, did
not say anything when he saw their radical kippas.
Yonah was not a rebel in any sense of the word and he wore the black
kippa both at home and in school and everywhere he went. He did not
consider the school or the community puritanical, so there was no reason to
rebel, in his mind. His parents gave him the clothes that he was supposed to
wear and he wore them knowing his parents would never do anything to hurt
him. He wondered what kind of parents allowed their kids to wear the sportskippas and he wondered where they got those kippas in the first place.
The day began with their primary teacher reading from the Torah, and
going over the passage that they were supposed to have studied the day
before. Some of the students already had second-and-third and even fourthgrade level Hebrew language skills and the teacher asked them to read
portions of the text from Exodus.
About five minutes before the bell rang for break, one of the students,
Amitai, said, We should get Yonah to read Moses part! and the entire
classroom burst into laughter. Yonah got all red, but he did not let his eyes
swell up with tears.
Quiet down! the teacher bellowed, quiet down!
The class continued. One of the students continued to read the text, but
Yonah was no longer paying attention. He was trying to imagine how Moses
was able to overcome his stutter and deliver Gods message to the children
of Israel, and to speak to Pharaoh. He then remembered that Moses had a
brother, Aaron, who was three years older. Yonah imagined how things would
be different if had an older brother too, and he wished that in fact he would
have an older brother instead of an older sister. He forgot all about Miriam.
The bell rang, and the boys went outside to play during the fifteen
minute break. Some boys went to drink at the water fountain that had just
been installed in the school. It was a beautiful water fountain: metallic and
shiny, delivering water that tasted like cold, melted sugar. It stood outside
under in the shade of an orange tree and a line quicjly formed as the boys
waited to drink the cold water. If someone took more than ten seconds at the
water fountain the other boys told him to hurry up. Although all the other

~ 66 ~

boys had already tried the water from the fountain twice and some even
three times, Yonah had not yet: he hated waiting in lines.
At school, on account of his stuttering, Yonah did not have many friends.
He could get angry quickly if someone made fun of him. Amitai, who had
made the Moses comment, was part of the cool crowd and he was
physically larger than Yonah. He was waiting in line to drink from the water
fountain and was laughing with the other boys. For a second Yonah thought
of confronting him but then decided against it. Instead, he joined a group of
students kicking around a plastic ball that was light enough to be blown
away by the wind. The ball was red, the color of strawberry ice cream. One of
the teachers had brought it to school earlier in the school year. The teachers
name, Sergei, was very close to the word sargel, which in Hebrew meant a
measuring ruler. A couple of weeks earlier one of the boys almost kicked the
ball outside of the school, and as the ball had started to be blown away, one
of the other boys- the one who gave Yonah the nickname Trin Trin- yelled,
Careful! You dont want to upset Sargel! From then on all the boys referred
to the teacher as a measuring ruler behind his back.
Even though Yonah was quiet and shy on the outside, he had a boiling
anger inside of him. He often got into fights. Many boys in his class were
intimidated by him, or his anger, despite his small size.
The bell rang and the boys went back inside to their classes. Even
though it was a religious seminary, the school was somewhat non-traditional
among surrounding communities and offered most of the classes that could
be found in secular schools: Math, Science, Hebrew, and Yonahs favorite
class, Nature. The last one was the only class taught by a woman in the
entire school. Her name was Ruth; she was an Orthodox Jewish lady who
came from a liberal, secular family back in New York; her ancestors settled in
the United States emigrating from Poland as a result of the pogroms in
the late 1920s.
Like Yonahs family, Ruth moved to the Israeli settlement around ten
years earlier; she moved in 2003, Yonahs family a couple of years later. She
was a kind woman and perhaps because of that Yonah often imitated her; his
imitations were terrible, but despite the stuttering it was one of the few
times that he was able to make his classmates laugh, to stand out in a cool
way. He always felt guilty about imitating an elderly lady, and twice the
teacher told him to stand in the corner. Standing in the corner during Nature
class was, in his subconscious, akin to wearing a kippa with a basketball ball
drawn on it.
When the bell rand at the end the school day, the boys dispersed,
leaving the school empty of students in an instant. The rooms were vacant

~ 67 ~

other than a handful of teachers, the principal, and some administrative

staff.
On his way home, Yonah noticed a number of students standing next to
a tree just outside the gates of the school. There were about three of them
and they were all laughing about something. They looked older than Yonahl;
they may have been in sixth grade. Yonah noticed that one of them had a
pack of cigarettes and that two of them were smoking. The one holding the
pack of cigarettes was not smoking and his eyes caught Yonahs eyes. Yonah
immediately turned his head forward and walked faster along the path.
As he neared his home, Yonah suddenly remembered the old man and
Khaled. Then he remembered the olive tree. He decided to take the little trail
that ran by the barb-wired fence, the same path he had taken a day before.
Yonah climbed up the slope of the small hill and then the large hill and
finally reached the olive tree. He tagged the tree with his fingers as he had
the day before and looked at the tree. He was amazed by its immensity, the
width of its trunk. It seemed as animate as anything else around him. His
eyes began searching for Khaled and his grandfather, the old man. He could
not see them.
He sat down near the tree, resting his back against its trunk. He closed
his eyes. Suddenly, after a couple of minutes, a familiar whistling broke the
silence of the wind, the whisper of the trees and the dead leaves that would
rise above the ground before settling again. Yonah quickly stood up and saw
Khaleds grandfather across the fence. Khaled was with his grandfather, and
together, along with the frail-looking donkey, they walked up the hill toward
Yonah. They did not look surprised, as if they had expected to see him in that
spot at that time. Yonah blinked his eyes, once.
Without saying a word, the old man took out the same black set of ivory
dominos from his jacket pocket and handed them over to Khaled. As he was
about to leave Khaled asked his grandfather if the donkey could stay with
them. His grandfather nodded his head and fastened the rope leading from
the donkeys mouth to the fence. He then walked down the hill by himself.
The frail donkey stood there, close to the fence, his face and his mouth
oscillating between searching for something on the ground and peering
through the black, metallic chain-linked fence.
Khaled sat down, cross-legged, in the same spot he had the day before,
and slowly began taking out dominos pieces. Silently, Yonah followed
Khaleds lead, sitting almost in the same spot that he sat a day earlier.

~ 68 ~

Beseder, Khaled began to speak, lets see if you remember anything

that I taught you.
Quietly, they played a few games, with Yonah concentrating like a
student under the careful tutelage of an ancient master. Khaled played as
tough and intensely as he would while playing at home against his
grandfather. He won the first three games, easily. Suddenly and
unexpectedly, Yonah won the fourth. They played one final game, which
Khaled barely won. After about fifty minutes of playing Khaled said, Okay,
lets collect all the pieces. They preceded to do so, and afterwards Yonah sat
against the olive tree and Khaled against the fence, waiting for Khaleds
grandfather to come back.
Whats your name again? Khaled asked skeptically, looking backwards
across his left shoulder towards the olive tree where Yonah was sitting.
Khaled rested his hands on his knees, which were pulled close to his
stomach. Yonah sat in a similar position.
Yonah, Yonah replied.
Khaled thought for a few seconds. Does it mean anything? he asked
even though he knew the answer; he felt that letting Yonah answer the
question would make him feel special.
It means dove, Yonah replied, then paused. He wanted to say
something else but was afraid that he would stutter. Finally, after about thirty
seconds, he mustered the courage to speak again. This time he spoke
quicker than usual, with more ease: My name is Yonatan. In America my
name would be Jonathan. Yonah is the short version of my name and it is
what everybody calls me, and it means dove. A few seconds of silence
passed.
Are you from America? Khaled asked.
Again, Yonah took time to respond, as if he was mapping out the
sequence of his words first, planning a route that he could follow. No. My
parents are. My sister was born in New York, but my family moved here when
she was about three years old, one year before I was born. There was a
longer silence this time. Finally Khaled asked, Are you a stutterer? Khaled
mispronounced the Hebrew word for stutterer megamgem but Yonah
understood what he meant.
Yes, Yonah replied.
You havent stuttered once when we were talking today, or yesterday,
except when you first told my grandfather your name and when your mother

~ 69 ~

would be back. He paused. We both noticed that you stuttered in the

beginning. But you have not stuttered since.
Yonah was confused. He was not sure if that was true. He was sure it
could not be true.
How old are you? Khaled asked.
Eight.
Im nine years old. Im in third grade.
Thus they talked, slowly, carefully, in short sentences, Khaled asking
most of the questions. They talked about their different schools, each sitting,
reclining against his own reality, his side of the fence. Khaled told Yonah that
was learning Hebrew and Arabic at school. Yonah told him that he attended a
religious seminary and that he only learned Hebrew. Then, unexpectedly,
Yonah asked him there were any girls in his school. Khaled responded that
there were Khaled was surprised by the question and asked Yonah if he had
any girls in his school. Yonah replied that he attended an all-boys school.
Khaled laughed, with young and innocent arrogance. Yonahs cheeks turned
slightly red, embarrassed.
Dont worry, Khaled said. Girls are very hard to deal with. He spoke
with the impression of wisdom, as if speaking from experience.
Do you like any girls at your school? Yonah asked.
No, Khaled replied. Well, except one girl. All of my friends are boys
and all the girls only talk to each other. But, there is one girl that is in my
group, and she talks to both girls and boys. She is pretty, and she plays all
the sports that we do. He paused, looked at the ground, and then continued.
I think she likes me, but I am not sure.
There was a pause, then Yonah suddenly asked: Can you draw?
Khaled looked surprised. Why?
I wanted to ask you if you could draw your school for me. Your friends
and the pretty girl.
Khaled laughed. He thought about it for a few seconds, then said,
Okay.
In exchange, Ill draw you my school.
Khaled laughed again.
Thats okay, Khaled said. It doesnt sound like your school is very
fun.

~ 70 ~

Its not, Yonah confessed. After a few seconds of thinking, he

continued, But it is not bad. We just got a water fountain, an-an-and, he
began to stutter. He was nervous again. There was something that he
wanted to say but once the stuttering began he forgot at once what it was.
Suddenly, they heard Khaleds grandfather approaching. How are you
boys? he asked, standing above both boys. Did the donkey misbehave?
Both boys looked in the direction of the donkey. The donkey was so quiet the
entire time that they had forgotten that it was there.
No, Khaled said confidently, standing up. It behaved itself. Khaled
wiped the dirt off of his clothes and his grandfather picked him up and
carefully placed him on top of the donkey. They said goodbye to Yonah and
began walking down the hill on their side of the fence, their world. Yonah
looked at his Casio watch and realized that he was late for lunch at home. He
quickly picked up his bag and ran down the hill towards home.
* * *
When Yonah opened the door his sister and his mother were already
sitting at the table eating lunch.
What time is it? Yonah asked, throwing his backpack near the door and
taking off his shoes.
Its three-thirty, his mother said. You are late, once again. She
sounded disappointed.
Yonah sat at the table.
Nah nah nah, his mother said. First you must wash your hands. He
got up and went to the kitchen sink. He filled the jar near the tap with water
and splashed each hand three times, alternating between hands while saying
the prayer. He cleaned his hands with the sides of his pants and the back of
his shirt.
So, his mother said as Yonah sat down to eat. Whats your excuse for
running late? Yonah shook his head as if he was not going to answer. But,
this time his mother insisted, No, this time I need to know. Why were you
late, ah? She paused. Are you getting into fights with the boys at school?
Yonah shook his head. He had still not started eating his soup. What is it,
then? his mother continued. Tell me, I am worried. You know that I am
always worried about you.
I... I... was pl-pl-playing with wi-wi-with the kids from school, he said.
He was nervous; he felt that spending time with Khaled was worse than
fighting: it was sacrilegious. He was an iconoclast.

~ 71 ~

Hannahs words that she was worried about him came from a place
of motherly love. She had meant well; but, for some reason, it had only made
him feel more scared, more insecure. He wanted to close in on himself when
his mother asked if he had fought with others at school.
Thats wonderful, Hannah said, smiling.
His mother was happy. Earlier in the year the principal at Yonahs school
had asked her to meet with one of his teachers, Ruth, who taught Nature
class. Ruth told Hannah that she was concerned about Yonah. While he was
concerned about his misbehaving in class, she was more concerned that he
had not made any friends and always seemed to be getting into fights.
The day Ruth told Hannah that Yonah had no friends at school, she
returned home and asked her son how he felt at school. He nodded his head.
She asked if he had any friends. If he would have said no, she would have
moved the entire family somewhere else. Where? God knows. There were no
other schools on the settlement. She would have dropped the whole religious
business and moved to a city in central Israel, Tel Aviv or maybe Herzliya. If
he did not like school there she would have moved the entire family to
another city, to another country, to another planet if need be, until they
found a school where he had friends. But Yonah simply replied, I do have
friends. We are not exactly friends yet, bu-bu-but we-we will be friends.
She thought about her sons words. They were simple but deep; she
made an effort to believe that it would only take time until he made real
friends. And now, the fact that he was running late because he was playing
with other kids after school, granted her solace. She did not mind if he came
to lunch a bit late if he was playing outside with boys from his class.
After lunch, Yonah went to his room and worked on his homework. He
thought about the story that they had read earlier in the day. Again he
thought about Moses stuttering and even though it should have made him
feel better to know that a prophet was also a stutterer it did not. Moses had
an older brother to help him, and Yonah only had an older sister, with whom
he barely spoke. He sat at his desk completing the homework assignments
for another hour, all the while thinking in the back of his mind about Moses
and Khaled and Aaron and the parting of the sea and the old man and the
Pharaohs. They were all different and from different times, but they were all
of this earth and they all found space in his head, forming a pattern as
natural as the dust on a butterflys wings.
When he was finished with the homework he put the thin textbooks
inside his backpack and went back to bed. Underneath his bed lay a copy
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in Hebrew. He read a chapter, then one

~ 72 ~

more, and finally fell asleep as he began reading a third. Then he heard his
name, followed by four knocks on the door.
The door opened and his father came in.
Wake up, his father told him. Its already 5:45. Get up. We are late.
Yonah tried to remember what they were late for but could not. He dressed
up quickly, tied his shoes, and walked outside with his father.
They got on the sidewalk alongside the road that led to the settlements
synagogue. Inside the synagogue Michael introduced his son to the chief
spiritual leader of their settlement, Rabbi Akiva.
Oh I remember you! the rabbi exclaimed upon seeing Yonah. The little
boy did not remember the rabbi. Pointing to a place just above his knee, he
added: But when I last saw you, you were maybe this tall Rabbi Akiva
had been living in the United States for two the past two years and had only
recently returned to the community of which he was one of the original
founders; their community was given the green light by Netanyahu in the
late 1990s.
Yonah smiled.
Does he stutter? the rabbi turned to Michael. I heard he stutters.
Yes, a bit, Michael replied. But hes getting better.
Where does he stutter: at school, home?
Sometimes at home, and his teachers told us that he stutters at school
too. We thought that it would go away, but...
The rabbi nodded. I see, he said. As you know, Moses stuttered, and
he was a prophet. The rabbi looked at Yonah as he uttered the mystical
word, prophet, and added a storytellers emphasis to the word, as if Yonah
could one day become through hard work and studying a prophet himself.
Yonah smiled politely. He wondered whether the rabbi was as old as
Khaleds grandfather. He had a longer beard, the ancient hairs falling from
his chin and cheeks like a miniature Niagara waterfall: and his black suit and
intimidating black hat exuded something that Khaleds grandfather did not.
Yonah did not know what it was but speaking to the rabbi felt differently,
scarier, as if the rabbi had some sort of control over his fate that Khaleds
grandfather did not. The rabbis presence commanded a mysterious aura of
authority, his image filtering throughout the whole of Yonahs body.
I dont intend to take him to the demonstration, Michael said,
somewhat defensively.

~ 73 ~

The rabbi looked surprised, as he had not brought up the subject.

Thats fine, Akiva said. I did not ask about that, but I understand...
Although... although if in this weeks demonstration they- by they he meant
secular Jews bring their children, we must show that we have children too.
In that case it would be incumbent upon each and every family in the
settlement to bring their child... But, I do not think that this will happen. I
think that they will see our side and everything will be fine. Dont worry.
I dont think that my wife would allow it, Michael said. I dont think
she will allow me to take him to any demonstration in the future. Ive told
you about his....
Tell her I asked you to do it.
Michael hesitated before saying the next few words: I dont.... think that
it will make any difference to my wife. I am sorry.
What? Rabbi Akiva exclaimed, with agitation that stood in a sharp
contrast to the peaceful facade he exuded only a few minutes earlier. Am I
not the spiritual leader of our community? he asked. Does my word not
make a difference in our community?
Michaels face turned red.
I know, Michael said, I know. There was a silence. Yonah looked at
his father and the rabbi: the former looked like a servant, the latter a master.
Or perhaps it was the other way around. Neither was the case, of course:
both were free men and had put themselves in the situation of their own
volition. But it seemed to Yonah that the rabbi had invisible control over his
father.
Anyways, Rabbi Akiva said, well cross that bridge when we get to it.
There is no need to worry about it now. His face was also slightly red now.
He himself was not sure what had brought out the anger, the irritation in
him. Well cross that bridge when we get to it, he repeated. Suddenly he
smiled and added: Thank you for coming over. It was good to see you again
too, Yonah.
* * *
Yonah and his father walked home. On the way back, Yonah asked his
father if they had a set of dominos at home.
Why?
Just... Yonah responded. One of the ki-ki-ki... kids at school brought a
set of dom-mmm-in-os. And taught me how to play.

~ 74 ~

I... suppose we have a set somewhere at home, yes. I think it is on top

of the chessboard in the living room. Then his father paused. I hope that
you did not play against the older kids who stand outside of school.
No, father, Yonah said.
Good. Im glad to hear that you are making friends at school. Your
mother told me earlier today. Im really glad to hear that.
* * *
At home the family sat down for dinner.
What did Rabbi Akiva say? Hannah asked halfway through the meal.
Michael continued to eat, as if he did not hear Hannahs question. Then
he finally answered: He recognized Yonah.
Thats it?
We talked about the demonstration later in the week.
And? Akiva is back barely a week after a two year absence and is
already organizing demonstrations.
Akiva said that Yonah doesnt have to come. Then he paused. At least
not this time. He was not opposed to Yonah coming in the future.
Hannah nodded her head: she was disappointed but not surprised. I
dont even want to know what that double-negative means, Hannah said.
Okay, Michael said, then repeated the rabbis words: Well cross that
bridge when we get to it.
Yonah and Sarah were listening to the conversation. Neither of them
understood what it was about, although Yonah recognized his fathers words
as those of the rabbis. Yonah was about to say something, but as usual
decided against it. He wanted to ask what the demonstration was going to be
about, and he wondered why his presence there mattered and why his sister
Sarahs name had not been mentioned.
After dinner Yonah and his mother cleaned up the table while his father
and Sarah went to the living room to watch television. After cleaning up,
Yonah washed his hands and went to search for the box of dominos. He found
them not on top of the chessboard as his father had said but in the glass
cabinet that stood in the living room.
He brought the set to his father, who was lying on the couch. Do you
want to play? he asked.

~ 75 ~

Sure.
His father sat up and they played a few games on the table between the
television and the couch. Yonah was intently playing the game, studying it.
His father played too but was watching the news at the same time. They
played three games in total: his father won the first two and Yonah won the
last one. Halfway through the second game Hannah joined the family in the
living room. She watched the news and her two boys, her two men play
dominos. Then it was time to go to sleep. Yonah packed the domino pieces
up and put the box in the cabinet.
Who won? Hannah asked as Yonah and Sarah were leaving the living
room and walking to their bedrooms.
Yonah won all three games, his father said, and then continued, with
irony in his voice, but I let him win! He laughed at his own joke.
Yonah heard it but did not laugh. He continued to his room. In bed he
read a few pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and then put the
book under his bed, turned off the light, and tried to fall asleep. He kept
thinking of the hill with the olive tree and he wondered about the type of
house that Khaled lived in and whether his grandfather lived in the same
house or whether he had his own and whether the donkey had a place where
he could sleep, his own home.
Yonahs mother walked into his room. She left the door open behind her
so that a little path of yellow light snuck into the room, forming an elongated,
abstract shape. She scratched her sons head and again told him about the
possibility of piano lessons in the future she would give math lessons to the
daughter of the piano teacher in return for free piano lessons. Yonah fell
asleep to the sound of classical piano music which was, it seemed, playing
as early as dusk drifting outside in the dark of night.
His mother left the room and closed the door and now the entire room
was not black but almost dark navy blue. The window was opened a crack
and a soft breeze came in. Somewhere a stray cat meowed. After about
fifteen minutes Yonah began see the outlines of objects in the room: shadows
in the dark. In the living room Michael was still watching the news when
Hannah came in. She sat down at the other end of the couch.
They are talking about the demonstrations later this week, he said.
Apparently all the major television stations are going to send reporters to
cover it.

~ 76 ~

Hannah nodded her head but did not say anything, her gaze firmly fixed
on the moving images on the screen. Finally, after five minutes, she asked:
Do you know who Yonahs friends are at school?
Michael turned his head towards his wife. Not sure, he said, happy to
hear his wife speak to him again. But whoever they are, they know how to
play dominos.

