The Diamond Setter

by Moshe Sakal

  But how would Fareed find his way home? A different person, he told himself, someone unlike him, would be able to stand his ground. If he was going to end up at the Israeli police anyway, perhaps he should just turn himself in now. But he wasn’t brave enough. Besides, he was afraid the diamond might take revenge on him. Greater and more important people had suffered at the hands of Sabakh. Fareed wasn’t certain that he really believed in the diamond’s power; Laila’s strange stories had always struck him as dubious. But at the same time he could not shake the impression that it was after his grandmother had taken possession of the diamond that she had been forced to leave her home and live in exile.

  Was that Sabakh’s plan? Was that the reason Laila had invited her beloved grandson to her home and told him her life’s story?

  He soon fell sound asleep.

  3

  Fareed covered all of Yafa by foot. As it turned out, it was not that big, certainly not for an infiltrator with lots of free time. Where did he go? Anywhere he could glimpse the sea, or at least know that if he turned around and ran he would soon see it. There was only one place — the house on Sha’arei Nikanor Street where his grandparents had lived — where he did not have the courage to go.

  Still, he had returned. The right of return be damned — he himself had returned. It was the return of one individual, but nevertheless a return.

  Before his own private return, he had read about refugees turning up at their old homes out of the blue. Some found ruins — not a single wall preserved, only a heap of stones buried under overgrowth. Sometimes all that remained of an entire village were four arbitrary walls. The skeleton of a mosque, for example. Those who returned searched for their homes among the weeds and stones, but all they found was a well. The well was stopped up by a large rock, and they had to suffice with that.

  There were others, too, who came all the way to Palestine to evict the people occupying their homes and found old acquaintances, residents of the city who, in 1948, had rented apartments from the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property. These “absentees” were the owners, but for decades the state had rented out their homes, sometimes to Arabs, who took up residence and treated the homes as their own. But they did not touch the furniture or the pictures.

  And there were those who crowded onto the deck of Al Awda — The Return — at the port of Limassol, Cyprus, in 1988, intending to return to Palestine. But a limpet mine blew open a hole in the ferryboat and prevented the voyage.

  Some returned as characters in fictional accounts, like the book Fareed read, a story full of wrath and prophecies of doom. It was about a couple who returns to Haifa to look for their son, whom they left behind in the chaos when they fled the city in 1948. They find in their home a Holocaust survivor with her adopted son — none other than the fruit of their loins, who has been raised as a Jew and served in the Israeli army. Before leaving, the parents acknowledge that the only possible resolution will be through war.

  There were also serendipitous returns, like the Palestinian who was imprisoned by the Israeli army during the first Intifada. After his arrest, he asked the warden, “Where am I?” The warden told him the name of the village where the prison was located, and, miraculously, it was the village the prisoner had left twenty years earlier, in 1967. From that moment on, his imprisonment seemed less onerous. He put his nose up to the window bars and breathed in the aroma of the soil of his village. He squinted, trying to make out the houses. He was happy.

  All these things Fareed saw in films and read in books.

  * * *

  Fareed belonged yet did not belong to Yafa. He was bound in some way to this place, although he did not seek a well, nor did he find one. He had not come to evict invaders from his house, because none of the houses were his, except for one. The house on Sha’arei Nikanor Street used to belong to Abed and Laila. But how could he prove that? He didn’t even have a key.

  He did have Sabakh, and that was enough.

  Laila had told him everything: what happened in Yafa and what happened afterward. She had done so calmly, neither defiant nor apologetic. This was simply how the events had transpired, and who were we to judge?

  CHAPTER THREE

  AUNT GRACIA

  1

  AUNT GRACIA’S APARTMENT FACED THE MEDITERRANEAN, with windows open to the four winds. On one side was the sea, and on the other were the narrow streets climbing up from the beach to Allenby Street, which snaked away from the shoreline until it was swallowed up among Tel Aviv’s buildings. Far beyond them lay the northern land, under lock and key. Aunt Gracia could look out of the southern windows to Jaffa, and since coming to Israel in 1949, that was where her feet took her on the rare occasions when she left home.

