by Malka Marom
“My son was called up, hours before the radio announcement,” said the Electrician. “We were in the synagogue, to please my father mainly. My father is so happy to see us in the synagogue, on Yom Kippur at least. Three generations side by side—his old cronies made a big fuss about that. My son was only nineteen and a half, but they worked him so hard in the paratroopers that he kept nodding off, like the old men. It was just before noon; I remember checking my watch and thinking how slow time moves in the synagogue. It was just a few minutes before noon that one of the boys from my son’s unit shows up in our pew, whispers something to my son, then my son leans over to me and whispers that war has broken out on all fronts, he must rejoin his unit. ‘But you are still a child,’ I told him. I’ll never forget what a child he looked to me that moment.
“‘You have no combat experience,’ I told him, ‘I’m an old war horse, I’ll go, you stay.’ I had no say, of course. Neither did he. Just like that, without a minute to adjust, his place and mine changed. He was the man in the family now. I understood how my father felt in the ’56 war, when I was called up. Now my father was draping his prayer shawl even over his head, and the gold band covered his forehead and his eyes, as always. It used to scare my son when he was little, to be shut out from his grandfather, so he would tug at my father’s shawl and say, ‘Let me in, Sabbah’ until my father would envelope him also in his prayer shawl. Now, my son was taller than both my father and me; he had to bend down to whisper to his grandfather, ‘Let me in, let me in Sabbah. . .’
“I could feel my father’s tears on my face when I also parted from him to rejoin my unit. But, like everyone in this unit, I rushed only to wait—finding the main roads plugged with tanks, supply trucks, reservniks, and regulars . . .”
“But no civilians,” said the commander. “You have to be a taxi driver to appreciate what a mistake the Arabs made when they chose to attack us on Yom Kippur, the only day in the year that our roads are not clogged by civilian traffic. And they compounded their mistake when they didn’t bombard the traffic jam; they could have destroyed our whole Defence force before we even had a chance to regroup.”
“First time in my life I saw religious reservniks and regulars driving on Yom Kippur,” said Marble Cake. “It was that, more than anything else, that made me realize we were in deep shit.”
“The last thing I expected,” said the Electrician, “was to find our unit trucking troops from one front to another, like a child using his fingers to block a pipe bursting from more holes than he has fingers for . . .”
“The last thing I expected,” said the commander, “was that we would lose seven hundred men in seven days. The tourists in my taxi don’t know what it means, until I tell them that seven hundred men killed in one week here is comparable to the number of Americans killed in a decade in Vietnam, even more. Here, I tell them, there wasn’t a person who didn’t lose a loved one.”
“I don’t remember a week when the morale was so low,” said Marble Cake. “Of all weeks, our minister of Defence chooses that week to disappear. No explanation. As if all those years Dayan was just a figment of the nation’s imagination.”
“A general like Dayan we didn’t have since Joshua, I believed, until that Yom Kippur war,” said the Accountant. “That black eye patch of his was almost like a symbol to me, a symbol of courage, resolve, triumph against all odds. I couldn’t believe Dayan disappeared for any reason but to hold secret talks with leaders the world over, to secure a cease-fire, or supplies at least. But then I heard that Dayan had given up—no use putting up a fight, he believed, no hope of a chance for us to survive this war.”
“Really, that’s what it looked like,” said the Turk.
“Ah, all you had to do to feel like a hero was not quit like Dayan did,” said Marble Cake. “The troops we trucked from one front to another buzzed with the latest: Dayan quit the war effort, but not his cabinet post . . .”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” said the photographer from Ein Hod. “Dayan’s daughter is my next-door neighbour and, according to her, Dayan, her father, offered to resign.”
“Me,” said the commander, “I felt I was living through a biblical event—a biblical turning point, if not a biblical punishment, calamity. In seven days, in front of my very eyes, we turned from a nation of idealists to a nation of cynics. The youngest soldier in my truck told me sarcastically, ‘We are going to survive this war for sure, else our ministers and retired generals wouldn’t bother to promote themselves by putting down each other, even the chief of staff.’ Daddo—the chief of staff—was not up to the task, we heard.”
