The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (2 page)

There was a time when Mother would sew identical dresses for herself and me, from the same cloth and in the same cut. She'd dress me, warn me over and over not to get dirty, tie a matching ribbon in my red curls, clean my patent leather shoes with spit, and hand in hand we'd go to Café Atara near our house on Ben-Yehuda Street. But after I dirtied the dresses time after time, didn't show them the proper respect, she stopped.

“What kind of a girl are you? A
horani
, a primitive. You'll never be a lady. Sometimes I think you were born in the Kurdish neighborhood!” she'd say, and that was the most terrible thing she could have said, because my mother despised the Kurds.

I could never understand why Mother hated the Kurds. Even Nona Rosa didn't hate them, certainly not in the way she hated the English. I never heard her say, “May the name of the Kurds be erased.” But whenever there was mention of the English who were in Israel before I was born, she'd always add, “May the name of the Ingelish be erased.” It was well known that Nona Rosa hated the English from the time of the Mandate, ever since her little brother Ephraim disappeared and went in hiding for years as a member of the Lehi underground organization. My mother, on the other hand, had nothing against the English. On the contrary, on numerous occasions I heard her say it was a pity they'd left the country: “If the English had stayed, then maybe the Kurds wouldn't have come.”

I actually liked the Kurds a lot, especially the Barazani family who lived in the other half of Nono and Nona's house after our family's financial situation forced my grandparents to move into the Kurd neighborhood. The two yards were separated only by a thin fence, and once a week Mrs. Barazani would light a fire in the yard and bake a tasty pastry with bubbling cheese inside it. And before the day my mother, with threats of a beating, forbade me to go anywhere near the Barazanis' side, I'd wait for the moment when “the Kurdia,” as Nona called her, invited me to sit on the floor by the tabun and enjoy the heavenly pastry.

Mr. Barazani would wear a big dress—“like the Arabs in the Old City,” my mother would say—and a rolled-up kerchief on his head, sitting me on his knee as he laughed with his toothless mouth and talked to me in a language I didn't understand.

“
Papukata
, where did your mother buy you, the Mahane Yehuda Market?” Mrs. Barazani would laugh. “Because it's impossible that you and she are related.”

It was only years later that my Aunt Becky told me that our family had a long score to settle with the Kurds.

My Aunt Becky was Nono and Nona Ermosa's youngest daughter, and she loved me as if I were her little sister. She looked after me and spent far more time with me than my mother did. I was also her alibi when she went to meet her boyfriend, Handsome Eli Cohen, who was as good-looking as Alain Delon. Every afternoon Handsome Eli Cohen would pull up on his shiny black motorbike and whistle. Aunt Becky would go out into the yard, dragging me after her, and shout to Nona Rosa, “I'm taking Gabriela to the playground.” And before Nona had a chance to answer, we'd already be on the bike, me pressed between Becky and Handsome Eli Cohen. We'd drive along Agrippas Street to King George Street, and as we passed the modest building opposite the Tzilla perfumery, where my mother bought perfume and lipstick, Becky would always say, “There's our Knesset.” Once we even saw Ben-Gurion leave our Knesset and walk toward Hillel Street, and Handsome Eli Cohen drove after him on his motorbike until we saw him enter the Eden Hotel. “There,” Becky told me, “is where he sleeps when he's in our Knesset, in our Jerusalem.”

At the city park, they'd send me off to play on the swings or slide and they'd kiss until it was almost dark. Only then, when the park emptied of children and mothers and I was the only one left in the sandbox, Handsome Eli Cohen would drive us back to Nono and Nona Ermosa's. Mother, who'd come to collect me, would yell at Aunt Becky, “Where the hell have you been with the child? I've been looking for you all over Jerusalem!” And Becky would reply, “If you'd take her to the playground yourself instead of sitting in Café Atara all day, then maybe I'd be able to study for the exam I have tomorrow, so you're welcome!”

My mother would smooth her sleek skirt, pass a hand over her perfect hairdo, examine her red-polished nails, and murmur, “Go to hell,” through clenched lips before taking my hand and leading me home.

Eventually Aunt Becky got engaged to Handsome Eli Cohen at Café Armon. It was a lovely party with tables of food and a singer who sang Yisrael Yitzhaki songs. Aunt Becky looked as beautiful as Gina Lollobrigida. When the family had our photograph taken with the engaged couple, Nono Gabriel sat in the middle surrounded by the whole family, and I sat perched on my father's shoulders and looked down at everyone. That was the last photograph taken of Nono Gabriel, because five days later he died.

