My Father, His Daughter

by Yaël Dayan

  My father, well bandaged and very weak, was installed in the back seat of my grandmother’s little Morris; my mother sat in front; my other grandmother took me on a bus—and we all went up the winding, beautiful road to Jerusalem. It wasn’t the horrible scent of fish oil that made my mother faint when the bandages were being changed. She was a few months pregnant, too late for an abortion, and my father’s reaction when he found out was violent. Never in his life before, or later—until shortly before his death, when he was losing the ability to see with his one good eye—did he indulge in self-pity. He did now. Recuperation was slow, the maiming of his face depressing, the prospect of metal and glass fragments forever embedded in his head and body terrifying. His hand was still deformed and partly paralyzed, and the empty eye socket discharged pus and was painful. The end of the war was nowhere in sight, and it was obvious that another war would have to be waged to acquire a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Moshe Dayan found himself a farmer without a farm, a soldier without an eye to focus with, or hands to pull a trigger. He saw no way of providing for his family, and the thought of a second child was a frightening prospect. He was a war hero, but he had no country which could reward, compensate, or even acknowledge its heroic son, and recovery was painfully slow.

  Pouring tea from the kettle to the cup without missing it was a major task for him; reading was blurred; the judgment of distance was totally inaccurate, which made driving impossible, and attempting to focus was almost always a miss. Treating life itself as a God-sent gift, and measuring the daily shortcomings against its grandeur, could not last. Normal proportions resumed, and my parents, not being religious or even remotely believers, could not resign themselves to an abstract, humble “This is God’s will” and accept. The world was fighting for its sanity and life, and although the magnitude of the Jewish tragedy under Hitler was not yet grasped, Jews in Palestine were determined to secure a state for themselves. Meanwhile, my father was taking night walks to force himself to adjust to his handicap. It was the quiet, realistic insistence of my mother and her parents, their trust in him and in his ability, and to a small degree my existence that gave him support. His recuperation meant spending a lot of time with me. I didn’t seem to mind too much the absence of one eye, and was not in any way repelled or frightened by the sight. I was a fast learner, and with the excuse “Why should I read these stories to her, let her read herself,” Father taught me to read and write. The fact that children under three years of age do not read didn’t impress him. I talked well, I remembered well, and I soon learned the alphabet and the numbers and mastered the writing of a small vocabulary.

  I learned to read, and he taught himself to live with one eye. Soon he could drive, learned to adjust to the change from light to dark, and he knew it wasn’t an act of charity when Reuven Shiloah, then in charge of Special Services at the Jewish Agency, offered him a job. A real job, for a salary, and additional pay for the rent of a small apartment, and not least in importance, the chance to be absorbed again into the war effort, in its political and military aspects.

  The threat of a German invasion was all too real, and it was essential to prepare an intelligence network for transmitting information to the Allies in case of a German occupation. My father submitted a detailed plan, which was approved by the British. “Moshe Dayan’s network” was centered in Jerusalem but had cells and substations all over the country. My mother, by this time showing her pregnancy, participated in a training course for wireless operators in which she didn’t excel, although the sight of her in khaki uniform and protruding big stomach had a cheering effect on the general morale.

  We moved to a large flat in Jerusalem. Part of it was used as a wireless station. Two rooms were occupied by “Ginger” and Ron, British sergeants assigned to the intelligence plan; and when Udi was born in January, they volunteered to administer his late-night bottle. We were a family of four now. Udi (short for Ehud, the Bible hero) was a handsome, gentle, easy baby. His birth did not cause the excitement mine did, but there were no nervous tears of inexperience and uncalled-for anxiety either. I showed no symptoms of jealousy, then or at any other time, because I obviously felt secure and superior. The attention and love bestowed on me were fully and dominantly mine. I was not asked to share and never begrudged my brothers what they got. I always knew that in my father’s heart, as much as he loved Udi, and later Assi, I occupied a special, unique place. I don’t know whether it had to do with being his only daughter, or being his first child.

