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By Root 430 0

think I was this wild-spirited artist, carefree and full of confidence, but I wasn’t. I was just a kid wandering around in Paris with no idea what to do. I was smart, O.K., fine, but I had no real strength, no real conviction. I was tired and out of money and I thought I’d have to return home and become, what? I don’t know, an art teacher? Christ, I’d have to return home to all those people I swore I’d never be, to lives I despised. Then I met your father and he offered me an easy way to live what seemed like a glamorous life. You can’t imagine the pleasure I felt telling my parents and my friends that I was moving to Africa. I felt cosmopolitan, so accomplished, as if I’d done something. I pretended that it had nothing to do with your father. That’s a very limited kind of courage, Gilad, following someone else’s life. Anyway, I didn’t plan to marry him. I was caught up in creating a story, and now, well, that’s what I’ve got, a good story. It’s just a good story.”

I listened and ate my dinner.

“The thing is you have to fight the whole time. You can’t stop. Otherwise you just end up somewhere, bobbing in the middle of a life you never wanted.”

“So what? That’s it? You’ve given up? This is it for you? You’ll stay with a man who’s barely here? And when he is, he beats you?”

She was crying.

“I’m sorry.” I looked away for a moment. “Mom, I just don’t accept that this is it, that you’re going to spend the rest of your life alone in expensive apartments pretending to be happy.”

We sat together in that kitchen for a long time. I told her about the protest, about Hezbollah, about the silent crowd and the metal bar. About Silver.

“At least he said something,” she said.

I shook my head angrily.

“What do you want, Gilad? What do you expect of people?”

I looked up at her bruised face, her bloodied lip. There were slight lines around her eyes I hadn’t noticed before. It was late. She was exhausted. She looked back at me as if she wanted, more than anything else, an answer to her question.

* * *

I’d promised myself I’d never do it again but on Monday I took the school bus with all the others. I didn’t have the energy for the cold walk from the métro and anyway, that morning I was short on principles. I had Silver first period. I thought about skipping it. About skipping school in general. But then I suppose I was expecting some sort of explanation. How he’d snuck around the back and broken the guy’s neck. Something.

He began class with an uncharacteristic lecture:

“In 1958 the Front de Libération Nationale, Algeria’s revolutionary party, attacked and killed four French policemen in Paris. Maurice Papon, then the chief of police in Paris, organized retaliatory raids against the Algerian community throughout the city. He rounded up thousands of Algerians and threw them in, among other places, the Vélodrome d’hiver and the Gymnase Japy, which by the way, is still there, just off boulevard Voltaire if anyone’s interested. Do you know why I mention these two places in particular?”

He was cold that morning, humorless, acid, sarcastic, and unfamiliar. I remember Hala squinting at him, her face revealing a combination of confusion and concern. She wrote quickly in her notebook. Whatever play had been there on Friday, whatever lightness, had gone.

“I mention them because they’d both been used in 1942, sixteen years earlier, during La Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv. Anyone have any idea what I’m talking about?” He looked around the room. He was fierce. “Abdul? Any idea? Ring any bells?”

Abdul nodded.

“Yes? Good. So tell us about it, tell us about La Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv.”

He kept nodding but shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“No?” Silver said, “No.”

“I do.” This was Hala who ordinarily would have enjoyed seeing Abdul’s ignorance revealed, but she was upset, and glanced worriedly at Abdul as he went on nodding, tapping his fingers on his notebook. Silver leaned back against his desk. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at her.

She looked at Silver angrily. “La Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv. The police arrested thousands of French