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seriously, as because she liked to be privy to all his whims. If he was going to play hooky from work while she sat in a black robe weighing the fateful dramas of the awe-stricken actors in her courtroom, she at least wanted to know about it.
    He stopped by the departmental office on his way to see if there was any mail for him. There was nothing, however, except a polite reminder to pay his share of Samaher’s wedding gift. He settled the debt and consumed the last squashed piece of baklava, glancing idly through Akri’s now open door to his desk, at which, undistracted by his departmental chores, the department head sat peacefully immersed in his scholarship. Asking a secretary to check the plane’s final arrival time, he went to inform Akri that, feeling real alarm for the spuriously ill Tedeschi, he had decided to prod him into consciousness by setting out for Jerusalem at once. “That way, Ephraim,” he remarked, “he’ll be ready with a bibliographical favor to ask of you when you turn up there tonight.”
    Akri smiled faintly, the deep flush of his dark face disclosing the umbrage he took. Now that he had tenure, he had nothing to fear from a senior colleague. And yet two promotions from assistant to full professor still lay between them, too great a distance for him not to be stung by Rivlin’s sarcasm.
12.
    â€œY OU’RE RIGHT ABOUT one thing.” Rivlin paced freely around the new department head’s office while trying to decide whom Akri resembled more, his blond or his dark grandson. “That harangue of yours needs to be challenged. I’m sure we’ll have a chance to debate it sometime soon. For the moment, I’d just like to inquire whether you don’t think it was tactless, perhaps even—you’ll forgive my saying so—imprudent,
to lecture Arabs at an Arab wedding on your theory of . . . what is it that you call it? Your Theory of Arab Failure? An Orientalist’s Theory of Despair? Yes, your Theory of Despair. I might ask whose despair, though—ours or theirs?”
    â€œEveryone’s . . .” Feeling his colleague’s hostility, Akri braced for a confrontation.
    â€œWell, you should realize that not everyone understands what it is that you’ve despaired of.” Rivlin stared at the photographs on Akri’s computer, bitterness welling inside him not only at the grandfather, but at the grandsons too. “You don’t have to give me your whole speech again. I’ve already heard it: your despair is pure, intrinsic, theoretical, with no tendentious political content or ideological agenda. But if I, who have some knowledge of your ideas and your articles, have difficulty discerning their purity of intent, what can you expect of others? The students at the wedding weren’t all from our department, you know. Those who were are accustomed to your baroque style and have their semiallegorical, semihumorous way of interpreting it. But there were students from elsewhere as well. Why provoke and confuse them at an idyllic village wedding?”
    â€œBut that’s precisely the place for it!” Akri declared with unexpected tenacity. “On their own turf, where they feel most at home, surrounded by their favorite foods, totally connected to themselves and to their land. It’s only there that you stand a chance of getting them to admit the truth. You know me well. You know I don’t look down on the Arabs. I only want to call their attention to a fundamental flaw in their conception of freedom that has spelled tragedy and disaster for them. What did I do wrong last night? I livened up a wedding party with an intellectual discussion in a perfectly civilized way. Didn’t our rabbis say that a table without words of wisdom is no better than a pagan altar?”
    â€œWords of wisdom?” Rivlin looked at Akri as if he thought the usually quiet department head had gone mad. “Whose