III
YONAH WAS WOKEN by four loud knocks on his door the next morning.
Im getting up, he yelled after a moment. The knocks ceased.
He put on the same clothes as he always wore: the white tzitziyot, the
white shirt over it, and the loose black pants that were held at the top by a
black leather belt. He tucked the black velvet kippa with a small metal clip
on the top of his head. He opened the door to his room and journeyed out,
hovering above the ground like an apparition. He brushed his teeth and
washed his face.
Opening the bathroom door, he heard the morning noises. Chairs
moving, cups and plates being set up on the table by his mother, his father
opening the front door to leave for work. When Yonah finished brushing his
teeth he went back to his room. He picked up his backpack, which he had
readied for school the day before, and exited his room, leaving the door
open. When he would leave for school after breakfast his mother would clean
the room. The bed he left tidy but the rest of the room needed cleaning up.
His mother would later scold him for throwing the candy wrappers under his
desk; at present she wrongly concluded that it was one of Yonahs friends at
school who gave it to him.
In fact, it was Rabbi Akiva who snuck a few pieces of candy and
chocolate bars into Yonahs hands when Yonah and his father visited the
synagogue the day before, when his father was not looking. Quickly and
furtively Yonah put the candy in his pockets, as quickly as it takes to snap
ones fingers. The candy was meant to buy Yonahs goodwill, and at first it
worked; but if the wise rabbi believed that Yonah would worship him because
of a few pieces of candy he was mistaken. No sooner had Yonah finished
eating the candy the evening before than his thoughts drifted like clouds
towards the olive tree and the hill on which it stood, strong and rooted. His
thoughts drifted further down still, to an imaginary house in a village beyond

~ 77 ~

the fence; a house that he had never been to, where Khaled and his
grandfather were playing dominos.
However this morning, Yonah had already forgotten about all of that. He
was focused on eating his favorite brand of cereal: sugar-coated cornflakes
that his mother allowed him to eat, infrequently, on days when she wanted
to extract information that he otherwise would not share.
Yonah, his mother said as Yonah was eating his cereal, absorbed in the
sweet cereal and milk dissolving in his mouth, I am very happy to hear that
you have friends.... She paused, trying to find the next words to say. It
seems like they know how to play dominos. Yonah was still eating his cereal,
listening to his mother but looking down at his cornflakes. Id love it if you
told me who your friends are. That way I can contact their parents and
arrange for them to bring their kids to your birthday party.
Yonah did not respond. Innocently, he continued eating his cereal.
Suddenly, Yonahs sister, Sarah, who was sitting at the table and eating her
cereal too but had not said a word, exclaimed, loudly and harshly: Yonah!
Mother is asking you to tell her who you friends are. Sarah spoke as if
commanding him to speak.
Yonah nodded his head as Hannah spoke to her daughter. Sarah, calm
down. This isnt a life-and-death situation. Yonah, she said, turning to her
son looking at her son and putting her hand gently on his, you dont have
to share with me who your friends are if you dont want. His mother meant
it, too. But Yonah could not share it with her even if he wanted to.
Sarah and Yonah finished their breakfast and took the empty bowls to
the sink. They each splashed a bit of water into the bowl.
Can you clean mine? Sarah asked Yonah.
You dont have time, Hannah said as she walked into the kitchen. You
have to go to school.
Yonah and his sister left home and started walking towards school. For
some reason Sarah was angry with Yonah and she did not mumble her usual
good-bye to him when they parted at the fork on the way to school. She was
the older sister and if she did not say good-bye he would not either; he
always had a feeling that she would get angry at him when she found out
that he made new friends.
When Yonah reached school he saw the three older boys who had been
smoking cigarettes a few days before. One of them seemed to bellow
something at him and when Yonah heard the yell he hurried up towards the
entrance to the school, opened the heavy door with some strain, and quickly

~ 78 ~

went inside. When he reached his classroom he sat at his seat in the third
row (out of four), all the way on the left. As usual, he did not raise his hand to
answer any of the questions that the teacher asked about the Torah portion.
He remembered the promise that he had made to Khaled a day earlier and
wondered whether Khaled remembered the promise he had made to him. He
realized that it would be tough to find the crayons and the pieces of paper on
which to make the drawings of the school.
As the other kids were looking at the text, Yonah devised a plan that he
thought was bullet-proof. During the break between the first and second
period class, Nature, Yonah found Ruth in the teachers room. She was alone
in the room, drinking coffee and reading the daily newspaper. Through the
open door, Yonah waved to her. She quickly hid the newspaper (a week-old
edition of Haaretz) in a drawer at her desk, then quickly got up.
What are you doing here? Ruth asked.
Despite the stutter, which only seemed to get stronger as he kept
speaking, she was able to understand that he wanted to draw the trees
outside, the garden, and the groves on the settlement. She was a bit
confused but finally said, Okay. He was wondering if he could borrow
crayons and a blank sheet of paper. She gave him a skeptical glance; she
thought about it for a few seconds.
Fine, she finally said. Wait here for a few seconds.
She went back into the teachers office there were months of
arguments over whether she should be allowed in the all-male teachers
office, with Rabbi Akiva finally deciding to make an exception for her and
opened up one of the trays to the printer. She withdrew a thin stack of white
printing papers four in total, Yonah discovered after counting them and
then went into another room, past the little kitchen in the office. She came
back to the main part of the office, then exited the room and walked up to
Yonah.
There, she said, handing Yonah the pages and a box of Crayola
crayons.
Thank you, Yonah said, smiling. He then went to the classroom. With
no other boys in the classroom, it looked like a wide expanse, an empty echo
chamber, devoid of life, empty but remarkably tranquil. The broken sunlight
splashed the room, coloring half of it in yellowish white, and illuminating the
rest in thin rectangular slices. Yonah sat all the way in the back row away
from the light and began to draw. First he took out one crayon: dark green.
He started to draw the leaves of the tree. Then he paused and noticed the
brown crayon in the box. It could be used to draw the trunk of the tree, he

~ 79 ~

thought. And the blue one could be used for the sky. And the white one, for
the clouds. He turned the entire box upside-down and let all the crayons fall
onto the desk. Before he could start drawing, however, the bell rang and all
of a sudden students started filtering into the room.
Yonah quickly packed the crayons back into the box. One of the students
from class came up to his desk. Thats my seat, he said in a bellicose tone,
even though none of the seats in class were assigned. The seemingly
anarchic organization of the classroom was apparently governed by the
childrens customary law.
On any other day Yonah would have gone back to his seat; but today he
wanted to sit all the way in the back of the classroom so that he draw
without being distracted or noticed. The bell rang again and the teacher
spoke to the entire classroom:
Alright, everybody sit down. You too, she said, looking at the boy
standing near Yonah, who was about to push Yonahs shoulder and force him
to get up.
After a moment of tension, in which Yonah felt like a fight would break
out, the boy finally disappeared, finding a new home in Yonahs old seat.
During the rest of the class Yonah drew. Ruth noticed that he was not paying
attention to class but she did not mind; she assumed that Yonah was drawing
for himself, for fun. A few times during class Yonah looked up from his paper
and gazed at Ruth her clothes, her dress when she was writing on the
board and had her back to the class.
A few of the other kids in the class those in the back row especially
noticed Yonah drawing intently. His face looked both serious and happy, like a
craftsman working on his masterpiece. These few students in the back row,
like the teacher, wondered what and who and why Yonah was drawing, and
for some reason they suddenly became very jealous. They wanted to imitate
him: and as though he had suddenly become Tom Sawyer, they would have
gladly traded favors and gifts to draw the painting for him, if only they could
get up from their seats in class.
Yonah completed the first drawing: an olive tree standing on top of a
large hill next to a smaller hill. The rest of the drawings Yonah drew during
the class were for Khaled. First, he made a drawing of his classroom, with
about eight boys (half of the class) all of whom looked like him in the
drawing standing in front of the blackboard. Behind them stood a much
taller figure, her shoes not quiet touching the ground, hovering above the
ground like a listless ghost: Ruth.

~ 80 ~

Yonah then drew a picture of his family on the beach. It was hard to tell
which body of water the blue crayon colors were meant to represent. The
drawing was inspired by a family trip to the Mediterranean over the past
summer. The beach was segregated by gender. The Hassidic men wore their
white shirts even while still in the water; in their own separate section the
Hassidic women went into the water fully-clothed in nighttime-like robes.
Yonah drew his father standing on the sand, to the left of a barrier, and his
mother and sister on the right side of the barrier. Yonah drew himself holding
an ice-cream cone with two scoops that were supposed to represent
chocolate and peach, his two favorite flavors.
Yonahs final drawing was similar to the first but included himself,
Khaled, Khaleds grandfather, and the donkey standing beside the olive tree.
For a moment Yonah hesitated: Should I draw a fence? He began drawing
one lightly, then quickly stopped.
The last drawing was by far the hardest one. When he finished it he left
the first one intended for his teacher on his desk and put the remaining
three inside a binder in his backpack. The bell rang a few minutes later. All
the other boys exited. He brought the box of crayons and the first drawing,
the receipt a record of his work that he thought would preempt any
questions that Ruth would have asked to the teachers desk and left it
there. Ruth was cleaning the matte-colored chalkboard as Yonah picked up
his backpack at his desk and exited the room, yelling on the way out, in an
un-stuttered, high-pitched voice: Thank you!
Ruth was slightly startled, having thought that all of the students had
already left the class, but did not turn around and instead finished cleaning
the chalkboard. Afterwards she put the wooden eraser just below the
chalkboard. She was lost in her own thoughts, something so insignificant that
she could not remember afterwards what it was. She did not actually put the
eraser down, but sort of threw it down; a bit of calcium dust, like a small
cloud, emerged; she sneezed as a result, and the sneeze brought her back
from her daydream. She then turned around and saw on her desk a box of
crayons and a drawing. Picking up the single drawing, Ruth noticed a tree on
top of two hills. It had Yonahs name on the bottom right-hand side. She
stared at it for a few moments, attempting to discern what it meant.

* * *
For much of the rest of the day Yonah could not pay attention in class. It
was fortunate that he did not speak much in class; none of the teachers
expected him to speak and they werent worried if he remained silent. He

~ 81 ~

was excited about the drawings he had done and about showing them to
Khaled and seeing Khaleds.
In a very nascent albeit narrow sense Yonahs teachers wanted his
fledgling heart to become attuned to the ancient, monotheistic truths written
in charcoal letters (that sometimes looked like the bottom of bird feet or cave
drawing): old oral community narratives translated in dangerous times into
writing, in time becoming the glue of Western civilization the only one that
truly mattered in the epoch in which he was living. But in Yonahs mind now
prevailed a singular image, that of Khaled and the old man and the yet olderlooking frail donkey standing by the olive tree, all he thought waiting for
his company.
When the afternoon bell rang all the students marched out in unison like
a regiment. Yonah walked towards home by himself, as usual. When he
reached the fence by the olive tree he looked onto the Arab village in the
distance but did not see anyone. He was suddenly gripped by fear: What if
they dont show up?
After a few minutes he noticed in the distance a small black sphere, like
the end of a xylophone mallet, expanding, moving in his direction; the
movement of feet on the ground became noisier and noisier. It was the old
man, leading the donkey, on top of which sat Khaled, smiling and waving his
hand in Yonahs direction. The donkey and the old man moved slowly,
dragging the wisdom of the earth with their feet. As the ground of the hill
vibrated silently from their weight Yonahs excitement grew. Yonah suddenly
felt slightly nervous: perhaps Khaled would be his first best friend. When
he thought about that he became more anxious, as if this entailed some
responsibility he had not considered.
Khaleds grandfather picked up the young boy up off the donkey and put
him on the ground. He left the donkey with the boys and walked down the hill
back to the village, promising to be back in an hour.
The donkey stuck its mouth and nose through the fence, as if searching
for something. Yonah patted its nose. After a few seconds the donkey
brought its mouth to the earth. In the silence of the tree and the
domesticated horse, a working animal, lay the foundations of eternal and
enduring faith.
Yonah sat down on the ground first this time. He opened up his
backpack. Khaled followed him. Yonah took out his drawings and Khaled took
out his. Yonah folded his drawings into a cylinder and passed them through
the fence. Khaled did the same; he was intrigued by Yonah. The latter had
been very shy the first time that they had met. But now Yonah was leading,

~ 82 ~

moving the process forward naturally, without saying anything or feeling like
he needed to say anything, as if all of it had been pre-planned. Perhaps the
circumstance felt comfortable for Yonah because of what Khaled had told
him, which he had turned over in his mind since: You dont stutter around
us, Khaled had said, or something to that effect. That sentence shot in
Yonahs head like a pinball on a winning round, and he felt confident around
Khaled.
They each opened up their folded drawings. Yonah looked through the
drawings that Khaled made first. Khaled only made one but it was far more
complex than Yonahs, as if he spent the entire day working on it. Unlike
Yonahs it was drawn not in crayon but in a colored pencil. It showed about
fifteen people: all of the figures were either disproportionately big or
disproportionately small; most of the figures were boys or men and Khaled
explained that they were his teachers and his classmates. At the bottom left
stood a boy and a girl holding hands. The girl was wearing a light purple
headscarf and the boy was wearing a green shirt and dark blue jeans. Above
them hung an orange star, its yellow rays reaching almost to the core yellow
circle at the top right-hand corner of the drawings. Khaled told Yonah that the
boy and the girl at the left were him and Maha, the girl he liked.
How old is Maha? Yonah asked.
Khaled replied: She is eight, just like me.
Yonah kept his eyes fixed on the drawing. It was like all three of his
drawings rolled up into one. His eyes hovered around the drawing,
mesmerized, almost hypnotized. In a sequestered space at the bottom righthand, in a small square region devoid of all colors except white, Yonah
noticed what looked like writing; he recognized one set of letters, but not the
others.
What is this? Yonah asked, pointing with his fingers to letters. Does it
have a meaning?
Yes, Khaled said, that is my name, in Arabic. Underneath it is my
name in Hebrew.
Yonah continued looking around the drawing, taking it all in with the
same child-like joy and wonder that he had when he opened up his favorite
box of cereal. He suddenly remembered his own drawing and suddenly felt
that it was not as good as he had thought. But he remembered that Khaled
was one year older than him, which made him feel a bit better; he too would
draw better as he grew older.
Do you want to look at my drawings? he finally asked.

~ 83 ~

Yes, Khaled responded. He brought Yonahs second drawing closer to

the fence. It was the drawing of Yonahs classmates and the teacher. Yonah
waited for Khaled to look at the drawing. Suddenly Khaled said, But you
have to explain it to me because I do not understand anything!
Yonah explained to Khaled who each stick figure was, pointing with his
finger through the fence. Each of the stick figures represented a classmate of
Yonahs, although they appeared to all looked the same. He described all of
the boys in the picture as his friends, although this was far from the truth. He
told Khaled the name of each boy and the name of the teacher that taught
Nature class. Yonah told Khaled that he often made fun of the teacher and as
a result he would have to stand in the corner because he was so unruly.
Khaled laughed, and then flipped to the next drawing and Yonah told him all
about his family and their trip to the beach over the past summer.
Have you ever swam? Khaled asked.
No, Yonah replied.
I havent either, Khaled said profoundly, as though swimming was a
monumental task that one learned much later in life. Then he flipped to the
last drawing. Yonah explained to him that it was a painting of him and Khaled
and Khaleds grandfather and the donkey and the olive tree. (The grey old
donkey seemed to have only two feet: perhaps he is facing forward, Khaled
thought.) When he heard Yonah explain the final drawing a tear appeared in
his eyes, unexpectedly. Perhaps he was touched by it, or maybe he felt guilty
for not including Yonah in his drawings. He realized that he meant more to
Yonah than Yonah to him. But more than that, in an instant he realized that
although in the drawing they were less than an inch apart, in reality they
were worlds apart. They woke up on different sides of the fence, running
along borderlines that were drawn by men of previous generations. They
were both old enough and smart enough to realize it even if they could not
explain it. But they had not thought about it before Yonahs drawing.
Yonah did not include the fence out of the drawing. He did it with good
intentions: a drawing borne of innocence; but now, as they sat on the hill,
separated by suddenly became angry: at his parents and grandparents. Yes,
they were the ones to blame for the fence, Khaled thought: and his eyes
turned pink with sadness and sorrow. Yonahs eyes welled up at the sight of
Khaleds tears.
Yonah did not realize that he was on the verge of crying until he closed
his eyes for a moment and when he opened them up again, there were tears
between his eye-lids: it felt like someone had splashed his eyes with water,
water so salty that it may as well have come from the Dead Sea. But seeing

~ 84 ~

Khaled wipe his tears away with the back of his palms, Yonahs tears quickly
evaporated, too.
Suddenly, they saw a shade hovering above them, passing through both
sides of the fence. You draw too, my child? the old man asked as he
furrowed his eyebrows. Yonah nodded his head. Then, suddenly, with
confidence and force, Yonah said: Old man. And then he paused, as if he
had forgotten what he wanted to say. Perhaps he was fighting through the
stutter. The old man laughed a bit, nervously, at Yonahs brazen address of
old man. As the silence continued the old mans eyes shifted from t Yonah
to looking at Khaled.
After about ten seconds, Yonah started to speak again. Old man, I told
you my name, he said, now you must tell me yours. The old man laughed:
the boys request stood in sharp contrast to his attempt to speak in an
adults voice. The old man thought about it for a few seconds, still taken
aback by the command; for some reason he felt mildly insulted.
Ibn Battuta, Khaleds grandfather said dismissively, as he picked up
Khaled and put him on top of the donkey. Goodbye, little boy, he said, and
they walked away, down the hill, farther and further to their side of fate,
towards their plot of conquered earth. Suddenly Yonah wanted to cry. He was
confused about why he felt sad and unsure if they had gone away because of
him or because the old man had seemed to lie about his name.
After a few minutes, Yonah remembered that he must go back home and
he started to run back. He made it back just before three; at home he threw
his backpack in the room and with renewed confidence in something that
he could not put in words he said hello to his mother and his sister.
As he put the utensils on the kitchen table a few minutes later he began
to speak of his day: he told funny tales from the day of incidents his
conscious mind was unaware that his subconscious had noticed, and
anecdotes from earlier in the school year that he did not know his
subconscious had recorded, and stories about his classmates and his
teachers that others had told and that he had somehow remembered.
Everything was at once illuminated. He expressed thoughts he did not know
he had and he was aware that he was speaking quickly and without
stuttering and it felt so good that he did not want to stop talking for fear that
it would make him stutter again, that he would drown in the sea of self-doubt
in which he had been swimming for years, that the pencil in his heart would
break or the ink would run dry.
So he did not stop talking and he spoke like an adult and a wise adult at
that, in a serious tone and short sentences that ended with a period, as if

~ 85 ~

each sentence was the step of an army soldier, the periods being like arm
boots stepping in wet mud. For the first time in his life, his throat and his
mind felt one, strong as strong as the stump of a tree whose branches had
been cut off in winter to preserve it. He spoke while setting up the table; his
mother and sister were both surprised, if not startled.
Then they all sat down at the table. Sarah made a weak joke about his
appearance something about the dry brown dirt on his clothes, which got
there when he cleaned his hands off his shirt upon getting up from the tree
trunk. She had completely ignored his words, shifting his concentration on
something else. Her words his sisters seemingly meaningless, possibly
innocent, possibly unintentionally mean tone shattered the image, perhaps
the illusion he momentarily had of himself as someone who never stuttered:
her small, compact comment was like a pellet shot through fine blue china.
Following her comment, his thoughts and his speech slowly began to
fracture. He stuttered through the rest of lunch until he realized again that
he was stuttering. Then he rediscovered the comforts and safety of silence,
and he fell into it, his thought dissipated as quickly as they formed, and if
they had never been there in the first place.
During the rest of the lunch, Yonah did not speak. When he was back in
his room after lunch he took Khaleds drawing out of his backpack. Again he
marveled at its detail. He looked at the stick figures and in his mind made up
stories about each person. Then he closed his eyes and tried to imagine
being a student in Khaleds school: the kids there were probably happier,
which is why Khaleds drawing had more colors. He imagined walking with
Khaled and Maha back from their school, slightly to the side of them, walking
along on the trail with his arms outstretched.
He opened up his eyes: he was still in his room. He wanted to put the
drawing on his desk but he knew that he could not. He put it in a cabinet by
his desk, in the middle drawer, under older sheets of paper, old homework
and quizzes with red thin numbers on top inside a red circle.
As he did his homework Yonah wondered if he really had shed his stutter
earlier or if it had all just been an illusion. He decided to focus on the good
feeling he felt when he spoke without stuttering. He imagined that moment
as a note written on a piece of paper in Hebrew or Arabic, it did not matter
which language and in his mind he bottled up the note containing the story
and threw it into the ocean, hoping that an older version of him would get it,
years from now, and recall the good feeling of that day, when he felt like he
had finally made a friend, when he stopped stuttering, if only for one day.

~ 86 ~

When dinner was ready Yonah helped make the table, as usual. Neither
his mother nor his sister mentioned to his father that he had spoken earlier
without a stutter: what earlier in the day felt like a dream had now turned
into a nightmare. Yonah wondered if the afternoon had happened at all: by
their silence one would think it did not. As his parents were talking amongst
themselves Yonahs body froze, as if turning into an icicle. His eyes rolled
upwards and his body began shaking: he was having another seizure. The
moment right before it happened felt like the greatest (perhaps most
concentrated) moment of his life.

* * *

When he woke up it was around ten in the evening.. He had a headache

and his body was in pain. Slowly, he got up from his bed, out of his room,
and walked to the living room, where his parents sat watching moving
images, the news, on the screen. His mother got up and gave him a hug,
petted his head.
What are we going to do with you, dear boy? she asked.
His father, Michael, got up now too and also hugged him. Yonah looked
around the kitchen. It was all clean, all the dishes had been put away. The
house was eerily quiet. The community doctor that had visited their house
had already departed. Standing in a white nightdress in the little dark hall
between the bedrooms and the living room Sarah appeared behind Yonah.
Thank God he is alive, she said. Then she turned and walked back to her
room.
Yonah joined his parents in the living room and watched the news with
them. A newscaster was describing a video of the mitnahlim (the settlers)
yelling at secular Jews in the city center of Jerusalem. Then the newscast
flipped to another demonstration happening simultaneously. Each side had
signs and slogans: the people were singing different chants and neither was
listening to the other. In between the two groups of protestors stood a row of
policemen, as if waiting in a queue. For a second Yonah thought he saw his
father on the screen. (It was a man with a long black beard; he was wearing
a white shirt and black pants and a black velvet kippa, as black as a black
chess-piece.) All of his fathers friends looked like that: it could not have
been Michael: his father was not the type to get into quarrels.
Okay mister, his mother said at around 10:30. It is really time to go to
bed now.

~ 87 ~

* * *
Over the next several months Yonah and Khaled would meet every day
after school. Sometimes they would play dominos, other times cards (Yonah
taught Khaled how to play a Russian card game named Idiot, which Yonahs
mother learned from Olga, their Ukranian neighbor who lived in the
settlement. Olga joked innocently to Hannah that the game was named in
honor of Prince Lev Myshkin, but Hannah had never read Dostoevsky. The
game became Yonah and Khaleds favorite). Sometimes they would
exchange drawings, other times photographs. (both snuck out one or two
photos from their family albums and traded them). Sometime they did not
say anything or do anything. They would bring a bottle of water and sit on
the ground and drink and look out into the distance. They would watch the
birds flying above the hill, the ants building an ant colony under the fence.
They would meet every day except Saturday. One day Khaled confessed
that his grandfathers real name was not Ibn Battuta but Abu Jasim, and that
he had only said that as a joke.
Oh, Yonah said, then paused. He had forgotten about that moment.
So who is Ibn Battuta? he asked innocently.
I think he was a famous explorer a long time ago, Khaled responded.
Yonah did not understand. It does not matter. He was only joking. He did not
mean any harm.
Their meetings became so natural that they did not even have to plan
them. Yonah would show up after school, and a few minute later Khaled and
Abu Jasim would come, always with the donkey trailing behind and always
with the old man leaving for one hour.
What is his name? Yonah asked one afternoon, after he and Khaled
finished playing cards.
We never gave him a name, Khaled said.
Suddenly the old man appeared.
But we should have, Abu Jasim said. What do you think its name
should be, young boy?
Yonah thought about it for a moment.
What about- he began, then paused and thought more seriously.
What about Abu-Eeyore? (Yonah had just finished reading A. A. Milnes

~ 88 ~

book in Hebrew, passed to him by his father, who somehow got a copy of it
through Rabbi Akiva).
Both Khaled and Abu Jasim burst into laughter.
Yonah continued: The donkey is old enough to be Eeyores father.
Khaled thought about it. Alright, he finally said, We shall call him AbuEeyore.

IV
IN EARLY MARCH Yonah was sitting with his sister having breakfast when his
father came back into the house after having had left earlier. Michael closed
the dark brown door behind him and walked up to Yonahs mother in the
kitchen. He dropped off a set of keys on top of a small cabinet next to her.
The clunk of the keys disturbed Hannahs concentration and she noticed
suddenly that her husband was back.
He suddenly said, in a foreboding tone, Its done. It sounded like he
had just killed a man, though that happening would have been as far from
the truth as the earth is from the sun.
What is done? she asked, confused and momentarily worried.
Its been decided, he said, irritated that he she had forgotten. What
we talked about last night.... I just saw Akiva. Yonah is coming to the
demonstration tonight. He paused. That. Is. Final, he said after a few
seconds. The silence between those three words betrayed his fear of his
wife, of Akiva, possibly of the entire universe.
Yonah, who was eating his cereal, heard his name but nothing beyond it.
He looked up from his bowl of cereal at his parents and his heart began to
beat faster when he saw his mothers frightened expression.
What? Yonah asked innocently, not knowing that he should have not
entered the conversation.
Are you sure its necessary? Hannah asked Michael. Dont tell me
what Akiva said. Tell me what you think. You are Yonahs father. She spoke
in an accusatory tone.
Nothing in life is necessary, Hannah, Michael responded fatalistically.
Then Michaels lungs and chest expanded. He continued, But this is as
necessary as it comes. It will not just be good for the cause or for the
community. I think it will be good for Yonah to see what we are up against, to
see the types of challenges that he will have to deal with when he grows up.

~ 89 ~

Then he paused, and a bit more ashamed now he said, And itll be good for
our family. It will show others our loyalty, our commitment.
I doubt that it will be good for Yonah, Hannah retorted. She had
resisted his other attempts over the past few months to taking Yonah to the
regular demonstrations that her neighbors and the entire community were
involved in; but after a few months she had grown resigned. But, if you
think it is important, she continued.
I dont think anything, Hannah, Michael said angrily. Why do you the
Bible is so widely read? Because it contains the truth. The Bible is popular
because it is free; if it cost a single dollar half of the current believers
wouldnt buy into the concept of God, Hannah cynically thought to herself.
And the truth is, Michael continued, the truth is that Judea and Samaria
belong to us, not the Arabs.
There are two and only two races in this world, thought Hannah as she
heard her husband talk about the Arabs, remembering Viktor Frankls words.
The race of the decent man, and the race of the indecent man
Michaels mother was a secular Jew whose family escaped Russia right
before the Bolshevik revolution; his father was Scottish. He found religion
after traveling to Israel on a Birthright trip as a junior in university, and even
after that trip years passed before he became religious. It was only after he
found out that one of his great uncles fought the Nazis in Belarus and saved
thousands of Jews and later immigrated to Israel that Michael himself began
to feel a greater connection to a land that started referring to by Biblical
names such as Judea and Samaria and to the God that he now referred to
as Hashem.
As Michaels sentences alternated between what Hannah thought was
the right thing for a man to say and what she thought was the wrong thing
for a man to say, Michaels whole body expanded and contracted like a
beating heart.
After a few minutes of silence that filled the house, Michael mumbled
under his breath, as if embarrassed, Rabbi Akiva said it will be good for
everyone.
By unwittingly becoming a missionary in the service of the rabbis
control of the settlement he was relinquishing control of his own family, and
even his own free will. All of this was an outcome of an impulsive
commitment to religion: a profession of people professing to be professors of
ethics.

