From the novel, All Together Now

Chapter 3 What Would Frank Sinatra Do?

Chapter 3-What Would Frank Sinatra Do?

So Karly, her friends and I grabbed a table closer to the window facing the street and away from Tom and the group. Karly introduced me to Susan and Katie. Susan was very pretty while Katie just looked cranky. If she had a better disposition, she could have been way hot, but alas…no. We sat by the Israelis, one of whom eyed me directly while waiting for their food but not threateningly. I’m sure the keffiyeh masked any benign tendencies he would have liked to have seen in me. In his line of work, he had to be careful. The other stood by the door. These guys were over six feet, maybe 220 pounds of pure muscle and armed. They each had fists the size of a human head so I doubt very much they viewed me as a threat. They were wearing khakis and black polo shirts with a company logo in Hebrew on them, probably a security company, definitely not army. I could tell they weren’t looking for trouble, just wary of it.

The overcast day was beginning to give way to dusk and some of the street lights were coming on as businesses were closing up for the night.

“So you’re from California?” the one named Susan asked. “That’s what I heard you say.”

“I don’t like California. It’s too weird,” the one named Kate said.

“Oh Katie, what do you know? This is your first trip out of New Mexico! This is my cousin, by the way.” Karly said to me. “Who hasn’t been ANYWHERE!” she held her hands to her face to emphasize her point loudly.

“I like it. Cool stuff comes from there.” I offered.

“So what are you doing here?” asked Susan.

After offering the same “family business” line, she blinked a little blankly then started in with some gossip that I feigned interest in with a series of facial expressions. This was part of their little test to see if I was alright. Girls do this.

“Well I think he’s weird.” Katie said finally after Susan’s tale of witnessing not-so-secret petting between two of the Bible tours’ most “chaste” participants in the back of the bus on the way home from Bethlehem the night before.

I kept the rest of the conversation light as I did not want to be subjected to the girlfriend tribunal this early in the game. Like a bunch of Juliette Caesars, they could vote thumbs up or down, “feed him to the lions, or spare him.” I avoided that trap, man. The realization was made not long into college that “grownup” life was like eighth grade homeroom only with more money and more pettiness. It was not to be underestimated. I often found it vicious.  

“So Katie, what was your major in college?” I figured getting this girl back on herself wouldn’t be too tough as she wasn’t terribly aware as much as self absorbed. I wasn’t sure if that was learned or genetic.

“Oh, it was journalism. Not finding a job, though which sucks.” She said brightly, as she blathered on about her senior project, seemingly relieved that I cared at all, since I was paying more attention to Karly anyway. Susan seemed to be gearing up the next round of dirt to dish as she fiddled about her purse.

When the table was turned back to me, I talked about my old school, my job, my band and anything else that would keep our time casual. I stayed out of religion as they were on a Bible Tour for Chrissakes so they really didn’t need my opinion. We managed to avoid the politics landmine as that’s always too big a discussion to be summed up at any one meal and people are weird. I found that if I disagreed with most, they would turn on me right away. It wasn’t just me as I saw this with most folks. Vicious. So I stayed pleasant, goofy and as charming as possible.

Karly slipped me her number on a napkin. I knew she had a thing for me, the girl’s got taste. Her fingers briefly brushed mine and it felt like electric velvet.

She had to know I wasn’t into the Bible thing so slipping me her number was a nice surprise. I glanced down and saw the number was a California area code and sure enough, Venturas’ 805. I figured if that Tom guy was anything to her, it’d be her place to tell me and not by slipping me a phone number. I was going to run with this and hoped I’d be seeing her on the rest of the trip at some point. I think she had the same feeling. I could see the corners of her mouth curl into a grin and she appeared to be suppressing giggles. Susan and Katie were not really looking at us. There’s an unspoken vibe when people are trying to swap information. Karly’s friends weren’t stupid. They knew and were being surprisingly cool about it.

Tom started rounding everyone up, eyeing me straight away, “Alright guys, wrap it up! We got curfew and so do they!” referring to the restaurant. The Israelis re-engaged, getting back on their own clock and got ready to escort the tour back to their bus and hotel. The bus had just pulled up and one of the Israelis was on his shoulder mic to the driver who also had a guard with him.

