I ask Rekhev to ask Sangeeta when she thinks her husband will return home from the Gulf.
“Soon,” she says dreamily, looking at the screen. “He is coming back very soon.”
On the journey home, Rekhev and I cram ourselves into a crowded six-seater rickshaw bound for Alibag. My entire left side borders on his right, and I have a heightened sense of our proximity, like a line of current from shoulder to knee. When some of the other passengers disembark, making more room in the cab, I don’t peel away from him, and we sit like that, fitted like a puzzle, for more than an hour. I don’t know where he’ll go when we get back to Bombay. Perhaps he’ll take a bus back to Pune, or stay with a friend in the city. I’m not sure and I don’t ask, afraid of breaking the spell that binds us together for this one moment.
When we reach my house, he helps me bring the equipment inside, and we begin to unpack it, counting the tapes we have shot, separating the rolls of film that need to be processed.
“So what’s the story of the Bene Israel?” Rekhev asks me when we have finished. I think it over for a minute, considering my response.
“It’s about being caught between these two places, I think—India and Israel—and between two identities—Indian and Jewish. They all have a decision to make: whether they are going to stay here or move there.”
“Your Nana would be proud of this hard work,” he says. “Are you happy?”
“I am happy,” I say, and find that I mean it.
We sit at my table in comfortable silence, Rekhev reading one of my books, I labeling tapes. When he leaves later that night, I shutter myself inside and comfort myself with the private rituals of a life alone, boiling water, chopping vegetables, pouring myself a drink. I’m curious to hear the sound of American English, and keep company with CNN. It’s a year after the World Trade Center attacks, and the announcer says that 52 percent of Americans say that things are not at all back to normal in the United States. When they are asked if things will ever be back to normal, 54 percent say no. I watch a report about the IT industry in India; it shows a handsome announcer walking around a crowded bazaar as he comments on his surprise at Indians’ efficiency with computers. I see New York from two vantages: the eyes I traveled here with, and the eyes that I see with now. I understand for the first time why some people leave home and never come back. I wonder if I could do the same.
I watch the middle part of the evening stretch out before me. I think of all the things I will tell Rekhev the next time we meet.
The next morning, my mother calls, worried that she has not heard from me in two weeks.
“Where have you been?” she asks, and I explain about the holidays, that I’ve been staying in Revdanda. “Where did you sleep?” she asks, trying to imagine it.
“In a hotel,” I say, vaguely.
My mother is calling with bad news. She has heard from one of her cousins that Uncle Moses, the curmudgeonly relative whom I first met in India, is in ill health and may have only a matter of weeks, or days, to live. She asks me to go see him and pay my respects. Apparently, he is now living in Bombay with his daughter. I promise my mother that I will find him.
IT IS ONLY A YEAR since I first met him, but I find Uncle Moses very much changed, his feisty spirit cloaked underneath what seems like a tremendous amount of pain. I don’t know what he is dying of, and I don’t ask. Whereas before he seemed likely to chase me out of the room with his cane, now he seems weary, almost too tired to raise his head.
I have brought with me some of my photographs, large color prints that I’ve had blown up at a professional lab in Bombay. I thought perhaps I could show Uncle Moses my work, show him what I’ve been doing this last year. His daughter tells me that she doesn’t think that he will have energy for such activity, that his eyesight is going, but I take them out of their box anyway, bringing my chair up close to his, and lay them in my lap.
“These are Bene Israel families in Bombay,” I tell him. “Here is Magen Hassidim, and the Gate of Mercy Synagogue. . . .” I say, “This is a wedding. . . . This is a mehndi ceremony. . . .”
Uncle Moses looks barely cognizant of what I am saying. He has trouble focusing on me and closes his eyes from time to time.
“This is a family in the village of Chorde,” I say, pointing to a portrait. “I think that your wife Lily Auntie was also a Chordekar, if I’m not mistaken. . . .”
He doesn’t seem to be listening to my running commentary.
“This is a photograph of the Jewish cemetery in Bombay; this is a photograph of a young boy learning to blow shofar. . . .”
Uncle Moses clears his throat as if to speak, and I lean in to hear him.
“These . . . look . . . expensive,” he says, with difficulty.
“The prints?” I ask. “They are a little expensive. . . .”
“Waste . . . of money!” Uncle Moses says, and I’m relieved that he hasn’t lost his persnickety spirit.
“This is the synagogue in Revdanda,” I continue. “I have just spent Sukkot and Simchat Torah there, and this is I think my favorite place in India. For some reason, I feel very at home there in that synagogue. I don’t know why.”
I haven’t articulated this thought until now, but as soon as I say it I know that it is true. Uncle Moses looks at me. I see a glint of recognition slip through the milkiness in his eyes.
