Yasmine (7 page)

Sandra hugged and kissed me as if I were Kabi himself. “I’ve been so worried,” she said as she started the big Peugeot.

Dear Sandra, a really sweet girl. She came from Georgetown University to Jerusalem to perfect her Hebrew, met this fellow at a dance in the newcomers’ club and fell in love with him. But he went off to be a spy in Europe, and before she could work out what was happening the war broke out and her man came back unexpectedly, got in touch with her, rushed off to the battlefield and was wounded.

“Sandra, your story and Kabi’s should be made into a Hollywood movie.”

“Or an Italian melodrama,” she laughed. “But we still don’t know how it ends.”

I told her about Father’s heart attack.

“That’s terrible! Kabi will take it very hard. Why didn’t your mother tell me? I could have helped, if only as a chauffeur.”

The hospital was bursting at the seams. Kabi wasn’t in his room, and we had to search for some time before we found him in the cafeteria. There he was, with his upper left arm and shoulder heavily bandaged. We fell into a close embrace.

I took a good look at my handsome brother. He’d grown a
beard, which suited him. Kabi is taller than me. He’s sturdy and broad-shouldered, and the wide arch of his rounded shoulders makes him look gentle. His eyes too are gentle, and warm, and his smile is boyish and attractive. I never flatter him, although I did say to him once, half in jest and half in earnest, “You’re not only the first born, you also took the best from Father and Mother, and I got the leftovers.” He blushed.

“What happened?” I asked now, pointing at the bandages.

“A piece of shrapnel tore a ligament and scraped the bone. It’s nothing, I’ll be discharged in a few days. I’ve got a slight fever and they’re waiting for it to pass. Then I’ll need physiotherapy, that’s all,” he brushed it aside. Then he asked, “Little brother, what do you think was the most important thing that happened in this war?”

“We screwed Pharaoh, but I don’t suppose that’s what you mean. I’ve no idea, tell me.”

“It was our war.”

“Really? Not England’s, not France’s?”

“You don’t understand. Look around you, most of the wounded are from the mass immigration, as they call us. Jews from Iraq, Romania, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, Iran…”

“Seventeen from Katamon alone lost their lives,” I told him.

“It’s a revolution. From now on the State is as much ours as theirs.”

“Kabi, I’ve got something to tell you. Don’t be alarmed, but Father wasn’t feeling well, something to do with his heart.”

“What? When?” he asked in a low voice and pushed his plate aside.

“The night you were called up.”

He frowned. “How is he? Tell me the truth.”

I told him everything I knew.

“And how is he now?”

“He’s all right. Mother’s looking after him, and he’s on a strict diet.”

“Was that why you were sent back from the front?” he interrupted.

“No, not at all. The Minister in Charge sent for me. My job is translating petitions and announcements. He needs me to report to him on ‘opinions in East Jerusalem’, so he can show the Prime Minister that he has his own sources of information.”

“Why is Father suddenly having heart problems?” he asked, his face darkening with worry. He lit a cigarette. Kabi and Father were deeply attached – he was the apple of Father’s eye. Until his bar mitzvah Father would sit beside him at bedtime, as if he were a small child, and Kabi would hug him and hold his warm hand till he fell asleep. When Father went to a café to relax, or to hear his youthful passion Selima Pasha singing at Teatro el-Jawahiri, Kabi would stay awake until he came home. Father also shared with him, his eldest son, his secrets and his family business. Kabi alone had known about the weapons hidden in our house in Baghdad.

“How is he really? Tell me the truth,” he repeated.

“He’s better now, I promise. A bit thin and weak, but the worst is over. He’s stopped smoking and Mother is a bit anxious, you know what she’s like. Tomorrow or the day after I’ll see his doctor and find out exactly what his medical condition is.”

“Don’t let them know about me.”

“Of course not. I’m not crazy.”

“Tell me, with your connections, can’t you arrange for them to have a phone?”

“And you, working for the Mossad, can’t you arrange it for
them? You know how many people are on the waiting list? I keep buttering up Elkayam at the post office till I feel sick. We’ll see, maybe now the Minister in Charge will help me get one.”

