The Sea Cloak Read online

  ‘Where were you before?’

  ‘France.’

  ‘Ah! I bet the flowers there are wonderful.’

  ‘They certainly are,’ the young man chuckles, then finally straightens up. ‘Erm... I’d like some flowers for my mother, for Mother’s Day.’

  ‘Lilies are the flower for this occasion,’ says the shop assistant. ‘White ones, as you can see.’

  ‘You’re the expert.’

  The man with the dimple laughs: ‘A cup of coffee and a bouquet of white lilies – the perfect present!’

  ‘And a croissant!’ the young man adds in his thick french accent.

  The two young men exchange money and shake hands, smiling, and for a moment all the differences between them disappear.

  Gaza Beach

  It is nearing midnight when the man with a dimple in his left cheek arrives at his home in al-Shatea Camp – a bouquet of white lilies in his hand. The smell of the sea lingers in the sandy streets, where houses crowd together either side of alleyways too narrow for even a donkey cart to pass through. These are simple houses, made from sheets of corrugated asbestos, echoing with the sound of the seagulls splashing in the sea. Just as he arrives, the door of the house opposite opens and his neighbour steps out, smiling broadly: ‘Ali, there you are. I have great news! I have a daughter.’

  Through sleepy eyes, Ali gives the man an affectionate look. ‘So, you’re a father now?’ He grasps him by the palm and gives him the bouquet of white lilies. ‘Have you thought about the name Zahra?’ Ali asks.

  ‘Zahra it is!’ The new father replies, making the orphaned seventeen-year-old very happy.

  21 March 20081

  Gaza City

  Without taking her eyes off the sky, she plaits her thick hair into two braids, then sits back at a desk by an open window, trying to focus on her homework. The house is quiet except for a persistent buzzing noise. Her mother is at work and her father sits at the table preparing for the afternoon shift; the classes at school are divided into shifts as well. Zahra is getting restless as she sits cross-legged on her chair.

  ‘Baba, the sound of the mosquito is hurting my ears,’ she shouts into the next room. ‘How can something so small fill the whole house with its racket?’ Her father smiles to himself and goes in to give her a hug.

  ‘My naughty one. You’re just looking for an excuse for me to do your homework for you.’

  ‘I’m not, Baba. It’s annoying!’

  ‘How about we close all the windows,’ he suggests, then watches as she jumps up off her chair, picks it up, and carries it to the each window in turn. One by one, she slams the windows shut, clambering onto her chair to reach them.

  ‘That’s better isn’t it?’ he says when she returns.

  ‘Baba, the girls at school were talking about a big mosquito that launches rockets from the sky.’

  ‘No, no, sweetheart,’ he replies. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  The girl inspects her father’s face, ‘Then tell me, what is that noise?’

  ‘It’s a mosquito, but it doesn’t launch any rockets. You can be sure of that... The sky only sends us rain and flowers, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Baba. And the insects help the flowers grow as well, don’t they? My teacher told us about them; she had a special word for them: “drones”. They’re not really mosquitos at all; they’re much bigger – like airplanes but with no pilot. They spray pesticides from the sky. I want to be a drone operator when I grow up. I want to spray the fields so the flowers and trees can grow quickly. Imagine seeing all those green spaces on my computer screen! ‘Buzzzz, buzzzz – look Baba, I’m a mosquito.’

  Her father laughs as she runs around the room flapping her arms, but a darkness sits behind his eyes.

  ‘Can I be a drone operator when I’m older, Baba?’

  ‘Maybe, my little Buzzer,’ he says.

  ‘Then I will spray that mosquito with my drone and he’ll stop bothering us!’

  He smiles: ‘But that mosquito you hear will be way up high, like your drone!’

  The girl is confused now: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

  He gives his daughter a kiss. ‘What I do know is: first you must finish your homework. Come on, habeebti, we have to go soon.’

