Track Changes Read online

  Also by Sayed Kashua

  Let It Be Morning

  Dancing Arabs

  Second Person Singular

  Native

  TRACK CHANGES

  SAYED KASHUA

  TRANSLATED FROM THE HEBREW

  BY MITCH GINSBURG

  Copyright © 2020 by Sayed Kashua

  Cover artwork by Olaf Hajek

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

  FIRST EDITION

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Grove Atlantic edition: January 2020

  This book is set in 12-point Cochin LT

  by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-4789-9

  eISBN 978-0-8021-4790-5

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  20 21 22 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Sayed Kashua

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part A

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part B

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part C

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part D

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part E

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part F

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part G

  Chapter One

  Postscript/Arabic Chapter

  Back Cover

  A

  1

  In the living room of a grad school dorm, I sat at a computer and stared at an old Sony tape player. It was the kind we used to call an executive recorder, and it was top-of-the-line when I bought it twenty years ago. I was so impressed with the name of the thing back then that I felt sure that my future—in management’s top tier—was guaranteed. The recorder takes standard-size cassettes and has an external mic, three black buttons, and one red one for recording. I opened it gingerly with two fingers, making sure the tape was not tangled, and pulled out the ninety-minute Maxell cassette, B-side up. It was new, the plastic wrapping torn off just two months ago. I had known, already then, that I couldn’t afford to take any chances, that it had to be a new cassette. Judging by the amount of magnetic tape spooled around the two white wheels, I had about sixty minutes of recording. I flipped the cassette, so that the A-side was up, peering at me through the clear deck window, and hit Rewind. The click of the black button, which popped up and stood even with the rest, informed me that I’d reached the beginning of the story.

  For some reason this story starts at a bar in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

  The bartender was pretty, and I was unable to guess where she was from. Not too dark, not too white. She must have been one of those people who can check multiple boxes on the ethnicity forms that Americans are asked to fill out when they sign their kids up for public school or open a bank account or visit a health clinic for the first time.

  I sat on a high bar stool, tucking into my second beer. My carry-on suitcase was pressed against the side of the stool and every now and again I touched it offhandedly to ensure it was still in place. Noticing this, the bartender said that ever since airlines had started charging for stowed luggage anyone who can takes carry-on. “It saves twenty-five bucks,” she said. “But it isn’t really about the money, because a sandwich and a drink here cost about the same.”

  “Can I get a shot of Jameson?”

  “A shot for eight or a double for twelve?” the bartender asked.

  “Double, please,” I said. “Neat.” I had a total of five hundred dollars to cover the entire trip, and that had to include presents, however small, for the kids and maybe for Palestine, too.

  “Here you go,” the bartender said with a smile, and I smiled back. She was young and beautiful, or at least that’s how I want to remember her. The age of servers and bartenders in America always surprised me, and I wasn’t sure if it was a pleasant surprise or not. When we started taking the kids to local restaurants on the first Friday of every month, I started noticing that the servers and bartenders here can be old. In Jerusalem, they are always young, and the chance of finding a server over the age of thirty is possible only at what are called Oriental restaurants, which operate mostly during the day. I didn’t know what to make of the elderly servers in America, who were sometimes in their sixties and seventies. Sometimes I thought that it’s good that there’s no age discrimination and hats off to the American public for creating an equal opportunity job market. But other times I felt a deep sorrow bubble up inside me when someone my parents’ age served me water in an ice-filled plastic cup—with a wrapper-capped straw, of course—and said, “Here you are, sir.”

  The cups of water in America are enormous, at least in the usual chain restaurants, which are by and large what we have in the small town where we live. My sons love TGI Fridays and Buffalo Wild Wings. My daughter always says she doesn’t care where we go, that she’d rather skip the whole scene and stay at home. And I say that I’d rather she come along and join the rest of the family once a month, that it’s important, and she always relents. The servers in these restaurants have a set routine. They deliver the tray of cold water to the table and then hand out the menus and ask if they can get you something to drink. The soft drinks come in three sizes and the refills are free. Once they arrive with the drinks, they expect you to be ready to order. First courses and mains arrive together. Then they come back once more and ask if everything’s okay and if they can get you anything else. Once you’ve said, “No, thanks, everything’s fine,” then they come back while you’re still eating and set the bill on the edge of the table, usually in a padded folder with an inside pocket for the credit card. Around here they don’t wait for you to raise your finger and request the bill. “Take your time, whenever you’re ready,” they always say with a broad smile. Elderly servers, though, sadden me, because it’s hard work: you have to stay on your feet for hours on en
d, scurrying from kitchen to table, serving, seating, and cleaning. People of that age should be living a different life, free of the financial burdens that force people to work long shifts till they can no longer stand on their feet. I don’t know why such things upset me, as though my life were so different from theirs. Maybe it’s because I fear that their fate is what awaits me. After all, in order to buy the plane ticket, which cost over a thousand dollars, I had to use my wife’s credit card, the Israeli one, and divide the payment into twelve equal installments, the most they’d let me do without interest.

