Now she remembered, too, where she had seen the likes of the emblem on the rosary she had found next to Jamal’s diary. It was the same one she had seen on that uniform in her mother’s closet so many years before. That one too had said, “Sisters of the Cross,” she now knew. She had felt drawn to the rosary and had kept it, even once she turned the journal over to Ruby. She had felt it belonged with her. Now she understood why.
Tikvah cleared her throat. “My mother, it seems, never completely gave up her Catholic convent upbringing. She felt guilty for losing her virginity to Jamal out of wedlock. She felt guilty for betraying her kibbutz comrades. And she felt guilty for having an abortion. So she wanted to have a final confession before she died, and this is as close as she could come to it.” She took the papers from Alon and folded them, to put them back in the envelope. When she did, she realized there was more writing on the back side of the final page. She read it aloud:
So that is all. That is my confession, my daughter, my Hope. Named after Hope Valley, where you live now. The scene of the crime. I named you Hope because that is what Jamal would have wanted. Like he told me that night, our last night together. He told me to hold on to hope. That is the origin of your name. Your father’s final words to me. Your biological father. David, the man who raised you, was my best and dearest friend. But he was not your biological father. Jamal was. David was gay. That virus he died from, it was AIDS. Not all of those nights he never came home were spent at the hospital. That day in the ambulance, I tried to seduce him, so he would think you were his child. He had tried to comfort me, but he said it was no use. He was not wired that way. So I told him about the pregnancy, and about Jamal. I suggested we get married and that we act as if you were his biological child. No one would have to know the truth. A marriage of convenience, as it would help him, too, to put up that front.
Things were different back then for gays. So much harder than they are today. Especially working as a surgeon. Of course, when he was diagnosed with AIDS, he did not go back to surgery. He wanted to save lives, not risk them. He was a highly ideological man. But he never came out of the closet. His sexual orientation was a secret he took to the grave. No one knew except me. And his countless lovers. His secret came with difficult memories. Jackie, the Kapo who went to his death with the children, was having an affair with the SS commandant to get special treatment for the children, although your father, the man who raised you, David, swore that Jackie never took advantage of him, even if he knew he was gay, too. Jackie must have known he was handing David over to his SS lover to become a sex slave, but he did it to save his life. He lived a double life, the father who raised you. He carried around a lot of shame, even more than I did, I think. But he never let on. He used his pain to try and ease the pain of others, including mine.
I know I was not a good mother. David was a much better parent to you than I could be. I let my own lack of faith in love, my own hurt from the one great love of my life, prevent me from loving too much again. I gave up on love and on life. I am just sorry you had to suffer the consequences of my despair. Now that I am gone, it is time you know the truth. I do not want to do to you what was done to me. You deserve to know who you are. A mix of two warring nations and conceived out of wedlock, but still, a child of love. I have to believe you are a child of love. If not, then all hope is lost.
I know we should have told you sooner, but I could not face what I had done, and your father, David, he did not want you to know you were not his biological child, or that he was gay. He was ashamed, and he loved you so much. We both thought it better you not know. But we were wrong. I see that now. And I let my own lack of peace with myself come between us. I could not bear the thought of you returning to that place from which I had saved you. From which I had escaped. But I can see now that your deciding to go back there, even if you did not know of your connection to the place, was your destiny. It was God’s plan. Perhaps your being there will be a corrective of sorts. A healing for that land.
I considered being buried there. It would have been simple enough, with you living there. I could even have come there to die and be buried in the moshav’s graveyard, overlooking Hope Valley and our Tree of Hope. But I am no longer a religious person. My remains will not be limited to one place. I have seen what attachment to land can do. I have asked to be cremated and for my remains to be cast into the wind over the ocean. It makes no difference to me where. I imagine by the time you receive this letter, it will have already been done. The nurses at the Home were kind enough to promise they would take my ashes down to the Atlantic to cast them into the wind. By now, my soul should be free.
