Art of a Jewish Woman (6 page)

To get to her job, she walked a block and took a bus through Jaffa’s Mansheya neighborhood. Some days she walked, and it seemed as if the whole world still lived there together: Ashkenazi, North African and Yemenite Jews, Palestinian Arabs, Bedouins who had given up their nomadic herding life for the city, Turks, Egyptians, Syrians, Circassians from the Caucasus, Germans, Greek Orthodox, and Lebanese. In fact, for centuries Arabs and Jews had lived peacefully communally until immigration began to threaten the status quo. But by the mid 1930s, because of the waves of demonstrations, violence, and growing tension, Jews had almost entirely forsaken Jaffa’s ancient heart, and the population of Jaffa had sunk from about 100,000 to now less than Tel Aviv’s.

Up ahead on a rocky promontory was the Old City partially circled by remnants of antiquity’s battle walls, densely built with stone houses rising terrace-like from the port’s docks, warehouses, and fishing fleet marina. It was a shallow-water port in a slight indentation of the coastline, protected by a jetty and rock breakwater. Small motorboat tenders ferried cargo to and fro from a handful of freighters anchored a hundred yards or so offshore and stevedores labored the cargo in and out of warehouses and onto trucks and train wagons.

The bus dropped Felice in the busy central square minutes’ walk from the dentist’s office. The square was circled by two and three-story commercial buildings with balconies, tall peaked windows, colonnades, and dominated by an Ottoman clock tower, a symbol of modernity when the Turks built it. In the distance above the port was the needle-like minaret of the Mosque of the Sea. If Felice came by foot through Mansheya, she liked to detour past the Christian Arab school, where nuns taught the children in French. She watched the beautiful children flock in and out of school in their blue skirts and pants and white blouse or shirt uniforms. The nuns were in their black habits, all in order, all formal, and it made her think of France. But everything else was too new, and practicing her profession for the first time was too stimulating to make her miss Europe.

In Dr. Sayeed el Hadj’s office she took her dental instruments from her suitcase for the first time, unrolled their cloth case, and placed them by her work station. Her new employer did not need her for her license, as had been the case in Jerusalem, but because he wanted to increase his practice. She was not just doing simple dentistry but treating cleft palates and diseases of the mouth. For this he needed a woman doctor because many of his potential patients, Arab women, would not remove their head coverings for a male.

“Keif Halik, Doctora,” the women patients greeted her when they came in each day.

“Mashbuta,” she answered.

They would bow down, then give her a package of food they had prepared for dinner or from last night’s dinner. There was more food—strange, aromatic dishes—than she could possibly take home with her. The Arab women were wonderful to her. In some way she was a hero to them, for there were no other women dentists in their community. For the first time she could remember, she didn’t have to worry about subsisting on two meals a day. She didn’t have to calculate, “Can I just have coffee for breakfast and save a little money for lunch and then have enough money left for dinner, or can I have a real breakfast and starve at lunch?” She could have breakfast; her lunch was assured, and there would be dinner at home. She didn’t have to fear the hunger pains that made her press hard on her abdomen. When the pain went away, she would laugh.

She even had food to give away, and once she tried to flush some down the toilet, but the toilet stopped up. It was a terrible disaster. She didn’t know how to stop the water. Then she felt guilty for throwing food away because she knew her parents didn’t have enough.

At night she walked home. She’d climb the alleyways from the office to the old Moorish Crusader fort and descend the stone steps to the port to see the big boats that came from all over and the little fishing boats rocking in the water. Then she followed the curve of the sand along the sea to Tel Aviv. For seven months of the year there was no rain, and she loved the warm breezes. It was like nothing she had ever experienced. If it was winter and dark early, she could see the twinkling lights of Tel Aviv in the distance and knew how far she had to go. It was never cold, nothing like the winter in France or the air that took one’s breath away in Sczuczyn or Wilno. She never felt danger, she never had in her life. She thought she would never leave.

The Arab Revolt

The first dangers weren’t physical but spiritual. In the office was an assistant, perhaps more of a servant, Bluma, a young, dark-complexioned woman of uncertain origins.

