In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees Read online

  ALSO BY JEFF TALARIGO

  The Pearl Diver

  The Ginseng Hunter

  © 2016 by Jeff Talarigo

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher:

  Etruscan Press

  Wilkes University

  84 West South Street

  Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766

  (570) 408-4546

  www.etruscanpress.org

  Published 2018 by Etruscan Press

  Cover design by Carey Schwartzburt

  Interior design and typesetting by Susan Leonard

  The text of this book is set in Chapparal Pro.

  First Edition

  17 18 19 20 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Names: Talarigo, Jeff, author.

  Title: In the cemetery of the orange trees / by Jeff Talarigo.

  Description: First edition. | Wilkes-Barre, PA: Etruscan Press, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017014816 | ISBN 9780998750811 (eBook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Palestinian Arabs--Fiction. | Culture conflict--Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Political. | GSAFD: Allegories.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.A525 I5 2018 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014816

  Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Etruscan Press.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

  For the people of Jabaliya, and

  for my father.

  Seal me with your eyes.

  Take me wherever you are—

  Mahmoud Darwish

  Table of Contents

  So That We Never Forget

  A Two Cigarette Story

  The Night Guardian of the Goat

  A Three Cigarette Story

  The Boy Who Sold Martyrs

  A Four Cigarette Story

  My Father, the Mole

  Border Shearing

  As Far As One Can Go

  Acknowledgments

  So many have helped make this book possible.

  From the Ohio years: Jack Hoover, Roger Gochneaur, Bill Currin and Barb McFarland—for being beams of light in those darkest of days.

  To all the people in block number four in Jabaliya, especially the Elakra family and to Fayez, Bassam, Uncle Ali, Mustafa and Shafiq el Biss—for allowing me to see Gaza with my own eyes and for changing my life.

  To the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers class of 2006–2007, for giving me the greatest year a writer could hope for. Thanks in particular to the following fellows for their guidance and unwavering support: Jim Shapiro, Jim Miller, Maya Jasanoff and David Blight. Also, to Jean Strouse, the glue that keeps everything together, and Pamela Leo, Adriana Nova, Betsy Bradley, Sam Swope, Miriam Gloger and David Ferriero. And to my cousins, Bill Schierberl and Margaret Pomeroy—New York is a much emptier place without you.

  All those in my Boston years: the wonderful people at Grub Street, Theresa Tobin at MIT Library, AGNI, for publishing a part of this book and for the careful eye of Jennifer Alise Drew, to a couple of early readers and listeners, Dana Sadji and Reema Tambosi, and to the greatest bookstore in the world—The Harvard Coop—a sanctuary where much of this was written.

  All the students, past and present, and to the faculty at Wilkes University’s Low-Residency MA/MFA Program who have provided an enormous amount of feedback and encouragement. Mike Lennon for his suggestion to bring the American into the novel; Bonnie Culver for passing this manuscript along and to three late-stage readers, Kevin Oderman, Teresa Loeffert, and Bev Donofrio.

  Everyone at Etruscan Press for their care, bravery and passion for this book: Phil Brady, Bob Mooney, Bill Schneider, Pamela Turchin, Danielle Watson, Bob Antinozzi, Susan Leonard and Carey Schwartzburt.

  And finally, to my mother, my father-in-law, Tadashi Toshimitsu, my wife, Aya, and son, Sam, who have also carried this book along with them for so many years.

  He has come here, to the land of the forgotten, in order that he may forget, that within their story he may perhaps find his.

  His first hour there.

  He appears in the city square on a February afternoon, unbeknownst to anyone, a backpack stooping his shoulders. Standing along Salah el Din Street, eating a falafel sandwich, eyes of curiosity are on the stranger, eyes of distrust, but they turn from him and down the street in an instant to where a convoy of soldiers approaches. Above him, unseen, a group of boys lurk on the rooftop, the stones in their hands itch their palms, and when the first jeep is within range they throw them. A loud bang and then another against the side of a jeep startle the stranger. Within seconds the soldiers are shooting at the boys and he, frozen, is caught in the crossfire. There is an alleyway behind him and he escapes into it. People are shouting, throwing anything they get their hands on: rocks, bottles, bananas, a water pipe. An old man yanks off his left shoe and fires it into the throng of soldiers. He watches the old man hobble away, leaving the shoe in the middle of the street. A soldier in the back of a jeep aims his Kalashnikov and shoots dead the shoe.

  There is much the American does not know.

  That one should never stand beneath the roof where stone throwers are perched. When soldiers pass, make yourself invisible. The waft of tear gas that seared his lungs earlier in the day is produced only forty miles from his hometown. Don’t drink the last of the coffee in your glass. As of late, soldiers have been appearing on the streets, out of uniform, allowing them to get closer to the stone throwers. Sometimes they carry a backpack with a gun inside and then make arrests. The name Jabaliya means people of the mountain, and it is pronounced in even syllables – Ja – ba – li – ya.

