by Moshe Sakal
I didn’t say anything.
“It may look like a relic to you now,” Menashe went on, “but in the ’70s, when I used to get to work at eight in the morning, there’d be a line of people outside, like it was the welfare office or a doctor’s clinic. Back then, jewelry meant security — people thought it was safer to have jewels than to hide dollars under the floor tiles. People don’t buy as much jewelry nowadays, and no one hides anything under the floor tiles anymore. Now people sit at their computers moving their fingers this way and that, and that’s where their money is: nowhere. But I can tell you that there are still people who love jewelry. I have a core of regular customers, I work almost exclusively with regulars. One good customer is worth more than a hundred occasional browsers. These are families who’ve been coming here for decades, and they know Menashe will never cheat them. I’m their family diamond setter, that’s what they tell me.” Menashe’s gaze broke away from the sea and he looked at me. “Besides, let me tell you, this job will give you lots of ideas for your writing.”
I smiled. Everyone thinks their life is interesting enough to be immortalized in a book. But what could be so fascinating about an old shop run by an aging jeweler, where the only customers were lunching ladies who stopped by for new earrings or gold chains or strings of pearls to drape over their generous cleavage?
A few days later, I started my apprenticeship.
3
Menashe has worked at the little shop on Plonit Alley for decades. Every day he sits in his chair under the harsh fluorescent lights, king of his castle. His eyes are protected by large safety glasses, like a coal miner’s. Here in this tiny kingdom he polishes and welds gold, insets diamonds, and fuses granite with opal. He monitors customers while carefully holding a fire-breathing torch to weld two pieces of gold together.
There are three topics that Menashe knows everything about: gold, diamonds, and cacti. He learned about gold and diamonds at home, from his father, Rafael. Cacti, on the other hand, are his own private obsession. On his workbench in the shop, for twenty-five years, he’s kept a faded copy of Avraham Steinman’s Guide to Cacti for Balconies and Gardens, his bible when it comes to succulents. Menashe’s potted cacti act as a barrier between the customers and his workspace.
Menashe has countless stories about jewelry and endless quotes about diamonds and gold. “Man comes from earth and to earth he returns,” he likes to say, “but diamonds, once they’re out in the air, nothing can get them back in. Even when you think a diamond has completely vanished, it always turns up in the end — but it always happens in a place and time of its choosing.”
I knew from my first day in the shop that Menashe’s favorite topic of discussion was the blue diamond, which was known as “Sabakh.” “When I was a boy,” he told me, “my parents were always talking about Sabakh, and I realized that it was deeply connected to our family. When I was a little older, my father told me that Sabakh had come from very far away. From India. It wasn’t called Sabakh back then, it had a different name, and it was much bigger. This diamond went through amazing adventures — miracles — before it ended up in our hands. And quite a few tragedies, too. But I only learned about all that much later.”
“What was its name before it was called Sabakh?” I asked.
“Its first name was the ‘Tavernier Blue.’ It traveled all the way from India to Europe, and then to Istanbul, which was still called Constantinople back then, and finally ended up with my family, but only a small piece of it. And it was cursed.”
“What do you mean, cursed?”
“Well, I never had any proof that it meant to harm us, and I certainly wouldn’t claim that all my family’s troubles were that little diamond’s fault. But I’ll get to that. My father, Rafael, told me that the first time anyone heard about Sabakh was in northern India, where it was inset in Shiva’s third eye. But one day someone stole it out of the statue, and ever since then it’s been taking revenge on anyone who tries to keep it.”
“Your father didn’t believe that, did he?”
“You have to understand something: My father loved diamonds. He used to sit reading books about diamonds for days on end. He knew all the stories about Jean-Baptiste Tavernier by heart. This man, Tavernier, was a big adventurer and a famous gem merchant in the seventeenth century. Every night at bedtime, Father told me about diamonds like the Koh-i-Noor, the Daria-i-Noor, and the great Sancy. But more than anything, he liked to talk about our diamond, our little piece of the Tavernier Blue, which became Sabakh. He didn’t tell me these stories just for amusement. He wanted me to understand Sabakh and care about it. He told me again and again that it was our family treasure, the only thing in the world we could count on. So for him, the diamond was blessed, not cursed. He said Sabakh had always protected our family in Damascus, and that it would keep protecting us in Tel Aviv and anywhere else we went, as long as we took care of it.”