“It was great meeting you!” Karly beamed. “I had a great time.”

Smiling like a dumb kid, “Yeah, me too,” I was sure there were a couple of mayors from neighboring villages wondering where their idiots were.

As she and her girlfriends were gathering up their things, we exchanged pleasantries, “Nice meeting you guys.” I said to both her friends as Karly, standing behind them, held her hand to her face like a phone and mouthed the words, “call me” and I nodded.  

Sam and I watched the tour get on the bus, walking through the gauntlet of protection they had hired.

After the Dome was cleared and we were done cleaning up, Sam asked if I wanted a beer. I looked around. “Here?” I asked.

“Yeah man, just be cool and don’t tell anyone. I get it in Israel and bring it here…Shit, like the border guards care? You just can’t sell it. I mean this isn’t Mecca, so it’s not like anyone gets lashes for beer but they could close me down and your dad will kick my ass. Turn the music back on and the lights off.” He said.

We sat in the front as the night came. The lights from back in the kitchen were coming into the front as the crew finished cleaning up. Street lights glowed through the front windows on to the dark floors with the chairs making odd shadows. If anyone could see us, they couldn’t see what we were drinking. Sam pulled out Maccabees Beer, an Israeli brew that had been around since the 1960s. He had a case in the walk-in refrigerator. This was a pale lager that was not bad at all. Because it had been awhile since I had a beer, I couldn’t tell if it was really that good. I drank the first one real fast so it was good enough. An Israeli beer in Jerusalem, like a Mercedes here was not lost me either.

I loved beer. If anything, it had that unique quality that always made me feel American. When I drank with the guys, it was something that gave us unity. The ritual of it was just so simple. I could see why drinking becomes a problem for some.

Despite being born in the States, I always had the feeling of being an outsider or different. It’s tough when your parents had accents or ate “that weird food.” I grew to appreciate the differences as I grew up but as a kid? I wanted to blend in badly. Be named Donny or Michael, Keith or Bobby; anything other than my own name. As I grew up, however, I resented conformity and as such, I grew to appreciate that my parents didn’t name me Roy. I would not have picked my background, truth be told but now I wouldn’t change it either. I learned to finally like me, at least for the moment, which is all any of us has. I truly started understanding what an American really was. A mutt, just like me. This was the running gun battle I had with myself most days; that fine line between gratitude and wishful thinking.

The other guys joined us for beers and this was a new feeling in watching these guys, because we never had liquor growing up in our house. Even the parties my dad held were dry. My dads’ business partner would join us for dinner three or four times a week and he liked his beer. He grew up with my dad’s big brother. My father would allow him the one tall can of Bud they picked up on the way home. It was to be left in the bag, in the fridge. He could drink it only at dinner but it had to stay in the bag as to not give the impression my dad was condoning this zenith of sins. I moved out at 20 after a transfer from junior college to university, where they had cheap housing so I started drinking and man, did I make up for lost time. I did that with pork for awhile too. If that was illegal, I’d have been in jail long ago.

But these guys followed the Muslim religion like most Catholics do theirs; observe the major holidays and don’t get caught doing anything really wrong as that’s the unspoken general rule. Sam was not an exception as he pretty much was the rule. Not too different from my dad but dad would never be seen drinking. Dad was quite content raging along, cheating on my mother, sober as a judge which carries its own burden, leaving no margin for error.

He didn’t think I knew but I knew. When he came to the U.S. he was selling door to door. Because the immediate L.A. area was saturated with sales guys and he could only hit certain neighborhoods only so often, he’d travel. He and his partner would be gone for forty-five or sixty days at a time. The travelling in itself wasn’t all of it because he treated my mom rather badly.

Being horny was my genetic curse. If I was gone for forty-five days, I’d figure something out, married or not. Shit, I’ve only been here two days and already I’m looking for talent that won’t get me killed by an angry, jihadist mob and I might even have risked the mob! I believed the main reason my parents got married was so that my dad could come into the U.S. hassle free. They made the best of it because it could have been much worse as it was for many such couples. Not exactly the makings a Shakespearean sonnet so no one could tell me my dad was always faithful.

“Cool chick,” Sam smiled as he sipped his beer staring out into the surprisingly quiet street. “I thought sure you’d close.”

