The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

by Sarit Yishai-Levi

  “Time went by and the Turks, may their name be erased, left Palestine and in their place came the English, may their name be erased too, and one day, without warning, Gabriel showed up at his parents’ door. Mercada, who had been watering the plants, almost dropped her watering can, and Raphael almost fainted with excitement, so before Mercada could fall into the arms of her beloved son who had returned from America, she had to quickly pour water over her husband and pick strong-smelling herbs to bring him around.

  “Mercada could barely recognize her son. He had left Jerusalem a sixteen-year-old youth with a hint of stubble, short and as skinny as a beanpole, and had come back a handsome, tall, and well-built eighteen-year-old man. They gathered all the family and neighbors, and Mercada made cold lemonade with mint, brought up the watermelons from the cistern, and crumbled goat’s cheese over them. She sat Gabriel in the middle of the yard, and everybody around him urged, ‘Tell, tell us como es America, what America’s like.’

  “Gabriel told them of a place with buildings that touched the sky and automobiles that drove like locos, and his work on the Lower East Side with the butcher Isaac who only spoke Yiddish and didn’t know a word of English, and about the first words he learned, and how today he could pull the wool over the eyes of any Ashkenazi in the market with his Yiddish. And about Moshe who decided to stay in New York and not come back to Jerusalem. When his father Leon heard this, he burst into tears, and Gabriel consoled him: ‘No llores, don’t cry, Senor Leon. Moshe will be successful. He’s already found a bride, one of ours, and he’s going to get married and one day he’ll bring you to America too.’”

  “Uncle Moshe?” I interrupted Tia Allegra. “Our rich uncle from America?”

  “The very same, querida. In the years they lived together in New York, he and Gabriel were like brothers, and they forged a bond they nurtured all their lives. Moshe became very wealthy and came to own women’s clothing factories and shops all over America.”

  “He sent us packages from America!” Again I interrupted Tia Allegra. “Thanks to him I was the first girl in school to have real jeans.”

  * * *

  I knew the story of the rich uncle from America very well, the uncle who, a short time after Nono Gabriel’s return to Jerusalem, had married, had children, and established a fine family in New York. I’d heard many times how, as the years passed, Uncle Moshe’s dream had come true and he’d become a millionaire. The packages from America arrived every three months in big boxes, and Father and Mother even saved a particularly pretty green one and used it to store bed linen.

  One time, a long silk and lace bridal gown arrived with a photograph of the bride Reina, Uncle Moshe’s youngest daughter, pinned to it.

  “Tronchos de Tveria, cabbageheads from Tiberias,” Mother said, “they’ve made a Purim costume out of it? Isn’t it a pity, such an expensive dress?”

  “Purim costume?” Becky said. “They’ve sent it for Gabriela.”

  “Pishcado y limon,” said Nona Rosa. “No time soon.”

  “If it’s for Gabriela, then I’m taking it,” Mother said, and nobody opposed her because nobody had any need for a bridal gown.

  That night, when everyone was asleep, I got up quietly and crept into the living room. The bridal gown lay on the couch, shining in the darkness. Awestruck, I moved over to it and started stroking the soft silk and the pearl buttons that adorned the front. I lifted it gently and undid the buttons one at a time. It took a while because there were so many of them. Then I wiggled my little body into the dress, very slowly, so, God forbid, I didn’t rip this dress that was so huge I drowned in it. When I eventually managed to get my arms into the sleeves, I tried to stand up so I could button it, but then my feet got tangled in the hem and I fell onto the floor, and at the last minute I grabbed at the low side table on which sat a vase of flowers. The table rocked, the vase smashed into pieces, and the dress and I found ourselves drenched with water and covered in shards of glass. Soon enough my mother was standing over me, screaming, “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” And before checking to see if I was hurt, she ran her hands over me to see if the dress was damaged, and then stood me up and smacked my bottom.

  “Destructive child! What are you doing in the living room at twelve o’clock at night? And who gave you permission to touch the dress? Go straight back to bed!”

