I wrote this story while living in Jaffa in 2018, and since I haven’t published it elsewhere, I’m offering it here. I’ll be writing a lot more about Palestine and Israel in the coming weeks and months, and am beginning with fiction because it’s what helps me most often in times like this…in the hope it helps us imagine a different future than our current reality.
I met God yesterday.
I saw her sitting on a bench at the Jaffa port, an old woman with her cane by her side and orthopedic sandals on her feet. She stared at the sea with tissues crumpled in her lap, and when she smiled at me I saw she was crying.
God moved her cane and patted the bench. I sat and she dropped a pack of tissues in my lap and winked. Then I cried too, and my face still wet from heat, the tears coated sweat and mixed salt with salt. Tasting my lips, I laughed, “I forget we’re made of so much salt.”
She scooted closer and said, “You forget a lot when you can’t see the sea.”
We watched the sun shift several centimeters and she hummed and I cried. I almost wondered where all these tears came from, but I could see the sea and knew she made me mostly water. I asked her if she did so for this moment.
God nodded and turned. She turned all the way around, and for the first time she touched me. She faced me towards her and her hands were small like mine, holding my shoulders at the height of her own. She was as short as my Bubbie was when she’d started to forget.
God squeezed my shoulders and closed her eyes and sighed the longest breath I’d ever heard. She sighed for all the seconds it took for the waves to lap back and forth, two times then three. When she stopped, I blinked and my eyes were dry.
She turned back to the sea and said, “I’ve been waiting so long for you to stop. Just waiting for someone to see me crying and ask why.”
I stammered I was sorry for not asking, but she shushed and said, “You stopped, so that’s enough, and now here we are.”
God was silent again and the sun shifted another centimeter before I spoke. “It seemed rude to ask God why was crying. I didn’t know I could ask such a thing.”
A full second passed, then God laughed. She laughed for nearly as long as I’d cried, laughed like they told us in Hebrew school that Sarah laughed when the angels said she’d have a son. God’s whole small body shook with laughter and she wiped her eyes and took a while to catch her breath.
Again she turned to me, eyes still crinkling: “You ask God everything else, and with everything else you ask, you can’t ask why I cry?”
I stammered “sorry” again, but she pressed my hand over my mouth. “You don’t need to apologize for being what I made you. I still forget how you are, how different my creations are from me.”
“But the thing is,” I replied, “I thought we were even more different. I would never have thought that God cried.”
God’s face dropped. Her face stayed dry, but she looked even sadder than she had while crying. God stared down at her wrinkled hands and held my words as her eyes closed again.
“How many times do I have to tell you I made you in my image for you to believe me?”