by Ruth Gruber
Gad was romance and youth and escape. Escape from the grim reality of Cyprus.
But is it Gad I really love?
Then why am I sitting here?
Why am I not in a sherut already on my way to Haifa? Remember—she heard Señora Vavá’s voice—you are a ninth-generation Jerusalemite.
She looked around her in the winter rain. She was only a few blocks from the Old City, the turreted walls and Jaffa Gate a stone’s throw from where she sat.
She shook her head; the frontiers between Israel and Abdullah’s Legion were bizarre: sometimes the frontier was a street or an ugly aluminum fence; the most famous was the “Mandelbaum Gate,” the war-wrecked house of Abraham Mandelbaum with its ugly corrugated-iron shed that separated East and West Jerusalem.
The city was obscenely truncated, and she felt the separation physically, as though part of her had been amputated.
Closing her eyes, she saw Mount Scopus…the hospital…the nursing school…her first delivery…the birth fluid drenching her like a geyser…Arik at her side…Arik, teaching, guiding, making her feel her own strength.
The rain had turned to hail; stones pelted her face. She hardly noticed. Did she love him as teacher? Or man? Or both?
The answer was suddenly clear. Raquela ran across the street to the post office. She sent a cable:
HAVE DECIDED TO STAY IN JERUSALEM. GOOD-BYE DEAR GAD. RAQUELA.
She walked swiftly back toward Hadassah A. Thunder rumbled through the streets; streaks of light tore open the sky over the great Romanesque hospital.
Arik…she began to run, tears mingling with rain on her cheeks…Arik, it’s you I want…you I need…you and Jerusalem.
On the island of Rhodes a gifted black American, Dr. Ralph Bunche, the UN mediator, began meeting with Arabs and Jews in armistice negotiations on January 13, 1949.
Wise and shrewd, Dr. Bunche brought the erstwhile warring factions together in a technique of diplomacy so simple, so obvious, it was conceded that only a genius could have developed and implemented it.
First he met alone in a room with each country’s delegate. Then, when he sensed some movement toward agreement, he brought a delegate from one of the Arab states and the delegate from Israel face-to-face. When they reached agreement on armistice terms, he handed them the papers to sign.
His secret of success was twofold: face-to-face, and one Arab country at a time.
The Egyptians signed first, on February 24. Jordan signed next, on March 4; Lebanon, on March 23; Syria was the last to sign, on July 20.
Thus, on the twentieth of July, the War of Independence ended. Twenty months—nearly two years—since that day in November 1947 when the UN had voted to partition Palestine and the Arabs had marched out of the UN and declared war.
Twenty months. Six thousand dead. One out of every ten Jews dead on the battlefield.
The nation born—like all births—in blood.
On a warm October day in 1949, Raquela and Arik rode out of Jerusalem. They were bound, some seventy miles south and inland, for Beersheba.
Ben-Gurion had already begun implementing his dream of opening the Negev. He turned to Hadassah. The frontier needed a hospital. Would Hadassah establish a first-rate hospital in Beer-sheba?
Arik had spent most of September converting a group of houses the army had turned over to him for his department of obstetrics and gynecology. Now he was returning with Raquela; she was to set up the maternity ward and the delivery room.
They sat in the back of the sherut, talking to some of the passengers. The middle-aged couple in the jump seats were scientists: he, a government ecologist; she, a government botanist. Beersheba was to be their headquarters, but they were headed for a mountainous region forty miles farther south. With twelve others, including a cowboy from Texas, two meteorologists, and a zoologist-soldier in case they were attacked by Arabs, the couple were searching for water and grass to feed the pioneers who would someday live here.
The slim brown-bearded young man in die front seat was an archaeologist on his way to dig for the wells of the ancient Nabataeans, who had farmed and cultivated this land two thousand years ago.
Raquela looked out the car window at the empty rolling steppe-land.
Not a tree, not a plant. Only sand dunes and bareback hills, broiling sun and thin translucent light.
