“Are you okay, Ima? I know this is difficult stuff, but I’m glad you’re taking an interest.”
Tikvah did not know if she was glad. That was not the word. But it was liberating to see the bigger picture, now that she knew how limited her view had been up until now. For so many years, it seemed, she had walked around with only a piece of the truth. That was what saddened her more than anything. After growing up in a house where so much was left unsaid, she had come to this country in search of truth, in search of greater meaning and direction, perhaps even a way to ensure that systemic oppression like her parents had suffered would not happen again. But it seemed she was not told the truth, at least not all of it.
Tikvah paced her kitchen, as much as the phone cord would let her, as she thought this through. She said goodbye to Talya and hung up. Perhaps it was time to trade this phone in for a wireless one, after all.
WAS IT POSSIBLE Alon did not know about the history of the moshav and their house? Tikvah asked herself this question while staring out her kitchen windows at Bir al-Demue. She was having trouble concentrating on her work of dealing with reservations for the upcoming holiday season.
Alon was the more informed of the two of them on matters having to do with history and politics, especially since he had served in the military. Over the Green Line, within the Green Line, Area A, Area B, Area C. When, a month or so before, Prime Minister Barak suspended the peace talks in Stockholm and the transfer of those three Palestinian villages to Area A—because of the Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians near Jericho—Tikvah had to ask Alon to sit down with her and a map to remind her Area A was controlled by the Palestinian Authority. It was all too technical for her and felt worlds away from peaceful Galilee. Or at least what she had thought was peaceful Galilee.
Galilee had, since the founding of the Jewish State, been part of Israel proper, never contested or occupied territory like the lands captured in 1967. It was part of the history of the pioneer building of the country. The first kibbutzim and moshavim had been established right where she lived now. Muddy and disease-ridden swamps had been turned into thriving agricultural lands with proper academic and medical institutions. A miracle, like the creation story in Genesis. Something from nothing. Order from chaos. That was what she had learned in her Zionist Youth movement. About the relationships between Arabs and Jews back then, she had not been taught much, aside from the fact that the Arabs had been hostile to the Zionists when they came to rebuild the Jewish homeland. Tikvah knew little about life in Galilee between 1948 and 1976, when the Land Day riots flared up. She and Alon only moved to the area in the early eighties.
When Alon returned from Lebanon and retired from military service, he began looking for properties to buy in northern Israel. When he heard about the property on Moshav Sapir, it sounded ideal. There was so much land, and with permits to build a business in addition to the agriculture. She had not asked who had lived in the house before and why it had not been occupied for so many years. She had not asked why it looked different than the other houses on the moshav. She had cast all of this off to local bureaucracy without having any idea what that meant; and Alon had not corrected her.
Alon had read the papers and told her to sign on the dotted line. It was too much Hebrew for her, anyway. And far too high level, with that legal terminology and no vowels. She had studied art on a university level, not law. She could analyze a Renaissance painting in Hebrew, carry on a friendly conversation, express her emotions, and even her deepest thoughts in Hebrew. But still, when she faced any official letters or documents in the language, she felt like the immigrant she would always be. Bank statements, governmental letters, and legal documents were all Alon’s territory.
Now she wondered how much he knew, how much he had not revealed to her when they bought the house. He had wanted the property so much; he had wanted it to all work out, and quickly, so that they could start over as soon as possible. And she had not only trusted him, she had not even had a thought that there was any reason not to trust him. It was convenient for her not to ask too many questions. Ruby was right.
But now that she knew, she wanted to know how much he knew. She would ask him. Even if it would upset him. She checked her watch. It was almost noon; she decided to prepare some food so they could sit together over lunch for a change.
When Alon came in, Tikvah was at the stove frying eggs. Freshly laid that very morning. He went right to the refrigerator to have a drink of cold water straight from the glass bottle they kept filled in the fridge’s door. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a hand towel.
“That smells good,” he said. “Is there enough for two?”