The chef exhaled a long stream of smoke. “We heard that General Sharon would deploy the atom bomb if he were chief of staff—let the Philistines die with us . . . And Dayan—by the time our leaders finished with him, even the king who wore no clothes fared better. For years the gossip columnists wrote about Dayan’s womanizing and archaeological digging and hoarding. For years the people knew all about it. But only now the people called Dayan, ‘Zayan’—Fucker . . . Even the people from his own party said that Dayan stole not only the nation’s antiquities and another man’s wife, but also another man’s thunder. The credit we gave Dayan in the ’67 war belonged to Levi Eshkol; the credit Dayan gave himself in the Sinai War belonged to Ben-Gurion, who was the prime minister then and the Defence minister as well . . .”
“To me personally,” said the commander, “there was something biblical about Dayan. Even in his downfall, he was a unifying force. Like the nation, Dayan was an idealist in his youth. I hope his downfall is just a warning and not a foreshadowing of things to come in this modern state of ours.”
“What downfall? Dayan is our foreign minister today,” said the Turk. “It was a grief-stricken nation that dumped on Dayan. A grief-stricken nation, battle-fatigued, fighting on the losing side, with no supplies, no ammunition, no leader to rally behind, no hero . . .”
“No hero?! Trucks full of heroes we saw day in, day out,” said the Electrician. “One more exhausted than the other, and my son . . .never have I seen my son looking so exhausted as on the day we trucked his unit from the front in the north to the front in the south. It was ten days after Yom Kippur, I remember, the first time I saw him since Yom Kippur. He was in the first line of fire, I could tell. He didn’t have even one quiet minute in that whole time to shave, wash up, change a shirt. And now he couldn’t unwind. It wouldn’t sink in that we were rolling safe now, out of range. ‘We shouldn’t be sitting in the same truck,’ he told me. ‘Mother will kill us if we catch a direct hit,’ he said, had a good laugh, then added, ‘Did you hear the latest? The only man in the government is Golda. Steel balls this woman has, if she can launch a counter-offensive now . . .’”
“He was at the spearhead,” said the commander to Tal and me. “The Electrician’s son, I mean. He was with the paratroopers who spearheaded the counter-offensive that crossed the Suez Canal, and stopped advancing only ninety-seven kilometres from Cairo, and only on the condition that Egypt sit with us at the cease-fire table. And Egypt agreed. I didn’t think I’d live to see the day that an Arab nation sat at the table with us. These first direct cease-fire talks led to the peace talks in Camp David today. So that counter-offensive that Golda launched was a turning point, not just in the Yom-Kippur War, but in our destiny . . .”
“I wake up in a sweat some nights, so well I recall that turning point . . .” The Photographer was lost in memory. “I’ll never forget how the Egyptians pounded everyone and everything that tried to reach the bridgehead at the Suez Canal . . . So many bodies were floating in the Canal, you couldn’t see the water . . .”
Tal’s men were among those, I could sense-see it in his eyes.
“Naa . . . the only person who suffered an injury in the Yom-Kippur War was General Sharon,” said the dark Adonis, and everyone laughed—except the Russki. “Come election time, and you’ll understand, yaa-Russki
. Come election time, and you will see The Land plastered with the picture of Sharon walking around during the Yom-Kippur War, wearing a bandage around his head like a crown, ‘Sharon Melekh Israel—Sharon, the King of Israel!’ His party people on the right will shout come election time, you’ll see. And the people on the left will shout back.”
“Aaah . . . you will never know how I dreamed to vote in democratic elections with shouting for and against,” said the Russki. “Best thing I like in this country is that I can criticize everything and everyone from first moment I come to this country . . . even before I know Hebrew. Very loud I like to criticize now, for all the years I had to be a silent Jew in Russia.”