“Here, with her on a Bible Tour? Are you high? That Tom dude makes friends easy though, huh?” I said brushing off the comment.

“Probably a virgin…” Sam said.

“Tom?” I asked. “Yeah he looks tight, too. It’s obvious he works out. I think he liked you…get a number?”

“Fuck you!” Sam choked his beer as he tried to keep it out of his nose.

“Anyway, I won’t find out here. But yeah, I got her number…I will definitely call her when I get home. Definitely,” I said folding the napkin after looking at it again.

“Fucking Christians. Bossy as fuck and they didn’t even tip.” Sam smiled. “Your girl magically did, because I saw you leave money, you whipped mother fucker!” he said, chuckling. “Have another beer, man.”  He opened a couple more for the guys.

“Yallah,” Sam said to the remaining crew, Anwar and Nasser, meaning “hurry up,” the rest was in Arabic, as he gestured to the chairs, which basically translated for them to have a beer and relax in the dark with us while Aerosmith played “Toys in the Attic” in the background. “In the Attic!” Sam screamed, shaking his head to the music, moving his feet off the chair in front of him for one of the guys who were laughing at the performance.

Two Israeli soldiers on patrol heard the music and peered in the window from the sidewalk. They couldn’t see the beer but could only guess and laughed as they saw Sam rock out. One of the soldiers was especially animated and screamed as he made the “devil sign” with his fingers knocking on the window as he laughed while his grinning partner just observed. We all saw that and thought it was funny. I wasn’t much of a metal guy and Aerosmith was rock and roll and not some goofy hair band, far as I was concerned. We all appreciated the brief camaraderie of such a simple act as the soldiers moved on.

This was how it went with humans being human. It’s tough when the occupier can relate to people. It’s tougher when the occupied can relate back. Either scenario may get us killed if we’re careless. At this point, I felt what was fair or not was no longer the question. Palestine hasn’t been a country for 3,000 years and Israel certainly wasn’t going anywhere. It was a territory when Britain did what they did. Now these people have to deal with the consequences of such high end deals on a daily basis. It’s their lives that change and not those of the deal makers but something was going to have to give.

Sams’ kitchen guys spoke some broken English but we could talk and Sam helped out. “So, America…It is very rich, yes?” the guy named Nasser asked.

“Yes.” I answered, waiting for the set-up. When I was a kid, this was always a prelude to a set-up by my cousins and my dad. By high school, I got wise.

“Why they keep helping Israel when the people, they no need too much help? He continued.

“More money and power I guess.” At twenty-three, I only had so much history to fall back on.

“The U.S. why they against three hundred million Arabs for 3 million Jews?” Nasser pulled on his beer. “We would like to have peace. The world see how we are and then they understand.” He said. “But you don’t care. You are American. Not Islam. I know.” He may as well have spit on me, too.

“You’re right.” I said. “I am American and I don’t know why my country does…”

“See! Palestine is not your country!” Nasser cried like I was busted. Anwar tried shushing him but he’d have none of it.

Even Sam rolled his eyes, blowing air through his lips like a big fart and said something to the effect of “What does that make me, man?” in Arabic.

Nasser made a shushing noise at Sam and continued, “You are American first, yes? You are not…”

“Look, Nasser,” I jumped in. “Like I said, you’re right. You know what? I’m American and I’m not a fucking Muslim, either. But guess what? Neither are you!” Pointing at his beer as I cackled, “You’re a hypocrite. I don’t see you fighting Jews and getting beat up either. You work here and Sam pays you guys OK, and by the way, beer is not Islam so if you want to run and tell my uncles and my dad, then go fuck yourself!” Having exhausted my pique, I drank my beer. Echo and the Bunnymen came on. The song was “Gods Will be Gods.” How appropriate.

We sat silent while Anwar worked at bringing down the tension and we talked about Americas’ other attributes, namely women and money, something we could all agree on. I was fine and I could tell Sam was a bit relieved but Nasser could not be bothered. I didn’t give a shit. I was ready to beat his ass. This precious religious bullshit was always annoying and as it wore on me, my patience with it thinned. Christians, Muslims, I no longer gave a fuck. All these cunts were liars and I was no longer of the mind to be polite about it. Spent a lifetime doing that and felt, as a grown man, that if you were counting on me to be more polite than you while treating me badly, one could go fuck oneself and be sure to tip the innkeeper as I kick your ass out the door. So there’s that.