“You’ve got an important job.”

“Well…” I dismissed the subject. I said nothing about the car, the phone and the promised office in East Jerusalem. With him I always played down my achievements, partly because I was living in the kibbutz while he was working in the transit camp, and partly because he was the eldest and his achievements had to be greater than mine. But he understood that I’d been given an important position.

“Little brother, listen to me, keep a diary while you’re working there.”

Then we talked about broadcasting to the Arab population, something Kabi had specialised in, which was now of the greatest importance. “I’ve got some ideas for them,” he said.

“Why the hell should you help them after all they did to you?” Kabi had worked in the Arabic service of Israel Radio for five years, first as a news reader, then as a correspondent, editor and news analyst. His rich voice, his excellent Arabic, his general knowledge and sound analysis made him a natural choice for any role. Nevertheless, he was sidelined, in particular by the Iraqi-born department heads. “They can’t get beyond their slave mentality,” he used to say. For five long years he gave of his best, but was never offered a permanent job. Finally he quit in disgust. He tried the Ministry of Information, and there too they treated him shabbily. His skills were overlooked, he kept having to prove himself, convince the people in charge that he was good enough, and the only way to end this misery was to pull strings, which he refused to do. Either because of this, or because he was simply
tired of the struggle, he finally accepted the overseas work that the Mossad offered him.

By the time Sandra brought me back to Elazar Street it was quite late. I emptied my mailbox and climbed the stairs, feeling worn out. The dirt and untidiness in the flat depressed me; I had to impose some order and turn over a new leaf.

“Miaow miaow,” Grushka greeted me at the door. I let her in and gave her the cream Mother had given me (Mother knows I dislike cream, but keeps trying). Grushka lapped it up, whitening her whiskers. I understood that from now on she would despise the yogurt I used to give her before the war. I wrote on the shopping-list on the fridge: “Cream for the princess”.

The radio was playing a Mendelssohn symphony which revived me, and despite my fatigue I plunged into housework and started cleaning. Mother had instilled these habits in me as a child, and I learned to be tidy during my time in the kibbutz. There I had a small section in a wardrobe shared with other kids, and had to keep all my clothes in it – underwear, shirts, socks, sabbath clothes and work clothes, even towels – and in time I got to be a dab hand at folding things neatly. Here in my flat I had a big old wardrobe all to myself, and it held everything – bed linen, clothes, tapes, files, notes, text-books and newspaper cuttings. In the course of the week it all got jumbled up, but periodically I put things back in order.

Soon the flat was sparkling and fresh-smelling. I took a shower and then sat down with a shot of slivowitz to read my letters. One was from Sonia, my group teacher in the kibbutz. After asking the usual polite questions, she wrote that our schoolmate, “Mister Universe”, a.k.a. Amram Iwa, was killed on
the first day of the war. Though he’d left long before, the notice was sent to the kibbutz because when he was conscripted he gave the kibbutz as his home address, hoping it would help him get into the paras. Sonia asked me to speak about him at the thirty-day memorial service at his family home in Netanya.

Tears were blinding me and I went and lay on the bed. I thought about our time in the transit camp on Mount Carmel, and in the youth group at the kibbutz. As sleep crept up on me scenes from the past flashed through my mind, one was especially memorable: Amram, tall, sturdy, surrounded by a crowd of boys and girls, breathlessly watching him bending iron bars with his hands. Cries of “Bravo!” from all sides, and Amram walking away, proud as a peacock, with a beautiful Romanian girl on his arm.

I'm very fond of
The Book of Legends
by Bialik and Ravnitzky, which I received as a present from Professor Shadmi when I finished my national service. It's always on my desk and from time to time I dive into it for wisdom from our Sages.

These days I keep recalling the famous statement of Rabbi Yohanan: “The Son of David cannot come except in a generation that is wholly righteous or wholly iniquitous.” I admit that I'm not waiting for the Messiah, and I don't believe that people will ever be all good or all bad, but with the liberation of Jerusalem there is something of the taste of Messianic times hanging in the air, and there is a sense that it's a great privilege but also a great anxiety that wrong actions could jeopardize it all.

