Hope Valley
Page 1
Table of Contents
Praise for Hope Valley . . .
RUBY
TIKVAH
RUBY
JAMAL
TIKVAH
RUBY
JAMAL
TIKVAH
RUBY
JAMAL
RUBY
TIKVAH
RUBY
JAMAL
TIKVAH
JAMAL
RUBY
TIKVAH
RUBY
TIKVAH
MIRIAM
TIKVAH
MIRIAM
TIKVAH
RUBY
TIKVAH
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise for Hope Valley . . .
“I loved these driven, restless, flawed, ever-changing women, and you will too. In Ner-David’s beautiful story, beautifully told, their full and real lives interlock in a grown-up fairy tale that will leave you full of hope.” — Dara Horn, author of Eternal Life
“Set against the backdrop of another round of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Haviva Ner-David’s debut novel centers on Tikvah and Ruby, two artists living in the Galilee. Touching on themes of illness, loss, trust, and complicated family histories, Hope Valley is a tender, moving story of two strong women who circle each other and, in recognizing each other’s pain, offer a glimpse of how we might move towards reconciliation. I was completely swept up by the story, as I watched the gentleness and openness between Tikvah and Ruby grow.” — Julie Zuckerman, author of The Book of Jeremiah: A Novel in Stories
“Two women living on opposite sides of the fence separating Moshav Sapir from the Palestinian village of Bir al-Demue meet by chance and discover they have more in common than the land they each lay claim to. Tikvah and Ruby are complex characters who defy stereotypes as they come to terms with chronic illness, past choices, collective trauma and secrets from their pasts. But it is the old stone house, the only structure still standing after the Haganah bulldozed the village of Yakut-al-Jalil, that holds the most remarkable secret of all. Hope Valley, a beautifully written novel by the post-denominational interspiritual rabbi, Haviva Ner David, provides a fresh and nuanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the words of Ruby, a Palestinian artist, “If you step back and get a broader perspective, you will find . . . moving out of your own narrow view of things can give you more focus . . . it makes you realize how ephemeral and relative it all is.” — Patricia Averbach, author of Resurrecting Rain
© 2021 Haviva Ner-David
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher. The people and places in this novel are fictional. While the names of other places are real, Moshav Sapir, Kibbutz Zohar, Yakut al-Jalil, and Bir al-Demue did not and do not exist, although they are an amalgamation of actual places that do or did once exist.
978-1-949290-59-2 paperback
Cover Art
by
Meira Ner-David
Cover Design
by
Sapling Studio
Bink Books
a division of
Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company
Fairfield, California
http://www.bedazzledink.com
To all of those in Galilee and beyond
whose stories have helped me cling to hope
Hope is a little wisp of a girl,
Yet a girl who spans the worlds.
It is she, this little one, who knows all . . .
And who keeps the universe evolving.
—Charles Peguy, Souvenirs (translated from the French)
RUBY
Galilee, July 2000
RUBY KNEW HOPE Valley so well she didn’t need a flashlight. The full moon provided enough light so she had her bearings, and her instincts led the way. When she reached the wire fence that divided the valley and her village, Bir al-Demue, from what was officially Moshav Sapir property, she took her cutting shears and pliers out of her backpack and made a hole in the fence—like her brother, Hussein, did to bring his flocks over to the moshav side to graze. “It’s all really our land, anyway,” he explained. Even if it was her land, she was on unfamiliar ground now that she was on the other side of the fence.
Her father had described his childhood village, Yakut al-Jalil, to her every night when she was a child, before she went to sleep: the diwan rooms where the men gathered to smoke rose tobacco from their nargileh water pipes, drink their bitter black sadah coffee, and banter every night for hours; the three trusty deep wells that kept alive the village’s close to two thousand inhabitants; the one-room school house where the boys—and only the boys—studied through the sixth grade; the view of the golden cross of the convent down the valley that remained constant against the backdrop of the changing sky. But that was all gone now, except the cross. Yakut al-Jalil had been destroyed in the 1948 Nakba—what the Jews called their “War of Independence”—and the Jewish gated agricultural settlement of Sapir stood now in its place. Ruby flicked the switch on her flashlight to light her way.
It should not be hard for her to find the house. Her father had pointed it out to her during their regular walks in the valley. It stood perched at the edge of the hillside, which was why the Jewish Haganah soldiers had left it standing. They used it as a look-out and ammunition storage station during and after the Nakba. Until they finally gave it to the moshav to use as residential property. It was the only one in the spread of small country homes divided by dunams of farming fields and orchards, cow and goat dairies, horse and donkey ranches, that looked like the original buildings that had stood on this land: one-story stone structures with small slits for windows to keep out the sun and heat in summer and the wind and rain in winter. Those other moshav houses looked more like the chalets she had seen spotting the French countryside during her time living in Paris. If those Jews wanted to live in Europe, why didn’t they stay there after the Nazis lost the war, instead of coming here, capturing her father’s family’s village and taking over their house?