Love,
Your mother, Miriam/Miryam/Marie
Tikvah turned the page back over and re-read the previous page. She had misunderstood. Her father, David, had not given her mother an abortion. He had tried to make love to her, but couldn’t. He married her, though, and brought her with him to New York and raised her child—her, Tikvah—as his own. Now it all made sense. The uniform in the closet, Sisters of the Cross, her mother’s refusal to visit her moshav, her father’s death from a mysterious virus, her parents’ passionless marriage. It had not been by chance that Tikvah and Ruby had met. Call it synchronicity. Call it God’s plan. Or call it dharma. But suddenly, she felt the puzzle pieces fitting into place.
Tikvah’s mother had not known that she now lived in Jamal’s family’s house. She had not known that she had found Jamal’s diary or befriended Jamal’s daughter. But somehow she had felt that Tikvah could be a corrective of sorts. A glimmer of hope on the horizon, like the one to which she and Jamal had both run. She was a Jew, a Catholic, a Muslim, an Arab, an American, and an Israeli. Palestinian and Belgian, too. She was all of these and none of these, and somehow she felt more herself than she had ever felt before. She and Ruby were sisters. She just hoped it was not too late to tell her.
RUBY
RUBY WAS LYING in her bed, attached to a monitor, with an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. She was on home hospice, and her mother and brothers were taking good care of her. Despite the tumult in the outside world, they had all set that aside to be with her until the end. After she was on to her next incarnation, Raja would publish the diary, and her other brothers would continue in their political struggle. They had been caught on their way to riot in Sapir with a bunch of other villagers, before any damage had been caused. They had been let out after one night in jail. For now, they were focusing on her. She was grateful for that.
Ruby listened to her own heavy breathing as she rested in her bed. She felt someone touch her arm. Slowly, she opened her eyes and glanced at the hand. It was a woman’s hand. Her mother sat by her side almost constantly now, but this hand was smaller than her mother’s. More fragile, less sturdy. And it was shaking. It was Tikvah’s hand. She had come, after all. Ruby looked up at her friend.
“Hey, you,” Tikvah said, softly.
Ruby gestured to the oxygen mask.
“You want it off?” Tikvah asked. “Are you sure?”
Ruby nodded.
When the mask was off, Ruby said Tikvah’s name weakly. “I am so glad you came,” she whispered. Her throat was dry, and without the mask, she had to work hard to draw enough breath to speak. She looked around for her mother.
“She went to the kitchen. Your brothers showed me in and suggested she eat something while I sit with you. I could see it was hard for her to leave your side, but I told her I’d like to have some time alone with you, so she agreed.”
Ruby gestured for Tikvah to sit in her mother’s empty chair. “I won’t make it to the first rain to teach you how to forage for mushrooms.” She was still whispering, so Tikvah leaned in closely to hear her. “Or to harvest olives with my family. I’m sorry.”
“No. I’m sorry, Ruby. I should not have run out on you. I was scared. And I should have come back sooner. But I couldn’t. I’m so sorry.”
Ruby shook her head. “Everything happened when and how it should have,�
�� she managed to get out.
“Yes.” Tikvah sighed. “Talya and Udi were married. They eloped. I trust it is for the best, too. Alon checked him out, and even he is not concerned she’s in danger.”
Ruby nodded. Their life would not be easy, but easy was not what life was about. She noticed Tikvah was leaning on a beautifully carved walking stick. “That’s new,” she said in a dry whisper, making a small gesture toward the stick. “What happened?”
“I had a relapse.” Tikvah smiled wanly. “Alon whittled and carved this himself, though. He’s sorry, too. He’s the one who brought me here. He’s sitting in the diwan with your brothers now.”
Ruby nodded. That husband of hers was not so bad after all. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. I’ll be fine. Just a bit slower.”
“I mean, are you okay? In here,” Ruby said, touching her heart.
“I think so, Ruby. Thanks to you. Like I said, I was afraid when you told me you were dying. I ran. But I don’t think I’m afraid anymore. You are so brave,” she choked.