  The bartender’s face showed no signs of distress. Sometimes I feel like I can read people’s faces and know their backgrounds, their bank balances, and whether they were bullied or did the bullying during their school days. Sometimes I worry about the way in which others might read me.

  I wanted a cigarette so badly, but in US airports there are no smoking corners whatsoever. The smoker is officially despised here, cigarettes the habit of beggars and criminals. Nonetheless, I asked the bartender, who said she was sorry, but no, there’s no smoking zone here in O’Hare. But she’d heard that down South, in the Atlanta airport and others, they still had smoking rooms, somewhere after the security check. I looked at my cell and saw that I had an hour before boarding. I couldn’t step out for a cigarette, though, because then I’d have to go back through security and although I knew I’d probably make it in time, I couldn’t take the chance. I couldn’t afford to take any undue risks, not today. The lines could be too long. I’ll smoke in Paris, I figured. There had to be a smoking zone there and I had a two-hour layover in Charles de Gaulle before catching my connection to Tel Aviv.

  I planned on nursing the whiskey. I couldn’t afford another. Two beers and a double shot of whiskey ought to do the trick. I’ll just drink slowly, I told myself, and save the last sip for the last minute. That way I’ll board the plane with as much alcohol as possible in my bloodstream. And aside from cheap wine they don’t offer beer or any other kind of alcohol on flights anymore, at least not in economy.

  “So, where you off to?” the bartender asked.

  There was no trace of an accent on her tongue, at least not a foreign one. I have an accent and always will. My ear is not attuned to the American vowel sounds and there are some words I don’t even try to say like the locals, knowing in advance that I’ll fail. And yet I can always recognize a foreign accent, in any language. People with a foreign accent carry a different expression on their faces, an expression that is hard to describe in words.

  “Home,” I said.

  “Where’s that at?”

  “Jerusalem,” I said, figuring that she must have heard of it and that it would spare me the rest of the explanations.

  “Ohh, that’s awesome, that’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit. How long have you been away?”

  “Almost two years. Actually, a bit more than two years.”

  “You live in Chicago?”

  “Not remotely,” I said, trying to be entertaining. “Urbana-Champaign.”

  “So, you’re a Fighting Illini, then?” she asked.

  “Go Illini,” I said, masquerading as a foreign academic whose unique services had been sought by the university.

  “You must miss it, though, huh?”

  “Very much.”

  “You going home to let the family spoil you a bit?” she said with a sweet smile, asking a question suited to a younger man, not one fast approaching forty.

  “Totally,” I said, as the locals do.

  “The food must be great over there, right?” she asked, and I nodded, “Best in the world.”

  “How long will you be abroad?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I still didn’t know.

  2

  The sky was starting to darken and the time on my phone showed ten in the morning as the plane touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport. The American phone—its roaming data restricted to domestic use only—would not update to local time, 6:00 p.m., without a wireless connection. It had been more than twenty-four hours since I’d left my wife and our two boys for Tel Aviv. As for my daughter, well, I’d knocked softly on her door and called her name, but she had not come out of her room. Maybe she really had been asleep and hadn’t heard.

  A day before departure, I told the kids that I was going back to the old country for an important job. I told them that a rich customer had offered me a serious sum of money to write his autobiography. I told them I was going back simply to meet him and record his life story and that I’d do the rest of the work upon my return. My middle son asked me yet again what an autobiography was and when I explained it to him he still didn’t understand why I write them for other people and why they don’t write their own stories themselves.

  I hugged the kids and promised to be back soon. My wife offered me a ride to the nearest bus stop and though I was happy for the offer, I declined, knowing that if she took me it would mean bringing the kids, too. And I believed that each and every car ride with the children, however brief, was a danger best avoided. I took the bus to Central Station and from there I took another to O’Hare.

  As the plane taxied toward the terminal at Ben-Gurion I checked to see if there was a Wi-Fi connection. When we’d left the country, there had not been free internet at the airport, nor had we needed it. Back then we still had Israeli phones with a 3G package, which I’d asked the provider to cut at midnight on the night of our departure. That same night I searched online for my father’s current cell phone number and wrote him a long text message to explain that we were going to the United States for work, that my wife and I had both been offered excellent opportunities, and we had decided to leave for a few years. We have three kids I also informed him: a daughter and two boys. And then we shut off our Israeli phones and boarded the plane.