  For years, Aunt Gracia was unaware of the many goings-on just beyond her doorstep in Tel Aviv, not to mention events unfolding in the rest of the country. Her window faced elsewhere, her eyes were drawn far away, and hardly anyone maintained contact with her apart from her close relatives. And Sami.

  She did not respond to things that occurred beyond her immediate surroundings. Perhaps she did not even know about the huge fire atop the Eiffel Tower, the new constitution and women’s suffrage in Egypt, the Winter Olympics in Italy, or the independence granted to Morocco and then Tunisia. She did not know about Martin Luther King Jr. in America, or the Islamic Republic in Pakistan, or the homecoming of four Israeli prisoners of war from Syria. She did not know that the city of Ashdod had been founded, or about the polio vaccine, the first World Judo Championship in Tokyo, or the first Eurovision Song Contest. She was, however, informed of the newly founded city of Dimona in the south of Israel.

  Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt, the Italian SS Andrea Doria sank at sea, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and barred Israeli vessels, the Israeli army launched a retaliation campaign, President Eisenhower declared “In God We Trust” America’s national motto, in Israel the term “manifestly illegal order” was coined in response to the massacre at Kafr Qasim, and the Cuban Revolution broke out. Of all these things, Aunt Gracia was blissfully ignorant.

  She was certainly told of the Suez Crisis. And that Egypt was bombed to try to force it to reopen the canal. But she had nothing to say about either of these events.

  Once a week, after lunch, little Menashe used to kiss his mother Adela goodbye and walk south on Dizengoff Street until he came to the market. He knew that when he emerged from the stalls, not far from the sea and from Jaffa, his great-aunt Gracia would be waiting at home, at almost any time of day. She always invited him into the living room, served tea, peeled a cucumber for him, then swiftly chopped and deep-fried potatoes, her gold bands jangling on her wrists as she worked. Then she sat down opposite him. Sometimes she spoke tersely, other times she talked a lot, but her words were flat, with no high or low cadences. And all Menashe really wanted was to hear her sing. But she refused.

  “You see, Menashe,” she said once after a long silence, as she stroked his soft brown hair, “I sang when I lived there. There they wanted me to sing, they listened to me quietly, they applauded, gave me money, courted me. But here…” She looked out the window and followed the Tel Aviv street all the way to the sea and beyond. “Here they’ve forgotten me. Not forgotten — worse: No one even knows that there used to be a singer in Damascus named Gracia, that even the Ottoman sultan sent emissaries to bring her all the way to Istanbul to sing for him. Have I ever told you about when I went to the sultan’s palace, Menashe?”

  She had, many times, but he wanted to hear the story again. He thought perhaps if Aunt Gracia got carried away with her recollections, she might forget the vow of silence she had taken when she came to Israel and sing for him. And then, when that happened, for one elusive moment, he would feel like a sultan. Sultan Menashe. So he nodded and gazed at her silently. His brown eyes wandered over his aunt’s face, with its subtle makeup, and the brown hair piled on her head and held down with countless invisible pins, and her green eyes, which always
seemed to be facing the wrong way, looking inward.

  Aunt Gracia told him about Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s palace in Istanbul, named Yıldız, which means “star” in Turkish, and about the sultan himself. “The sultan tended to the palace and the gardens all around. He had gardens like the French king’s in Versailles! With flowers from seeds sent from Europe. There were fountains, and exotic herb bushes, and a little zoo where all the animals lived in peace and no one was allowed to kill them.” Gracia knew that Menashe would appreciate this part of the story, being so concerned for the welfare of animals. After all, he had seen them slaughtered with his own eyes.

  “The sultan’s palace was like a small city,” she continued. “It had a theater, and a big library, and many, many rooms. There was one room with pictures of all the cities in the sultan’s empire. They say he built the palace furniture himself, because he was very talented — at handicrafts and music and literature. He translated European operas. But history did not forget the other things he did. They called him the Red Sultan, because he had blood on his hands.”

  Menashe looked down and thought about a different pair of hands, the ones belonging to Grandpa Menashe, the shochet, which he had seen not long ago. But he didn’t dare interrupt his aunt’s story. He stared at her gold chain and longed to run his fingers over the pendant inset with a red stone. She noticed.

