Unholy Land Read online

  “I don’t know. I mean it’s me, it’s a part of me, but I left, didn’t I. It’s in my language, it’s in the way I think and see the world, but it’s not to say I’m comfortable with it.”

  “You could do with a rest,” Elsa said. “See some old friends, relax in the sunshine. Get drunk. Forget everything.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that sounds like a good idea.”

  “Good, good,” Elsa said. She sounded strangely relieved. Tirosh said, “I’d better go. I think the flight’s finally boarding.”

  “Safe travels, then,” Elsa said.

  “I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up and stood to leave with a sense of relief. People were congregating by the gate now, lining up in two rows. There weren’t that many passengers. He noticed a woman, queuing in the line he hadn’t chosen. It was only a glimpse, for him. He saw a woman with brown hair and pinned back delicate ears, which reminded him of his ex-wife, but with a sense of solidity about her, as though she were somehow more real than the artifice of the airport all about her. Perhaps she somehow sensed him watching, because she turned her head and frowned.

  The passengers boarded the plane without incident. Tirosh settled back in his seat with a sigh of relief, or weariness. Images of his son kept flashing through his mind, and he blinked, rapidly, staring out of the window though it was fogged; it must have been raining. The woman with the brown hair sat nearer the front. He saw just the top of her head. The flight attendants went through the safety routine. The inside of the plane smelled of warm plastic, stale breath. There was a piece of gum stuck to the underside of the food tray. The engines thrummed alive. Tirosh watched small grey figures through the window, moving with a clear but unguessed-at purpose. He watched the runway move past, and tensed as the plane began to accelerate, then took to the air with a bump. The airport grew wider before growing smaller. For some moments there was the flash of fields, the density of a city, the silver snail trail of cars on a highway. Then they entered the clouds and the world turned white and grey, and fine strands of fog drifted past outside the window. Tirosh put his head back and closed his eyes.

  “Hush, Isaac,” he murmured. “Daddy is trying to sleep.”

  He thought he felt the touch of tiny hands, pulling on his hair; warm clear breath on his ear, and a delighted giggle, but it was nothing, just noise in the engines.

  After a time he slept.

  2.

  When Tirosh woke up, his mind felt clearer than it had for a long time. He did not know how long they’d been flying. He felt curiously refreshed, renewed. He realised there were very few passengers on the flight, far fewer than he’d initially thought. His mind must have been playing games on him, earlier, but he had been tired, troubled by some vague memories he could no longer recall. He stretched and saw that the woman with the brown hair was there, sitting alone at the window next to two empty seats. When he peered out of the window, he saw the green slopes of the Cherangani Hills, growing blue towards the distance, with low-rising clouds settling over the higher peaks. Small villages sat amidst seas of green, and Tirosh saw the smoke of cooking fires undulate gently into the air.

  “We will soon begin our descent into Ararat City,” the pilot said. “Please fasten your seat belts.”

  A wash of memories came upon Tirosh then. How could he have ever forgotten Palestina? One does not forget one’s homeland, no matter how long he may go away, how long he may dwell elsewhere, under a different sky, speaking a different tongue. The worries and the doubts of the past days fell away from him. Already the air in the cabin felt different, warmer and more humid. As the plane began to descend, Tirosh saw the hills peel away, and over a vast distance the Great Rift Valley opening and beyond it, like a smudge of pale blue, the sea.

  Then, too, as the plane drew lower and lower still, Tirosh could see a fault in the land. A white towering wall cut through the sloping hills and fertile farmland. It snaked its way through fields and forests, separating settlements and villages, rising and falling with the land like an annotated series of discordant notes. Its whiteness stood glaring against the rich earth and its tones, startling against a sky already thickening with rain.

  He looked and kept looking but could see no end to the wall in either direction, though it went round and out of his sight, continuing elsewhere. He began to discern new features on the ground, straight roads, slow peaceful cars like beetles, modern buildings gathering first in clumps and then in larger convocations until they became, at long last, one continuous wave as Ararat City rose in the view ahead.

