My parents and hers had met on a bus trip to Egypt. They were in the same group, struck up a conversation, had their pictures taken together, and visited one another from time to time. I started seeking her out after I saw a picture of her near the pyramids. Pretty, with her head tilted slightly, long black hair, and mature eyes. All I knew about her was her name and that she was in the eighth grade. I’d met her parents a few times when they came over. Now the timing was right. Now I could talk to her. I was entitled. I was smart, and I was going away.

When she comes, I’ll ask her to wait for me. She knows I love her. She’s seen me following her. I’ll promise her always to think of her and to return to her when I finish school. We’ll be married and we’ll be happy. When she finds out what I’ve done for her these past two years, when she sees the picture of her by the pyramids in my wallet, when she discovers that I know her schedule by heart, she’s bound to agree to wait.

I walked behind her, feeling very proud, realizing people were observing me and that everyone was filled with admiration. If anyone makes fun of me today, of my mustache, of my bag — people will know that it’s just because they’re jealous, poor sports who can’t accept defeat. Rim’s flower-print pants fluttered in the wind, then clung to her legs. I lowered my gaze. It was the last day of school, and she was going to find out.

Mango

“Today you’re the aris, the groom, the star,” my father says, and goes to the door to greet our guests. In my neatly ironed cotton pants and my white shirt buttoned up to my neck, my hair not quite dry yet, and my tiny mustache, I take my place by his side. With us are all my aunts with their children and families.

Father’s friends from work are the first to arrive. They shake my hand, saying Mabruk and Congratulations. They bring gifts, mostly cheap Parker pens. They say they hope I’ll become a rocket scientist. They say I’ll build the first Arab atom bomb. Then Rim’s parents arrive, carrying a gift-wrapped box, and shake my hand. She must have been held up, I think. She’s got to come today.

The grown-ups are drinking coffee, eating knaffeh and mango, and laughing from time to time. My brothers are with my cousins outside. They’re playing hide-and-seek and they invite me to join them, but I say I don’t want to get my clothes dirty. I sit on the fence separating the house from the street.

I want to go to bed. The guests leave, and my mother begins cleaning up the yard. My brothers have gone indoors. Father comes out and asks me to go turn off the water in the mango grove behind the house.

It’s dark out there, and I’m scared.

Father insists and doesn’t understand why I’m scared. He gets annoyed and slaps me. I start crying and go to turn off the water.

When I come back inside, Grandma is shouting at Father. Mother is washing the dishes, and she says I ought to apologize. I enter the room. My younger brother is in his bed already, next to mine. I crawl into bed without taking my clothes off, pull the covers over my head, and let the tears roll down my cheeks.

Grandma comes in and mutters something I can’t make out. She tries to pull down the blanket, but I cling to it. She raises her voice at my father. “You’re killing the boy. Come see for yourself how he’s trembling. You have no soul.”

Grandma puts her hand on the blanket and tells me to calm down. She’s crying too.

“It’s best for you that you’re going away,” she says. “Thank God it’s over.”

PART THREE. I Wanted to Be a Jew

The Toughest Week of My Life

I look more Israeli than the average Israeli. I’m always pleased when Jews tell me this. “You don’t look like an Arab at all,” they say. Some people claim it’s a racist thing to say, but I’ve always taken it as a compliment, a sign of success. That’s what I’ve always wanted to be, after all: a Jew. I’ve worked hard at it, and I’ve finally pulled it off.

There was one time when they picked up on the fact that I was an Arab and recognized me. So right after that I became an expert at assuming false identities. It was at the end of my first week of school in Jerusalem. I was on the bus going home to Tira. A soldier got on and told me to get off. I cried like crazy. I’d never felt so humiliated.

Sometimes, before I fall asleep, the familiar smell of the boarding school comes over me and paralyzes every muscle in my body. It belongs nowhere but there, and it comes back to haunt me: the smell of a different world, of buildings and furniture and carpets and people I never knew. A smell that used to make me feel uneasy, every single time. I spent three years there, and I never got used to it. That smell remained foreign to me.

The first week at the school was the toughest week of my life. Every day gave me new reasons to cry my heart out. I cried when I had to say good-bye to Grandma. “Just don’t talk politics,” she said, and kissed me.

Then Father drove me to the meeting place at the entrance to Jerusalem. The drive up the winding roads to Jerusalem scared me. What if Father didn’t make it back in one piece? It was raining hard, and a long row of cars was inching its way up the mountain. I prayed in silence that I’d miss the school bus and would have to go back home.

There was a row of tables where people gave each of us a name tag to hang around our necks. They misspelled my name. They gave us envelopes with a piece of paper that told us the color of our building and our room number. It took me a while to find the place. My three roommates had gotten there first and had left me the bed farthest from the window, closest to the door. Everyone said Hi, and one of them shook my hand and read the name on my name tag. I didn’t correct him.

That first week, I didn’t know what to do with my tray in the dining room. I didn’t know how to eat with a knife and fork. I didn’t know the Jews put the gravy on top of their rice, instead of putting it in a separate bowl. I cried when my roommates found out I’d never heard of the Beatles and laughed at me. They laughed when I said bob music instead of pop music. They laughed when I threatened to complain to Principal Binhas — instead of Pinhas. “What did you say his name was?” they asked, and like an idiot I repeated it: “Binhas.” They laughed at the pink sheets Mother had bought me specially. They laughed at my pants. At first, I even believed them when they said they really wanted to know where they could buy such pants. “Do they make special pants for Arabs?” they asked.

After English class, one of the students said I had the same accent as Arafat. As far as I knew, Arafat was the guy from the Aden Hafla cassette. Another kid said I looked like the blind kanoon player on TV. All through the first week, they kept calling me Abu Jamil el-Anzeh, the guy in the Arabic course on Educational TV.

That first week I also met Adel, the Arab who was a year ahead of me. I saw him in the dining room and recognized him at once. He was at a table with the girls, and he was eating his chicken with his fingers. I knew I didn’t want to look like him, but just seeing him there kept me going. Within two days, we’d moved in together. I had no problem persuading one of his roommates to swap with me.

Adel thought my sheets were really nice. He came from a village in the Upper Galilee, four hours away by bus. They’d made a film about him once for Israel TV. Showed him dribbling on the basketball court, to prove that Arabs and Jews can live together. Pinhas said about him in the film, “Adel brought his whole village on his back,” and Adel said it was a compliment. He was a good student and didn’t need to study much. He answered in class and wasn’t shy.