“Yes, of course,” Tikvah answered, flipping the omelette. “That was my intention. I made a salad, too.” She indicated with her head a wooden salad bowl on the counter. “If you set the table, we can dig right in.”
“Sounds perfect.” Alon placed two woven placemats on the butcher block table, along with silverware and cloth napkins. Then he took two ceramic plates from a pinewood cabinet he had built years ago when they renovated the kitchen. He put them and the salad bowl on the table, and sat down. Tikvah followed with a sizzling hot six-egg tomato, cilantro, and cheese omelette. It did smell delicious, especially with the salty goat cheese from their neighbors’ farm.
“So what’s the occasion? Why the formal sit-down meal? I was going to grab a sandwich like usual.” Alon cut a big piece from his egg and started eating.
“I wanted to ask you about something. When we moved to the moshav, did you research the history of this place?”
Alon swallowed. “Why do you ask?” He took a drink of water.
“There were a lot of Arab villages in the area, apparently, that were captured and destroyed in 1948. Some quite substantial.”
“Yes, so . . . ? Maybe there was a village here before the moshav. Like you said, there were lots of them. Arabs in the area fled in 1948. They were scared. And justifiably so. Their leaders told them the Jews were going to slaughter them.” He put more eggs into his mouth, but he chewed slowly now, watching Tikvah as he did.
“So why wouldn’t we let them back into their houses, back onto their land, when the war was over? Is that why no one here wants Arabs to move into the Regev house? Are they afraid it might cause an onslaught of the old villagers coming back to the moshav to claim their property? That it might even set a precedent for Israeli Arabs in general to do that all over Galilee? Is that why you signed that petition?” Tikvah looked down at her untouched lunch.
“Maybe.” He put down his fork. “I can’t lose this place, Tikvah. Even if no one can take our house away, if Sapir becomes mixed, even if through legal real estate transactions, the value of our property will go way down.”
“But what about the ethics of it, Alon? The way I understand it, some villagers were actually forced to leave. And those who fled . . . well, they had reason to be scared.” Tikvah chose her words carefully. “There were incidents of unwarranted violence among Haganah soldiers. And it seems there was a deliberate attempt to get the Arabs out of here, to create a Jewish majority for a Jewish State.”
Alon pressed his palms against the table top. She could see he was trying to remain composed. “Yes. And the Arabs would have done the same to the Jews had they won. There were massacres of Jews by Arabs, too.” At least he used the word, not her. “It was a civil war with no love lost between the two sides. An ancient family feud that goes back to Ishmael and Isaac in the Bible, as you know—”
“—I do know. That’s why—”
“—And we, running our cozy bed-and-breakfast in Galilee in the year 2000, are part of it. But we are not going to solve it. It’s way bigger than us. War is ugly, and people get out of control. I learned that from first-hand experience, as you know.” Alon was growing agitated.
“Yes, I do, Alon. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Well, you did. And I want this to be clear.” He clenched his fists firmly against the t
able top. “Those villagers left, and we needed the land.” So he did know. “You didn’t forget what happened in Europe from 1939 to 1945, did you? We had hundreds of thousands of refugees to house. And those were the ones who survived. That was the Haganah’s top priority back then, not a bunch of frightened Arabs whose leaders did not have their best interests in mind.”
“So you knew about the village that was here before”—Tikvah almost said Nakba but caught herself before the word came out—“before the War of Independence?”
“Maybe I did.” Alon furrowed his cinnamon eye brows so that they almost met to form a line above his green eyes.
“So why didn’t you tell me?” She put her hands on his clenched fists.
“Honestly, Tikvah, I did not think it was important. This whole country was built on land where there was a majority Arab population before the State. It was populated by Canaanites before the Israelite dynasty, and it passed from the Romans to the Ottomans to the British. There were Jews here, Muslims here, and Crusaders here, too. And now it’s a modern Jewish State.” He took a deep breath. “Leave it alone, Tikvah. Please. What’s done is done.”