~ 90 ~

Yonah is not the rabbis son, Hannah said. She wanted to add, And
not Gods either, but held herself back. Although Jewish by birth, she was
drawn to religion by Michael, and whenever his voice waivered her faith
waivered, too. He is your son. She stressed the word your, poking a
rhetorical finger at Michaels chest.
Watching their parents argue in the kitchen, Yonah and his sister
stopped eating. It was an unusual sight in their home, especially over
breakfast, to see an open argument right there in the kitchen by the dining
area, and perhaps it was because of its rarity that the conflict seemed more
profound and disturbing.
You know about your sons condition, Hannah continued, and you
know that the demonstration might get violent, and you know how I feel
about large crowds. She spoke with a mixture of sorrow and anger now.
You are making it sound like I am Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac,
Michael responded bitterly. He regretted the analogy as soon as the words
came out of his mouth. Ive been to these demonstrations before and they
never turn violent.
Ive seen the demonstrations on TV, Hannah said. Dont tell me that
they dont get violent!
When she was a child, the youngest of ten children, Hannah obediently
(in publicly displayed speech if not committed thought) followed the strict
relativity her parents had so thoroughly tried to instill in her and her siblings.
To her father (who above all else encouraged irreverence) everything was
about perspective, truth was always up for grabs, and debate was strongly
encouraged. Sometime in her teens she called out her parent's left-wing
political hypocrisy and claimed that political correctness was the left's own
self-imposed thought police. Her father would vigorously defend himself
against such assaults, but would also secretly feel proud that his daughter
had the courage to make up her own mind.
She remembered how in her youth she fervently resented her few
religiously devout friends who would dare make supposedly august moral
claims and furnish them with irrefutable biblical verses. Nothing is black-andwhite, she thought back in the days of her mimicked youth; but, after falling
for Michael (for whom she would later lose respect, a secret she would
sometimes share with Sarah) she quickly dropped the facade of relativity almost as if she had always been ready for this transition - and just as
obediently adjusted not just her lifestyle but her worldview as well. Her lips,
which once bore the hallmarks of her mother's Mona Lisa smile, had
gradually become austere, as horizontally linear as the sea's edge; and with

~ 91 ~

time she had become spiritually resigned to the sacred simplicity of ancient
rituals. However, although she had found some profound existential solace in
god God G-Ds absolute or eternal truths, she had never become puritanical:
her upbringing had left some streaks of latent if not indelible pragmatism
which periodically made itself visible, especially when it concerned her
children. In this instance she was unwilling to put her son at risk for god or a
greater cause.
Michael paused. He was hoping his momentary silence would calm his
wife down. He stretched his hands out and gripped her shoulders; she was
breathing heavily now. Then, after about fifteen seconds, he continued.
There is screaming at the demonstrations, Michael admitted. I
confess to that: there is screaming.... But never once in all of the
demonstrations that I have gone to was there a hand raised-
And what about rocks? Ive heard our side- (she meant the settlers),
throws rocks at any and everyone, including fellow Jews, like the Pale-
- or a rock thrown, Michael cut her off. Ive never once seen a single
rock thrown.
Did you tell Akiva about Yonahs condition? Hannah pressed.
No, he responded, then paused. Michael turned his head to look at his
son. Yonahs hand was gripping the spoon. Michael looked at him with fear.
Then, he looked back at Hannah, who now had her hands crossed in front of
her: her eyes were pink, on the verge of tears, reflecting either sorrow or
anger, she was not sure which. Her earlier resignation to Yonahs now
mandatory attendance at a large and potentially violent demonstration had
momentarily given way to a deep fire of anguish was growing as her
hesitation about their community and their cause increased.
Over time Hannah had allowed herself the psychological room to
entertain the following thought: in order to fulfill a divine prophecy (the initial
claim that the settlers maintained for their presence on these unsettled
lands), the settlers had voluntarily relinquished their capacity to formulate
rational thought; the formaldehyde truths contained within the ancient
scrolls they read had become substitutes for their right to reflect upon their
own idiosyncratic emotions, which no external object could wholly capture.
Such inner beliefs were sacrilegious, and she dared not speak of it to anyone
in their community. But, it had caused outbursts such as this, when her
priority to her children - the family became her divine refuge.
Yonah is going to be fine, Michael continued. That sentence, to
Hannah, was the last straw. She did not want to scream again in front of her

~ 92 ~

children.. Slowly, quietly, Hannah left the kitchen and went into her bedroom.
She closed the door behind her. There was no sound of tears, no audible
crying emanating from the room.
Be ready to leave the house by five in the evening, Michael told his
son. Wear the same clothes you wear to school, to the demonstration
today. Michael opened the front door and left the house. Yonah was not sure
what demonstration his father had meant.
Yonah and his sister finished eating breakfast by themselves. They
quietly got up and carried the dishes to the sink. Unusually, in an act of
random kindness, Sarah cleaned her dishes and then, with her soap-stained
hands, took Yonahs spoon and cereal bowl. As she was cleaning her
brothers dishes, she said to Yonah, Can you go make sure that mother is
fine? Yonah walked to his parents bedroom. He was about to knock, but
could not. He wanted to say or ask something, but his fear gave in. He just
stood there, trying to hear if Hannah was crying. After a few minutes his
sister came around to where he was standing. She made a motion as if to
knock, and then opened her mouth as if to talk, but could not do either,
standing frozen in front of the door. Then she looked down at the ground,
brought her ear closer to the door. She did not hear anything.
Shell be fine, Sarah told her younger brother, echoing her fathers
words about Yonah earlier. Lets go. We have to go school now.
They left the house, locking the door behind them with Yonahs keys. To
Yonah it always felt like doors were closing and locking on the settlement,
never opening. The settlement felt like living on a hot air balloon that was
supposed to rise but never did, not matter how high the flames were turned
up, no matter how many sandbags were thrown down from it.
On the road to school Sarah put her right arm around her younger
brother. He kept his hands in his pockets. His eyes were watery now, for
reasons that he could not understand. When Sarah put her hand around his
shoulder he wanted to cry. At the fork in the road, again unusually, Sarah
gave him a hug. The hug was slow and gentle and lasted for about ten
seconds. Then, without saying anything, she walked on the road towards her
school, the all-girls religious seminary that stood far apart from the boys
school. Yonah wiped away his tears and continued walking to his school. By
the time he reached his school his eyes were pink but no longer had tears in
them.
At school he was quiet. A few of the teachers noticed his sadness. One of
them, the Hebrew language teacher, asked Yonah if he was alright. Yonah

~ 93 ~

nodded his head up and down. After school Yonah walked along the path that
he had walked for months now, since the beginning of first grade.
Khaled was already on top of the hill when Yonah reached it. He was
sitting by the fence, resting against it, and reading a book in Arabic. Yonah
said Hi and Khaled looked up and responded.
What are you reading? Yonah asked.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Khaled responded. Yonah smiled.
He opened up his backpack and took out two plastic, see-through cones with
candy inside of them. Yonah took a few steps back and, with his mightiest
effort, threw one of the cones across the fence. The cone hit the ground on
Khaleds side of the fence, making a loud sound. Khaled picked it up.
Rabbi Akiva? he asked, with a smile.
Yes, Yonah replied.
This had become a normal exchange. Yonah would get two cones with
candy in them from Rabbi Akiva when he went to synagogue to listen to
prayers - strange words that he did not yet understand, in writing that was
similar to but different from the words he saw in his copy of Sherlock Holmes
in Hebrew. Yonah would share one of the cones with Khaled after school the
next day. Khaled would always take out one candy from the cone - a sweet,
yellow one - that had a red wrapping with white dots and that looked like a
strawberry, and pass it through the fence back to Yonah. The two boys called
it strawberry candy even though it did not taste like a strawberry. Khaled did
not like the taste of it and Yonah did, so the exchange made sense.
Yonah brought the candy cones once every few days. On days that he
did not Khaled brought sweets from his home baklava, ghraybeh, kullaj,
knafeh always wrapped in yellow or white plastic bags that Khaled would
throw across the fence to Yonahs side. They alternated the days in which
they would bring the sweets without planning, knowing what to do in that
confident and wise way that young people sometimes do. Despite the
differences between them, despite their separation, their brains over the
past few months had become synchronized: as if they were brothers. Their
eyes stopped seeing the fence.
On this particular day, it was Yonahs turn to bring the sweets, and after
he had thrown the candy cone across the fence to the other side and Khaled
passed the strawberry candy through the fence, they both sat down. Yonah
put the strawberry candy in his pocket, to keep it for later; he sat against the
trunk of the tree. Khaled sat close to the fence, on the other side, directly

~ 94 ~

opposite from Yonah. Each began to eat their candy, putting the wrapping
inside their pockets.
I am concerned today, I am anxious, Yonah said, speaking like an
adult, repeating words that he had heard parents and other adults say
around him at home and elsewhere: I am stressed, I feel pressure.
Suddenly, they both heard military helicopters hover overhead. They
flew slowly and loudly above them, passing from Yonahs side of the fence to
Khaleds like big flying insects. They both could tell that they were military
helicopters by their dark forest green color. The sound was very loud,
frightening, but then the noise disappeared.
Why? Khaled asked when it was quiet again. Yonah was eating another
piece of candy. He chewed it more quickly now with the back part of his
teeth.
I am supposed to go to a demonstration today, he said.
Khaled looked confused. Whats the demonstration about?
I dont know. My parents have not told me but my father expects me to
be ready by five tonight. I do not know what it is about but my parents
seemed to have a fight about me going, and my mother looked very scared.
Yonah paused.
Dont worry, Khaled said, after a few seconds of thought. I know that
it will wont be anything bad.
After an hour, each had finished their cone of candy. They withdrew the
empty wrappings, red, yellow, green, and blue, out of their pockets and
stuffed them into the plastic cones, which had become makeshift garbage
bins. Then they got up and picked up their backpacks. By now their body
movements largely mirrored each other.
Bye, they both said simultaneously. Then they proceeded to walk down
the hill, in nearly diametrically opposed directions. Khaleds grandfather,
along with the donkey, was waiting for Khaled at the bottom of the hill on his
side of the fence.

* * *

The sun set a few hours later. After lunch Yonah had begun doing his
homework and had almost no time to finish it, rushing to meet his fathers
deadline. At 4:45 his mother came in and told him to get ready, his father

~ 95 ~

would soon be coming. At five in the evening Yonah was in the living room,
waiting. A few minutes later, his father came in.
Are you ready? Michael, barely a few steps into the house, asked his
son. Yonah nodded his head.
Michael did not say anything, did not speak to Hannah. Instead he
proceeded to the bathroom to wash his face. He brushed his teeth in an
expedited manner, up and above the gums in circles as he had been taught
as a child. Then he rinsed his mouth with water, gargling loudly, so that it
was heard in the living room and the kitchen. Then he went to the bedroom
and put on a new white shirt. At five-twenty Yonah and his father left the
house without saying good-bye to Hannah or Sarah.
In the car, Yonah thought about asking where they were going, but then
he paused and was not able to utter a single word. He was gripped by fear.
Sensing that his son wanted to say something, Michael said, We are driving
to Tel Aviv, answering an unspoken question.
Yonahs eyebrows shot up almost to the top of his little forehead. In a
high-pitched voice, he asked if they are driving all the way to Tel Aviv. Yonah
and his family lived in a settlement that was not too far away from
Jerusalem. With traffic, they could reach Tel Aviv in one hours time, at best.
More likely it would take them an hour-and-a-half, although with his fathers
crazy driving they could get there by the one hour mark. In Israel an hour on
the road was a lot; in America, Michael remembered driving for four hours
from Boston to New York and New York to Washington.
Yes, Michael responded. It shouldnt take us too long though. Then
there was silence. After about five minutes of driving, reaching a main
highway, Michael continued. You are too young to know anything about
politics, so I will try to explain to you what is happening. Avoda and Kadima,
two left-wing political parties, are organizing a twenty-year commemoration
of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabins death. Well, it wasnt really a death: it was
more of an assassination. But that is a different story. They are going to hold
it in Kikar Rabin-
Yonah nervously stopped his father: Ra-. Ra-. Bin?
Michael looked at his son, then back at the road. Of course. You are too
young to know. It happened before you were born. Everything I say.... is just
my opinion, and you have a right to form yours. Your mother will be happy if
you become the type who forms his own opinions. But as you will see my
opinion is in agreement with the rest of the settlers. Rabin was a very bad
person, a bad man. He was a Jew like us, but he wanted to take away land
that God gave to the Jews and give it to the Palestinians. He thought that it

~ 96 ~

would bring peace-- Then he stopped speaking. He made a dangerous left

turn that almost ended in disaster. After almost a minute he continued. He
was killed by a fellow Israeli. A religious Jew. Or so they say: in reality there
were three holes in the front of his shirt: and only two of the holes- the back
ones- could be explained. The Bible tells us that it is wrong to kill someone,
but.... He felt like what he was telling his son mattered a lot - would matter for decades - so he paused to think before he said anything else. Anyways, I
dont think Yigal Amir actually killed Rabin. It was a conspiracy.
After a few minutes, Michael continued: The Jews of political parties like
Kadima and Avoda are not the same Jews as us, they are not like you or me.
They have lost all their links to Hashem and to their heritage. They do not
believe in G-D. Their secular beliefs have nothing to do with us or how Israel
should be governed. They want to give the land that rightfully belongs to us
to the Palestinians. They will not have a place in heaven, believe me. His
eyes were focused on the road now. He had forgotten that he was talking to
an eight-year-old. Their voice will not be heard on Judgment Day. Do you
understand what kind of people we are going to see? He paused, unsure if
he should say the next sentence. Theyre worse than the Arabs.
Yonah did not respond. He was trying to understand what his father was
talking about. I need you to say that you understand, his father was saying
now; he was stern. Or I can explain it to you again.... Do I need to repeat
what I just said? For some reason Yonah felt that his fathers voice was not
his, that he was speaking for someone else.
I un-understand, fa-fa-father, Yonah said. Up until that moment he had
not heard of any distinctions amongst and between Jews. In a way, he was
glad that his father did not say that they are going to a demonstration
against Arabs. The civilizational lines were not yet drawn in his young and
innocent mind but he knew that Khaled was in his parents eyes different - an
Arab - and that he, Yonah, was Jewish and that there was a fight between the
two. Thats probably why the fence is there, he thought. To protect the olive
tree.
His father turned on the radio. The pundits were talking about the rally
that had already started in Tel Aviv.
Twenty years after his assassination, is this the Israel that Rabin would
have wanted to see? one of them asked. The radio gave Yonah his first
flavor of the political turf-battle he was about to witness.
Another one of them replied: No, Not at all. I think that by 2015 he
would have wanted to see Israel live in peace, side by side, with the
Palestinians. Two states. No war, no more bloodshed. No more Israeli

~ 97 ~

teenagers going to war, going into peoples homes in Gaza and the West
Bank, risking their lives, their futures. What a strain on their psychology, on
our economy, on the international standing of-
Thats right, a third commentator chimed in, And let us not forget
let us not forget! - that it wasnt3 the Arabs who derailed the peace process,
but Yigal Amir, a religious fanatic on our own side-"
Nonsense, Yonahs father said over the radio, and changed the
channel to another radio station, one whose views he found agreeable.
Yonah, meanwhile, fell asleep on the side of the door car, his head resting
atop a pillow placed firmly between his shoulder and the window. He was
sitting in the back, his seatbelt buckled. He dreamed of the hill with the olive
tree; there was the sound of a helicopter that he could not see, and the
ground was stuttering, shaking as if it were about to split open.
Michaels car entered a parking lot not too far away from Kikar Rabin at
almost seven in the evening. As he was parking, Yonah woke up, and they
both got out of the car. It was already dark outside and beginning to get cold.
Near the square they joined a group of Hassidic men, sixty strong,
wearing black pants, white shirts, their black beards made visible by the
orange light of the street lamps outside. Yonah looked at their sacred signs,
their sacred clothing; and he soon became scared by the site of seeing so
much passion exuded by so many men at once. The men were chanting
slogans now, together, words he could not understand. Their singing was not
like in the synagogue. It sounded more like soccer-stadium shouting: virulent,
angry, bitter. Yonah looked at their signs: he could not make out the letters
on the signs, but noticed the various black-and-white pictures of secular men
and women with red blood stains splashed across their faces. One of the
signs (which Yonah did not, could not, understand) was a sign that had been
saved from 1995: it was of Yitzhak Rabin, photo shopped with a Nazi uniform,
with a Hitler mustache and a swastika on his arm.
One of the men in the crowd handed Yonahs father a sign. Michael held
it with one hand and his sons hand with the other, joining the chanting and
the yelling. All the men were jumping up and down, in part to show their
passion, their commitment to the cause, and in part to keep warm.
When is the commemoration over? Michael asked the man who gave
him the sign.
Any minute now, the man responded. Michael and the other man,
despite the similar appearance, were from different settlements. Yonah did
not recognize the other man but his father seemed to know him.

~ 98 ~

There wont be any violence, Michael said, or rather asked, as if he

was seeking a confirmation.
I dont think there will be, the other man responded. God willing.
I have my son here with me.
I see. Thats good that you brought him here. To show them - the
liberals and the seculars! - he yelled at a direction across the street - that
we have our own generation. They take their kids to listen to guitar music
played by hippies, wearing purple glasses and waving peace signs and
lighting candles. Each one of our sons in worth one hundred of theirs!
He shouted the last part at the still-empty sidewalk opposite from theirs.
The man alternated his sentences between responding to Michael and yelling
across the street when he wanted to make a point. But there wont be
violence this time. Theyve actually blockaded the exit to where the
peaceniks are having their demonstration. Even if we wanted to, we cant
reach their side of the street. Michael seemed confused by what the man
was saying. The latter explained: The police is going to allow up to one
hundred of the goyim to stand across the street, on that sidewalk there. Then
the police themselves will stand in the middle of the blocked road, in
between the two crowds, and will allow us to engage in a peaceful
conversation. The more he talked, the more riled up he got, although he
laughed at the last part of the sentence.
Michael turned his head away from the men talking to him and towards
the road. There was a dark blue wooden barrier that said Police on it in white
letters. It was raised about four feet from the ground. Standing in front of his
father and the man from another settlement, Yonah noticed that he was the
only boy on their side of the barrier.
The man next to Michael continued. If any one of them hurls a single
thing - a water bottle, a rock, anything- Im taking this barricade down and
running in their direction. Then he paused, looking at Yonah. But I dont
think that will happen.
After five minutes the pro-peace camp from the commemoration
ceremony began to filter out of the area where their rally was held. The
religious side, the settlers with which Yonah found himself attached, bound
not by choice but by fate, began to raise their volume as about seventy or
eighty secular Israelis filtered onto the opposite end of the street. A police
officer closed a little makeshift gate on the right hand side of the side-walk
behind them, and stood there making sure no more people came in. Then
about twenty other police officers, all dressed up in dark blue pants and
light-blue shirts and dark blue hats, took up their positions in the middle of

~ 99 ~

the road. No sooner had they taken up their positions than the shouting
match commenced.
The religious side was the first to hurl vulgar words and insults. Soon
each side was telling the other side to go back to where they came from,
with no end-destination specified. Then, a more kindly looking older
gentleman who had thus far remained silent, suddenly yelled: Why should
we send our children to die on the behalf of the fantasies of the mitnahlim in
the West Bank?!
Its called Judea and Samaria, you old fool! yelled the man standing
next to Yonahs father. What kind of a Jew are you to call it the West Bank?
You should be ashamed of yourself!
We are the true defenders of the faith, another orthodox man yelled.
You and your children are not defending anything, except a corrupt secular
state that has lost its moral ways and its connection with Him!
Defenders of the faith?! a secular woman with black hair in her early
forties yelled back. How come you dont send your kids to serve in the IDF?
How come you dont pay taxes? Why did Yigal Amir kill Netanyahu? You are
responsible for the killing of a fellow Jew! You should be ashamed!
Yonah was terrified by the screams of both sides.
You are holding Israels future by the throat! another secular Jew
yelled. You are holding our country hostage to your visions of Armageddon.
You all should be concerned about the coming of the Messiah! one of
the younger men in the orthodox group yelled. It is going to happen any day
now.
The longer the screaming continued the more anxious and tense Yonah
became. Michael seemed to move with the flow of the screams; Yonah, weak,
tried to go against it. Michael realized that Yonah must be terrified, and with
one hand continued to hold Yonahs hand.
And then what will happen to us?! the secular woman with the black
hair yelled. You have no place for us in your messianic visions!
And what about the other side? a man from the secular, pro-peace
camp yelled. He was referring to the Palestinian Arabs. Does it not say in
the Torah, Thou shalt not kill? Today an Arab boy died, just a few hours ago,
and his grandfather was injured, next to one of your settlements. The boy
was nine years old! He paused when he said that to emphasize the boys
youth. Nine. What evil deed did he commit? Nothing! He just happened to
be in the wrong place when a helicopter missile struck. Did you see his

~ 100 ~

family weeping on TV? Did you see his injured grandfather weeping over his
grandson? How do you live with-
The orthodox man next to Michael hurled back an ad hominem insult. All
the noises were becoming blurred in Yonahs ears. The secular mans
comment took about a minute to register fully in Yonahs mind. At first his
ears refused to believe what he had just heard. Then, after about a minute,
his soul gave out.
Yonah immediately knew that the nine year old boy from the Arab village
near their settlement was Khaled. The realization sent a shockwave through
his entire body. His blood stopped flowing throughout his body. His eyes
rolled back. His father, who was looking at the opposite side of the street,
suddenly felt Yonahs hand shaking. He immediately looked down and to the
left: Yonah was having another epileptic seizure. As Yonahs body was about
to fall down his father caught him.
We need an ambulance! Michael yelled. The secular-religious shouting
match continued as if no one had heard him. We need an ambulance! he
yelled louder again. Several heads turned toward Michael and Yonah. The
rest kept yelling across the street.
One of the orthodox man noticed Michael and Yonah and yelled at the
opposite camp: Do you see what you do?!
A second orthodox man suddenly screamed: They threw a rock at the
boy! They threw a rock at the boy!
A third man bellowed: The seculars are killing our children!
The shouting slowly subsided.
The pro-peace camp looked around themselves confused. We did not
throw anything! one of the pro-peace protestors yelled.
One of the police officers noticed Michael holding his son. He glanced
quickly at his captain, who also noticed an orthodox man yelling for an
ambulance. The captain yelled at the officer to leave the police formation
and run to help the father and his boy.
The officer ran up to the sidewalk of the religious side and, across the
barricade, yelled: There is an ambulance at the end of this road! The police
officer ran toward the ambulance, and Michael followed him on the sidewalk,
holding Yonah in his arms, running through the religious protestors. The
officer got to the ambulance first and informed the driver, who was reading a
newspaper, of the emergency: A boy was injured in the demonstration! he
yelled. The driver and a nurse that was standing outside next to the

~ 101 ~

ambulance talking on her cell-phone both looked at the police-officer: they

assumed that the young boy was shot. They opened the back of the
ambulance, and a few seconds later Michael arrive, holding Yonah in his
hands.
He had a seizure! Michael yelled a few steps away from them. He was
out of breath. My son had a seizure. The ambulance driver and the nurse
led Michael and his son into the ambulance, where Yonah was placed on a
white stretcher. Michael set inside the ambulance. All of the roads near the
demonstration were blocked, and it took an extra fifteen minutes to arrive at
the hospital. Yonah was quickly checked in and given a room and a bed.
Outside the hospital room Michael telephoned his wife and told her what
had happened. There was a fifteen second pause after he had told her.
Okay, she finally said in a cold tone, as if she had expected what had
happened. There was nothing she could do: they had only one family car and
she could not take an hour-long taxi to Tel Aviv. Michael told her that they
would be coming home late and hung up the phone.

