Newcomers in an Ancient Land

by Paula Wagner

“Up there, on the gangplank. See Laura’s pigtails swinging in the breeze? Mom and Dad are right behind.”

  Zeroing in, I caught sight of a pair of red-gold braids swaying side to side as Laura stepped cautiously down the gangplank with Dad behind her, his tweed fedora protecting his vulnerable bald spot. Behind them stood Mom in a sleeveless blue-and-white sundress.

  Waiting for them to emerge from the ramshackle shed marked CUSTOMS in bold black letters, I prayed Dad wouldn’t put René on the spot the minute they met. Although bold at home, Dad could turn shy in social situations, which sometimes came across as condescending. It had been known to happen with previous boyfriends. Once, he had greeted a boyfriend of Naomi’s by asking if he was extant—as in, “Good evening, young man. Are you extant?” Not having the faintest idea what the word meant, the poor boy had squirmed and stuttered. The story had been immortalized in family history as an example of Dad at his nadir (another of his favorite words).

  But René had reassured me when I’d warned him Dad might be awkward.

  “Don’t worry, it will all right,” he said, omitting the “be.”

  With René’s irrepressible optimism, it seemed that all things would miraculously be “all right.” Still, I worried about how Dad would handle his fractured English. I expected to be doing a lot of interpreting to smooth their conversations.

  My fears temporarily dissolved in the hugs we shared as soon as my parents emerged from customs without any scenes of scofflaw sailors or contraband jeans as when I’d first arrived.

  “Welcome!” boomed René, his voice rising in direct proportion to his excitement.

  With outstretched arms, René sprang to embrace my father, but taken by surprise, Dad offered his hand. Switching gears, René seized his hand but shook it so hard that Dad stumbled backward almost losing his balance. Teetering back and forth, they danced a bumbling jig like two clowns stepping on each other’s toes—in more ways than one.

  But René’s enthusiasm remained undampened. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Wagner!”

  “Uh, you too, young man,” stammered Dad, struggling to regain his composure.

  The scene would have been hilarious if I hadn’t been so mortified. How little they had in common! Technically they were both secular Jews, but the similarities stopped there. René’s Jewish identity—a mishmash of Old World Ashkenazi and Sephardic customs inherited from his parents—contrasted wildly with Dad’s “lite” brand of Reform Judaism, which he barely practiced. While Dad spoke English and the Hoch Deutsch he’d inherited from his mother, René spoke French and Hebrew. Neither of them spoke Yiddish. While Dad was a second-generation American music professor, René was the first-generation son of unschooled working-class immigrants. Where René was exuberant, my father was reserved. By any stretch of the imagination, they had next to nothing in common.

  Hoping to right this gauche beginning, I introduced my mother.

  “Enchanté!” beamed René, regaining his aplomb and kissing her on both cheeks in the French custom. She blushed, clearly charmed.

  “And who is this petite demoiselle?” he cooed to Laura, trilling the “r” in lo-ra and boosting my little sister high in the air.

  When it was Gidon’s turn, he and Dad shook hands without incident, though Dad was clearly appraising the rumpled blue work clothes, mud-caked boots, and stubbled chin of this wiry farm worker who looked older than he expected. Apparently Gidon hadn’t had time to shower or change after his shift at the refet. Still, Dad wasn’t one to judge on appearances. Despite his own education, he had a deep respect for manual labor.

  Although René wasn’t one to shy away from hard work, he believed in working to live rather than living to work. His favorite motto in Hebrew was “slowly, slowly in the morning, not too fast in the afternoon.” Accordingly, we’d spend a restful Shabbat with Naomi and Gidon in Hazorea before going to Haifa that Sunday morning—a workday in Israel.

  By now the noonday heat and humidity had risen to stifling levels. Sweat was pouring off Dad’s temples, Mom was wilting like an English rose, and Laura’s cheeks were flushed. Jon shifted from one foot to the other, shading his eyes from the glare.

  “’Ave you eaten lunch yet?” asked René, dropping the “h” in have with his French accent. “We must break bread together on this special occasion, non?”

  “Sorry,” declined Gidon. “I have to get back to work.” By Naomi’s look of disappointment, I knew she felt slighted.

  Nudging Gidon aside, René hissed in his ear in rapid-fire Hebrew.

  “Ma, ata meshugah? What, are you crazy? Relax, man! You can’t leave without sharing lunch with your new family. Your sacred cows aren’t mooing for you yet. The two p.m. bus will get you home before they finish chewing their cud.”