  He felt a pang of loss and a pang of joy at the sight. He wished Isaac were with him then, sitting in his lap, chattering nonsense words at the window, eyes round as he saw everything new. Ararat towered into the sky, with new, modern skyscrapers jutting out of the ground like grasping fingers. Glass and metal set off a contradiction against the dusty green beyond, and the white houses were like bold strokes of a painter’s brush against concrete and asphalt and paved stone.

  “Prepare for landing,” the pilot said, tersely. He spoke Judean, and Tirosh realised he had missed the sound of his mother tongue. He searched for familiar landmarks, but the city had grown and changed in his absence, nothing he could have pointed out to Isaac were he sitting there, but then Isaac was away, back in Europe with his mother; he must have been; and he would see him again, soon.

  The landing strip came up abruptly. The plane banked hard, then coasted, and the few passengers clapped. It was a strange custom, as though the landing were some remarkable achievement, a performance to be applauded, like the conclusion to a symphony performed by a full orchestra. But it was home; it was the done thing.

  They disembarked shortly after. Ahead of Tirosh was the woman with brown hair; between them, carrying heavy luggage, was an elderly Orthodox man in the black garb and the felt hat of an Unterlander, accompanied by a wife and two children. The Unterlander turned and caught Tirosh’s eye. He unexpectedly smiled, and gave Tirosh a wink. “A bi gezunt!” he said; which meant, “Don’t worry so much, at least you still have your health.”

  Tirosh shrugged; and the man dismissed him with a “Psssht!” and a flick of the hand and turned back to his family.

  As Tirosh stepped out of the plane, the humidity and heat engulfed him as though he had stepped from one world to the next. With them came the smell of Palestina: a mixture of tropical rain and car exhaust fumes, frangipani and jasmine and foods fried in oil. Tirosh took a deep breath, and when he expelled, it was the old breath of Europe he was expelling, and when he breathed again he felt renewed, much more himself. He was a Palestinian.

  On the hot tarmac a bus idled impatiently, the driver smoking a cigarette by the doors. Tirosh climbed on board with the other passengers. He saw other planes parked out in the airfield, two British BOAC planes, a Uganda Aviation Twin Otter and an old Palestinian air force Spitfire, as well as a private jet, outside which a welcoming committee of sorts had formed, with suited dignitaries standing stiffly, only now and then turning their heads up to glance at the clouds. It was going to rain. The driver finished his cigarette and took the wheel. “Everyone here?” he shouted over his shoulder and, not waiting for a reply, drove them away at some speed. Tirosh watched the jet as the stairs lowered, and a line of Maasai men in ceremonial robes of animal hides emerged gravely, to be welcomed by the waiting dignitaries.

  Then they were lost from sight as the bus came to the terminal building of the Nahum Wilbusch International Airport. Tirosh followed the others into the building and queued with his passport already held in his hand. It depicted the twin stylized lions of the old British Judea, holding between them a Star of David.

  As a child, Tirosh still remembered hearing the lions in the distance, at dusk, on his father’s farm. Sitting on the porch, watching the red sun set over the distant peaks of Mount Elgon, he’d hear them, calling with a sort of lonely pride across the distance.

  It was then, with the cooling of the day, that the animals of th
e veld would come out to the watering holes, and a fragile sort of peace reigned, for a time, in the animal kingdom: lions would drink within sight of elephants and gazelles, intermingled with brazen birds, snakes, and crocodiles. Now, he thought, they must be all but hunted to extinction: farmers shot them, as the lions often attacked and killed the cattle.

  “Tirosh?”

  The border control officer was young and her hair was tied back severely. She wore the baobab-grey uniform of the Palestinian Defence Force.

  “Yes?”

  He tried not to look nervous. Even that simple word, y’a, came out haltingly, as though he had forgotten his own tongue and how to speak. He always felt awkward crossing borders, which were strange animate things to Tirosh, nebulous worm-like creatures which shifted between two states of existence, and also he feared officials. His grandfather, who had settled here as a young man fleeing Europe, had instilled in him a fear of officialdom which he had never quite lost.