* * *

Yonah woke up at around ten in the evening. A doctor came in the room
a few minutes later. Michael had informed the doctor of Yonahs condition
earlier, when Yonah was asleep.
Look, the doctor said, standing next to Yonah directly opposite from
Michael, who was standing on the other side of the hospital bed. I wouldnt
recommend him going home tonight. It normally takes four or five days to
recover. I dont recommend any movement for him the next twenty-four
hours, at the very least.
A-a-a-I want to go home, Yonah suddenly spoke. Both the doctor and
Yonahs father looked at him.
We live an hour away. He has to go to school tomorrow, and I have to
go to work, Michael told the doctor.
I understand, but... the doctor paused. He thought about it for a
moment. Look, I still recommend against him going home tonight. His body
needs to be in a relaxed state. Then the doctor paused again, and in a more
understanding tone said: You can check him out tonight, even though I dont
recommend it, but if you do, make sure to take your time driving home
tonight. Dont drive like the other nutcases on the road. Drive slowly. And, let

~ 102 ~

him have the day off school tomorrow.... One of the nurses outside can write
a note for his teacher.
The doctor looked into Yonahs green eyes for a few seconds, then
exited. Yonahs father helped Yonah get out of bed and they got the doctors
nurses note and checked out of the hospital. The procession was slow, per
the doctors orders. Then they finally got into taxi cab outside of the hospital
and told the driver to take them to the parking area near Rabin Square.
When the cab arrived, the area that had been so full of violent animosity was
quiet and peaceful, devoid of all any human beings. Uncollected trash lay
scattered across empty lots and paved streets. Even though Michael was on
the side of the settlers, which was louder by a few decibels, he was not the
type of person to enjoy protests. He had joined the movement of orthodox
men, perhaps naively, while still living in New York. From across the pond the
idea of being part of a noble and ancient cause and fulfilling a prophecy
seemed appealing. He believed in the cause on a number of levels, and it fit
well with his own personality, which shunned the superficiality and
materialism that he thought New York embodied. But a decade on, the dream
of making aliyah and on top of it becoming part of the settler movement had
lost its appeal, as all dreams do when they become realities, or almost
realities: he did not expect others, no less Jews, to oppose his dreams, and
he did not expect his side to be so fervent, so militant.
Arriving at the quiet parking lot near the square Michael felt relief. There
was no one to provoke and no one to be provoked by. The navy blue silence
of the streets and alleyways and sidewalks of Tel Aviv, gently lit by electric
orange lamps, spoke of peace, or at least a temporary ceasefire, a reminder
that the hatred that he saw only a few hours before was not intrinsic to the
area but only had taken place because.... He was not sure why. Frankly, he
did not know what it was all about. He had forgotten why he even went to
the protest to begin with. Akiva, he remembered. Yes, Rabbi Akiva.
Yonah had fallen asleep in the cab and Michael carried him out of it in his
arms, and then transitioned his thin body into the back of their family car
and fastened the seatbelt and put the pillow under Yonahs head so he could
sleep on the ride back. On the ride back to the settlement Michael searched
for a radio station, browsing between them in a low volume until he found a
station that was reporting on the rally. An estimated 100,000 people showed
up at Kikar Rabin to commemorate the anniversary of the Prime Ministers
assassination. No incidents of violence were reported, except with the
possible exception of a young boy who may have been attacked, though no
confirmation of that story had been made yet.

~ 103 ~

Later, the radio reported that the Israeli military had participated in
operations in the West Bank earlier in the day, killing a number of terrorists.
Several bystanders were killed, too.
Michael switched the radio station and finally settled on a station that
was playing a mix of old pop music, alternative rock, R & B. Michael loved
the emotional immediacy of music and it brought him back to another era in
his life: a monetary escape from the Puritanical community he had left earlier
in the day, of which he voluntarily but impulsively signed up to join. This
music is my medicine, he thought, justifying actions he felt would otherwise
be sacrosanct as ones justifiable under pikuach nefesh, the principle in
Judaism that the preservation of life overrules any other religious
consideration. Towards the end of their journey home, as Yonah was reaching
rapid eye movement sleep, a song came on the radio that prompted Michael
to lower the volume of the radio, although he kept the station on as the song
played on:
Oh life, it's bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Michael and Yonah arrived home at almost one in the morning. Michael
carried his son back into the house. Hannah was awake when they came in,
watching the news on the television. Michael carried Yonah to his bed quietly.
Hannah closed Yonahs bedroom door when Michael walked out, pausing for
a few seconds to look at her son through the doorway.
* * *
Michael sat on the couch. Both had known that neither would fall asleep
that night. The news was on at a low-volume, images of the demonstration not the rally, but the shouting match afterwards - moved across the
television screen.
They had normally sat on opposite sides of the couch, but now it seems
that another inch had been added to the width of the sofa. When they had
both made the decision to move to the ultra-orthodox settlement in Israel,
Hannah only had one child: Sarah, who was just a year old. Hannah had
fallen for Michaels explanation of the righteousness of the cause, back then:
before they had kids. Michael, meanwhile, was convinced - or had convinced
himself - that Israel was not a state for Jews to be materialistic or secular.
Once, he had heard a rabbi in a reform synagogue say that Israel should be a
state where a Jew could feel free to either be religious or secular. No, not at

~ 104 ~

all, Michael thought to himself. The creation of Israel marked the fulfilment of
a promise that was thousands of years old in the making. In his view the
return of the Jews to the Holy Land after so many thousands of years of exile
would not make sense if Jews started wearing bikinis to the beach,
worshiping idols, acting like pagans.
Both Michael and Hannah had difficulties adjusting to life on the
settlement. Most of their neighbors were from either New York or New Jersey,
like they were. Originally it seemed like a good idea, the notion of going with
other people who had similar backgrounds. But now it felt suffocating to be
around personalities from the past, the same ones that they knew back in
the States: everyone here was extremely loud and incredibly close. Or so it
felt. Hannah was only able to make friends with one woman: Olga, or Olya,
who had emigrated from the Ukraine to New York in the early 1990s. Olya
gave Hannah an English-language copy of Fyodor Dostoevskys The Idiot.
Olya had not read the book since she was a child but from what she could
remember, either Dostoevsky or the main protagonist of the novel, Prince
Myshkin, or both, had epilepsy. Olya told Hannah, too, that Yonah reminded
her of Prince Myshkin.
Sitting in front of the television at two in the morning, Hannah bit her
lips until the pain became insufferable. She recalled Olyas book, telling
herself that it was the only real act of kindness on a personal level that she
had experienced in her life on the settlement. Olya was the only one who
attempted to make friends with her. Hannahs mind clung to that thought,
the notion of only one person being kind to her in over a decade. She knew
her thoughts were irrational, and that she could come up with other
instances where people were kind to her, but she did not want to think of
them now.
Im sorry that I took Yonah to the demonstration, Michael suddenly
said. He muted the television.
Hannah remained silent for a few minutes. Im just glad that you made
it home, she finally said, breaking her temporary verbal embargo. Then she
got up and went to their empty bedroom silently, without saying goodnight.
Michael stared at the screen. He, too, was reflecting on their time in the
religious community. This evening had represented a microcosm of their
experience. The passions, the ceaseless yelling of the demonstrators, an
overflow of conviction the chilling sounds and wild flashes of the darting
ambulance all of these things added up, made it unbearable he grew
older. The fervor of the settlers is increasingly unsettling, he thought. Their
seemingly insulated neighbors were infinitely difficult to deal with. As he sat
in front of the muted television drained of energy, a certain fear gripped him.

~ 105 ~

A paranoia -- caused by the thought that not only the community but the
weight of the entire world was resting on his shoulders -- hit him. He felt that
the land on which he and his family lived on, the small groves that
surrounded them, the soil: all of these existed on a different plane, as if in a
parallel universe: and somehow his family found itself on the universes
borderline, on the edge of civilizations tectonic plates. It was all almost too
much, but a part of him that he would never admit also found this reality
exciting: there was a lot at stake. Or so it seemed. On the ground the fight
was ultimately over a few shifting square feet here and there. When they had
first met, before Hannah decided to adopt Michaels religious conviction, he
told her that the Bible is the word of G-D and that upon this book civilization
rests. She responded that, in addition to being the word of God, the Bible
was, more simply, the poetry of the Jews. She agreed that this book was the
foundation the rule of law in the Western world, but she was not sure why
civilization was built around a book written by this particular group of desert
nomads.
That evening those old conversation that Michael thought he had
forgotten, had wanted to forget, came back, biting with their sharp teeth at
the religious experiment that he had persuaded his wife to embark on. The
initial thrill and enthusiasm in their religious aliyah was gone; now they were
just enduring the days, actors convinced that the show must go on
irrespective of what others think.
At almost three in the morning Michael turned off the television and
went to bed.

V
BY AROUND 6:30 the following morning Hannah was making breakfast in the
kitchen for her husband and her children. She took the milk out of the
refrigerator and poured it into a jug. For her husband she made a hot
breakfast.
Michael arrived in the kitchen around 6:50. He had slept an additional
ten minutes, and was now in a rush. He ran outside of the house to get the
newspaper and quickly brought it in. With one hand eating his breakfast and
the other flipping through the articles he finally found something that peeked
his interest.
Hannah, listen to this, he said, still chewing. The tension from the
evening before had dissipated. Hannah was still in the kitchen preparing food

~ 106 ~

for her kids. Despite, or perhaps because his publicly held views that were so
antithetical to Israels left-wing (he never dared admit to his wife or the
community his true doubts), he subscribed to Haaretz magazine. Michael
finished chewing and began reading out loud a poem that someone had
written in response to the rally the night before.
They hold a knife to our politicians throats:
They own them- have them in their back pocket.
If any one of our leaders speaks out for peace,
Theyd urge them to kick the bucket.
When the Day of Judgment comes
The Hassidim will save no seat for us;
They answer only to their own God,
While we pray for a different kind of boss.
Can you believe how they write about us? Michael asked his wife.
They portray us like we are some kind of monsters.
Hannah said with disdain, mumbled under her breath, just loud enough
for Michael to hear, Atheists. Agnostics.
Agnosticism has long been the true religion of the ruling elite, Michael
said, still looking at the newspaper, correcting himself but speaking with selfevident intellectual brilliance, as if he had written a PhD dissertation on the
subject. Hannah turned over in her mind what her husband had just said. She
had the courage to be cynical. In her mind she thought, Judaism is not a
religion: its a rowdy collection of roaming philosopher kings. But of course
she did not say this out loud. Instead, she put her own spin on what her
husbands words.
Atheism is the worlds oldest religion, she said.
At around 7:05 Michael picked up his keys and rushed out of the house
to get to work, leaving his plate behind him. A few minutes later Sarah came
in and sat at the table.
Where is Yonah? she asked.
Hannah carried a bowl and some fruit to the table in the dining room.
Your brother had a seizure at the rally last night, she said.
Again?
Hannah walked back to the kitchen. When Sarah finished eating her
cereal she brought it back to the kitchen and her mother cleaned it for her.
Sarah picked up her backpack and left for school.

~ 107 ~

A few hours later, at a little after ten in the morning, Yonah got up.
Slowly, without brushing his teeth, he walked into the kitchen. His mother
ran toward him and picked him up.
You should not be walking around, she said. She carried him back to
his bed and lay him there. She put the blanket on top of him and kissed him
on the forehead. Then she said, Rest a bit more, I will bring you breakfast in
about half an hour.
I want to go to school, he said, unexpectedly.
Hannah had a surprised look on her face. The doctor recommended
against it.
I want to go to school, he repeated, without a stutter.
Really? she said. She hesitated for a moment. Maybe it would be good
if he did go to school, if he saw his friends. Okay, she said. Brush your
teeth and dress up and come to the kitchen when you are ready. I will take
you to school.
Yonah did what she told him and finished eating at around eleven and
after that walked with his mother to school. She wanted to hold his hand but
he refused.
Is everything alright? she asked.
Yes, he said.
They brought the doctors note from the night before to the head of the
school and Hannah explained while Yonah waited outside the office. When
Yonah was finally checked into school it was lunch time and all the boys were
eating in the cafeteria. Yonah joined one of the tables and although his
mother had made him lunch he did not eat it.
He was thinking about Khaled. He looked unusually sad and one of his
table-mates noticed it and asked him if he was alright. Then suddenly Yonah
got up and went to the teachers office and called the Nature teacher. He
convinced her to give him one blank piece of white paper. During the last two
periods of school he composed a letter to Khaleds injured grandfather, and
then folded it and put it in his backpack.
On his way back he thought of going to the olive tree but when he
started making his way on the road, he started to cry. At first he could not
breathe normally, then his eyes filled up with tears, and finally he fell to the
ground, his hand still clutching the letter, his knees fighting against the
roughness of the stones and dry gravel.

~ 108 ~

He could not control his tears.

After a few minutes the crying subsided as if of its own accord. He slowly
got up off the ground, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and got back
on the path that led home. He suddenly decided that he did not want to see
Khaleds grandfather or give him the note. A few minutes later the path to
the olive tree drew him again and this time he told himself that he must act
as an adult: he must deliver the letter.
When he reached the fence he noticed Khaleds grandfather in the
distance and he yelled out his name. And with each step that the old man
took in Yonahs direction the young boys eyes filled with more and more
tears, until his entire vision was blurry. Seeing the young boys tears the old
man himself started to cry.
After a minute of silence and the two of them staring at each other, the
old man looked at the boy and said, Im sorry... Im-
As the old man began to say sorry for a second time Yonah quickly
turned away and started running down the hill, with his backpack bouncing
up and down against his shoulders and the bottom part of his back. When he
reached home he opened the door and ran straight to his room. There was a
lock to his room and with the key he locked the door, something he had
never done before. He was crying into his pillow when he heard four knocks
on his door.
Is everything fine? his mother asked. He fought back the tears and
told his mother he was fine. She walked back to the kitchen to prepare lunch.
In the kitchen Hannah looked at the clock: it was not even 2:30 yet. She
wondered why he was back so early.
* * *
For the next two weeks, Yonah kept the note that he had written for
Khaleds grandfather in his backpack and did not return to the olive tree. At
home there was a wooden cabinet next to his bed. In the middle drawer he
kept all of the pictures that Khaled drew for him as well as the strawberry
candies that he gave him. Every day after school now he would eat one piece
of the strawberry-wrapped candies. He had fourteen in total and ate thirteen
of those candies over thirteen consecutive days. As he ate them he looked at
Khaleds drawings and closed his eyes and imagined being in Khaleds village
and attending his school and walking home with Maha and Khaled.
When Yonah reached the fourteenth piece of candy he decided to make
a chain out of it. He found a string in the house and through the top green
part of the wrapper he cut a little hole and pulled the string through. He

~ 109 ~

brought it to his neck and tied it up from behind. He went into the bathroom
and looked at it. It looked unusual but Yonah felt that final piece of candy had
some sort of special meaning.
He went back to his room and took out Khaleds drawings and lay on his
bed and flipped through them. He decided that the next day he would go
back to the olive tree and deliver the letter to the old man.
During the following day Yonah walked to the school wearing the
necklace he made under his white shirt. During a school break he found a
little rock outside and put it in his backpack. He wanted the rock to be put on
Khaled's grave. In one of the classes he looked at the original letter that he
had composed and decided that he did not like it. After school he hurried to
the olive tree. While waiting for the old man he took out another piece of
paper and composed a new letter under the olive tree, on top of one of the
books, in pencil. Then he got up and looked through the fence. He did not
see Abu Jasim.
He waited for another ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, becoming more and
more desperate, until he finally saw the old man walking with the donkey.
"Abu Jasim! Abu Jasim!" he yelled across the fence. Abu Jasim slowly
came up the hill. When he reached the fence Yonah passed the small rock
and the note to him through the chain-wires.
The old man was confused and he furrowed his eye-brows. "What does it
say?" the old man asked finally, as if this was a parenthetical remark.
The old man could not read, neither in Arabic nor in Hebrew. He kept the
rock but folded the note and passed it back to Yonah to read. Yonah opened it
and read it without a stutter: the letter was addressed to Khaled; in it Yonah
expressed his sadness at what had happened and thanked Khaled for his
friendship and expressed his hope that the letter would be kept along with
the other things that Khaled's parents had kept in Khaled's memory; he
wanted the rock to be placed on top of Khaleds grave; he knew that Khaled
was happy in heaven. The letter referred to Khaled as Yonah's best friend, his
only true friend, the "brother that I always wanted to have."
When Yonah finished reading it out loud he looked up and saw that the
old man had tears running across both cheeks of his face. The tears almost
met under his chin but gravity pulled them down and they fell onto the dry
ground. When Yonah saw the old mans tears he looked at the ground and
started crying too.
The old man did not know what to say. With the back of both hands- his
left palm still holding the rock- he wiped the tears away. He opened his

~ 110 ~

mouth twice to begin speaking but there was a lump in his throat that
prevented him. It was as if Yonah had taken a hold of his soul, squeezed it,
and then let go.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
"Im sorry, my dear boy, my son," he said, then paused. His voice almost
stuttering. "Khaled... Khaled is Khaled is not dead."
Yonah's eyes, which were gazing at the ground, suddenly lifted up and
looked at old mans eyes. A few seconds passed before the old man repeated
what he had said.
"Khaled is not dead. At first he had almost lost his voice, but now he
had recovered it. "He moved to another school in a part of the West Bank
that is far away. He moved two weeks ago. I know you were friends and I am
sorry that he had to move and that you will not be able to see each other...
That is what I was sorry for when I last saw you.
The old man paused and looked at Yonah. After a few seconds he
continued. He wrote a letter to you last week and gave it to me." The old
man took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and bent it carefully and
passed it through the fence. "I had meant to give it to you last week and over
the past few days but you had stopped coming. I thought something was
wrong with you and I am glad to see that you are well. I am sorry that you
thought Khaled was-" he paused, his voice trembling again. Although the
news was good Yonah suddenly began crying even louder. After about a
minute his crying subsided. He looked at the envelope: it felt like there were
several pages inside. On the outside it read in both Hebrew: To Yonatan,
from Khaled. He also wrote something in Arabic.

Yonah stared at the letter for five seconds. His hands played with the
envelope, as if it had Khaled's spirit around it. But he did not open it yet.
"I have to go now," the old man finally said, "but if you ever want me to
pass a letter to Khaled, just yell my name across the fence. I see his parents
every few days."
Yonah thanked him and they both proceeded to walk down the hill, to
their homes on respective sides of the fence.
* * *

~ 111 ~

At home Yonah opened the envelope. The letter was written in Hebrew.
In it, Khaled told Yonah about his new school and where it was located and
some of the new classmates that he met. The letter also wrote that he was
happy to get to know Yonah and that he considered him one of his best
friends. In the last few lines, Khaled wrote: On the back of this letter I wrote
the same thing but in Arabic, perhaps you will learn it one day and will be
able to read it. Your friend, Khaled. The envelope also included a little
drawing of the new school; it had a stick figure of Yonah that Yonah
recognized because it was the only one in the group wearing a black circular
kippa.
Yonah read the letter several times, with tears appearing as he thought
about Khaleds words. Then, he decided to take off the necklace that he had
made. He put it back into the middle drawer of the cabinet in his room, and
placed Khaleds letter there too.
* * *
That evening Olya came to their house along with her husband for
dinner. Michael and Hannah expanded the dining table to host the extra two
people. After dinner Hannah gave Olya the borrowed book back and told her
that she really liked it (although she confessed that she had skipped some
parts of the book) Then they sat down in the living room on the couch and
drank tea and talked, while the children went back to their rooms and the
men continued talking about politics in the dining area.
At some point during Hannah and Olyas conversation Hannah asked
about her guests background, which Olya had never really told her about.
My grandparents were born on the border between Poland and Ukraine.
When they were born it was part of one country, but when my parents were
born it was part of anther, Olya said. The soil, the earth stayed the same,
but the land, the names of towns, even the nationality of the trees kept
changing between Poland and Ukraine.
* * *
In his room Yonah opened up the middle drawer of his cabinet. From
listening to his parents and other adults over the past year - at the dining
table, at the demonstration in Tel Aviv, inside and outside of the synagogue Yonah knew that there were lines drawn in the sand that he could not yet see
or comprehend. He understood that those lines that were drawn on earth
were much like his own and Khaleds drawings: though he was too young to
understand their purpose he knew that they were put there by human
beings; the earth itself had no say to whom it belonged. To adults these lines
were as important as Khaleds drawings were to him.

~ 112 ~

Like the earth, Yonah had no choice to whom he belonged. He was born
on one side of the fence and was expected to be part of that side. Its time to
grow up, he thought. He was not sure why he told himself that but maybe it
was because he knew there was no chance for him to see Khaled, there was
no way he could travel to wherever Khaled was now living. I need to grow up,
Yonah thought to himself again and again.
Then, growing tired from such adult thoughts, he lay in bed and covered
himself with his blanket and began reading Sherlock Holmes. A few minutes
later, with the book still clenched in his small hands but resting against a
beating chest, Yonah fell asleep. He dreamt about the two hills near his home
and about Khaled and the old man.
In his dream Yonah was sitting on top of the donkey, which was being led
by Khaled toward the village where his grandfather still lived. On top of the
taller hill behind them all stood an olive tree. There was no fence.

~ 113 ~

II
i. OUTBREAK OF A FIERY MIND
I
The bell rang: 6:55AM. Emily snoozed it.
Three minutes later it rang again: Emily snoozed the damn thing again.
Two minutes later she repeated the same motion and turned off the
alarm, although she was not fully awake. From the drawer near her bed she
took out a black shiny purse: inside it was a black leather wallet, small with a
key chain with a small cat figurine on it at the end. She opened the wallet to
the middle and stared at the photo, taken just over 11 months earlier. Her
parents looked so different than her: they had a different skin color, different
eyes, different hair type.
She rose up and glanced at the calendar: it was marked with red Xs. A
countdown to what? she asked herself. The year was 2023 which meant that
she was twelve years old because she was born in 2011. Born where? Born
to whom? she wondered. It was the final week of school and she dreaded it:
she wished it would last for longer so that she could be with her temporary
younger sisters for a bit longer.
She began brushing her teeth, then splashed cold water on her face. She
loved doing that in the morning: she loved how cold water could make her
feel awake. She did this four times: with both hands she lifted cold water and
splashed it on her face. Then she took a towel and wiped it until it was dry,
then with the pillow covering her nose, her mouth, her two eyes stared back
at her through the mirror for thirty seconds: the eyes were so different from
her parents eyes, much narrower.
She got back into her room, changed from her light blue pajamas and
slippers into her school uniform, picked up her bag, and went downstairs.
Good morning Emily, her temporary mother said in the kitchen.
Good morning, her temporary father added, with a smile. Since its
the last week of school, Ill drive you to school myself this morning. No need
to hurry up to finish your breakfast to catch that mean yellow school bus.
Emily pretended to smile: at twelve years of age she already knew how
to pretend to smile.
II
Welcome to class, Emilys teacher said. The classroom had about 20
children, all of whom looked very different from each other. Who else is

~ 114 ~

excited about the final week of class? A few of the kids raised their hands.
Emily did not. She had a diary in front of her, a black agenda book like her
parents. It was an adult agenda book, it had no stickers on it and she wanted
that exact one.
She stared at the two white pages in front of her: they were blank. By
Friday they would be filled with words, sentences in pencil, but not as much
as in previous weeks because this was the last week of the school year. Emily
looked at the top left-hand side. In big black letters it said Monday. Above it,
it said, in slightly smaller letters, June 5. And at the top of the page, right in
the middle, in letters with yet another font size, it said 2022-2023.
Who here knows who their parents are going to be next year? the
teacher asked. None of the kids raised their hands. The teacher asked again,
Doesnt anyone know who their parents will be? Again a silence. The
teacher waited until finally one of the kids raised their hand.
Yes Adam, the teacher said, Do you know who your parents are going
to be?
I know, the boy answered. My old... I mean my new... I mean my old
temporary parents showed me their photo this morning.
And what are their names going to be? the teacher asked.
My new temporary father is going to be Larry, the boy said, then
paused. And... and my new temporary mother is going to be... is going... to
be... a lady called Janet, I think.
Wow, the teacher said. Those are really beautiful names. She
paused and looked around again. The kids were all staring at their books.
And are you excited about meeting Larry and Janet? Adam hesitated. He
was the only blond-haired kid in the classroom, his hair brighter than all the
rest. It was in the shape of a mushroom, and he told his classmates that
previous parents did not allow him to get that haircut but that his current
parents did and that was why he liked them and thought that they were the
best.
Yes, Adam said, I guess.
Anyone else? the teacher continued, looking around the classroom.
Suddenly Emily raised her hand: Why do we need new parents every
single year?
The teacher looked surprised. Few kids asked that question before,
though there were a number of girls - four in fact- in the ten years since the
program started that had asked that question. Two of them had red hair.
Emily was the first girl of Asian descent to ask this question.
Does anyone know the answer to Emilys question? the teacher asked.
Again a silence filled the room. Adam raised his hand.