The archaeologist was talking. “The Old Man,” he said, speaking of Ben-Gurion, “sees this whole desert filling up with pioneers and cities. ‘Go south, young men and women,’ he says, the way the Americans used to say ‘Go west.’”
In the shimmering light the colors of the sand were changing from yellow to reddish brown. Was this lunar landscape with its own strange beauty Ben-Gurion’s dream?
Who lived here? Who would come to this hospital? She knew there was a chain of kibbutzim in the Negev. The first three had been started in 1943; then, defying the White Paper, a small army of young men and women, in one dramatic nighttime operation, had established eleven new kibbutzim in the Negev on Yom Kippur, October 6, 1946, as the Day of Atonement ended.
The kibbutzim were little islands in the desert, but what would life in Beersheba be like these next months?
Happy, but a little apprehensive, she looked at Arik. He was smiling. “There’s a sense of peace here,” he said, “a kind of eternal serenity, despite the constant tug of war between man and the desert. It was only after I began to work here that I really understood what Ben-Gurion meant when he asked us to open up a hospital for the whole Negev.”
“What did he say?” Raquela asked.
Arik spoke slowly. “He said, “If the state doesn’t put an end to the desert, the desert will put an end to the state.”
An end to the state?
The yellow arid desert enveloped them, another challenge to survival, another enemy.
The only sign of civilization they saw for miles was the narrow road they were traveling, the artery that was to pump life-giving blood into the desert.
Suddenly against the horizon they saw the silhouettes of camels moving in a straight line in the yellow shimmering sunlight. A Bedouin nomad in a flowing black robe and white keffiyeh, stark and one-dimensional, followed the camels on a donkey. Behind him walked three women, black-gowned and veiled, with baskets on their heads. Across the sea of sand two barefoot boys shepherded goats. A little girl with enormous kohl-rimmed eyes stopped to stare curiously.
The car sped past them.
Again the desert, unpeopled, limitless, empty to the horizon.
They were approaching Beersheba.
Raquela had expected to find a small town; instead she saw a sleepy desert outpost with dirt streets, Arab houses in shambles with broken shutters, a single mosque, and a police station.
“There’s Abraham’s Well,” the bearded archaeologist said as they drove on the main street.
“Can we stop for a minute?” Raquela asked. “I’ve heard about this well all my life from my father.”
The driver pulled up on the side of the street. The passengers formed a circle around the well that had been dug four thousand years ago. The young archaeologist pulled a well-worn Bible from his pocket and read from Genesis: “And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and they two made a covenant.”
Raquela stared down into the deep dark hole, listening as the archaeologist read of the seven ewe lambs that Abraham presented to Abimelech, the Philistine king of Gerar, in exchange for the grazing rights to the land.
“That’s how Beersheba got its name.” The archaeologist closed his Bible. “‘Beer’ of course, means ‘well,’ and ‘sheba means both ‘seven’ and ‘covenant.’ Take your choice; I like to think of Beersheba as ’the Well of the Covenant.’ We’re renewing Abraham’s covenant in the desert.”
They reentered the taxi and drove a few hundred yards to the main street—a few little shops and one café with CASSIT printed over the doorway.
Raquela and Arik said good-bye to the two scientists and
the archaeologist and wished them success.
“And good luck to you, too.” The passengers shook Raquela’s and Arik’s hands.
Arik asked the driver if he would take them up the road about a quarter of a mile.
“What’s up there?” the driver asked.
“We’re setting up a hospital,” Arik explained.
They drove along the dirt road, churning hot dust into the flat landscape. “We get out here,” Arik said. They opened a gate and found themselves in a quadrangle of four short intersecting dirt streets.
“We closed this area off,” he said, “as a compound for the hospital and the staff.”
He pointed to a warehouselike building. “That’s the combination staff kitchen, dining room, and laundry. And that”—Raquela looked at a jumble of scrub—“was once a garden and I hope will be again. See that little house behind the garden?” Raquela nodded. “Our pediatrician has already moved in, a young Englishwoman, Dr. Pearl Ketcher. I’m sure you’ll like each other.”