  The girl looked at his face, then at the passport, and she frowned. “You live outside?” she said.

  There was something strange about the way she said it, as though it meant something more than he realised. He said, “Yes, in Berlin—” feeling like he was making excuses for himself, trying to justify a whole lot of things he couldn’t say.

  “What is the purpose of your visit?”

  “My father,” he said. “He is ill.”

  “Where does he live?”

  She had the metallic delivery of an automaton, he thought.

  “Fever Tree Farm,” Tirosh said, feeling self-conscious. “In Elgon District.”

  The girl’s eyes opened very slightly larger and she said, “That Tirosh?”

  Tirosh shrugged. The girl looked at him again, doubt in her eyes, then handed him back his passport.

  “Welcome to Palestina,” she said.

  He hurried away towards the barrier where more soldiers were standing. He saw the Maasai delegation enter the hall, accompanied by slightly wet-looking men in suits, who carried dark umbrellas.

  A man in civilian clothing stood by the barrier. His receding hair was cut short and he had soft, sad eyes, or so an ex-girlfriend once told me.

  There was no reason for Tirosh to know who I was; not then.

  “Passport,” I said. He looked at me, that sort of half-glance that doesn’t really register: seeing a function, not the man.

  “Tirosh?”

  “Yes,” he said, tiredly. Perhaps he didn’t like his own name. There had been a fashion in the 1970s for modern, Hebrew-sounding names. His old name would have been something like Heisikovits.

  “Is this your luggage?” I said. The soldiers brought it over, put it down on the examination table. They were good kids, not too bright, but eager. I gestured for them to put on the gloves and open the bag. Tirosh travelled light.

  “Yes?”

  “Could you empty your pockets, please?”

  He complied, a man used to the indignities of travel.

  “What is this about?” he said.

  “Routine check,” I said. “You understand.”

  “I’m not sure that I do.”

  I shrugged, apologetically. “Quarantine,” I said. “We have to take extra precaution with people coming in from the outside. We can’t afford any contamination.”

  “Do you mean biological?” he said. “I’m not bringing in any seeds or plants.”

  “It could be anything,” I said. “Anything from the outside. Do you have a phone?”

  “A phone?” he said. “What would I plug it into?”

  I glanced at his eyes. They were clear and a little tired.

  “Check everything,” I said.

  I watched his eyes as items were brought out, one by one. An analog watch, a toiletries bag, two folded shirts, a box of matches. I held the matchbox between thumb and forefinger, rattling it. I watched his eyes.

  “Do you smoke?”

  “No.” A flash of confusion in his eyes. I nodded to the soldiers.

  “Bag it.”

  “But what is this about?” he said.

  “You have been outside for a long time?”

  “I’ve been away, yes?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes you pick things up without even knowing it. Traces. It’s best to be thorough. You understand.”

  He looked like he wantd to argue, but he didn’t. I wanted to tell him about mimicry, about how organisms can disguise themselves visually in a foreign environment: like weeds pretending to be useful crops so as to avoid destruction.

  I didn’t, of course. To him I was just a petty official, then.

  “Stop.”

  The soldier was little more than a boy, and no more aware of the procedure than Tirosh was. He hesitated with the case in his hand. “Sir?”

  “My glasses case,” Tirosh said.

  I looked at him sharply. “You use glasses?”

  “For reading,” he said; unwillingly, I thought. I couldn’t read his eyes.

  “Are you sure you had them with you, when you boarded?”

  “Excuse me? I don’t understand your question.”

  I should have confiscated them. I don’t know why I didn’t. I don’t think it really made a difference, in the end.

  We confiscated a few items. A ring, a pack of cards. They could have been nothing. Tirosh was an unknown quantity. He’d been away a long time. He bore watching.

  “You’re free to go,” I said, at last.

  “Thanks,” he said. “That’s nice to know.”

  “Just doing my job, Mr. Tirosh.”

  “Curious sort of job,” he said.

  “You know Palestina,” I said, and he almost smiled. “It’s a curious sort of place.”