~ 115 ~

I know, he said.
Yes Adam.
Its... so ... that we dont form ... attachments, Adam said. He was not
sure of whether he pronounced the right word correctly or not but since the
teacher did not correct him he must have had.
Thats right, the teacher said. Any other reasons?
Another girl raised her hand. Her name was Chelsea: her hair was
golden-brown. Yes Chelsea, the teacher said. Well, the reason why we get
new parents every single year is so that we do not get angry at them and
they do not get angry at us, Chelsea said.
Exactly, the teacher said, suddenly with more force. She repeated that
word: Exactly. Suddenly, she paused. Then after a suspenseful silence she
continued: And do you know why that is? The teacher looked around. No
reply. She continued: They did studies, scientific studies, like in your science
class, except that they did them with people. The teacher was looking
around like she was telling a story: And they found out that the longer you
know someone, the more you start disliking them. That is especially true
with your parents, but is also true with your siblings, and even friends, she
said, with a cautious voice at the end.
But what if we want to find out who are our real parents are? Emily
asked boldly, without raising her hand. The teacher turned her head toward
Emily and quickly responded: Of course... of course you are welcome to find
out who your parents are- then the teacher paused, she seemed to hesitate.
How? Emily asked.
Just... just go outside to the main lobby and look at the bulletin board. I
would not recommend doing that, there are reasons why this system is the
way it is. And believe me, Ive lived under the previous system - where you
had the same set of parents... forever, and you had to live with them in the
same house for eighteen years... And do you know how many times I wanted
to run away from home? Do you know how much I hated my parents?
The kids were looking up at their teacher now, with their eyes wide
open.
I wanted to run away. Every. Single. Day, the teacher said slowly.
After the class ended and the bell rang all the kids left the classroom
and Emily was the only one left. As she got to the doorway her teacher, Mrs.
Macomber, stopped her. I would not recommend going to look at the
bulletin board, Mrs. Macomber said, you have every right, like every child
in our system, but I would recommend against it. Emily did not respond, and
slowly walked out. From the corner of her eye, as she walked down the
hallway, she could see that her teacher was still staring at her with arms
crossed.

~ 116 ~

III
The bulletin board had many signs on it, posters in different colors
talking about sports, talking about health. There were a few advertisements
that had celebrities with a white mustache and the words Got Milk? under
them. As Emilys eyes worked their way up and down from the left side of the
board, she came across two sheets of paper, all the way at the bottom righthand side. The two pieces of paper were next to each other, and although
not stapled together they looked similar: they both did not have any
particular colors and they were both written in Comic Sans font.
The headline of one said: THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT:
APPLICABILITY TO CHILDREN UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE.
The headline of the other said: CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES: WARNING.
Emily unpinned the first sheet of paper and begin reading it, with the
tips of her fingers playing with the top of the yellow plastic pin:
Under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act, Amended in the
year 2013 to include Children under 18 years of age, in support of the new
Temporary Adoption & Relocation Program (TARP) that was signed into law
by the President in 2013, if you are a child of under 18 years of age you are
entitled to find out who your Biological Parents are. Their names, along with
their photos and current addresses, are maintained at the City Hall in the
Public Office for Child Services. You do not need any form of identification,
just your name. At the office, you will be asked to scan your index finger on
a machine and take a small blood sample that does not hurt. While you are
allowed to see a photo of your parents and find out their address, we do not
recommend that you go visit them for health and safety reasons, which are
detailed in the CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES page that should be located on
this bulletin board as well.
Emily pinned the first page back onto the bulletin board. She then
leaned forward to read what the CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES: WARNING
said:
Child Protection Services (CPS) a sub-agency of the Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Parents (ATFP) section of the government, strongly
recommends against you or your friends from going to visit your so-called
Biological Parents. Repeated studies have shown the negative effects of a
childs prolonged exposure to his or her Biological Parents. Illnesses that
may result include:.
The sheet listed all the types of illnesses that may result from
prolonged exposure to parents. Emily read the words: they had long letters
with constants and vowels in variations she had never seen before. They
seemed serious to her.

~ 117 ~

To repeat, the ATFP strongly advises you to NOT seek information

related to your biological parents.
Despite the page with the warning on it, Emily had already made up
her mind, even before she walked up to the bulletin board in the lobby. When
her teacher, Mrs. Macomber, said that kids were allowed to find out who their
parents are, because of the Freedom of Information Act, she immediately
knew that she would: now she had a place that she could go to find that
information. Not only that, she was planning to actually see her parents,
regardless of what the ATFP said.
In school the next day a girl asked her whether she read the two sheets
and Emily responded that she did. Rumor soon spread amongst the small
group of her girlfriends, and even Adam somehow found out. He tried finding
out from her what it said and she simply replied, Im not telling you. You
have to read for yourself. He tried to ask her if she was going to somehow
find out who her biological parents were, and actually see them, and she
simply nodded her head and, with her mouth closed, mumbled Mh-hmm.
You shouldnt, Adam told her in the lobby, as Emily was putting some
books away into her locker and getting other ones out. Her girlfriend walked
up to her locker and, having heard what Adam said, asked, You shouldnt
what?
She shouldnt go see her biological parents, Adam answered her
girlfriend, with a mocking, exaggerated voice on biological parents.
Youre going to see your biological parents? her girlfriend exclaimed.
When? Can I come?
Emily closed her locker and turned around. Im not going to see my
biological parents, she said. Adams an idiot.

IV
But of course, Emily had made up her mind and when the school bell
was going to ring at 1:55PM on Friday she was going to miss her school-bus
home and instead run to the City Hall to find out who her parents were.
With each passing hour on Friday, as the school year was coming to an
end, Emily became more and more nervous. What if I was born in another
city? she wondered. What if my biological parents are in another country?
How will I see them then?
She reflected on her current, temporary parents, for that is how children
referred to their parents when the parents were not around: temporary
parents. In front of them the children were always supposed to refer to them
as simply mother and father. Reflecting on her current parents, Emily tried
to be objective. On the positive side, they let her have more freedoms than

~ 118 ~

her previous temporary parents. She was allowed to take dance classes, and
she did not have to do piano: her previous parents forced her to take piano
lessons half-way through their year with Emily and she did not have a good
ear for music and above all hated her parents. She was happy to leave at the
end of that year, in June of 2022, and in the summer of that year - the
Transition Summer as it was called - she realized just how lucky she was
with her new temporary parents and her new temporary home. It was larger,
more beautiful. And, it had two younger girls: they became her temporary
sisters.
On the negative side... well, there were no negative sides. She wondered
whether this years parents let her take dance classes simply because she
was older and whether her previous years temporary parents would have let
her take dance classes if she had been her age now when she lived with
them. She did not think about it too hard, but remembered a word in an old
book that she read - the word was love - and the story was between a boy
and a girl and she wondered whether that existed, whether it ever existed,
between parents, and whether it could exist between people who knew each
other for only one year.
The bell finally rang and she was gripped with fear. All of the children
exited the school and Emily walked with them. But instead of walking to
where the school-buses were waiting she walked to the left, alongside a path
that ran around a small baseball field where the children would play during
gym class. As she was walking away from the school-bus pickup point she
heard several of her friends yell out her name - Emily! Emily! Where are you
going? - but she kept walking, not looking back.
She was walking now on the main road of her suburban town in
Eastborough, Massachusetts and with each step she picked up her pace, until
she was running, running faster than she had ever run, her back-pack
bouncing up and down and hitting the top of her shoulders and then her
lower back until it hurt, and finally a few feet away from the steps of the City
Hall she paused. Her heart was still beating fast and she was short of breath
as she walked slowly up the steps leading to the City Hall.
An older officer, a guard with a large nose running perpendicular to a
mustache that was almost as long, was sitting inside the main lobby. He
glanced at Emily with a confused, surprised expression: he had never seen a
kid come to the City Hall by herself.
Can I help you? he asked.
Im here to see the Public Office for Child Services, Emily responded.
The police officers right eye brow slowly moved up. He was about to say
something, then stopped. He looked around the main lobby: it was quiet.
Only a few people had come in on this Friday, most of them employees.
There were a few other people who had come in, and they were mostly
delivery-men. As the City Hall was closing at 3PM, there likely would not be

~ 119 ~

any other visitors: this girl was the last person of the day to enter the
building.
Okay, the officer got up. Let me show you how to get there. They
went around the primary steps of the main lobby and on the way there the
officer asked with curiosity Do you have an appointment? and Emily
responded No. He asked her what her name was and she responded. Then
they reached a big brown door with the words PUBLIC OFFICE FOR CHILD
SERVICES. As the officer opened the large door, he asked, under his
mustache, Is everything alright? He meant to say Is everything alright at
home? but decided to drop the at home part. Yes, Emily responded with a
smile.
Emily entered the office. Right across the door was the reception area.
A large podium stood there, with a notebook on it. No one was near the
podium, which was about as tall as Emily. One of the ladies in the office
looked up and saw Emily. She walked towards the podium slowly and asked
Emily: Whats your name? Emily gave the lady her first name and her
temporary last name but then added quickly, I dont have an appointment.
The lady looked up from her notebook. Okay, she said.
I want... I want.... Emily began saying. Tears suddenly started forming
around her eyes, in her throat: she was felt gripped by fear, sadness,
confusion, she did not know which. She took a slow breath in, a slow breath
out, and said dramatically: I want to know who my biological parents are.
The lady in front of her looked confused: she stared at Emily, looking
up and down. Weve never had anyone come here to find that out, she
said, then paused. Emily did not say anything and waited for the lady to
respond. Have you read the ATFP warnings, Emily? she asked. Yes, Emily
responded. I mean, not just the Freedom of Information Act sheet... the
lady said. Yes, not just the Freedom of Information Act sheet... I read both of
the pages, and I know the illnesses that may result, Emily replied.
Fine, the lady said, in a bureaucratic voice. Well... Ill need to scan
your index finger, take a small sample of blood, and then go through the
archives. Everyone is gone since its Friday, Im the only one here. So this
may take about half an hour.
Fine, Emily responded, with a bit more confidence than earlier.
The lady took her to a little black machine with a red laser and Emily
scanned her index finger. Then the lady said This will hurt a bit... ready? ...
three two one... and a little pin stung Emilys index finger, drawing blood.
The bureaucrat lady removed the little machine from Emilys index finger.
Then she took out a little chip from inside the machine and walked back to
her desk. She stuck the chip to the back of her computer.
You can sit down, the lady told Emily from her desk.

~ 120 ~

Emily sat down at the main reception area. She looked around the desk.
There were old copies of National Geographic, Entertainment, and Sports
Illustrated. There was also a copy of The New York Times magazine. Emily
picked up an older copy of National Geographic and leafed through the
pages: she loved looking at the pictures of giraffes rubbing their nose against
their children, a lion cub with her mother. Finally, after fifteen minutes, the
lady walked towards Emily with a printed page, one sheet, black and white,
with two photographs at the top. She sat down next to Emily.
Look, the lady began. These are your biological parents. Your
fathers name is Justin Qin. Your mothers name is - was - Lily Qin, but it
changed to Lily Cheng after her divorce from your biological father. Your
father is originally from China and your mother is from Taiwan. They both
moved here together. We still have your dads address in Eastborough but he
may have moved back to China. Your mother, Lily, is still living on 152 South
Street.
Emily knew where South Street was: about than a mile from Main Street,
where the City Hall was. Her yellow school bus two years ago took her on
that road every morning and afternoon; the bus always drove by a place
called Linda's Doggie Play-land, where she went with her temporary parents
when she was nine to get a temporary pet. Emily grabbed the piece of paper
and ran out of the office. Coming up behind her the City Hall bureaucrat lady
mumbled Please close the door next time.
As Emily ran down the steps of City Hall she began to imagine the facial
features of her biological mother and what her house would look like. She felt
like was running away from a home where she did not belong but lived, to a
home where she never lived but belonged. Her backpack again was bouncing
down and up, up and down, against her back, against her shoulders, as she
ran faster and faster towards what she thought was her house. Her heart was
on fire. The last part of South Street - the last 0.1 miles - did not have a
sidewalk, it ended, blended into a little hill. Emily had to walk around the hill
as cars slowed down around her and then continued driving. She crossed the
street and saw the mailbox that said 152 on it. Oh my God, she thought.
Thats where my mother... my biological mother lives.
She walked down the driveway- the road was higher up than the
house- and towards the light blue house, up the three steps. As she was
about to ring the bell she was gripped by fear, again. What if Lily is at work?
What if she isnt home?
Finally, she rang the bell. She did not hear the doorbell ring inside the
house so she rang it again. After about ten seconds she started hearing
footsteps coming cautiously towards the grey door, which finally opened. The
lady across from her looked like the Lily on the picture, except gentler. She
was holding the front door screen open. There was a silence for five seconds
as they both looked at each other.

~ 121 ~

Im looking for Lily Cheng, Emily finally said. Mo- she began to say,
then stopped.
You got her, Lily cut in. A short pause. Who are you?
Lily inspected Emily; she had no idea that the hair, lips, nose, ears,
fingers, nails of the young girl in front of her were those of her daughter. In a
stern voice she asked: Who are you?
Well, my name is... Emily began saying, then paused. Emily.
Do we know each other from somewhere?
Not exactly. We Im. She hesitated. Your daughter. Im your
biological daughter.
Lily did not respond, her facial expression not changing one bit.
Can I come in? Emily asked.
Lily continued standing by the doorway coldly, with one hand on her hip
and the other holding the front screen door. She did not know how to
respond to Emily. She never thought this moment would happen; she did not
want it to. It must have come from her father, Lily thought. He was always
the curious type, could never let go of the past. She must have picked up
that weak personality trait from her biological father. But Emilys features
were her own: Lily felt like she was staring at self-portrait in a convex mirror,
a portrait of herself as a young woman.
Well, come in, Lily finally said. Then added, But only for a few
minutes.
Without a word Lily turned around to walk in and as she did, all of the
moments in Emilys life when she thought about her biological mother
when she wondered where her mannerisms, her features were from came
rushing at once. It was not just the way Lily looked, but how she moved. In
fact, it was only when Lily turned around that Emily finally felt like she finally
understood who she was.
Emily followed Lily into the house.
We were just having lunch, Lily said. You can join us at our table, but
not eat. Thats all I ask of you. You can ask me any question, but you cannot
have any food.
Okay, Emily responded. As they entered the kitchen Emily saw another
girl her age. The girl was black, her hair was frizzy, pulled up at the back.
The girl had puffy cheeks and smiled kindly at Lily.
How can I help you? Lily asked.
I just... Emily said. I was wondering... I wanted to see how you look.
Okay, Lily responded. What for?

~ 122 ~

I was just curious. I wanted to see if I look anything like you. Emily
then paused and looked at Lilys hair, her fingernails, her clothes.
Well, this is me. She spread her hands wide. Now what?
I was wondering whether I could stay here one night with you...
Ha! Lily laughed. You seriously thought that you could do that? Dont
you know the system?
Emily did not respond.
Do you know how much I wanted to get away from my parents when I
was your age? Lily asked. I would have given anything to leave my
biological parents forever. But in China and Taiwan kids are not allowed to do
that, and if they try to run away, where do they go? They have nowhere to
go. They cant make any money, so either they become slaves, sometimes
sex slaves, or they come back home, to their biological parents. Its such an
outdated, backward system. Lily paused, took a sip of water from the glass.
In this country, you have an amazing opportunity. You are never bogged
down by your past, by your biological parents, by the circumstances in which
you were born to but had no choice in making. Here you are allowed to run,
fly as free as you want: nothing is holding you back, no biological roots are
pulling you down. Lily took another sip from the cup. Emily sat silent,
looking at her fingers, her palms, hoping Lily would let her stay for one night
with the family.
You realize that this is the best system? Lily continued. I know you
want to be a rebel, like your father. She said the word father with disdain;
although she uttered that sentence with conviction it still felt slightly strange
to say that because Emily had never met her father. No matter where you
will be raised you will always have that trait, its in your DNA, your genes,
like it was in mine. But there is a reason why we - why I - brought our family
here. You should see how it is in other countries. You should see other
homes, other families, look at how inefficient and unhappy they are. Really,
Lily said now, more sternly, you should go to China, where your father is
now, with his... You should see how life is like in China, look at how much
they work. For what? For whom? For their parents? They are just running
around in circles.
For some reason Emilys eyes began to form tears, just around the
edges.
Oh dont be so weak, even your biological father never cried, Lily said.
Can I please stay for one night with you, Emily asked slowly, fighting
through her tears.
No! her biological mother said. Not only is it illegal, but... I am not
your mother. Biologically yes, but I didnt raise you. Ive had almost a dozen
kids since you were born, each for one year: each had their own
idiosyncrasies, their own weaknesses, their own strengths, their own talents.

~ 123 ~

I am used to adjusting myself to new kids every single year: even if I wanted
to, I wouldnt be able to be your mother for more than a year. And trust me,
you wouldnt be able to bare me for more than a year ha! ha! ha!
Emilys crying intensified.
Lily continued, Because I am kind, as a gesture of good-will, I will give
you a ride back home. Where do you live? Emily did not reply, still wiping
tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Emily, Lily asked, in a kinder voice. Where do you live?
Emilys tears had now stopped. She wiped the last tears off her cheeks,
off the sides of her eyes, then replied: Three. Lon-Longfellow. Road.
Three Longfellow Road? Lily asked.
Emily nodded her head.
Lily got up from the dining table, grabbed her car keys and took Emily by
the hand, leading her to the garage. They both sat down in the car, a white
Ford Eco-boost. As they drove to Emilys home Lily asked Emily if her parents
were there and Emily replied that they were, they had taken Friday off. We
were supposed to have lunch today at 3PM, Emily added.
They drove up the hilly Ruggles Street, entered Wayside Estates, and
reached Emilys temporary home. Lily parked at the bottom of the driveway:
the house on top of the hill looked very similar to the house on 152 South
Street, like most of the cookie cutter houses in their suburban bubble.
Wow, Lily said, thats a beautiful house. And must be easy to clean
during the winter. In our house, because the driveway goes downhill, the
snow is stuck with us and shoveling it is impossible...
Emily did not respond. She unbuckled the seat, opened the door, and
got out. Before closing the door, she asked whether Lily wanted to come in,
to see her current temporary family, even though she knew what the answer
would be.
No, Lily replied. Then, more kindly, she added, I really shouldnt. The
system... it works much better if we never meet.
*

Im sorry I ran away, Emily said as she entered the house. Both of her
current temporary parents were standing in the lobby. Im sorry if you were
worried. She was hoping that they would say that they were worried, that
they would have a horrified expression on their face. She was hoping the
cops would be outside. Instead, her parents were smiling. In the living room
Emily noticed two strangers, a man and a woman, sitting on the couch, the
same couch she would often lie on and watching television after school.
Its fine, her mother smiled. We werent worried at all.

~ 124 ~

We... her father began to say, glanced at her mother, then back at
Emily: We knew that you would come back.
What time is it? Emily asked.
Its three-thirty, her father replied.
Okay, I will go upstairs and change and come back down to have lunch
with you, Emily said, quicker than usual, a bit nervous.
We had lunch without you, her temporary mother said. We packed all
your things earlier today, too. They are right there. She pointed in the
direction of the living room, where the two strangers were sitting, smiling.
Emily wanted to ask who the two people were, but could guess from their
look, from the time of the year.
These are your new parents, her now old temporary father said firmly.
It was really nice to meet... to live with you Emily for a year, her now
old mother said. I really cant believe that its been that long! Time just flew
by...
Then, her father added: You really are a great kid, one of the smartest
girls Ive temporarily watched over, and I think you will really do great things
in this world.
Her temporary mother came to give Emily a hug. Emilys arms remained
frigid, frozen on her sides. Her temporary father reached out his hand to give
her an adult handshake, the type of adult behavior Emily told him she liked,
but Emily did not respond. Her old temporary father tapped the top of her
head gently a few times, messing up her hair. She would usually fix it when
he would do that, but not now: she was still frozen in the same position. Her
teary eyes were fixed on the staircase behind her parents, where her
temporary younger sisters were sitting. They were both holding a teddy bear,
the same toys that Emily bought for them in the beginning of her school year
last year, when they were just starting to get to know each other.
Emily reflected on the future of her old temporary siblings; she would
probably never see them. Because they were younger, they had a different
time when they would shift to a new set of parents: August 15th of each
year. That was the rule, the system. The last months of the school year for
children who were seven or younger was spent at home with their current
parents, so that they could spend the summer with people they knew. Does
that make a difference? She asked herself. Does it make summer more
enjoyable, to spend it with someone you know? She tried to remember how
she felt during the summers when she was seven or younger, but could not.
Would the rules change by the time they were in first grade? Would
temporary parents be for two years? Four years? How would that impact
their lives?
Her old temporary parents continued staring at her, as did her new
temporary parents. She did not care about them: above all she wanted to

~ 125 ~

say good-bye to her temporary younger sisters. She put down her backpack,
which she still had not taken off since coming into the house, and began
walking towards her siblings, but her father stopped her. You probably
shouldnt, he said. I just want to say good-bye, she said, her voice, her
throat filled with tears. You cant, her mother said. I just want to say goodbye, Emily said, her voice louder now. You cant, her mother said sternly.
Her new temporary parents rose up in the living room, picked up Emilys
luggage, and went to the main lobby.
Thank you for the tea, the new temporary father said to Emilys old
temporary father.
Remember, the old temporary father said to both Emilys new mother
and father, her favorite color is black, and like all kids she likes to be treated
like an adult. In Emilys eyes, what her old father said was factual but felt
meaningless, which hurt more. Facts hurt when theyre told by fake people,
she thought.
Her previous family told us that she was angry at the end of last year
too, her old temporary mother whispered conspiratorially, with the back of
her hand over the side of her mouth, to Emilys new temporary mother. She
is very emotional.
The new parents smiled understandingly, and the new temporary
mother went to take Emilys hand so that they could walk out and go to her
new home. At first Emily resisted, quickly pulling her hand away from the
strange woman. Her new mother looked at her, surprised: Emily seemed
angry. Surely it was nothing the new temporary mother had said or did, for
she has not had a chance to even communicate with Emily yet. Her new
mother reached out her hand again and said Im Susan. She waited, her
arm stretched for five seconds. Emily did not respond, but after a minute
finally reached out to Susans palm and took it. And this is John, Susan said
to Emily, pointing with her other hand, John is your new temporary dad.
With her backpack on and her new temporary parents carrying her
luggage. Emily exited her old home to a new beginning, in a new house, with
a new set of parents. She did not, could not look back: it was not allowed.

~ 126 ~

ii. THE TENURED TWITTERER

THE SCANDINAVIAN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Joachim Palme ran up the

steps to the front door of Mr. Fillmores Regents Park apartment. Joachim had
been on loan at Kings College London from the Department of Comparative
Literature at Stockholm University for over three years, but was still confused
by Londons Tube, or Underground system, and was therefore twenty
minutes late to Mr. Fillmores apartment.
Joachim had something important to say. In an email he had described
the vital importance of meeting Mr. Fillmore in person, as soon as possible.
That was May 9th. It was now early August. In the email, Joachim had
mentioned that he was distraught with the state of contemporary literature;
and he wanted to speak to Mr. Fillmore one of the leading contemporary
authors known for his post-modern Southern Gothic writing about that
subject.
It was eight oclock. The sun was setting slowly over Londons redbricked horizon, pulled down by the quieting ambitions of the citys tired
professional class of merchants: bankers, Fortune 500 executives, media
moguls, and many Uni professors (merchants of knowledge) spread across
the eighteen colleges of the University of London. Joachim knocked two quick
knocks on Mr. Fillmores door, and waited. Then he rang the bell. No one
opened the door. He took one step back to look around the house: tall
windows, no curtains: clean, white walls like bleached teeth. Joachim
wondered whether or not Mr. Fillmore heard his knock or the bells ring.
He was about to ring the bell again when he noticed through a window
a light turned on inside the house. He suddenly heard foot-steps walking in
the direction of the door. This was it: this was the moment he was waiting for.
He felt his heart beating: not fast, but loud. He needed to summon up all of
his courage and face down a man who was destined to win the Nobel Prize
for Literature.
Mrs. Fillmore opened the door. Joachim was startled: he thought he
would instantaneously see Mr. Fillmore. Joachim had met Mrs. Fillmore
somewhere before: she was a genuinely kind person, unlike her husband.
Come in, Joachim, she said, gesturing him to walk inside.