  Now I wanted to send my wife a short message. Just a quick: “How’s it going?” containing no hint of longing or love. She’d understand that I’d landed and would respond with a soothing: “All good.” Or if something had happened, she’d call.

  One of the flight attendants reminded all passengers to stay buckled until the aircraft came to a full stop and the no-seatbelt sign had been turned off. The freedom to rise, as always, was announced with a ding, signaling the start of the race to the cabin doors. The goal was to exit as fast as possible, to push a single step closer to the doors. Seated in a window seat in one of the rear rows of the economy class, I had no choice but to shuffle aggressively forward like the rest of the passengers, as though a fire had seized the tail of the plane. I had to use my elbows to break into the current of traffic, otherwise I would have been the last person left on board. The race continued in the jet bridge that led to the terminal: the competition being to see who could get first to passport control, some moving in a fast gait, some at a full gallop. I tried not to join in but could not stop myself, for it is after all a war, and there is disdain here for the losers.

  “Father’s name?” asked the policewoman in the booth at the front of the Israeli passports line as she eyed my papers. I answered, and she handed over my passport with a slip permitting my entry to the country tucked into its pages. Once through passport control the passengers surged toward the duty-free counter, where the goods purchased upon departure were stocked in giant storage rooms, an arrangement that exists only in Israel’s international airport.

  Friends and family thronged the arrivals hall, eyeing the passengers as they came through the doors. Some clutched bunches of colorful balloons, and one young woman held a bouquet of flowers. I looked for the cigarettes I’d put in the front pocket of the suitcase and before lighting up I thought to myself, not for the first time, that if I’d managed to go without smoking for the duration of the flight it could well be the first step toward quitting. Maybe. I lit the cigarette and took a small drag, wary of the onset of dizziness, which strikes me whenever I first smoke after an hours-long break. I hoped that I didn’t stink of alcohol an
d that the smoke would help cover the tracks of the drinking I’d done during my layover at de Gaulle, where I’d also smoked as much as I could in the glass cage that I shared with the other similarly condemned passengers, whose Arabic came in an array of dialects.

  January—and darkness comes early.

  The weather, though, was nice, even quite warm when compared to the Midwest. I didn’t need the jacket I’d brought. A sweater would have sufficed.

  Walking toward the taxi stand, I cupped my palm over my mouth and sniffed but was unable to say definitively what my breath smelled like. The first taxi driver in line waited outside his car and cast me a hurrying look. He smiled a forced smile in my direction and popped the trunk. “No need,” I told him. “It’s only a small bag.”

  “As you like,” he said in a Russian accent.

  I sat on the right side of the back seat and set my bag down to my left.

  I wondered if the driver was scared and promptly found myself immersed in all of the old fears. Nothing had changed. I did not want to trigger feelings of anger, suspicion, or discomfort in a Jewish driver with a Russian accent who was in the process of discovering that he was transporting an Arab. It’s possible the matter would cause not so much as a flutter of excitement and that he regularly drives Arabs to villages within the Green Line and that he is one of the many Israelis who makes the pilgrimage to Tira on Shabbat for the weekend market, which I learned about only a few years ago from an Israeli TV program. A market that draws thousands of Israelis every Saturday to the city, which I will always call a village, searching for a variety of food and merchandise and principally looking to spend their day of rest in the fanciful atmosphere of financial prudence, clinging with blind faith to the notion that all things Arab are by definition cheap. And what reason would the taxi driver have for fearing to enter an Arab town in Israel proper? True, he has a Russian accent, but the accent seemed like a function of age and not a reflection on the number of years he’d been in the country. If there’s a formula that can take the two variables, age upon immigration and accent, I’d use it in order to estimate that he had made aliya twenty years ago. He certainly works with Arab drivers, knows to differentiate between different sorts of Palestinians, probably has already learned to say a few words in Arabic, and yet I was incapable of saying to him that I wanted to go to Tira, the site of my birth, home to my parents and siblings, whom I have not seen in years. I was not able to say to him that I wanted to go home and take a shower, remove the yoke of foreignness, change clothes, and rest from the twenty-four hours of travel before embarking on the assignment for which I had come. Instead I asked him to take me to Kfar Saba, speaking the name of the city in a way that any native Israeli would recognize and categorize but not this driver, who as a new immigrant lacked those skills, even if his newness was two decades old.