The streets were quiet that night as the Mid-East version of the Hatfields and McCoys decided to take their night off. We could actually relax but the Dome was definitely closed for the evening and quiet, by no means, meant safe…

                                    ***************************************

We finished up and walked out back. Parking the car in back was a precaution Sam was used to. This alley was long and took you around to the other side of two city blocks so it was like its’ own secret tunnel. We got to the outskirts of town pretty quickly.

“Well, you’ll hear about that little chat, I’m sure.” Sam said.

“I doubt it. I bet no one else likes him either.” I answered. “Right?”

Sams’ silence confirmed my deeper suspicions about Nasser.

Driving home, the night was clear and the sides of the headlights lit the brush on the edge of the road. Sam took back roads as we were out after the curfew and did not want to get stopped by the Israelis or worse, other Arabs. I have found under martial law, folks only react in one of two ways and that is to acquiesce or rebel. Not too much of a middle ground to be noticed, hence drinking Israeli beer in Jerusalem. It was a big chance to take but at one point, I guess people get so tired of the bullshit and there’s that human tendency to push your luck until something bad happens. You keep getting away with it over and over until there’s a fuck up. Then and only then does one learn their lesson, making deals with God, putting any macho bullshit or vitriol on the back burner until the next moral outrage. We humans forget pain quickly when we get ready to make fresh mistakes but hold onto it forever when moving forward is involved. I was as guilty as the next on that count, though it wouldn’t matter in the long run.

“So how was your first real day in the Territories?”  Sam smiled as he lit a cigarette. He had been here three months on this leg.

“Pretty cool, I have to say…a lot to see, you know?” I sighed. I was buzzed and it had been a long day, if not an intense couple of weeks. The recent episode with Nasser was not even registering as a blip on the radar.

Sam exhaled his cigarette, “Yeah…we’ll do some cool shit for sure, let’s just get home in one piece tonight.”

Custer may have said it better.

“Shit man, not tonight!” Sam said smacking the steering wheel, cussing in Arabic as his headlights raced up a road block revealing the source of his frustration. We slowed down.

As my pants were about to require much in the way of laundering, I noticed that the road block was Israelis. I was relieved because I could see the Army trucks in Sam’s headlights. I wasn’t there long enough for such an informed opinion but a burnt up dead person left an impression so I waited for Sam’s reaction. While he was cool about it, he wasn’t thrilled and I wasn’t necessarily orgasmic; all you need is one Jew to get nervous and you’re as dead as a collaborator killed by Arabs, so who cares? Dead is dead.

We stopped and the guards came to the window. The main guy seemed cool and very mellow. Two guys had his back as the one soldier began in Arabic and smiled when Sam answered in Hebrew. He asked us to get out of the car. I opened my door to the soldier on my side and he let me out. The sergeant asked Sam for his keys and then in English asked us for ID and to take off our shoes…again with the fucking shoes. I swear to Christ, if cops did this in L.A. I would make a bloody fortune because I’d sue their ass with relish.

Sam and I stood on the paved road so as to not get sand in our socks. The soldiers went through the car. This took about 15 minutes while one solider had his gun on us, the rest hung out looking alert but bored by the routine at the same time. They probably figured us to be harmless and while not being an expert, I still thought that a strange habit.

The sergeant asked Sam, in Hebrew, what he was doing out after the curfew. He thought it odd that an American and an Arab were out this late, when it seemed like a good idea to be home earlier given the circumstances. After a brief exchange which included information about his being the owner of the Dome, the soldiers gave me and Sam back our shoes, I.D.s and sent us on our way.

“Man, that was intense.” I said.

“Yeah, it went OK though, it could have been worse…Learning Hebrew was the smartest thing I could have done.” Sam said lighting another butt. Apparently, the way this stop went down was per usual.

“Well, yeah. That guy seemed to loosen up after you started talking.” I was genuinely impressed.

“You know that Arab saying, ‘Learn another mans’ language and you learn how he lives’?”

