shakespearean drama, part two

Ali and I, as we are generally prone to delusion, sometimes concoct ridiculous fantasies about things like what our wedding would be like in a parallel universe where such a thing wouldn’t kill my grandmother. Since we never have any time together and his work consumes his life, these fantasies often involve sinister things (mainly that he invents) like being imprisoned together or kidnapping each other. The other day we came up with a great plan that I would stage his kidnapping explaining to my grandmother that I’d kidnapped a Palestinian and that she, being an Arabic-speaker, would have to negotiate with Haniyeh himself to do an exchange for Gilad Shalit. We even said we’d put one of Ali’s friends up to playing the role of Haniyeh and while Savta was busy on the phone we could lock ourselves up in my child-sized room and forget about the world around us. I marveled at our demented form of genius while he whispered all kinds of un-kosher sweet-nothings in my ear. In the meantime, back to work and the unwelcome and bitter realities of separation…