The Fairest Among Women

by Dalya Bilu

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Author’s Note

  One: Ali Hamouda’s House of Notes

  Two: Thread of Saffron

  Three: The Greatest Love in the World

  Four: Four Butterflies, Four Husbands

  Five: The Love of Uncles

  Six: Cinema Rosa

  Seven: A Life of Habit

  Eight: Angel Wings

  Nine: A Dead Man’s Smile

  Ten: Portrait of a Husband

  Eleven: The Dancing School

  Twelve: Love to the Steps of a Dance

  Thirteen: The Invasion of the Shoes

  Fourteen: The Fattest Woman in Israel

  Fifteen: Jacob’s Dream

  Sixteen: Cheerful Hands

  Seventeen: Angels on the Ceiling

  Eighteen: Poor Madame Butterfly

  Nineteen: Butterflies of Ash

  Twenty: The Miracle Worker

  Twenty-One: One Child and Three Fathers

  Twenty-Two: The Beloved of the Crows

  Twenty-Three: “My Little Angel has Fallen!”

  Twenty-Four: The Punishment of Time

  Twenty-Five: A Golden Ladder

  Also by Shifra Horn

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In April 1948 a bloody battle for control of West Jerusalem took place between Arab and Israeli armies. The wealthy inhabitants of the Arab neighborhood of Katamon, with its beautiful stone villas, suffered as a result of the fighting. Caught between the two armies, the neighborhood was subjected to a barrage of bullets and shells, and the lives of the residents became intolerable. As the fighting continued to rage, they fled, leaving behind them uneaten meals, unmade beds, and all their possessions, for unknown destinations, with the clothes on their backs and the keys to their houses around their necks, hoping and believing that the war would soon be over and they would be able to return to their homes. The neighborhood was conquered by the Israeli army, and the original residents were never allowed to return to their homes.

  When the battle was over the magnificent empty homes were taken over by Jewish refugees from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which had been conquered by Jordanian Legionnaires. They were joined by those fleeing from the borderline neighborhood of Mamilla, at the foot of the Old City walls, which was subjected to heavy bombardment and bullets from Jordanian snipers. Broken in body and spirit, Holocaust survivors, who had left behind them in Europe the ashes of their murdered families and their memories, homes, and property, crowded together with Jewish exiles from the Arab countries, who left everything behind them and emigrated to the Promised Land.

  In the rooms of the abandoned villas of Katamon these refugee families set about trying to rebuild their ruined lives and to forget the sights of death and war.

  * * *

  This book is dedicated to refugees all over the world, violently uprooted from their lives in the shadow of war.

  one

  ALI HAMOUDA’S HOUSE OF NOTES

  The earliest event etched on Rosa’s memory was a noise. A strange, muffled, swishing sound, unlike anything else she had ever heard, filled her with dread on the night they moved into the new apartment and became the first memory of her life. This muffled noise, which easily prevailed over the routine, familiar crackling of the guns and thunder of the shells, made her hair stand on end and disturbed her sleep.

  In years to come, when she tried to recapture it for her children, she said that the noise sounded like the dragging of bodies, many bodies, of people no longer alive.

  All that night, while Angela, her mother, hastily packed their few possessions in British ammunition boxes that smelled of grease and gun oil, taking care to put her slain husband’s things in a separate box on which she wrote, in black ink, AMATZIA, the crackling of gunfire went on echoing in the town, interrupted by the muffled dragging noises and people’s hushed voices. What exactly they were dragging there she didn’t know, since she was still only a little girl. And when she tried to approach the window, to penetrate the darkness and see what was causing the noise, her mother screamed at her to get back into the room and closed the shutters.