Menashe paused and looked at the photograph of his parents on the wall. “You know, Tom, diamonds are just like people: Some come into the world easily, and some worry you to death by the time they’re born. Do you have any idea how diamonds are born? It happens a hundred miles or more below Earth’s surface. There’s carbon down there, which forms into diamonds over billions of years because of the immense pressure and the high temperatures — over one thousand degrees Celsius. The diamonds sit there for years, until one day there is a volcanic eruption, and then special pipes called kimberlite carry them up to the surface.”
He gave me a look I’d seen before, and I knew he was about to tell one of his anecdotes.
“There are some diamonds,” Menashe explained, “that completely change the fate of the people who wear them. Our blue diamond, the Tavernier Blue, belonged to Marie Antoinette before she was guillotined. During the French Revolution it was stolen and somehow ended up in the hands of King George IV. He even wore it for his coronation! George IV was a notorious hedonist. He lost his mind when he was a young man, he was a political failure, his people hated him — even though they also admired him — and he had a miserable marriage. Eventually the diamond was polished and sold to an English banker named Henry Thomas Hope. I’m almost positive that was his name. Anyway, they say that Hope lost everything and his whole family died of starvation. After that, the diamond was sold to Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908 or 1909, perhaps even earlier.
“The sultan had thirteen wives and more than two hundred concubines. He gave the Tavernier Blue to one of the wives, I think her name was Subya. Not a bad gift, eh? Well, it turned out to be a big mistake. Subya was involved in a plot against the sultan — she conspired against her own husband. The Ottoman Empire was in bad shape in those days. Long story short, the sultan’s advisers told him the diamond was cursed and would bring him bad luck, so he took it back from Subya and went to a soothsayer for her counsel. She told him that if he split ten carats off the diamond, the curse would be lifted. And that is exactly what he did: He had his jeweler take off a ten-carat piece, which he named ‘Sabakh.’ A few years later, when the Ottoman Empire was in dire financial straits, the sultan had no choice but to sell the large diamond, but he was adamant that he would not sell Sabakh, even though he was still afraid of the curse.
“One night the sultan dreamed that he traveled to Damascus and met a Jewish girl who sang exquisitely. Her voice was more beautiful than any he had ever heard, and in his dream he recognized that she was singing in Arabic with a Damascene accent. When he awoke, he ordered his emissaries to go to Damascus, find the girl from his dream, and bring her to him. They went to the Jewish quarter, where they searched and searched, and finally they found — believe it or not — my paternal great-aunt, Gracia, the most famous chanteuse in town. They brought her to the sultan’s palace, where they held a grand banquet and invited her to sing for the sultan. He fell in love with her at first sight, apparently, and after dinner he stayed alone with her. The next day, he gave her Sabakh.”
“He just gave her that diamond as a gift?�
��
“Yes. Well, it was actually more of a deposit. He asked her to keep it for him. He didn’t tell her he was afraid to keep it himself, of course. Years later, when the sultan died, he left the diamond to Aunt Gracia in his will. And ever since then, it’s been in our family. Until the robbery, when someone stole it from me.”
“Wasn’t Aunt Gracia afraid of the diamond’s curse?”
“I don’t think so. My father certainly didn’t believe in cursed diamonds. But he was a fatalist. He thought that whatever was supposed to happen would happen. All he knew for sure was that we had to keep the diamond until it decided it was time for a new owner. Father and Mother came to Tel Aviv in 1949, and a few months later Father opened the shop where we sit now. But that, you already know. When I was fourteen I started coming here regularly, and when I was seventeen, Father decided it was time to retire.
