Hope Valley

by Haviva Ner-David

  A dirt path lined with rocks led directly to the chapel with the golden cross. Wild purple, yellow, and red flowers grew in the grasses on each side of the path. I had been trying for months to learn their names like a native, but they were different than the ones I knew from the Belgian countryside. I passed a contemplation garden with a lone wrought-iron bench. But I did not stop. I put one foot in front of the other, taking myself towards the chapel. It had been so long since I had been inside a House of God. Mother Superior had told me to ask my people how they prayed, but I had discovered that, like my father, these kibbutznikim did not pray. They sang and danced and worked and worked, but they did not pray.

  The door to the chapel opened just as easily as the door to the compound. The walls were stone and the floor painted tiles. At the far end of the room, a crucifix made from branches hung to the right of the Madonna, and a sanctuary lamp to the left. Above the altar hung a dove, the Holy Spirit. How I longed to be free, too, from the material world. I sat on a wooden pew in front of the altar and looked up at Mother Mary holding baby Jesus in her arms. I had missed her so. I took my rosary out of my pocket and fingered the beads; they were warm to the touch. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, I heard echo in my head.

  I looked up at Mary as I whispered these words aloud for the first time since I had left the Sisters of the Cross: “Hail Mary full of grace. Blessed art thou among women.” Here it was safe. It felt so good to say those words again. And would you know it, but Mary looked back at me with eyes so full of warmth and compassion, I could hardly breathe. Only the Holy Mother could understand my longing and pain. She and only she. I skipped directly to the end of the Rosary prayers.

  “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

  You see, the words roll off of my tongue now as if I were still a convent girl, over fifty years later.

  How I longed to shrink into an infant once again and climb into the arms of Mary the Judeo-Christian mother, where I could be both, where I would not have to choose between one or the other, and where that would be just fine.

  TIKVAH

  TIKVAH WAS SO absorbed in reading her mother’s letter that she was startled when Alon walked in, the door closing with a bang behind him. She looked up from the papers which were resting on her lap. The letter would have to wait, as would telling him about her mother’s passing. First she needed to know what happened with Talya.

  “Alon. You’re back.” She could not read his face. “Where is Talya?”

  “She’s on her way home now.” He shut the door behind him.

  “Home? From where? Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering?”

  Alon walked over to her bedside. He looked harried and spent. He ran his fingers through his messed graying red hair. “They were on a protest cruise to Cyprus with a bunch of other mixed couples, it seems. It was a public statement.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were protesting the lack of legal interfaith marriage here in Israel. It’ll be in the press tomorrow, although with this intifada in the headlines, it will luckily be on the back pages. But I still don’t like this one bit.”

  “You don’t like what? I don’t understand.”

  “They eloped, Tikvah. They all went to Cyprus together. She married the guy.” Alon threw Tikvah a defeated and slightly remorseful, look. But she detected some relief in his demeanor as well. “The ship is on its way back to Israel now already. They have banners up and everything. I saw it all on video from the base. Navy intelligence was watching them all along, but they couldn’t stop them. Apparently, it’s not illegal to marry in Cyprus and come back here to register. It’s just illegal to perform the ceremony here on Israeli soil.”

  Of all the scenarios Tikvah had imagined, this had not been one of them. She did not know what to think. “I guess she didn’t answer her phone because she didn’t want us to tell anyone and ruin their plan.”

  “I guess so. At least she’s safe, for now.”

  “I—”

  “I know, Tikvah. I was wrong. I’m ashamed that I thought the worst. I had him checked out. He’s legit. Not a mark on his record. And no reason to suspect he’s involved in any terrorist activity. A star law student. He even tutors disadvantaged kids in Jaffa, for heaven’s sake.”

  Tikvah could not help but smile. Talya was safe. Married to an Arab man, but safe. And Alon was dealing with the news much more calmly than Tikvah would have anticipated. “What a relief, Alon.” She kissed him on his stubbly cheek. He had not shaved for days. “I was so worried. You had me suspecting the worst, too.”

  “It’s not that I’m okay with it all. Far from it. This is not a smart move. Their life will be hard, Tikvah. People don’t like this kind of thing. Just look at what they did on the moshav. This could even hurt our standing there. Our home may also be in jeopardy.”

  “But it’s their life to live. I’m finally truly understanding now just how important that is. To live only the life you can live. Before it’s too late. I have something to tell you, Alon—”

  “And what if it’s a mistake?” Alon looked into Tikvah’s eyes, and she heard the deeper concern in his question. “Do you think you made a mistake?”

  “Oh, no, Alon. I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here. I don’t regret a thing. I just want to make the most of the productive time I still have left. You see, my—”

  “I don’t like to hear you say that, Tikvah.” Alon looked down.

  Tikvah put her hand to his chin and lifted his face. He raised his glance to meet hers.

