Hope Valley

by Haviva Ner-David

  Over ten years later, when she and Alon were researching the property on Moshav Sapir, she had only considered the location because of the lake at the seat of the hill on which the moshav lay. Yet, when they discovered that lake was actually a reservoir where swimming was prohibited, Tikvah still went along with their plan. It was a great deal—property would surely go up in value in Galilee as new access roads and highways were being built, and living in the Center was becoming impossibly expensive.

  Alon—who was in such a fragile emotional state after Lebanon and his retirement from service—had wanted the “fixer-upper.” The property—dunams of agricultural, residential, and even commercial land—had been uninhabited for years. The old stone one-story house with its large room off the back entrance—ideal for an art studio—was calling out for renovations. The least she could do was give up her ocean in exchange for Alon’s sanity, she had told herself. After all, the reservoir did provide a beautiful water view. And at least no one could take her painting from her, she had reassured herself. That was portable.

  How was she to have known that the inspiration would later fade with her waning energy and disrupted balance, and then leave her completely when the doctor’s prognosis rang in her ears like a death knell? It was as if the disease had entered her body in the place where her spirit had once resided, and was lumbering in her bones like an imposter, as the liquid aliveness that once had been flowing through her veins seeped away. Like her paints and brushes, she was dried out. And there was no one with whom she could share this feeling. She and Talya were close, but she did not want to worry her daughter or make her feel guilty for living her own life in Jaffa, a two-hour ride from the moshav. Tikvah was still scarred from the guilt her own mother had inflicted when she moved to Israel. These were the kinds of feelings she had shared only with Alon, which was what made her miss even more the ease and openness they once had.

  Perhaps if she had a friend on the moshav who was also ill, or whose husband also suffered from war trauma, she might have felt less alone. She assumed there were other women on the moshav who fit this description, but in her sixteen years living in Sapir, Tikvah had not made any good friends—at least not the kind in whom she felt she could confide. The other moshav residents seemed suspicious of her, with the American accent she never managed to shake completely, and the husband who spoke little and had retired in his thirties from his army career. Alon had never been social—when they met, he told her he preferred dogs to humans—but Lebanon made him anti-social. This was one reason, she knew, that he wanted the property. It would not only keep him busy, but it would also give him a good excuse to be a recluse. On a moshav, the houses were spread apart and the members mostly tzabarim (there was truth in the choice of the thick-skinned cactus fruit—with its prickly outside and sweet inside—as the term for native-born Israelis). As long as she and Alon did not stick out or cause trouble, people left them alone. The sweet inside of the sabra fruit revealed itself in times of crisis, when she knew she could count on her neighbors to help—if she could bring herself to ask for it, and as long as they considered her one of them.

  As Tikvah walked through her and Alon’s passion fruit vineyards—with Cane following along on her leash—she breakfasted on some of the tart, slimy fruits while heading for her neighbors’ olive groves, grape vineyards, pomegranate orchards, and fields of barley, chick peas, corn, and wheat. Dunam after dunam rolled out as far as the road below. The road leveled in front of her as she headed towards the moshav’s front gate. Hoping she and Cane could wander freely for a couple of hours, until she had to be back to check the cabins and greet a new wave of guests, she glanced up at the sky. A flock of white storks flew by overhead—just as she expected this time of year—with a sense of direction that made her feel like a bird who had lost her flyway.

  The storks flew towards the hill across the valley, where the village of Bir al-Demue sat. She had a view of the village from her bay kitchen windows, but, like most other Jews in the area, she had never been inside. She had not been inside most of the other surrounding Arab villages, either, except the few times she had ventured into some of the Bedouin ones when she needed something urgently on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, when stores were closed in the Jewish towns. The Bedouin villages were considered safer than the fallah ones; at least most Bedouin served in the Israel Defense Forces.

