Siamo Rovinati

No one of us ever knows how we are perceived by others. And so it was for Sufien: He didn’t know that for several days, as he worked the stall in the Mercato Centrale, shouting figures, pounded by the summer heat, that he had been transformed into the living picture of liberty and the pursuit of happiness by a complete stranger. Yes, there Bernard was, Sufien’s future best friend, standing mesmerized by the mask of joy he saw on this market salesman day after day.

Bernard was sick of his own people. Their Ivy League degrees. His Princeton and Exeter friends. Right now, they were probably all at the Harvard Club. The same ones who descended from those who fought passionately against ending the Jewish quota, and now couldn’t stop praising the ingenuity of the Jews and the Blacks. Just ask them, they all worshipped Malcolm X. Bernard was sick of America. Sick of its hypocrisy. And he was mostly sick of his parents asking him, Bernie, when are you gonna find a nice girl to marry? They never said a Jewish girl. Assimilation was their mantra. And he was sick of that too. How hard they tried. Sick of the Cape Cod summers visiting all those Wasps, and striving to wear loafers and linens just so. He never got it right. Now he was in Italy on an extended break with a hippie named Sandy he had picked up in Berkeley. He felt free, everyone was dark-haired, big mouthed. If he didn’t try to talk their language, he slipped right in. Like a real Italiano.

All of this was why Bernard finally asked Sufien the price of a carpet, in his broken Italian, with his twangy American tongue. Bernard didn’t want the carpet. He wanted to know this man.

Is it for you or a gift for someone else? Sufien asked him in English.

What nerve, Bernard thought. Per mia ragazza Sandy, he said, striving to prove his Italian.

Sì, Sufien said, making note of the necklace this stranger wore. Dangling at the end of the gold chain was a Star of David pendant. Sufien had not seen anything like it since Safad. What color are her eyes? Sufien asked in English.

Whose eyes? Bernard asked.

Your sweetheart, Sufien said. The one the rug is for.

When was the last time Bernard invested so much care in something, like this suggestion that somehow a carpet should reflect a lover’s eyes? This was what drew Bernard to Sufien in the first place. He had sensed that Sufien truly adored what he was doing.

Bernard had a revolutionary thought. He did not want to ask his father for any more money. He wanted to stay in Italy. He wanted to stay there for the rest of his life. He would work in this market too. He would sell leather and rugs.

You know what, Bernard said. Forget the carpet. How can I get a job here? he asked, rubbing his pointer finger to his thumb indicating the action of cash. Lavoro?

Sufien knew this man didn’t need money. Sufien knew he wasn’t one of his own. And one of his own didn’t mean just a Palestinian. It was a different language. One only the poor were fluent in, a language which bypassed color, nationhood. It was about starvation. And the fear of it. A man had it in his eyes or he didn’t. No, Bernard smelled sweet. It was a scent, not just a look, a scent, yes, innocent and even a little rude. Bernard’s hair seemed to curl in a certain way, like it was being blown by some distant, western wind. Nothing would ever touch him. He had seen no evil. His skin was unblemished. His glasses were crooked in a way that could always be fixed, his jeans scuffed by choice. Nevertheless, Sufien loved him already. He recognized that Bernard was shrewd and at the same time good, and that these were qualities Sufien would need in a friend. Bernard was more buoyant than Yasin, than Malik, than all those guys. All those men did was wear Sufien down with their talk. Bernard was Sufien’s first American.

It was a rare feeling, though altogether natural, this faith Sufien had in this stranger, as if they had known one another previously, in their last life. And now here they were, meeting again, wearing these new faces.

Mi chiamo Bernie, the man said, holding out his hand. Ciao, Bernardo, Sufien said. You could start work tomorrow.

It’s all commission.

Domani? Bernardo asked, assuming his Italianized name with a grin. What would his life have been like had he been born a Bernardo rather than Bernard, so often truncated to the diminutive Bernie? Bernie now wanted to be a Bernardo. He never wanted to be called by his former name again.

Andiamo, Sufien said. Domani.

Mi chiamo Franco, Sufien said, still shaking Bernardo’s hand in that earnest American way, in the way he had seen in films. Mi chiamo Frank Leone.

It was raining again, and Sufien couldn’t stand it, all that noise battering against his windows as he sat in his yellow-walled apartment on Via de’ Bardi. It was raining too hard for even the market to open, the walkways were flooded, and in the five years he had been working there, seven days a week, this sort of downpour had never happened before.