My dad said it all the time. He knew four languages. Not bad for guy who was functionally illiterate. However, like a lot of Arabs, he would not learn Hebrew. His form of rebellion, I suppose. Me? I’m a big fan of the “know your enemy” or “when in Rome” philosophies. The Arabs that did learn Hebrew had a much easier time with the Israelis and that was a fact. More Israelis knew Arabic than the other way around and I always found that interesting. I knew a couple languages and would see Mexicans warm up real quick as soon as I spoke Spanish in L.A. I couldn’t imagine it would be any different in the West Bank, people are people. Sam had the same effect on the Jew which also helps if you’re both reasonable. Even with a cynics’ view of the situation and the world at large, they both seemed to want to have a good night and see the wife and kiddies. We continued driving home. Sam lit another cigarette and said the soldier asked if I was Muslim.

Sam told him that I was not.

“You bummed?” I asked.”

“Not really. You’re no worse than me, I guess. At least you can admit it and act like you mean it.” Sam quietly exhaled the smoke through his nose.

I was a little relieved because I knew Sam did not know my secret. When I was thirteen years old, I made a conversion to Christianity. So it wasn’t as dark a secret like I was selling heroin to the kids at school or pork and hookers to Muslims. That would be a Saudi whisky bender in England.

But Sam was no Muslim either.

Being born into a certain family doesn’t mark you. At the end of the day, we all pick our certainties while some of us may never have to fully defend them, save the occasional spat over Thanksgiving Dinner or a beer in a Jerusalem diner.

Sam dropped me off at my uncle’s house, said he’d see me in the morning. He sped off in the Mercedes as he waved at Ali and his other brother who were hanging out on the porch. They were smoking as they had just wrapped up dinner and their mother had gone home. I walked up and greeted them and it looked like they had been talking a long time.  

“How was the day, cuz?” Ali’s brother asked.

“Pretty cool. Met a girl,” I smiled.

“Arab-ia?” asked Ali, incredulous using the Arab word for “Arab.”

“Nah, man, American,” I said.

“Oh, I thought so. You can’t do here like in the States, man.”

“Yeah, we established that earlier today.” I was referring to the camera shy, picture girl.

“Her parents would never allow it. Not without your father,” Ali’s brother offered.

“Imagine my disappointment,” I grinned. If I had one gift, being a smart ass was it.

They had a chuckle over my beer breath and said something in Arabic which earned them a “fuck off” and a laugh in English. I said good night and went in.

Eddie pulled up to where he’d been staying with his wife and kids and they were asleep. He walked into the house, went down the hall and unlocked what appeared to be his own office and dropped his bag on the floor. He moved the stereo and opened the floor boards. There was easily a half a million dollars in the makeshift safe already. He opened his bag and pulled out ten stacks of hundreds, wrapped in plastic. He put them in the floor and sealed it back up. He went up the stairs and he looked in on his kids and then went into his room, undressed and got into bed. Not seeing their grandma has been tough on the kids and his wife, her own mother long since passed. His wife turned to him and asked him something, in Arabic, the tones hushed, almost conspiratorial but she didn’t really know what was going on and Eddie made sure she kept her place…

As I walk in the house, Uncle Ayoub is the only one who is still up, he’s watching TV, lying sideways on piles of pillows and smoking. These guys did smoke a lot. My uncle smoked his own hand rolled cigarettes. He carried a tobacco pouch and cigarette papers and he could roll one with one hand, lick it shut and light it in the middle of any task like it was a magic trick. I think he smoked 15 to 20 of these things a day and bear in mind these were not filtered. Half of the habits’ addiction had to come from the rolling ritual. I knew this because I liked to roll things that weren’t as addictive.

He saw me and gestures around the room indicating that everyone’s asleep. I kiss him on the cheek, quickly and say goodnight in Arabic. It’s one of the few things I can say but I also didn’t want to linger too long, lest he made the beer discovery. He smiled and waved me off. I think he knew, but he wasn’t like the others. He made that clear the day before when we were in the car and he held my hand like I was nine. He seemed to be not at all concerned with macho pretense. I watched him play with the younger children and he clearly felt that you could not love your kids too much. Family lore always held that he was more like my grandfather than any of the brothers. My dad must have been separated at birth.

