A Visit to haifa circa 2018 Winner: The Robert Day Award for Fiction Selected by Alexia Arthurs
Devon Ross Lina says that only girls who grow up lonely will develop an appetite for opulence. It is her way of reminding me of my excessive greed and her anticipation that I will soon find some sort of financial footing so that she and my father can retire in Naples, drink wine and chat with their children only through phone screens. Although I do desire opulence, there is a difference between growing up lonely and growing up alone. I don’t tell Lina this because of her upbringing in Shirakawa—a village in the Japanese alps so small that it’s practically extraneous—which must have been lonely for a woman who so heartedly desired to grow up, immigrate to America and experience the world. She is excited to be in Haifa for the summer, wearing Dorin Frankfurt blouses and drinking ouzo instead of wine. Being opulent as ever. It is June when we arrive at the peak of a vigorous heat wave. The car that picks us up from Ben Gurion has a broken air conditioner, so the driver keeps the windows down throughout the ride to the Carmel. Daisy—Lina’s daughter and my stepsister—sits in the middle seat and fans herself with the glossy visitor’s pamphlet she picked up at the airport. There’s a satellite image of Israel on the cover, and Daisy’s face turns pink when she stops her fanning to examine it. “Have you noticed how the Israeli land is green, but the Palestinian land is mostly desert?”