Yasmine by Eli Amir

lost weight, my son. Stay here a few days, rest and eat properly.”
    She went to the kitchen and came back with a tray bearing a finjan of coffee with cardamom for me and tea with mint for Father. It was a pleasure to drink the excellent coffee, after so many days of sour dishwater. “Father, do you have a cigarette?”
    “No, son. My throat was hurting so I didn’t buy any.”
    My father without cigarettes? He’s a chain-smoker and usually keeps several packets at home. He looked so weak and pale, lying in bed in the middle of the day, in the thick pyjamas.
    “Have you consulted an ear, nose, and throat specialist?” I asked.
    “What throat? Never mind his throat, he’s had a heart attack!” said Mother, and I was struck dumb.
    “Why are you worrying him, he’s just come back from the war,” Father hushed her. Deeply shaken, I drew my chair close to his bed, took his big hand and pressed it to my cheek. What had happened? Why a heart attack? Where did that come from? A deluge of pity flooded me, I wanted to hold his head and kiss it.
    “Don’t worry,” Father said in a soothing voice. “I got over it all right.”
    Mother couldn’t contain herself. “All right you call it? Don’t ask what we’ve been through. I can’t sleep a wink, I’m jumping at the slightest noise – footsteps on the stairs and I collapse. And your Father lights one cigarette with another, his ear glued to the radio all day and all night. Matit Israil, jannat Israil! – Israel is dead, Israel has gone mad! – they kept screaming, God damn them. Your Father couldn’t rest, he fell asleep with the radio on, I turned it off and he turned it on again, and so on night after night. Then one morning – crash! He fell on the bed, couldn’t breathe, was suffocating in my hands, his face all wet with cold sweat. God Almighty, what to do? How have I sinned? I ran out on the balcony and yelled and yelled. My soul almost flew away by the time the ambulance arrived. Don’t ask what we’ve been through,” she concluded with a heavy sigh.
    I glanced round the room and saw just how abject it was: a small windowless space, low ceiling, a dangling lightbulb. On the wall hung a photograph of us before leaving Baghdad. Mother and Father in the middle, elegantly dressed, their faces bright with hope. Mother is pregnant, my brother Moshi is looking serious, Kabi is trying not to grin, I’m tilting my head to one side in a dreamy posture. I like this picture. Father cut it out of our travel document and gave it to a photographer who enlarged and framed it.
    “Here, son, clean clothes. Go on, shower and leave everything behind you,” Mother urged me and again clasped my neck. “Such days we’ve had, good God Almighty. The body’s here and the soul over there…You heard about Broshi? What a fine boy! My eyes dried up from crying. And about Zakkai and Shkrachi and Skhaik? I don’t know who to cry for first. You heard what Broshi did with the first money he earned from the hall? Bought his parents’ flat from the government! Tell me, is therejustice in this world? Why didn’t all his good deeds protect him? His mother is a saint, an angel. She cleans and looks after the synagogue, and comes to prayers, and helps the poor. Nobody can be more righteous. We were together in synagogue when the shells fell on the neighbourhood. I said, ‘Come down to the shelter,’ and she said, ‘Me, go down to the shelter when my son is at war? God forbid!’ And look what happened to her.”
    “Enough crying, it’s bad for your eyes,” said Father.
    “It’s not the eyes, it’s the heart. I remember his bar mitzvah as if it was yesterday. We were new in the neighbourhood, I didn’t know a soul, and his mother brought me refreshments with her own hands, a big platter. ‘Take it for the children.’ Suddenly he’s a soldier, and he’s gone…Oh my oh my…”
    “Um Kabi, why are you wailing now? Your son is back, thank God, he brought good news from