My Father, His Daughter

by Yaël Dayan

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  My Father, His Daughter

  Yaël Dayan

  For my mother,

  who loved, understood, and

  tolerated us both

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  One • A Long Friday

  Two • First Kaddish

  PART TWO

  Three • Before Memory

  Four • The Protective Circle

  Five • Growing Up and Away

  PART THREE

  Six • Adolescence

  Seven • Perspective

  Eight • A Soldier in His Army

  Nine • My Father, His Daughter

  Ten • The Six-Day War

  PART FOUR

  Eleven • Between Two Wars

  Twelve • 1973–1977

  Thirteen • Peace

  Fourteen • Two Years in My Father’s Death

  PART FIVE

  Fifteen • Shiva

  Sixteen • Last Kaddish

  Epilogue

  Image Gallery

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  This is a book I had to write. George Weidenfeld, my British publisher and friend, believed it should be published, and read as well. I thank him affectionately for his unfailing confidence.

  Dov Sion, my husband, objects to and abhors any self-induced exposure. With gentleness and understanding, he deviated from this principle and gave me his full support during the long and often painful writing of this book. David Rieff, senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was my first objective reader. I am indebted to him not only for editing the manuscript for publication but for easing my anxieties and enabling me to work with the right perspective on the final version.

  My friends Shimshon Arad, Kay Cohen, Bess Simon, Betty Epstein, Marianne Griessman, and Ira Bermak were kind enough to read the book in manuscript form. For their comments, encouragement, and support, I am profoundly grateful.

  I must mention with thanks Pamela Levy, who managed the impossible and turned the undecipherable handwritten manuscript, with attention and care, into a typed readable one.

  My mother’s contribution to this book was invaluable. She made available to me her amazing memory and the hundreds of letters my father wrote her. She let me touch exposed sensitive nerve ends and bravely removed protective fences in order to help me learn and understand.

  My brothers’ role in my life and my father’s is reduced to a minimum in this book. That does not reflect reality but their wish, which I wholeheartedly respect. They may want to tell their own stories one day, and it should be their prerogative when and how to do it.

  My father wrote me when I was working on my first book: “As you are writing a book, you should put all your efforts into making it a good one, and when I say ‘good,’ I mean ‘honest.’ I see no harm in full exposure of inner statements, providing you don’t compromise on honesty.” It comforts me to think that, were he alive and read this book, he would have been satisfied that no such compromise was made.

  Y.D.

  Memories are not history. They are fragments of things and feelings that were, tinted and sifted through varying prisms of present time and disposition. This book, then, is not the story of Moshe Dayan, or my own life story, but an attempt to depict a relationship of four decades between a father and a daughter, from birth to a mature emotional and spiritual connection—one that to some extent has survived death and still continues to inspire and have meaning.

  I have not aimed for objectivity of any kind. That would be absurd and pretentious, since I was and am a participant rather than an observer. What truth I can offer is neither historic nor scientific; my own subjective, intense, one-sided, emotionally loaded truth. If my portrait of my father clashes with the memories or observations of others, that does not mean I doubt their truth or mean to impugn their Moshe Dayan. My father had a number of significant relationships in his life. In this book, I will consider them subjectively from the vantage point of my own involvement. My mother, my brothers, my father’s friends, and his second wife may see that their perceptions of some of the episodes in my father’s life or of elements of his character are different from mine, but then, their memories are not history, either.

  PART

  One

  ONE : A LONG FRIDAY

  I am compelled to begin with the end, with the image of my father as a dead man, devoid of heartbeat and blood pressure, feeble and small in the intensive-care unit. A body still connected to tubes and electrodes, its maimed face turning yellow; gray fingers; a deep scar for an eye; a meaningless green line on an EKG screen.

  I have seen many dead faces. Tranquil or accepting, amazed or tortured, childish or wrinkled. My father’s conveyed angry frustration, as if he didn’t mean it to happen quite then, and for the first time ever was caught unaware, deprived of the last word. Those things unsaid and unaccomplished hovered there, almost palpable. This furious aura has haunted me ever since.

