by Adam LeBor
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By 1936 Julia and David Chelouche no longer lived in Tel Aviv. They had moved to Haifa in 1930 after a sharp reversal in the family fortunes. During the 1920s Julia’s father-in-law Avraham Haim and his brother Yosef Eliyahu had overstretched themselves. Taxes were high on their land holdings, the banks were increasing their pressure, and the land market collapsed. The brothers were forced to sell substantial areas for a fraction of their worth. Two years later the market jumped back up by six or seven hundred per cent, but by then it was too late. In 1925 Avraham Haim died. David’s brothers Marco and Zaki returned from Paris and joined the family construction company that had helped build Neve Tsedek and Ahuzat Bayit. Some time later, the firm was closed down and David, his brothers and cousins, were sent to make their own way in the world. David found a job in Haifa, at a flour mill owned by the Rothschilds. Marco opened an estate agency and Zaki practised as an architect, building blocks of flats in the International Style, otherwise known as Bauhaus. Haifa was just up the coast, only a couple of hours away. But like her ancestors in the 1880s who did not want to leave Jaffa for Neve Tsedek, Julia wanted to stay among her family and friends. Saying goodbye to Tel Aviv was heart-rending, she wrote in her memoir: ‘I found it difficult to leave family and friends and move to Haifa. I remember the day we left, we stood on the steps and tears streamed from my eyes. My mother in law said to me, “Come and visit us at every opportunity. And on holidays we will all celebrate here.”’
Like Jaffa, Haifa was a beautiful city overlooking the sea. Julia and David rented a large flat owned by a Muslim, Hasan Dik. It had nine rooms and two balconies, one overlooking the port, and the other Mount Carmel. There was a historic family link to Haifa. It was here that David’s great-grandfather, Avraham Chelouche, had first arrived in 1838. Julia and David contributed a further generation to the dynasty and had four children: a son, Aharon, and three daughters, Edith, Rina and Haya. Aharon, Edith and Rina enrolled at Haifa’s Reali School, one of the most prestigious in all of Palestine, but Haya had reacted badly to a smallpox vaccination and did not go to school. Eventually Julia sent her to a children’s home in Beirut.
With the borders with Lebanon and Syria open, it was easy to travel to the neighbouring Arab states. Each summer Julia, her children and other relatives would decamp to the mountains in Lebanon, where the air was cooler, staying in a different village or small town each year. David would travel up each weekend from Haifa, a journey of about three hours, one that cannot now be made. Palestine was then still part of the Levant. Jaffa’s Nagib Bustros Street was crowded with shoppers from Cairo, Beirut, even Baghdad. Despite the violence and tension between Jews and Arabs, the old Sephardic families were still close to their friends among the Arab a’yan. Julia, David and their relatives were friends with the Arab elite families, such as the Rocks, and a man called Ali Mustakim who would, after 1948, reappear in the Chelouche family history. One year Julia and David went to a New Year’s ball at the Rock home, in Ajami. ‘At midnight they turned off the lights, then lit them again and wished “Happy New Year” to everyone. The table was set with all sorts of wonderful foods, the liquor flowed and we danced until very late,’ she wrote.
‘We lived in the Middle East, and we were part of the Middle East,’ recalls Julia’s daughter Edith Krygier, who was born in 1925. Edith now lives in a stylish, elegant house north of Tel Aviv and is proud of her family name and its rich history. ‘I remember my grandfather Avraham Haim and his friends talking about their good Arab friends in Jaffa. They had a real relationship with them. They would be invited to their homes, and they would invite them back. It was easy for us to make friends with the Arabs, since we spoke their language and were familiar with their culture and customs. The Arabs were not tolerant towards people from other cultures. I was raised learning this from my mother instinctively.’ When Edith and Rina were a little older, Julia and David sent them to the American School in Beirut. Those were happy days, she recalls: ‘I grew up with children from all over the Middle East, there were girls from the Iraqi royal family and from Egypt. We had wonderful American teachers.’
