The whole family is at my parents’ house. They’re outside this time, seeking comfort in the shade of one of the few trees in the yard. “Look at him,” Mother says. “He thinks of everything. Who else thought of buying candles?” My father laughs at me for buying so many batteries. “What do you think, that we’ll never have electricity again?” Everyone’s laughing now. Even my nephew, who doesn’t understand any of this, manages a smile. My wife has already told them about my shopping spree yesterday, which she discovered when she went into the storage room.
“So?” Father says. “I see you’ve decided it’s going to be a long war.”
My older brother comes to my rescue and tells us that he’s hardly managed to buy anything. “And what if things go on this way? Nobody really knows what’s happening, so I’m glad you did what you did,” he tells me.
My mother goes into the house and returns with a bowl of potatoes and two peelers. I say at once, “Mother, why waste the potatoes? The things in the fridge are about to spoil. Let’s eat those first.”
Father laughs out loud and coughs. “Yes, the potatoes should be kept for the tough times of the war. By tomorrow we’ll have nothing to eat, after all,” and he continues coughing.
My wife says I’m right. It really would be a waste. They’re going to be cooking all the meat in the three families’ freezers today, so there’s no need for potatoes. My mother puts them back and says in a ceremonious voice that we have so much meat we won’t be needing bread today either. I go inside, enter my parents’ bedroom and look for the battery-operated radio. It’s the one we used during the Gulf War, when all of us moved into the sealed room at night. I put in the batteries. The official Israeli channel has no reports of casualties. They’re just talking about the new situation, what they call a general state of emergency, and the moderators, assisted by security officers, government officials and experts from academe, are trying to analyze the implications. There’s nothing on the radio about an attack either, nothing on Iraq or on Syria. There’s no mention of terrorists, except the story from this morning about an attempt that was foiled by our soldiers. Everyone agrees it’s important not to take any chances, but nobody says a thing about roadblocks.
Outside, they’ve decided to roast all the defrosted meat. My mother says that’s in bad taste. “This is no time for a barbecue. People might think we’re celebrating when two families in the village have just come from burying their loved ones. Think of the contractor’s mother. She kept fainting. Her son was the backbone of the family.” Mother says she’ll use a pressure cooker to prepare the meat. “It’ll be much tastier, soft as a doughnut.”
Father insists that the contractor was a complete idiot, only a fool would run a roadblock that way. “What was he thinking, that it’s a game? What’s a soldier supposed to think when a pickup comes charging straight at him? Isn’t he bound to shoot?”
A car stops in front of the house and everyone stares at it. A young man gets out, one of the mayor’s nephews. “Salam aleikum,” he greets us, and informs Father that the mayor has invited him to a meeting with the heads of all the families in the village, in the council building.
It’s the first time they’re having such a meeting. Normally, decisions are taken by council members without consulting the villagers themselves. Before the mayor’s emissary has a chance to get back into his car, my father wants to know, “Has he decided to set up a security cabinet?”
Our family may be one of the smallest in the village, barely a hundred people, but my father has always been among the mayor’s supporters. The two of them belonged to the Labor Party. The mayor followed in the footsteps of his father. His family is the largest in the village and the other heads of families had never succeeded in uniting and gaining power. When it comes to the local elections, the Muslims and the Communists and the nationalists don’t stand a chance. The only thing that counts is the family. They all turn to their families, and what’s good for the family is good for them.
The mayor has always been good at providing positions for the right people in the competing families, and ever since the state was established, there have only been two mayors, the father and the son. And like the father, the son began his party career by driving sanitation workers to the Labor Party headquarters. Somehow they joined up with the right people, who realized that whoever was in charge of transportation belonged to one of the largest families, and that with a small amount of money they would succeed in bringing in thousands of votes. When the father was elected, he bequeathed his pickup and the sanitation workers to his eldest son, and when he died, he bequeathed his position as mayor.
Father and son looked very much the same. The father I know mainly from stories and from a black-and-white photograph I used to see all through high school. The high school was named after the late mayor, the current mayor’s father. There was a large sign with his name and picture that greeted everyone who arrived at the school, and the same picture was positioned over the blackboard in every classroom, facing the students. I remember very clearly the day when the principal’s father died, and the principal, who came from the second largest family in the village, one that supported a different Zionist party, removed the sign with the name of the late mayor and replaced it with one announcing that from that day on the school would be named after his father. A few minutes later a few of the mayor’s relatives arrived. First they shot at the new sign, and then they took it down and replaced it with an even bigger sign bearing the name and picture of the former mayor, Allah yirhamo. Were it not for the intervention of some members of the Knesset and notables from the nearby villages, a feud would have broken out between the two largest families in the village. The compromise solution included naming the sports field for the principal’s father. The principal refused at first, mainly because the village sports field is a patch of sand and the goalposts are nothing more than stones that the students keep replacing. The next day, the mayor installed proper goalposts, with nets. I remember how happy that made everyone, me too.
My father comes inside to get dressed for the meeting. He is always very careful with his appearance. I offer to drive him to the council building. Some of the grocery stores have closed already, having been cleaned out completely. My father looks through the window at the groups of people milling about in the streets, then looks at me and asks:
“Does it look serious to you, this whole thing?”
“I think it’s scary.”
“Yes, but it’s just the second day. Why jump to conclusions? I bet the mayor’s going to tell us he’s been informed it’s all over.”
“I very much hope so.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I have no idea, Father.”
I park outside the council building. Hundreds of people have gathered near the entrance, waiting for some news. Cars blasting music at full volume are cruising back and forth. I turn off the engine and stay in the car, light a cigarette, inhale and turn my head to blow the smoke out the window. A big new BMW pulls up and suddenly stops beside mine. There are four men inside. I don’t recognize them, but I’m sure they’re looking me over. The driver turns down the music, leans over the steering wheel and calls out my name. “Wallah, it’s you. How’ve you been? It’s been ages,” he says, and smiles. Now I recognize him. He’s Bassel, who was in my class.
I force a smile. I feel out of breath but stifle a cough. “You’ve started smoking, eh?” Bassel says, with a smile that hasn’t changed at all. “It’s bad for your health, you know,” he goes on. “Salamat.” Slowly he starts the engine and turns the music back up.