double would take on the name Moishie Lipshuitz, for example, and move into Moishie’s house, and Moishie would move into his double’s house and take on the name Raid Ahmed Bashar. People could be matched by profession, taste in the opposite (or same, as the case might be) sex, and hair color.
If that didn’t work, Daniel said, we could all leave. We could desert the entire region and spend the rest of our lives on Club Med cruise ships, only they’d be renamed Club Mid. Some ofDaniel’s jokes were macabre and in poor taste; they were about things like recycling body parts and obligatory victim suits, with pictures of corpses on them, which all citizens should be forced to wear, in order to garner sympathy from our critics abroad and also to raise money. Instead of relying on posters of a child with missing limbs lying in a hospital bed, the foreign ministry could print an aerial view of the entire population dressed in victim suits.
When I came to know Daniel better I understood that he felt there was something trivial and tedious about endless analyses of the situation, endless conversations in living rooms. A few months after we married there was a problem with an Arab at the firm he worked for. The army approached the company and asked them to design a big military complex. It was a great contract for them, huge. The army said this guy, Isa, who was one of the architects, couldn’t be part of the project, or even part of the firm, because he didn’t have clearance. The firm didn’t want to fire Isa, but they promised to keep him away from the project. They took away his keys to the filing cabinets and moved him to an isolated office. He had an entire floor to himself, but he was all alone there. Daniel quit in protest, and one other woman left, too. Daniel didn’t tell me about any of this while it was going on. He just came home one day and announced that he’d quit his job. “Why?” I asked. “Too many racist cowards,” he said. I had to ply him with questions to get the full story.
It was time for the sea, my drug and my salvation. The sea kept me from drowning myself, a notion I had never seriously contemplated, but I knew that if I did, the sea would be there to hold me up and send me back. Every evening I walked the one hundred steps from my flat to the beach, to the soft hot sandor the soft cool sand, depending on the season. There were times when I didn’t go out until late at night, but my favorite time was dusk, when the waves turned into white satin and pale blue silk with gray transparent strips of light shimmering under the fading sun.
I stepped out of our building and waved to Marik, a young immigrant with smooth skin and slanted eyes who guarded the gleaming new City Beach Hotel across the street. Poor Marik sat on his stool all day, sullen and languid behind an incongruous office desk that was taken out to the street every morning and removed at midnight.
I once had a very embarrassing experience with Marik. One sweltering summer night I had left the house wearing a long cotton dress. I rarely wore anything but jeans, but I had a yeast problem at the time and the doctor had recommended loose clothing until it went away. So I bought an ankle-length Indian dress; I wanted it to be light and colorful because I didn’t want to be mistaken for a religious woman. I wasn’t wearing panties; they only made matters worse, and the dress was long enough to provide a feeling of security. Unfortunately, on my way back from the beach, just as I reached my building, I stepped on a sidewalk grate, the kind that produced such winsome cinematic results when Marilyn Monroe encountered it in her white skirt. In my case, the dress blew skyward above my shoulders, leaving me completely naked on the street.
I didn’t understand at first what had happened, which made the dreadful moment last even longer. I tried to pull down my dress, without success; my second idea was to crouch down. Only then did it
If that didn’t work, Daniel said, we could all leave. We could desert the entire region and spend the rest of our lives on Club Med cruise ships, only they’d be renamed Club Mid. Some ofDaniel’s jokes were macabre and in poor taste; they were about things like recycling body parts and obligatory victim suits, with pictures of corpses on them, which all citizens should be forced to wear, in order to garner sympathy from our critics abroad and also to raise money. Instead of relying on posters of a child with missing limbs lying in a hospital bed, the foreign ministry could print an aerial view of the entire population dressed in victim suits.
When I came to know Daniel better I understood that he felt there was something trivial and tedious about endless analyses of the situation, endless conversations in living rooms. A few months after we married there was a problem with an Arab at the firm he worked for. The army approached the company and asked them to design a big military complex. It was a great contract for them, huge. The army said this guy, Isa, who was one of the architects, couldn’t be part of the project, or even part of the firm, because he didn’t have clearance. The firm didn’t want to fire Isa, but they promised to keep him away from the project. They took away his keys to the filing cabinets and moved him to an isolated office. He had an entire floor to himself, but he was all alone there. Daniel quit in protest, and one other woman left, too. Daniel didn’t tell me about any of this while it was going on. He just came home one day and announced that he’d quit his job. “Why?” I asked. “Too many racist cowards,” he said. I had to ply him with questions to get the full story.
It was time for the sea, my drug and my salvation. The sea kept me from drowning myself, a notion I had never seriously contemplated, but I knew that if I did, the sea would be there to hold me up and send me back. Every evening I walked the one hundred steps from my flat to the beach, to the soft hot sandor the soft cool sand, depending on the season. There were times when I didn’t go out until late at night, but my favorite time was dusk, when the waves turned into white satin and pale blue silk with gray transparent strips of light shimmering under the fading sun.
I stepped out of our building and waved to Marik, a young immigrant with smooth skin and slanted eyes who guarded the gleaming new City Beach Hotel across the street. Poor Marik sat on his stool all day, sullen and languid behind an incongruous office desk that was taken out to the street every morning and removed at midnight.
I once had a very embarrassing experience with Marik. One sweltering summer night I had left the house wearing a long cotton dress. I rarely wore anything but jeans, but I had a yeast problem at the time and the doctor had recommended loose clothing until it went away. So I bought an ankle-length Indian dress; I wanted it to be light and colorful because I didn’t want to be mistaken for a religious woman. I wasn’t wearing panties; they only made matters worse, and the dress was long enough to provide a feeling of security. Unfortunately, on my way back from the beach, just as I reached my building, I stepped on a sidewalk grate, the kind that produced such winsome cinematic results when Marilyn Monroe encountered it in her white skirt. In my case, the dress blew skyward above my shoulders, leaving me completely naked on the street.
I didn’t understand at first what had happened, which made the dreadful moment last even longer. I tried to pull down my dress, without success; my second idea was to crouch down. Only then did it
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