  Throwing her bag over her shoulders, the girl heads out onto the street with her father; there they part ways, the girl running and skipping all the way to school – al-Shatea Camp Primary School. She arrives early and kills time in front of the gates by singing to herself, leaning against the school’s high wall. She has to wait for the children from the ‘morning school’ to file out, before she can go in as part of the ‘afternoon school’.2 The morning school is crowded with refugee students. The sound of their voices floods into the street, passing through classroom windows and carrying all the way to the gates and beyond, reminding passers-by that they too once sat in hot, crowded classrooms, playing the same games, screaming the same screams. Then suddenly the playground fills with children: skinny girls in striped uniforms with white ribbons in their braided hair; boys in blue shirts and jeans, kicking footballs or fighting, stuffing their faces with all varieties of snack – sweet, salt and sour – waiting for the gates to open.

  Ali is running down the street as fast as he can. He has just finished his shift; these days he works as a florist in Gaza, and has his own shop – ‘The Love Ambassador’ – on al-Wehda Street. He heads north in the direction of Shifa Hospital, then turns west towards al-Wehda Tower. He needs to get there before Zahra starts class. She’s like a daughter to him. He carries a white lily with him as he runs, and is almost there.

  Tel Aviv

  A thirty-year-old man with delicate features is driving his car down Dizengoff Street. He’s listening to the Voice of Israel on the radio. Today it’s broadcasting the words of Mahmoud Darwish, as interpreted by the famous Lebanese singer Majida El Roumi. It’s been nearly two years now since the July War rocked her country.

  He recognises snatches of the original poem:

  I dreamt of white lilies, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn in a lemon tree.

  – And what did you see?

  – I saw what I did: a blood-red boxthorn.

  I blasted them in the sand… in their chests… in their bellies.

  The words draw him in, and he turns the radio up.

  Homeland for him, he said, is to drink my mother’s coffee, to return safely, at nightfall.

  More scattered verses, he drives faster:

  I love it with my gun...

  ...that doves might flock through the Ministry of War...

  ...that doves might flock...3

  His car pulls up outside the military base known as Matcal Tower in the HaKirya quarter. As he reports for duty, unlikely memories from many years ago intertwine with his thoughts. It must be the song, he thinks.

  Throwing open the door to his office, he plonks himself down in front of the large screen showing a live, black and white aerial view of a man walking through crowded streets. He puts a communications headset on and wraps his right hand around the joystick. He communicates with a colleague in Hebrew with a strong French accent.

  ‘So? What’s up?’

  ‘Your orders are to follow the subject. He’s heading west through al-Shatea Camp. He should be right in front of you.’ And so, another day in the office begins: he watches his target, like a character in a computer game.

  On the screen, the man can be seen approaching al-Shatea Camp School as he receives a phone call.

  ‘The lilies have blossomed, Ali. It’s time.’

  The operator with the French accent touches a button on his headset: ‘Possibly a coded message.’

  ‘Neutralise the target. There’s no room for error,’ comes the reply.

  The operator pauses for a moment, the light from the screen flickering across his face. The city is like a map unrolling between his delicate fingers, street after street scrolling towards him. He centres on his target and zooms
in, until the colours of the target’s clothes, the way he walks, even the flip-flops on his feet can be seen clearly. Then he stops; the man is carrying something in his left hand: it looks like a flower, a lily perhaps. The image of an Arab teenager with a deep dimple in his left cheek glimmers in his mind. ‘That was years ago,’ he thinks out loud. ‘Why am I thinking of that?’

  The operator’s eyes scan the screen closely, as if hoping to take in every movement, pixel by pixel. From this elevation, the children gathering outside the school gates look like bees swarming around a hive, the man with the flower like some kind of victim being swallowed up by it. The drone’s buzzing seems to irritate some of the children: a girl leaning against the school wall covers her ears as she crouches. The man with the flower and the dimple walks towards her. The operator feels his hands growing clammy; his fingers lose their grip on the joystick. He adjusts his grip and tries to focus. The clearer the operator sees his target, the more he hesitates. Children are zigzagging around the target. The operator touches his headset again: ‘The target is surrounded by multiple civilians. Please advise?’

