DUAL CITIZENSHIP

...But I, who teach them, have learnt more than they will...

...Subhi called him "Reb Dovid," a form of respectful address used by speakers of Yiddish...

...It is a component, surely, of the conscientiousness with which I meet my obligations...

...Minority status is not only a function of numbers, I write Subhi: it is an affliction, it is the forced understanding of all points of view, even, God help me, that of my colleague who thinks the Middle East should be sealed and its inhabitants allowed to kill each other off...

...To my Israeli colleague, whose face shows that he does not need to be reminded of the history of the Jews, I say nothing at all...

...It is not only a matter of schedules that have been set but of obligations as well: my department is planning a spring conference, and I am to speak to potential participants...

...A M m.t breakfast I seek out my Israeli colleagues: first, a farewell to the one departing for Israel...

...I have my self-respect to maintain: under these circumstances by retaining my composure, which is easy enough, since in me affection for the man and amusement at the action mingle with a bleak indifference which has leached the color from everything...

...I have no ready response to this, he is not a man with much international feeling anyhow, and I doubt if he would have donated the price of a lamb chop to Biafra...

...which was mine although I did not care to know it and migrated from the United States to Israel in order to avoid discovering it...

...But for the most part, 1 pay the price of dual citizenship as quietly as I can, waiting by my mailbox . . . . . . although when the letter does come, it takes me wholly by surprise...

...When you prick him, does he not bleed...

...Indeed he does, copiously, more often than many peoples, and perhaps too shrilly for some...

...My own students are called as witnesses...

...Around us eddies of flirtations, political maneuvering, camaraderie: and in Hebrew he tells me, "One thousand eight hundred and fifty-four killed...

...He is to leave in the morning, in the middle of the evening's hilarity our embrace passes unnoticed...

...we abandon our coffee and pursue our separate duties for the day...

...The plane, which had not risen much above the clouds for its twenty-minute flight, begins to descend...

...As sometimes happens, anticipation exceeds the act itself, and the ice cube's brief travel down my shirt is actually missed by my own student, and has to be repeated...

...For what seems to me to be the very first time, I am able to understand something of minority-group status, which has been Subhi's since 1948, when he became a citizen of Israel...

...Or at least I suppose myself to have been silent: something has escaped me, for when 1 came late to a class, one of my students looked at me gently and said, "We thought you*d enlisted...

...I cannot decide whether it would be easier to face my students here or my colleagues in Miami Beach...

...But no, I have never suffered any form of motion sickness in my life, this is an existential sickness, I should like to vomit up the whole of the past week, the polystyrene hotels of Miami Beach and the endless unsuccessful efforts at concealment...

...I am packed and ready to leave for the airport for a conference and badly in need of a week of comic relief, glad to hear from Aaron, my co-author, colleague, and friend, and I open the airletter with pleasure, and I had always wondered how I would behave at a moment like this — "I thought you should know . . . David Katz was killed...

...The flight for Miami is boarding: presently I am seated, directly in front of a loud omniscient woman who shares her knowledge with her flight companions non-stop...

...And the casualty lists are still unpublished, and all I can think is, my God, I only know one name so far...

...The week gave me nothing of the interlude I need for mourning, I am afraid to pick up my accumulated mail...

...My own face, unfortunately, is permeable to grief, and within two minutes I have met a friend and he has asked me what is wrong and 1 have told him...

...I can hardly speak to my own children, who ask me what is wrong...

...I've discovered something about your character, Nancy: you'll never back down on a dare," and I think to myself, that is true, and what is more, it explains not only my present behavior but even perhaps, my migrations of the past ten years...

...At the student party inhibitions vanish: in some this is precipitated by a drink or two, in others by conference-satiation, in me by exhaustion...

...But among my friends the careful mask of hilarity drops from me, and, in a car full of good will and affection, I sink at last into the privacy of my own pain, wishing I had not come, afraid to be among strangers, afraid to be among friends, and afraid to be alone...

...Why should the Syrians and the Jews fight each other...

...and I perceive at last that it is not the indifference of my colleagues that I am dreading...

...At last my plane reaches Miami, I have arrived, checked in, and I make my way to "the opening recepWe are clumsy imperialists: the Athenians taxed their subject territories, we tax ourselves...

...But it is a short-lived peace...

...This remark will pursue me for twenty-four hours...

...I am close to inquiring whether it would look better if the Syrians bombed Jerusalem...

...By morning I am beginning to grow anxious about them...

...My students are watching, some seeking knowledge of social processes and others seeking knowledge of the private selves of their educators...

...one is doing a paper on formal and informal dimensions of socialization at academic conventions...

...and, leaving the hotel for the last time, I take leave also of the few colleagues with whom I had been able to share pain...