Ayoub was just happy to have family around. That was always paramount to him and he was the only one who stayed there. He never left, not even to vacation. I suppose someone had to stay and guard the sisters and the sheep. All the brothers left to Europe, the U.S. or South America, to make their fortunes. The West Bank in the 1940s and 50s didn’t offer much of a future for a young man, unless you were one of the oldest boys in an established family. Otherwise, you worked for someone else or your brothers. So his brothers left. My dad couldn’t leave fast enough itching to make his mark at seventeen.

Ten years later, Ayoub would be dead, having passed away during an afternoon nap. Never ill a day in his life…After all the tobacco was natural, I guess.

I went to bed and passed out quick. It had been a long couple weeks and the beers kind of got to me on that night too.

“It’s quarter to three/there’s no one in the place/except you and me…”

Sinatras' “One For My Baby” was playing in the background. Me, Karly and her friends, Susan and Katie, were playing poker and it was hot outside. The big, green felt covered table was littered with cash, poker chips and whisky glasses. We were playing in a house which was an old, white Victorian number that I actually was surprised to find there in the Territories.

We were playing poker with several of the Israelis that I had met at the check point just two days before. The mood was tense as Karly had been winning more than her fair share of hands if a poll were taken amongst the losers. It was funny how I already knew this but I sensed that one of the soldiers was pissed that she may have been using her looks to distract his buddy, Liev, the guy I met at the checkpoint as he was also the guy who got us into this game.

Karly looked to one of the girls then back to me then to the Israeli, whom she just beat the worst after she’d been called. Her smile lights up as she put down four aces. The Jew exploded in anger and the table flipped over violently! He got his gun out but so did I! We blast away running out of this house. They were shooting their guns at us and I was hauling ass as I saw my uncles’ Mercedes. My feet kept digging into the sand, making it hard to run. I felt like I wasn’t even moving and while I was certain we were about to die, I kept thinking about the trouble I’d be in if I destroyed this car.

Karly was covering the both of us and firing away with a bag of cash in her free hand and a .45 in the other!  As I ran up on the car, I could see that explosive charges were planted inside the wheel wells. White C-4 set to blow the car to pieces!

How did I fucking know this?

I dove under the car, the wind was blowing sand badly and I could barely see what I was doing but I dismantled the crude bombs made with sandwich bags. Practically shitting myself as Karly was screaming at me to hurry up. She kept me covered but the Jews were coming fast, having already shot Tom and her girlfriends! These guys were heavily armed, pissed and very serious… “fuuuuUUCK!!” was the operative word.

Finally, I got the charges loose and slid out from under the car! I got in the driver’s seat, screaming at Karly to get in. She did so, shooting and cursing the whole time. Of course, it’s in these tender moments that the car doesn’t start right away. Fucking Germans! I kept turning and turning the ignition and finally it started!

We peeled out, tires spit up rocks and gravel as the charges exploded behind us, blowing up whatever was left of the house, the Israelis and Karly’s dead friends. Very Steve McQueen of me, if I may say so. We drove for a while. The windows were open and the warm wind started to calm me down. Our breathing slowed as the high noon sun bore down on us and the open highway. I felt like I was slapped hard, if not punched and just getting the feeling back in my face.

“So…where to?” I asked, numb as I did.

“Beirut… I hear the beaches rock between wars, maybe even Turkey. I hear their beaches are even topless, hmm…” she purred. Karly leaned in, nibbled my ear and slid her hand over into my lap and rubbing my cock. She feels the erection, “Well hello, there!” she coos as she gently rubs on the outside of my jeans.

Somehow, feeling like this was an inappropriate time, yet grateful for the attention, I grinned nervously saying, “Well that was different…Too bad about your friends.”

Seemingly, without as much as a hint of emotion, “Yes it is…But isn’t that what heaven’s for?” She unbuttoned my jeans, my rising progress gripped in her pretty fingers and before she goes down on me, she looks me dead in the eye and says “This is the luckiest thing about you right now,” her liquid blue eyes disappearing into the back of her head as her mouth…

I shot bolt upright in my bed. I looked around. It was indeed quarter to three. Yeah, a dream and I had a boner. My heart was beating fast. I haven’t had that kind of dream since…fucking ever. Maybe the lack of visible female flesh and the excitement of meeting someone new and the beer got to me all at once. I was bottled up for awhile by that point. Maybe that was it.

