Auntie Farhuma Wasn’t a Whore After All

(A moment before:)

On the day they hung Eichmann, I was circumcised. An evil woman with dyed red hair tried to steal from the mohel a part of my body that was lying on a towel, but Mama handed her a piece of chicken liver instead and the evil woman cursed me. Do curses come true?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, Auntie Farhuma was fucking an anonymous client twice a week and Yoav, the hunk from the elite reconnaissance platoon, was calling 056 for erotic conversation. Yes, folks, if you’re stupid, you get pissed on from head to toe by everyone.

And suddenly Arik popped up, promising me once-in-a-lifetime love even though I have bad genes, and an elephant in love trumpeted for us on Mt. Canaan. Only homos really die, I tried to explain to Miodrag, go find yourself a college girl from a good home and live forever. Who mends your socks, my Milosh, who holds your hand when you wake up at night, impoverished prince waiting for me in a distant city while I sit on Rothschild Boulevard in front of two cups of coffee and cry. A country without squirrels is a country with a soul – but at least it’s ours.

Chapter  One

On the day they hung Eichmann, I was circumcised.

It was an especially hot day, Mama said. She washed diapers in the big tub and hung them on the line. The laundry was dry in five minutes. “My guts are falling out,” Mama groaned. “Wash, hang, iron! When the head doesn’t work, the body suffers. I have to rest a few minutes, or else the stitches they made me in the hospital will open!” She was angry. “Fire is falling from the sky! You’ll dry up in this heat!” she yelled at Papa and made him a huge glass of tea. Clumps of mint like green scalps were soaking in the tea. It was the end of May, but already very hot.

I was lying in a small carriage, covered with a net against the flies, next to a young plum tree Papa had planted the day after his wedding night. “What a night that was,” Mama laughed. “We were both young-stupid. No one taught us.”

“Shut up, for God’s sake,” Papa would say angrily.

“I threw the chickens into the boiling water with their gall bladders and their shit,” Mama recalled. “The food stank like a dead animal, but Rabbi Babajana here gobbled it all down, didn’t leave a crumb.” She wiped her eyes. “We were both orphans who came from a foreign country,” she went on, looking at her husband affectionately. She pinched him: “I wouldn’t exchange you for a sack of rice.”

“Very nice.” Papa couldn’t decide whether that was a compliment or not.

“In the morning, your father gets up, sings a few songs in Afghan, and starts planting that tree.” She wiped her forehead with a rag. “That’s how he wastes the country’s water.”

I remember that Papa dug half-meter circles around the fruit trees and called them “saucers.” He pulled a rubber hose to the edges of the saucers and turned on the water. “Fire is falling from the sky, God help us,” he said and sat down to slurp the green mint tea. When Mama wasn’t watching, he smoked cigarettes to his heart’s content, then crushed the butts with his thumb and buried them in the ground. Within a few minutes, the water rose and all sorts of earthworms and bugs, mixed with rotten cigarette butts, floated on the spongy ground.

“The water’s running!” Mama would yell, scaring him out of his musings. “Look, you made us a sea in the yard, and you’re still sitting there drinking tea! Eats and shits in the same place! The country will end up without water and they’ll throw us out of the neighborhood! We’ll end up like...