The next day, my mother called and said the teachers where she worked, the ones who hadn’t been invited, thought it was a shotgun wedding and we were just trying to avoid disgrace. Samia said her family hadn’t been sure if it was an engagement or a wedding, because at an engagement you only serve knaffeh but the restaurant had served a full meal. On the other hand, at a wedding you wear a bridal gown, but she’d worn a dress from Shenkin Street. Samia cried and said it was all my fault. She knew it wouldn’t work, I couldn’t think of anyone but myself, I wasn’t prepared to do anything for her, and her parents were hurt and angry because she hadn’t been married like everyone else.

My father chewed me out too. He said I was a mess. “Next week come again, and we’ll put an end to this disgrace.”

So we got married all over again. The checks covered the hall, the music, the photographer, a thousand guests, and a Netanya hotel. Apart from my aunts and their children, I hardly even knew anyone at my own wedding. I hadn’t invited anyone. Everyone had been invited by my parents or Samia’s. I put on my black suit and my black shoes, like in an Arab movie. I had to put the ring on Samia’s finger. I had to dance with her, even though I haven’t a clue about dancing the debka. I was supposed to cut the cake and kiss men whose names I didn’t know. I had to hug my aunts and uncles and smile at the camera. I had to listen to horrible music that never fails to give me a headache. And I had to put up with all that without any alcohol or cigarettes. Because I’m well-behaved and shy.

Beit Safafa

A few months after we got married for the second time, we moved into Beit Safafa. It used to be a village, but by then it was a neighborhood of Jerusalem. It’s good to be a stranger. Nobody follows you around. Nobody takes an interest in you, and the only thing the landlord cares about is that you pay the rent on time. True, our landlords are Arabs, but we still don’t feel like we belong. We have no relatives or acquaintances or friends here the way we do in Tira.

Our house is in an area that was occupied in 1967. Its Hebrew name is Givat Ha-Matos (Hill of the Plane), because an Israeli plane was downed there in the war. From 1948 to 1967 there’d been a barbed wire fence running through the village, splitting it in two. For nineteen years, brothers, relatives, and families living on either side of the fence couldn’t visit each other. Our landlady says that the only time the Israelis and the Jordanians would allow families to approach the fence and shake hands with two fingers was on holidays or wedding days. She showed us pictures of a wedding being celebrated on both sides of the fence. Half the family lived in Jordan and the other half in Israel, she said, and laughed. Now both halves are occupied by Israel, except that people in the part occupied in ’67 have residents’ passes and those in the part occupied in ’48 have citizens’ passes, so they’re considered superior and more loyal. At least their homes are higher. It figures — they’ve always had more work on the Israeli side.

My wife and I are citizens, and thanks to that our landlady treats us with respect, because we have medical insurance and social security and we know Hebrew well. The homes in the half of the village that was occupied in ’67 are cheaper, because there’s no sewage system, and the water and electricity are supplied by Arab companies, so there are a lot more power stoppages and problems with the water system. When war broke out — the Intifada — the Palestinian part came under much greater pressure because the electricity was cut every time Israel shelled Bethlehem or Beit Jala or Beit Sahur. There was a big settlement separating us from places that were shelled, but we still belonged with the Palestinians, at least when it came to water and electricity. Life became much more difficult with the Intifada, and my wife and I began to regret that we hadn’t rented in the Israeli half. The rent’s a little higher, but we would have managed with a smaller home.

Since the war broke out, there have been more soldiers milling around in the Palestinian half, and the power cuts are making the winters tougher, especially for the baby. We can hear the shellings, but they haven’t reached us so far. The Palestinian side of Beit Safafa is quiet, because they know that if they join the Intifada the Arab tenants will move out of the rented apartments, which are their main source of livelihood.

Almost all of the people in the Palestinian half have set aside a room for rental or built an extra home for citizens like us who are trying to leave their own village in favor of the big city. People feel solidarity with the ones who are being shelled just a short distance away, and they take up collections of toys and money for the refugee camps, but they won’t throw so much as a single stone at the Jewish soldiers who are underfoot everywhere. It’s embarrassing what people will do to make ends meet.

We have a small home. Our daughter sleeps with us in our room, and there’s a small kitchen and a small bathroom. When a Jew is killed, our landlady bakes basbussa and brings us a portion in a small dish. She takes off her head scarf and stuffs it in her mouth to muffle the sound. Then she gives muted cries of joy.

Our landlady is a refugee from the village of Malcha. Sometimes she climbs up on the roof and looks down at her home. It’s still there, two meters away from the mosque. In 1948 she escaped to the southern part of Beit Safafa, which had become Jordanian, and since 1967 she’s been working at the Hebrew University. She’s head of a department, which means she’s in charge of the toilets on the law school campus. When the war broke out, her brother was praying at the El Aqsa Mosque, as he did every Friday — and was killed. He was a plumber, and he had a small Fiat. His sister used to call him every time our pipes were clogged. When our daughter was born, he arrived with his wife and children and brought us a present.

The Fashion Channel

I’m lying on the sofa, trying to entice myself with the fashion channel. Bridal gowns flash in front of me. I try to think back on my own wedding, but I’m too drunk for that. One of the landlord’s brothers has just gotten married. They kept the guest list small, with no music and no food. The two families only spent half an hour together.

There’s shooting again, and another power cut. It wakes up my wife. I can’t understand why it’s the quiet that causes her to wake up. Or the darkness. She calls me from the bedroom, trying to talk loud enough for me to hear, but not so loud as to wake the baby. “The flashlight is on the TV,” she says.

In summer the shooting and the shelling are louder, especially at night. You sit there trying to imagine exactly where they’ve landed or to picture the helicopters homing in on a target, tilting downward and shooting. The pilots are the best. They must be my age, but with a good physique and a nice face. They’ll finish their nightly assignment, step out of the plane, and take off their helmets, and with an impressive flick of their wrist they’ll fix their hair. Fair hair, blond maybe, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. Especially since the alcohol throws me off.

Another salvo of shooting. My wife bends over, and her silhouette on the wall frightens me for a moment. “It’s as if we don’t belong.” She yawns. “We’re onlookers, like strangers, doing nothing.”

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll call the power company,” I tell her. “It can’t go on this way. I’ll sue them.”

I’ll sue my father too, for planting hope in my mind, for lying to me. For teaching me to sing:

“We’ll march through the streets, for united we stand Let us sing to our glorious nation, our land.”