My Father, His Daughter
Page 32
The next day I recorded a half-hour TV interview, in tribute to my father. Prime time on Wednesdays is usually devoted to the controversy of the week; a panel of journalists fly at a cabinet minister or some other top personality. This week was to be different, and where my father “faced the nation” on many happy and sad, but always dramatic, occasions, I sat, facing one interviewer, trying to reach the essence of what he was and what he meant to us all.
My voice may have quivered, my hands trembled slightly, but I was sure of what I had to say and selected my words carefully. The evening paper on the following day remarked: “The daughter does not evade or apologize. This was not an advocate speech but a firm statement of love, comprising an eloquent defense of the right of the man to be different, original, strong, proud and even alone.”
Toward the end, I read the poem he wrote which had been attached to the will. Translation certainly doesn’t do justice to whatever poetic merits it has, but the contents, curious as they are, weren’t harmed. It was written in Tel Hashomer Hospital, shortly after the surgery to remove the cancerous tumor from his colon, fifteen months before his death.
At the End of the Day
Come, my three children and Rahel, and let us sit together around the stone in the garden.
I find myself at my nightfall, the wind is blowing from the sea.
My days were not devoted to you. I was never the perfect father, I followed my own path, never exposing my grief and joy.
I lived my own life.
Only two things I could do:
Sow, plow and reap the wheat
and
Fight back the guns threatening our homes.
Let each of you cultivate our ancestors’ land, and have the sword within reach above your bed. And at the end of your days, bring it down and give it to your children.
And now, let each of you take his bundle and walking stick to cross his Jordan in his own way.
My blessings be with you, do not let the hardships of life paralyze you.
[Written at Tel Hashomer Hospital, July 29, 1980]
The camera didn’t notice the tear through which I managed to read the text. I put the paper down and shared my feelings about the poem. It amazed me. There was something primeval about it. Coarse and frightening. The land and the sword—these are the necessities of survival. Not the Bible he admired, not Alterman, not the written word or the expression of morality, not the wisdom of generations or the mystique of a people for generations swordless and landless … It was a biblical command, clannish and almost primitive, no faith or spiritual command. It had the feeling of Adam’s exile from Paradise, rather a curse than a gift. We were doomed to till and fight, and this is what we were to bequeath our children. We were each to cross our own Jordan, equipped with the spade and the spear. Did he write it in a melancholy moment of poetic mood, or did he mean it verbatim? I’ll never know, as I’ll never find out many other answers, and I don’t dare suggest them in his stead.
The weekend papers carried the last tributes to my father, marking the end of the thirty-day mourning period. Among the many printed pages was a long—the first—interview with Rahel, titled “The Other Moshe Dayan.” The article is a hymn to a great overwhelming love, in which everything is “for the first time” and “nobody would have thought he could” … Bring flowers, a box of strawberries, drive in the moonlight to a romantic site, share inner feelings or a meal consisting of rare and expensive delicacies … “The Other Dayan” was able to fight wars and write books thanks to the inspiration of his wife; he drank wine with his meals and had no patience for fools. The journalist, after this interview, “was not at all surprised to learn the contents of Dayan’s will.” In her presence, the other Dayan was “warm, sensitive and generous.” The article ends with a description of his last hours. A strange one, to say the least. Friday afternoon, she left to go home and freshen up. “But around five she felt uneasy and hurried to the hospital. Dayan was conscious but his body frightfully cold. He asked the doctors and nurses to leave the room; she wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. ‘I am tired,’ he mumbled. Rahel lifted him up, and then all of a sudden he slipped from her arms and sank into bed. Rahel cried out, noticing his open eye, lifeless. She knew that Moshe Dayan was dead; he had died in her arms … For the last time, she took his rough hand, with its thick, bony fingers. This hand now, as if shrunk, was very thin—and lifeless …”
Weren’t we there too? Was it all a figment of wild imagination? Did we not enter his room at six? Did I not wait with her outside his room when attempts were being made to save his life? Did she not entertain a slim hope with us when we held on to the counter on the intensive-care unit, watching on the screen his failing heartbeats? Did I not hold his other hand across the bed from her? Did it really matter?
A source of light produces rays; sound reaches us in waves. What we see and what we hear are a reflection or an echo deflected or returned by the objects the rays and the waves break against or pass through. Their full spectrum never reaches our senses in the ordinary manner. Nature has equipped us to absorb only a given fraction of these sensations, thus safeguarding us from overwhelming, dangerous, harmful light and sound.