  Even the Jewish soldiers of the Palmach, who had won the bloody battle of the Saint Simon Monastery and invaded the affluent neighborhood of Katamon, which emptied overnight of its Arab residents, were unable to stop the noise. It turned out to be caused by carpets, legions of brightly colored carpets rolled up into thick, heavy sausages and dragged, like prisoners bound hand and foot, through the streets of the town on the night after the battle. The magnificent carpets, which had never left their homes, were peeled from the cool stone tiles where they had been slumbering peacefully for years in the rooms of the affluent villas of Katamon and hauled against their will away on the looters heels’. Humbly they were dragged through the dust, leaving furrows in the ground as they passed, their brilliant colors blackened with the filth of the streets, the threads woven and tied by the strong, nimble fingers of the young women weavers coming loose. Where the carpets went, who dragged them away, what floor tiles they were covering today, and whose feet were cushioned by their softness—nobody knew the answers to Rosa’s questions when she grew up and tried to solve the mystery of the walking carpets.

  In years to come, whenever she came across a magnificent carpet in the homes of friends or relations, she would look closely and search for signs of dragging, in case it turned out to be one of the looted carpets that had terrified her with their muffled noise on the night after the Battle of Saint Simon.

  The next morning they moved from their narrow room in Mamilla to the new house they had been allocated in Katamon. Its Arab owners had fled in panic and made their way in a sad convoy of cars and loaded wagons that crept along the Hebron Road to an unknown destination. All the way from Mamilla to the abandoned neighborhood of Katamon, little Rosa walked with one hand held tight in her mother’s and the other imprisoned in that of her uncle Joseph. The household goods, the mattresses, the quilts, and their clothes and those of the dead Amatzia preceded them on a ramshackle baby carriage made of wood. Rosa remembered the bare back of the porter pushing the baby carriage heaped with the greasy ammunition boxes. The back was broad and glistening with sweat, and the dark hairs growing on the round shoulders stuck to the wet flesh. When they arrived Angela argued over his fee, and he went away cursing and spitting in disappointment.

  Splendid villas greeted them in their new neighborhood, and the tense stillness in the air underlined the chirping of the birds hiding between the boughs of the mulberry trees, palm fronds, and pine needles as if they were afraid of being hit by a stray bullet. The house that had been assigned to them and that, together with its inhabitants, was to decide Rosa’s fate and set her life on its predetermined course, was built of chiseled pink stones veined with red. Tall, narrow windows, framed in jutting stones, looked at them curiously under arched eyebrows and half-lowered blue blinds. Rosa raised her eyes and saw the rusty remains of the rain dripping from an iron gutter projecting from the corner and gaping at her like the beak of an ancient bird. The downspout climbed up the wall of the house to an ungainly roof covered with orange tiles, which reminded her of a fez. The iron gate, shaped like a potbellied treble clef, opened wide with Oriental hospitality and greeted them with a merry squeak that broke the tense silence. A vast hall, stripped of carpets and
furniture, welcomed them in; and a fresh smell of lavender mixed with the sweet scent of the jasmine twining round the window bars, designed by the music-loving owner of the house to look like musical notes, assailed Rosa’s nostrils. Like a trespasser on somebody else’s property, afraid that the rightful owners would emerge to chase them away in disgrace, Angela took Rosa’s hand, pressed it tightly to her bosom, leaving white pressure marks on her palm, and set out with her to explore the deserted rooms on either side of the hall.

  In the kitchen they found a cold meal set on a spotless damask cloth, covering a magnificent mahogany table that appeared to be crouching in the corner on legs carved to resemble lions’ paws. Rosa felt the pitas and marveled at their unexpected hardness, gazed at the black olives gleaming seductively in their bath of green oil, examined the soft white goats’ cheese called labneh, whose sour smell pervaded the house, and tried to breathe in the aroma of the black kebabs threaded on little skewers, around which a swarm of glittering flies was buzzing. She longed to break off a piece of pita and dip it in the labneh, but Angela’s bony hand shot out and slapped Rosa’s dimpled little one. The insulted child withdrew her hand from the tempting food and burst into the frustrated screams of a hungry little girl whose food has been snatched from her mouth.

  “It’s not ours,” Angela explained. “It’s not our food.”

  “So whose food is it?” she asked when she calmed down. Although her mother usually took care to answer all her questions, this time she did not bother to reply.