~ 127 ~

Joachim, please, he mumbled looking into the ground as he walked into

the empty house. Where... where is Mr. Fillmore?
Hes inside, she said. Just finishing his nap.
Mrs. Fillmore took Joachims lime green Burberry coat, his hat, and his
umbrella and put them by the door. Her statement about Mr. Fillmore
repeated itself in Joachims embittered mind.
Listen, my husband told me that you have something important to say
to him, she suddenly said with a stern calm. He has many critics, many
people who do not understand what he is trying to do. I just wanted to say...
She stopped. If you... Another pause. Once he wakes up, give him about five,
maybe ten minutes to adjust himself to his surroundings before you dive into
whatever you have to say.
Okay, he said. He felt compelled to show Mrs. Fillmore that he had
understood her wishes and thus quickly added: I promise to give him time to
fully wake up before starting any serious conversation.
She suddenly smiled and gregariously said: Fantastic. Can I offer you
some tea?
Yes, please. Black? Green? With milk, without milk? Black, please, and
milk, please.
Yes, that would be good: a bit of caffeine to wake myself up after a
long day of teaching.
Mrs. Fillmore went into the kitchen. Joachim sat down on the couch. He
took out his iPhone: no messages, no new emails. He went to the home
screen and clicked on the Notes app, and opened a folder entitled Palmes
Poems. He secretly yearned to be a poet; he found the latest poem that he
was working on and scrolled through it:

The Art of Temporal Living

The actions of the atheist were
Restricted by experimental
Constitutions and ephemeral policies:
For the atheist believed that only words

~ 128 ~

On paper provided for his cherished natural rights:

As if merely the cup and not the coffee contained
The caffeine he needed to survive.
The free will of the pious many was governed
By a metaphysical god,
Who existed beyond time and apace,
And tempered by dogmatic scriptures
That stressed giving up the self:
Begging then the question: why have
Free will if we must tether it
In service of the Lord? And if we must
Use our free will to worship the Lord,
For all else will lead to our damnation,
Is our will truly free?
And it was only he who had rejected
Militant atheism and radical religiosity
And who was even secular about agnosticism and
Agnostic about secularism:
Only he who had come to embrace
The profound act of not knowing
And the beauty of the meaningless
Of life: only he who embraced the inevitability
Of suffering with a silent smile:
Only he who had the courage to be sly and cynical from time
to time:
Only he had emerged truly free,
Only he had endured: for only he
Was not just a machine for god
But a human too.

His eyes looked up from his iPhone. In the kitchen Joachim heard water
running and Mrs. Fillmore opening and closing cabinets and drawers. But the
house felt empty. He opened another one of his poems:

God Before Dinner

Does god exist

~ 129 ~

God exists in the minds of those who

Believe in him
Under the threat of a wobbling kitchen knife
I solipsistically answered her question:
And mother pardoned me
With my last meal
Of the last day
Of last
Year.

He secretly longed for Mr. Fillmores approval of his poems, but knew
that he would be too afraid to share them. He put his phone back into his
pocket, where it was stuffed beside a fat wallet. Joachim was systemically
unkempt: like all university professors, he was a walking abstract painting,
somewhat eye-catching, somewhat mysterious. His socks, his pants, his
jacket, his hat, all of his belongings had their own personality, each object
with its own radically different color: every piece on his body and in his body
embodied individualism, each was individually bought for a reason, but came
together on any day without a plan. His random, formless appearance and
Einstein hair gave him a disheveled look and a charming, and memorable
appearance.
Inside the living room, Joachim was trying to remember what he
wanted to tell Mr. Fillmore, while looking around in order to pick up details
that could be useful in his conversation. He was surprised, above all, by the
lack of books inside the room, which stood in sharp contrast to the large flat
screen television. In fact, as he discovered when he gave the living room a
slow, water-sprinkler 180 degree look, there were no books in the room at all.
There were shelves filled with what, from a distance, looked like laminated
novellas. But when he got up quickly to look at them closer he realized that
the narrow objects were DVDs, blue-ray copies of movies like Deuce Bigelow:
Male Gigolo, Weekend at Bernies, Napoleon Dynamite, and Avatar He
noticed the music soundtrack for A Night at the Roxbury.
You wont find American Beauty amongst these titles, Joachim suddenly
heard a voice say behind his back. He turned around: it was Mr. Fillmore. I
hate that fucking movie, Mr. Fillmore continued, arrogantly.
Behind both of them Mrs. Fillmore walked in holding a tray: it had a
kettle on it, two cups, a 3 oz. stainless steel bell for the milk, and a few

~ 130 ~

brown sugar packets that Mr. Fillmore had stolen from a coffee shop nearby.
She put the tray on a glass coffee table which stood in front of a burgundycolored sectional couch, walked over to Joachim and whispered: Give him
five to ten minutes. As she exited the room the two men awkwardly journey
across the room and ended up on opposite sides of the couch. There was a
silence as Mr. Fillmore looked at Joachim, who continued staring at Mr.
Fillmores DVD collection. Forgetting how he had meant to start the
conversation, Joachim reached to pour himself a cup of tea to buy a few
short seconds to think about what he was going to say - and how he was
going to say it.
Could you pour me a cup, too? Mr. Fillmore asked.
Yes, sure, Joachim replied quickly.
1-0, Mr. Fillmore thought to himself. Then he yawned and stretched his
arms, wrists. A restrained, Mona Lisa smile appeared on his face: Joachim
was going to be a push-over, he thought. Another day in London, another
day in life: he was having too much fun. He had initially come to a British
University as a writer in residence, but, after receiving many accolades for
his tweets, including a number of honorary doctoral degrees (including one
from the London School of Economics), he became a tenured instructor. He
was the universitys first official tenured Twitterer.
As he poured Mr. Fillmore a cup of tea, Joachim thought to himself:
Great. This will give me a few more seconds to think of what I need to say.
And, hopefully, by being nice, he will reciprocate my kindness and
understand my point... Though I already feel like I made a mistake by
deciding to confront him.
Mr. Fillmore watched the entire tea-pouring ceremony: his entire body
stayed still, not a word spoken, only his eyeballs and lips moved in reaction
to the neurotic Swedish professors jittery motions. He moved forward to pick
up his first prize of the evening, a cup of tea, and kindly thanked Joachim.
In America, we drink Starbucks coffee, Mr. Fillmore added, a bit slowly,
remembering that his guest may not be American, so it was perhaps better
to speak to him as one would with a child. But when in Rome, so to say...
Yes, Joachim said, awkwardly. They love Earl Gray tea with milk here...
A small pause. He could not go directly into what he wanted to say that
quickly, hed have to continue the small talk, at least for three more minutes.
I personally prefer to get my caffeine from Coca-Cola, he continued.

~ 131 ~

Is that right? Mr. Fillmore asked with masked enthusiasm.

Yes, yes, Joachim continued. I read somewhere that F. Scott Fitzgerald
once said that he never drank alcohol when writing his stories: only CocaCola. Apparently the fizz helped him come up with ideas for writing. And,
although I do not write, I do read- and I have noticed that drinking Coca-Cola
helps me read...
Mr. Fillmore pulled the cup to his lips and took a loud sip, all along
continued to stare at poor Joachim. I drink mint juleps with bourbon whiskey,
Fillmore suddenly said.
The two men had never before met. Joachim knew everything about
Mr. Fillmore; the latter knew nothing about the former, although he should
have known at least a bit from the email Joachim had sent to him. Joachims
remarks about Coca-Cola confirmed Mr. Fillmores suspicions that Joachim
was not from the United States; otherwise Joachim would have said simply
said Coke. He remembered that Joachim told him he was from somewhere
else, not the United Kingdom... perhaps Sweden? I couldnt care less, quite
frankly, Fillmore thought to himself. He was only interested in hearing praise;
everything else was noise.
Speaking of writing and reading, Joachim continued, in an even more
restrained voice now. He put his cup of tea on the table, and quietly knocked
on the table twice with his index finger. Then he let his index finger stay
there, barely touching the table, as he began to try to get to his point, which
was slowly fading from his memory.
In fact, that is why I came to talk to you: to talk about writing, and
reading, and so forth. As you know, I am from Sweden. We have a few
notable writers...
Right, thats where hes from: Sweden, Mr. Fillmore thought to himself,
his thoughts crowding out Joachims words from his mind.
... in Sweden. Maybe youve heard of August Strindberg? Joachim
asked.
Yes, of course, Mr. Fillmore said with a blank stare. He was a poor actor
but Joachim gave him credit for having the courage to lie.
And Par Lagerkvist, Joachim continued. Perhaps youve heard of The
Dwarf?

~ 132 ~

Of course, Mr. Fillmore replied, after a short pause. It was about a

midget, right?
Yes, Joachim replied, with a hint of sadness in his voice. Well, it was
really about a dwarf, if you want to be specific. It was written in the first
person, from the perspective of the dwarf, who worked in the kings courOh wow! Mr. Fillmore exclaimed, cutting him off he continued to take
long, loud, slow sips from his cup of tea.
Yes, yes. In Sweden we have some brilliant authors, but few openly
show their emotion, which makes it tough to show mans inner universe
which is so critical in literature. So we often have to give out the Nobel Prize
normally to authors of other nationalities, who have the courage to show the
dark sides of human nature, who have the courage to be cynical.
Joachim could see that his sentence about the Nobel Prize caught
Fillmores attention.
So thats what I wanted to say, Joachim continued, trying to remember
what he really wanted to say. I came to talk about... your literature. He
wanted to add, if you want to call it literature - a thought that had raced in
his head since the first time he read Mr. Fillmore literature - but did not have
the courage or heart to say that to an older man.
Yes, Mr. Fillmore said innocently.
As you know, I am the head of the Comparative Literature Department
at Kings College London, Joachim said, trying to find a way to frame the
discussion.
And Im an instructor at University College London, Mr. Fillmore quickly
said, with an honorary degree from a number of universities: the London
School of Economics, and so forth.
Mr. Fillmore was not trying to impress: he was just being himself. He
refused to be defeated in any fight, existent or non-existent. At forty-eight
years of age Mr. Fillmore was internationally renowned for his short storiesreally short stories, and his anthologies of twitter quotes - tweets. He is
bound to receive a Nobel Prize one day, Joachim thought to himself, bitterly.
Compared to Joachim, who was six feet tall, Mr. Fillmore was much
shorter: five foot five, with a small mustache that curled just a tiny bit at the

~ 133 ~

edges. Despite his diminutive stature, Mr. Fillmore could stare down any
man, no matter how tall. And he rarely looked up: hed prefer others to sit
down so that he could look at them, like he was now doing with Joachim.
Yes, I know that, Joachim replied. I know of your honorary degrees and
have read all of your books. And Im a follower of your Twitter account, too.
Oh, wow! Thank you so much. There are literally millions of followers
now. And its incredible just how many times people re-tweet my tweets.
Absolutely blows my mind: I mean, Im not saying anything that incredible,
right?
Mr. Fillmore paused, then added in a confident if not arrogant tone of
self-deprecation: And over half of my followers are women, some Victoria
Secret models! They must be following me because its a trend I am not
good-looking enough to be followed on aesthetic grounds. To be the trend
now thats power, that is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
The origins of Fillmores online writing dated back to a WordPress blog
that he created in August 2003. The incredible power of his writing became
evident during the 2004 Presidential elections, when (as a lifelong Democrat)
he came out in support of Senator John F. Kerry over President George W.
Bush, who with Congressional support a year earlier invaded Iraq on flimsy
premises and was at that time running for a second term. By the time of the
2004 elections many U.S. soldiers had already died, and Democrats wanted
to make this a front-and-center topic in the elections. On Tuesday, January
27, 2004, Fillmore perceptively wrote on his WordPress blog the following
line, No one died when Clinton lied. This rhyme went viral: it became a
slogan used over and over again by the Democratic Party, and millions went
to vote for Kerry as a result. No amount of canvassing conducted as part of
the Democrats get out the vote effort contributed as much as that single
sentence to catapulting Kerry to victory in the 2004 New Hampshire
primaries. Not all of Fillmores written thoughts won the day: his brilliant
slogan, A Stronger America, lost to the even more brilliant, A Safer World
and a More Hopeful America.
But Fillmore recuperated and nearly a decade later, he was slaying
Twitter. He had different types of Tweets. Some were mundane recollections
of the day. Others were aphorisms. One of his most popular aphorisms was:

~ 134 ~

@TenuredTwitterer: Your personality is how you choose to exercise

your will. #TheTruth. 9:12PM - 19 Aug 2014 - 1,452,384 RTs 1,234,495 favs.

Other acclaimed Tweets included:

@TenuredTwitterer: People are smarter than youd think but dumber

than youd hope.
@TenuredTwitterer: The truth is sometimes disloyal mistress, more
often a one night stand.
@TenuredTwitterer: In the long run there are only two types of people
in this universe: the living and the dead.
@TenuredTwitterer: Luck is usually not the fulfilment of dreams we had
but ones did not know we have.

Fillmore loved to impart fortune cookie observations about art, writing,

and poetry:

@TenuredTwitterer: All literature like life is fiction.

@TenuredTwitterer: Good writing has no expiration date.
@TenuredTwitterer: In fiction you can get straight to the truth without
having to sift through any of the evidence.
@TenuredTwitterer: Great art is the truth stripped of its politics.
@TenuredTwitterer: Your life is an experiment; your writings are the
findings.

One of his most famous tweets was:

~ 135 ~

@TenuredTwitterer: History is a narrative of the past: poetry, of the

future. #Poetry 3:13PM - 21 Sep 2013 - 1,371,562 RTs - 1,073,289
favs.

Time magazine called that last tweet stunning a masterpiece, while

the New Yorker raved that it was a revelation. Oprah conducted an hour-long
interview with him about that specific tweet, the development and editing
process behind it; he was generally averse to public interviews but knew that
Oprah had scores of fans and carried a lot of weight (he did not dare to make
a pun of the subject); overcome with joy from interviewing Fillmore, Oprah
proceeded to give out cars to all the audience members that very night. Not
all of his tweets enjoyed critical acclaimed or wide-scale popularity, though.
Some of his tweets were regurgitations of internet clichs and enjoyed only
hundreds of thousands of retweets and favorites. In particular, his
competitors loved pointing out two hackneyed tweets that were pulled from
the collective wisdom of the World Wide Web and which showcased, in their
mind, his substandard tweeting abilities:

@TenuredTwitterer: The problem about quotes on the internet is that it

is impossible to verify their veracity. - Abe Lincoln #InternetQuotes
@TenuredTwitterer: You cant unread this sentence.
#HowCanYouUnreadLOL

But all of that the good tweets and the bad were all in the past. At
present Joachim did not know how to respond to Mr. Fillmores comment that
being the trend on Twitter is the ultimate aphrodisiac. He wanted to knock on
the table and say, listen, you arrogant, self-centered... fuck you fake piece
of shit... but instead fell back on being polite, as he had been throughout his
entire life, a thoroughly polite boy and very shy:
Yes, I think it takes a certain amount of art and genius to create tweets
that are re-tweeted over a million times.

~ 136 ~

Goddamn right, Mr. Fillmore said, then took a sip of tea and looked to
the side. No one knows how fucking hard Ive heard to get to this point, the
road Ive travelled.
Do you have a lot of followers in your hometown? Joachim asked,
covering his anger with servility. Joachim was not an artist: he could not
create anything of significance, not even a tweet. He could criticize, but not
create. He thought about that fact as he looked at Mr. Fillmore. Whats your
hometown, by the way? he continued quickly, when he thought the silence
had lasted too long.
Yoknapatawpha, Mr. Fillmore responded, taking one last sip from the
cup, and then put it down on the table.
Joachim stared at Mr. Fillmore, incredulously. He was not sure if Mr
Fillmore playfully lied to anyone else before, if he always lied, or just lied to
weak people like himself. Something told Joachim that Mr. Fillmore lied to
everyone.
Yup, I have a lot of followers in Yoknapatawpha county, Mr Fillmore
continued.
Wow, Joachim said, trying to mimic his hosts fake enthusiasm. In less
than half an hour around Fillmore, Joachim was becoming a copy of the fake.
He summoned up his courage to deliver the next sentence. I wanted to ask
you: what do you think people will think about the state of twenty-first
century writing, when they look back at your anthologies of tweets, say in
fifty to seventy-five years from now? I mean, the way we examine writing
from the early 1900s, thats how people will be looking at our writing in the
2100s... 1913, 1914: a generation of authors who participated, in one way or
another, in something beyond themselves: Hemingway, Fitzgerald,
Faulkner. And they referenced their war experiences, and they lied about
them, and they leaned over backwards to pretend that they partook in the
war, but above all they wrote great literature... Today 2014: how will future
generations examine our writing? How can tweets capture the human
condition? How do Facebook status updates tell future generations about
society, about where the human race - where civilization - is heading? How
will a Joachim Palme or a Mr. Fillmore in 2114 look back at 2014?
How should I know? Mr. Fillmore asked. What am I, a prophet? At least,
I dont think I am a prophet. He paused, thinking whether it was possible that
he was a prophet. He concluded, humbly, that he probably was not.

~ 137 ~

I am just trying to wrap my brain around your writing, Joachim said. I

mean, your work consists of what? I tried to calculate what you write and I
came up with the following summation... Joachim pulled a small piece of
paper from his jacket pocket. Your writing consists of: one tweet a day. 140
characters, some of which are not even letters, just symbols; an anthology of
your best tweets, twenty of your best tweets from the previous year which
are then re-published, in font 24 size, each in its own chapter; and a separate
book, which consists of 235 to 260 words - each word in a different font type
than the one before it. And... Joachim looked up from the paper, directly at
Mr. Fillmore - and thats it... Some days you just re-post old tweets. I mean... I
dont even know what to say.
You dont need to say anything, Mr. Fillmore said, wishing Joachim
would pour him some more tea.
No, I do need to say something, Joachim said angrily. How, how long
does it take you to write each tweet? Each one of your masterpieces?
Fillmore thought about it.
Real masterpieces are created in the flash of a second, he finally said.
Ha! Joachim laughed out loud. Fillmore wanted to put that moment up
on Twitter under hashtag funny. Joachim continued: Another question, be
honest: how fictional or non-fictional are your Tweets.
You mean my literature?
Yes, yes, your literature.
How real is my literature?
Yes. Sometimes your tweets are aphorisms, and at other times you are
simply talking about the new socks you put on this morning, or the venti
macchiato you got at Starbucks. You have millions of followers. Theyre
counting on you to tell them facts. So, let me ask you again, are your Tweets
based on facts? Is your literature fiction or non-fiction?
Ah, my dear boy, Fillmore answered with exuberant arrogance. All
literature is fiction. He paused, then slowly raised his index as if to draw an
imaginary exclamation mark. Even history books.

~ 138 ~

At times Fillmore seemed to speak in aphoristic tweets. But Joachim

pressed him further.
So you dont think your 140 character creations need to be based on
facts?
A genius need not use facts, Fillmore responded. He just has to speak
the truth as he sees it, he has to be honest, with himself first and foremost.
Thats what readers want to see. They dont care about facts. They want
someone authentic.
The conversation was becoming a chess game between artist and
critic.
Fine. But dont you think that facts are powerful weapons?
Facts. Are. Powerful. Weapons. Hm. Let me think about that In what
case?
When they are true, Mr. Fillmore. Dont you think facts are powerful
facts when they are true!
Joachim could not believe that he had just raised his voice in a
strangers home.
Well, it certainly helps, Fillmore responded.
But it isnt necessary, Joachim asked, his eyes opening, for the facts to
be true?
Fillmore thought about it for a few seconds, then spoke slowly: Well, it
isnt necessary or unnecessary, my young boy. You are asking the wrong
questions. You see, a great artist, a great poet, a great author knows how to
tell the truth without being honest and how to be honest without telling the
truth.
Joachim seemed baffled. Fillmore often developed his thoughts in
dialogue. But then he would retreat back to a corner in his mind to reflect on
what he had just said and try to turn conclusions into tweets. In this instance
he came up with the following aphorism: The essence of aphorisms is
ambiguity. It helps if author of the aphorism only understands half of what he
meant: let the readers figure out what it means. He then cleaned up this
conclusion and turned it into a Tweet in his mind: Great writing consists of

~ 139 ~

telling the truth without being honest and being honest without telling the
truth.
Well, I beg to differ, Joachim retorted as he shuffled in his seat. There is
so much wrong with everything you just said that I do not know where to
start. You see, Im the head of a comparative literature department at a
respectable academic institution, and my only concern is that, when there is
a Joachim Palme who is born a hundred years from now and wants to teach
what I teach, there wont be any books to compare. He paused. At the turn of
the past century, the world had many authors: they published books, many
books, and poems, and novels, and ... and yes they experimented with
language, but they had more than 140 characters. Joyce certainly did, and
his writing was rebellious and vulgar and it was controversial at the time, but
at least he had words on the page, many words. He challenged our vision of
what a hero in a novel is. He tried to transcribe our dreams. And then
Fitzgerald, with his beautiful commentary of the jazz age, and other things
Things - ha! Mr. Fillmore said. Mr. Fillmore made Joachim feel slightly
guilty about English, which was not his first language.
Joachim continued: And then Faulkner came and showed us the life and
thoughts of peasant families from the American south. And no one knew
what the hell he or Joyce were talking about but they wrote words on paper,
many words, and pretended that they had something profound to say... But
to have something profound, you need words, you need characters, many,
many characters. What do you have, Mr. Fillmore, if I can ask blankly?
I have the hardest job in the world, Mr. Fillmore replied confidently,
then paused. It may seem from afar that I have an easy job, but there is a lot
of pressure on me to choose the correct character, to connect the characters
together into the right word: I cant afford to type the wrong character! He
raised his index finger again: another exclamation mark in the flesh. One
incorrect character and my entire reputation is destroyed. The other authors
you mentioned had to grapple with plot and themes and language. But every
plot has been explored, every theme has been written about. Even about the
theme of nothingness. The existentialists have monopolized that field:
Camus, Sartre, Gide. There is little for us authors but to slowly collapse the
folding chairs of literature, and walk off the beach: the sunset of your
glorious century of literature is fast fading, my friend. And if you speak of
commentary, what is a better way to comment on our modern society than
to actually use 140 characters? And you speak of modern authors who saw
war: Did McCarthy see war? Did Roth? Don Delillo? The only one who saw it
was James Salter, and no one even knows who he is!

