Of Pipes and Drums

It was a leaky week. My neighbor's mother had a leak in her roof, and, as if in sympathy, my mother also had water dripping through her ceiling down to her sink. I, too, had my share of leaks. Water in the hallway, a pool of water in the bedroom, and more water on the bathroom floor.

After a Shabbat of religious shoveling with a dustpan to avoid an impromptu swimming pool in my living room, my husband came up with the brilliant guess of the source of our leak: the hot water pipe.

On Sunday afternoon, the plumber – let’s call him Ya’acov - came.

"We'll have to open up the wall," he said. "I'll come back tomorrow with my mate."

After Ya’acov’s assistant, Ahmed, had drilled through our wall for a couple of hours, it was time for them to leave.

"We'll be back tomorrow," Ya’acov assured me." "We have to open up some more." They left me with an unusable rubble-filled bathroom cum laundry.

Ahmed was drilling the following morning, chiseling away the tiles around the bathtub, following the length of corroded metal pipe that needed to be replaced.

My friend, Hanna, came over for a previously arranged darbouka session.

My husband was working downstairs at the computer, so we would have to be upstairs in the bedroom, near the drilling.

Who would be louder, Ahmed's drill or our drums?

"This isn't a very convenient time for you," Hanna observed.

We practiced the different rhythms I had learnt.

After Hanna left, I went to see how the work was progressing. The wall was open on three sides. The toilet tank lay on top of the washing machine that stood, unattached, in the middle of the floor. Ahmed put down his drill to sip his coffee.

"You teach darbouka?" he asked me.

I explained that I am learning, and passing on what I learn.

"First thing you have to know," Ahmed told me, "it has to be fast."

"Right, but when you're learning, you need to go slow," I pointed out.

"You play to the dancing," he continued. "Each body movement has a different sound." Suddenly, he was standing up, his hands above his head, moving his hips like a belly-dancer, left, up, right. "Tak-as-tak," he named the beats, as his fingers tapped an invisible drum.

He transformed my rubble-filled floor into an invisible stage. "You have the women over here," he turned to his right, stretching out both hands as if positioning them, "and the men over here," he turned to his left, again as if positioning the dancers. "The drummer has to watch the dancers' feet." He stepped down hard on the rubble-cum-stage. "That's a 'dum.'" He sidestepped, "tak-as-tak," and his fingers beat his invisible drum.

"Do you play professionally?" I asked, thinking that maybe Ahmed, the plumber's assistant by day, might actually be a famous darbouka-player by night.

"Not yet," he grinned.

"We need to continue to drill," Ya’acov, who had been out during our drum session, declared upon his return. "You see this hole down here in the pipe?" he pointed to the pipe in the open wall below the bathroom sink.

"No." I couldn't see a black hole in a black pipe. He turned on the cold-water tap. Now I saw the water gushing out of the half-centimeter-wide hole.

One week later, as I sat in the bathroom, I could still see the bookcase in my son's room on the other side of the wall. I looked at the gaping opening in three sides of the wall.. I even have a hole in the floor heading out to the hallway.

I awaited Ya’acov’s and Ahmed's return ... Ahmed will fill in the gaps not only in the bathroom walls, but also in my education.