  Like someone rudely shaken out of her sleep in the middle of the night, Angela walked around the house in the wake of the man in uniform who had been waiting to meet them. She pointed to the room she wanted and asked for it in a weak voice. Rosa was surprised at her choice. The room was full of excrement, and there was a strong smell of urine in the air. After scrubbing the floor and scattering Amatzia’s possessions about the room, Angela tried to put Rosa to sleep in a new-looking wooden bed she had dragged in from the adjacent room. Rosa looked suspiciously at the bed, on which plump little angels were painted in soft pastel colors, and sat down on it hesitantly. With a weary movement of her hand Angela motioned her to lie down, and she curled up obediently and sank into the soft mattress. But just as she was falling asleep she suddenly sprang up as if she had done something wrong.

  “Whose bed is this?” she asked.

  “It’s yours now,” Angela answered in a confidential whisper.

  “But someone slept in it before. Another little girl slept in it; where is she now?”

  “The little girl went away, and now it’s yours,” said Angela.

  “Then the bed isn’t mine, and I’m not allowed to sleep in it,” said Rosa firmly, remembering the pita and labneh.

  “If you don’t want to sleep on it you can sleep on the floor,” her mother answered crossly.

  Worn out, Rosa sprawled out on the new bed, thinking of the sounds she had heard the night before, of the little princess on whose bed she was sleeping, and of the painted cherubs playing her to sleep on their harps. With sweet sounds in her ears and images of golden-haired princesses dancing in front of her, Rosa closed her eyes and fell asleep. The mattress, which still held the warmth and the smell of that other little girl, who had gone, never to return, who had wet its kapok with her tears when she was sad and dreamed sweet dreams in its depths, quietly and submissively embraced the heavy body of the new little girl who had found a refuge in it.

  That night Rosa met her. She was a little girl of her own age wearing a ruffled white dress, with airy lace gloves as white as snow on her hands and spotless white socks and patent leather shoes on her feet. Around her neck hung a big, heavy iron key, tied to a white silk ribbon and dangling against her chest like a precious locket. If she hadn’t been so short, Rosa would have taken her for a bride. She looked at the girl in alarm and realized that she was looking at her own image, as if she were looking at herself in a mirror. The two little girls stared wide-eyed at each other.

  Rosa dared to break the heavy silence. “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” the little girl answered like an echo.

  “I asked first. Who are you?”

  “You’re sleeping in my bed,” the strange little girl said in a quiet voice, her face as expressionless as if the angel bed had not been stolen from her.

  “It’s mine now. My mother said so,” Rosa retorted, holding on to the wooden railing firmly, as if the mattress were about to slip out from under her body.

  “But before it was mine,” said the stranger quietly, afraid to wake Angela and Joseph, sleeping soundly on their bedding on the floor.

  Rosa knew that the little girl was right, and she held her tongue because she didn’t know what to say. Then she gathered the courage to ask, “What’s your name? Mine’s Rosa.”

  With inexplicable obstinacy the stranger refused to reveal her name, and Rosa decided for her: “If you don’t want to tell me your name, I’ll call you Rina,” she announced, happy to give her a name of which she was particularly fond at the time.

  The strange little girl rolled the name round in her mouth like a ball: “Ri, Rin, Rina,” and with lackluster eyes accepted her new name.

  “What’s that key?” Rosa asked, and weighed the key in her hand.

  “It’s the key to my house,” she replied, hesitating.

  “And where is your house?” asked Rosa, even though she knew the answer.

  The little girl didn’t answer, as if she hadn’t heard the question.

  “So where are you sleeping now?” asked Rosa. “My mother told me today that you’re sleeping in the bed of another little girl who went away.”

  Rina was silent. With her snow white hand she signaled to Rosa to make room for her. Rosa turned down the blanket, and to her astonishment the little girl got into bed with her clothes, her gloves, and her shoes on. Rina laid her head with its halo of curls on the plump pillow next to Rosa’s, and in a tone of command said to her: “Now we have to go to sleep.” Rosa snuggled up to her obediently and fell asleep.