  “Well, it’s about time you heard it. Because that is what we are facing. MS is a degenerative disease. I am not going to get better. Only worse. This episode is proof of that. I know it’s hard for you to face. I know you’ve had losses and trauma in your life, but your ignoring my condition has made me have to face it alone. And that has been very hard—”

  “I’m—”

  “Let me finish, Alon. That is one reason I turned to Ruby, the woman whose father grew up in our house. Rabia. Like I told you, she is also sick. Very sick. We were able to talk about that. Until she told me she was dying. I felt like I was seeing my own death in front of my eyes.”

  Alon took Tikvah’s hand into his. His face looked pained, but he did not turn away.

  “I left, Alon. Out of fear. But it was wrong for me to abandon her like that. Like I did my mother. I see that now more than ever. I spoke to a woman from the rest home on the phone just before you came in. She told me my mother passed away a few days ago. Life is just too short . . .” Her mother had written about the mother superior telling her something like that. Life is too precious to waste on self-pity.

  Alon leaned over the bed and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Tikvah.”

  “It’s okay, Alon. It was her time. I just regret that we never reconciled. She pushed me away, and I let her. I ran away instead of insisting that she let me in. I did not know my mother. I knew she suffered, but I did not really know the extent of it.” Alon put Tikvah’s fingers to his lips. They were smooth and familiar. She touched the big freckle on the crease of his lower lip. “I felt helpless in that relationship. I don’t blame myself. But I see now that running away was not the answer. I want to go to my friend Ruby now. Will you take me there, Alon? Please.”

  “If you feel the need to go, I will take you. When you’re well enough to leave here. We can discuss it then. Now that the immediate danger is over for Talya, please concentrate on getting better, Tikvah. I want you home.” Alon looked down at the envelope and papers on Tikvah’s lap. “Spea
king of home, I see you’re reading that mysterious letter I brought for you. What was so important that it came registered priority mail from New York?”

  Tikvah lifted the letter. “It’s from my mother. I was reading it before you walked in. What I read so far is pretty unbelievable. I knew my mother—my parents—had secrets, but I never imagined they were of this magnitude.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here.” She handed Alon the pages of the letter she had already read and continued reading the rest.

  MIRIAM

  That day that I went to the church is the day I met Jamal, right there in the chapel. And this is where my confession begins. Before that day, I was free of guilt. After that day, I cannot say I was. Jamal came from the village of Yakut al-Jalil. You will not find it on a map, as it does not exist anymore. It was destroyed. Decimated by the Haganah. And I will tell you now my part in that catastrophe.

  He was a beautiful young man, like David. Inside and out. Although unlike with David, there was electricity between us. He was a poet. Only twenty years old when I met him. I was even younger. Eighteen. Almost nineteen. But my soul was ancient by then. His was, too. We continued to meet at the chapel. We would both sit in silence—sometimes even in the contemplation garden when the weather was especially inviting—and then we would walk home together. At first our conversations were mostly political, ideological. Philosophical. He was a communist. Not like the fake ones on the kibbutz who believed in equality only among Jews, and only for men. I told no one on the kibbutz about Jamal. Not even David. Jamal was my lovely secret.

  Jamal wanted to live in peace with the Jews, to create a socialist Palestine.

  I did not tell Jamal what the nuns had said, about my mother really being Jewish. I had been baptized. I felt it in my soul. The nuns had just been trying to protect me by sending me away. An orphan with a Jewish father, I would never be fully accepted in the convent. They could have kept me there, saved my soul from purgatory, but they did not see life as easily divided into right and wrong as they let on. They believed with a Jewish father, I belonged with other Jews. They were giving me a new lease on life, a chance to start over in a country of orphans and traumatized people, like myself. There I would fit right in. I knew that was what they had been thinking. Hoping. But I couldn’t help but be drawn to the cross.

  Jamal agreed with Marx that organized religion was the opium of the masses, or worse yet, the instigator of the masses; but he too came to the church to sit with Allah. He still believed in God, he said. Father Allah, he called him. He just did not believe in what people had made God into. I liked that. I too believed in God, the Father. I needed a father. And a mother. I had neither. And I forgave God just like I forgave my own father. Just like Jesus forgave his murderers. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It wasn’t God’s fault what humans had done to the world.

  Those were stressful times, Hope. It was 1948. The months passed, and Jamal and I kept meeting. Some comrades stayed on the kibbutz to work, some went off to the front. David was a medic on an ambulance somewhere. Truth be told, there was not really a front to go to, as the kibbutz itself was a front line. There was fighting all around Palestine, including Galilee. Jamal had told me that there was strong anti-Zionist sentiment in most of the surrounding villages, and his was one of the most hostile. There was going to be a battle. I heard from those in the know that the Haganah was not going to let Yakut al-Jalil alone. It was too important strategically, with its hilltop location and proximity to Nazareth; and there were rumors of weapons being hidden in the village. I knew from my fellow kibbutz comrades that there were squads already training in the surrounding hills to join the Haganah platoons when they would come to attack Nazareth and the local villages.

  Jamal and I had been meeting when we could in the chapel. Many times I went there and waited, but he did not come. He said he did the same. It was growing increasingly difficult to leave the kibbutz; there was so much work to be done. And I did not want people to ask too many questions. Jamal said it was the same at home in his village.