  His wounds were healed. The shrapnel was mostly static, and though he suffered from pain, he learned to live with it, for the time being. We all thought in terms of the “time being.” Obviously, this was a transitory period. We had no home of our own, we were mobile and adjustable, and the war engulfed our lives on a temporary basis, allowing no time or state of mind for any planning or even dreaming about the future.

  Although Mother was a Jerusalemite and she loved her city, she longed to return to the farm. One day, she hoped, they would own their own farm. In contrast, Father, a Nahalal farm boy in his thoughts and behavior as well as background, fell in love with Jerusalem, especially with the Old City. On Saturdays, we walked the narrow alleys, shopped in the bazaar, and ate sumptuously at the National. Father was not interested in archaeology then, and his sense of “belonging to the Middle East” was a sensual thing. If anything spiritual supported his sense of continuity, it was the Bible, which he knew and loved—not for its values or strict morals as much as for its prose, precision, and wonderful stories of Judges and Kings. When he walked the walls of the Old City, he could see King David and King Solomon, the way he thought of Gideon and heard Deborah and Barak in the Valley of Jezreel.

  Jerusalem was smells and tastes and sounds which were home for him, not an exotic Orient but his own language, an extension of his spirit which was never in conflict with his beloved Nahalal, with the orchards of kibbutz Hanita or the flowers on the Hill of Moreh.

  The Germans did not occupy Palestine, and some of the network trainees were recruited for missions into Nazi-occupied Europe. In the summer of 1942, we returned to Nahalal. Deganya, Nahalal, Shimron, Jerusalem, Hanita, Nahalal again … Farming on a moshav, on a commune, fighter, intelligence officer, sailor, truck driver—how and where did my father see his future? Clearly, he had no ambition whatsoever to achieve any of the things that made him famous a few years later. He was never surrounded by an entourage or aimed at leadership. He wasn’t a loner, but didn’t encourage jovial friendships. He did not think of himself as a brilliant future strategist or even an exceptional farmer; and his scholarly inclinations were satisfied with improving his English with the help of my mother. In one of the last letters from Acre, he tried to sum up his thoughts, dreams, and plans: “About our future, after all we are not children, and we have Yaël, and it’s time we had planned our life. I know that plans and reality may be too different things, but I’ve given it a lot of thought. Basically, I think that my demands on life are minimal. If once I thought that social activities were central, that one should search for ‘fun’ and ‘content,’ that in order to find life satisfactory one should be active and perhaps even a leader, today I ask for much less. The subject is happiness, and to achieve it I imagine a way of life—We are sitting in our cozy room, listening to the radio, reading a good book or poetry, Yaël rolling on the rug and you knitting. We sip tea and talk … I know this is an exaggerated romantic idyllic picture, but these are my daydreams.

  “What work to do? Whatever, as long as it does not disrupt the scene I’ve described. I could be the village driver, or a watchman, a builder or a farmer, in a kibbutz or a moshav, even a trade-union functionary, as long as I can have the peace of family life, the good books and the two of you. You probably think I am naïve, I must sound more like a Boy Scout than a father, but these are the desires I want to share with you. I feel I’ve lived for so long, and went through so much, that all I want is calm and rest. Good night, and a kiss in the m
iddle of your forehead …”

  Returning to Nahalal, to a small cabin famous for its leaking roof, offered the beginning of the peaceful life he coveted. Farm chores and duties were resumed, as if nothing had happened in the interim—except my father’s black eye patch.

  My father hated the black patch. He hated it physically—it irritated and upset him—and he hated the symbolic value it had acquired. For many years he didn’t abandon the hope of replacing it with an artificial eye, and he underwent several operations—each less successful than the other. The villagers soon were used to it, and children, once their curiosity was satisfied, didn’t give it a second thought. My own schoolmates wanted to know whether there was a deformed sick eye under it or a deep hole, and at home, the instant he walked in, he removed it, and we were accustomed to the scar and the deformed skin under it. Only later did I realize that his real fear had to do with the one healthy eye, that it might be injured and leave him totally blind.

  I was sent to the village kindergarten; my mother tried to earn some money making children’s dresses; Father worked on his father’s farm, waiting for a chance to buy his own farmstead and basically seeing his future as a member of the Nahalal cooperative.