  When she woke up in the morning the little girl was gone. In her place she found a huge doll with a hard china face and a soft body, cheeks painted pink, blue glass eyes, and a magnificent tower of yellow curls tied with a red silk ribbon. The doll wore a white ruffled dress, and on its feet were soft kidskin sandals. Rosa looked in horror at the doll’s dead eyes, which looked back at her with an accusing expression, and pushed it away with a cry. The doll fell onto the tiles, which were decorated with pictures of leaves and fruit, and its hollow skull hit the floor with a dull thud. By some miracle, the doll’s head remained intact.

  “What’s wrong?” Angela rushed up to her, picked the unwanted doll up from the floor, and examined its head for cracks. “Look what a beautiful new doll you’ve got,” she said, trying to infect Rosa with her enthusiasm.

  “It’s not my doll,” the little girl answered accusingly.

  “It’s yours now,” said Angela and put the doll back on the bed. Rosa shrank into herself, trying not to touch the lifeless body lying beside her and staring at her with cold glass eyes. She tried to tell Angela about Rina, but her mother, who was busy arranging the room and unpacking the boxes, only pretended to be listening, nodding in agreement, and Rosa knew that she hadn’t heard a word. Later on she overheard her mother saying to Joseph: “If we hadn’t moved into this house they would probably have slaughtered us, like they did my poor husband, Amatzia, and it’s lucky for us the army arrived to save the town, and in any case they’re living in our houses now and sleeping in our beds and wearing our clothes and eating our food, and we’re doing to them exactly what they’re doing to us.” Rosa, who didn’t understand what she meant, asked her uncle Joseph, but he refused to elaborate on his sister’s words, and afterward she heard him scolding Angela for planting unnecessary fears in the child’s heart.

  The next night, before she got into bed, Rosa put the rejected doll into an ammunition box she had found i
n the yard and padded it with an old towel. She placed the box with the doll inside it next to her bed. “This is your bed,” she said to the doll. “You’re not allowed to get into my bed.” That night Rina visited her again. She was glad to see the doll and told Rosa that her name was Belle, because she was the most beautiful doll of all. She picked the doll up carefully—“because her face is made of china and it can break”—and showed Rosa how to turn it over so that it said in a high, piping voice: “Mama, mama, mama.” Then she asked her to take good care of the doll and keep her dresses clean and showed her how to look after Belle’s hair.

  After that Rina appeared every night and lay down beside her, and she became her best friend—until the day that Rachelle, Ruhama, and Ruth, her new friends, arrived in the house. Rina, her night friend, couldn’t take part in their daytime games—jump rope, catch, and hide-and-seek—and their friendship cooled off a little. She would reappear mainly on lonely nights when the icy winter wind played whistling tunes on the musical notes of the window bars. Then she would stand pale faced next to the bed, ask about the doll, Belle, and Rosa would invite her into their bed, calm her fears of the thunderbolts and lightning flashes, and explain to her that they were not gunfire or shells, because the war was over long ago. And when Rina calmed down, Rosa would tell her in a whisper that the whole world was full of little girls sleeping in the beds of other little girls who were sleeping in the beds of other little girls, and that there was no end to it, because this was the way things had to be.

  A few days after they had moved into the splendid villa, which boasted the name “Ali Hamouda’s House of Notes” and was registered in the government offices as “Abandoned property, block 142, house number 5,” they were joined by refugee families who had escaped from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, whose eyes still reflected the terrifying sight of the Jordanian Legionnaires surrounding them on all sides and whose ears echoed with the thunder of the shells. Tattered clothes, diapers gray with washing, and sheets stained with blood and excrement were hung out in front of the house, over the lavender bushes, hiding the splendid entrance from the eyes of passersby. The air grew dense with cigarette smoke, and the odor of sweat mingled with the sweetness of cheap perfume, the reek of menstruating women, babies’ shit, salted herring, garlic, cabbage soup. All these plus the bad breath of rotting teeth and smells of mold and rust suddenly filled the house, rudely thrusting aside the delicate scents of lavender and jasmine that had greeted Angela, Rosa, and Joseph when they first arrived.