Yet Edith felt there were some things about the Middle East she would never understand. When her parents’ Arab landlord, Hasan Dik, married, the wedding feast lasted for a week. ‘They fed the poor Arab people from the back of our house. They were lining up for lamb, rice, fruit and vegetables. Then one day after the wedding Dik decided to deepen the well for his houses. They started digging, and we heard screams. They had lowered a worker down, but he had died because of the poisonous gases inside the well. Hasan Dik knew he died but still ordered his workers to continue digging, so they lowered another one. He died, and then another one was lowered. They all died, all in front of my eyes. They did not have any respect for human life. I will never forget this. On the one hand they fed all the poor people with delicious food, on the other they were very cruel.’
Haifa was a train ride away from Jaffa, and Julia and her family returned to Tel Aviv every year to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Pesach (Passover), in the spring. Travelling in the 1930s was a stylish affair, recalls Edith. ‘My mother and father both had special suits for the journey. She wore a tweed two-piece, while he had a white linen jacket, with a straw hat. There was an African porter at the station, who wore a long white robe. He took the luggage and you never carried a thing. The train was so clean that the window glass was sparkling. The family made a big fuss about Pesach. They made us new dresses and bought us new shoes. It was a big occasion.’
By the 1930s the kind of relationships the Chelouches enjoyed with their Arab friends were increasingly rare. The leadership of the Yishuv was dominated by Ashkenazi Jews from central and eastern Europe. Most could not speak Arabic, did not understand Arab culture or customs and had little or no interest in trying to do so. Many were ardent socialists and distrusted businessmen such as the Chelouches. Instead the Ashkenazi elite preferred to work through their own agencies, and ignored the decades-old, carefully nurtured relationships between the Sephardic families and the Arab landowners. Sephardic grandees such as Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche did their best to mediate between the Arabs of Jaffa and the Jews of Tel Aviv. But he despaired at the insular attitudes of the Jewish immigrants who seemed not to understand that they were no longer in Europe, but were living in the Middle East. The Yishuv had been established, he wrote in his autobiography, taking every factor into consideration except one: the Arabs who already lived in Palestine. ‘The bitter and terrible truth is that our leaders and many of the founders of the Yishuv did not undestand the high value of good relations between neighbours … During this period of building our country, we know nothing about Arab customs, habits, manners, tribes and social trends, their economic and cultural situation and more. In all the Zionist literature there is not even one book that would describe these people’s lives accurately or contain genuine information about their situation.’
The Chelouches’ business experience and foresight brought them great respect and influence among both peoples. With tact and caution it would be possible to create a relationship of mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs, wrote Yosef Eliyahu. He was a revered and respected figure in Palestine, but in later years few among the Yishuv leadership acted on his advice about relations with the Palestinians. Yosef Eliyahu died in July 1934, just three months after his beloved wife, Freha. Mourned by his family and his multitude of friends of all faiths, his life was remembered as a testimony to the possibility of co-existence between Arabs and Jews. His words still ring true today: ‘We have to build a bridge between us and them.’
Meanwhile Julia had a new brother-in-law: an Ashkenazi Jew called Yosef Pomrock, who had married her husband David’s sister, Simha. Yosef, a graduate of Warsaw University and a qualified dentist, had arrived in Palestine in 1921, at the age of twenty-seven. He had been despatched by his parents to find his meshugga (crazy) Zionist brother Moshe and bring him back to his hometown of Radom, one hundred kilometre
s south of Warsaw. Moshe was living in a tent somewhere near Haifa, working with a road-building group, and he had contracted malaria. The story of Yosef’s mission has entered Chelouche family folklore. Once he arrived in Palestine he headed straight for Haifa to find his brother. He took an Arab bus, which dropped him off near a hill. Yosef trudged up the road until he reached the camp, where he asked about his brother. ‘Moshe is in his tent today, as he does not feel well,’ one of the workers said. In fact Moshe had begun to feel a little better. He went to the flap of his tent to take some air, which he hoped might revive him. As he stood at the tent’s opening, he saw in the distance a man coming towards him, dressed in a suit, holding a dentist’s bag. The man looked exactly like his brother Yosef. Moshe shook his head. The man continued to walk towards him.