It was so hot and dry now at this time of year, that Ruby heard the earth crunching beneath the soles of her Australian ankle boots. Still, there was a slight breeze that came across the valley even in summer, and this late at night it had an almost cool edge to it. Ruby flashed the light behind her and took one more look. Marjat Amal. Hope Valley. The name of her father’s first book of poetry. It was an ironic name for a place that had witnessed so much bloodshed over these hill tops and fields. Ruby had been around the world—Thailand, India, Australia, Europe, Central America, and the U.S. She had seen breathtaking mountain views, lush green woodlands that went on for kilometers with no end in sight, tropical rain forests, and lakes so pristine you could drop in a stone and see it hit the bottom. Yet generations of people had fought over this unimpressive tiny landscape. Her eyes could not understand why, but her heart could. No matter how far and long she travelled, this was her home.
Ruby had stayed away for half of her life. She enjoyed her freedom. An artist with no responsibilities besides herself, she could come and go as she pleased. She had come back to her childhood home for treatments; that was the drawback of considering herself a citizen of the world: she had never stayed in one place long enough to get citizenship or healthcare. Besides, it made sense to come home. Despite all of her criticism of Israel, the country was known for its good healthcare; and as much as she liked the anonymity of Manhattan, her last residence abroad, it was a lonely place to be sick. She needed the loving care only her mother could provide.
Would she have come back if not for the cancer? As much as she loved this place, she despised it. Li
ving here with her family’s tragic history and her own painful memories would have been twisting the khanjar in an open wound, as her father used to say. Even once she had let go of her anger—with the help of months of living in a Buddhist ashram in a tiny village outside of Dharmsala, and years of daily meditation after that—she still could not bring herself to return.
She had been in touch with her parents—and then, after her father passed, just her mother—for all of those twenty-five years she was gone. They were happy she was making a success of her art—although her mother asked every time they spoke if she had met any suitable men. She had been afraid Ruby would end up “a woman who had missed the train,” as the old Arabic saying goes. Her mother did not ask anymore, now. Ruby was past child-bearing years; and besides, even if there had been any chance of giving her mother a grandchild, that train had certainly passed, with all of these chemicals being pumped into her body.
Ruby maneuvered her way in the dark through passion fruit orchards—another Jewish import to Galilee—focused on her destination. The mulberry bushes and cacti she passed as she continued further, away from the valley, had a monster-like aura by the light of the full moon. She knew she was getting close to the edge of the residential part of the moshav where her father’s family house still stood, because he had told her how, as a boy, his hands were purple for several weeks at the beginning of summers, when the mulberries were ripe on their trees. Those trees were the equivalent of a candy store for him growing up, he said. The cacti’s fruit also provided a sweet snack for those who knew how to pick and peel it, and the prickly plants acted as fences between neighbors and protection from the winds and wild animals. When those Haganah soldiers bulldozed the houses of Yakut al-Jalil, at least they had left the vegetation alone.
Ruby kept walking, letting the memories her father had shared of his life as a boy on this very land, guide her. She spotted the house, her father’s childhood home. She stood and took in the sight of it up close. With such a bright moon, even without shining the flashlight onto the structure—which would have been a foolish move—she could see it was the right place. The silence was total. Not even a bat flying among the trees nor a jackal looking for hedgehogs. Nothing. She hoped no one was awake inside, either. It was the middle of the night. The chances that anyone was up were so slim that Ruby decided to risk going through the gate, which, she was glad, was held closed by a mere latch.
She lifted the hook and walked into the yard, leaving the gate ajar in case she should need to make a run for it. The way her father had described the house, there should be an entrance through the cellar, where the rainwater cistern was. That is where her father’s letter said she would find his diary. She wondered how it looked. Probably leather-bound, with yellowed pages. Would the writing still be clear enough to read? When Ruby had returned home only months ago, her mother handed her a note from her father in a sealed envelope with her given name, Rabia, written on it. He had composed the letter years before he had died, her mother said, hoping Ruby would return one day and read it. It was for Ruby’s eyes only. Her mother was illiterate, but apparently he did not want her brothers to read it, either.
Ruby was the only daughter among ten children. All nine after her were boys. This was considered lucky after the disappointment of a firstborn daughter. Her father should have been elated to have sons. When Hassan was born, he finally became an official father worthy of respect and earned the title “Abu Hassan.” But it was Ruby who read all of his poems first. He even let her call him “Abu Rabia” when they were alone, as long as she promised not to let anyone else in on their secret. Her mother used to call Ruby and her father “chickpeas in a pod,” with a hint of jealousy in her tone. It was not surprising her father had chosen her to entrust with this final secret he had kept for all of those years, nor that it was she he wanted to retrieve the diary. She only wished she could fulfill his wishes before it was too late.
