Before my younger brother got engaged, he asked if I was planning to move back home, because if not, he’d prefer to take over the shell they built for me. It could save him a lot. He wanted to get married quickly. He was engaged to a girl from Karra who went to university with him, and he was finding the distance oppressive. I told him that as far as I was concerned he could have them both, because I was never coming back.

I can’t figure out where my father got the money to build three shells. I didn’t think he had any money. He’d always complained about the cost of my tuition. He said if I’d been studying something useful he wouldn’t have minded so much, but I was just wasting my time. I started working right from my freshman year. I didn’t want to live in the dorms, and my father said if I wanted to rent an apartment I’d have to get a job.

We have to save the way your parents did, my wife says. Where do you think they got the money? Sometimes she calculates the value of the property that my parents own — the homes and the land — and says it’s worth more than a million dollars. She says I should stop being so naïve. Since my brother’s wedding, less than a year ago, they must have saved fifty thousand already. Unless I make a move, I’ll be left with nothing. My parents will never just come out and offer me some of it.

When a helicopter hovers over our home, I feel my wife has a point. Maybe it really is time to go back to Tira, to forget about Jerusalem and turn over a new leaf. If I don’t go back now, I’ll have to wait till they marry off my brother in a fully furnished home. This is my chance. My life there could be better, more focused. My wife says I don’t have anything to hide from anymore and nothing to conceal. My drinking and smoking is something my parents know about anyway. And besides, she never could understand why a married man of over twenty-five is afraid his parents will find out he smokes. It wasn’t until the day my wife gave birth that I asked my father to lend me a cigarette.

The alcohol I can hide in the cupboard, according to my wife, like my father. He drinks a lot, and there’s always a bottle of whiskey waiting in the bedroom. I don’t dare help myself, even though I’m often tempted. Once, when Grandma still had the strength, she would look for his bottles and flasks and break them outside. She’d rock the whole neighborhood with her screaming about my father and his irresponsible behavior. Wasting his money on alcohol instead of saving for his children. Who would send them to the university? Who would build them homes? She’d scream till she was red in the face, her voice almost choking. It’s all my mother’s fault, Grandma would say. She doesn’t know how to domesticate her husband. She sits around with him, glad that he drinks. She doesn’t care about the children. She spends everything on clothing and restaurants. Instead of every bottle he drinks, instead of every blouse she buys, they could be buying another chicken for the children.

An Arab Lover

Every time I enter the kitchen, I remind myself I need a lover. Even my wife knows. Since she gave birth, she says she doesn’t care anymore. As far as she’s concerned I can bring one home with me. She says Islam permits such things, something called a marriage of enjoyment.

For a few months now, my wife has been saying I can’t stand her. That’s for sure, I say. I never could stand her, but lately it’s worse than ever. She asks what’s changed, and I say nothing has changed with me; she’s the one who’s more sensitive, now that she’s a mother.

I’m looking for an Arab lover, preferably a married one, someone who’ll understand me. Someone I’ll have a lot in common with. She can be a divorcée or an unmarried woman who’s been through a lot. I’ll put an ad in the paper. How much could it cost? But I’m afraid of ugly ones or of the Arab men who may try to find out who the pervert is. She might send me a letter and a picture to my postal box, or make a date at some café, and just then one of my neighbors will happen to come in and everyone in Beit Safafa will be talking about me.

I’m a failure anyway. One night a cabdriver who took me home asked me my name, and as soon as I told him, he said, “Oh, so you’re the one who comes home drunk every night.” Lots of taxi drivers from the village work downtown at night. I can see them staring at me as I walk out of the bar, so I start taking out the garbage when I leave, even though I don’t have to. That way maybe the cabbies will think I’m working and not just wasting money.

Unfortunately, I’ve had to rule out the possibility of finding a lover in Beit Safafa itself. Sometimes when we visit Tira, my mother-in-law talks about another married woman who was caught with one of the neighbors or with a stranger. It never fails to surprise me — Arab women who cheat on their husbands. I admire them. The ending is always tragic. They always wind up being caught in one of the orchards of Tel Mond or Ramat Ha Kovesh. The orchards, el-bayarat, have always been the scene of forbidden things. I grew up on stories of people being hunted down in orchards or orange groves, of thugs setting fire there to stolen cars, of criminals being found dead or young girls found hanging from the branch of an orange or avocado tree. If it happens in Tira, it probably happens in Beit Safafa too. Except that we’re not tuned into the local scene. We’re strangers here; we don’t know the main characters in the play. There are no orchards or groves, and I’ve yet to locate the hub of the Arab criminal scene. Sometimes I think it may be at the Malcha shopping mall or at the Biblical Zoo.

When I get myself a lover, I won’t know where to take her. All the places I’ve thought of seem too dangerous, too visible. There are Arabs in all the cafés and all the bars, and working in just about every restaurant in town. Maybe someone will recognize her? Maybe someone has seen me sometime in the past? If I can work up the courage, I’ll take my lover to the Jerusalem forest. We’ll find a quiet spot or park the car and walk down to one of the side paths. We’ll sit there, talking and looking at the view. When it gets dark, we can make out in the car. Just once, I’ve got to make out in a car. Maybe she’ll bring her husband’s BMW. Maybe he has a Volvo. But me, I’d never risk going into the forest. What if they stole my car? It’d take us five hours to walk back to town. And what if we’re killed by some Arab? Nobody will feel bad about the mistake, not even the Arabs. They’ll say it’s an omen. God wanted to expose the criminals and punish them. Better die by hanging in the groves of Tel Mond than get shot as a Jew by mistake — and with a lover, no less. How would they be able to tell we were Arabs, sitting in the forest and making out? I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be wearing a veil.

It’s not that I’m good-looking. My wife says I’m okay. She says I have no neck and my head is too big. She says I’ve got to stand up straight when I walk, because it could add five centimeters to my height. At the pharmacy she bought me a device that’s supposed to support your back, but it bent out of shape within a week. I’m not fat, but my cheeks are too big. I look in the mirror and see the bulges I should get rid of. They really are ugly, and no matter how much weight I lose they won’t go away. My wife says it has to do with the shape of my skull, and nothing is going to change it. I try not to eat too much, and if I do, I try to throw up as much as possible. I never leave the house, even just to the grocery store, without throwing up first. My wife says my proportions are all wrong. My body’s thin and my head’s enormous. I’ve got to gain some weight.

I need a lover quick. How much longer can I last with the same woman? I’m not to blame. They keep talking on TV about the chemical substance of love that stops working after four years with the same person. So according to science, I’ve been walking around for two and a half years without the chemical substance. Sometimes I think that’s why I throw up.