Shame

There are five toilets in my father's home. Four downstairs, one upstairs. He told me not to flush the paper and I got into the habit of throwing it into the dustbin - somewhat reminiscent of my days living in third world countries. Today we call them developing countries.

My father lives in dilapidated grandeur. He handed me a list of the malfunctions last summer, when I visited in the middle of a London heatwave.

In addition to the toilet issue, the fridge did not cool, the footrest of my late mother's recliner stuck mid-air, the washing machine failed to spin, food floated in the clogged kitchen sink, the thermostat of the three showers suited English winters, the wooden chairs were worn away, and the three crackling analog landline phones emitted faint sounds and tunnel voices. The rooms trapped the heat, most windows permanently sealed. A rapidly deteriorating state of affairs.

My father wobbled from room to room, his walker echoing click, clunk, click, clunk, like an enigmatic Alfred Hitchcock movie. The walls were thick with paper and paintings, the floor treacherous from slippery spills and bunched up carpets.

The heatwave had begun the day before my arrival. I was poorly prepared, clinging to limp fans in stifling rooms. I tried all the showers before locating one with cool water.

When I was fifteen we moved to London. My father was starting a new job in an Arab Bank and was asked whether he had Jewish blood in his veins. He answered, to the manner born, that he did not. This was 1977.

I was a wounded smart aleck and would say to the girls in my class, mostly from Lebanon and Syria, "We live between two underground stops," or, "Marble Arch, not in the Arch though." Other times I would say, "Near Edgware Road," to confuse and give the impression we housed with my executioners, the Arab contingent, and not in a home that once displayed a mezuzah on the outside doorpost.

One girl from southern Lebanon did not return after the winter break - killed on her balcony. The class instantly knew by whom.

Thus began my mutilated rebellion entangled within my teenage rebellion. I held on long to the shame of those years and took that sour smelling box of secrets from one country to the next.

My brother married twice, first to a Catholic from Italy, then to a Catholic from France. My sister married twice, first to a Palestinian Muslim from Dheisheh, then to a Catholic from England. I married an Israeli.

My father is an old man now and says he can get away with murder. He sits in the last functioning recliner and holds forth. He likes to shock his audience: "I am a Jew. A Proud Jew. Take it or leave it."

Perhaps time does work wonders. Perhaps memory is truly short. Perhaps redemption is around the next bend. Perhaps the sins of the young are neither forgotten nor forgiven.

The betrayal of my youth, the dismemberment of my young self, the wounds of duplicity have dissipated. Today the shame of the toilet rolls and other malfunctions belongs to my father, and not to me.