Tikvah did not want to let the conversation end there, but, judging from how he was reacting to simply mentioning the fact that a village was here before the moshav, she was certainly not going to mention Ruby or her claim on the house. “Okay, Alon. I just wish you had told me then. I like to think we don’t keep secrets from each other . . .” As the words escaped her mouth, Tikvah realized how hypocritical she was being. Not only was she not telling Alon about Ruby, but she was also not telling him about Udi. And as much as she resented her mother—who lay alone in a nursing home since Tikvah’s father’s death several years before—for continuing to keep the details of her history from Tikvah, she had not even told her mother about her MS.
“I’m sorry, Tikvah.” He looked at her pleadingly. “I’m not trying to hurt you. The opposite. I’m trying to shield you. If you only knew the half of what was going on behind the scenes in this country. You think that suicide bombing in the Netanya mall a month ago was the last? Of course not. Just like the one before it, at that Jerusalem bus stop, was not. It’s never ending. That’s just the reality of living here. And it’s only going to get worse now that Camp David failed. I can’t say I blame Barak for not giving in on Jerusalem, but we all know what’s coming now. Increased suicide attacks for starters, but probably not just that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shootings, knifings. Whatever they can do to wear us down and get attention for their cause in the press. Even kidnappings. They are getting more sophisticated in their tactics. Brainwashing not just boys to throw stones this time, but training spies to infiltrate Israeli society and kidnap civilians—”
“—Oh, Alon. Do you think so?” Tikvah thought about Udi and Talya but put the thought out of her mind.
“I know so. There are hundreds of Palestinian prisoners just waiting to get out on a hostage swap and set off more suicide bombs once they get out. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s just a matter of time. So please, don’t talk to me about Arabs who left here with their tails between their legs in 1948. This is a land constantly at war. We may be out of Lebanon, but there’s an uprising about to explode on the West Bank. Let’s just hope it doesn’t spread into Israel proper. And certainly not up to Galilee. I came here to get away from all of that.”
Tikvah wanted to tell Alon that there had to be a solution other than just waiting for the next war to start and hoping that their side would win, but Alon pushed his chair away from the table and stood, letting Tikvah’s hands slide off of his. He took a gulp of water, scraped what he had not eaten of his eggs into the compost bin, put his dishes in the sink, and went back outside. Tikvah looked down at her own plate. She had not eaten a bite. She would put her food away for later. She had lost her appetite.
RUBY
RUBY WAS PLEASANTLY surprised when Tikvah’s daughter called. Talya said she wanted to meet with Ruby alone, without Tikvah. She would take a bus up to Galilee on Saturday. The official state buses did not run on the Jewish Sabbath, so she would take an Arab line. They could meet at a café.
Ruby had driven into an-Nasira with her brother Hussein’s car. It was a short enough ride from Bir al-Demue for her to manage. She maneuvered the winding narrow roads and steep hills, thinking of her time in San Francisco. An-Nasira could certainly use a cable car system like they had there. Chances were if any hilly city in Galilee got such a system, it would be Hayfa. There had been more Arabs in Hayfa than Jews before the Nakba, when so many fled in fear for their lives. Unlike in Yakut al-Jalil, Hayfa’s Arabs had not been kicked out but rather had fled and their houses taken by the Jews and filled almost immediately with WWII refugees, turning the original owners of the houses into refugees themselves. Now Hayfa was a mixed city with a Jewish majority and distinctly Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, and a few that were even integrated. An-Nasira was a strictly Arab city, and would therefore surely not be first in line for any improvements.