  ‘Take down the target. That’s an order. Use what caution you can, but follow the order.’ The operator’s eyes sting with salt.

  Zahra spots Ali’s face approaching among the children. She turns towards him and peels herself off the school wall. He smiles and waves the white lily, the dimple in his left cheek sinking deeper than ever. For a moment, she forgets the buzzing and the humming and the chaos, and is comforted by the fact that Uncle Ali has come to see her. He calls out to her: ‘Zahra, it’s your flower! For Mother’s Day!’

  The man with the French accent lifts his thumb to the button at the top of the joystick, caressing it for a moment. Suddenly the target is clear, the children surrounding the man with the flower have dispersed. He doesn’t hesitate; the figure on the screen drops to the pavement.

  It all happens in a split second. Zahra is blown backwards by a blast of hot air. Her first thought is that she’s been hit by a motorbike. For a moment she can see only smoke. Then, as she gets to her feet, she realises these aren’t exhaust fumes. As the smoke clears white petals appear scattered across the pavement. And in between all the white, patches of red. Not flat spots of it, but pieces. Clumps. Threads and stems of red. The humming above her fades. She looks up at the sky. Birds quietly scatter. Something about their silence makes her stiffen like plaster. She can’t feel her feet.

  The operator takes his thumb off the button. He isn’t sweating anymore, and his eyes no longer sting. As he directs the drone north, he gets out his mobile phone with his left hand, and starts to look at possible destinations for his upcoming holiday. Tuscany is meant to be beautiful. He’s never been there before.

  Notes

  1. In 1997, Gaza was occupied by Israeli forces, and there was less of a distinct, hard border between Gaza and the rest of Israel, as both were regarded by the occupiers as one and the same territory; so movement by Gazan Palestinians in and out of Gaza was possible (e.g. commuting to work in Tel Aviv). Following the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, or ‘Hitnatkut’, in 2005, the hard border between the two territories returned and has remained impenetrable to anyone without a permit to cross through the Erez border. Thus in 2008, commuting from Gaza to Tel Aviv would have been impossible.

  2. Due to lack of resources and space, different schools in Gaza often occupy the same building; dividing their use of the building into morning and afternoon slots.

  3. Lines from the poem ‘A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies’ by Mahmoud Darwish (1967), published in English in Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (University of California Press, 2003). Translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché.

  Our Milk

  King David Hotel, Jerusalem

  22 July 1946

  They march in single file, dressed in white kitchen uniforms, their sandals dragging under the weight of their churns. A precious cargo: fresh, foamy milk for the hotel’s guests. As they set them down, each face seems to betray a different breed of expression to those borne by the frenetic morning cooks. They are surly, somehow, and lacking the air of gentility that hangs over the hotel’s own staff. The clatter of spoons and saucers fills the basement kitchen: the ovens are already roaring with heat, the aroma of fresh bread filling the air with the excitement of morning.

  Birds swoop past the high windows heading up to where their song will stir the sleepers floors above, rouse them to the smell of incense that lines the hotel’s corridors, and the peeling of the Dormicon Church bells half a mile away. The Al Aqsa’s call to prayer mingles with the Christian bells and the organ music of the other churches in an existential harmony that soon has everyone out of bed and preparing for the day ahead.

  A British soldier leaves his superior’s room, muttering to himself as he climbs the hotel’s stairs. He is angry, his words barely coherent. ‘How could they? Would they really attempt this?’

  Seated at a table in the ground-floor restaurant, a woman smiles, lost in thought. With her blonde hair, cherry lipstick and white dress, she looks almost like a movie star, waiting for the glass of fresh milk that has become her morning custom. Her mother-tongue is English, but she knows enough Arabic words to ingratiate herself with the staff.