~ 140 ~

Joachim was taken aback by Fillmores knowledge of the literary

landscape.
Still, Joachim said, I fail to understand some things. I try not to think
about the future of writing because it just seems too... absurd. Why dont you
do something about it? Why dont you push the outer-limits of the English
language, rather than folding its armchairs, so to speak? Why arent you as
rebellious with your prose as Saul Bellow? Why dont you use as many words
in your novels as he did? I mean, I calculated the number of words you have
in all of your literature combined: 5,667. He paused, then repeated slowly:
Five-thousand, six hundred, and sixty seven words. Thats less than two short
stories by Hemingway... and you are going to win the Nobel Prize for that...
Yes but what words! Mr .Fillmore exclaimed. Every character, every
word carefully chosen. I spend days and nights turning in my bed, wondering
what would be the perfect letter for my next tweet, or the next word for my
novels.
Yes, okay, Joachim said, but there is no plot... you cant create a plot
with so few words. You cant develop characters or build an arch. The closest
thing your works resemble is imagism, but lets be honest, youre no Ezra
Pound.
Im not interested in plots. Im interested in style, Fillmore replied. Then
he began inspecting his fingernails. The impression he was that Joachim
simply did not understand his profound genius.
Maybe you... maybe you could tell me about your books, Joachim said,
as he mumbled if you can call them that under his breath.
What about my masterpieces? Mr. Fillmore asked, pretending not to
hear Joachims jibe.
Not the anthologies of your twenty best tweets, but your so-called
novels: why are they always in the range of 235 to 260 words? Joachim
asked, truly curious.
Oh, well, my dear boy, Mr. Fillmore said. You see, for my novels every
day of the year I search for the best word in the English language... And- he
quickly continued, anticipating Joachims next question, I usually find the
words from a newspaper, like the Daily Mail, and I cut them out and put them
on a piece of paper. Sometimes I dont know what the words mean so I go to
the Oxford English Dictionary. And then I connect the words, and finally

~ 141 ~

publish it in a book format, with each word in a different font, in order to

preserve the authenticity of the original experience.
Mr. Fillmore finished the sentence with a content smile: obviously proud
of his method.
Interesting, interesting, Joachim said. But... he thought for a moment,
doesnt that mean you should have 365 words in your book, not 260?
Well, Mr. Fillmore said, I take the weekends and holidays off -- so my
novels end up being around 235 to 260 words each, depending on the year.
Sometimes I work on weekends, when I want to get away from the wife.
Right... right... Joachim said. And you spend the entire day just
searching for a single word?
Yes, I spend the entire day searching for a single word, Mr. Fillmore
replied, surprised that he would need to repeat himself.
There was a long pause. Joachim looked at the palms of his hands: he
focused on the lines, trying to figure out if he should change his profession to
a palm reader. Mr. Fillmore, taking Joachims silence to mean 2-0! in Mr
Fillmores favor, began inspecting his fingernails again. They were even more
interesting than he previously noticed: maybe he could tweet about them.
Staring at the palms of his hands, Joachim realized that this was fate:
there was nothing he could do. Mr. Fillmores genius was in his ability to
deflect criticism, to pretend to be dumb when doing so was useful, to
pretend to be a genius when pretending to be a genius would serve his
needs: to fully and utterly believe in his own genius. The sheep would follow,
the herd would never stray from its feeble-minded shepherd.
Well, Joachim said, if thats what the people want. You do have over
one hundred million Twitter followers, I suppose.
He paused, as if waiting for Mr. Fillmore to change his mind, to say he
would write longer and possibly more profound novels.
Listen, my dear boy, Mr. Fillmore said, looking up from his fingernails, I
have been in this business for a loooong time Mr. Fillmore elongated the
world to what seemed to be just short of 140 characters - the times are
changing. I have read your authors; I know the books that you mentioned.
But people dont have time to read long, profound books anymore. I am not

~ 142 ~

the criminal you are looking for: I am merely responding to society around
me. In a few decades, do you think there will be libraries with books in them?
No. There will be desks with e-readers and people will be able to download
long books, old books: and perhaps they will download my novels? Time is
the only critic that matters in the long-run. Listen, above all else, you should
realize that Im not the person you should seek out as the perpetrator of any
crime, if there is or was a crime to begin with.
Joachim got up to go abruptly, without saying a word. He hurried to the
doorway and picked up his Burberry coat, his umbrella, and his hat.
Listen... Mr. Fillmore said slowly, approaching Joachim by the front door.
Joachim turned around, expressing a modicum of profoundly childlike
innocence: an unfounded hope that Mr. Fillmore was about to confess that he
was a phony and promise to write longer novels with plots, the kind that
Joachim wished he to see.
Listen, if you are interested in this topic, in the topic of literature in the
twenty-first century, Mr. Fillmore paused and put his hand on Joachims
shoulder, you should check out my tweet from the start of May 2013. If you
like it, feel free to retweet.

~ 143 ~

III. ABSTRACT HORROR STORY

ALICE

I am standing in the kitchen putting on the finishing touches of a cake - a

chocolate cake - for a surprise birthday party for my boyfriend. My twin sister
and her friends, and my boyfriends friends, are all waiting at a house just
down the street; he is supposed to show up there in an hour. He has no idea
we are throwing a surprise party for him...

I am a bit nervous, though, and I am not sure why. The door leading from the
kitchen to the balcony is open. A light breeze comes in. It helps calm my
mind down, if only for a bit. There is no one else in the house except me: my
parents have left our little suburban town to go hike in another part of
Farmington, Connecticut, and my twin sister, as I mentioned, is with our
friends in another house.

< An apparition appears in the kitchen: a pale, sickly boy, no older than five
years of age, stands still in the kitchen. An older girl is there too, baking. The
girl does not see the boy, who is four feet behind her. The boy is much
younger and shorter than the girl, who is about seventeen years old. The boy
is very pale; the black under his eyes stands out; his eyes are pink. He has
no expression, but his right hand is behind his back: he is hiding something.
>

As I bake the cake, a nervous tension grips me. I am thinking about my

boyfriend. What if he does not like me? I wonder. I am, after all, a red head,
and that is unusual. I have heard of stereotypes about redheads from nonredheads, and they are all so unfair. I do not believe that I am any of those
stereotypes, and besides, weve have been dating for months now, we have
already gone to prom together.

~ 144 ~

I remember how we first met: last summer, with our families travelling from
Connecticut to a beach in Cape Cod. It was August and the water just barely
warm. I dipped my feet in, while he ran in, jumping in like he was a dolphin,
or like it was the Olympics. It was funny. Using his hands, he splashed me
with some salty water; the water was cold and it was a bit unfair. I used my
feet to spray him with ocean water as well: since he was already wet, it did
not seem to bother him.

He quickly won me over on that trip. He introduced me to scary movies, old

ones like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Those movies
haunted me then, and they sometimes still do, especially when I am alone. I
took our relationship slowly and made it clear he knew that I was calling the
shots when it came to kissing and all that. He went in for a kiss when we
watched Scream but I did not let him; it would have been too soon. The
first kiss took half-a-year, but he was sweet: he held back and followed the
timing as I had wanted us too, as it should have been. For a while we did not
hold hands, except during prom. Im not one to hold hands, generally, but I
make exceptions for certain occasions, and for certain people, like him, as I
did during prom... I bet he is going to like this cake later this afternoon, I
think, trying to shift my focus back to the cake.

< A breeze from the outside breaks against the boys white robe. His feet
stick out from under the robe, which looks like something an angel would
wear; the child, however, looks like the devil. As the white robe makes waves
from the breeze coming in through the balcony, a diabolical smile forms on
his face. One of his hands is still behind his back, hiding something. >

I love my boyfriend, I think to myself, as I add another layer of chocolate, the

final layer of chocolate.

I wonder what hell think of my black dress. When I put it on just a few hours
ago, I agonized for some time about what color I should wear. I have a white

~ 145 ~

dress, but white dresses are too common, they are too... hackneyed, a word I
recently learned.

Besides, I have something dark about me, or at least I like to think that I do.
When my boyfriend asked me what my favorite bands were, I named bands
like Nine Inch Nails and other bands that are pseudo-dark. I love dark humor
too. I love The Adams Family, even though I am not goth, and I love wearing
black dresses. I wore a white dress to the prom, but most of my wardrobe is
black: black shirts, black pants, black shoes. I do keep other colors, like white
and even pink, maybe to hide the fact that I am a closet goth? I dont know. I
do know that my boyfriend is fine with me wearing black; in fact, he told me
that he loves that fact about me, that it makes me different from all the
other girls, all of whom love pink. It must come from my family, which loves
the color black: even the floor in this kitchen is marble black.

< The boy is gripping a kitchen knife behind his back: the knife is very large,
about three times as long as the boys hand. A ray of light comes in through
the kitchen window and hits the knife. A vague white line reflects from the
knife onto the wall in the living room, which is adjacent to the kitchen,
behind both the boy and the girl. The boy grips the bottom of the kitchen
knife, then releases. He grips it again, then releases it again. He moves his
thumb up and down the handle of the kitchen knife, all along smiling as he
watches the girl, who is oblivious to his presence and continues preparing
whatever it is she is preparing. >

Toppings: what toppings should I add to the cake? I could put on some
sprinkles, make the cake girly: that would be funny, Id tease him about
eating a girly cake. I love him in part because I can make fun of him like that,
and he sort of plays along. I could also get strawberries, and draw a heart
shape with them, or would that be too much?

Finally, I remember that in the refrigerator I had left icing inside a papercone: I was simply going to write To JT: Happy Birthday! - my boyfriends
name is Jonathan Cohn - and add a large 17 to the side of the greeting. I do

~ 146 ~

that: I reach for the icing in the refrigerator and write what I had originally
intended to.

< The boy watches the girl reach for something in the refrigerator. He slowly
pulls the kitchen knife from his back, and holds it to the side, slightly
forward, stretching out his arm as far as it can go. Another breeze comes in
through the kitchen: he has done this before, and he has always enjoyed it.
He smiles again: diabolically, surreptitiously. >

As I draw the greeting on the cake with the icing that I had prepared, I think
for a little bit about our future together. We are going to be seniors in high
school next year, and afterwards we are going to go to college. I want to go
to a university in Massachusetts, he wants to go to New York. Will we stay
together? I have no plans of breaking up soon. But when should we talk
about our relationship? Would it be better if we broke up before the school
year was over?

I realize that I do not want to think about those questions yet. I love him, I
love him now and I want it to last for as long as possible. I cannot wait to see
him later this afternoon, and I know that he will be so happy, so excited by
the party.

I reach for the birthday candles. I pull seventeen candles out of the small
blue box: some dark blue (his favorite color) candles, yellow, green, blue,
and purple. I stick each candle one-fourth of the way into the cake. I spread
all the candles randomly around the cake, so that they fill up the space as
much as possible. Six of the seventeen I put right in the middle of some of
the letters: the o, the a, the two ps, the d, and finally the second a.

The cake is finally ready. I give a sigh of relief, an unusually loud one as no
one else is in the house, and pick up the cake with both hands, ready to take
it to my boyfriends surprise birthday party.

~ 147 ~

< The girl sighs, lifts something in front of her, and turns around. The boy
takes a few steps towards her, then stabs into the lower part of her stomach,
below what she is holding, three quick times: STAB STAB STAB. She pauses,
frozen. Her soul seems to depart her body: she drops what she was holding;
it does not fall neatly. The girls eyes meet the eyes of the pale boy, a ghost.
She does not recognize him.

She falls to ground on her knees in front of the little boy, as if to kiss his feet.
Her right knee hits the top of the cake she baked. Her head is bowed
downwards. She slowly reaches to her stomach to touch the spots where she
was stabbed, then pulls her hands to her face; her fingers and her palms are
covered in blood. After a short pause, the boy continues to stab the girl: he
stabs her right shoulder, the pulls out the knife; then her left shoulder, then
cuts along the top of her neck. She squeals a little with each stabs, but does
not put up a fight. With each stab her yells grow fainter. The apparition
keeps stabbing the girl as the blood splatters all over the white kitchen floor
and her white prom dress.>

~ 148 ~

iv. YOUNG LOVE ON THE BLACK SEA

There was a beach that lay west of everything, its pebbles emanating
heat, its water kaleidoscoping sunrays. They lay on its stones, a boy and a
girl: the Black Sea.
The sea-salted girl was lying on her back now, resting her head on the
wet towel: a sponge. The boys head rested on the bottom part of her
pillowed stomach. His ocean water soaked hands played with warm beach
stones beneath and around him, scattered along the ocean by some ancient
gods. Then while still resting his head on her stomach he picked one of the
smaller stones, reached back with his right arm, and with his fingertips found
her neck.
That's where this stone belongs, he said, in a semi-serious tone, and
placed the small, almost weightless, warm stone in that little pouch just
under the girls neck and above her ribcage. She did not respond.
Slowly, he grabbed another small stone, and put it next to the first one,
until a line of small beach stones trickled down the girls neck and all the way
to where her stomach ended and his right ear began, emanating a pulse of
heat against her vibrating body.
The boy then paused. Against the sun rays beaming into his eyes, he
wondered: What should I do next? With childish innocence he put a
diminutive stone on his own stomach. It felt much warmer and nicer than he
had expected, especially in comparison to the icy-cold water of the Black
Sea, in which he had swam only a few minutes earlier, and the cool breeze
around them.
She must have felt that warmth, too, when I was building my magnum
opus on her stomach, he thought to himself.
He tentatively titled his work Exodus of Snails: from the distance he
imagined that it looked like a procession of snails deciding to leave the beach
vis--vis the body of a young girl; he could not see the Exodus, but it must
have looked like the line of massage-stones one frequently seen in posters in
spas, and must have felt as splendid and warm as the expressions of the
people on those posters, too. And yet she did not say anything, uttered
nothing at all as he built his artwork warm stone by warm stone - on her
cool stomach, and it took his soul to realize that her silence simply meant
that she was content. When he turned his to look at her, he could see from
below her chin a smile.

~ 149 ~

Somewhere near them waves crashed against black rocks: not too
loud, not too soft, audible enough for the beachgoers to hear - as if the
waves were drummers in a jazz band playing the background beat to a
Thelonious Monk song or a Charlie Parker tune. In the background children
played: they heard the waves, felt the warmth of the beach-stones with the
bottom of their feet, and responded with wondrous childlike noises. And with
the exception of one man - the ice-cream man, whose shouts of Ice-cream!
Ice-cream! felt like a slow-moving ambulance roaring through a quiet
Parisian boulevard on a lazy Sunday afternoon - the boy and girl felt like they
were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
They dubbed the evil Beach Ice Cream Man (a sub-profession of the
overall ice-cream man, itself a subset of the contract-killer profession) the
only name apt for him in that time and place: Lucifer. Lucifer walked on and
on as his screams of Ice Cream mellowed out into the sea, into the horizon of
splendid sound engulfing the boy and girl.
Adam imagined that somewhere further along the beach, Lucifer's
screams of ice-cream would resonate more with a young boy in need of a
sugar kick, sound sweeter than the waves to a younger boy who had not yet
felt love for a girl. The boy's mother would give him the coins needed to buy
the ice-cream from Lucifer, and the young boy would feel the same
happiness consuming his ice-cream that Adam felt putting warm pebbles on
Eve, as Lucifer disappeared into the sand, as the ocean stubbornly stretched
infinitely into east and west, its top border brilliantly demarcated by the
black sliver of an ancient horizon, its vast silver expanse capturing a pond of
light from the hovering sun - which according to Beckett rose and shone
having no alternatives - the sun rays against waves that clashed
unbelievably in primordial rhythms, waiting to be destroyed, eaten by the
sun millions of years later, millions of years after Adam and Eves hair would
turn gray, millions of years after Adam would say to Eve: I dont think I
could ever forgive you.

~ 150 ~

v. SNAILS PACE

THE BACKPACK WAS HEAVY. He had put two large novels in it: Ulysses by
James Joyce and the collected stories of William Faulkner. A bottle of white
wine stood erect by the books inside the backpack, pregnant with his
memories, those of others.
He was just putting on his shoes when the smartphone rang. He
picked it up: it was JB.
Hey, are you coming? she asked.
I am just about to leave, he replied as he tied his left shoe.
Okay, so itll take you another half-hour to get here, she said, more
seriously now, her disappointment audible. I guess well start without you.
No worries! he exclaimed, tying the laces on his right shoe now,
wondering who the we were - he thought it was just going to be the two of
them, it would be his moment, their moment, her moment - and
simultaneously felt the rushed guilt normally associated with running late.
I am bringing a bottle of white wine... to go with the Indian food. He
finished tying his right shoe.
When he had bought the bottle of wine, he thought with some
seriousness about which bottle to buy. The wine-bottle selection of the
express supermarket perplexed him; he finally decided on a German white
wine: as he was buying it he realized that he rarely, if ever, had German
wine. JB was half-German, half-Korean, but visibly more proud of her German
heritage, for whatever reason. In university he studied constructivism, the
idea of an imagined identities and how the role their play in post-modern
societies; a German bottle of wine would be a subtle gesture, a nod to her
constructed identity, her imagined community.
The white wine would also balance well with the spicy flavors of the
Indian food. After nearly a decade of knowing each other they first met in
their freshman year of college, and JB later followed him to Washington, and
later still followed him to London, after he finished working in Iraq and she
was done with Afghanistan they were both postgraduate students, she an

~ 151 ~

MA candidate, he a PhD candidate, both at Kings College London (he had

come there first): this bottle of German wine, while not the cheapest on the
shelves, was modestly priced.
JB said something and hung up: her easy dismissal of his investment of
time, energy, and resources, and thought in buying the bottle of German
white wine irritated him to his core, bothered him in a way that he did not
expect.
The dinner was supposed to start at eight. It was eight-o-five when she
called; hed arrive at eight thirty five. Following the abrupt end of the phone
conversation with JB, he picked up the bag and closed to the door to his
apartment. Why the fuck did she say We?
Walking down the staircase, he realized that it was like that with her, at
least when she was with him. He had known JB for nine years. They were
often very far away from each other but stayed in touch, normally at her
initiative. Shed wave her hand from across the Atlantic over Facebook
pictures and random emails with long narratives of where she was traveling,
hed wave back: usually sharing less about his life and asking her more
questions about hers. They both fancied themselves to be part of a
transcontinental class of exiled cosmopolitan intellectuals, no matter where
they went; that was the burden of the imagined shadow they carried. They
were not the intellectuals they had wanted to be, under the veneer of
intellectual independence; they were never really financially secure enough
to call themselves intellectuals (petit bourgeois perhaps). They were
impoverished, restless, ever-healing souls: they were perpetually looking for
a greener grass, a spiritual perfection. It may never come. They did not
believe in limits. They had a chip on their shoulder that they would never get
rid of. They were not everyones cup-of-tea.
In short, in an absurd transcontinental way, JB loves me, he enjoyed
thinking, and others who dared hang in their ephemeral company were
convinced of the same, too. He feigned foolishness, a lack of social
awareness. She loved him from the moment they shared a strangely deep
and superficially profound first conversation on a bus to an Outwards Bound
camping experience during freshman year of college. She felt comfortable to
put her head on his shoulder on the bus, pretending to sleep, within half-anhour of getting to know him.
Why? What is it about me that pulled her strings?

~ 152 ~

Since then, she would put herself as many times as possible, as close
as possible, to him, in the hope that he...
He never did: he did not find her attractive, although a lot of their
mutual guy friends did. There was only one time that he tried to kiss her:
when she needed somewhere temporary to stay in Washington DC and he
went to kiss her. By that point she was already engaged to someone who was
going to move from Germany to the United States to live with her. His halfhearted attempt to kiss JB did not work, and it probably only hurt her.
Meanwhile, she never had the courage to go for it, for him, as well. She was
a girl: girls arent supposed to go for guys. JB especially was a girl scared of
vulnerable boys, of love, despite being very courageous about other things:
like spending a summer volunteering in Rwanda, or going to work in
Afghanistan.
Things were different now for him than in the past: he now wanted her
to go for him. He was now living alone in a crammed London. He had moved
to the city a year and a half prior to this dinner: she had moved only a few
weeks before. She got into a masters program of the same university that
he was attending. Under the front that he was pursuing a doctorate program,
he knew very well that his time was running out: every moment spent alone
was a moment of social entropy. If he was not interacting with people, if he
was not putting himself on the line and displaying the courage that would
allow him to be hurt, the social part of the brain - wherever that resided was wasting away, like an unused muscle.
Because his love life was wasting-away, he needed her now more than
he needed anyone in the world, more than he ever needed her in the past or
more than he would ever need in the future. Not because he found her
attractive. He needed her beyond the physical part: he needed someone
familiar, someone he knew, someone he could trust, someone who would be
willing to correct his paperwork, a familiar face he knew amongst a crowd of
million strangers, a face that was not merely another petal on a wet, black
bough.
As he reached the bus stop (five-minutes from his home) to begin his
journey towards JB, he looked back and saw the bus approaching from
behind him. He felt relief, which soon turned into sublime anger. JBs serious
tone over the phone had impacted him, it put pressure on him to come
quickly: it had made him feel guilty. The guilt was turning into a sense of
relief that he would not need to wait too long for the bus, and thereby not
run even more late than originally intended. The relief transitioned to anger:

~ 153 ~

she had run over late by over one hour the last time they met: who was she
to judge?
Swiping his Student Oyster card, he entered the moving box of the
working-class. He spotted the first good-looking girl on the bus, and sat on a
level above hers. She was not particularly good-looking, but had a set of
breasts that she proudly put on display. From the vantage point of his seat,
he could see them very well. They would serve as a nice distraction from
Joyce and Faulkner, perhaps even finally help him make sense of their
writing.
Why was he reading Joyce and Faulkner? He was pursuing a doctorate
degree in war-studies.
Yes, hed say, almost savagely, after being asked to repeat for the
thousandth time what he was studying: War. Studies. Like, the history of war,
why people go to fight, why people go to kill each other. The doctorate
degree he was pursuing in war studies, however, was simply a veneer: he
was more interested in writing and reading literature. History was interesting
only in the sense that it was a narrative.
He looked at the architecture outside, the bridges, the lights hovering
above the River Thames as bus no. 63 continued south on Blackfriars Bridge
towards its destination. Somewhere his stop would come: hed need to get
off. Hed need to meet two strangers. They are probably males, he thought.
The youngest of three girls, JB was the type of girl that only hung out with
guys.
Regardless of whether the two strangers would be male or not, the fact
that there would be two complete strangers in her apartment destroyed his
subconscious fantasy of a potential final hook-up, a crescendo after years
and years of tension, which was stored at the back of his mind: the fantasy
that she would, after nine years, go for it, for him that night.
He looked at his copies of Joyce and his Faulkner, and at the girl, and
thought these were surely better company than whoever else he would get
to meet that night. The prospect of free food was little compensation: the
wine he no longer cared about. If the two strangers are males I will go home,
he thought. Just drop the bottle of German wine down and go home.
When JB told her husband of her decision to stay in Afghanistan for
another tour, her husband did not take it well: he packed up his stuff and
broke of all contact with her, and delivered the final blow of the twenty-first

~ 154 ~

century friendships: he un-friended her. JB now found herself alone in

London.
Maybe she invited two girls to her party tonight, for me? he thought.
The bus arrived at the station and he hurried across the busy
Blackfriars and entered the apartment complex where she lived. Though
poorly lit, it was not a bad neighborhood: just south of river Thames. He rang
the bell. He looked around: this was not where Gatsby lived. She buzzed him
in. As he walked up the stairs he heard her voice, bellowing pretend
happiness. He barked back happiness, like a dog, as he checked his phone: it
was 8:45, he was only forty-five minutes late. He wondered when he would
go home.
The two strangers were waiting inside the dining room, which stood
halfway between the kitchen and the balcony. He shook the right hand of the
first one: Sbastien, with a French accent. A male. He met the second;
nothing about him stood out, not even his name, except his gender: a male.
As he proceeded to sit down, the second person immediately offered to put
food on his plate. He kindly said that he would like to have what was being
offered, and thank-youd the person offering.
The four people kindly began the dinner conversation: strangers
attempting to make small talk. Why was he there? Why were they there? He
was not aware that they were going to be there, he was just invited to dinner
by JB, who was making her best to explain the situation.
Sbastien was going to be the next person moving in, replacing the
second person, in one-weeks time. The second person was gay: JB had
mentioned that he was gay, and that he was moving out, and that she was
meeting new tenants, and now this Sbastien, whose sexual orientation he
was not aware of, was moving in. And where along the line did he fit? Why
was he meeting those two strangers? Why did JB not simply take him to her
room?
Which wine do you want: we have red wine... rose? she said, a bit
harshly. Her question sounded like an order.
Well, I brought German white wine... he replied, taking the bottle of
wine out of his bag.

~ 155 ~

Oh wow German wine, she said parting her lips. Then she smiled.
She took the bottle of wine from his hand and promptly put it inside the
refrigerator.
Okay, I guess Ill take the rose, he said. Looking at the two brand
strangers, he continued, with a half-smile: its halfway between the red wine
that you are having and the one that I brought. They all laughed, even
Sbastien - who, as everyone later found out, had little idea of what anyone
was saying for most of the night: which explained his long, blank stares.
Later he spoke to Sebastian; the only words the Frenchman could eke out in
English was a description of the bus ride to JBs place.
A pleasant breeze came in through door that opened onto the balcony.
The weather was perfect, and the conversation good. They drank and drank
and drank. Somewhere during the night, as they ate Indian food and drank
the rose wine, a snail snuck in from the balcony onto the dining room. JB,
who was paying the least attention to the conversation, noticed the snail.
Hey Charles! she exclaimed, picking up the snail. Fancy seeing you here. She
put him back on the balcony: the snail come back again later in the night.
They knew each other: they were friends. Everyone was friendly, platonic.
He proceeded to tell a joke about a snail. One rainy evening a snail
rang the bell of a farmer at the middle of the night, and asked - kindly - to be
let into the house to escape the rain outside. The farmer, angry at being
awakened in the middle of the night, kicked the snail, and the snail flew far,
far away: almost all the way near the road at the edge of the farmers
backyard. The snail never bothered the farmer again, until one day, two
years later, the farmer heard a bell ring again in the middle of the night. He
ran downstairs, and saw the same snail. The farmer was happy to see the
snail that he hadnt seen in two years, but before he could ask the snail how
it was doing, the angry-looking snail bellowed, What the hell was that all
about?!
They all laughed. He was surprised that they all laughed because they
were all really drunk and he thought they wouldnt get it. JB had to explain
the joke to him using the French she had previously studied: the coin sunk
but sunk too late, itself adding irony and laughter to the Platonic night. The
other him had his arm her as she explained the joke. What the fuck is he
doing? Dinner ended: the food portion had stopped, but the wine and
conversation continued. Her gay housemate picked up one of the books in
the house (Gore Vidals Myra Breckinridge) and retired upstairs: he was
funny, smart, the best conversant of the four.

