The Pillars of Hercules

On the surface, it was a back-to-the-homeland story, but where was the work? Where was the money? It was all right for Yossi’s father, who was a bank clerk, but Yossi and his brother did not discern any bright new Israeli dawn. The brother moved to Los Angeles and prospered. So much for the homeland as a refuge.

“I went to Los Angeles to visit him,” Yossi said. “In California you can’t walk on the street. Just Mexicans walk. Everyone else drives.”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Yes! I was there! No one walks!”

“But your brother is happy there, right?”

“Right. And I want to live there. I want to work, get a Green Card. But how can I, if I can’t walk on the street?”

Impatient in the stalled traffic, he had become shrill. I decided to agree with everything he said about the United States, no matter how offensive or inaccurate it was.

“Manhattan is better. You know that.”

“It sure is,” I said.

“Too many Jews in Manhattan,” Yossi said, his grammar slipping. “That is good. I talk to the Jews, they talk to me. I think, maybe I go there and get some money. Here is no money.”

“But this is the Jewish homeland, isn’t it?”

“No money here,” he said, smacking the steering wheel. And he started to grumble. “America is dangerous. Guns. Trouble. Why I want to go there?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Because here is bureaucracy,” Yossi snapped back. “Office. Papers. Application. Permission. ‘Hello—No, sorry, is closing, come back in two hours.’ ‘Come back tomorrow.’ ‘Come back next week.’ ‘Sorry I cannot help you.’ ‘You pay one hundred shekels.’ ‘Officer is not here now.’ ‘Where is your papers—you have no proper papers.’ This is shit!”

It was quite a performance, and it certainly convinced me. I shut my mouth and let him fume until the traffic eased. But he was soon chattering again.

“This Habiby sofer—he is an Arab, you say?”

“He’s an Israeli—Christian. Born in Haifa,” I said, and resisted adding, Unlike you, Yossi.

“More road fixing!” Yossi said.

More traffic, a bottleneck; an hour went past, and then we were on our way, in a road that skirted a large village.

“That is an Arab city,” Yossi said.

“What is its name?”

“I don’t know.”

I saw from my map that it was Shefar’am—small houses on a hillside, sprawling further, some animals grazing in the foreground; not much else.

“No streets, no numbers, no names—like this Habiby. ‘Ask for me—ask for sofer.’ No number, no street. In Haifa you can go anywhere—too easy. Jews have numbers!”

“I’ll try to remember that, Yossi.”

As the obstacles increased, Yossi became shriller and in his shrillness more anti-Arab.

“Look at the houses—not clean! The streets this way and that! No numbers!”

The road to Nazareth became narrower, the line of traffic slower, and Nazareth itself across the desert and occupying a high hill was like a distant vision, almost a mirage. It was physically different from any other of the places I had seen in Israel, not just the style of house, but the way they were piled up, some of them leaning, the look of accumulation over the years, added rooms and windows, wall upon wall, the layers of tiled roofs. The foundations were ancient, but higher up, the third or fourth story was more recent. It was the sort of growth that was characteristic of wonderful old trees—fragile shoots on young branches that crowned a thick immovable trunk. Nazareth had that same grip on its hill—it was something venerable, with deep roots, still growing.

People worked outside in Nazareth, too—some of them were the sort of occupations that were usually pursued in the open air in the Middle East—carpentry, wood carving, car repair; but there were men fixing televisions and painting signs, too. They were banging dents out of car fenders, and selling fruit, and stacking bricks. Unlike the indoor existence that people lived in Jewish Tel Aviv or Haifa, life in Muslim Nazareth spilled into its streets.

That was another difference between Jews and Palestinians. It annoyed Yossi.

“You see? Just people everywhere, and not clean, and what are they doing?”

They were working, they were sitting, they were dandling babies, they were exuding an air of possession and belonging.

“Look over there,” Yossi said, and pointed to the east, another settlement, an extension of Nazareth, but newer, with whiter buildings and tidier roofs and emptier streets, the Jewish settlement of Natseret Illit.

“Jews! Jews! Jews! Jews!” Yossi said.

We started up a hill (“Too many cars! All these Arabs have cars!”), entered an area of twisty streets (“So dirty!”), continued to climb (“Houses have no name, no number—like Morocco Arabs”) and yelled at passersby, “Habiby—sofer!”

The name did not ring any bells with the passersby.