The promising cool of the new airport vanished at once and a familiar slap on the face by the July heat greeted me — I was back home. Drowsily, I dragged the two suitcases forward. Once again the world was yellow and enormous. Once again, I was under the surveillance of the sun looking for shade.
A long sleep in the beautiful, green, seasonless California dissolved into familiar dry air that smelled of mixed spices and burnt straw — yellow mixed with black — the color of my mother’s eyes.
sixteen years later standing at the threshold of her new house.It was not quite noon and the smells of her forgotten slow cooking filled the air. I heard the sounds of utensils slamming into a sink, lids clicking onto pots and pans — a bubble of busy movement in a slow motion melted universe. I suddenly remembered the ants in our back yard, more than thirty years ago, carrying straw into their hole — oblivious to the blinding light, to the cracked soil, to the pervasive threat of fire.
The direct light of the sun consumed her garden colors. A monochromatic garden as if pulled from an old black and white photo — a hint of fading flowers, bare trees, and a bush with thorns for flowers.
Coming to the gate, the path and then the door of a house I had never seen, I noticed that she had moved the old green mailbox to this house and the old lion door knocker with a weight chain in its mouth. It was attached to the door, right below the eyehole, only now I didn’t have to tiptoe to reach it. The lion had lost its fierceness as if shrunk by the heat and had gotten shinier with repeated touch.
“How many people have knocked on the door since I left? How much has she aged? What has the sun done to her face — to her yellow-black eyes?” The smell of her turmeric-mint chicken churned my stomach. In panic I thought, “What will she see when she looks at my face?” As I held the lion chain I reminded myself –“Its just a visit” — and I knocked.
My mother dried her wet hands on the sides of her apron and ran back to the stove while yelling, “Hang on a second, the knish is getting burned…” A painting I made in fourth grade hung on the wall in front of me. In it, David is playing the harp to cool Saul’s mood, the scene mostly all blue with a striking red harp.
She returned looking shorter, wrinkled and gaunt — her eyes still yellow-black though sagging at the corners. She held the same orange towel she used to slap me with and said, “Come in… you must be hungry… I made you your favorite foods… come…” she said rushing back to her kitchen.
The table was set for one person. “Sit… sit, …” she urged me while describing some of the dishes she prepared. “Its not going to taste as good as you remember them… its not the same produce as its used to be… I wasn’t sure exactly when you’d arrive… and you know my eyes are not what they used to be.”
We did not hug.
The next day, I set by my dad’s grave and looked at the long rows, boxes filled with soil, covered with Rosemary plants. My dad’ grave revealed brown bald spots at the middle. All the graves were connected by an irrigation system that dripped water three times a day. The head stones were like pillows puffed up on empty beds — as in a vacant hospital.
On the white marble the names of the dead, their parents’ names, their birthplace and age — were all engraved in mustard yellow paint. On the bottom left was a description of the cause of death. There were three different variations: “Died in a battle,” “Died while on duty,” and the last and least used one, the one engraved on my dad’s head stone, “Deceased at the time of service.” I wrestled with the memory of his funeral, pushing it away, even as the images flooded into the moment obliterating the last 36 years.
…I could see the line of soldiers standing in front of us aiming their guns to the sky. Three shots, deafening silence, and then a hollow echo. The rabbi howled the Kaddish to the sky; his eyes closed, his beard trembling. “Yithgadal veyishtabch sheme raba dekudsha…” I looked down into the hole my dad was going to go into — my pants warm and wet — my vision blurry. My mom screamed at the coffin “Why did you leave me alone with the three of them?” as if in a middle of a fight with him — furious. The pee dripped through my pants and filled up my shoes. Two people with shovels threw dirt onto the coffin covered with the Israeli flag. She looked at them and yelled: ”You’ll have to cover me too”, and then collapsed onto me…
“I gave him your name, daddy” I said looking around to see if anyone was looking. I was cleaning the marble like her — pulling all the pine needles from inside the carved letters. I paid extra attention to his name as if it was his eyes I was cleaning. I poured fresh water on the hot marble watching how quickly it evaporated, then ran my fingers through the rosemary plants and whispered, “I am ready to know — I am not angry anymore”.
The next day at my mother’s house “I am glad today is not as hot as yesterday; it will give you some time to adjust”. She said while filling the plate with rice.
“Dad never ate in the middle of a hot day,” I suddenly said, “He would wait until sunset and then sit in the garden and eat. I went to see him yesterday. Remember the rosemary plants? They still don’t cover the whole place…maybe they need more water”
“ What is all this nonsense,” she interrupted, “it’s not so hot today… I do have fresh cold fruit if you want”
On the mountain of ivory white rice she poured her bright yellow chicken with the green minty spots. I could feel the same revulsion as when I was first forced to eat it. I was maybe five—yet, the sweet thick aroma prompted a powerful hunger. “Eat, before it gets cold,” she said.
I laughed, for the first time, and said, “Cold? Does anything get cold here?”
She brought the cucumber salad looking scolded, poured it into a side dish next to me, and said “Don’t act like an American, it is not so hot here”.
Elliptical drops of water accumulated on the cucumber slices.