~ 156 ~

It was now just him and her and him. It was 11PM. They attempted to
continue the dinner conversation, but it fell flat: without the second person,
his lack of English-speaking skills were unbearable. And, worst of all, he
refused to leave: by not saying anything, sitting pleasantly with his hands on
his knees, he refused to leave. He just stared, into the wall, into their eyes,
blankly. When asked something hed try to find the right words in English,
stretching out seconds and minutes and redefining time, as if they were
approaching the speed of light on a moving train.
An hour of confused conversation and absurdly long translations
followed. It was now midnight. There was a moment when she left the room
and it was just the two of them, and one of them asked the other to leave:
somewhere in the back of his mind the fantasy still flickered. The other one,
pretending to not speak English, refused. She walked in, oblivious to the
brewing sinews of war that her womanhood and the wine had crystallized in
the mind of two young men.
Alright, he said, I gotta go. I have to teach tomorrow. He grabbed a
couple of books from the shelf inside the living room, which had no
television: just books.
Oh youre stealing these two books? she asked with a smile.
Well, your roommate said that these books belonged to someone who
lived here before and told me that I can grab them... I can return them later:
itll be our excuse to see each other again, he said, with a polite smile.
Their conversation was foreign to one of them. They both kissed her on
the cheek. He felt an uncomfortable feeling of uneasiness seeing him kiss
her on the cheek.
She parted with him. One he said au revoir to the other her and parted
with them. There was nothing wrong with the other him: he was just a kind,
sweet guy, oblivious to social interactions.
He limpidly walked to the bus station that would lead him back home
while the other he remained with her. He waited for the bus to go back, back,
back in an eternal recurrence to the bus station from where he initially
departed. He would end up at the same street, but across it, from where he
started hours earlier in the night: he was the snail.

~ 157 ~

vi. SWALLOWS NEST

February 1, morning: He woke up on yet another flaming if not florescent
Friday in 2013.
Outside London was brimming with the grey of clouds, penetrated by
sparse arrows of sunlight: a strange city refusing to be illuminated. He was a
teacher though he himself was still a PhD candidate: over two decades of
academic and experimental learning across a plethora of languages,
cultures, continents and yet there was an endless ocean of questions to ask,
countless answers to provide the fuel to ask more question.
The first thing he did was thumb at his smartphone: check his email,
facebook. The feed was a flame burning not far from him, a digital fire giving
him access to the #globalcybervillage. Overnight over a thousand of his
Facebook friends fired the furnace of the imagination burning inside the
hearts of millions of social media caffeinated, ADD, ADHD attention whores
who decided to narrate their naked lives: sometimes in the first person,
sometimes in the third. His eyes are lured to one appetizing update from two
hours prior: Molly is engaged to Leopold. And another update a few minutes
later appeared on his timeline: Molly is married to Leopold. People chime in
with exaggerated congratulations in the hope of healing wounded egos. On
the engagement update (56 likes, 27 comments), Molly left her own
comment: He asked me would I yes to say yes. On the marriage update (90
likes, 33 comments), Molly left another comment: yes I said yes I will Yes!
Mollys Jesuit, Evangelical, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Zen Buddhist, Rastafarian,
Pastafarian, Kopimistic, atheistic, and agnostic friends proceed to post in a
pedestrian succession of outbursts: Mazel Tov and Congrats and
Congratulations!!
With half of his face still on his pillow (Egyptian Cotton 800 Thread
Count) Oleg proceeded to imitate his cyber colleagues; because his heart
burns with desire to be original in infinite jest he combines two words
CongraTov! and timidly presses enter. His comment thus having been
digital printed he has left his mark on the nothing new of the World Wide
Web: and his heart is bursting with ecstasy moments later when a red dot
with the number two flashes magically on his screen. He sees that his
congratulatory note has already been liked by both Leopold and Molly. He
has joined a cyber-conversation, he has already left a social mark upon this
world: and he hasnt even had taken the time to brush his teeth yet!
#Winning 1,567,903 favs

~ 158 ~

Another update on his feed caught his non-pillowed eye: a feminazi

intentionally posted a quote by Johnson No Maam, when a woman is tired
of London, she is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. For
reasons unknown this provided him with the impetus to finally sit up on his
bed. By a long stretch this was the hardest task of the day: he was now
halfway to the fifth circle of hell that was his quotidian morning. He slipped
his feet into red-pink-and-white thin thong beach-like slippers; ENGLAND in
big white bold letters is emblazoned upon their surface. He looked to his
side, beyond his left shoulder, to the short yellow cabinet by his bed: Karl
Ove Knausgrds first volume lay in lifeless geometry. He put the Hitleriantitled masterpiece inside one of the drawers: he was eternally afraid that the
thrill of life will be gone and dissipate into Knausgrdian lines. And yet this
was exactly what his life had precisely become.
He picked up a white-and-turquoise electric toothbrush, unlocked the
white door (click-clunk), took said toothbrush to the bathroom (the room next
door), and brushed his teeth (Colgate toothpaste in the morning, Rembrandt
at night to remove the days coffee and black tea stains that accumulated on
his teeth). He splashed two eye drops in each eye, alternating between
sides, to take away the dirt and dust that his pillow donated the night before
to the laminated surface of his eyes and skin. The pink of the morning
irritation lingered around the green centre of his eyes which were neither
his mothers nor fathers colour but now he looks like he is about to cry,
too.
He picked up the white Dove soap bar, a quarter of which was infused
with moisturizing cream, and drew two thick white lines under his eyes with
it like a Special Forces soldier or defensive end. He put the bar of soap back
down; his eye lids closed the skinned curtains; and proceeded to lather his
face with his index fingers: small circles around his cheek, the forehead, the
nose, the skin above the eyes. He splash splash splashed semi-cold water
until his skin was soap-free. He picked up a small dark blue face towel and
wiped off the water from his cheeks, the nose, and the eyes. When he
reached the last step of this premeditated routine he felt a compulsion to
post his accomplishment onto the feed: he yearned for others approval,
their likes. But his Cartesian body stopped his Cartesian mind.
Retreating back into his room he placed the toothbrush on its charger
and proceeded to boil water: he mixed the blistering water with a tea spoon
and a half of soluble coffee (Nescafe Collection, Espresso, rich with crema
strength, three yellow dots out of four, 100% PURE ARABICA). As he drank his
cup of coffee his eyes caught the title of one of Jonathan Safran Foers books
lingering limpidly on his shelf; the book was a gift from an ex-girlfriend of his
here you go, this is you forced upon him. He opened up his laptop and

~ 159 ~

typed in wsj on the internet browser: and as he typed those three secular
letters the Google Chrome browser completed the selection so that he ended
up on the Wall Street Journal webpage. He read an article about TARP, which
was signed into law on October 3, 2008 following the subprime mortgage
crisis: the article noted that a few months earlier, in October 2012, the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that total disbursements would
under TARP would be a mere $431 billion.
Thats a beautiful number, he taught. Four minus three equals one.
Paulson must have written the math himself on a napkin over crepes with
Bernanke.
Distressed by the potential for inflation that such expenditures could
wreak on the economy of United States of America, his alma pater, and
fearful that the wave would somehow hit the United States of Europe, across
the pond, he closed his laptop and prayed that the meager pounds he held in
his Barclays account would maintain their strength. A quote his mother had
told him from a young age suddenly entered his mind.
Per aspera ad astra.
Though like Frankl he wished that one day he would be worthy of his
suffering, and though at times he maintained miniature delusions of
grandeur, most days he simply felt like no more plaything of circumstance:
his was a young mans heart stuck in man search for meaning. The script for
the previous evening, written by a flakey God, reinforced this point.
Evening at Jessie Bs London apartment. Oleg enters the hallway
between the living room and the door outside.
OLEG
(Whispers to Sebastian.) Do you mind leaving Jessies apartment?
SEBASTIAN
Je ne vous comprends pas, vous corne tromper! Parlez-vous franais?
OLEG
(Through gritted teeth.) Damn you! Leave! Abandon thyself!
SEBASTIAN
(Brushes Olegs hand from his arm.) Ne me touchez pas!
Jessie B. enters the living room.
JESSIE B.

~ 160 ~

(Looking at both.) There you are! (Pause, flashes a look of concern.) Is

everything fine?
OLEG
Of course. Perfectly fine.
JESSIE B.
(Speaks at Lev with a slight hesitation.) Its almost midnight. How long
do
OLEG
(Cutting into her unfinished question). Yea I gotta go. I have to teach
tomorrow.
Shattered, Oleg enters the living room and picks up This Side of
Paradise and Tender Is the Night. He dumps both books into his backpack,
alongside Ulysses and Faulkners collection of short stories. From the
corner of the room Jessie catches what he is doing.
JESSIE B.
(With a smile.) Oh youre stealing these two books?
OLEG
(Without skipping a beat.) Well, your roommate said that these books
belonged to someone who lived here before and told me that I can grab
them... I can return them later: itll be our excuse to see each other again.
With his tail between his legs he says au revoir to Sebastian and goodbye to Jessie and goes outside to grab bus number 63 back home.
-

END SCENE. APPLAUSE. 6 MILLION FAVS

The following morning Oleg tried to block out the failure of his weak
courtship attempt by remembering old loves. The first one that sprung to his
mind was Natalia, a very pretty Ukrainian girl he met a few years earlier in
Boston and had stayed in touch with. In late 2011, before officially beginning
his PhD, he flew to visit her in Ukraine. They danced by train south from Kiev
to Crimea and arrived at the main train station in Simferopol; from there they
hitched a ride with a family of tourists to Foros, the southernmost tip of
Crimea; after staying at Foros for two nights they travelled east to Gaspra, a
small spa town where they saw Swallows Nest, a beautiful decorative castle
perched on a cliff overlooking the Black Sea; posters around the structure
spoke of a Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series that was slated to be held in the
near future. From the castle they bus hopped to a beach on Yalta, and after

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swimming in the cold water of the Black Sea he rested his wet head on her
stomach and placed warm pebbles on her silent stomach.
As he remembered Natalia he jotted down in a light green notebook
moments from that trip. Certain elements of their visit to Yalta the statue of
Lenin standing in front of a McDonalds, their visit to Livadia Palace and Park
Museum where Roosevelt and the American delegation stayed in 2015 did
not make the storys cut. He focused on something else: their inspired
moment together, the absurd tranquility of her silence, the unmuting of the
moment by a man selling ice cream on the beach.
Then his heart took a different turn and he suddenly remembered
Alice. She was a redhead girl whom he dated years earlier while he was still
attending a university in Boston. Alice dumped him and proceeded to never
speak to him again. He was at first heartbroken, a soul drowning in invisible
tears, but in time her cruelty had transformed his sorrow into fury. Alice is a
bitch, his father told him after the relationship ended.
He remembered a quote about how authors and artists should save the
violence in their heart for their art, for their literary works. In his green
notebook he drew an outline of an abstract short story where it was
impossible to know whether a young Alice was killed or not by an apparition:
but it allowed him to release violence without hurting anyone. He wished
that the whole universe would exist in writing; then we could satisfy our need
for violence and no one would get hurt.
An alarm he had set on his phone drew him back into the present
moment. He remembered that he was going to have to teach at Kings
College London in four hours. He was unconcerned about the subject matter
that he was going to teach: it was part of his life. But there was something
else he wanted to do beforehand; and so he quickly dressed up and threw a
number of books into his backpack, all of which had titles derived from old
poems: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, A Farewell to Arms. He
walked from Kings Cross, south down Grays Inn Road, took a right onto High
Holborn, a left onto Chancery Lane, and then another left into the majestic
Maughan Library where according to unfounded myths Harry Potter and The
Da Vinci Code were filmed. He returned the books and checked out four
classic novels whose titles were borrowed, not stolen, from ancient Arabic,
English, Greek, and Hebrew literary works respectively: A Sport and A
Pastime, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and The Sun Also Rises.
He spent the next few hours reading: he studied the syntax of each
work, the plot, the characters, the way the dialogues were structures, but
above all the style, which he believed encapsulated the entire work itself.
Reading Hemingway he noticed how his words were the like the footsteps of

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soldiers, and repetitive conjoining of sentences with and; Salter had a similar
simplicity: the sparseness of words made each word more powerful, the
things that were not said were just as important as the things that were said.
In Faulkners Sound he noticed how each chapter was broken into a different
period in time, and a different point of view, and how it all came together in
the end; As I Lay Dying was similar in this respect. In contrast to Joyce and
McCarthy, in all four books the characters dialogue was in quotation marks.
But he noticed something curious about Hemingways dialogues, and
something that he felt was key to the strength of his dialogues. In nondialogue writing Hemingway wrote cannot, and did not, and will not: a very
journalistic style. But in Hemingways dialogues the protagonists and the
narrator himself were quoted as saying cant, didnt, and wont. The contrast
in the presentation of movement and dialogue imparted the illusion that the
dialogues were natural; at least that was the impression Oleg got.
As he read As I Lay Dying, Oleg tried to imagine what Faulkner had
been like as a person, and how he would write in the modern day. He
imagined Faulkner as being immensely confident in himself, almost cocky,
funny: Oleg sketched in a light green notebook a short story of a Faulknertype character who enjoyed immense success on Twitter for his aphoristic
writing. It was merely a sketch, but he hoped to one day turn it into a short
story.
After two hours of reverie, in which like Stephen Dedalus he had
become acquainted with nobility, he left Maughan Library and walked to the
Strand. On the intersection between Fleet Street and Chancery Lane he saw
a father, mother, and child: they were tourists, from central Europe perhaps,
and they looked cheerful. Tears lumped together into a salty ball that
remained stuck in his throat: he has not spoken to his own poor parents in a
week. He felt bad about it, but his relationship with them often felt
unbearable: even a pond away they still fell too close, as if they were tugging
at the neck opening of his t-shirt: and yet his heart drew another conclusion:
that the saddest scenario would be if they the people who he thought hurt
him so much had never existed in the first place. Nothing would be more
painful than if the people who had the power to hurt us turned out to be
mere apparitions.
Familia supra omnia.
He thought of the Fifth Commandment and chuckled at how obvious
and human and beautiful it was that the Bible was written by humans and
not God! He found it absurd that humans would create God in their image to
justify commonsense behavior.

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He arrived at the classroom that he was supposed to teach just on

time. His eyes were teary; but he was able to hide them by looking down and
jotting down on the back of a receipt in his wallet: TEMPORARY PARENTS,
GREEN NOTEBOOK. He did not know what it meant but he trusted that he
would sort it out in time.
This week the seminar that he taught, Causes of War, was looking at
ethnic and religious conflicts. His students were drawn from all over the
world: primarily from China and the Arabian Peninsula (a number of
precocious royalties from the Al-Khalifa, Al-Thani, and Al-Saud families are
supposed to be there but do not bellow their name during roll-call); a
minority from the UK (Scotland, Wales); but the majority was from countries
in the Asia-Pacific, the Far East. At some point the topic reached the ArabIsraeli dispute, and the conversation got heated. Camps formed out of thin
air. Tents for the different sides were pitched as if they were on a
spontaneous political camping trip. The biggest argument concerned the
separation barrier in the West Bank: a liberal Taiwanese student called it a
wall. Another student, from the UK, pointed out that almost the entire barrier
was really just a fence. Security versus liberty. Was Israel the only beacon of
hope and democracy in the region? Or was Israel merely an apartheid state?
Though his students are only eighteen or nineteen they all have a
fucking opinion about everything. While Oleg had his own opinion, he did not
allow himself to express it in his role at teacher. But as the students spoke he
was lost in his own thoughts: he recalled watching the signing of the Oslo
Peace Accords live on television as a child in Herzliya, Israel in an elementary
school for the arts called A. D. Gordon; he remembered a morning two years
later, in 1995 when his father had told him, right before he went to school,
that Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister, was assassinated by someone at a
peace rally; and he remembered that in the ensuing confusion it turned out
that Yigal Amir, the murderer, lived less than fifteen minutes away from their
home. He remembered that the day Rabin was assassinated, as he walked to
school he saw his teacher, Mikhal, a young woman with a black ponytail who
was known for being a supporter of the left-wing political party Avoda, crying
near a tree away from everybody; she was covering her eyes with her hand,
hiding her tears; but even at the age of nine he could tell that she was
crying. He did not know it back then, but the killing of one person meant the
killing of hope; not only Rabin but the entire peace process was dead. It was
the start of bloodshed that contributed to his parents decision to embark on
a second migration.
When he returned to his third floor apartment in Kings Cross that night
he thought again about the mid-1990s. He tried to turn the memory of
madness of that decade into light. In his mind he made up a piece of fiction:

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a story about a boy that has no friends at school; the only friend he is able to
make is someone from the other side; and once they become friends they
are separated by history, by fate, by arbitrary political lines in the sand: by
lines that leave nothing for anyone. Although it was fiction, the story felt real
in his mind, so compelling that he began to cry. He lay on his bed, still in his
shoes, crying: for an hour, maybe more, the image of the fictional story
lingering in his mind.
He finally got up. He took off his shoes; then went to the bathroom
adjacent to his room to brush, floss, and mouthwash his teeth. As his
Cartesian body went through his evening routine his Cartesian mind thought
about how different the last few years of the 1990s were for him. He moved
from Israel to Westborough, Massachusetts in 1998, during the Monica
Lewinsky scandal. He remembered trying to fit in amongst the students of a
quiet, upper-middle-class suburban American community; he changed the
clothes he wore quicker than he could adapt his cultural DNA, and he quickly
got into a number of fights. In the eighth grade he broke the eye glasses of a
kid named Ryan Uhlman, who hacked into his yahoo email account; he was
roundly suspended for this mild rebellion, and he subsequently spent an
entire day composing an apology letter to Ryan. It was something that had
never been done before in Westborough Middle School; the whole school was
abuzz. Sometime after that Tom Dolan, the most popular kid in their grade
who would later become their class president, came to his cafeteria table
and asked if he wanted to join him and Brendan Moss and the cool table
filled with blond girls. Oleg looked around his own table, full of immigrants
and rejects, and for some reason said no. Years later he wondered about that
moment and kicked himself in the foot for his own folly: a minority of the kids
at their table remained his life-long friends, but maybe he could have
brought them to the popular table; those he had felt guilty about abandoning
at the time disappeared from his life. He not only regretted saying no; he was
so embarrassed by the moment that to this day he never brought it up. In his
mind someone else had made that mistake.
In his room now he opened up the drawer near his bed and took out a
turquoise copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: and started
rereading it as he felt asleep after a long but inspired day: His unrest issued
from him like a wave of sound Then a noise like dwarf artillery
*

February 1, evening. Yesterday I sent a letter to Karl and told him that
today Monday I plan to take the day off. Karl and Alec have started to
come into our Merrifield office more regularly and I cant edit my novel in
front of them. Ive had enough of their presence: an assault upon my inner

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dreams to publish my parvus magnus opus: the years since Ive started
writing in earnest have faded like leafs on a daily calendar: 2013, 2014,
2015, and the first month of 2016 have all vanished into the imbibing abyss
of dark matter.
Auribus teneo lupum.
To be frank I was frightened to my metaphysical core when my email
travelled at the speed of light through the cyber-ether to Karl. I told him last
nght that I was feeling under the weather and would therefore take PTO
paid time off tomorrow. This morning, on Monday, he responded, Feel
better!
The fool.
I took the day off because I knew that this would be the last day I had
to edit what it is I needed to edit. The outlines for my fiery literary outputs I
originally devised on three thin notebooks: a light green notebook (for short
stories), a light blue one (novels, novellas), and peach orange one (for poems
and pomes penyeach). I bought all three notes for about one pound each at
Rymans Stationary on 19-20 High Holborn in London by Chancery Lane
station in early 2013. (All of 2012, the first year of my PhD, was devoted to
research, literature reviews, and the like.) Much of the meat around the
skeleton of each story and novella I thumb-typed on the Notes application on
my phone, first on my Android and later on my iPhone: and I wrote the text
itself - fragments of stories, the first sentences, the last, paragraphs,
sentences, poems- whenever I had free time: on Londons red busses; on the
T in Boston and the Tube in London and the Metro in New York and the DMV;
in the attic of my old home, in a bohemian room in Williamsburg and a
squalid room by Russell Square: street poetry in action.
It was unintentional. But, he was hoping that in writing on trains and
buses and the road his hands, which were furiously thumb-typing notes and
poems, picked up the truth of the human soul from the ground up: to him
the idea that great writing was about the battle of the heart against itself
was not just a pretty poetic sentiment. He had seen it in the eyes of
countless men and women across all backgrounds: the people he had to
battle with, the people he loved and did not love him back, the people that
loved him and he did not love back, the friends and the bureaucrats, the lazy
and those who worked harder than he did, the beautiful and the ugly, the
sentimental and the cold, the superficial and the real, the present and the
forgotten: it was all relative. He knew in his heart all the people he knew
existed on this earth the good and the bad, the moral and the immoral and
the amoral, the theists and the nihilists and the existentialists, the pious and
the pedophile priests, the politicians and the pundits, the philosophers and
the ignorant had free will but it wasnt about that: they all bore the burden

~ 166 ~

of their fate, a fate of which he was afraid to admit lest he be eternally

damned to hell, was not of their choosing: and they were all connected by
the fact that they were all part of the human experience. There really was no
good or evil: and he did not care that society needed religion to be civilized,
and he did not care that militant atheists like Richard Dawkins thought that
society did not need religion to be civilized: all he cared about was the
person, the individual: and above all the heart, which, being neither
pessimistic nor optimistic, kept beating. It did not pause to reflect like the
mind; it did not hate itself; it did not hate others. It just kept the body it was
responsible for alive. For no particular reason: kept it alive just for the
fucking fun of it.
In mid-July 2015 I finally received my doctorate and started working.
But the work hasnt been as interesting as Id hoped be: and getting a
clearance with a foreign-sounding name like mine has been a beeyatch. A
few months ago I found an old book about a select group of Nobel Prize
Winners; the book started with an entry about TS Eliot, whose poems I had
read in London during my free-time. Reading his poetry inspired me to write
primitive poetry of my own; some of my poems alluded to the Kennedy clan
(I was reading An Unfinished Life at the time).
Kennedy the Nightingale King
Above the brutal savageness of the lions pawed teeth
The passerine voice of an abandoned nightingale perched freely
Atop a bough in the midst of a tragic animal kingdom
Had (in the poetic space between mans ears)
Come to reign supreme;
Under shared skies so too through tactic whispers
And the tactical pulling of political string behind curtained scenes
A frail, cynical Joseph Kennedy had arranged for
His second son to win the Pulitzer and the Presidency
While in convalescence, favorable vicissitude, and infidel
JFK was focused on fishing in the Cape and finishing
The last scoop of his favorite ice-cream.
I wanted and during my free time at work started to write a long
poem called Homeys Odyssey: it was going to be similar to Homers poetry
but was going to describe the journey of a famous rapper: and the poetry
was going to transcribe rappers rhymes into actual poetic lines. But my
poetic efforts didnt yield much. I couldnt focus. I dont think I have ADD, or
ADHD. Maybe I do, maybe I dont. What was I just talking about? Ive just

~ 167 ~

lived in too many places, got into too many fights, spoke in too many
languages, to have the stability of mind necessary to walk from point A to
point B in a straight line. If I ever got a chance to walk the route of the
hypotenuse in a right-angle without any obstructions in front me I know that
Id still wobble, Id still walk backwards, Id still trip over myself. Thats the
burden I have to bear: thats my fate. And, Id venture to go further: that is
the psychological burden that my caffeinated generation the Skipped
Generation has to bear: we arent crazy, just broken.
And so we all must beat on: boats against the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past. I cant go on. Ill go on. I will try again, I will fail
better. I will execute on a dream written in green and blue and peach orange
notebooks: Ill find a way try to turn my diverse and disparate notes into one
goddamn novel.
With this plan in heart, he begins to write what it was he was meant to
write all along: and as he nears the ending of his novel he is simultaneously
finishing a book that someone else was writing: and as he is reading his
ending it doesnt make sense because it just goes right back to the start:
April Twelfth, 1999
JUSTIN
WHERE you sit is where you stand.
I heard my American history teacher say that last week
London 2013
Boston 2014
New York 2015
Fairfax 2016
- Sent from my iPhone

~ 168 ~