Que le soleil est beau quand tout frais il se lève, Comme une explosion nous lançant son bonjour!
— Bienheureux celui-là qui peut avec amour
Saluer son coucher plus glorieux qu'un rêve!
Charles Baudelaire “Le Coucher du Soleil Romantique”
Preface to the Reader: I’m a lover, not an aesthetician.
Zivah and I met in Tel Aviv-Yafo.
We volunteered at a youth center
promoting peace and understanding.
Our toughest cases were the former
suicide bomber trainees, but she and I
made a great team. The first time
I asked her out for coffee she said she didn’t
get my text but I’m sure she ignored
it on purpose. When she came to the Center
she had just found out that her boyfriend had
cheated on her while he was fulfilling military service.
Repeatedly. And lied about it to her face.
According to my Zivah, his most unforgiveable
crime: saying “I love you” when there’s no way he meant it.
Then one not so unordinary day after that
she asked me if I wanted to go
get an ice cream and walk along the Port after work.
And we did.
“Khalid, what if we never left this beach?
Just wiled away our days and nights here
and never looked over our shoulders ever again?”
“I wouldn’t want to share you with
the inevitable tourists that’ll come. I barely want
to share you with the sand and the waves of
this white sea.”
“It’s Mediterranean blue.”
“The White City looks out on the White Sea,
habibati, you can’t deny it.”
“And the memory of Jaffa oranges
never smelled so convincingly.”
Bars and coffee shops. Museums and bric-a-brac.
Endless days and sanguine nights.
Moments of eternal splendor.
What now would I give for a night at the opera.
Zivah wanted to see “Il Trovatore”,
the tickets were going to be my surprise for her
when out of the blue she came running
up to me and took my right hand and guided
it over her stomach. Her eyes looked up at mine and she smiled.
And so did I.
She was late for work. She wasn’t answering
her cell phone. The morning news said a suicide
bomber had carried out his unilateral sentence
on her bus, the number five. I was supposed to
pick her up, I should have been there. Who knew?
Her brothers never approved of us
but that they didn’t let me call
on her house during shivah
was unforgiveable.
Zivah and I could’ve made it;
life wouldn’t have been easy
but it should’ve been ours to know.
How I longed to be the rock
blown to pieces falling into itself
and the sea’s able fingers
as they caress the newly forged stones
of a no-longer latent Intifada.
The cool night sand and the moon’s
lullaby waves could not bring me back.
The tape across my chest now started
to itch and my sweaty palms…
It is here on this rock where
isolation is the key to
our stormy grave by the sea.
Splendor eternal are Zivah and I.
And for a windswept moment the memory of our last
cascaded over me. Of her knowing smile.
Of our three lives forever changed… and already lost.
I proclaimed: “Habibati, ani ohev otech.”
The idiom is:
the bomb goes off.
Molly Flynn
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