(a half-inadvertent Peace-in-the-Middle-East moment: Aaron and his new buddy Ahmed)
At the height of noon at Basata, a seaside commune in the Sinai, one has two tolerable courses of action: to stay in the water with divine-strength sunscreen, or to lounge in the sheltered communal space, drink Sprite and try not to move. Aaron and I had started with the second and had begun to mobilize for the first when Ahmed installed himself to monitor our progress in the Arabic novels we were reading. If people we meet register surprise when they hear us speak Arabic, they succumb to utter befuddlement at the notion that we could read it. This befuddlement often turns to denial: when possible, they ask us to prove it and thrust a text in our faces, then breathe over our shoulders as we read, correct each mistake in pronunciation and translate into English for us any word they happen to know. Then, “So did you understand it? What did it say?” Well dag, I was concentrating so hard on pronouncing it right that I didn’t really catch the meaning . . . I guess now you think I don’t speak Arabic even though we are bloody speaking Arabic and have been for the past two days . . .
With this in mind, imagine Aaron’s unease when our new friend Ahmed scootched in next to him and commanded him to read aloud from Tayyeb Saleh’s Season of Migration to the North. Among possible Arabic taskmasters, Ahmed seemed a gentle and compassionate candidate. Big brown eyes and chipmunk cheeks make him appear younger than his twenty-nine years, and two days together had confirmed his natural state as reclined on one arm in a white linen pyjama shirt and pants. Now however, he sat haunch to haunch with Aaron, alert and challenging. Aaron gripped the book like a life raft and plunged in. Ahmed remained ever vigilant; each time Aaron stumbled over a word he sprang to action: what does that word mean? In his anxiety, Aaron did a rather poor job of hiding his annoyance at these frequent interventions (not that I do any better myself in similar situations), but Ahmed either did not notice or did not care. If Aaron didn’t know the word, he translated it into English. If Ahmed didn’t know the English word, they delved into Hans Wehr together. I sat to one side writing down all of the new words in my little book and imagining myself as the wife of a famous and adventurous general, a clever wife who in the end learns more from listening than the men learn from doing, then manages to save the day in a thrilling climax. HA. I sipped my Sprite and plotted. Aaron and Ahmed forged ahead. At least two hundred pages remained to be translated and as luck would have it, the scene upon which Ahmed had joined the project bordered on pornographic. This of course made the process of translation more compelling, and Ahmed’s enthusiasm flagged not. (Aaron later revealed that his tutor’s infernal breath had rendered the task all the more harrowing.)
In the end it was Mohammad who saved Aaron from an afternoon of tedium. Shirtless and hair-slicked, he plopped his bulk down next to us and lit a cigarette. As usual, he wanted to talk. My insides had begun to stew from the heat and I wanted to swim, but there you are: “isn’tanopportunitytospeakArabicthebestpossiblechoiceatanygiventime?” Aaron’s performance provided us with the first topic for discussion, but the point of infinite density that is Israel made quick work of hijacking us and downward we spiraled. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
“Israel can’t win against Hizbullah on the longterm. It’s a guerilla war,” Ahmed lectured, and went on to list examples of other guerilla wars in modern history: Afghanistan, the current struggle in Israel-Palestine, and, with a smirk, the American Revolution. “America should know best of all that even great powers can’t defeat guerilla warriors.” He gathered steam. “They are easily replaceable – there is an endless supply of unemployed, angry youth in the Arab world that would just as soon die for their country, die for ideals, than die in humiliation under an imperial power. They will never give up.”
“Yes, but they can’t win either,” burst out Aaron. “I’ve heard this argument, that guerilla warfare and suicide bombing in particular have become a last resort for freedom fighting. But I can’t agree that it is a winning strategy. Maybe they can make a statement, gain access to international attention, but it will never be an answer. A violent non-state actor cannot expect to be taken seriously and receive sympathy in the context of an international political system.”
