The Pillars of Hercules

“He talked too much. He should have proceeded slowly,” he said.

“You mean he was demanding too much?”

“No. He didn’t realize where he was,” Habiby said, throwing up his hands. “He was in Morocco, not Israel. He was among Arabs. But he talks to these Arabs as though he is talking to his own people.”

He was referring to Rabin’s manners, his characteristic bluster. “Being tough and businesslike, giving orders.”

“That’s it. But a little politeness would have been helpful.”

“I suppose he is feeling confident now that he has made a peace agreement with Jordan.”

“It should still be possible for him to show some politeness,” Habiby said. “Now they are committed. But instead of all this public boasting and all the urgency, why not use a little tact?”

Tact was a scarce commodity in Israel. Suspicion was so ingrained, and fear so common, that every sphere of life was affected, and the absence of faith and goodwill made people brusque. Israelis had struggled to arrive at this point, but life was still a struggle, and they perhaps saw, as Habiby had said, that they had no one else to rely on; the only allies Israelis would ever really have would be the Palestinians.

“Charmless,” I said. It was a word that summed up the atmosphere of Israel for me.

“Yes,” Habiby said, and gestured with his cigarette. “As for the peace agreement, I am not hopeful. I have doubts. But there is no going back.”

He had written, “We, Israelis and Palestinians, are already fated to be born again as Siamese twins … true solidarity with one is contingent on true solidarity with the other. There is no alternative.”

“What brings you to Israel?” he asked.

“I’m just traveling around the Mediterranean. At the moment, I’m on a Turkish ship,” I said. “It’s in Haifa—leaving tomorrow.”

“I have been traveling myself,” he said. “I must stop traveling or I’ll never write anything.”

“I know the feeling. Monotony is the friend of the writer.”

Yossi joined the conversation, first in English, then in Hebrew. Several times I interrupted to say that we ought to be leaving—after all, I had visited on such short notice. More food was brought. We ate. Habiby roared, describing the pompous attitude of Israeli politicians. Yossi nodded—yes, he agreed, it was awful.

Later than I intended, Yossi and I left, the whole Habiby family turned out to see us off and make us promise that we would come back again.

“You see, Arabs? The door is always open,” Yossi said in an admiring way. “We come there, the door is open. Cigarettes for me. Some food, thank you. Coffee, yes. Some more. Please, thank you. Take some extra.”

“You like that?”

“Oh, yes. Is good,” Yossi said. “The Arab door is always open.”

We got lost again, but Yossi was calmer. He stopped and instead of shouting out the window he got out of the car and asked directions. A man said that he would show us the way, if we followed him. We were taken down a dark narrow road through the Balfour Forest, and then on a different route to Haifa.

At Haifa, Yossi was reminded again of the hospitality at Nazareth.

“We lock our doors,” he said. “Jews don’t have open doors. No pastry. No food. No coffee.”

“What do Jews have instead of open doors?”

“Just hello. A little talk. Then good-bye.”

He kept driving, and he had second thoughts. He suspected that he had given me the wrong idea.

“But sometimes an open door is bad,” he said. “You want to talk to your wife, eh? People doing—what is Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Laughing.”

“Yes. Laughing. It is bad. Open door can be bad. And look,” he said, and nodded at the heights of Haifa just ahead of us, Mount Carmel, the populous cliffs. “Those streets have names. Those Jews have numbers.”

He drove me to the port. He became sentimental again. “It was nice how they served us. Food. Coffee. That was nice,” he said. “You know that man was talking politics to me?”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him, don’t ask me. I don’t know about politics.”

Instead of eating on the ship I found a restaurant and spent the last of my shekels on a meal. Every meal I ate in Israel was delicious, and I had found the Israeli countryside an unexpected pleasure. The restaurant was almost empty, like the streets; like everything else in after-dark Haifa. Everyone was home, watching TV, doing schoolwork, worrying.

All the Turks were on board the Akdeniz, so eager to leave, and in such a mood of celebration that even from my cabin I could hear them singing, their voices and their plonking instruments vibrating in the ship’s steel hull, making the thing throb with music of the Arabesque.

Sometime in the night I heard the sounds of departure—clanking chains, the lines slipping and straining in the winches, barks in bad English from ship to shore and back again, and then the reassuring drone of the engines and the ship rocking slowly in the deep sea. Then uninterrupted sleep was possible.