  Since the Galilee Land Day riots in the seventies, the Arabs kept to their villages, and the Jews to theirs. When moshav and kibbutz residents shopped or went for medical care or cultural activities, they skirted the local Arab villages and drove to the closest Jewish towns. When they walked for exercise or fresh air, they stuck to the paved roads in their own villages, or hiked the marked trails created and maintained by the national Society for the Protection of Nature. Tikvah followed suit.

  When she reached the electric gate, Tikvah opened it with her cell phone, let Cane off her leash, and continued walking, with Cane treading beside her. There was still a remnant of the slight early-morning chill in the air, but soon it would be gone, as the sun rose higher in the sky. They could walk for at most another couple of hours before it would get too hot to be outdoors. The heat was so intense this time of year, it was like an unwanted blanket she could not simply kick off and go back to sleep. She longed for summer to pass and for the green of winter—spotted with red and white anemones—to sprout with some signs of life. She paused for a moment to catch her breath. That was when she heard the gunshot. It was startling enough to make her flinch. Cane took off like a gunshot herself, straight in the direction from where the sound had come.

  “Cane! Stop!” Tikvah called. “It’s nothing! Just a wedding in one of the villages!”

  At least that’s what everyone said when they heard those gun shots. And even if it wasn’t, they said, let them kill one another. One fewer Arab the better. Tikvah cringed at the statement, but she understood it came from a place of fear. There was real hatred between the descendants of the sons of Abraham. In this case, good fences did not make good neighbors, but at least they kept enemies at bay. As if not seeing each other would provide the illusion that the other did not exist.

  Well, for Tikvah it mostly worked. She saw Arabs—the cashier at the supermarket, the clerk at the bank, and even some doctors and nurses at Haifa’s Rambam hospital, where she went to see her MS specialist—but she never socialized with them, even if they lived only a few kilometers away in all directions. Universities were mixed, but there had been only a handful of Arab students in Bezalel when Tikvah and Alon were there, and they had been a group onto themselves. Tikvah had become friendly with one of them—Reem, her name was—when they worked together on a project in her final year, but when they graduated, they went their separate ways. When she and Alon moved to Tel Aviv, they had not kept in touch with any of their classmates for very long, let alone Reem, with whom it would have taken even more effort than with a Jew.

  Tikvah continued to call out to Cane, telling her to come back, but it was no use. The dog kept running until she was out of sight. Tikvah looked around her, as if help might appear. But she was totally alone. She started in the direction Cane had run, towards the fence that indicated the end of Sapir’s agricultural lands and the beginning of the valley separating the Jewish moshav from the Arab village of Bir al-Demue. No one she knew would think of going alone into the secluded valley. Young Arab men were known to ride wildly on horseback there; and one could not trust that they would care to stop rather than trample a Jew or two.

  Tikvah sighed. She put Cane’s leash into her backpack, where she had her water bottle, tehina sandwich, and cellphone, and continued to walk after the dog in the direction of the gunshot. The terrain was unfamiliar. She stopped to check how much water she had in her bottle. Almost full. She kept walking.

  Tikvah reached the fence, but no sign of Cane. Instead, she saw a hole in the wire just large enough for Cane—and her—to climb through. Alon had told her that local Arab shepherds wer
e constantly cutting holes in the fence to bring their sheep over to graze on the grasslands on the Sapir side—more quickly than the moshav’s security team could mend them. Tikvah stood in front of the hole. Her heart was racing. She knew Cane had gone through. She could feel it. Yet she was afraid to follow. Even if she had never had any meaningful interactions with Arabs, besides Reem, Alon certainly had. And none were positive. He had fought in ’67, ’73, and in ’82 in Lebanon. He would not want her to go through the fence. It was best not to go where she was not wanted, he said.

  Tikvah looked out over the fence into the valley. There was not a person in sight. She was nervous, but she needed to find Cane. She pushed away the wire as she stepped through the hole and looked into the distance where the houses of Bir al-Demue came into definition. She started walking straight ahead and down the hill but still no sign of Cane. As she looked around, she saw rows of olive trees, their branches swaying, as if enchanted, in the balmy breeze.