I dropped back down on the bed and tried to sleep but it was no good, even after I popped one off. So I got up and walked around the village. The rest of the house was sound asleep so I was real quiet sneaking out. Some of the porch lights were still on but it was clear the town was asleep as the homes were dark. A stray dog caught up with me and walked with me for awhile before turning into what I assume was his house. He looked over his shoulder at me, bowed his head and went around back. I suppose he had a long day too.

It was so peaceful here and especially at night, not like the rest of the Territories at all. This place was so far removed that the last time Israelis were here or had ever been here was in 1967 during the Six Day War. They stopped to take a collective crap and coffee break in a café bathroom or something as the villagers hid in caves for the three days the Jews were here. What is it about Arabs and caves anyway? I guess they come in handy if you need to evacuate in a hurry.

I kind of knew where I was going and figured I could find my way back before sun up so I walked up the hill. I could see the lights coming from the different cities. I walked around past my other uncles’ house and over to the pasture where Ayoub raised his head of sheep. They were just grazing, sleeping, they seemed peaceful. I wondered what they counted. The sheep have been in the family at least two hundred years. Not the same sheep but I got that.

Then I hiked over to where my grandfather was buried. He wasn’t buried in the cemetery with everyone else. He was buried just at the edge of town in a crypt that was alone as he wished. My father actually had pictures of it which I thought a bit morbid, so I knew what I was looking for. It was on a big lot that he hoped the family would employ as time passed. At that point, it was just he, his wife, my grandmother and my Uncle Jacob, dads’ older brother. He would have grown up my fathers’ business partner.

Uncle Jacob got blown to bits when he was eighteen years old. The British left munitions behind after the Second World War. Jacob and his buddies would go over to hang out and fuck around like teenage boys anywhere else.

They had done this before so it was only natural that my father, who was a six year old boy at the time, wanted to join in, driven by a six year-olds’ curiosity. Hard to picture my dad at six and there were no childhood photos of him. Our family was too poor to have photos taken but as more money came into the family, photos were an indulged extravagance. This was probably why my aunt had hundreds of pictures all over the house. My grandfather had his first pictures done in the late 50s when he was in his 70s.

Jacob was my dads’ hero but that day my uncle chased his baby brother back with a switch from a tree with my dad crying the whole way home. Jacob rejoined his friends and about an hour later, the explosions could be heard for miles and it wasn’t just one either. My dad had said many times that it sounded like forever (his term and I was always surprised by the poetry of it.) My grandfather and his neighbors took a horse and wagon to collect the remains of their sons. These men just seemed to know what happened as men like these tend to know these things. It wasn’t like the cops or fire department had called the house or that the military chaplain dropped in. That too, proved to be a token of a luxury not enjoyed here in Derduwan.

My father told me this story quite a few times. It was his way of relating and I guess he wanted me to be nicer to my younger brothers as they were that far apart in years from me. Standing there, I wondered if Uncle Jacob did it on purpose. Maybe he wanted to die. Maybe he and his buddies had a pact because options were few here and eighteen is a dramatic age regardless of heritage, nationality or options. Or maybe, just maybe this was the sort of horrible accident that keeps parents fearful of their kids ever leaving home. We’ll never know but I once heard that having children was like setting your heart loose in the world with arms and legs attached to it. He died before my grandparents. I could never conceive burying my own child.

I never thought of this before or maybe I didn’t want to. It’s one thing to hear the story but here was Uncle Jacob, buried in a crypt at eighteen. He’ll be eighteen forever. I wondered if that didn’t massively fuck up my dad in some profound way. He was at a funeral for his hero at six years of age. Basically, Jacob was Custer without the horse or Indians.

I just stood there, contemplating my grandfather. He died at ninety-eight in his sleep. I was twelve at the time and as such, I did not get to meet him.  The invite to come here from my father came when I was nine and I had barely got home from six months in Brazil with my mothers’ family. I was not crazy about my dad, although I couldn’t put my finger on why. As a child maybe I wouldn’t because kids don’t like to think of those things. Maybe because he never let me be a boy, I don’t know and that night, it didn’t matter. That night I had been a man for awhile and I was fast creating a distance from boyhood.