  I remember nothing of the kindergarten. I was reading and writing already, and my world was rich with stories and tales rather than toys. My mother’s efforts to earn extra income were not successful, as she worked without patterns and put too much effort and material that was too good into products which the spartan, stingy, poor Nahalal families considered luxuries. I was to remain, for many years, the best-dressed little girl in the circle, and the sewing machine was put to other uses—patching and mending and making sheets and curtains. My Grandfather Shmuel regarded the experience as degrading. We were farmers, people of the land gathered from the Diaspora to reclaim and cultivate the soil, not to indulge in frills. He would not have a dressmaker for a daughter-in-law. My father tried in vain to fix the leaking roof, and perhaps one of my early real memories has to do with the obstacle course from door to bed, as one hopped around or over pots and buckets placed on the floor under the holes in the roof, to contain the rainwater.

  But before we got our own farmstead, we moved again, this time to Tel Aviv. As before, this was not my father’s doing, but a move prompted by higher Haganah circles which thought there was a job that “Moshe Dayan from Nahalal was the right guy for …”

  Two years earlier, Sadeh had come to recruit Father for the Syrian operation, and now into the cabin one afternoon walked Eliahu Golomb with a new assignment for my father. Golomb was Supreme Commander of the Haganah, and the mission he wanted my father to perform had to do with Jews rather than Arabs or Vichyites. Father would be a full-time officer in the Haganah headquarters in Tel Aviv, and participate in the attempt to stop and curtail the independent dissident undergrounds. The Haganah advocated “restraint” and cooperation with the British against the Nazis. The war was still on, and Ben-Gurion believed there was no call for acts of violence, such as the Irgun and the Lehi were engaged in, against the British or, for that matter, against innocent Arabs.

  Of all the battles, intelligence work, or political endeavors my father engaged in, this was certainly the least pleasant, emotionally the most taxing, and spiritually exhausting and trying. He rather liked some of the Irgun and Lehi leaders, respected greatly their self-sacrificing devotion, and understood, even shared, their motivation. But he knew their methods were wrong. Rather than “hunt” them—the Haganah tactic during the so-called Saison of 1943—he tried to negotiate with and persuade the dissidents, but he was unsuccessful and was unhappily forced to follow the official approach.

  Father insisted we all move to Tel Aviv, and to his father’s expression of discontent, he replied that loyalty and proximity in marriage were difficult enough to sustain and he was not going to risk it by physical separation, or take chances. Shmuel, of course, thought the big city was bound to corrupt us small children, and he was sure we would pale and weaken without the fresh farm eggs, the smell of fresh hay, and the famous Nahalal fresh double cream.

  We lived in one shabby hotel room, then in another, and Tel Aviv was harmless and cozy compared to my grandfather’s predictions. I was nearly five, and it was time to think of proper schooling for me. My parents paid a visit to the best school in Tel Aviv, talked to the teachers and the headmaster, and found out there was no room in the first grade. My father suggested I was overqualified for the first grade, and when it was ascertained that this was indeed the case, I was enrolled at the age of five in the second grade. I was two years younger than my classmates, which didn’t bother me then, or later, and even offered certain advantages, not the least of which was my parents’ pride at this enormous leap. Udi was accepted in a nursery school across the street from my school; Mother enrolled in a French course; and I proved to be a responsible “big sister,” taking Udi to and from his school, before and after mine, and babysitting with him in the afternoon. I was not only the youngest in the class but by far the smallest. Of small frame anyway, thin-limbed, and rather short, I nevertheless was strong and pretty in a regular way, and had no trouble keeping up with the others.

  By the end of my first school year, the Saison, to everybody’s great relief, was over, and a farm was available in Nahalal. Resources—mostly those of my mother’s parents—were put together, and farmstead number 53 on the Nahalal circle was ours. After ten years of marriage and two children, my parents had their own home, and if they worked hard, a stable source of income—another dream—would come true.