Since Aaron had offered a perspective outside the traditional line of discourse, it was as if he had not spoken. Ahmed did not argue with him; he simply picked up where he, and his brothers, had left off so many times before: “But without America, without American weapons, Israel would be nothing compared to warriors from all of the Arab countries combined.”
Mohammad took off with the weapon theme. With much gusto, he listed the varieties of American weapons used by the Israeli army; however, popping out of Egyptian Arabic in Mohammad’s Australian-accented English, “F-16s” and “M-16s” sounded jolly and harmless. And indeed, the relish he took in decrying the Americans struck me in and of itself as almost festive. All together now, everybody! One, two, three: Death to America! We Americans stood by feigning diffidence and foraging for eloquent, equivocal defenses that would give our interlocutors food for thought without revealing Aaron’s Jewishness.
Mohammad leaned forward on his cushioned bench, his eyes sparkling, his wry smile darkened. “Who are the Israelis anyway? How many of them could there possibly be? They’re just a handful of immigrants from Europe. We could destroy them. We don’t even need the whole Arab world to unite, any of the Arab countries alone could destroy them. Agouza or el-Dokki could take on Israel! That is, if Israel didn’t have America.”
“That’s why America can’t abandon Israel,” Aaron entreated. “Because without American aid, Agouza and el-Dokki would crush them, and that would not be a solution either.”
After a good half hour of this, I had had enough. Rather relieved for the first time to be an underestimated female, I claimed that my sensitive system could no longer stand the heat nor heated discussion and deserted. On second thought, I ruminated as I trudged back to the hut through the searing hot sand, maybe I’m not really underestimated. Maybe I just don’t have a brain for politics. I guess that’s okay. It makes sense, if I’m operating in this environment of mutually exclusive gender roles. We are the sooth-sayers, the providers, the communicators; they are the planners, the plotters, the victors. Perhaps the system makes more sense than we enlightened modern females would like to admit. At that moment, I felt I could sacrifice all further participation in political discussion without regret in favor of playing in the water with adorable Egyptian children.
Maybe though, I reasoned further, my issue is a bit more specific than that. Might it not be this subject and this context of discussing it that strikes me as particularly fruitless? Because at times like these, it sure seems to be. First of all, the conversation is taking place based on false premises, namely, that Aaron is not Jewish and does not have a wealth of first-hand information to offer on Israeli history and the current Israeli point of view. Surely the inclusion of such points would serve to further the dialogue, or at least shake it out of its usual “self”-centered tail-chasing. But at this point, we had already lied, and who knew how Mohammad and Ahmed would react if Aaron announced the truth at this point? Mohammad had claimed to have Jewish friends in Australia, and both ticked off the breezy given, “Of-course-the-Jews-aren’t-evil-just-their-politicians-are” more than once. Ahmed even took a fancy to declaring that he would like to marry a Jew: “Maybe then I could convince her!” These submissions aside, our educated and articulate friends showed no greater capacity for separating “Jew” from “Israeli” than Aaron’s sheghala, and neither of us felt prepared to hack away at this formidable barrier in ‘aamiyya.
So was it worth it to embroil ourselves in these conversations at all? For me, probably not, at least not in what concerns Israel. I don’t know enough to feel confident supporting a position and if I did, arguing with Ahmed and Mohammad would infuriate me beyond the powers of articulation even in English. This often seems to be the case with Aaron. His knowledge of the region and its history puts him in the position to offer objective and informed insights; however, when combined with his personal struggle in reconciling that knowledge with the contradicting historical narratives that informed his childhood, his desire to enlighten stems not just from scholarly but also from emotional obligation. Once funnelled through a foreign language, the disparity between what he aims to deliver and what gets communicated is often daunting, and his determination to navigate this gap does not always serve to clarify his expression. My vicarious experience of this growing frustration silences me as much as it provokes Aaron. Sometimes I just can’t stand to listen anymore, so I go and play with my favorite Egyptian yet, a five-year-old named Safiyya who would rather sing songs and have underwater tea-parties than talk about weapons and geopolitics. Ihna bashar, mish kideh? (We're all human, right?)
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