His rust-coloured spray stained our white-coloured sacks.
TZ’s arm helped me through the underground garage. The place was blue-lit with cylindrical posts. Outside the chamber, buses sat dead in a chain. It wasn’t dawn yet, no cracks happening.
§
Sugarman had tried to teach me that Ka-Tzetnik 135633 and all survivors write down their memories through the sieve of their trauma.
On the witness stand at Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Ka-Tzetnik the writer-survivor was called to testify. But he could not complete his testimony because he started convulsing. KZ convulsed with the knowledge that he could have been Eichmann. Convulsing, discounted, Ka-Tzetnik had to be taken away.
What the writer-survivor was trying to say to his brethren was: I was he and he was me.
Sabbatai Zevi, if he’d been there, would have agreed.
TZ: No more desecration. No more violation. Release us all from persecution.
Buruk New, Ameyn.
§
We walked to the park in the darkness. The earth was so quiet. About seven tents blistered in the rusted playground.
‘They know me here,’ whispered Barbra. ‘This is where we’ll sleep.’
She led me through garbage bags and rotting boxes of fruit.
I lay on my back on the lukewarm cement.
Barbra sat near me, crossed-legged. ‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘It’s okay.’
I inched my head into the space of her burning-hot lap. I kept flinching. Alien. I could not rest. I kept feeling the plunge. People go mute from horror. I remembered how Abigail used to watch movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all the Halloweens. She said it was because then she would know that a man would actually kill her – she could beg and beg and it wouldn’t matter to him. But I felt that night in Barbra’s lap in the park, with my light-bulb-shaped head and blood-splattered pants, I thought that girls in horror movies were maybe not a reliable form of thinking. Or maybe Abigail was right, they were the pinnacle of thinking. Girls in horror films knew exactly how to think, how to act, how to be.
‘Barbra, I got you wrong,’ I moaned.
I don’t know if my words came out clear or garbled. It felt muddy inside the no pills in my head.
‘I’m sorry.’
I tried to make my head smaller. I made it so small for one second that she slid away and left me there.
Through a blur, I watched her walk through the park. She walked to one man who stood underneath a lamplight. I watched them together. They were exactly the same height.
When Barbra returned sometime later, she held two cups of coffee. ‘Mutasim said I could stay. Join the fight.’
I scalded the roof of my mouth. My thoughts felt parodic. I mean, they parroted hers. I agreed: she should stay, she should fight. They were planning a protest. They would branch out and fight in the south and the west. Here was her home now. A new place, restless.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. ‘I got you all wrong.’
‘Bruh,’ Barbra whispered, ‘you were my stepping stone.’
I remembered her swan’s neck on my pillow. I remembered each time she graced my bed. The X-acto. The stopping. The wine to help thinking.
‘Barbra,’ I croaked.
She leaned toward my elephant face. She kissed me. I choked. It burned in my memory.
This was a park full of humans in need. What was needed from me now was only to leave.
For a few more hours, I lay in a tent blasted with sun. My mouth was covered with crust. It hurt everywhere. I already missed her. I heard her outside the tent with the others, near where garments were hung.