  Her yelling woke up Father and Ronny. Right away Father started yelling at Mother. “Why are you waking the whole neighborhood!” He picked me up as I cried and took me to the bathroom, washed my face, and changed my pajamas while he murmured, “It’s okay, good girl. Everything will be okay.” Then he put me into bed and covered me and sang right into my ear, “Sleep, sleep, my little one,” and the moment before I closed my eyes I heard my mother whispering angrily, “She ruins everything, the ruffian.”

  The next day Mother took the bridal gown to her seamstress and had a dress made for the army veterans ball at the Menorah Club, where she and Father had been married. This time she didn’t have a matching dress made for me. The dress was a dizzying success, and Mother, so Aunt Rachelika told me, was the belle of the ball. But that was nothing new. My mother was always considered the most beautiful of the Jerusalem girls. Every time Ronny and I walked down Jaffa Road with her, people would turn and look, and Mother would hold her head high, grasp Ronny’s hand with one hand and mine with the other, and ignore the stares.

  Mother loved buying shoes. Before Rosh Hashanah and Passover she would always take Ronny and me to the Freiman & Bein shoe store in the Pillars Building, and sometimes we even went when it wasn’t a holiday. While she’d try on shoes surrounded by a flock of assistants who complimented her on her ankles, Ronny and I would get giddy and play on the carousel and train slide they had in the store. But Mother didn’t always buy shoes. Sometimes she’d just try on all the shoes in the store and then decide she didn’t like any of them. The assistants never got angry with her. On the contrary, they’d compete over who’d climb higher up the ladder to grab her more shoe boxes. My mother would giggle with them, saying, “Shalom, thank you, and good-bye,” and we’d all leave the store with heads held high and walk to the taxi stand on Lunz Street, where Mother would stop and chat with the driver “uncles,” who’d been at Hadassah Hospital with her during the war. Sometimes she’d say, “Wait here for a few minutes with the uncles, I’ll be right back,” and then she’d disappear and return after what seemed like an eternity. In the meantime we’d sit on little chairs on the sidewalk and wait for her. Once when it took her especially long to return, Ronny started crying, and when she came running back, she begged a thousand pardons and told us for the thousandth time, “You know who the driver uncles are? They’re hero uncles, they defended our Jerusalem for us during the War of Independence, so every time we meet the hero uncles you behave yourselves properly and be patient, and you, Gabriela,” scowling at me and wagging a finger, “not a word to Father. If you tell Father I’ll never take you to the carousel in Freiman & Bein ever again.”

  One day Mother left Ronny with Nona Rosa and took just me to the store. On the way there rather than the way back we passed the taxi stand. All the driver uncles stood by their vehicles, and they stopped talking when my mother approached. My mother, who always wore rouge on her cheeks, went as pale as a ghost, and her hand holding mine trembled. One of the drivers came over and hugged her tightly. It seemed strange to me that someone who wasn’t my father was hugging her. He whispered something in her ear, and she let go of my hand and gave a stifled cry.

  Someone brought her a chair and she sat down, took her handkerchief from her purse, and started sobbing. I stood there not knowing what to do. My mother was sitting on the side of the street by the taxi stand and crying, and I didn’t know why. Was she crying because of me? Had I behaved badly and upset her again? I stood there helpless for a long time while the driver uncles consoled her. Eventually one of them noticed me. “Here, little one, have a sweet,” he said and offered me a toffee.
“Come on, don’t be frightened. Your mother will take you home soon.”

  I popped the toffee into my mouth and then the uncle lifted me up and said, “Do you know why your mother’s crying?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Because Uncle Ginger has passed on,” he said.

  I was confused. On the one hand I didn’t know what “passed on” meant, but I could sense that something bad must have happened to the uncle who had red hair and laughing eyes and who would always sit me on his knee and twirl us around in his wheelchair. “Hold tight,” he’d say and put my arms around his neck and then roll the wheelchair fast along the sidewalk. I’d be helpless with laughter, and Mother would shout, “Stop, put her down, she’s heavy. You shouldn’t be carrying her like that!”

  “He’s passed on,” the driver said. “He was badly wounded in the War of Independence when he was defending our Jerusalem, and his wound never healed, and now he’s dead.” I sat with the driver uncle for a long time until my mother took my hand once again and we walked home.