Bluma’s submissiveness to Dr. el Hadj shocked Felice. If she didn’t move quickly enough when the doctor asked for an instrument or chart, he slapped her. Felice wondered how a cultured man could act that way. She thought she should quit, but then how would she pay her rent? She scarcely had enough money to buy a stamp to send her parents a letter telling them about the situation. During her walk home, she thought of a better idea that didn’t involve running away or being silent. She told herself that maybe she would teach her employer a thing or two. She was strong; she could teach him. He didn’t know that she was penniless and needed the job. The next day Felice told the doctor that if he wanted her to continue to work in the office, he should never hit Bluma again. Much to her amazement, it worked. She could see him trying little by little to be more polite toward her. One morning when nobody could see, Bluma took her hand and held it and thanked her.

Felice also made friends with Dr. Sayeed el Hadj’s wife, who was young and petite like her, a beauty greater than any girl she’d met before. She had the whitest complexion because she was never out in the sun, and dark hair and dark eyes. She and her husband had three children. They dressed in European clothes and she and Felice spoke in French together. Madame came every day to meet her husband for lunch, maybe to check on him, but after awhile that began to change. He would be away at lunch. She would be crestfallen. The two women would eat together, and Felice would try to cheer her up. The doctor told her to tell his wife that he had to go to the post office, or to Tel Aviv to buy medical instruments, or to a meeting. Then one day Felice and Dr. Sayeed el Hadj were at a medical convention in Tel Aviv and he introduced Felice to a Viennese lady dentist. She suspected at once that the woman was his mistress. The next time the doctor asked her to make an excuse for him to his wife, she informed him that he would have to do it himself.

Not long afterward, Dr. el Hadj brushed against Felice as he came to look at a patient she was treating and whispered, “Every night before I fall asleep I see your face.”

“I need to concentrate, Doctor,” She wanted to slap him. He was a womanizer, and she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him; he was too old and had a belly. She preferred his brother-in-law, an ophthalmologist across the hall, and went out with him a few times for coffee or dinner.

Dr. el Hadj persisted, “You are the most beautiful woman I have seen; you have the most beautiful eyes. I dream only of you. Your face keeps me awake at night; I can’t sleep. Your eyes are persecuting me.”

“I’m not a psychoanalyst, Doctor. I don’t want to hear your dreams.”

The home of her landlords and their five-year-old son, Dodik, was a respite. They were gentle people, an exquisite couple with great affection for each other. The father was an engineer, and they quoted her a price of two pounds a month, meals included, which was the going price of a room
without
board, but perhaps she looked hungry.

“You look pale,” the husband said. “How hard do you work? We can only rent the room to you if you take meals with us.”

“How can you afford to feed me? It will cost too much, and you have very little yourself. I can bring home some food from my patients.”

“We’ll think about that later. We’ll see how much you eat and then decide what to charge you.”

The price didn’t go up. It was a cozy relationship, but like so many things in the young woman’s constantly shaping and reshaping life, the home away from home dissolved. Acute rheumatic fever struck the father. Felice knew the illness because she had had it as a ten-year-old girl. After several months in bed with aching joint pains and high fevers, she had recovered completely. The young engineer was not so fortunate. The disease attacked his heart and, after a few days, caused his death.

The mother turned her kitchen and oven into a small bakery. Felice contributed money for her food, and the mother baked during the week while Dodik was in school. On Saturdays Felice took care of the boy while the mother delivered her cakes and pastries to fine restaurants all over Tel Aviv.

Before caring for Dodik, when she had thought of having children it had been an idea, an imperative that was not connected with any actual experience with her younger sisters and brother growing up, for she had always been a student, mostly boarding away. Young women from the village had helped her mother with her siblings. Five-year-old Dodik, by contrast, called her auntie and came to her when he was hurt or hungry and gave her his hand when they went to the park. He fixed the desire to be a mother in her heart.