Now that the Western Wall is in our hands, I could give Mother a real treat by taking her there. She was very excited. The night before, however, she dreamed about her father, who was a pious and humble rabbi, but she did not remember any details of the dream and it left her feeling vaguely uneasy. Since coming to Israel Mother had known many upheavals, but she never gave up her simple religiosity. She observed the Sabbath, kept a
kosher kitchen and followed all the rules. Still, she became more tolerant with us, and didn't force her sons to be like her. It seems she accepted that it's possible to be a good Jew without sticking to all the laws.

When she saw the Wall her face shone with the same light and youthful vitality that glowed during the Kol Nidrei prayer on Yom Kippur. She stared at the huge stones with the patches of sprouting hyssop and scraps of paper wedged in the crevices, then looked at me. She said nothing and simply walked up to the Wall, touched it gently and then disappeared amid the throng of worshippers.

The dusty square was crowded that morning. There were religious and secular Jews, tourists, policemen and soldiers, but despite their differences they looked to me just like a crowd of pilgrims from the past. I watched from the side, trying to imagine the place in all its ancient glory. Mother was gone for a long time but at last I saw her walking towards me. Here, amid the mass of strangers, she looked so small and delicate. Her expression was relaxed – the dream about her father had come back to her, she said, and then added that he had always hoped to pray at the Wall.

The crowd swept us along. Thousands streamed through the shady passages and out to the sweaty alleys of the souk – the street of leather goods, the butchers' market where great hunks of meat hung on hooks, streets of clothes, of fruit and vegetables, foods and sweets – each alley with its own distinctive odours and colours, sweet or sour, fresh or mouldy, attractive, nasty and confusing to the nose. The smells reminded Mother of Baghdad and she was happy, holding herself visibly more erect.

We stopped and stared at the passers-by. Such a colourful
variety, such contrasts, different cultures side by side, although with no contact between them. There were veiled women showing only their eyes, dignified men wearing long robes, a wide sash, keffiyeh and agal, simply dressed peasants bearing baskets, and among them bare-headed women in revealing modern clothing. How did these men feel at the sight of the girls in tiny mini-skirts invading their alleys? What were the veiled women thinking?

Bustle and noise. Hundreds of people, most of them Jews, packed the speciality shops, buying baclava, pressed apricot, boza ice-cream, imported liquors, various cheeses, fish and smoked meats. They fell like locusts on the shops selling electrical appliances, household goods, furniture, antiques.

“Watch out for pickpockets,” said Mother, alarmed by the crush.

“This is a city of saints,” I replied, borrowing her stock phrase, and her eyes smiled back at me.

She wanted to surprise Father with the kind of dried white mulberries that he used to like, but finding herself at the entrance to a textile shop she could not resist going inside. The shopkeeper, his head wrapped in a keffiyeh despite the heat, showed her some fabrics, then turned to a customer who did not speak Arabic. Mother looked at the materials and now and then interpreted for the two of them.

“Learn Hebrew and you'll do good business,” she said to the shopkeeper.

“What for? How long will you stay here? A month, two months?”

“
Khaliya ala allah
, leave it to God.”

“Well, my son,” she said when we left the shop, “this is just the honeymoon.” She wouldn't rest until we found the
souk al
-
attarin
,
the heavenly spice market. There she discovered a shop that specialized in dried fruits and traditional eastern sweetmeats, and bought not only dried white mulberries, but also small dried fruits of the kind we hadn't tasted since Baghdad, dried apricots and plums, dates and pistachios, black watermelon seeds, and all sorts of other delights that caught her eye.

Loaded with all these aromatic goods from the Old City, we reached Jaffa Gate. I wanted to put her in a taxi, but she insisted on going home by bus.