  This is where he wants to go—the largest camp in the Gaza Strip, the birthplace of the intifada, the uprising. He has no idea how to get there, or if he can even enter the place, only that it is north. Knowing that the sea is a mile away and to the west, he begins to walk through the city, keeping, as best he can, the sea to his left.

  He hasn’t been walking long before a voice, in his language, stops him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to go to Jabaliya,” he says, mispronouncing the word.

  The young man corrects his pronunciation.

  “My name is Fayez. That is where I live.”

  Several hours later the two of them are walking up School Street and the American is gazing at the expanse of cement block houses. Children get close and Fayez tells them that the man is an American.

  “Go away,” Fayez says to the children. They scatter for a second or two, but are back, appearing from everywhere, out of nowhere.

  “It’s okay,” the American says, removing his backpack and playing with the children.

  And this is how it is the entire way up School Street. Women poke their heads out of colorful doors, men sitting along the cement wall nod to the stranger.

  Nearing the house, the American asks:

  “Why is it that you are bringing me to your family?”

  Fayez watches the American shaking hands with the children and he smiles and says: “I trust your eyes.”

  So That We Never Forget

  As of late, in the coastal village of al-Jiyya, there has been an increase in the sightings of the talking jackals. Ghassan, a fishing boat repairman, has lived his twenty-four
years in a cave, just outside this village, which is equal distance from the two ancient coastal cities. He calls the cave The Finger of Allah, imagining that Allah, one day, poked his finger into the side of the mountain and created it. The cave has a beautiful view of the Sea and in it, on this late September day in 1948, is Ghassan’s wife, eight months pregnant. From the entrance of the cave, standing at its far-right side and on her toes, Ghassan’s wife can see the top of her husband’s work hut down along the beach. It has been a while since she has done so because being anywhere near the bright sunlight sends flashes of pain into her head. Most of her days are spent at the rear of the cave, where only the final minutes of sunset can cast their auburn glow.

  On this particular evening, as Ghassan is about halfway up the hill leading to his home, two jackals stand blocking the path. Ghassan continues walking toward them, and when he is fifteen feet away, one of the jackals speaks.

  “I hear that your wife will soon have her first child.”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “How wonderful for the both of you,” the jackal says.

  “Thank you. Now, could you let me pass? I must go and attend to my wife.”

  “We have just visited her and she looks very tired. Before we allow you to pass, there is something you must agree to help us with.”

  “What is it you want?” asks Ghassan.

  The smallest of the jackals hands Ghassan a scroll of paper.

  “We hear you are good with the brush and we need those names painted on signs for us. One name per sign.”

  Ghassan unrolls the scroll and looks at the long list of names.

  “There must be over one hundred and fifty names here.”

  “Your mind is very quick. There are one hundred and seventy-six.”

  “It is in the script of the jackals. This will take weeks to do.”

  “No, they must be finished before your wife gives birth. If they are not completed by that time, your wife will give birth to a goat.”

  Ghassan looks at the jackals and can’t believe what he is hearing.

  “Where will I get all the wood for the signs?”

  “It is all waiting for you by your home.”

  “And the paints?”

  “So too are the paints.”

  “And how am I to learn this script?”

  “Get practicing.”

  They step aside in order that Ghassan can pass. He quickly walks by and before he has made it around the bend, one of the jackals shouts, “You should hurry! It looks as though your wife may give birth early!”

  Ghassan sees the hill of blank wooden signs in front of his home. There are two stacks, both taller than he. Next to the stack of signs is a barrel of paint. Simple white. He takes one of the signs and rubs his hand over its smooth surface. Each sign is a yard long. Ghassan does a quick calculation; four signs an hour, twenty signs each night. That would be more than a week, nine days to be exact, to complete them all.

  He enters the cave and goes to the back where his wife is on her side, rubbing her stomach. She has told him how she can feel the hiccups of the baby and Ghassan finds this both miraculous and frightening. Only once has he even touched her stomach and it reminded him of an inflated balloon and how it cracks and becomes perilously taut when you paint it. Her eyes are open and she is looking at Ghassan. He thinks of asking her about the jackals, but decides against it. Stress, he has heard from the midwife, can cause a woman to go into labor early.

  “How is your headache?”

  “It is not bad today. For some reason the sunlight is not so strong. Is it cloudy?”

  “Not a cloud,” Ghassan catches himself, thinking of the stacks of wood and how they are probably blocking much of the bright sunlight. “Not a cloud this morning, but as the day passed, more clouds began appearing.”

  “Have you anything for dinner?”

  “I brought home some sardines and I will cook them and make bread as well.”

  Ghassan goes to the front of the cave and does what he has told his wife he would do. Soon there is dinner, which his wife only picks at.

  “You must eat more.”

  “I have little appetite. I think the baby will come soon.”

  Ghassan gags on the fish bone of his wife’s words.

  “Eat some bread,” his wife tells him.