  Early on Friday, October 16, the phone woke me long before the alarm clock, set for six-thirty, went off. This was not in itself unusual. My father’s wife, Rahel, was on the other end of the line, assuring me there was no cause for alarm. He had been in the hospital for a few hours, having had pains the night before. He had refused to be carried to the ambulance and insisted on walking, had been conscious and stable when admitted, and was refusing to see any visitors. There were no tears in Rahel’s voice, nor was there a false effort at cheerfulness. Rahel simply didn’t know more than she communicated, and I hung up with an enormous sense of anxiety.

  The morning news on the radio contained the brief statement that Moshe Dayan had been hospitalized due to a heart problem and that, according to the doctors, his condition was stable. I packed my children off to school and drove to Tel Hashomer Hospital in the heavy morning traffic, turning the radio on loud to block thought. It was not the first time I had driven in haste to Tel Hashomer to be at my father’s bedside. There had been the time when, while he was excavating for antiquities, a hillside had caved in on him and almost crushed him to death; then there was the year he was operated on for cancer of the colon; and there had been other, more minor occasions. My father had suffered from heart disease for a long time. He was an undisciplined patient. But he had taught me to think logically, and I strove not to give way to premonitions or emotionalism as I drove to the hospital. I shifted gears automatically, stopped when the traffic lights turned red, drove by the maternity ward where both my children had been born; I parked and walked to the intensive-care unit of the cardiology department. The attending doctor greeted me unsmiling and refused to go further than to describe the situation as stable. Rahel was there, looking tired and pale but not desperate or hysterical. He was in a small room, lying on a narrow bed. Although sedated, my father was awake and irritable, and he didn’t want to see me. She said she was sorry, since she knew how I felt, but there was no persuading him. She told me my father had ordered everybody out, and promised to call me later and tell me when to come.

  Mumbling something about calling my brothers, I turned to listen as the young cardiologist explained to me in detail my father’s heart-muscle malfunction. I remember looking at the small screen which was transmitting electronic signals from his heart. The lines went up and down—pretty green lines. Although my father wouldn’t see me, I stood at the edge of his room, watching him through the half-drawn curtain. His good eye was weakening, tragically so, and he couldn’t have seen me even if he’d been able to k
eep it open, which he didn’t. His face had the intensity of an angry fighter unable to grasp the dreadful thing that was happening to him. It was then I realized I had arrived too late. My belief in his love for me wasn’t shattered, for I knew he couldn’t face me. Had I walked in, he would have realized how near he was to his death.

  And perhaps I, too, couldn’t face it. There was an accumulation of unsettled accounts between us that he was too weak to confront in his pain. Within moments, my father had ordered the nurse out, summoning Rahel and the doctor. As she entered his room, she promised to call me as soon as she could. Her sympathy was genuine, and I walked out, inhaling fresh air and swaying lightly.

  Friday in Tel Aviv is always a short, crowded day. Traffic is heavy, the lines in the shops are long, and the school day is over early. Our family is totally secular, but the Sabbath still holds a special meaning of family communion for us: a cake in the oven, household chores, fresh flowers in the living room. As I hurried home, I tried to keep my mind on the trivial duties I had to take care of before lunchtime. But, back in the apartment, the phone was ringing. Rahel, apologizing for the morning’s “unsuccessful visit,” had called to suggest I come in the early evening. She said my father couldn’t eat the hospital food, and asked me to prepare some chopped liver. His condition, she said, was still stable. I called my brothers. Udi, three years younger than I, happened to be visiting Tel Aviv from Nahalal, the Dayan family farm, where he lived and worked. Assi, the youngest, lived in Tel Aviv, and I got through to him without difficulty. Neither of them wanted to go to the hospital alone and we decided to meet there at six that evening. They asked the obvious question: was our father dying? I had no answer, but I remember that, unlike previous illnesses of his, for once we didn’t indulge in morbid jokes.