  One day in the middle of the summer—it was mid-July—we both knew it was inevitable. In Jamal’s village, people were still celebrating the Ramadan fasts and feasts with whatever food they could muster, he told me. They slaughtered some sheep. People said at least the animals should feed them now rather than feed the Jews later. It was just a matter of time.

  Jamal said he was in love with me. I know I was in love with him. Although I did not feel the need to consummate our love physically. But he did. I heard the voices of the nuns in my head. There was the side of me that still wanted to be a nun. Or at least a devout Catholic. I still considered matrimony a sacrament and wanted to save my virginity for marriage. But war was all I remembered, and in times of war, the regular rules can feel irrelevant. Or at least not applicable. One of the messages I had learned at Sisters of the Cross was that God understands when the times call for drastic measures. I wanted to show Jamal that no matter what happened in the future, I would always carry him in my heart. I knew God would understand.

  Jamal asked me to meet him at the old olive tree that night. We had never met at night, and I knew his intentions. It was summer, dark only in the evening, an hour or so after dinner was served in the kibbutz dining hall. I stole away and went down into the valley, which was lit up by a full moon. Jamal was waiting there for me with a woven straw mat tucked under his arm. He lay the mat down beneath the tree, right in the center of its trunks. I imagined the trunks as walls, and the canopy of leaves and branches like a marriage canopy, or a roof above our heads. The closest we could get to a home, a joint life. And then I let him have what he wanted.

  Don’t get me wrong. I too wanted it. I felt myself open to him and take him inside me, and I cried from both joy and sorrow, as I knew our love had no future. I did not feel I was sinning. I was afraid for Jamal’s life more than for mine. He was a jewel of a soul. I wanted to give him that gift, in case that would be his only chance before he died. That is the way we thought back then.

  After that, we lay on the mat in each other’s arms, not wanting that time together to end. At least that is how I know I felt.

  I broke then. I wanted to protect my young love after being thrown from place to place, not knowing who I was or was meant to be. Lying in Jamal’s arms, I felt like I belonged somewhere, finally. We were both lost, and our love was hopeless, but I did not want to believe that. I wanted to believe I had the power to change the inevitable. So I told him of what I had heard at the kibbutz a few days before, about my comrades who were going up into the hills around Nazareth to train and prepare to join the Haganah soldiers who were coming to capture the city. They had been almost giddy in their excitement to finally help capture our little section of Galilee. What they had been trying to do with facts on the ground, settling the land and working it, they could now accomplish with guns and bombs. The Haganah was on their way to help! But I was distraught. I thought maybe Jamal could save himself, run away.

  “Where could I run to?” he said. “I have dreams of going to study abroad one day, as you know. But I have no money, nowhere to go. And I cannot abandon my family now. Galilee is the only home I know. We mustn’t give up hope.”

  Lying out there in the moonlight with Jamal, I actually let myself believe there was still hope. He rolled over on top of me and looked into my eyes with his, which were deep brown, like Turkish coffee. His long, angular face was lit by the full moon. I fingered the dimple in his chin, took in his features, trying to create a picture for my memory bank. Just in case. With his aquiline nose, thick lashes, full lips, and curly dark hair, he was the epitome of what the Nazis despised. Semitic through and through. Jews and Arabs were cousins, yet they were fighting instead of uniting. Didn’t they know how futile and self-defeating that was?

  When we both knew we had to part, we stood, not wanting to go. We held each other and looked at our tree. And to this day, I hold two mental
pictures of that night. One is of Jamal’s handsome face against the backdrop of Hope Valley and the moonlit night. The other is of our Tree of Hope. He named it that night, as we stood there together in each other’s arms in the Valley of Hope. It came to symbolize for me the hope we both felt so sincerely at that moment, even as we knew there was no future for us, and no peaceful one, at least, for the land or for our respective peoples.

  Before we parted, I gave Jamal my rosary. I felt somehow that it might protect him. And I wanted him to have something to help remember me if we never saw each other again. I knew I had those two images in my head to remember him by, although I didn’t realize then that he had given me something much more tangible than that.

  The next day, I heard about what had happened to Elie, Yoni, Yiftah, Dani, Zvikah, and Reuven that very night. A group of ALA irregulars raided their training camp and murdered all six of them. They attacked them in the dark; my comrades did not even have a chance to fight back. The other six men from the kibbutz, who were sleeping in a second tent and woke from the gun shots, did fight back; they survived to tell the story. One, Shimmi, followed the killers back to their village. They were from Yakut al-Jalil.

  I knew then that Jamal had betrayed me. He had leaked to his brothers what I had told him. I knew his brothers were with the ALA. He had told me as much. But it never occurred to me that he would help them. I knew how he felt about their violent tactics. He was for a peaceful solution. I don’t know how they convinced him, but somehow they did. Didn’t he know the lesson the nuns had taught me—that it is permitted to lie to save lives? I assume not, because the very night I told him, the squad was attacked. Or maybe he had been pretending to be in love with me all along, just to get information from me about the kibbutz. Maybe he was not who he said he was at all.