  That evening Mother was quiet, hardly exchanging a word with Father, hardly speaking to Ronny and me. In the middle of the night I was awakened by the sound of her crying. My father wasn’t able to calm her and left their bedroom. When he saw me and Ronny standing in the hallway he said, “Go to bed. I’ll be right back,” and left the house.

  He returned a short while later with Aunt Rachelika, who hurried into Father and Mother’s bedroom. As soon as Mother saw her, she burst into more tears and sank into her arms. Father came into my and Ronny’s bedroom and lay down on my bed beside me. “More over a bit,” he whispered. “Make room for your father.” And for many nights after, he’d sleep like that, with me in my bed.

  My mother didn’t stop crying all night and all the days that followed. Why did she cry so much? Why was she sad? Why did she go from being a woman who spent all day out “measuring the streets,” as my father used to say, to being a woman who locked herself up in the house? Why did she shut herself up with Aunt Rachelika? And why only after months did she return to routine was something I would not understand until many years later.

  The day I ran away to Tia Allegra in Tel Aviv, I didn’t yet know the answers. But I needed to. It was stronger than me, this thirst for the story of the women in my family, for the secrets that would help me understand. I knew I might discover things I’d regret knowing afterward, but since my nona had opened this Pandora’s box, I had to know so I could move forward with my life.

  “On condition you don’t stop me again,” Tia Allegra warned me, “because it’s already late and soon my memories will get tired together with me.”

  I swore that from then on I’d keep silent and lay back on the cushions, closed my eyes, and listened.

  * * *

  “The Turks finally left Palestine and the English came in their place. A short time later your Nono Gabriel returned from America and started work in Great-grandfather Raphael’s shop. He was handsome, as tall as a cypress tree, a young man of eighteen at the peak of his physical strength. He worked in the shop in the Mahane Yehuda Market from morning till night. While the other merchants had not yet opened their eyes to say the morning Shema prayer, he would already be carrying sacks out of the shop, arranging goods in their tins, and waiting for the first customer to arrive. Gabriel was the most industrious young man, and he had a great many ideas for expanding his father’s business, enlarging the shop, and bringing in merchandise that would attract Ashkenazi customers. He persuaded our mother to prepare large quantities of olives and pickled cucumbers in big jars, and soon her pickled cucumbers were famous, and people began coming from all over Jerusalem for Mercada’s pickles.

  “To make it harder to resist, he’d take the salty cheese they bought from the Arab women out of its tin and lay it on the counter so the customers could ‘taste it with their eyes,’ as he’d describe it. He’d arrange the dried fruit in their sacks outside the shop, placing the best, biggest fruit on top and the more wrinkled ones further down. Later he added colored candies, row after row of anis-flavored bamblik sweets, pink and white sugared almonds they threw in synagogue at a groom or bar mitzvah boy, and the pistachios that came directly from Aleppo in Syria. It was a sight for sore eyes. And so the family shop became famous all over Jerusalem, and every Friday there was a long line of housewives that ran from the shop door on Etz Ha’Haim Street as far as Eliyahu Banai’s fruit and vegetable shop on HaAgas Street.

  “One day the widower Leon asked to speak privately with Senor Raphael. He told him he was thinking of marrying an Ashkenazia widow who had two children.

  “‘An Ashkenazia?’ Senor Raphael asked, aghast. ‘Why not find a good widow who is one of our own?’

  “‘I’ve looked,’ Leon replied. ‘But no widow of ours is prepared to marry a poor market assistant with a young son to feed, another son to marry, and a third one in America whose best years are behind him. The Ashkenazia widow doesn’t mind that I’m no longer a young man and have sons. I need a wife to cook, wash, care for my young son, and I ask for your blessing.’

  “When Raphael realized that Leon was determined to marry the Ashkenazia, he gave him his blessing and a handsome sum as a wedding gift.

  “The Ashkenazia widow easily got along with the Sephardi women in Ohel Moshe and learned their customs, but she didn’t give up her own. For her husband she cooked both Spaniol and Ashkenazi dishes. Her specialty was fruit-flavored custards. They were so tasty that Gabriel offered Leon a special counter in the shop where he could sell his Ashkenazia wife’s wonderful custards on Fridays for Shabbat. Its success was immediate, and Gabriel, Leon, and the Ashkenazia had more work than they could handle, so Great-grandfather Raphael decided to bring in his younger brother Eliyahu, who everyone called Leito, to work in the shop as well.