“But if everyone will do here what he couldn’t do outside, will this country survive?” asked the Turk.
“Okay, clear the table. Supper will be ready, sixteen minutes from now,” said the Hilton chef. True to his word this time, he rustled up a delicious kalabash—Moroccan omelette—and a sumptuous vegetable salad, with a fruit salad to finish.
And, just like at home, someone got up to bring over a jar of olives, and the others muttered, “Bring over the pickles, while you are at it . . . and the cheese . . . the jam . . . and more bread.”
Bedtime. Tal and I find we are billeted in the barracks that serves as sleeping quarters for all the reservniks at the base.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Tal’s eyes, sparking amusement, say to mine.
“You should be so lucky,” my eyes reply. His eyes dance with laughter, imagining himself sleeping in a barrack full of women.
CHAPTER 15
The Badawias watched me putting on my clean change of clothes with disappointment and disapproval.
“Surely these are not your tribal clothes,” says Azzizah.
“They are not,” I reply.
“Now that you are bathed clean, I thought you would be wearing, not your stranger’s clothes, but your tribal clothes,” says Tammam. “Surely you brought your tribal clothes in one of the travel sacks.”
“Tammam wants to see your tribal attire,” says Azzizah.
So do I, I think to myself. For all I know, Tammam and Azzizah are wearing my tribal attire—that is, if my tribe had tribal clothes. Were they destroyed with the Temple? Did my tribe lose them in exile? Was it Isaiah or Amos who had described the daughters of Zion wearing anklets, bracelets, rings, shawls, and veils like the ones that Tammam and Azzizah are wearing today? Which tribe originated them? The Badawias? Mine? The Babylonians? The Aramaic? Or some other tribe erased from history in the devastating tribal wars fought throughout this region ever since time remembered? Such questions didn’t seem to have entered the Badawias’ minds.
“Are you wearing your tribal attire?” I ask them.
“Taba’an—naturally,” Azzizah replies.
“What would you say if someone were to tell you that your tribal attire resembles mine?” I ask her.
“Cannot be,” she responds. “The only tribal clothes resembling ours are worn by Badawias of our tribe.”
“It is from our tribeswomen who dwell at the Gates of the Wadi, and from my brother as well, that I heard how strangers the world over admire our tribal attire,” says Tammam.
“Your tribal attire is truly admirable,” I tell the Badawias.
“You can wear my clean change of tribal clothes and veils, if it is not forbidden for you to do so by your people,” Tammam tells me in response.
“Only if it is not forbidden by your people,” Azzizah emphasizes to me.
“Wallah, I would like to try on your tribal veils and clothes. It is not forbidden by my people.”
“Wallah, wallah,” the Badawias exclaimed, sounding as happy as me.
First, the Badawias helped me get into a tanorah—underdress—which Tammam had given a shake to expel the creases and the dust and sand. Ankle-length and shaped sort of like a granny nightgown with ruffles at the ankles and wrists, the garment is made from fabric printed with iridescent blooms resembling nothing that grows or glows in the desert. Tammam’s underdress feels light and soft to the touch, except for some rough spots on the bodice where Tammam’s milk must have flowed over, and also below the waist—her discharge, I guess. (The Badawias wear no underpants, I assume, since they were so amused to see me putting on mine.) Two nursing slits are hidden inside two wide folds tucked to a side seam that can be easily moved to the front, so wide is the cut of her underdress. The overdress—the traditional black thowb—weighted by yards and yards of heavy wool and exquisite embroidery, is even wider and sways sensuously around the hips. It keeps you warm in the chilling shade, and, out in the scorching sun, it keeps that film of sweat that acts like a sort of air-conditioner. These yards and yards get caught between my legs when I started to walk, cracking the Badawias up.
“Wallah, you walk like a camel with its front legs hobbled,” says Tammam, still laughing.