And always with the rain, the dead find their voices. Like dreams they come, in their blue bodies, and wrap themselves around us, saying, I’m here now, I’ve returned. They seem in a daze, in a daze to be back, to be beside us again, remembering how heavy this place is. The rain makes the passage easier, because the rain is grace, and it’s their language, the dead’s.

Likewise, that spring day in 1967, they were coming to tell Sufien something.

Sufien never remembered that it was raining too for a spell that day when they left Safad, how the fog wrapped itself on the mountains like shrouds as they walked down that hill, following all of the wailing women, a trail of black against the tawny countryside. At least the rain put a roof on the world that day. The sky could not just go on and on, dissipating into the hostile distance, into a universe which did not know about any of us or care. That day, or its rain, Sufien hardly remembered, but the world would tear itself in two for a hundred years or more over it, and this simple, awful image: a people lost because of a people lost.

My father, Sufien whispered then, in the year 1967, back in Italy under the rain. How had seven years already passed since he had seen him?

The dead were not talking to Sufien about his father—they were talking to him about the war, the war to come. They murmured to him of the Nakba, of those days returning again, those days when his people wrapped their own in burial garments for no world to see, when their houses were taken, their trees and orchards, and then a new flag rose, to the soundtrack of all the nations’ cheers.

In Sufien’s hands, that afternoon, he stared at another letter from his father, all soggy from the weather, and he pressed the paper to his nostrils hoping to smell his father’s scent in it, his musk, that oud oil he had worn his entire life, purchased more than three decades prior on one of those ancient trips to Istanbul when he was still a dignified man, a man of Palestine who could come and go between borders as he pleased.

My little lion, you are a man now. You’ve seen the world. It is time to be with your family again, settle down and marry. Ahmed says he can find you a job with the airline. Firas is working as an English teacher. Wafa is engaged. The youngest ones are now almost adults. You can work in diplomacy with all of your languages. I always say that the great war is coming, but now it is here. Nasser is standing with us, he is strong, he has closed the Straits of Tiran, and next he will finish the entity they call Israel. Come to us and we will all return to Safad together. I want to see my father’s land again before I leave for the next life. I am not well, son, my heart feels too light in my chest.

For years, there had been no official reason for Sufien to remain in Italy. In fact, he lived there now illegally, his student visa long expired. The truth was he loved Italy. How could he tell his father that? How could he say that he had come to adore the happy singing of the Italian night, the abundant drinking, the broad notion that life was not bound up in martyrdom but in pleasure and in beauty? And oh, how good the skin of a woman was. It was his now, all that memory of the flesh. And he wanted more. He was not just the son of his father. Not just a Palestinian. He was Frank Leone. And perhaps tonight even, he could go out into the Italian evening, and find some girl to love. He wanted another body, another drink, another smoke. He did not want to think of sacrifice.

So, Sufien went out. He could not have this conversation with Malik. Malik would tell him to do his duty, it was time to pack up and help his family. Bernardo would tell him to “be free.” Bernardo was always saying that, Be free, man, just be free.

Sufien went out to find Bernardo. They never had to make plans, those two. It was a matter of an hour before Sufien found Bernardo because he was always at one of two of his favorite trattorias. Always the same place, or the other place. Sometimes Bernardo just yelled up at Sufien’s balcony from Via de’ Bardi to come down, come drink. In the decades to follow, the two would reminisce about that time Bernardo came to Sufien’s flat unannounced, only to find Sufien with blood all over his face and body. Bernardo thought his friend had killed someone, and accused him of as much, but it turned out Sufien was having one of his famous nosebleeds. The two went to the bar anyway, and Sufien sat there with tissues stuffed in his nostrils. That was the only night in the history of their friendship, Bernardo later joked, that all of the women preferred him over Sufien.

This night ended differently than Sufien’s other nights with Bernardo in only one way. Sufien thought Eden, Bernardo’s family friend who had been sitting with him and Sandy at the bar, was another American. Her English was so perfect. Yes, an American named Eden, and oh how Sufien loved Americans, because they were so sweet, and a little easy, and already her taste was in his mouth, that milk and honey, when she told him she was Jewish and no, she wasn’t American, that she had grown up on a kibbutz in Israel. I’m an Israeli, she said emphatically.

At first it meant nothing. He did not want to stop what he was doing. He wanted so much more than just to kiss her.