My father’s personality varied, we all do, according to the receiving end of his beacons and sound waves. We each had our own “other Dayan,” loud and clear or a distant murmur, bright and colorful or sultry gray, blinding or deafening. The exposure varies; so does our ability to contain it. Now that the source of his specific light and sound waves is gone, what remains is a projected picture, reflections and echoes which we can refer to as selected, probably slightly distorted, memories. Evoking those, through the strainers of my cornea and eardrums and brain cells, is the purpose of this book, without a sense of mission, but definitely with a sense of responsibility stemming from the grammatical structure of the phrase: He was my father, I am his daughter.
EPILOGUE
My father’s archaeological collection was bought from his widow, through the most generous contribution of an American philanthropist, by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The house in Zahala, its extraordinary garden and many of the less valuable antiques scattered throughout it, was put up for sale by Rahel, soon after my father’s death. A wealthy lawyer purchased it and lives there with his family and fearsome dogs. The small building in the garden was turned into a study, and on the shelves where ancient vessels were exhibited, there is an impressive collection of dolls, each wearing a different national costume, still encased in plastic.
After lengthy and unpleasant negotiations, Rahel’s lawyers offered Udi, Assi, and me a “settlement.” I would not embarrass her by quoting the sum, or its size in proportion to the wealth that was my father’s. The spirit in which it was given induced me to donate a fair portion of it to charities and a few individuals who deserved and were not beneficiaries of my father’s financial attention while he was alive.
On the first memorial day, a large crowd gathered at my father’s graveside, and Assi said Kaddish.
The second and third year, a smaller faithful group heard Dov’s Kaddish. My brothers chose not to attend the official ceremony. We all visit the Hill of Shimron when our mood or need takes us there. Respecting our mother’s wish, we have made sure that the lot next to Father’s grave is kept vacant for her, may she live to a hundred and twenty.
Telem, my father’s political party, ceased to exist. I joined the Labor Party, which I believed to be, in spite of bitter sentiments, the closest in ideology to my father’s political heritage. I campaigned in the 1984 elections, which resulted in the formation of a unity government, with Shimon Peres, the Labor leader, as Prime Minister. My place on the Labor list was low enough to preclude any possibility of my becoming a member of the Knesset, but I could at least make sure that since the foundation of the state there would always be a Dayan on some list.
It is impossible to keep updating the turbulent chronicle of my family. Udi divorced his second wife
. Assi remarried after the 1982 war in Lebanon and had a baby boy, Lior, who will know his father’s father only from photographs. Dan celebrated his bar mitzvah, in synagogue and in the intimacy of our home, shortly after the period of mourning for my father was over. Rahel sent him a tallith and a gold watch which had belonged to but were never worn by my father, gifts he must have received from admirers.
My mother left Washington and returned to live in Israel. She continues to work as a consultant in Latin America and Africa, but it is her house which is home for all of us now.
My father was born in the spring and died in the fall. This is the cycle of fruit-bearing trees. Against the basic laws of nature, while the tree itself is gone, its roots are not dead, and it continues to bear fruit.
Image Gallery
Dayan with his mother and sister, 1926
As a schoolboy, 1929
With Yaël, 1940
Moshe and Ruth as newlyweds
As a prisoner in Acre prison, 1940
Yaël and her paternal grandparents, 1946
With brothers, Assi and Udi
With her mother in 1956, during basic training
Cadet school graduation ceremony, 1957
In Paris, 1961
At Udi’s wedding, 1963
At dinner in Athens, 1965
With Ariel Sharon in the Sinai, 1967
At Yaël’s wedding to Dov Sion, 1967
Dov and Yaël on their honeymoon in Rome, 1967
The birth of Yaël’s son Dan, 1968
Dayan with his grandson Dan in Zahala, 1972
Dayan and Ariel Sharon during the Yom Kippur War, 1973
The archaeological collection at Zahala
Dayan with Henry Kissinger, Zahala
A postcard from Camp David in 1978 during the peace talks
Yaël and Dayan at the White House for the signing of the Egyptian Peace Treaty in 1979
Moshe Dayan, Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Begin in Israel
Yaël with Rahel at Dayan’s memorial service
Mourners at Dayan’s funeral, October 1981
About the Author
Yaël Dayan is an Israeli author and political figure. Her father, Moshe Dayan, was the military leader who oversaw the stunning capture of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. Like her father, Dayan served in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, of which she was a member for ten years with the Labor Party. An outspoken activist, Dayan has been involved with Peace Now and other organizations fostering the peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians. She has written five novels, including Three Weeks in October, about the Yom Kippur War. Among Dayan’s nonfiction works are Israel Journal, a memoir about the Six-Day War, and My Father, His Daughter, a biography of Moshe Dayan.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1985 by Yaël Dayan
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
Cover photo by Yaël Rosen
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9881-9
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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YAËL DAYAN
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