“I know why,” he says. “Your great-grandparents were from this place.” He raises his eyes very slowly to meet mine. “They grew up near here. They were members of this synagogue.”
I feel a prickling sense of having known this already—though how could I? With a flash, I remember the large, mossy stone wall that circles the perimeter of Revdanda. The village inside a fort that my grandmother spoke of. Of course.
I hug Uncle Moses. He feels impossibly fragile between my arms, like a stack of bones held together with cloth. There is a palpable feeling of imminent death in the apartment, as if he has already made peace with the idea of leaving and is holding on simply to give those around him a chance to say goodbye.
The more I think about what Uncle Moses told me, the more remarkable I find it. If my grandmother’s mother and father were members of this synagogue, then Revdanda is my native place. So I do have one, after all.
23
LEAH AND DANIEL
BOMBAY, JANUARY-MARCH 2003
Miss Sadia!”
I hear a young woman’s voice, and then I look up and see a head emerge over the top of the ORT school stairwell. I see a young woman in her early twenties, in a mauve-colored salwar kameez made of shiny polyester. “Miss Sadia, it’s time for my marriage!” she says, coming down the stairs, and hands me a white card, embossed with gold letters in a flowing, ornate script.
Leah marries Daniel
Of course. Leah. She was one of my students who performed the play. A girl so shy she could barely utter her lines onstage; the one who was embarrassed to talk about her engagement.
“Is it time for your wedding now?” I say, reading the date, two months away.
“You will come?” she asks.
“Of course, I’d be honored,” I say. “So who is Daniel?”
Leah blushes and shrugs, not sure how to answer the question.
“He’s Daniel.”
“He’s a Bene Israel from Bombay?” I ask.
“His family stays in Thane. An hour outside. He stays in Israel.”
“So after you marry . . .”
“We’re going to Israel the day after the marriage.”
“Have you been there before?” I feel oddly protective. I try to imagine shy Leah navigating Israel.
“No, but I’ve been wanting to go. Miss Sadia, first you come for my malida ceremony.” I have read about the malida, a Bene Israel ritual to ask Prophet Elijah for his blessing, or to show thanks.
“You’ll do the malida to bless your marriage?”
“We do the malida before we start the preparations for marriage. We will have it at my place on Sunday a
t seven. Please come.”
THAT SUNDAY, I make my way to the east side of the city, where I find Leah’s apartment, one small room, about eight feet by twelve, in a large building of identical rooms stacked on top of one another—a chawl. I’ve visited Bene Israel families in other similar buildings, and I’m struck again by how each room in the building is a different, private world, packed with multiple members of different families and all of their belongings. As I walk up the stairs, I peek into other people’s spaces. I see small Hindu shrines, calendars, televisions, women chopping vegetables on the floor. The doorway to Leah’s family’s apartment is hung with a mezuzah and a tile containing a Hebrew prayer, and inside I see eight women squatting on their heels washing and cutting fruit, beating rice, and grating coconut to make the malida, a sweet mixture which will be eaten after the recitation of prayers to honor the Prophet Elijah. Leah greets me enthusiastically, and introduces me to her mother. I say hello to Leah’s best friend, Judith, who smiles affectionately when she sees me, and sit down next to the two young women, where I start to help wash and peel fruit.
Leah lives with her mother, father, and younger brother, Joseph. I can’t imagine how they all fit here. There’s a system, Leah explains to me matter-of-factly, which makes it all work. In the morning, the room is a kitchen, where Leah’s mother prepares food for her family. In the afternoon, the room is a social space, when friends drop by and sit on a bench perched in the bay window overlooking the street. In the evening, it becomes a kitchen again, when Leah and her mother prepare dinner; after dark, it becomes a bedroom, when sheets and pillows are pulled out of the trunk and the family rests side by side on the floor.
“Would you like some water, Sadia?” Leah asks, offering me a bottle of mineral water, which I realize with equal parts guilt and gratitude has been purchased especially for me, the foreign guest. I look around, trying to ascertain who is related to whom. Everyone sits on the floor except for a slightly more affluent-looking guest in a silk sari with a gold border, who sits on a plastic chair in the corner, amiably watching the proceedings.
Leah and Judith have grown up together. They are neighbors, and their parents are close. Judith points out her mother, who is busy grating coconut on the other side of the room.
“Judith is like my sister,” Leah tells me. “We have done everything together since we were babies.”
“You’ll miss each other when Leah moves to Israel . . .” I say to Judith, pointing out the obvious.
“We were going to move there together last year,” Leah says. “But then my mother said, Don’t go there single. Marry, and then go. Judith will get engaged soon, and then we’ll both be in Israel.”