Her father wrote in his letter that when Yakut al-Jalil was captured and the villagers expelled, the soldiers had told them to leave their belongings behind. He had thought he would return days later, so he did not take the diary. But, alas, the village was decimated and pillaged. No one knew about the diary. It was hidden behind a stone in the cellar wall. Months later, when he snuck back over the border from Lebanon and alternated between his grandparents in an-Nasira and camping outside the village ruins, he tried to get the diary. But he was caught, thrown into jail, and almost hanged for the murder of a woman on Kibbutz Zohar down the valley. Luckily, the mayor of an-Nasira, his grandparents’ friend, bailed him out, obtained citizenship papers for him, and convinced the authorities that he had been framed. But her father had to promise he would never set foot in the moshav—which was being built over the ruins of his village—or the kibbutz again. He knew this was a promise best kept.
Ruby had promised nothing to anyone. She had every right to be here looking for what was hers. If she could find the diary, she would not only be honoring her beloved late father’s request, but she would be able to read his account of the events of 1948. Her father had been one of only a handful of high-school-educated villagers back then; his plans of going to university had been thwarted by the Nakba, but he had been a dedicated autodidact, which made him stand out from most other villagers, who were fallaheen, subsisting on farming and shepherding. Memoirs, journals, even letters from those days were non-existent. Her youngest brother, Raja, the brother to whom she had been like a second mother before she left, was now an Arabic book publisher; he could get the diary out into the public eye. Perhaps her father would even gain the literary appreciation he deserved.
Until she returned and read her father’s letter, Ruby had known nothing about his diary. But now that she did know, the diary was what she thought about when she woke in the morning and went to sleep at night. While living abroad, she had learned to let go of resentment and blame. Her art was all about beauty, color, and form. Art for art’s sake. But ever since she had come back to this place, the site of her suffering, the suffering of her family and her people, her art became political and finding that diary became her mission.
Ruby flashed the light onto the bottom of the house, careful not to let it shine into the windows. Whoever was living in the house now had done some renovations. The windows were much bigger than her father had described them. There was even a large bay window overlooking the valley. She continued to flash the light along the outside of the house until it revealed the cellar door. She ventured forward to see if it was locked. But as she did, she knocked her shin on something hard and flipped over whatever it was that was in her way. She let out a groan—“Ach!”—before she could help herself, and fell forward, breaking her fall with her hands.
TIKVAH
Galilee, July 2000
IT WAS MID-SUMMER, when all that was dry in Galilee from the sweltering heat and not even a thought of rain, was longing to be quenched. Yet, there was no hope of that, at least not for another few months.
Alon had woken Tikvah with one of his nightmares, again. He had managed to go back to sleep, but she hadn’t. She went to the kitchen for some herbal tea, to help soothe her back to sleep. While pouring steaming water over her calming home-grown blend of peppermint, sage, and passion flower, she heard a noise coming from outside. It sounded like a person hurt or in distress.
There had been a series of robberies lately on the moshav. Normally, she would have woken Alon to check it out, but how could she do that now, when he was finally resting peacefully? Flashlight in hand and cellphone in her pocket—Alon and Talya had been trying for a while now to convince her to get one, but the deciding factor was when the moshav’s front gate became operated by cellphone only, almost a year ago—she ventured out.
Tikvah scanned her property with the flashlight: the lawns and picnic tables, the vegetable garden, the flower beds, the herb garden, the supply shed, the chicken coop, the hammock and swing, the construction site of the new clubhouse. She was careful, th
ough, to avoid the cabins where the bed-and-breakfast guests were all hopefully fast asleep. The scene was still and silent. But when she turned the light off, she heard a rustling sound. Quickly, she turned the flashlight back on, just in time to catch something—or someone?—running off into the cover of the night. Whatever it was that had stolen onto their property was now gone.
But then she heard rustling again. She flashed the light around once more and noticed movement in the herb garden. She walked gingerly in that direction. Was there something shaking in there? As she drew closer, the pungent scents of rosemary, sage, and hyssop filled her nostrils. As she drew closer still, a pair of eyes gleamed off of the light of the flashlight. Tikvah stopped and stood in her tracks. Had one prowler gotten away while another was left behind hiding among the herb plants?
She heard a noise, a whine that could not be human; it was coming from behind a rosemary bush. She pushed aside some branches with their needle-like leaves, and saw a pair of slanted glistening eyes—the color of pickled green olives—peering out at her, longingly.
Her eyes locked with animal eyes. She pushed the branches further to the side, shined her flashlight on the rest of the form, and revealed a trembling dog, its rib cage bulging through its matted charcoal-gray fur. The pitiful creature had apparently sought shelter in the bushes. Or perhaps even a place to hide and rest its weary body and wait for death to come.
Tikvah’s belly was aflutter, like a butterfly waking in its cocoon. It had been so long since she’d felt life in her being. For years after Talya was born, Tikvah hoped to conceive again—but to no avail. And now she had not gotten a period in over two years. So, what was shifting inside her at the sight of this withering creature?
Tikvah moved her gaze from the dog’s eyes to the front gate. It was open. Someone had come inside their property. The dog must have followed. But there was no one there. Whoever it was who had made that noise must have escaped. That was the figure she had seen running off. She walked across the lawn, closed the gate, and refastened the latch. She would take the dog to the vet first thing in the morning—if it was still alive then. Hopefully Alon would not notice the creature on his way out for his daily sunrise run, which she could count on like she did the sunrise itself.