  With that, René hustled us all out into the grimy street where a teeming crowd instantly engulfed us. Aggressive vendors with rickety pushcarts hawked fly-blown bagels, salt-laden pretzels, and gray hunks of roasted shwarma (spicy slabs of beef). The tantalizing aroma mixed with the fumes of idling diesel engines. Jon seemed amused, but Dad’s jaw was clenched and Mom’s face had turned ashen. Laura clung to my arm for dear life.

  “Come inside,” commanded René, steering us into a café that was only slightly cooler and quieter than the chaos outdoors.

  “Whew, what a maelstrom!” muttered Dad, collapsing into a chair at the head of a table covered in a red-and-white checked oilcloth.

  “Bedlam!” said Mom—her English term for a madhouse.

  “Cacophony!” declared Naomi.

  “Mayhem!” I added.

  Relieved that our sense of humor was still intact, my spirits rose when the waiter delivered a traditional Mediterranean spread—what else but hummus, baba ganoush, olives, dolmas, falafel, cucumber-tomato salad, and pita? Jon and Laura tried orange Fanta, while the rest of us ordered cool, fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. Feeling better, Dad loosened his belt, wiped his mustache, and took a deep breath.

  “You remind me of my own papa after a good meal,” said René. “Ready for a nap now?”

  But Dad squared his shoulders and flared his nostrils to show he still had energy to spare.

  “Well then, we’d better get going if we want to catch the last bus for Kibbutz Dan,” René said. The intricate meanings of Dad’s Big Sniff were lost on him.

  At the Central Bus Station we shared sweaty hugs with Naomi and Gidon before they left for Hazorea, taking Jonathan with them for his second week in Israel. Our plan was to show my parents around Galilee for their first week, then bring them back to Hazorea for a second week of sightseeing with Naomi and Gidon. In this way they’d get to know where we both lived as well as see a good part of northern and central Israel. With sizzling temperatures in August, we ruled out the Negev, especially given Dad’s extreme sensitivity to heat. His pink skin and bald pate were no match for the merciless sun.

  As the bus rolled north, Mom said the parched landscape reminded her of Texas, the first place Dad had found a job after bringing her to the US. For a girl from foggy London who spoke the king’s English, the extreme heat and southern drawl had been a shock. Without a car, we had ridden the still-segregated buses. At four, Naomi and I had loved sitting on their bumpy back benches, but Mom didn’t have the heart to tell us they were for “Negroes Only,” so after awhile we had simply walked to the Piggly Wiggly for our groceries—boycotting the buses long before the Civil Rights Movement that was gaining momentum once again in the 1960s.

  This bus ride would be the first of many for my parents in Israel. Hitchhiking wasn’t an option for them, and renting a car would have been too expensive, so they would have to see the Land of Milk and Honey through the dusty windows of an Egged bus. But traveling by bus would also give them a firsthand glimpse of the diverse humanity I had come to love in Israel—from bearded Orthodox Jews in black coats and yarmulkes, to kibbutzniks in blue denim work shorts, to squawking chickens that occasionally flapped through the aisles until their no-nonsense owners rec
aptured them. As always, a few Arab men fingered prayer beads half hidden in the folds of their robes. I had warned my parents and Laura to be careful of the pyramids of spit-out sunflower husks left under the seats by previous passengers, despite signs that said No Cracking of Sunflower Seeds. Mom and Dad surveyed the scene with admirable serenity. I didn’t dare ask what they thought of the bus driver’s Uzi slung casually around the back of his seat.

  Chapter 30

  SIGHTSEEING IN THE UPPER GALILEE

  Despite his political reservations about Israel, Dad found everything about kibbutz life intriguing, especially the socialized division of labor. True to Avram Fein’s prediction long ago, Mom loved the concept of the collective dining room where she wouldn’t have to cook a single meal—unless, of course, she was assigned to work in the kitchen! They weren’t so sure about the bet yelidim, where children slept in the care of a mitapelet (caregiver) rather than at home, but they couldn’t refute how boisterous and happy the kids looked. Maybe a degree of family separation was for the best. But what about babies, Mom wanted to know? Wouldn’t their mothers want them nearby instead of getting up at all hours to nurse them in the bet tinokot (baby house)? I hadn’t considered this inconvenience, so I had no answer, but Dad chimed in with Avram’s famous remark about every problem having a soluuuu-tion. I dreaded telling him that Avram didn’t remember saying this himself, but Dad would find out in due time when we visited Ein Hashofet the following week. I only hoped my encounter with the Feins wouldn’t be too strained.