...The plane's approach follows the valley of the Monongahela River, and on the river I can see two coal barges, moving slowly, laden for the cold winter ahead...

...We know defeat more intimately than victory: yet even Athens fell once, nations fall and so might we, Jerusalem has fallen often...

...They have grown tired of us...

...I shall discover my colleagues, who were untouched by the six o'clock news, to be touched by my own visible pain, and yes, it is just this which I fear...

...his unit was at the Suez Canal, on routine reserve duty, before Yom Kippur, and they were overrun by the Egyptians on the first day of the war, the letter said — "The Jews and the Egyptians and the Syrians are all brothers, they have no reason to fight...

...Either the airport is chilly or I am...

...My host of the preceding night's party turns to me with mischief in his eyes and an ice cube in his hand and approaches me slowly, dramatically...

...I must know half-a-dozen words for "dead in combat...

...And there is evening and there is morning: the second day...

...My brother told me one of our family has been taken prisoner," and, after a moment, "but at least he is not dead," and, pausing, adds, "They are getting tired of our little wars, Nancy...

...They ought to fence it off and let them kill each other off...

...I have been maintaining a feverish gaiety throughout this flight and I am not about to let it crack: "It's very complicated," I tell him, and run to the bathroom...

...have a small flock of graduate students to tend, who are arriving by automobile, and who had been looking forward to a week's frivolity with me...

...we must return to Miami Beach, I have a banquet to attend and the last of my speakers to contact...

...Indeed, if I let that out it will not be long before I am asking whether it didn't look best when the Jews were being shoveled wholesale "into furnaces: but I do not trust myself to say anything at all, and over the days of the fighting I have been silent...

...Toward indifference or antagonism I can turn an impassive face, and maintain it indefinitely: it is kindness which causes me to crumble...

...tion, for I am badly in need of familiar faces...

...This pain is full of private ironies for me, I would like to shield it and myself, but it translates the announcement of "over eighteen hundred dead" of the news broadcasts into one thousand eight hundred fifty-four persons, for those who are unfamiliar with the wars of Israel and Israeli grief...

...I spend the time writing letters to a very carefully chosen assortment of friends...

...Hath not a Jew eyes, hands...

...Twentieth-century Israel is so often compared to the warring Spartans: but it was golden, legendary Athens which held an empire, as Israel is now supposed to be doing — I think of my taxes, building hospitals in the West Bank and connecting Gaza to the electric grid, and I think also of the West Bank Arabs, giving blood for the Israeli Army, though they do not love their occupiers, nor would I. We are clumsy imperialists, the Athenians taxed their subject territories, we tax ourselves...

...T Mhe fourth day of the conference is a day of escape for me: some friends have rented a car and invite me to join them on an excursion to the Florida Keys...

...And there is evening and there is morning: the first day...

...We have a better-than-human-frailty percentage of military losses recorded over the centuries...

...In the Pittsburgh airport I have a three-hour wait...

...But it is silly to suppose that Israel will win: even before this war, which is demonstrating that desperation alone is not enough, a casual study of the history of the Jews would have shown that victory for Israel is not only not inevitable but has, in fact, been very rare...

...and soon my plane is leaving Miami Beach behind, and then we have come to Pittsburgh, and I have boarded the last plane of this journey...

...Day passes and evening comes...

...Certainly not...

...At the first party of the evening, drinks are for sale rather than for free: I am asked what I would like, and I tell my host that an ice cube would do, to wear rather than to consume...

...I move on to the next party, at which drinks are free, and obtain some ginger ale and reconnoiter with my students...

...Aboard the brief commuter flight which will take me home, I discover myself to be sick to my stomach: the eight-seater Beechcraft is being tossed all over the skies, and in and out of intermittent snow flurries, and at first I suppose myself to be airsick...

...We are calling the Embassy all the time...

...and I practice a bland face on the babysitter, who tells me warmly to have a good time, and I step giddily onto the plane which takes me to my connecting flight in Pittsburgh...

...These factors converge in me after a while and induce recklessness: with a melodrama exceeding his, I stalk him, cold sober, hoping as I think of it that no one else is...

...They look alike, you can't tell a Syrian and a Jew apart, why, they're brothers...

...or sometimes, for those who fall under fire, as it was said of the eleven dead at the Munich Olympics, may God revenge his blood...

...He watches rather admiringly: "I thought you'd lose your nerve...

...After lunch they turn up, having driven all night, weary but safe, and I make my recommendations for interesting panels and point out some famous names...

...Meanwhile among my Jewish colleagues there is some concern that it doesn't look good for the Israelis to be bombing Damascus...

...Others among my colleagues view the war as one might a football match...

...Yes, that is what I have been thinking myself, people are tired of the Israelis, certain that they will win, indifferent to the price...