Only after he died, during the shiva, the seven-day mourning period, when my mother fainted all the time from crying so much and they had to pour water over her so she'd wake up, and Nona Rosa kept saying, “
Basta
, Luna! Pull yourself together so we don't have another tragedy in the family!” and Tia Allegra, Nono Gabriel's sister, said, “May he rest in peace, Gabriel. Not only isn't she crying for him, she won't even let her daughter faint over him”—it was just then that Becky found the right time to announce her wedding date. They all congratulated her but said she had to wait a year out of respect for Nono Gabriel, and Becky said there was no way she'd wait that long, because by then she'd be too old to have children. And Tia Allegra said, “Gabriel, God forgive your sins. What kind of girls did you raise that they won't even give you the respect of a year?”

My mother, who had come around from her faint, whispered, “Thank God she's finally getting married. I was worried she might die an old maid.” A fight broke out and Aunt Becky ran after my mother with her
sapatos
, her slippers, and threatened to murder her if she ever dared call her an old maid again, and my mother told her, “What's to be done,
querida
. It's a fact. At your age I was already a mother.” At that Aunt Becky darted out of the house and I after her down the steps of Agrippas Street until we reached the Wallach hospital graveyard. She sat down on the wall and sat me next to her and suddenly burst into tears.

“Oy, Papo, Papo, why have you gone, why have you left us, Papo? What will we do without you?” Eventually she stopped crying, hugged me tight, and said, “You know, Gabriela, they all say that Nono Gabriel loved your mother Luna more than any of us, but I never felt that he loved me less. Nono Gabriel had a heart of gold and that's why everybody took advantage of him. And you, my lovely, never let anyone take advantage of you, you hear? You'll find yourself a boy like my Eli and marry him and be happy. Isn't that right, my good girl? Don't search right or left. When you meet a boy like Eli, you'll feel the love here.” She took my hand and laid it between her breasts. “Right here, Gabriela, between your belly and your breasts, you'll feel the love, and when you feel it you'll know you've found your Eli and you'll marry him. Now let's go back home before Nono Gabriel gets angry with me for running away from his shiva.”

In the end Aunt Becky waited a year until the mourning period was over and only then married Handsome Eli Cohen at Café Armon, where they'd gotten engaged. I wore a white dress and walked in front of the bride, throwing sweets with my cousin Boaz, Aunt Rachelika's eldest son, who was stuffed into a suit and bow tie. Mother and her middle sister Rachelika had picked out my and Boaz's outfits together. They did everything together. When Rachelika wasn't in her house on Ussishkin Street, she was with my mother, and when my mother wasn't in our house on Ben-Yehuda Street, she was at my aunt's.

After Nono died, my grandmother remained in her and Nono's house, and every now and then she'd stop by ours for a visit. She'd always come with chocolate and bamblik licorice sweets, and fascinating stories about the time she'd worked in the homes of the English.

“Enough of those stories already!” my mother would say, annoyed. “Cleaning the toilets of the English isn't exactly a great honor.”

And Nona would muster up strength and say, “It's also nothing to be ashamed of! I wasn't born a princess like you, with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to feed my brother Ephraim, and besides, I learned a lot from the Ingelish.”

“What? What did you learn from the In … ge … lish?” my mother would reply mockingly, drawing out the word
Ingelish
for as long as she could. “And anyway, how many times do I have to tell you, it's English. English.”

Nona would ignore Mother's taunts and reply quietly, “I learned to lay a table. I learned Ingelish. I speak Ingelish better than you who learned it in the Ingelish school, and to this day your Ingelish is like my troubles.”

“Me? I don't know English?” My mother would become angry. “I read magazines in English. I don't even read the subtitles at the cinema, I understand everything!”

“Right, right, we've heard all about you. You understand everything except for one thing, the most important thing, respect and manners.
That
you don't understand, beauty queen of Jerusalem.”

And Mother would storm out of the kitchen and leave me with Nona Rosa, who'd sit me on her knee and tell me, “Remember, Gabriela, there is no work that is beneath a person, and if ever, God forbid, you find yourself in a situation,
tfu-tfu-tfu,
where you have no choice, there's no shame in cleaning toilets for the Ingelish.”