‘I must be very sick,’ Moshe told himself, ‘I am hallucinating about my brother.’ He went back into his tent, and took to his bed. When he woke up his brother was beside him, not a hallucination at all. They embraced, and Yosef explained his mission. Moshe nodded. ‘It’s true, I do have malaria. But at least let’s stay here tonight. You can see how we live. We have a campfire, we bake eggs and potatoes, we sing songs. And then tomorrow we can decide what to do.’
Yosef nodded. Why not, what difference could one night make? And he had come a long way. He took off his jacket, and made himself comfortable. Later that day, when dusk fell, the workers came back to camp. Young, sun-bronzed, lively and enthusiastic, they were an attractive group, especially the women. They were not like Warsaw girls. They wore shorts. They looked Yosef up and down with frank and confident interest. Moshe addressed the group as they prepared the evening meal.
‘This is my brother, Yosef. He has come to take me home to Poland,’ he proclaimed, with a certain tone in his voice. The group understood him and nodded. The camp was especially enjoyable that evening. The fire burned brighter, the food was more plentiful than usual, the Hebrew songs sung with greater gusto. The young pioneers explained how they were building a new world by hand, a home for the Jews, where they no longer need be afraid or at the mercy of kings and prime ministers. A world where nobody would persecute them because of their faith. They sacrificed much, it was true. There were no cafés or cinemas up here on the hill. They lived in tents. There were wolves, malaria, the risk of attack by Arabs. But there was no other life like this.
Yosef watched and listened, nodding thoughtfully. The next morning he went to the nearest post office and sent a telegram home to Radom: Moshe is not coming back and I am staying. And he did, some time afterwards meeting and marrying Simha Chelouche, sister of David. Yosef Pomrock, the Ashkenazi dentist from Warsaw, ‘straight as a cedar tree’ as Julia Chelouche described him in her memoir, was made welcome by the Chelouches. He in turn was entranced by their Mediterranean warmth, and the spicy, exotic food they prepared, quite unlike anything he had ever eaten in Poland. Yosef and Simha lived in a house that Avraham Haim and Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche had built for their daughters on Herzl Street, one of Tel Aviv’s oldest thoroughfares. Yosef and Simha had a daughter, Anina, and a son, Zvi Avraham. The Sephardim and the Ashkenazim were finally intermarrying, and out of the two communities would come a new nation: Israel.
5
Palestine Beckons
1930s
When Jaffa falls into hell I will not be among the mourners.
The diary of David Ben-Gurion, 11 July 19361
Hasan Hammami was playing happily with his new toys at home in Jebaliyyeh. His favourite was a white rocking horse with a black tail, and a splendid red, white and black saddle. The horse was one of several fine gifts he had received lately. He was surprised that his parents had given him so many presents at once, seemingly out of the blue. Then everything suddenly became clear. Hasan spotted a man walking up the street carrying a small case. Every small boy was terrified of him. ‘As you can imagine we were aware of the man carrying a small case, with his name and profession artistically painted on it. My brother Hussein and I smelled blood and ran to hide in the corner of the veranda,’ recalls Hasan. It was 1937 and Hasan was five years old, Hussein, three. The man with the case was the Mtahher, the ritual circumciser.
Unlike Jews, who circumcise their sons after eight days, Muslims do not have a set time for the ceremony. Some families arrange it soon after birth, while others leave it until the boy reaches his teens, when, like a Jewish bar-mitzvah, the ceremony is a (rather more painful) rite of passage into adulthood. The ceremonies are virtually identical, although the Jewish blessings are in Hebrew and the Muslim ones in Arabic. The boy is dressed in a white silk or cotton gown. The flap of skin that is removed is buried in the garden, as both faiths hold that body parts should be properly interred. The family and friends then celebrate with a festive meal.