  Next was the chopped chicken liver, into which I poured all my hopelessness, as if preparing a life-saving remedy. I called my husband, Dov, at Army HQ, and his driver was duly dispatched to help with the delivery of the clay dish. The ability to repress feelings, to ignore warnings, to create preoccupations is God’s gift to the human psyche. I remember that I ironed a load of shirts, scrubbed greasy pans, polished the shining silver, and all the while my father’s lungs were filling with liquid and his body was growing heavy. At one point in the afternoon, I called the doctor and found comfort in his clichés. For a moment at least, I could believe the radio bulletins and go on baking cakes.

  My mother had been living in Washington, D.C., for several years, and I didn’t feel the need to get in touch with her immediately. Fleeting through my mind, piercing my heart through, was a pathetic prayer for time to stand still. We weren’t ready yet, I wanted to whisper; whatever was between my father and myself—the love and the hurt and the desperate longing for balance—wasn’t yet settled.

  I sent my daughter, Raheli, ten then, to sleep over at a friend’s house, promising her she could visit her grandfather the next day. My son, Dan, almost thirteen and a man, remained at home while Dov and I went to the hospital. As always, we didn’t need to exchange words to produce an identity of feeling, and we drove through the empty streets in silence. At Tel Hashomer, we met my brothers (who had come together), and as we walked, it was almost necessary for each of us to prod the others forward. Rahel and two young doctors were waiting in a central ward from which the staff control—visually and electronically—the individual units that open onto it. A drawn curtain hid our father’s bed from us, as we walked to the doctor’s small office for a briefing. Udi was more silent than ever; Assi’s expression was a mixture of disbelief and confusion. Rahel seemed to be clinging to the doctor’s words, as if being attentive could postpone evil; and Dov’s eyes had doom in them.

  When the doctor was through leaving us suspended and baffled, Rahel went in and came back to say we could enter. Our father would see us. Not joyfully, not with a longing to be surrounded by loved ones in his moment of pain and, if he suspected, moment of farewell, but reluctantly. It had to be done.

  We stood around his bed. There was our father, lonely and dependent, yet not stripped of the powers he always had over us, unquestionable authority, a soliloquy which seldom developed into a dialogue. He talked—rather, delivered a statement. He was very ill. He wasn’t sure whether he’d get out of the hospital alive. If he did, he had decided to undergo an operation which was very risky, but he’d rather take the risk than live a half-life. He was tired, he said. “End of meeting,” it sounded. He looked and felt exhausted; I wanted to touch him, hold his hand, tell him I loved him. Instead, I angered an angry man. I mumbled something about being strong. I was bullshitting and couldn’t help it. I had to cut the deadly silence as if talking held the countdown.

  Stupidly, I managed to irritate him. He stared at me with his one eye, not sadly, not lovingly, a stare of discontent: I don’t need your philosophies right now, I don’t care what the doctors told you or what you think of it. I told you how I feel. He shut his eye, shutting us away totally. He had a manner of doing it whereby he didn’t isolate himself, but rather imprisoned the others. We left the room. He had nothing else to tell us, to ask of us, to communicate to his own children. What he didn’t say then, we found out a few days later, was already written in his will, in a personal letter and in a poem addressed to us.

  Back in the doctor’s room, we weren’t sure what to do. I turned to Dov, who seemed to be the only mature person around. The look on his face meant my father’s death. He knew this was the last time we would see my father alive, hear his voice, note the expression in his eye. Assi talked to the doctor. We are not babies, he said. Please tell us the truth. Is he dying? Should we stay here? Would he live through the night? All the young doctor could do was shrug. He couldn’t promise, he couldn’t predict, he didn’t know.