And what about you? she asked him, slowing him down. Tell me something about you. Your family name? And where is your family from?

When it was over, Sufien stepped out onto his balcony to smoke a cigarette. What had Bernardo done? But Bernardo hadn’t done it, Sufien had. Why didn’t his friend warn him? Warn him of what? Bernardo never understood Sufien when he became angry. Especially over politics. Bernardo always shut Sufien down, said, Life is too short. Do you want to waste it? Isn’t that your past? Be free, man. Sometimes Sufien thought his friend was right, and sometimes he thought his friend had never experienced anything to be angry about, and this enraged Sufien more. Sufien had never reckoned with Bernardo’s Jewishness. It hadn’t mattered, not until now. Now, this woman, Eden, was naked in his flat, and Bernardo had brought her to him. Her family was living on Sufien’s land. Her fathers and uncles and brothers may have killed Sufien’s own kin. Why hadn’t Bernardo thought of that? Had he meant to introduce them? Sufien had gone out in search of Bernardo. Not the opposite. But Sufien had seduced her, had drunkenly insisted she accompany him back to Via de’ Bardi. Was it a trick? A conspiracy even? How could it be? There she was. There she still was. Sufien could strangle her or he could make love to her again. It was late and Sufien heard the crazy old man who always raved through the streets all night long until the dawn, the one who had been walking up and down Via de’ Bardi since Rome had fallen, babbling: We are ruined, we are ruined, we are ruined.

Sufien returned inside, removed his trousers, lay beside Eden, and found her again.

Siamo rovinati, the madman wailed. Siamo rovinati.

Sharmuta died the night Jerusalem fell. It was so quick, her decline. One day she quit eating, and then the next she was breathing heavily, and then she could not lift herself up onto her legs to walk.

Sufien had been so loyal to her in the beginning, and then with the years, he had neglected her as we so often do to our pets, but on that night in June, as the news of his land bellowed from the radio, Sufien held her in her last moments and saw how long she had not been able to clean herself, because in her claws remained dried clumps of feces. She had always eaten whatever he would give her, scraps from his own dinner, now nothing. She was thin, wiry, her fur was hard, readying itself for the ground. He held her and she pissed in his arms, moaning, begging for him to relieve her of this misery, and at the same time the Israeli forces had taken al-Quds.

Sufien never understood power, the way human beings played with each other like dispensable toys. And he never would. Because of this, because of the way he misunderstood politics at the large and small scale, Sufien (like his own father) began to think of himself as a loser. He lost at chess, card games, he lost with women, and most of all, he lost with money. Now he knew that without a doubt he was on the losing side of the most important historical conflict of the twentieth century. And this was another reason why, for a very long time, Sufien found solace in drink. Drink was honest. It did what it intended to do, and didn’t lie.

Sufien held Sharmuta, and meanwhile, Eden was knocking and knocking and weeping at his door. He didn’t want to see her. Mostly because he couldn’t bear to tell her that the day before, his circle of friends, Yasin and the rest, the ones who would later fight with the PFLP, all except Malik, had denounced him because of the Zionist girl. It was one thing to befriend a Jew, that was conditionally acceptable, and perhaps excusable since Bernardo was an American. This one had served in the enemy’s army. And Sufien was fucking her.

Here Eden was, and her voice drew itself upon his body even from beyond the doorway, that gravel in it. She was saying, Let me in.

Sharmuta was blinking more slowly.

I know you’re in there, I know you’re drunk! Eden said.

Leave me in peace, Sufien said. It was true, he just wanted quiet for Sharmuta. Eden would not stop begging. He almost had brought himself upright to let her in, he almost had submitted to her, when something changed. Sufien put his ear down to Sharmuta’s chest. There was no more breath, no more heartbeat. She was dead. The Israeli had taken this last moment from him too.

Sufien cradled Sharmuta, and went out, passing Eden in the hall, out onto Via de’ Bardi. He did with her, Sharmuta, what he had long wanted to do with himself. He threw her into the Arno.

How long would he stand there grieving the cat? It felt ridiculous, this weeping, this useless weeping. You loser, he said to himself.

Then he stumbled downriver to that same trattoria where he had first met Eden months earlier, his usual place.

Someone bought him a whiskey. And he said, Shukran, ana Felestini.

The Italian man didn’t care. They clinked glasses and the old man grumbled about his bitch of a wife who was sleeping with the neighbor.