“You’re Ashkenazi, Tom, so you may not know this, but we Sephardim believe that a man truly lives only when he has children. At synagogue, when a father is called to the Torah, his sons stand up. The whole congregation looks at him and his sons, and they pay him respect according to the number of sons. He reads from the Torah, and the sons keep standing. He finishes reading, makes his contribution — also according to the number of sons — then goes back to his seat. He shakes the oldest son’s hand, then the other sons’ hands, and he sits down. He leans back in his seat, at ease, and his sons follow his lead.
“You’ve seen pictures of my father. Today he almost looks like a stranger to me: big gray hair, thin lips, fancy suit, thin gold wedding band. I never knew his eyes. I never dared look straight into them. I couldn’t even have told you what color they were. I loved his fingers, and I was always surprised by how gentle they were. Sometimes, when he slept, I was brave enough to stand in the doorway and really look at him.
“He never talked about his business with me. Not the successes and not the failures. He only spoke to Shlomo, my brother. Shlomo was just four years older than me, but he was the eldest, and so he was involved in all the business. He had power of attorney, he knew where everything was, and of course he knew about every sum and asset the family owned, and any possessions that had disappeared.
“I remember as a boy hearing Father tell Mother in the kitchen: ‘That’s how it is, Adela, there’s nothing more to discuss. I had that money, and now I don’t. Someone else has it. And if he’s a crook, I don’t care — may he go in good health. Ili faat, maat — what’s gone is dead.’ If my mother tried to say anything or make him promise to ask her before he made a decision next time, he would just get up and shut himself in his room.
“He didn’t get angry at people. He was a tradesman. He sold jewelry, but he didn’t make it. He didn’t know jewelry the way I do. He would come to the shop at eight thirty in the morning, always in his smart brown suit. At one o’clock he would go out for lunch with the newspaper tucked under his arm. He came back to work for a while in the afternoon and then he went home. At home, my mother put his slippers down in front of him. He put on his pajamas and a robe, tied the sash around his waist, and sat down to eat dinner quietly. Shlomo, my brother, always sat next to him and they ate together, without saying a word, each reading a section of the newspaper. I stayed in the kitchen with my mother, and she would hover and serve them their food.
“On one of those days in the kitchen, my mother said to me quietly, ‘Father lost some money again.’ She put aside the zucchini and eggplants, washed her hands, and started kneading dough. She scattered flour on the countertop. ‘That’s how it is,’ she said, ‘he just doesn’t care. If someone took it, they must have needed it, and that’s that.’ She said these last words in Hebrew, not Arabic. I suppose she needed to consider every sentence and choose the exact right words in her new language, the way you select cucumbers at the market — one by one, based on size and color and firmness, not the way she picked out fava beans from a sack and knew instinctively, without thinking, which ones to cook and which to throw out. Then she went back to Arabic.
“‘I keep telling him, but he won’t listen,’ she said. ‘Anytime someone comes to ask him for something, he just says yes. He doesn’t stop to think. He won’t tell them he needs to sleep on it. Whatever they say, he agrees. Whatever you tell him, he thinks it’s reasonable. I keep trying to get through to him, but he won’t listen. I tell him: “Rafael, you’re losing everything! Why let all that money go? What about our children? What will you give them when they leave home? And a dowry for your daughter? She’s just a girl now, but we have to think about these things. What will we live on when the money runs out?”
“‘You’ll see, Menashe,’ she told me, ‘the day he runs out of money, they’ll all disappear. He won’t have anyone left. When he walks down the street now, people come up and grab him and ask him to go to lunch. And he goes. He can talk with anyone, he’s an interesting man, a wonderful storyteller. In Syria they were crazy about him. Not like here, where he sits at home, quiet like a fish. He can find a common language with anyone, he knows at least three languages. In Syria he used to make up such interesting stories. Then he’d sit at home and write them down. But I worried: It’s no good, a grown man leaving all his friends from work to sit at home writing stories all day. I told him, “You need to get out, find a job.” So he said, “I’ll be a teacher.” And he went to teach French at the Alliance Française in Damascus. He taught all morning, then sat at home writing. Just like that — teaching and writing, writing and teaching. I stopped saying anything, because what could I say? He’s stubborn.’