  “Cane!” Tikvah called out.

  She saw rocks, dirt, and low-lying thistle bushes and hawthorns, but no dog. She was not willing to walk much further. Certainly not all the way across the valley and up into that fallah Arab village with its reputation for anti-Zionist activity. If she remembered correctly, they had been instigators in the area’s riots in the seventies. She continued down into the valley, slowly watching her feet in their worn hiking boots to avoid tripping over tree roots or slipping on slick rock surfaces. She needed to be careful about falling; the feeling of pins and needles in her legs and feet had never completely subsided since her first episode. She had read of other people living with MS whose downfall was a broken hip or shoulder. One serious relapse could put her into the category of those who go from fully functional to totally dependent within a few years.

  As Tikvah descended into the valley, she spotted two figures down below. One could be a dog. But if it was Cane, who was with her? More likely it was a stranger with a strange dog, which could mean danger. She wanted to run, but that was not possible. Running made the tingling in her legs turn into a numbness that made it difficult for her to keep her balance.

  The person below called out to her in Arabic. Suddenly, the dog came running at her. Tikvah panicked. She clutched herself, grabbing at her shoulders and shirt, as if that could possibly help. But as the dog came closer, she saw that it was Cane. And the figure walking towards her was a woman. Tikvah sighed in relief.

  The woman approached. She was thin and on the tall side, and she was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt tucked in at her waist above a brown leather belt. She had a leather knapsack slung across one shoulder, and leather ankle boots. Her head was covered with a gauzy gray scarf, which made Tikvah think the woman was a religious Muslim. A religious Jewish woman would not be in pants. But then again, the woman’s neck was exposed; a religious Muslim woman’s neck would be covered, she thought. She did not know where to place this stranger. Her spotless olive skin did not reveal her age, and she had never seen a religious Muslim woman in a pair of blue jeans, let alone faded, ripped Levi’s.

  Cane scampered up to Tikvah and jumped at her excitedly. Tikvah faltered but caught herself. Then she leaned over and reached for the dog’s paws. She smiled and hugged Cane in relief.

  “Sabah el kher,” the woman said.

  Tikvah did not know what that meant. She did not speak Arabic, of course. The woman looked at her questioningly. Her features were striking: dark almond-shaped eyes, prominent cheekbones, thin brown lips that came to two tiny crests beneath her nostrils; and she had a bump on the bridge of her angular twisted nose. There was something else strange about this woman’s face, but Tikvah could not place what it was. Something about her eyebrows; they looked painted on.

  Suddenly, tiny specks appeared in front of Tikvah’s eyes. Her head felt like it was emptying. Her feet felt like they were melting. This tendency to faint was a side effect—like the dry, sticky mouth and hot flashes—from those turquoise capsules that at least somewhat treated her MS. (It was hard to know how much they worked, since she did not know how she would feel without them.) She knew these side effects well, lived with them daily, like family members she had not chosen but had to accept as part of her life nonetheless.

  Tikvah could not see anymore. She lifted her sunglasses to the crown of her head, but it did not help. She was dropping. She could not catch herself. She grabbed the woman’s shoulder. What else could she do?

  RUBY

  IN A FEW months, it would be olive harvest season, when Ruby’s entire family would set out to the orchards for three days of smacking the trees bare, letting the tiny oval fruits fall onto canvas tarps to be collected later into sacks. A small portion would be set aside for pickling, but most they would bring to the local village olive press to turn into oil. Their orchards would yield enough oil for their extended family, plus plenty to sell for profit. Ruby remembered these family harvesting days fondly.

  Ruby hummed to herself as she walked, picking herbs as she went: rosemary, marjoram, lemon verbena, thyme, hyssop, sage, and tarragon. It was all here for the taking, for those who knew its secrets, passed on from generation to generation. She foraged and brought her findings back to her mother, who cooked with some and mixed others into concoctions to stave off the side effects of Ruby’s chemo.