I had some time to spare before a scheduled midday meeting with the Mayor and decided to visit my new office. It was only a few days since I had been taken to see it by Mr Solly Levy, but I already felt that it was my second home. Mr Levy, who represented the Israel Lands Authority, was a Sephardi Jerusalemite whose ancestors had come from Macedonia. He told me at our first meeting that his father had been the Town Engineer in the administration of Ragheb al-Nashashibi, the Palestinian Mayor who was married to a Jewish woman. After the June war, Solly Levy suddenly found himself responsible for all the public properties owned by the Jordanian government in Jerusalem. He showed me some spectacular buildings, then took me to a small house set in a beautiful garden in Sheikh Jarrah.

“This was the office of Ahmed Shukeiry, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organisation,” he told me. The name struck me forcibly. This was the man whose evil laugh spouted from all the radio sets during the run-up to the war: “Isra'il, your head is made of wax, so why are you walking in the sun?” Shukeiry himself was not a Palestinian but a Lebanese from
Tebnine, and was renowned as a sharp lawyer and brilliant speaker who hired out his pen and his voice to the highest bidder. He had served as Syria's ambassador to the UN, as deputy head of the Arab League, and even as Saudi Arabia's UN ambassador. Nasser appointed him chairman of the PLO – and here I was in his Jerusalem office.

The house had five rooms as well as the office, it had a handsomely furnished bedroom, a modern kitchen, and a living-room which contained a large sofa, a damascene inlaid table and two armchairs. All was comfortable and attractive, way beyond my expectations, but I was uneasy. Me in Ahmad Shukeiry's office? How could I work from the residence of such a bitter enemy?

Mr Levy broke into my thoughts. “Shukeiry ran away in the middle of the fighting, and these are the offices we've been given. Why are you hesitating? For myself I've chosen the Saudi consulate next door.”

He's right, I thought. And this place suits my purpose. If I'm to make contact with their leading figures, it will be easier for them to come to this prosperous secluded neighbourhood, to an office set among trees and diplomats' villas, far from malicious eyes. Perhaps here I'll be able to establish relations of mutual respect and openness. So instead of avoiding the dark shadow of the previous occupier, I chose to use the elegant house as my starting point. I felt there was a good spirit in the air, a new hope – perhaps a new order will prevail, perhaps the country will know peace at last.

Later I tried to pinpoint the moment when the seeds of future enmity were sown. When did the open hearts close, when did the smiling faces begin to frown?

Was it when the bulldozers demolished the houses of the
Mughrabi Quarter to make room for the Western Wall plaza, a huge open space that made it easier to reach the Wall, but dwarfed it and deprived it of its hidden, mournful glory? Or the moment when the inexperienced military governor insulted the Mayor of East Jerusalem, Ruhi al-Khatib? Or when another stanza was added to the song
Jerusalem of Gold
: “We have come back to the water-cisterns, the market and the square”, as if they hadn't been inhabited since time immemorial?

Who can tell, who can define the moment after which nothing was the same any more? Perhaps there was no such moment, no time of acceptance and reconciliation, only an interval after the shock of defeat. Perhaps while we were celebrating our revival, their old hostility, burning jealousy and intolerance continued to simmer, as well as their natural rage about the plunder of their land, and all these festered secretly like malignant tumours that devour the body and leave nothing but raw bones.

As in previous meetings in the office of the Mayor, Teddy Kollek, I tried to figure out his personality – a good-looking man, impressive and distinguished, full of charm and very influential, who seemed to be able to open all hearts and doors. Businesslike, impatient and self-confident, he was in a hurry to join together the two cities that lived side by side with a chasm between them.

“In Vienna,” he declared, “there were Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenes and other minorities, and they all saw themselves as Viennese.”

“But this is the Middle East, not Europe, and we're dealing with Arabs, not Czechs, Hungarians and Slovenes,” said Haramati of the Ministry of the Interior.

The Mayor gave him a hard look and proceeded to discuss measures to relieve the plight of the Arab population that had just been added to his jurisdiction. He was obviously torn between two impulses. On the one hand, he wanted to be an enlightened victor, a liberal governor, while on the other he did not want to give anything for nothing.

