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Fiction
DECEMBER 12, 2011 ISSUE
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank BY NATHAN ENGLANDER
ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR
T
hey’re in our house maybe ten minutes and already Mark’s lecturing us on the Israeli occupation. Mark and Lauren live in Jerusalem, and people from there think it gives them the right. Mark is looking all stoic and nodding his head. “If we had what you have down here in South Florida,” he says, and trails off. “Yup,” he says, and he’s nodding again. “We’d have no troubles at all.” “You do have what we have,” I tell him. “All of it. Sun and palm trees. Old Jews and oranges and the worst drivers around. At this point, we’ve probably got more Israelis than you.” Debbie, my wife, puts a hand on my arm—her signal that I’m either taking a tone, interrupting someone’s story, sharing something private, or making an inappropriate joke. That’s my cue, and I’m surprised, considering how often I get it, that she ever lets go of my arm. “Yes, you’ve got everything now,” Mark says. “Even terrorists.” I look at Lauren. She’s the one my wife has the relationship with—the one who should take charge. But Lauren isn’t going to give her husband any signal. She and Mark ran off to Israel twenty years ago and turned Hasidic, and neither of them will put a hand on the other in public. Not for this. Not to put out a fire. “Wasn’t Mohamed Atta living right here before 9/11?” Mark says, and now he pantomimes pointing out houses. “Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg—Atta. How’d you miss him in this place?” “Other side of town,” I say.
“That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what you have that we don’t. Other sides of town.