Judith smiles at the thought. “Soon,” she sighs.
“So what is the significance of the malida?” I ask.
“The malida is a very old Bene Israel tradition, an offering to Prophet Elijah, our Eliyahoo Hanabee,” Leah tells me. “When you do the malida, you make a mixture of beaten rice and coconut, and you decorate it with five fruits. The person seeking a wish to be granted asks the Prophet Elijah for his help. Then you distribute the mixture, to be eaten. When the wish is granted, again you do malida, to thank him.”
“Without this malida we cannot do anything,” Judith adds.
For this evening’s festivities, the adjacent apartment has been borrowed from Leah’s neighbor to make room for the thirty or so guests who have gathered to join in the ritual and prayers, and when the malida mixture is complete, we assemble in the other room, where we cover our heads and face the street. The room is crowded with guests, mostly men, who sing the prayers aloud in Hebrew. I help Leah’s mother to distribute the malida mixture in small paper plates, placing a small portion of the beaten rice and coconut on each plate, followed by a section of each of five fruits. At certain moments in the prayers, we eat the pieces of fruit in succession, and finally the malida mixture itself, praying for Prophet Elijah’s help to ensure that Leah’s marriage to Daniel will proceed smoothly.
The next day, I return to Leah’s apartment for another ritual, one that I have found in no book on the Bene Israel. Leah’s mother takes two new copper vessels and fills one with jaggery, a kind of unrefined sugar, and the other with a paste made of turmeric. She ties them together with brightly colored strings, and she says a prayer, stacking one on top of the other and placing them on a high shelf. She explains that this jaggery and turmeric will be used in a ritual to bless Leah before her wedding. Then she and Leah and I go around their building and gather five happily married women. One of them is a Bene Israel, but the rest of the women are Hindu—whoever happen to be at home preparing lunch or dinner for their husbands. In each of their hands, Leah’s mother places a leaf, and on that leaf two pieces of jaggery, like nuggets of concentrated sugar. Next to the jaggery she places a piece of paan and a one-rupee coin. Each of the women is instructed to eat one piece of jaggery so that her mouth is sweet, and then to feed Leah the other piece. Each wishes for Leah that the coming years of her marriage be sweet, and that she may have a successful life.
When the ritual is complete, each woman kisses Leah and wishes her well, and returns to her own apartment. Leah’s mother looks relieved.
“Now we can start buying things for the wedding,” she explains. “I have to buy saris for the groom’s family, a green sari for the reception, so many things. . . .”
I ask Leah’s mother how she feels about her daughter’s going to Israel, and Leah translates my questions into Marathi. Her mother explains that before, when Leah wanted to move to Israel with Judith, she was very worried. “I was thinking, Who will take care of her? Now she has a partner to take care of her, so I am no longer tense. I am feeling happy as well as sad that she is going to Israel.”
I ask her how she feels about the political tensions in Israel, and she thinks for a moment. “God is one, and he will help,” she says. “Hashem will help her.”
Leah and I sit in the bay window of her apartment, facing the busy street, and I ask her about Daniel. What is he like? She asks me if I’d like to see his photograph.
She pulls two snapshots out of an envelope, giggling. These are the pictures that Daniel sent in order to be considered a possible match for Leah, and she did the same.
Both of his photos were taken at wedding functions; the clothes are ornate, and the people are covered in garlands of roses. In one, Daniel has both arms around his mother; in the other he poses with his mother and brother. I note with a little surprise that he is completely handsome, with sharply defined features and a thoughtful look. I think about how a girl like Leah, strong and dependable but not known as a beauty, can benefit from the system of arranged marriages. She is clearly ecstatic at the match. In a word, Leah scored. I hope that he’s excited, too.
“What did you think when you first saw these pictures?” I ask Leah.
“I was thinking that he must be a very angry person!” she says, laughing. “Looking at these photos I was thinking, Baba, he’s looking hot-tempered!”
I look at the pictures again, trying to see it. I suppose his serious look could be considered stern, in a certain light.
“And now?” I ask, and Leah blushes deeply. I realize that she is in love.
REKHEV BEGINS VISITING BOMBAY once or twice a week for meetings about a short film that he’s directing, a 35mm narrative film based on Indian
storytelling traditions. When he is in town he comes by my apartment for tea, sometimes staying for dinner. He shows me pages and pages of drawings from his notebooks, lists of images and storyboards for his upcoming projects: a village shaped like a fish, a disappearing book, a mysterious figure who reveals himself to be an automaton, his body filled with birds and snakes. There’s a magic to Rekhev’s work, informed by his understanding of Indian history and mythology. It’s nothing like my interest in the everyday.
The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir Page 35