  “From the moment Leito started, he was put in charge of the cash register. Leon helped refill the sacks, metal barrels, and jars with fresh supplies, and Gabriel mingled with the customers and persuaded them to buy more than they’d intended.

  “‘Pishcado y limon,’ Great-grandfather Raphael would say to Nona Mercada at the end of the day, ‘your son, may he be healthy, could sell rocks and say they’re salty cheese.’

  “Mercada would sigh with pleasure. ‘That boy is a gift from heaven, God loves him. He’ll make us truly rich.’

  “‘We don’t need to be richer than we already are,’ Raphael would grumble. ‘We have everything we need. We have a home, we have food, we’re in good health and so are the children. We shouldn’t be greedy and we don’t need people to be jealous of us. We should thank Senor del mundo for everything He has given us and be satisfied with what we have. And now basta, enough of this chatter, make me a cup of tea.’

  “And Mercada would fall silent and hurry to the yard to pick sage leaves to infuse for her husband’s tea, and in her heart she’d give a prayer that her son Gabriel, may he be healthy, be successful in all his endeavors. Her husband was right, they should be modest, for after all there were many in Jerusalem who had nothing to eat, and they, thank God, had everything a person needed and even more. And to fend off the evil eye she increased the family’s donation to the poor, and although they gave handsomely, she knew that there were always people who had something to say and there were always people with big eyes, so she put up several hamsas in the shop and on the house walls, may His name be blessed and may He protect her son and her family from the evil eye, tfu-tfu-tfu.

  “Like everyone else in Jerusalem, Mercada believed in the evil eye and was afraid of evil spirits. When she came home from the market at dusk, staggering along with her baskets on the cobblestones of the Ohel Moshe neighborhood, she could swear she heard the sound of footsteps following her, and convinced that at any moment she would encounter an evil spirit, she would walk faster and murmur, ‘Pishcado y limon.’ Like all the other Spaniols she too believed that the combination of the two words fish and lemon would fend off the spirits.


  “Mercada was so afraid of evil spirits and the evil eye that she didn’t dare speak their name and called them los de avashos, those from below. Like human beings, the spirits were divided into male and female, and they were headed by the male spirit Ashmedai and the female Lilith. Lilith, belief had it, was frightened by red, so Mercada tied a red thread around her children’s wrists, her husband’s, and her own to keep her away. When Gabriel told his mother he felt like a woman with the thread around his wrist, she grabbed the hem of his coat and ordered him, ‘Hide the thread under your sleeve, but God forbid that you take it off. Querido, there is an eye on us.’

  “All she wanted was to keep the evil spirits away from her family and her home. It was because of this belief that she increased her activity in livianos, the healing ritual used to drive out evil spirits. The more she drove out the fears of others, she believed, the more she’d drive out her own.

  “Mercada and her livianos became well known throughout Jerusalem, and people came to her house for help. She would seat the person seeking a cure on a low stool in the yard and drape a white sheet over their head, preventing them from seeing what was going on around them. Then she’d take lead pellets and melt them over a fire she set in the yard, whisper a prayer, and pour the molten lead into a bowl of water held over the head of the person. The water would give off a dense, mysterious smoke, and when the smoke dispersed, Mercada would take the lead out of the water and interpret the strange shapes it had formed. If she saw the shape of a dog, she’d ask the person if he or she had been bitten by a dog. When it had the form of an evil spirit, she’d ask if a spirit had appeared to him or her in a dream. And if she saw a human shape, she’d try and understand who it was. The shapes told her the person’s fears, and she’d talk to the person about them and provide herbs and instructions on how to behave to drive out the spirit. People were so satisfied with the treatment that although Mercada stressed her services were free, there was a charity box overflowing in the doorway of the house, and once a week Mercada would donate the money to the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue. But the longer she treated people with livianos, the more she insisted on curing serious and trivial complaints alike, the more she donated her money to charity—the more her own fears increased, and the feeling that a catastrophe was about to befall her house would not leave her.