  He does as she says, although he knows there is no bone in his throat. He finishes his dinner and hurries outside and stirs the paint, looks at the long list of names on the sheet. He begins; the Hebrew script, although different, is at least in the same direction as his language—right to left. QIRYAT EQRON. YAD MORDEKHAY. ZIQIM. One by one, with hands weighted by a mortified heart and pounds of sadness, he paints the renamed towns and villages that have fallen in the war. But what is one to do, faced with the burden of being the father of a goat?

  It is past midnight and Ghassan has completed twenty-two signs. He can barely lift his arm and he joins his wife on the mat. She sleeps and he thinks of reaching out and touching her stomach, but is afraid to, so he slides down the mat to where his head is level with her stomach and listens closely for the hiccups of their baby.

  The days that follow are the same; Ghassan goes off to work along the beach, rushes home, eats, then paints two dozen signs before wearily crawling onto the mat. He has seventy signs remaining; three more nights at his present pace. When he awakens, although tired, the knowledge that he is only a few days from completing the work gives Ghassan some energy. He steps out of the cave and rubs his eyes, trying to shake away the mirage before him. Overnight, another stack of signs has appeared with a new list of an additional six or seven dozen names nailed to them.

  Ghassan doesn’t go to work on this day and he paints nonstop; his only break is at dusk when the mosquitoes are at their most ravenous. By the time he makes it to his mat he has nearly completed the entire initial list given to him by the jackals. He sleeps little on this night and his wife tries to find a position that will allow her to rest. Ghassan dreams that his wife, while trying to leave the cave in the morning, is unable to do so, not because of the stacks of unpainted signs, although they do hinder her, but because her stomach has grown so large that it is like a massive boulder plugging the mouth of the cave. Ghassan is left with no choice but to deliver the baby himself; the screams of his wife can be heard for miles along the shoreline, mistaken by some as a foghorn, and then, after the baby is born, he must wait until his wife’s stomach distends enough for him to squeeze out of the cave. In this dream, he wakes feeling not the hiccups of the baby but the kicks, not one little leg kicking, or two, but four, and Ghassan bolts from the mat fearing that the time is near and, if he doesn’t hurry, he will be the father of a goat.

  As with all the signs he has painted, the five dozen he finished the day before are gone, taken away in the middle of the night. But today, as with yesterday, there is a new stack with a new list of names attached to it. He begins working on them at once and it is more of the same for the next couple of days; Ghassan is unable to go down to his work hut.

  On the twelfth day of sign-painting, Ghassan’s wife lets out a scream and she screams again and again. Her water has broken and Ghassan, before spinning and running down the hill in search of the midwife, looks at the unfinished stack of signs, perhaps eighty are left, and he doesn’t know what to do and he just stands there, locked in indecision and fatigue.

  “Hurry, Ghassan,” his wife shouts. “It feels like a horse is coming out!”

  These words kick Ghassan down the hill and to the village of al-Jiyya where the midwife lives. He races past his work hut and along the breakwall and to the village. He is yelling for the midwife, but no one comes out of their houses. The village is without sound, not a single man gurgling from a waterpipe or sipping morning coffee, not a single person in their house. The village’s six dairy cows are nowhere to be seen.

  Ghassan retraces his steps. At the village entrance he notices, above his head, one of the signs he has painted—MOS
HAV GE’A. Briefly he admires his work before wondering where the sign for his village—al-JIYYA—has gone. But he knows. He knows what he has done, his betrayal.

  He thinks of his wife and passes the breakwall and his work hut and several fishing boats in disrepair. As he is about to turn onto the path leading to his cave, Ghassan hears the bleating of a goat. He imagines the goat is still sticky in its birth fluids, wobbling on newborn legs. Ghassan turns from the path and hurries southward knowing that by following the shoreline, in a few hours, he will come to the city of Gaza.

  But it is the conscience of man that makes him different from animals, is it not? Would a wolf or a bird or a horse be pestered the further it moved away from its pregnant mate? Perhaps, the animal would return out of instinct, but guilt would not prey on its mind rendering it unable to go a step further.

  It is this guilt that forms a sheen on our skin and takes an enormous, debilitating effort on our part to shed. And it is this that turns Ghassan around, halfway to Gaza. He retraces his footsteps past the fallen villages, past the signs that he has painted, and up that hill he has climbed thousands of times, but never as difficult as on this day, and he comes to the mouth of his cave and in there lies a baby goat, lapping at its birth fluids. Ghassan looks around, inside the cave and out, for his wife. He calls her name. Only the cave answers. The goat glances at him and Ghassan wonders, if like infants, newborn animals also cannot see clearly.

  Ghassan bends down, lifts and cradles the baby goat, walks out of the cave for the last time in his life, down the hill and along the beach, south with the sun on the left side of his face, atop his head, and onto the right. Before the sun drowns itself in the Sea, as he arrives at the Gaza border, with a city of tent camps swelling the beach, Ghassan lifts the tiny, floppy ear of the goat and whispers into it a promise, a promise of remembrance, that same promise that each and every generation of goat will whisper into their kids’ tiny ears. On and on, so that they never forget.