Felice was also getting to know Sayeed el Hadj’s brother-in-law, Ibrahim, the Beirut trained ophthalmologist. He was nicer, more gentle, more refined than her employer, more reserved than Shuli, and single. Tall and slim, in his thirties, he dressed impeccably in European suits at work, with a vest in cool months. He began his courtship by inviting her to join him for lunch occasionally, then for dinner. If the restaurant was elegant he liked to wear a tarboosh on his head, a small tapering cap without a crown, usually black or red with a little tassel.

After awhile Ibrahim invited Felice on a Saturday picnic to the countryside in his brother’s car. Just outside Jaffa the citrus plantations began, stretching for acres, scented with orange and lemon blossoms. There were also many vineyards. They passed a Bedouin encampment with tents, a vegetable garden, goats, and camels. On a rise, in the shade of an olive grove, Ibrahim swept the ground clean and laid out a small carpet. He gave Felice a long, light white cotton robe for warmth and to protect her dress from dust, and unpacked the meal his mother had prepared for them. It was a
mezza
of many appetizers they could eat with their fingers. There were figs for desert and a thermos of steaming black tea with cardamom pods.

He smiled and gestured at the greenery below, “A beautiful land, isn’t it?”

Felice nodded, “Yes, but it is so dry. Where does the water come from?” Between the plantings the ground was hard parched bare soil, rock and sand.

“The soil is good. All it needs is a little water. The sand isn’t very deep, just a foot or two, and when you clear it off, you can plant. Water is not too deep beneath the surface--so you can dig wells. We save water from the winter rains in cisterns, and we dig many irrigation ditches. But the farmers can’t plant anything that needs a lot of water except vegetables, so those plots are small. They know how to do it.”

Felice and Ibrahim hadn’t talked politics before, but she wanted to, she wanted something more than Shuli’s opinions. She said, “There is a Zionist saying, ‘We will make the desert bloom.’ But it
is
blooming, isn’t it? Do you know the saying?”

Ibrahim nodded solemnly as if he had been waiting for this moment.

Felice asked, “Do you think it is possible for Arabs and Jews to live together?”

“We have lived together for a long time, until now.”

“Is there a solution?”

Ibrahim smiled self-effacingly, “Intermarriage may be the only way, until we are one people.” His eyes twinkled mischievously.

Felice said more seriously, “You mean once people intermarry all this tribal nationalism, this nonsensical
my group, your group
thinking that men are addicted to will go away? How many generations will it take for there to be no more tribes to fight with each other?”

“Two, three; maybe more, maybe less. But one can begin.”

“Can one make a difference?”

Ibrahim thought for a moment, then continued, “We need to know each other, as a people. The Zionists don’t seem to think that we are capable of independent thought and I fear most of them just want to manipulate the Arabs. Some, like you, want brotherhood among people, but they are not bothering to learn Arabic.”

“I am,” Felice said, in Arabic. “You must know that the Zionists are not all the same.”

“They live in separate neighborhoods now and don’t visit our villages.”

“I want to go to your villages.”

“And they want to forbid Arabs from bathing on Tel Aviv beaches.”

“Shame on them!”

Ibrahim’s voice was quiet, elegiac, unlike Shuli’s vehemence when he felt strongly. “The Arab Higher Committee is talking about defending the homeland. You must know that there is an Arab guerilla army already.”

Felice nodded. “My friends in Tel Aviv say that it is because of agitators from other countries inciting the Palestinians. They say that most Palestinians don’t feel that way and that the immigrants are making life better for everybody here.”

“Felice, you are making my life better. But your friends are wrong about the majority of my people. They are scared, angry, and they won’t abandon their religious and political leaders. If the leaders do not lead, others will take their place.”

“And you, Ibrahim?”

“I am not a political man. I just want to practice medicine. I wish there could be a home for all of us. For you and me together. Maybe there can be.” His eyes were sad.

Sadly too, Felice knew there was something he didn’t understand about her. How the rest of her family needed to make it to Palestine and there was an untold number more families like hers. If they all came, even in the most peaceful of ways, then the Arabs would be a minority in their own land. And the Jews who were arriving felt it would never be safe to be a minority again. That is why they needed to come. Could Ibrahim ever feel what they felt, understand what Felice knew?