This was whiskey, like a rage, whiskey which didn’t belong in Sufien’s blood, it was a drink for a man pounding through ice. It was June 5, 1967. Half a century later his daughter would miscarry on this same date. Allah, who was made of time, who made time, and transcended time, kept a calendar. And Allah gave, and He took.

Al-Quds had fallen. Sufien’s cat was dead.

Eden was there suddenly. She was in the bar. Had she been there all along? Sufien didn’t understand the sequence. She had been outside of his door, and he had told her to leave, then the cat had died, and he had left, and now? Had she followed him? Or had he let her in and she had walked him to the bar? Here was her face, those scalloped tresses across her forehead like the waves at night. He just wanted her close. Why was she so far away, on the other side of the bar? He was so drunk. He was stupid drunk.

A man was whispering in her ear, Sufien saw his mouth move: Sei bellissima.

Sufien could see the man, despite his drunkenness. His hands were smooth, his nails filed.

You’re no Paul Newman, Sufien walked over and said.

And the man just laughed, like it made no sense, because it didn’t. Then Sufien took his glass of whiskey, that evil imperial drink, and smashed it against the man’s head.

Eden began to scream. You’re fucking crazy. What Sufien heard was, You Arab, you fucking Arab, and his hands were already around her throat.

And he thought, if he could think at all: This feels good because this is how I feel.

Then he felt like whimpering. He felt like he just wanted to die.

Someone threw him away from her and he was in the street, or the street was on top of him, and now he felt like, yes, he wanted the Arno all over him. He wanted to go home with Sharmuta.

There were people smoking outside, young people who all wanted to make love with someone that night. Where was Eden? Sufien was crying for her. He did not know where she was. And then she was kneeling beside him and he hated her again. For being there. For saying, Let’s just go home, habibi.

I’m not your fucking habibi, he said.

Now Sufien was going to ruin it. He was going to understand how power worked at last.

It’s all because of fucking Jews like you, he said. I’m kicking you out. Like you kicked me out, you stronza. And he thought he was in his apartment, not lying there drunk in the street, his legs sprawled out kicking her. No, she had moved away. He was just kicking air.

She was weeping, saying, Please, Sufien, please stop. You’re better than this. You’re bigger than this.

And he said, no. This is all there is. Ugliness, ugliness. You’re ugly, I’m ugly.

She thought that by coming close to him, kissing him, she would soften him, recall him to her.

You don’t scare me, she said. I love you.

He had never heard a woman say this to him, so nakedly. He couldn’t receive these words now. He closed his eyes, and imagined his father. Sufien could almost see Abdul Jalil’s hand shaking over his cigarette, as his heart vessels thinned to the soundtrack of an Israeli al-Quds. He had never recovered from losing his country the first time. He had lost it. Who had lost it? It was lost because of him. Sufien. Had he never been born? We would have it. We would still have it. The old sad intrusive loop played again.

There Eden was before him, saying it once more, I love you, and she was so pretty, her olive skin, her bangs wet from tears. She wanted to be French and didn’t shave her armpits. Her kohl dripped down her face. She had such elegant hands. She was still talking. All he had to say was that he loved her too. Or okay. Or let’s talk in the morning. Or let’s never talk again.

No. He liked the rage. This was power, this was whiskey.

This was England, this was Israel, this was America.

Vaffanculo, he said. Ya Yehudia.

You deserve it, all of it, she said finally.

So do you, he said. He had no idea what he meant. Suddenly, he just wanted to hold her. To take it back. But the war was finished. It was too late. And all that was left in his mouth was the acrid taste of power. So, he understood it now. How grand.

The next morning, it was all over the newspapers, that al-Quds belonged to Israel, and when he arrived at the market, his first customer was an American tourist. He told her she was a knock- out like he was saying good morning. He was still drunk and he felt like if he could just get her in bed the image of Eden’s face would go away.

She couldn’t stop smiling, this girl. Maybe no one in America ever dies, he wondered. Just then, Bernardo arrived at the market for work, whispering that he was sorry for being late, and Sufien didn’t know how he would ever tell Bernardo how sorry he was for what had happened between him and Eden. Thankfully, the tourist was still talking, and now she was asking Sufien how he was doing today, trying out her terrible Italian. AY TOO COYMAY STAY?

He nodded his head, said, Bene, bene, smiling back at her stupid smile.