I liked spending time with Nona Rosa. She was a marvelous storyteller and I was an excellent listener.

“Before you were born, a long, long time before you were born, Gabriela
querida,
” she would tell me, “our Jerusalem was like abroad. In Café Europa on Zion Square an orchestra played and people danced the tango, and at five o'clock on the terrace of the King David Hotel there was tea and a pianist, and they'd drink from delicate porcelain cups, and the Arab waiters, may they be cursed, wore tuxedoes and bow ties. And the cakes they served there, with chocolate and cream and strawberries … And the gentlemen would come in white suits and straw hats, and the ladies in hats and dresses like they wore at their horse races in Ingeland.”

But my grandmother, so I learned years later, had never been to Café Europa or the King David. She told me what she'd heard from the people whose houses she cleaned. She told me her dreams, some of which would come true years later, when her wealthy brother Nick, who Nona called Nissim, would come visit from America and the whole family would gather on the King David terrace, and he would order coffee and cake for everybody. And as the pianist played, I'd steal a glance at my nona, dressed in her best clothes, and I'd see a rare glint of pleasure in her eyes.

Nona Rosa had a hard life. She lived with a man who respected her but didn't love her the way a man loves a woman. She never knew true love, but she never complained and she never cried. Even during Nono Gabriel's shiva
,
when rivers of tears flowed from my mother's and aunts' eyes, threatening to flood all of Jerusalem, not a single tear trickled from hers. Nona Rosa would never hug. She didn't like touching and didn't like being touched. But I'd sit in her lap, wrap my little arms around her neck, and plant kisses on her withered cheek. “Enough, stop it, Gabriela,
basta
, you're annoying me,” she'd chide me and try to shake me off, but I'd ignore her, taking her rough hands and putting them around my body, forcing her to hug me.

Once Nono died, Nona stopped inviting the family over for Shabbat, and we'd hold it elsewhere. After the heavy Shabbat meal I'd walk with Nona to her house and stay there until Mother or Father came to get me. What I loved about her house were the glass-fronted cabinets in which porcelain and crystal tableware stood in perfect order, and the wedding photographs of Mother, Rachelika, and Becky in their silver frames. I loved the big picture of Nono and Nona on the wall: Nono, a handsome young man in a black suit, white shirt, and tie, a white handkerchief peeping from his jacket pocket, sits upright on a wooden chair, his elbow on a table and a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. Nona stands beside him in a black dress buttoned to the neck, the hem reaching to her ankles, with a gold pendant relaxing against her breastbone. She isn't touching my nono but her hand is on the back of his chair. Nono's face is finely chiseled, the nose, the eyes, the lips almost perfect. Nona's is broad, her black hair styled as if stuck to her skull, her eyes wide. They are not smiling, just looking at the camera with serious expressions.

There was the heavy dining table with its lace cloth and center bowl that was always filled with fruit and the upholstered chairs around it, the wide, deep-red couch with cushions that Nona herself had embroidered. My favorite of all was the wooden wardrobe that stood in Nona's bedroom, which was separate from Nono's. Lions had been carved into the top, and I would stand for hours in front of its mirrored doors, pretending I was Sandra Dee kissing Troy Donahue and we were living happily ever after.

Their yard, partly protected by the tiled roof, was surrounded by an iron fence entwined with purple bougainvillea and lined with geraniums in white-painted cans. There were stools in the yard, and the chair with the upholstered cushion in which Nono Gabriel loved to sit as evening fell, and next to it a wooden table on which Nona sometimes served dinner. After Nono died, his chair became a monument to his memory and nobody sat in it.

The yard was my kingdom. I'd sit on a stool, gaze at the sky, and wait for a rainbow, because I'd once asked Nona Rosa what God was and she'd told me God was the rainbow in the sky. When I wasn't searching the sky, I'd imagine I was one of the Hollywood actresses my mother so admired. After all, it was in our Jerusalem that they shot
Exodus,
and the star, Paul Newman, who my mother said was even better looking than Handsome Eli Cohen, stayed at the King David. Every afternoon during filming my mother would take me by the hand and we'd walk to the entrance of the hotel in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. After a few days of failing to see him, we crossed the road to the YMCA tower, bought tickets for five grush
,
and climbed to the top, the highest point in Jerusalem. “From here,” she said, “nobody can hide Paul Newman from me.”