  Ruby was startled from her foraging by a dog. A dog who came right up beside her and sniffed around in the plants, doing a bit of foraging of her own. She was a beauty. Gray with bits of white. Like the clouds hanging over Ruby’s village in the distance, teasing the notion of rain; but there would be none of that until at least October. From the look of her, the dog was mostly Canaan. Some Shepherd, too. A good mix for a guard dog. Or even for herding. Canaan dogs had been guarding Bedouin camps and helping with the flocks for centuries at least. This dog’s ancestors could tell Ruby more about the goings on in this place than any history book could. If the dog wasn’t wearing a collar, Ruby would have considered adopting her. Hussein could use another dog to help with the sheep. But she did have a collar. Most likely, she belonged to one of those Jews from the moshav.

  “Go back to where you came from,” Ruby said, shooing the dog away. But the dog wouldn’t leave her alone. She sat herself down next to Ruby, as if they were old friends. Ruby couldn’t help but stroke the soft white tuft of fur between the dog’s gray ears. She continued foraging as the dog watched her.

  A few minutes later, the dog lifted her head and pricked up her ears, as if she had heard something in the distance. Then she stood on all fours and circled Ruby. She was trying to tell her something. Ruby stood. She put the bag of herbs that she had just picked into her leather backpack.

  “Okay, I’ll come,” she said, and she walked after the dog, through rows of olive trees blowing in the breeze. The valley was like a wind tunnel all year-round.

  The dog stopped. There was a woman in the distance, coming down the hill from the moshav. The dog seemed to know this woman, as she scampered towards her. Then the dog jumped at the woman excitedly, and the woman embraced her, calling her by a name. Was it Cain? An interesting name for a dog. This woman must be the dog’s master. Or if not, then she was a good friend. Ruby was curious, but she did not really want to engage this moshavnik Jewish woman in conversation.

  As they came closer to each other, Ruby could see that the woman was dressed in baggy pants and a sleeveless tank top. She was short and thin, and her hair was shoulder length and curly. Ruby guessed she was no more than forty years old. Younger than Ruby.

  “Sabah el kher,” Ruby had called out to the woman in spite of herself, when she was within earshot.

  She could tell this woman was not an Arabic speaker, yet Ruby refused to speak Hebrew in this valley where her father’s family had spoken Arabic while grazing their sheep and growing their olives long before this woman and her moshavnikim moved in up there on the hill. If the Jews wanted to revive the Hebrew language, that was their prerogative. But that did not mean Ruby had
to speak it.

  The woman was directly in front of her now. Ruby saw that she had been misled by her petite build and casual dress. She looked older closer up, with crow’s feet at the corners of her hazel eyes, and more gray than Ruby had once had in her own hair—before the chemo. And the color was quickly draining from the woman’s face.She pushed her sunglasses to the crown of her head and grabbed onto Ruby’s shoulder. She looked like she was about to faint. Ruby helped the woman to her favorite sitting spot—on the flat rock in the center of the three connected trunks of the grove’s oldest olive tree—and offered her water from her thermos. The woman shook her head, took out her own thermos from her knapsack, and drank. She put her head between her legs.

  When she looked up after a few minutes, Ruby asked, “Khawafnaki?” She was standing over the woman, but she bent at the waist and leaned her face in towards her as she spoke.

  “I’m sorry but I don’t understand,” the woman said, nervously. She spoke in English, with a perfect American accent, to Ruby’s pleasant surprise. Perhaps she was not from the moshav. Perhaps she was just visiting the area. That possibility made Ruby more open to conversing with her.

  “Ah, so you speak English.” Ruby smiled. “Well, I asked if we startled you.”

  “We?”

  “Me and the dog. She seems to know you. Is she yours?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. We’re friends. I guess you could say we live together.”

  “You do, do you? Well, lucky you.” Ruby went down on her hands and knees for a better look at the dog’s features. She grabbed the dog by the ears and rubbed noses with her. Then she looked up at the woman, who was still sitting on the rock. “What did I hear you call her?”