“Do I have a choice? Do any of us?” Ruby said. She started to speak again but was overcome by coughing. Tikvah helped her sit up to drink a cup of water that was at her bedside. “I admit, when you disappeared, I was angry. I had grown to trust you.” Her voice was dry and raspy, barely audible. But she hoped Tikvah was hearing every word. She had come, and now she needed to know this.
“Oh, Ruby. You are right,” Tikvah said. “I realized my mistake when I was already incapacitated in the hospital. But I don’t want to make excuses. I want to be here with you now. I want you to know that you can trust me. I too value our friendship.”
She sat down and took Ruby’s hands into her own.
“I’ve changed since meeting you. You’ve put me back on course. Back in the direction of discovering who I am, who I was put on this earth to be. You taught me that word, dharma. But it took me until now to understand that it’s not about being who someone else wants me to be. Or being a stoic. It’s about being myself. Living my destiny. My story. And not running from it or avoiding the truth. Thank you, dear friend.”
“And thank you, for helping me complete my work here.” Ruby said this with her last strength and was overcome with the need to cough. Tikvah gave her another sip of water.
When Ruby stopped coughing, she glanced back up at her friend. The look of love in Tikvah’s eyes reminded Ruby of her father. She saw in those speckled hazel eyes her father’s unconditional compassion, despite all he had endured, and she knew that she could finally remove the knife that had been stuck in her belly for all of these years. They were all victims of fate—Marie, Jamal, Tikvah, Ruby. Even Tikvah’s officer husband and his Haganah father. Even the soldiers who had killed her grandfather and uncles and razed their village. Even her father’s brothers. Even her own brothers. And even Mustafa. He too was a victim of circumstance. She wished him well with his second wife. His children. Yes, even his children. She did not begrudge him that anymore. She was glad he too had found a way out and followed his dreams.
“I need to tell you something really important, Ruby. Our connection, it wasn’t by chance. We were meant to meet. My mother passed right before my relapse, and I only found out once I was in the hospital. But she wrote me a letter before she died, like you suggested could be the case. It had just seemed so unlikely. It still does when I think of the mother I grew up with. But not now that I read her letter. It took my mother’s death for me to get to know her. She was Marie, Ruby. My mother was Marie.”
Ruby could not speak, but she nodded. Life would send her surprises until the very end, it seemed.
“There’s more,” Tikvah continued. “She was pregnant with your father’s child when the village was destroyed. She never saw him again. But she had the baby.”
Ruby was not shocked by this news, but she was surprised. She had not told Tikvah about the final installment of her father’s diary, when he wrote of the sexual consummation of his relationship with Marie and the destruction of his village. On the date of that diary installment, July 16, her father had taken her every year down to the Tree of Hope, where they would look up at his childhood home and he would tell her, once again, of the day the village was captured. She had not realized how much he left untold. Only now did she know the whole story.
She recalled now the scene her father had depicted in his diary, as if she had been there herself in another life: her father and Marie making love within the shelter of the Tree of Hope, her father giving the tree that name . . . and then everything that happened tragically after that when he returned to his village under attack. She had not shared this installment with Tikvah. It was a lot for her to take in. She had needed time to sit with it, alone. And then share with Raja. Before she would share it with people outside of the family.
Ruby had read that last installment of her father’s diary but had no idea Marie had become pregnant with her father’s child. He had not written about that in his diary. Which meant he probably had not known about it himself.
“I thought you were an only child,” she managed to whisper. Then she collapsed back onto the mattress and gestured for Tikvah to help her put the oxygen mask back on. She was gasping.
Tikvah put the mask on Ruby and waited until she was breathing calmly again. Then she clutched Ruby’s hands tightly and looked at her with complete focus. “I am an only child, Ruby. I was born in May of 1949. I am that baby my mother, Marie, conceived with Jamal, your father. We’re half-sisters.”
Ruby laughed into her oxygen mask. There was a reason Tikvah reminded her of her father. Tears streamed down her face. She had a sister, and it was Tikvah.