  Although René had to work that week, I’d been lucky enough to get time off to spend with my family, since I was technically a volunteer. I had a full itinerary planned. Some of the sites were on or near the kibbutz, like Beit Ussishkin, a hard-to-pronounce natural museum. Mom pored over displays of native plants and animals from biblical times while Jon studied the artifacts from the Hellenic Period. Was there no end to the successive invasions of this land?

  “That guy Pan must have been quite the hell-raiser with his cloven hooves and devil’s tail,” Jon mused, inducting the Greek god of debauchery into his personal Pantheon.

  “Does his pipe make him the original Pied Piper?” added Dad.

  At Tel Dan, Jon soaked his swollen feet in the bubbling headwaters, relieving the blisters from his work boots. I unstrapped my sandals and let the icy water flow between my toes. The mingling of hot air and frigid liquid sent molten shivers up my legs until my whole body shuddered with delight. But Dad couldn’t be coaxed to expose his feet and give it a try. We teased him for being a tenderfoot. Although he prized physical stamina, even on the beach at home he wore socks and shoes to protect his delicate feet.

  With only a week ahead, I was eager to show my family as much as possible of my new home in the Hula Valley of the Upper Galilee. Unlike the south of Israel, water in the north was surprisingly abundant. I explained that Hula Valley had been a malarial swamp until it was drained for agriculture in the 1950s. Most people were proud of this transformation, but some had worried. The valley was also a flyway for thousands of migrating birds from the Great Rift in Africa along the Syrian axis. A fierce debate now raged between the supporters of development and those urging preservation.

  “Just like logging the redwoods at home,” Dad said. The lumber trucks that clogged Highway 101 seemed far away, but the comparison was all too close.

  “I hope they create a wildlife refuge,” said Mom. My mother loved birds. She often said she wanted to be one in her next life.

  “You’ll see a beautiful preserve tomorrow,” I answered. The sudden image of my mother fleeing a chicken coop or bursting out of a gilded cage caught me off guard. What was wrong with me today? I couldn’t seem to shake a wicked sense of humor. Perhaps she’d be a pink flamingo, a ruby-throated hummingbird, a robin redbreast, or even a rare cockatoo. Who knew? I only knew that no matter how far my mother and I traveled apart in this life or the next, she would always be with me. Even if, in the dim future, I took on the foolhardy task of writing a book, her spirit would be there to guide my heart, hand, and head to just the right word. Now the words she had spoken when I was only seven floated back to me like a command or a prophesy, I wasn’t sure which: “You should write.”

  Horshat Tal, a national park that had recently been created to preserve the fabled cold springs and gigantic trees there since biblical times, was a short bus ride away, so I packed a picnic lunch in the kibbutz kitchen—the usual mix of bread, sardines, cucumbers, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, some slices of white cheese, and a bunch of ripe grapes—and we set off.

  Laura was the first to notice the rows of olives trees that lined both sides of the road that led from the kibbutz to the highway. “What kind of trees have such gnarledy old trunks and feathery gray-green leaves?” she asked.

  Like a budding professor, Jonathan launched into a lengthy lesson on “The History of the Olive in the Middle East,” which Laura tried hard to process. Then it was my turn to add what I knew of the trees today. Rumor had it that every year in November, when the olive harvest season began, the kibbutz would allow the neighboring Druze villagers to pick what had been theirs in the first place, before the state of Israel had expropriated their land after the war of ’48. The kibbutz felt this was only fair and just.

  “I wonder how the villagers feel about that?” asked Dad.

  I said we couldn’t really know unless we went to the village to ask them, but that would be impossible because, although the Druze were known for their unswerving loyalty to Israel, going to a village uninvited was essentially taboo.

  “That’s too bad,” Dad replied pensively, though his brown eyes suggested far more. If the eyes are truly the windows to the soul (as Mom liked to quote Shakespeare), then the subtle shadings of Dad’s eyes—from coffee to russet, to bronze or burnt ochre, could convey a full range of emotion without his ever uttering a word. But the fine art of reading my father’s eyes was always touch and go for a girl of words like me. If only we shared a common language!

