NILI

EXT. MOSQUE - DAY

Ali walks out of the mosque slowly, reverently. He is alone. A few boys beat around an old soccer ball in a field just next to the mosque - otherwise the street is deserted. He walks down the street a little bit, waiting until he's out of sight of the masjid to light a cigarette. At the end of the street he sees a two-story ramshackle  building - it doesn't look like much more than an immigrant atelier - but the lights are on and young girls are walking into it. Jewesses, apparently.

Mildly intrigued or at least too bored to do anything else, Ali walks to a brick building across the street from where the girls are going in. There are curtains up - he can't see anything. He leans against the building, puffing on his cigarette, and waits. He taps the ash out at the side of the building, almost as though he's embarrassed - embarrassed that someone would see him emptying his ashes on an uninhabited and fit-to-be-condemned building. He hums to himself - and waits.

After a moment, he walks across the street - no more girls are coming in the door. He hunches down at a gap in the curtains - and he sees her. He hears Chopin's "Nocturne" over the burps and squeaks of the loudspeaker - the stereo is awful. The floors are scuffed and the girl's ballerina outfits are patchy and more khaki/beige than white. But it makes the one at the head of the class - the teacher - look like one of the visions from his holy books.

Her skin is dark, almost as dark as his, with dark hair and eyes. Her tutu is white. Ali stares at her through the gap in the curtains as the girl stretches along the wall at the front of the class, mouth slightly open, the cigarette still hanging there. She looks up for a moment, and Ali gets down on his haunches below the window, the smoke still going up in front of the window. The girl looks out the window, semi-sentient of him.

Ali looks sadly at his clothes - even his Friday best is a long way off from resplendence. He fingers the sleeve of his robe and pulls out another loose thread. He opens his satchel and takes out a piece of paper, then lays it out on the ground. He butts his cigarette out on the wall, then wipes it off and puts the butt on the piece of paper. FADE OUT and back IN TO

EXT. STUDIO - NIGHT

The cigarette pile, which has a pile of butts on it now. The girl opens the door and walks out, her face beaded with sweat. She hasn't showered, and she casts a glance of discomfort and hauteur at him, with a Mona Lisa trace of defiance. She turns away; Ali watches her go. He looks at the cigarette pile and sorts them out. She looks back and sees him doing this; then she walks away.

Ali stands up, putting the cigarettes back into the paper, folding it and putting it into his satchel. He goes over to the door, and sees a paper on the front - it's in Hebrew, which he can't read. So he copies the letters down - not a little awkwardly - on a scrap of paper inside his satchel, and then puts it into his pocket. He lights one final cigarette - the embers blaze orange as the night falls - and pulls an old baseball out, tossing it up and down as he walks away.