“Both dresses fit you in width but not in length, for you are too long for a woman,” says Azzizah as she and Tammam pull and tug the dresses to stretch them to my “length.”
At each stage of this dressing up, the Badawias, almost as if they could sense I wished they had a full length mirror, inform me how it fits and how it befits me, as they probably inform each other whenever they try on a dress, or a veil, while they cut and sew it.
Next, the Badawias fold a royal blue shawl into a sort of a sash, which they knot around my waist snug enough to reveal the curves. “Now you look supple-curvy-beautiful, like a Badawia—caring and cared for, loved and loving,” Tammam reflects. (And Russell thought it would offend the Badu if I wore anything that showed my curves. He couldn’t emphasize strongly enough that I should wear an extra-extra large top over my jeans.)
In preparation for my tribal hairdo, the Badawias rubbed soap into my hair—wouldn’t rinse it off. (Later, I discover that no hair spray or gel starches your hair like this soap job.) They braided my hair, into three—two thin side braids, and a thicker centre braid shaped like a cone right above the forehead, sort of like a unicorn horn. Over that cone, they drape the long black veil that covers their heads and falls back to their ankles. My neck nearly gave way from the weight; but in front, over that unicorn-like braided cone, this veil, sticking out like the brim of a baseball cap, shades my eyes. It doesn’t filter out the ultraviolet rays like “djinn-demon outer eyes,” but you don’t have to squint or clamp your hands to your forehead to see if you are heading for a sharp canyon drop.
And now that they have covered my forehead with beaded tassels and coins that dangled over my eyebrows, I understand why Azzizah and Tammam sit with their eyes downcast. Cast your eyes upwards or sideways and you see nothing but coins and beads, unless you crane or swivel your neck. “Improper, brazen,” Azzizah admonished me, as she and Tammam secured this headpiece with bobby-pins fastened to the side braids that are twisted above the ears, sort of like a pincushion, with a knot so constricting the blood vessels above the temples that I see stars as I wobble around, until my blood—my mind—adjusts. Adjusting is far too easy for the liking of that inner driver in charge of self-preservation; keep adjusting at this rate, it warns, and before you know it you’ll end up like the frog that kept adjusting to water that got warm, warmer, and warmer still, until it boiled the frog.
For last, the Badawias reserved the face-veil. They both examine Tammam’s spare and decide that it is not as beautiful as the one Tammam or Azzizah wears, but more beautiful than the one Azzizah keeps in spare. Then they debate whether or not it will do. Azzizah decides it is beautiful enough.
“Yes,” Tammam agrees half-heartedly; a second or two later, mischief sparks in her eyes. Even before Tammam’s hands go to unfasten her face-veil, Azzizah gasps—yaa-Allah, yaa-Allah—in amazement, delight, admiration of Tammam’s gumption, gall, daring, or whatever it took Tammam to unveil her face to a person—man or woman, not her blood-kin—for the first tim
e since she reached puberty.
How beautiful she is, this girl-Badawia sister of mine that Abu Salim married when she was sweet sixteen, if that (she can’t be more than eighteen now). Look at her unveiled, and you understand how a man like King David could have lost his head when he first glanced at Bat-sheva. Like Bat-sheva, Tammam is attractive. And like Bat-sheva, Tammam knows it. There is no mirror here, no lake, no still body of water to reflect her looks back to her, and no camera is allowed to photograph her, yet she knows it, has sensed it or seen it in others’ eyes, loving, jealous, envious. She has that aloofness, that protective shield that the gifted build after receiving one too many knocks for their God-given gifts, and also the self-assurance of those with talents, genius, good looks, and good luck. She smiled when she caught me staring, entranced by her looks.
“Wallah, Tammam, your mother was right to name you ‘Tammam,’ for your beauty, like your name, is Tammam—perfect, complete,” I say to her.
“So is your beauty,” Tammam tells me in response. Then again her eyes spark with mischief and she adds, “If you want to see a woman endowed with beauty unequalled, look at Azzizah.”