  That day, however, Dad’s eyes told me precisely what he was thinking. And sadly, I had to admit he had a point: that for all its lofty ideals, Israel was a segregated society where Jewish and Arab citizens lived side by side yet attended separate schools and enjoyed unequal rights; where, despite the promise of equality, fear, mutual ignorance, and discrimination ruled most relations between two groups who each loved the land with a passion. In Dad’s eyes, the society bore an uncanny resemblance to the relations of Blacks and whites in the American South of the early sixties. These were not the Jewish values he had instilled in us, his children. But in my single-focused zeal to help build the new socialist state, I had overlooked (or rationalized) these deep inequities.

  Just then the bus pulled to a halt, abruptly ending our conversation as we reached Horshat Tal. I could think of nothing more to say on such a sensitive and complicated subject anyway. Still, I knew there would come a time when I wouldn’t be able to ignore the thorny question of Palestinian rights.

  Peeling our damp derrières from the sticky plastic seats, we stepped off the bus and into a world of gurgling waterways, grassy grounds, and an inviting man-made swimming pool. Jon insisted on stopping to read all the English inscriptions on the many signs along the way, reveling in the park’s biblical and historical background.

  “Look, Dad,” I pointed out. “All the signs are in Arabic and English, as well as Hebrew.” At least there was an effort toward equality. One marker said the trees were over seven hundred years old; another cited a biblical account of the ancient oak trees:

  Legend has it that one of the huge Tavor oaks in the park had been split in two by a huge earthquake in the eighth century. But managing to heal its wounds, it grew into two separate trees joined at the roots.

  We stopped to gaze at the conjoined roots of two massive trunks whose branches met in a graceful arch overhead. Could the relationship Naomi and I shared withstand such a riveting, I wondered, yet stay forever connected at our sha
red roots? The question made me realize that I’d come to feel less worried about surviving outside our twin bubble than I had a year earlier. Step by step, I was becoming more independent. But more ominously, would my family survive the split that would soon follow this calm visit? In two weeks we’d be waving goodbye as they sailed home on the same ship that had taken Naomi and me away.

  At the swimming pool a sign warned that the water temperature was a glacial twelve degrees Celsius (fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit) all year round, but by now I was sweltering in the heat and nothing could keep me from plunging in. Curling my toes on the lip of the high-dive board, I stretched my arms overhead in a V shape and arched my back in preparation for a perfect swan dive, secretly hoping to impress my father. Dad had taught Naomi and me to swim when we were barely three, and since then I’d been a water dog. I still recalled my joy (and his shock) when, at age eight I’d beaten him in an underwater race. The feel of the silken water gliding over my body as I darted to the finish line had been as delicious as my unexpected victory while Dad was still churning through the pool like a whale in a bathtub. A champion in baseball and football, his thick limbs made for clumsy swimming.

  Thwack! The icy water hit my head with the force of a hammer almost knocking me out. Heaving for breath, I hauled myself to the surface and sprawled out on the lawn. The sun stabbed my skin like a thousand needles. Nursing my wounded pride as well as my smarting head, I was relieved the lifeguard—if there was one—hadn’t noticed me any more than Dad. I said nothing of my queasiness, much less my pounding headache, as we ate our lunch and dabbled in the shallow streams beneath the giant oaks for the rest of the afternoon. But the next morning, I woke up with a raging cold. Still, not wanting my ill-fated swan dive to spoil our happiness at Horshat Tal, I didn’t complain. I would be Dad’s big, strong girl if it killed me! Besides, the visit was going swimmingly, and I wanted it to stay that way.

  At the end of each excursion, René would join us for supper after his tough workday. As expected, I played the part of interpreter, smoothing out the communication when it got hopelessly bogged down in three languages. Dad was clearly impressed by my growing command of Hebrew and French, and his respect for René seemed to be growing, too. The more he learned of our plans—working in the family market business in France before returning to Israel to continue our education—the more reasonable he found them. Still, it was odd to feel Dad passing the baton—or more precisely, relinquishing his authority to René—like a feudal lord bestowing his daughter on a worthy suitor. What seemed most important to Dad was whether René could take good care of me. That a young woman might manage alone in the world without a man was still a remote concept in the early sixties. If Dad prized the intellectual independence of his wife and daughters, he never questioned his role as traditional male provider, a double message that unwittingly fostered emotional and economic dependence. I wondered if that was why my mother fantasized becoming a bird, free of Dad’s dominion. Or perhaps she simply yearned to fly home to her family. Much as I craved his love, I was desperate to fly free in order to make a life for myself.