She reached for the pad of paper and pen on her bedside table. Tikvah passed it to her. With a weak and shaky hand, she wrote: Not just soul sisters. Blood sisters, too. And the house is rightfully yours.
“I had not considered that, Ruby. And in a way, you are right. But is that enough?” Tikvah looked hesitant to continue. “My mother, Miriam, Marie, she died disillusioned. She had given up hope of love and peace. She did not know what to believe. She felt the massacre in the mosque happened because of their relationship, their forbidden love affair. In the heat of passion and worry, she told your father about a kibbutz squad that was training up in the hills, and later that night, a group of guerillas from the village attacked that squad and killed a bunch of kibbutznikim.”
I know, Ruby wrote. My father wrote that in his diary. I didn’t tell you.
“Really? Well, she felt guilty, and she died not knowing if your father had betrayed her or not, if he had been the one to leak the information. She knew his brothers were involved with the ALA. She died suspecting that Jamal had been lying to her all along, that he was a plant, a spy.”
Ruby pulled out her father’s diary from underneath her blanket. She kept it there, close to her heart. She opened it to the final pages, the diary entry of her father’s that she had not shared with Tikvah.
Ruby rang the bell next to her bed to call Raja. He arrived within seconds. She handed the diary to Raja and wrote a note for him to translate those final pages for Tikvah. Raja, confused but obedient to his dying sister’s wishes, began to read and translate as he went along:
July 16, 1948
Dear Father Allah,
I am writing this entry from down in our cistern cellar. Umm Ahmad is upstairs, crying. It all happened so fast, I cannot believe it is true. How could human beings act that way? Although, then again, how could my brothers have done what they did? How did I do what I did?
I was on my way home last night, floating above the clouds with love for Marie, who had given herself to me completely. We had made love on a straw mat within the shelter of the Tree of Hope. I named it that then, I was so full of hope. Despite the fact that my world was falling apart as I spoke. I stood and declared, like a foolish false prophet: “From this day forward, I declare this tree the Tree of Hope. Shajarat al-Amal.”
Marie got up and stood besid
e me. I took her in my arms and she looked into my eyes.
“If there was a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, and a Tree of Life, I’ll bet there was a Tree of Hope, too. And this could just as well have been it. After all, this is Hope Valley we’re standing in,” I continued.
“Inshallah!” she said, and I smiled. My heart was full. If only I had known what was awaiting me as I walked home that night. I was so high, I did not notice Ahmad and Kareem hiding in the olive groves, until they grabbed me from behind. They said they had been watching me, they had seen me walking with a woman from the kibbutz. They demanded to know who she was. They tied me to a tree and beat me. They had rifles. They were fidaheen now. Official men of Qawuqji’s Arab Liberation Army. Had Ahmad given the money in that bank account over to the ALA to buy rifles?
They said they would kill me, their own brother, if they had to, to save their land. Sacrifices had to be made. And what good was I, anyway? A sissy communist poet. (Apparently, they had been spying on me not only in the valley, but in an-Nasira and even in the house.) Not even a liberation poet like Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud, who sacrificed his life in the battle in Al-Shajara, they said.
They accused me of being Abu Ahmad’s favorite. They said he spoiled me and pampered me since my near death in the well. Like I was some kind of prophet or something. They said it would have been bad enough had he only turned me into a coward, but now they knew the truth. He had turned me into a traitor. And traitors needed to learn their lesson.
They continued the beating. Harder and harder. I could taste my own blood in my mouth. They asked me about Marie. I told them she was my lover. They beat me more, for planting my semen in a Jewess, a Zionist. I told them she was half-Christian. They only thought that was some kind of joke. “A Christian kibbutznik.” They laughed. I tried to tell them she was not like the others, but they didn’t care. They asked me if I had met some of her friends. Were they planning to attack the village? Was the Haganah on their way? I was seeing stars, the pain was so bad. I kept saying I knew nothing, that Marie was a farmer, not a soldier.
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