  FOUR : THE PROTECTIVE CIRCLE

  Every time my family returned to Nahalal, they had the illusion that it was forever. The year in the Haganah HQ did not lead my father to think in professional terms, to wish to climb higher in the hierarchy or contribute more than he did. Lack of personal ambition, which distinguished his behavior all his life, did not necessarily stem from a sense of inferiority or inability. Even at those times when he knew himself to be superior, he never indulged in self-promotion. “They” knew where he was, “they” knew his worth and how to get in touch. More than availability he didn’t wish to offer, and when it was taken, he would devote himself totally to whatever the mission was, reaching deep and high without regarding any of the positions as a step in a ladder which would advance his career.

  Number 53 farmstead had a small house on it, consisting of two rooms, a living-dining room and a kitchen. Toilet facilities were, for the time being, in the back yard, and the walk there at night with a lantern was scary. Altogether, this shaky aluminum structure, hiding a dug hole covered with a provisory wooden “seat,” the square cuts of newspaper for tissue, the unpleasant odors that stemmed from the wooden floor—all these were signs of poverty, a reminder of primitive beginnings and an inspiration to try harder, as we all did, so as to be able to install proper facilities in the house, running water and the like. (This was to be installed several years later, for at the time all efforts were concentrated on the actual farm.) In addition to the citrus grove that came with the farm, my father bought some cows, built a chicken run, and planted vegetables. There were dogs, German shepherds, and a mule called Lord which was our means of transportation when tied to a two-wheel cart. For fun we had a donkey named Menelaus, chicks under the brooder, small rabbits to play with. I had a baby brother on the way, for my mother was happily (and my father was contented this time) carrying Assi.

  Both my parents, on various occasions, referred to the years following our return to Nahalal as their happiest. These were the years between the two wars. The one had destroyed our people, and the other secured our national home. If this was happiness on borrowed time, my parents didn’t realize it, and as far as they knew or planned, life was going to consist of making the cows produce more milk, fighting insects and worms that bugged the cauliflower, and harvesting a better yield of wheat. Hopes had to do with rainfall, farm machinery, and a new coop for the chickens, and disasters meant drought, a cow giving
birth to a dead calf, or a foot-and-mouth cattle epidemic, which hurt our farm badly.

  My father’s involvement with public, military, or political affairs was minimal. His father was active in Zionist councils and in the Labor movement, and, at the time, young people were not encouraged to replace their experienced elders. Heated arguments at home were for argument’s sake, a verbal involvement after milking or before plowing.

  They were happy years for me too, and when I think of “childhood” in the abstract, before the impossible painful teens and after the little-remembered dramatic first years of my life, I recollect a rainbow dotted with pleasurable moments, delightful events, and enriching experiences.

  An active partner and contributor to this happiness was my Grandmother Dvorah. I was the oldest of her eight grandchildren, and her favorite, and I daily walked the quarter of the circle separating my parents’ farm from my grandparents’. There, her time was mine, and her world shared with me as if I were a savings account into which to pour and invest all precious knowledge and accumulated wealth of experience.

  My grandmother was not an easy woman. I had the time, the desire to learn and listen, and if not the mature understanding, the love for her, the way she was. Her dreams and aspirations were never to be fulfilled. Small and frail and very beautiful, she was ill for as long as I can remember. She fought cancer all her life and tried not to be dramatic about it. Dvorah was an artist, a serious, talented writer who had to be satisfied with expressing herself in short stories and vignette essays for the Labor-movement women’s weekly, in a language which wasn’t the language of her heart. We would sit under the grapefruit tree making butter from creamy milk till my arms ached, and talk about Pushkin. We skimmed the froth from the big bubbling pot of rose-petal jam, and talked of Anna’s suicide. Anna Karenina, Raskolnikov’s guilt, Tolstoy’s ideas, Turgenev’s men, and Chekhov’s women populated our world, and my enthusiasm waned only when she attempted to teach me Russian, of which I retain a couple of nursery rhymes. Grandmother’s Russian romanticism was well encased in a stubborn, almost tough external behavior. Her approach was cerebral, her posture in the village aloof, and her manners quite pedantic and calculated. She called me Yulinka, my parents called me Yula—a nickname I carried till I was married, and both she and Shmuel spoiled me rotten.