But at nine, I thought my grandfather would live forever. I was torn about not going on the trip as I had an attachment to the perception of what “normal” grandparents should be like, at least by my American neighbors’ standards or those set by sitcoms in the 1970s. That idea included grandparents that you visited often. Mine were thousands of miles away. Stories and pictures were not enough and I kind of felt less complete than my friends.

So at nine, I made the monumental decision not to go. My dad didn’t have the heart to tell my grandfather I wasn’t coming till he got off the plane. I was told he cried hard when he saw my father get off the plane alone. After all, I was his namesake or at least one of them. I always felt guilt about that. This was the projection of a mans’guilt onto a nine year old. I was named after him as is the tradition for the oldest boy to be named after your father and not yourself. There were six of us cousins with that honor and eventually twenty-two and counting.

At the beginning of his career, Frank Sinatra was asked to change his name many times. Other Italians did it, so why not? He wouldn’t even use a stage name, like Dino Martini had used Dean Martin. He famously said, “If I changed my name to Frankie Satin, like Tommy Dorsey wanted, I’d be singing cruise ships by now.” There’s something to be said for having vision without having seen the prize yet.

I have been tempted to change my name. It had come up a couple of times in my life; professional reasons or conflicts with my dad had me thinking about it more than I would be proud to admit. I could never bring myself to do it.

During the First World War, Palestine was then a British territory. It was not a nation so there was no black and white about it. Well, I guess there is if you want to dehumanize your enemy. My grandfather learned this first hand. Territories were property, pure and simple.

He was recruited with thousands of other young Palestinian men to fight the Turkish for the British as were the Jews of the region. They were told that doing so would guarantee a free Palestine (or Israel, in the Jews case) to rule as they saw fit. India would enjoy this hard won privilege some twenty-five years later by actually pressuring Britain as pressure was all they knew how to respond to. Grandpa was thirty-eight at the time when he was captured by Turkish forces and imprisoned with his men. This was a long time before the Geneva Convention or Amnesty International could even spell the term, Middle East. What’s more, the Ottoman Empire was developing quite the reputation for brutality with the Armenian Genocide in full swing and nary a peep from the “developed” world.

My grandfather spent six months in a Turkish prison before he escaped with a buddy that he knew from a neighboring village back home. They walked back to what was then Palestine and it took them six months to get home. They worked as farm hands, farriers, roofers and whatever else kept them fed and rested. They kept walking just like David Banner in the Incredible Hulk. He made it; got married and started raising kids along with the sheep his father would leave him and his brothers. He and my grandmother would have fourteen children with her having been pregnant nineteen times in her life. She died when my father was thirteen. I don’t think he handled that well and I doubt I would have fared much better.

My father always told me that I had my grandfathers’ temperament and that I forgave easily. He would say this with disgust as a way of highlighting my perceived weakness or what he considered a moral failing. Even though my grandfather never got rich, he was always the “go-to guy.” He was the dependable man in the village. My dad said his father was as calm as a Hindu cow on the day he had to collect the remains of Uncle Jacob and the other boys. Maybe that’s where I get it from, I don’t know. I had never met him, only heard the stories. Are souls genetic?

There lay my grandfather. He lived like other men, loved and affected his family like other men. He died just like every man will. Like some men, he had a grandson he never knew, maybe standing at his grandfathers’ grave. These men never got their Palestine and I doubt it will ever come. At least he died a happy, old man on his terms and not for nothing.

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As I stood there, I saw the moon hang pregnant in the middle of the bright, starry night sky. I have never been able to put this together before and even as my grandfather lay dead in his crypt, he was helping me make more sense of who I was. This was a tall order at twenty-three but I knew that life was for the living and I wasn’t going to waste it doing something I hated.

I walked back to the house as dawn was breaking. The porch lights in the homes in the hills of the village were giving way to the morning sun. It had been an interesting night; teenage wet dreams and Israeli beer having paved the way. I had never spoken of this night to anyone but it wouldn’t matter in the long run.

I saw fire by a roadside and was struck by the sadness of death and the passing of time…