“I know her. I met her at Hadassah A after she came to Jerusalem; she had been working with the DPs in Germany.”
He lifted Raquela’s suitcase. “Come on, I’ll show you the hospital and where you’ll be living.”
They entered a large courtyard surrounded by a jumble of one-story stone houses with flat roofs.
Arik was talking. “My friend Dov Volotsky was the first one down here—he came in June 1949. He’s already begun repairs and construction to convert each of these buildings into different departments. Dov lives in a little house in back of the hospital. Now I’ll show you your quarters.”
They turned left through the courtyard to a small stone patio. A lemon tree shaded a white stone cottage.
“It looks different from the rest of the buildings, Arik. I like its feeling of privacy.”
They walked up a few stairs and entered the small cottage. “There are two bedrooms,” Arik said. “Four nurses. You’ll be sharing your room with another nurse.”
They left Raquela’s suitcase in a bedroom just large enough for two beds and a small table. She hung her cape on a nail on the wall.
“If you’re looking for indoor plumbing,” Arik said, “there is none. The WC is across the courtyard. But you’ll be able to shower in the hospital. We’re putting in showers and toilets and our own generator. There’s one generator in Beersheba already, but they shut it down at ten-thirty every night.”
Raquela was impatient.
“Let’s go, Arik. I can’t wait to see what my maternity building looks like.”
“We haven’t done a thing there. We’ve left it completely for you.”
They returned to the huge open courtyard. “Here it is.” Arik led her into a small yellow building. Excitedly Raquela walked through the building’s four small rooms. Surveying. Studying. Noting that each room had two windows. Admiring the tile on the floor, but concerned: the floor had been laid unevenly. She would have to cope with that problem later.
“I see the way to do it,” she said, as much to herself as to Arik.
“We’ll put the delivery room in this room, left of the corridor, with a little admission office near the door, and a shower and toilet next to it.”
They continued to explore the empty building. “These two rooms at the right, off the corridor,” she said, “will be for the mothers. We can get three beds in each room. Not bad for a new hospital in the desert.” She paused. “You know, Arik, in Cyprus I began to realize it’s not bricks and mortar that make a hospital. You can be in a tent or a hut. It’s the way the doctors and nurses care for the patients. It’s making a hospital homelike. It’s what you taught me, Arik.”
“My disciple has improved on her teacher.”
“Never. You’ll always be my master builder.”
She went on. “Now, listen, on the two windows in each room I’ll put green and white curtains. I don’t want a separate nursery, Arik. I’d like to let the babies sleep with the mothers in these nice little cozy rooms.”
“Why not? It could be a fascinating experiment. Babies lying in with their mothers.”
“Beersheba is the place to try it out. Each mother taking care of her own baby—as soon as she’s rested—after I put the baby in her arms.”
He put his hand on her hair. “When do you want to get started?”
“I’ll make a list of the things still missing. We need everything—from diaper pins to the delivery table.”
“Okay, Sergeant. And now would you like to see where I live?”
They walked out of the courtyard, down the road, to an elegant stone villa. Several doctors had already moved into the six-room house. They entered and walked to Arik’s room, at the left, a large corner bedroom flooded with sunlight.
The light fell across her face.
Arik embraced her. “It’s a new beginning,” he whispered. “And you have never looked so beautiful.”
She shut her eyes with pleasure.
Now, at last, maybe we will have time to be together.
Her own future and Beersheba’s future seemed to be interlocked. In all these months in Jerusalem they had worked closely together, but it was always work. Maybe now, in the desert isolation, away from the pressures of Jerusalem…
Arik interrupted her thoughts. He drew away, talking rapidly.
“We’d better get back to the hospital. We’ve got a great deal of work if we’re to get this place ready before the opening in December.”
The pleasure drained from her face. Was work his excuse? Why did he embrace her and then draw away?
Was he still frightened of her youth, afraid of their age difference?
Maybe in Beersheba, she could make him see how she’d changed. Matured by Athlit and Cyprus. Forged by the tragedies of the war.