“Even the cucumbers sweat” I said knowing she did not hear me. Instead she came back with a hot tray held by a damp towel. I could see blue veins peeking out of her thin skin, blemishes I had never seen before, and a slight tremor in her movements.
A strong whiff of the baked knishes overtook the smell of the chicken. “It almost burned,” she said. “I saved it at the last moment thanks God”.
My uncle Lion sitting in my rented car turned his face all of sudden towards to me and I looked deep into his eyes. Into the one eye that sees mostly shadows and into the other that sees nothing. They were still as kind as they were forty years ago. The hair that was left on his head was white and the lines in his face deeper. No one here escapes the harsh sun. In him, I could still see the young uncle Leon, slim and handsome with his everlasting mysterious smile ready for a new adventure. I asked my uncle without turning my gaze if he had killed himself.
Taking time to evaluate his response he said slowly, “You did not forget where you come from, still direct like a good Israeli… But, this question is not for now,” he said decisively.
“But it will be later,” I mumbled like a reprimanded child. “Uncle Leon, I came all the way to find out why he did it. I have the right”. His eyes seemed to make an effort to look at me. I smiled.
“What do you want to know?” He said stressing the “you” in his low voice.
“Everything” I said impatiently, back to being a little girl. “I am older than my dad, Leon, I had my child at the same age he…”
“How would I know what went on in his head…? No one can really know,” he said almost to himself, as his eyes became covered with an extra layer of gray film. Leon was sitting by my side in the little Renault I had rented at the airport. I wanted to tell him how much I would rather be in his big Vauxhall, watch him shift the gears as if playing on a delicate instrument. How I missed listening to the engine’s music, smelling the mixture of leather and gas while he would bring the car to a halt soft as an ice cream cone melting in the mouth.
The loud air-conditioner deepened the silence and intensified the rubber plastic smell in the little boxy Renault. He looked out the window, and I wondered how much he was able to see, and whether he noticed my irritable driving. For a moment, I tried to hold the balky steering wheel like he used to hold the ivory thin wheel, making soft turns while, ever so gently, turning the blinker lever with his index finger.
“Leon,” I asked, “do you miss the Vauxhall?”
He was rubbing his two big hands swollen by heat and probably salty diet. His wedding ring was buried at the bottom of his finger. I missed the turn. It was a new road built only a few years ago, connecting west to east Jerusalem. He finally said, “It was time for it to go — I had it almost twenty five years.”
“But Leon, do you miss it?” I said irritably like a child, wondering if he noticed that I had missed the exit.
“And what good would it do?” he mumbled. Then, in a clearer voice, said matter of factly, “You have to make a U turn soon.”
I did not make a U turn. I turned the air conditioner off and drove straight, relaxing into my seat and into the heat. More of the same new neighborhoods stretched out in front of us. The same gray apartment buildings, new struggling trees, and shopping centers punctuated the landscape.
His fists opened onto his knees, his gaze turned to the windshield and his watch — still the same watch he had had back then — still turned onto his inner wrist. He said, “I will never be able to tell you what really happened, because I don’t know what happened.” And after a long pause he said firmly. “But I will tell you what I know”. For a minute I felt like stopping him and saying: “Its ok Leon, I don’t need to know now… maybe later…”
“Your father was a strong man.” He persisted.
“No, Leon,” I interrupted, “I want the truth, no stories today only what really happened”.
He ignored me and continued, “He was also a very humble man, I only know a handful of really humble people, and your dad was one of them.”
“I know. It’s what my mom used to call weak, passive and boring. You have got to tell me, was it her he was escaping? Or was it us he could not manage anymore?”
He looked straight ahead paying no heed to my comment and went on: “He did not need much. He never wanted to join me on my trips but he loved listening to my stories. He found more meaning listening to my adventures than I did experiencing them.”
I could see the sweat running through his sideburns dripping onto his arms. He did not bother to wipe it. I stopped the car in the middle of an Arab village whose name I could not remember. There were small houses spread on the hill, a few olive trees, a couple of sheep tied to a pole, political graffiti on the walls, and colorful laundry hanging on long ropes connecting one roof to another.
“He was searching for something… always curious… always interested. I miss him.” he said and chuckled.
“And then what?” I said hastily.
“And then he stopped searching. All they told us later was that on June 20th in the afternoon he sat in a locked room, on the border of Jordan, and cleaned his gun. A bullet from his gun went through his head and he died a few minutes later. No letter, no note, no clues of what actually happened. This is all I can tell you because this is all I know.”
“Leon, I have a only few more days left and I am still not sure what happened … what I should tell him…”
“Now, you know what I know and now you can tell your son what you know. Perhaps it will be different from what I know.”
Saying goodbuy I hugged my mother for a long time — smell of her cooking ascended from her clothes, her wet apron, her hair — she seemed so small. “Tell him I never loved anyone like him. Tell him he is the sun of my life… tell him…” She said as she broke our embrace. “And next time bring him with you…” she said with an old critical tone that provoked habitual wish to justify. “I’ll make him the dates and nuts cookies you liked… tell him, don’t forget to tell him, o.k?”