Ruby passed through the Yakut neighborhood of an-Nasira, named after her father’s village. Those villagers who did not flee over borders into Arab countries, fled to nearby an-Nasira and resettled there when the village was razed and it became clear they were not going to be allowed back. When she reached the center of the old city of an-Nasira, she parked near the Church of the Annunciation and walked to the café where she had told Talya to meet her. The walk up through the narrow alley in the heat felt more oppressive than her much longer foraging expeditions. The asphalt beneath her feet and the noise and exhaust from the cars and buses only made the heat more unbearable. She spotted the café up ahead. It was the oldest one still in existence in an-Nasira and had the most historic Galilean atmosphere. That was why she had chosen it. And for the memories it evoked. Ruby had spent many childhood afternoons here with her great grandparents—who had both died before she married Mustafa—while her father worked in his bookshop down the road.
When Ruby walked into the old stone building, the air was cool and filled with the sweet aroma of nargileh and cardamom. A huge iron chandelier with ochre glass lamp shades hung from the ceiling and cast yellow light around the smoky room. Mostly men sat at low tables playing shesh besh and cards and drinking sadah. There were two women sitting at one table drinking tea with fresh mint leaves. The younger of the two was wearing a sleeveless dress, and the older one a short sleeved loose-fitting top with slacks. Ruby assumed they were Christians because of their modern secular dress, and because Muslim women rarely went out to cafes. That was considered a men’s activity. An-Nasira had once been a mostly Christian city, but it was becoming more and more Muslim with time, as many Christian Arabs, who were the minority of Arabs in Israel compared to the Muslims, were leaving Israel for places with more promise and equality for them.
Ruby chose a table and sat down. Just as she did, she spotted Talya walking in, and bringing with her what felt like sunshine from outside. Her ginger hair shone from the light of the chandelier, and her face glowed and radiated warmth when she saw Ruby. She smiled widely and her eyes sparkled. She walked over to Ruby’s table.
“This place is amazing. So authentic. I’m glad I let you choose where to meet. I may have grown up right near here, but my parents never brought me to Nazareth, and it certainly was not a hang-out destination for Jewish teenagers. A day in the city means Haifa for the Jews who live in the area.” She sat down. “I’m famished. Did you order yet? Where’s the menu?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you would want to order food. This place is strictly for drinking and smoking. There isn’t even a menu.”
Talya frowned. “A café without food. Interesting. Well, I can hold out until after we talk, and then get a falafel on the street. As long as I’m here, I figured I’d also wander around a bit, check out the sites and the market. I’ve never been inside the Church of the Annunciation. Can you believe it?” She smacked the table with her
freckled hand. “I grew up next to one of the most historic tourist spots in the world and never saw it myself. It’s sad, really.”
“That is hard to believe. Like being a tourist in your own backyard. But that’s the way it is here. I’m afraid it has not gotten any better since I left twenty-five years ago. Only worse, I think.”
“You’ve been gone that long? Why did you come back?”
“I came back for my cancer treatments. I have health coverage here, and Israel is also one of the best places to be, apparently, if you have cancer. Too bad my Palestinian cousins on the West Bank often can’t benefit from it.”
“I’m with you, as you know.”
“Yes. Apparently you’re sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. You are with a Palestinian man, after all.” Ruby had to assume her suspicions about Udi being involved with Palestinian terrorists must be wrong, but he did seem too good to be true.
“And I work in a mixed nursery school. I don’t know if my mother filled you in on that detail. That’s how Udi and I met. His nephew is there.”
“She did mention that.” Ruby searched Talya’s expression, trying to discern why she had asked her to meet. Did she want tips about living with a Muslim man? Was she having second thoughts about “Udi,” as she called him? Either way, Ruby was happy to be sitting with her now. She liked her energy. She wondered, though, if she should try to find out more about her boyfriend. If there was reason to be concerned, she should warn her. “Although she seemed more concerned than proud about it. And about your relationship with Mahmoud, too.”
“I think differently than my parents do on these matters.” Talya twirled a curl around her finger. “Or at least my father. He’s not just concerned about my co-existence work. He’s against it. But I’m not sure what my mother thinks anymore. It seems you’ve been having an influence on her . . .”
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