The hospital was rapidly taking shape.
Dov Volotzky and his crew raced against time, repairing, painting, cleaning, installing plumbing, setting up the equipment they ordered from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and the industrial kibbutzim.
Raquela was standing on a ladder, hanging green and white curtains in the maternity ward, when Dov and Arik entered carrying huge boxes.
She looked down at them. “What have you got there?” she asked.
“A present for you. From Hadassah in America,” Arik said.
“For me? Who knows me in America?”
“It’s really for your patients.”
Raquela hurried down the stepladder. “Let me see.” She helped Dov and Arik tear open one of the boxes and lifted out a package of carefully folded white sheets.
“They’re beautiful. So soft and pure white. It’s the best present I ever got.”
“Well, don’t wait,” Arik said. “Put them on the beds. I want to see what they look like.”
“Not so fast. I’m going to get this place finished and spotless before I put on these sheets. That’s the last thing we’ll do.”
“Listen, you two,” Dov interrupted. “It’s Friday. How about coming for Friday-night supper?”
“I’d love it,” Raquela said.
It was dusk when Arik knocked on Raquela’s cottage door.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Come in,” she called out through the empty house. The three nurses who would share the two bedrooms had not yet arrived.
Arik stood in the doorway looking at her as if he were seeing her for the first time.
The few days in Beersheba had already turned her skin golden tan.
He kissed her. “The desert becomes you.”
He moved away for a moment. “And in this white dress, you look like an advertisement for wintering in the Negev.”
She stroked his cheek—tanned, too, and smoothly shaved. “Maybe coming down here is what the doctor ordered for both of us.”
He took her arm and led her in back of the hospital to Dov’s cottage. Dov was Arik’s height, with coal-black hair and sharp dark eyes, which squinted when he laughed. His eyes sparkled as he greeted them, holding
his eighteen-month son, Chanan, in his arms.
Sarah came to the door; she was about five foot two, with light hair, a creamy pink and white complexion, and sparkling teeth. She seemed warm and ebullient.
Raquela felt a sharp stab of recognition. The cottage smelled of Friday night; the table was set with a white cloth and Sabbath candles; delicious odors of gefilte fish, chicken-noodle soup, broiled chicken, and carrots came from the kitchen.
“Can I help you?” she asked Sarah, forcing herself back to the present.
“Everything’s ready. As soon as Arik is.”
But Arik was carrying little Chanan on his shoulders, oblivious of everyone but the little blond blue-eyed boy. He got down on the floor and Chanan rode him like a donkey. He tossed Chanan in the air, cuddled him, tickled him, laughed with him, until Raquela found it hard to decide who was enjoying it more, Arik or Chanan.
“Arik, you’re a born father,” Sarah said, laughing. “What are you waiting for? Now give me Chanan and let’s eat, or everything I’ve cooked will be ruined.”
They sat around the Shabbat table, talking, laughing, reminiscing. Then Sarah put Chanan into a carriage in the living room. In minutes he was asleep and the talk continued. Raquela learned that Dov and Sarah had been married in 1940. When the Nazis overran Poland, they were interned in the ghetto of Kovno. In the hovels of the ghetto Sarah gave birth to a little girl, Elana.
To feed their baby and themselves, they worked in chain gangs outside the ghetto. Elana was two and a half when, on March 27, 1944, the Nazis held one of their infamous “children’s actions.” Dov and Sarah returned to the ghetto at night to find that Elana had been snatched away.
Raquela glanced at little Chanan, who was sleeping peacefully. No wonder he looked so loved.
When the ghetto was liquidated, Dov and Sarah were sent to concentration camps, separated, each not knowing if the other was alive. They discovered each other after the war in a refugee camp outside Graz, in Austria, boarded a fishing boat to Palestine with a thousand others…Cyprus…then Palestine…The life juices returned. Chanan was born.
“And now,”—Sarah’s white teeth flashed—“here we are, with our few shmattes, our rags, and our most precious possession, living in this desert.”