  My brothers decided to leave and be in touch later. One thing was obvious: the man inside, fighting for his life, would not summon us. Dov, who knew—better than the doctors, better than my father—said we should stay. The nurse came rushing in, and Rahel and the doctor followed her. I was left alone in the room with Dov. We exchanged looks and hurried to the central unit. The curtain was drawn and Rahel, her face white as marble, was watching the screen.

  He lost consciousness, as he had earlier that day when alone with her. Nurses were wheeling oxygen canisters into the room; two more doctors hurried by and entered. None dared look at us. We had a plea in our eyes they had no way of answering; we didn’t utter a word. At precisely this moment, the television announcer read a bulletin, assuring the viewers that “Dayan survived a massive heart attack, followed by complications, and is resting now, his condition stable.” We talked in whispers. Rahel was recounting the events of the day and last night. He had had a couple of good hours in which he dictated two letters to the press and made sure they reached the editors in time. He was cold and tired and angry but totally in control of his thoughts and words.

  The blood left my body. My fingers and toes were frozen and I felt lightheaded. I watched the irregularity of the green line on the screen and held tight to the nurse’s counter, unable to ask for the glass of water I desperately needed.

  Then we heard the pounding. The doctors were manually pounding on his chest, an act of desperation when all medical knowledge failed, when all the rest proved ineffective, or when, I didn’t dare think it, the man was no longer alive. I could vaguely see Dr. Goldman, my father’s personal physician, coming out of the room, dazed and not quite believing what had just happened. He shrugged, and though he stared at the three of us the way people look at orphaned children, he still didn’t have the heart or the courage to pronounce the words of finality. He spread his hands sideways. “It’s the end,” he whispered. Rahel looked at him and at us. He didn’t say he was dead. He is not dead? she asked, knowing the answer.

  We walked in, as the nurses and doctors hurried out, expressions of failure on their faces, heads bent. I knelt by the bed, held the dead man’s hand, touched his face, and could no longer control the flo
od of tears and agony that had been welling up for so long, maybe for much much longer. Dov looked on. If he wiped a tear, I don’t know. He stroked my hair and knew to leave me alone.

  I wasn’t crying, I was sobbing. I was crying “Aba” once more, as I had when I was small and hurt, or an adult and in pain, as when screaming from far away lest the sound shake him back to life. Rahel was across the bed from me, holding his other hand, very composed and collected compared to my near-hysteria. She never consciously stood between us, and when I imagined she did, I found ways to bypass that, but as he lay there between us, still attached to tubes, his heart stopped and his eye shut to me, she was a stranger I knew I should call my mother, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.

  The mind is odd. I thought of figs. I thought he would never bring me big baskets of figs, as he had done every season. I looked at the hand I held, fingers twisted and scarred from wounds, hands that held me as a baby, slapped me as a naughty teenager, tickled my children into happy laughter, picked forbidden fruit for me—the lush, stupid image of figs again, food of the earth … Across the bed, Rahel held his other hand up and said something about his wrist-watch. My mind wasn’t functioning as I felt his hand growing cold in mine. I covered it, hoping to warm it up. The doctor was with us now, and I urged him to detach the tubes and electrodes. He led Rahel out of the room. I still couldn’t move. Dov left the room; someone offered me a glass of water; I was weeping uncontrollably. Please let my mother and brothers know, I asked, then realized I should be the one to do it. The nurses were busy with the body, which had to remain there for a while before being wheeled out, and I got to the telephone. I called Ezer Weizman and his wife, Reumah, my aunt. Father is dead. (There, I said it, I said the words I thought would never cross my lips.) Please call Mother and let her know. Suddenly I had a horror of not being left alone, the fear of a “situation” I couldn’t find the strength to cope with. The funeral will be on Sunday, I said. Perhaps she shouldn’t hurry back right away, it might be embarrassing for her. I regretted the words the minute I said them. Too late. My aunt didn’t spare my mother this unkind suggestion. Dov went to call Prime Minister Begin and Arik Sharon, and a journalist who was present went to break the news to the public.