  I watched him walk away. He didn’t look disoriented. He had this sort of gait that looked like he was always somewhat in a hurry but was making himself slow down. A sort of active nervousness. I hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be trouble but, of course, he did.

  3.

  Tirosh left the terminal building behind and stepped into the hot air outside. A row of stunted baobabs lined the road, their severity softened by the blooming jasmine shrubs that pressed against the airport fence. The rain had come and gone swiftly; mosquitoes buzzed drowsily in the air. A row of cars, all local make—Susita, Kaiser-Frazer, Sabra—were queued up in the taxi rank, the drivers leaning against the fibreglass chassis of their individual vehicles, all smoking. He saw the woman ahead, talking animatedly to one of the drivers—arguing the price, he thought—who finally shrugged, tossed his cigarette to the ground carelessly, and gestured at the car. She nodded, and a moment later the car took off. Tirosh raised his head, following the Susita as it drove down the tree-lined road. Wilbusch Airport was located some distance from the city. Ararat rose against the horizon in the distance, and he marvelled at how much it had grown. When he had left, it was a quiet, dusty town, filled with low buildings, wide avenues, small stores which shut, promptly, with the heat of the afternoon and only reopened before sundown, and public parks where old men sat cross-legged on the grass playing bao, and mothers pushed babies around in prams imported from Europe. It was a town filled with little hideyholes and strange, dusty alcoves where tradesmen worked much as they had back in Europe: carpenters, watchmakers, shoemakers, goldsmiths, tailors, and book binders, leather workers, and their like. On Tuesdays the tea and coffee market sprang to life around Wissotzky Square as farmers brought in their produce from all over the countryside, and along Herzl Avenue the latest fashions from Paris and Rome were displayed in the shop windows. On Fridays the whole town quietened, the synagogues shone with light, and a hush descended with the coming of the Shabbat. Tirosh remembered serious-faced, black-clad avreichim following, spellbound, as their rabbi walked ahead, explaining that week’s parashah with a raised finger that rose and dipped like a conductor’s baton.

  It was a city, too, where one could still come, unexpectedly, across a wild animal walking about through the thin traffic, remin
ding one abruptly of where they were: once he saw a giraffe stop at a red light; at another time, he was pulled forcefully away by an adult as a lioness, far from home, sat hypnotised outside a butcher’s window, licking her lips.

  Now the city had sprouted new towers of metal and glass, office buildings reaching out to the sky like the tower of Babel once had, and it had spread over the plateau in all directions, white house neighbourhoods growing on the outskirts like weeds, erasing the forest and the veld with their merciless encroachment. He did not know this city, he realised. He had been gone too long, and the world he’d thought he knew was no longer there, had been replaced with something mysterious and foreign.

  He was not aware of me watching him.

  He approached the taxi stand. The driver’s chequered shirt was taut over his bulging belly. He had a farmer’s tan and a smoker’s cough. He said, “Where to, friend?”

  “Ararat.”

  “Got a place in mind?”

  Tirosh considered. His visit had been hastily arranged. No one expected him but his father. In a way, it had been less a decision to come than a push away from where he was, an escape from things he didn’t clearly remember anymore.

  “Know any good hotels?” he said. “Not too expensive?”

  “The Queen of Sheba is all right,” the driver said. Tirosh shrugged. He followed the driver into the car. It was hot and stuffy, and he rolled down the window and stuck his hand out. They followed the fence and the line of baobabs along the dark asphalt road. When they came to the airport gates, they were stopped by more young soldiers, standing there with rifles slung over their shoulders. They checked Tirosh’s papers cursorily and waved him through. The airport fell behind them, and Tirosh now saw well-remembered vistas, the plateau opening on both sides of the fenced road with cultivated fields of wheat, replaced by grasslands farther away. He saw a herd of giraffes in the distance, silhouetted against the peaks of Mount Sergoit, and felt a sense of relief he couldn’t quite explain. Some of the old Palestina, at least, was still there.

  My men were following at a distance.