‘Hiding did not help and they soon found us,’ says Hasan, who like his father Ahmad, and grandfather Shaker before him, exudes the old-world elegance and charm of the Palestinian middle class. Hasan now lives in Florida with his English wife Barbara, but his rich store of memories of life in Jaffa has helped sustain him through the decades of exile. ‘The act did not take long. The mtahher was an artist. The whole thing was over in a minute. He made sure that there was no bleeding, sprayed on some antiseptic powder and wrapped our penises in white gauze. He left before we’d realised what had happened.’ After the operation, Hasan and Hussein changed their usual clothes for a traditional white jellabiyeh (robe) without underpants, to prevent any chafing. Within a week or two everything had healed up.
Hasan’s father Ahmad kept Muslim traditions, and prayed regularly. There was no alcohol in the Hammami house, and he gave zakat – the charitable donations that are incumbent on Muslims – generously. Ahmad often took Hasan to Jaffa’s mosque overlooking the beach, known as the Jami’a al-Bahr, the Mosque of the Sea. It was smaller and more intimate than Abu Nabout’s nearby Great Mosque. There was something very special about praying while the waves washed over the beach nearby, and the sea breeze blew in, cooling the prayer hall. ‘It was cool in the summer, and warm in the winter,’ says Hasan. Ahmad was also a modern man. He and his brothers wore western suits and ties, although sometimes they donned a tarbush. ‘Whenever new technology was launched my father was the head of the wave. He bought one of the first deep-well water pumps, an HMV radio and record player, a telephone exchange that could link a dozen branch lines for his business, and the latest model of car,’ says Hasan. ‘He had a balanced view of family, business, sports, innovation, modernisation and community. He had clear ideas about the future and was a strict disciplinarian, to ensure especially that we boys did not stray too far. He worked hard to provide for us, and rarely showed love in the modern manner of hugging and kissing, but gave it without limit in his care for us, the time he gave us and everything that he knew.’
Ahmad Hammami was very keen on cars. Shortly before the Second World War broke out, he bought a navy-blue Mercedes with jump seats, and hired a driver. One day Ahmad took Hasan with him and briefly left him alone in the car, which still had keys in the ignition. A little knowledge proved to be a dangerous thing. ‘I had my first driving and accident all at once, when I was six years old. I had been observing what the driver did. I turned the ignition key, pressed the starter button, and lo and behold, the car started in gear and moved slowly forward. I began to panic because I had no idea what to do next. The wall solved the problem as the car ran into it. But luckily no harm was done. I did not try this again for a long time.’ Hasan was always an adventurous boy. Once he climbed on the gardener’s horse, which was fun until his cousin Ihsan poked a stick into the horse’s rear. ‘It galloped off until it almost ran into the number five bus and stopped suddenly. I slid over its neck and scraped my nose and cheek, which both bled profusely.’
For the children of Jebaliyyeh and neighbouring Ajami, these were idyllic days, of playing happily, of swimming and picnics on the beach. Hasan and his brothers swam in a small cove, just a couple of hundred yards from the hou
se, although his sisters were not allowed to go to the beach. ‘I learnt to swim at an early age. My father encouraged us to practise and when he was confident I was ready, he took me out about two hundred yards into the sea on a hasakeh, a flat-topped canoe, and tipped me over. The panic I felt in the deep water did not last long. I found I really could swim, not just stay afloat in the water, and I swam back to shore.’
The Andraus house was not far from the Hammamis’ home, although Amin and Hanneh told their children not to play with the Hammami boys, who were judged too naughty. Still, Hasan had plenty of playmates. Apart from his own brothers and sisters, there were his many cousins, the children of Ahmad’s brothers Mohammad and Adel. The brothers’ houses were all built on the same plot of land, surrounded by a walled garden full of flowers and fruit trees. The children even had their own small patch of land which they kept free of weeds, and they grew their own flowers. Hasan’s younger sister Fadwa carefully tended a pink rosebush. Every day the ice-man came to deliver the frozen block for the Hammamis’ refrigerator, causing great excitement among the children. He arrived on his donkey cart, with great slabs of ice strapped inside, and broke off a large piece. The boys ran after the donkey, picking up the ice chips that were always left behind. In the orange season, the children helped to soak the branches of the pomegranate tree in the pool. Once they were softened by the water, they were woven into boxes to pack oranges.