“In discussing these measures,” somebody pointed out, “you're overlooking something essential: the Arabs don't feel they are being granted something when they're given back part of what used to be theirs.”

“My dear friend, you cannot turn the clock back.”

From the Mayor's office I went to Rehavia, to visit my old teacher Professor Shadmi. He led me into his spacious flat, where a pleasant smell of baking hung in the air. The flat was divided into two – one part was where he lived, the other contained his immense library and study. Whenever I visited him I felt as if I was entering a shrine. Thousands of books in many languages filled the shelves that rose from the floor to the ceiling. Vast regiments of volumes, ancient and new, thick and thin, stood crammed together. I felt that the shelves were groaning under the weight of wisdom, not because having a lot of books necessarily means wisdom, but because their owner was a real sage.

The professor gave me a friendly hug and congratulated me on my new appointment. He even insisted on toasting the occasion, although it was the middle of the day.

“I telephoned your office as soon as the war ended, and they assured me that you'd come back safely. Then I read about your new appointment in the newspaper, and I was pleased that I had a share in persuading you to take up Middle East studies.”

“A new world calls for new roles, doesn't it?” I said, trying to sound sophisticated. “But what's going to happen now?” This time-honoured Jewish question was sure to elicit an illuminating answer from him.

“What I have to say has already been said in part, so my reply will be something of a paraphrase. Sir Arthur Wauchope, the first British High Commissioner in Palestine in the 1930s, compared his role to that of a man who rides two horses – one is dynamic, efficient and has a vision, the other is slow, confused and indecisive. In that sense things haven't changed much. Today the horses are still not starting from the same line. Nevertheless, I do have a feeling that there is a positive current running between the two halves of the city, ‘reunified Jerusalem'. Perhaps at last we'll realise our dream of a life of productive co-operation and partnership. One side will provide modernity, scientific objectivity, rationality and the desire for peace, and the other will contribute its glorious history and its religious-ideological origins. I'd like to believe that we've been granted a moment of grace, a chance that Jerusalem will flourish with a plurality of cultures and languages and faiths, and will be a source of hope and light. We must not miss this opportunity.”

“You believe that we will achieve peace?”

“Well, that's difficult. At this moment I'll be happy if the killing stops, if we achieve even partial co-operation, but right now peace doesn't seem realistic. The Arabs are a proud people. After such a rout they won't make peace,” he concluded.

I phoned the department to check something, and Levanah, unusually for her, interrupted me and asked me to come in at once. “Something urgent has come up. Not for the telephone.” I raced back to the office of the Minister in Charge.

“I'm glad you phoned,” Levanah greeted me. “I didn't know where to look for you. The Prime Minister is going to visit the Old City and the Minister wants you to come along. Go down and wait in his car.”

The interior of the car was very hot, just as it was two years before when I had accompanied Eshkol on a visit to Nazareth. Then, too, Levanah recruited me to help with the first visit by an Israeli Prime Minister to the country's biggest Arab city.

The director of the Prime Minister's office, then as now, was a short smiling bespectacled man, who always made lists of the day's schedule in tiny handwriting, as if to cram Israel's whole agenda on to little bits of paper. Being short-sighted, he would push his glasses up to his forehead and peer closely at his notes. He asked me to prepare data about the problems of the Arab sector in general and Nazareth in particular, write down the main points for the Prime Minister's speech, and also
coordinate
the visit with all the relevant bodies. I worked day and night, enjoying the sensation that I was acting on behalf of the powers-that-be, and everyone complied willingly with all my requests. I even went to Nazareth ahead of the Prime Minister's visit in order to be there to receive him. On the day of his arrival I waited tensely at the entrance to the city together with the local Mayor and dignitaries. Nazareth was decorated and looked festive, school-children lined the streets and cheered, and the heads of the different churches lavished praise on the important visitor. “Too much flattery,” I heard the Minister in Charge whispering to Levanah. “And the Jews don't flatter you?” she responded in her quiet way.