  Surrounded by all the finery of the restaurant, which calls itself ‘La Regence’, her second morning ritual is to lose herself in the Assyrian tapestry hanging on the wall. In the foreground, in front of the great Phoenician wall that stands as a horizon, she sees all the achievements of the ancients: the wisdom of Greece, the arrogance of Rome, the resplendent beauty of Egypt: a pharaonic barge gliding down a river that meanders between one pink limestone column and another, columns that hold the tapestry taut, as if spooling it impossibly slowly. A cedar tree coils around a lofty column at the edge of the tapestry, lifting the English woman’s thoughts with its branches, drawing them upwards, spiralling to a kind of ecstasy that she has discovered too late in life.

  The tapestry’s vision of the ancient world transports the restaurant’s clientele back to a time when theories about how we should live our lives were still contended, still being formulated, when empires could choose what gods to serve, but not be defined by them. When things weren’t yet fixed.

  ‘Where’s my milk?’ the blonde woman asks one of the staff, in Arabic, annoyed by the delay.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ma’am. It’s on its way – that fresh cream you British love so much.’ The waiter’s teeth sparkle as he speaks.

  The woman smiles back, demonstrating her patience.

  As the kitchen clock strikes noon, milk sprays upwards into the air. For a nanosecond of frozen time it mingles with moats of unignited potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal. Something that looked like just another churn has exploded, sending the western half of the hotel – its chandeliers, its staircases, its marble floors, its plastered ceilings, and all of its guests – several feet into the air. When this leap is over, the sunlight attempting to break through into its aftermath cannot reach down deep enough to see the smile that still lingers on the English woman’s face. Nor to her shoes, buried beneath tons of limestone, now badged with red and white.

  The waiter staggers for a moment, still standing in the rear half of the restaurant that hasn’t collapsed. His face gushes with blood – some invisible piece of shrapnel has sliced his cheek – but he barely notices it. All he can do is stare at the splashes of colour that fringe the rubble: strips of tapestry and flesh, both heavy with history.

  Sbarro’s Restaurant, Jerusalem

  9 August 2001

  Her hair, as black as a misbaha bead, trails in the morning air as she drives down Ramallah-Jerusalem Road with the window down. Her eyes are fixed on the tarmac ahead with a quiet resolve that has stayed with her since she made her decision to give up on journalism in Jordan, and return to the fight. Sitting beside her is a young man, maybe seventeen years old, who says nothing, but gazes at her curiously. Every minute or so, he rubs his ha
nds together; his palms are so coarse she can hear his skin scratching like sandpaper. For a moment, she can’t imagine anything dirtier than those hands. Then she notices the clothes he is wearing.

  After two further checkpoints, and many more minutes of scratching, they are almost there. As they enter the suburbs, she stops the car and turns to him. One hard stare into his eyes and he seems to relax. The nervous, curious gaze dissipates into a smile, so she reaches behind her seat and brings forward a ukulele case.

  ‘Take this,’ she says. ‘Carry it over your shoulder when you get out.’ She twists her body round again then straightens, this time holding a bumbag. She hands it to him. It looks like a camera bag attached to a belt. ‘This is yours also, I believe.’ He takes them both and sets them down on his lap, looking ahead with as much focus as she had when she was driving. The car starts up again.

  Jaffa Road, dissecting the city from east to west, is its usual cacophony of noise; the clamour of modernity bouncing between ancient city walls: a bustle of street vendors, shoppers, and other obviously low-paid workers, slows the pace of the traffic, their feet crisscrossing in every direction, but all at the same tempo.

  The journalist’s car nudges its way towards downtown. At the junction of King David Street and Jaffa Road, the young man gets out, throwing the ukulele case over his shoulder and buckling his belt. As he walks towards a cheap-looking café diagonally opposite, the woman realises she’ll never know if there’s a real ukulele in there, or if he has any musical ability himself. The café is called Sbarro’s: it’s heaving but he isn’t deterred.