“Then my mother told me about when they left Syria. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘your father got up, left his job at the Alliance, and went to work at the Bourse. He did well in business, because to be a good trader, people have to like you. In Syria your father was always well dressed, clean shaven, with a thick head of hair, and his shoes were always shined. He had a firm handshake, and when he shook someone’s hand he looked them straight in the eye. People trusted him. Everywhere he went, they said, “Come in, Mr. Salomon, come in.” He did business during the day. A little, not a lot. He liked eating lunch in restaurants, and in the evening he would come home for dinner. He has a good appetite now, too, but not like then. The food was better there. We had a good life.
“‘After they declared the State of Israel, in Tel Aviv, a friend of your father’s helped us. He got us laissez-passer papers and found a mover to take all our furniture. First we went to Beirut, and we spent a few months there. Then they smuggled us into Israel. We walked a lot, maybe seven hours, before we arrived. Do you know how we crossed the border? In a taxi!’ My mother giggled. ‘And in Israel, we took another taxi to Haifa. And from there to Sha’ar Ha’Aliya, where they sent all the new immigrants. Every family got a couple of beds, and your father had to stand in line for food, morning, noon, and evening. It was very difficult. Afterward, we used our money to buy this apartment. But while it was being fixed up, we lived with your father’s sister, Juliette, and her family. They had a house that used to belong to Arabs. They didn’t pay for it. And we all lived there.’
“My mother told me it was very crowded in my aunt’s house. They already had my brother, Shlomo, and Mother was pregnant with me. The apartment on Dizengoff Street wasn’t livable yet. It wasn’t even hooked up to the gas. Father, who had been such a bubbly man in Syria, a seasoned trader with connections high up, hardly knew anyone in the new country. I think if my mother hadn’t insisted—’ We’re moving to the apartment on Dizengoff, gas or no gas!’ she announced — they would have stayed at his sister’s for a long time.
“So they moved into the apartment. It smelled like fresh paint. There were three spacious rooms, but Mother wasn’t satisfied. She knew very well that some people were still living in transit camps, in the ma’abarot, making do with tents or rusty shacks where the rain leaked in. She also knew that there were refugees who had lost their whole families in Europe, and they had nothing. She knew all that. Still, she wasn’
t satisfied.
“‘Where is the house we had in al-Sham?’ she would say to Father — she always called Damascus by its Arabic name, al-Sham, which means ‘the northern country.’ ‘Where is our garden and the rosewater and the divan and the apple trees? Where are our wonderful feasts…? We’re so close to al-Sham, but it’s a different world here. The food is rationed, and I have to dust the house endlessly, all day long.’
“My father didn’t answer. He sat in the kitchen listening to his music on the radio: Umm Kulthum, whose songs were as long as exile. When he was in the kitchen, no one else was allowed in. One of our neighbors, a Romanian woman, peeked in one day and said Father was suffering from melancholy. She showed Mother a book with pictures of melancholics: wide-eyed, well dressed but with a distant look, sitting at a table with their heads on their hands. And that is just how Father used to sit in the kitchen in our little apartment on Dizengoff Street: his head resting on his hand, his big eyes staring at the wall, days on end.
“But then Shayu came. Shayu was Father’s cousin, who had left Damascus and immigrated to Palestine in the ’30s. He said to Father, ‘I’m giving you a shop in my building off King George Street. Go there and do some work. You can’t be shut up at home all day. You have to get out, get to know the city, meet new people, make connections.’
“So Father did what Shayu told him. He came to this little shop — it’s all of 130 square feet — and became a tradesman. What did he trade? A little silver, some promissory notes, some land. Anything that came his way. But he always lost, and by the time I started here, at seventeen, Father had nothing left. No money, no stocks, no investments. The only asset our family had was Sabakh. Father had kept the diamond all those years in a secret hiding place in his bedroom, which only he and my mother and Shlomo knew about. Once a year, on the anniversary of their arrival in Israel, he took out the diamond and showed it to us all.