has increased with each word, so that by the end she’s shouting. Heads turn sharply toward her and a few people laugh, as if she’s made a joke. Blushing, she continues, somewhere between her normal voice and a shout.
“My area of interest, like Cindy’s, is teens. But what I’ve been involved with were discussion groups between Jewish and Arab adolescents in Israel. I was part of a group called Friends-of-Peace. They have a branch in Toronto. We ran meetings twice a month — with discussions and activities — to foster mutual understanding and tolerance between the two groups. To try to build bridges for the future between these two communities, instead of just conflict and hatred.” She pauses. Everybody’s looking at her and listening attentively.
“So while I’m here, I’d like to focus on cross-cultural dialogue, especially with adolescents, and examine what makes it work when it works — or not work when it doesn’t. In more general terms, I’m interested in how people talk to each other. I’m interested in hate speech, and also” — she smiles, scanning the room — “in love speech. In coexistence speech. In the language we use to communicate with each other.” She pauses for a moment. Then she shrugs. “I guess that’s it.”
Lots of people are smiling back at her or nodding approvingly. With relief and happiness she realizes she’s done well. She’s managed to translate herself, and her life in Israel, into Canadian terms: into something these people can relate to. Several of the professors are regarding her with interest. Cindy touches her arm and whispers, “That sounds very interesting.” “Thanks,” says Judith. Soon the go-around is complete, and Weick stands. But before he can say a word, there is loud, raucous noise coming from the hallway — yelling, laughing, and banging on the door, like an approaching mob.
“That must be the Labour Studies people,” says Weick. “An unru-u-uly bunch.” Someone laughs. “It’s their turn for the room now, so we’re going to have to adjourn. Please make sure you’ve got all the handouts, and we’ll see you in class. Welcome.”
Judith is glad this orientation is over. It felt considerably longer than one-and-a-half hours, and she’s tired. But she feels much better now — less alone — than when she walked in here this morning. She gathers her papers.
“Thanks again,” she says to Cindy.
“No problem. You know, we should talk sometime about working with teens. That’s not an age group many people like.”
Judith laughs. “I know.” She watches Cindy, who is trying to straighten out all her different-coloured handouts, and then, giving up, just stuffs them impatiently into her brown leather satchel. There is something endearing about this, and while Cindy bends over, buckling the straps, Judith says to her back, “How about now? I’m not doing anything.”
Cindy looks sideways at her with china blue eyes, reminding Judith of Loretta, her favourite doll when she was growing up: the one with the real open-and-shut eyes. “Sounds good,” Cindy says, standing and slinging the satchel over her shoulder. “But I have a few errands to do first: I have to drop by the administration office to pay my fees, and I need a library card.”
“I have the same list. So we could do them together.”
“Great!” says Cindy. They move toward the door. “That’ll be more fun than doing it alone.”
“Yes. I hate doing stuff like this. It’s so boring.”
“I know. Plus even though I did my B.S.W. here, they’ve changed the campus since then, and I can’t find my way anywhere.”
“Really?!” Judith is surprised. “You seem so … at home here.”
“Me?” Cindy laughs. “Not at all. I haven’t been in a classroom in five years, and I find all this quite overwhelming. I’m not sure I’m ready for this grad school thing. Plus the faculty for the B.S.W. and M.S.W. are completely different. I don’t know a single person here.”
“Yes, you do,” says Judith. “You know me.”
Now it’s Cindy’s turn to look surprised. They look at each other for a moment, then smile. “You’re right,” says Cindy. Together they leave the room. And on the way out, Judith, feeling triumphant, snatches one last cookie.
— 3 —
Five hours later, driving back to Toronto, she hits bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic. She probably should’ve left Dunhill earlier, right after finishing lunch with Cindy at the Lion’s Den. But she was too excited and happy. She had a great time talking with Cindy about social work and life in general. Cindy knew nothing about Israel except what she read in the papers, but seemed genuinely interested in Judith’s life there. Then she showed Judith some pictures of her baby and husband. And the weather was glorious: it felt like the perfect day to walk around the campus under those magnificent oaks, and find out where the gym, library, administration office, and cafeterias were. To physically orient themselves, it being Orientation Day. A strange word though, orient, it seems to Judith now in her unmoving car, since at this point she is not in the Orient. Dunhill shouldn’t have had an Orientation Day; it should have had an Occidentation Day, since, being in Canada, it is located in the Occident. Which sounds like Accident. Yes, she thinks, it’s an accident I’m here in the Occident. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Daddy getting sick. I didn’t choose to leave Israel — I’m not one of those chickenshits who fled because of the intifada, betraying Israel in her time of need.
She glances at the clock. It says 6:12, like the insect repellent she grew up with, and she frowns at the clock like at some horrible bug, as if it is personally to blame for the time. It’s late. And Bobby hates to be kept waiting. So there’s no time to stop off and change her sweaty, smelly T-shirt before going to his place for supper. The stalled traffic irritates her. She looks around: off the highway there are barns, crops, and some grazing cows, everything in a mix of sun and shade. She breathes deeply, inhaling the pungent smells of animal dung and the sweet hay and clover from the fields. Her father loved the country — he loved barns, of all crazy things — but she pushes this away, she doesn’t want to start thinking about him now. Or about his house, where she is now living all alone — so empty and desolate without him there, the house grimy and filthy, and her dirty dishes piling up precariously high in the sink.
Instead she reflects on the coming year. Tomorrow night is Rosh Hashana, and she hopes it will be the beginning of a good, sweet, and happy year. It can’t be worse than the last one: the year she watched her father die. She’d like the year ahead to be easy, light, and pleasant — even slightly boring, so she can recover from what she’s been through. Bruria, her friend in Jerusalem, thinks a year in Toronto may be the perfect thing. Last week Judith wailed on the phone, “What am I doing here, Bruria? Why am I stuck here for a year? I want to come home!”
Bruria answered calmly, “Try and enjoy it, Judith. It’s not like things here are so great right now. Some people would kill to be in your position — to have a year away from Israel forced on them by circumstances, no guilt attached. So enjoy yourself. Make the most of it. Think of the coming year as an anthropological experiment: a chance to study life in Canada. It could be interesting.”
“Okay,” Judith said, “I’ll try.” Grateful to be “given permission” — as Bruria, a therapist, would say — to enjoy herself. Now she reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out a tape labelled Israel at Forty, and in seconds her car is filled with bright, tinny music, unsophisticated and hopeful. No such hopeful music, though, emerged from Israel’s fiftieth birthday. By 1998 the country was traumatized by Rabin’s assassination, the first intifada, and a series of crises one after another, political, economic, and social.
