The baby will sleep, knowing she has loving parents that she can always count on. She’ll have an angelic smile and a dry diaper. She’ll be eager to talk, to tell us how wonderful we are, how much she loves us. She won’t have a rash or an eye infection, and she’ll never ever cry. She won’t be bored. She’ll feel wonderful; she’ll be happy to be alive. She’ll sleep till morning and wake us at just the right moment with little giggles and her first word. Baba, maybe. My wife will be happy for me. She’ll hug me and tell me she’s always known that the baby would say my name first, because I’m so good to her. I shower her with love.

I’ll give up drinking. Just a glass of wine on Friday night. I’ll buy a good bottle of wine in a liquor store, not a supermarket. A store in a good neighborhood. Not the kind that sells mostly to Romanian workers, not one that sells Gold Star Beer. We’ll have a set of wineglasses that we’ll receive from our parents. A bottle is too much for two so we’ll invite a couple we know. We’ll enjoy a good meal together. We’ll be comfortably full, with no stomachaches. Nobody will need to use the bathroom. We’ll eat just the right amount and we won’t grow a potbelly. The wine will go well with the meal. Maybe a piece of fine cake too, to enhance the pleasurable experience. It’ll melt in our mouths. It won’t stick to our teeth, and it’ll be digested smoothly, with no pangs of conscience.

I won’t have any more thoughts about women. I won’t keep looking at every girl’s ass. I’ll treat women with respect and listen to them without thinking dirty thoughts. I’ll stop jerking off. I won’t keep looking for tits and fucks on TV, and if there happen to be any in the middle of a good film, I’ll treat them like art. It won’t turn me on. My hands will always be where they belong. It’ll be good with my wife. She’ll know exactly what I want. I like her, I love her, I lust for nobody but her: her long neck, her Gypsy face, her perfect figure. We’ll understand each other. We’ll take each other’s needs into consideration. We’ll always come at the right moment, and we’ll want to do it again. There will be nights when we won’t get to sleep at all. We’ll make love until sunrise. She won’t dry out, and I won’t let her down.

I’ll go home now. I’ll drive slowly, in the right gear. I won’t overload the engine. I’ve got to be as quiet as possible. I hope none of our neighbors is making his way to morning prayers just now. I hope it’s still early enough, I hope there are no workers waiting at the intersection. I’ll keep my eyes to the ground. I won’t smoke a cigarette, I won’t listen to music. I’ll go to sleep now, and tomorrow will be a new day. I’ll show them all.

Tomorrow I’ll start praying. I’ve forgotten how you wash before prayers and what you say. I don’t remember the right sequence, or the number of prayers you’re supposed to say. Tomorrow I’ll buy an instruction book with pictures, the kind we had in elementary school. I’m convinced I wouldn’t be in this condition if only I’d kept on praying. Look at me, look at what’s become of me. Me, the one everyone expected to succeed. What a comedown. I’m going to prove to myself that I’m a good person, and then I’m going home to Tira.

I have no idea what I’m going to do there. It’s certainly not a place for a barman. They don’t even have alcohol. My father says I ought to become a social worker. They don’t have enough social workers in Tira. I could go to the same place as my wife every morning, and come back home with her in the evening. Maybe I’ll become a teacher. If I start praying tomorrow, I may still stand a chance of becoming a teacher of religion. Maybe I’ll be accepted into the A-Shari’a College in Hebron. It’s easy to get in, and they need lots of teachers of religion. I’ll be a good teacher. I’ve been through a lot in my life, and I can help keep my students on the straight and narrow. I’ll make sure they don’t go downhill the way I did. I’ll warn them against what can happen, but I won’t tell them how far gone I was. I’ll have the reputation of a good person. People will come to consult with me on questions of religious law. They’ll listen to what I tell them, they’ll respect me, and they’ll follow my advice. My father will be proud. He’ll start praying too. Perhaps we’ll go on a pilgrimage to Mecca together.

Gradually I’ll blend into the local political scene, and when my students get the right to vote they’ll nominate me for the Islamic ticket. They’ll make sure I’m at the head of the party list, and in the following elections I’ll be elected mayor.

I’ll be a candidate selected by consensus. I’ll be a Member of Knesset. The media will love me. They’ll find it hard to believe that a Moslem MK can talk like that, without a trace of fanaticism, gently, almost without an accent. I’ll express myself well, and I’ll represent the views of an entire community. Even the Jews will consider me an honest man. I’ll get along very well with the right-wing parties and the ultra-orthodox. I’ll become prime minister — the first Arab in the Islamic Movement to be made prime minister. I’ll bring peace and love to the region. The economy will flourish. There will be no war on the horizon. I’ll turn the Middle East into a superpower. I’ll be head of the Asian Union, and Israel will market maklubah, za‘atar, and gefilte fish in New York’s fanciest malls. The naked girl I left behind yesterday will never believe it. She slept with the mightiest leader in the world!

The Night of Purim

It’s the night of Purim, and two Arabs are taking over the dance floor. “They shouldn’t let Arabs dance here,” I tell Shadia, who’s standing there with me behind the bar. She chuckles and agrees with me. “It’s disgusting. In Nejaidat or any other village like that, people like that would be raped. I’m telling you, they simply grab those kinds of people and fuck them whenever they want to.”

They really are ugly, especially the short one with the mustache. He swivels his ass, crammed into those cloth pants of his, making a mockery not only of himself but of anyone dancing next to him — of the whole bar, especially Shadia and me. If he wasn’t so clueless, he wouldn’t dare to dance. Why should Arabs like him be dancing disco anyway? Don’t they realize how different they are, how out of place, how ugly? Especially the short one with the mustache. He doesn’t give up. Just keeps popping peanuts into his mouth and shaking his ass. Thinks he’s a regular celebrity model, and every girl dancing near him is a whore. Every time the ugly dwarf orders another beer, he points at one of the girls and says, “She’s Russian, isn’t she?”

“It’s my last shift,” Shadia says. “I can’t stand the sight of this place anymore. I can’t stand the sight of all these Arabs. They’ve destroyed the place, they’ve driven out the paying customers. The ugliest people in Jerusalem come here, good-for-nothings who think they’re God. I swear I feel like calling in a few people from Nejaidat, just to come in here and knock these guys senseless, the little shits. Especially the one with the mustache.” She giggles and covers her mouth with the back of her hand.

Shadia was the first Arab girl I’d met who knew about Tom Waits. She happened to sit next to me at one of the lectures in the philosophy department seven years ago. I was putting a new cassette in my Walkman, and she recognized it. That changed my whole perception of Arabs. Because of her, I realized there’s a different kind; they’re not all the same. But apart from her, I’ve yet to meet an Arab who likes the same music I do.

She lives in the Old City and only goes back to Nejaidat on holidays. She says nobody in her family will talk to her. Every time she goes there she imagines it’ll be different, and then she sinks back into her depression. She wrote a book and sent it to several publishers in Egypt but never got an answer. She doesn’t think they’ll accept it; her writing is too difficult for them to digest. Only two people liked what she wrote. One of them is dead already, and the other was Mahmoud Darwish. She says she’d always wanted to write about her childhood, but the problem was that sometimes in Nejaidat a whole week would go by with nothing happening. People would pass one another from time to time and ask, “How’re things?” and they’d answer, El-hamdulila.