...and I spend the afternoon pursuing participants for my own spring conference...

...I like the way the Israelis go to war," says one, "it's just like a game of Go: they capture territory and to hell with the men...

...DUAL CITIZENSHIP Nancy Datan This is the fourth war in Israel, and people abroad are growing tired of them, or so one of my colleagues suggests at lunch: "That's the craziest place in the whole frigging world...

...We part, with reunion scheduled for the evening's round of parties...

...David would not want that said of him, the closest he ever came to rage was indignation, and that generally in someone else's cause...

...And there is evening and there is morning: the third day...

...But, thank God, all are well so far...

...The peace I could not find in the company of friends I achieve at last on the silent white sand, listening to the waves and not to my own thoughts...

...and I find that the hills of West Virginia, which had borne the last traces of autumn color when I departed, have become bare and brown in my five days' absence...

...Meanwhile, in Miami Beach, in the absolute privacy ensured by speaking Hebrew, I am told: "Twelve of my family are in uniform...

...and after he has left for his taxi, coffee with the other and a brief sanctuary from my own unending efforts to smile at everyone...

...I have not yet seen the newspapers with their black-bordered names of the dead, but I remember searching in 1967 for the names I knew and finding tears, suddenly, for a stranger...

...become a (legally) permanent resident of Israel...

...Now, take me, I'm not Jewish" — that's something, at least — "but I'm pro-Israel, and I say, why should the Egyptians and the Jews fight...

...I am not contented with my passive role in this transaction, the more so since my assailant is not only senior to me but also older and considerably taller...

...o n the fifth and final morning, I drink my coffee with the melancholy relish that comes to me when I anticipate the ordeal of airports and connecting flights...

...It is unimaginable, but it is evidently true . . . What is there to do but weep...

...And meanwhile the suitcases stand by- the door, the ticket to Miami Beach is in my purse, and my children's babysitter is due to drive me to the airport within the hour...

...And still more privately, I am wondering whether I might have felt anything similar if I had not, ten years ago, Nancy Datan is a psychologist who is currently working on a cross-cultural study of women in Israel She lived in Israel for ten years, and is now on the faculty of West Virginia University...

...Deliberately and grandly I push his tie aside, and pop two ice cubes into his trousers...

...The tide of friendly colleagues separates us and the night hides our faces...

...What is more, I am privately wondering how widespread his feelings are, at universities like this one and elsewhere across the United States...

...I will insulate myself deep in the pile of obligations waiting for me, until my colleagues learn that I have ceased to eat lunch, ask me how I am feeling, suggest that I take a day off...

...and I am beginning to tremble...

...But he turns to me with a face too carefully controlled, and tells me: "Something made me want to call home this morning...

...but at the same time I am not looking forward to the extra effort it will require to maintain a convention facade...

...and then, my obligations met, the week's fatigue overwhelms me and sleep finds me...

...A M And it is eternal dissonance: while the goyim drink in airport bars, the Jews wait for the names of the dead...

...The telling does not ease me, in moments I am asked by someone else who knows my face well, and I have told her...

...or blessed be his memory...

...but I had discovered that for myself before I was able to read that far...

...And there is evening and there is morning: the fourth day...

...One thousand eight hundred and fifty-four...

...And in the notices, after the names of the dead, the several ways the Jews say "Rest in Peace" — on him he peace, for instance...

...One is an Israeli Arab, a close friend to me and to David, and I wonder as I write if the dislocations in daily life in Jerusalem may mean that mine is the letter which gives him this news: for, I am told, there has not yet been official publication of the names of the dead...

...In the end, the habit of meeting obligations, which tends to become stronger in me when the world becomes uncertain, tips the balance...

...At Marathon we stop for lunch, and I look forward to stone crab, until it arrives, and suddenly I discover — I, who had not known that the Jews kept meat and milk separate when I immigrated to Israel in 1963 — that I have no stomach for treif food...

...But I have hardly begun the business of introductions to significant persons when I am interrupted by a colleague, who draws me aside to meet another Israeli, with whom I achieve the instant intimacy of exiles...

...When lunch is ended we move on, and in the late afternoon discover a small key with an isolated beach...

...We move outside to the reception and there is an Israeli colleague, but it is easier to tell him: Hebrew is remarkably well-suited for the sharing of pain...

...and, so finely honed was Subhi's sense of irony that it applied only to himself, while his Arabic-accented Yiddish conveyed nothing but affection...

...My own seat-mate turns to me and murmurs, "Did it ever occur to her that maybe they hate each other...

...She takes about forty-five minutes to complete the transition from Florida real estate to the politics of the Middle East: "Now I feel really terrible about the war, I just really do...

...indeed, though I have seen him in uniform when he was on leave from reserves, I cannot imagine him going to war...