  “Do you know how much the sultan loved jewelry, Menashe?” she asked with a smile. “He wore a gold ring inset with agate that was made in Mecca, and he always kept a gold pocket watch. When he was a guest at weddings, his servants would throw pieces of gold at the bride and groom. That was the custom. He asked his jewelers to set precious stones in the desks he built, and every time he had a daughter, they gave her a tortoise as a gift because they believed it was a talisman for long life. The sultan’s jeweler would take the tortoise’s shell and coat it with gold, and they would use the shell to pour water on the newborn and bathe her every night in a tub made of pure silver. That was the custom.”

  “You mean the jeweler killed the tortoise?”

  “Yes.” She regretted telling him that. But Menashe’s thoughts were already elsewhere. He kept watching her quietly as she told him more about the sultan, afraid to interrupt. He fingered the tablecloth, which was embroidered with delicate gold thread.

  “Did you know that the sultan had an aunt whom he loved very much? Every time she came to visit him in the palace, he waited in the living room with all his servants, and when she entered she held out her hand and said, ‘My boy!’ And the sultan kissed her hand and said, ‘At your service, my aunt!’”

  Menashe grinned. He liked the stories about the sultan. But he wanted his aunt to sing for him. He kept listening patiently.

  “I always tell you everything that happened, Menashe, because you are a very sweet boy. And it’s thanks to you that I remember things that happened long ago, in another world, in another life. Do you think we can hold on to everything that happens to us? You’ll grow up and discover that your body changes, and you change on the inside, too, and all the things that happened to you — there is no proof that they really did happen. Even memory does not always last. You turn your face up to the sky, inhale and exhale, close your eyes, and some little thing comes back to you for a quick second. But do not believe that moment will truly return. Everything you do in life happens for the first time and the last time. There is nothing afterward, and there won’t be anything left. If you understand that, you will be able to genuinely enjoy the things you do. You will be able to hold on to them as tightly as possible before they escape you forever. Do you understand, Menashe?”

  He wanted her to sing, and the more he listened the farther away her singing seemed. It was important to him to hear Aunt Gracia’s songs, which belonged to a different time and place. He felt close to those melodies, although he couldn’t even imagine them because they always got stuck in his mind on the first note. But they were a part of him, even before he was himself.

  “I was a young girl,” Aunt Gracia said. “I used to sing even as a little girl, and the whole family was very proud of me. Do you know who is responsible for my singing? My sister.”

  Aunt Gracia’s sister, Menashe’s paternal grandmother, was named Mona. Menashe had never met her. She died in Damascus long before he was born. He knew that his grandfather had died first, on the eve of his parents’ wedding, and that Mona had died later. He pictured them like dominoes: One teeters and falls, knocking the other one over. First him, then her.

  “Your grandmother was blind. When we were little girls she went everywhere with me. I respected her a lot, because she was the older sister and she always knew everything, even without eyesight. Mona knew me better than anyone else, even better than our parents. Every night before going to sleep we would lie in bed and talk. I would tell her everything I’d seen that day, and she would tell me about things she imagined. I tried to picture the things she described — events that happened in different worlds — and I almost envied her for being able to think up all those things, for having time to imagine and lots of space in her mind, because she wasn’t confined to thinking about one thing or seeing only one thing. You know, Menashe, every time you turn to look at one thing, you miss all the other things one might see. And those things, Grandma Mona saw. At night we would lie next to each other holding hands as she talked, with our eyes shut, until we fell sleep. Together we watched the sights that came to her mind during the day. And you see, I wanted to give her something in return for all the wonderful things she showed me. But I had nothing to give. Everything I saw, everything I knew suddenly seemed so boring. So do you know what I did?”

  “You sang?”

  “Shater! Smart boy! Yes, I sang high notes and low notes, I invented stories through songs, stories that you tell with words and music. They were my gift to Mona. I was fifteen or sixteen. One day our uncle, my mother’s brother, was standing outside the room and he heard me singing. The next day he took me to a café where he knew the owners, and I stood up in front of all the customers and they told me to sing, so I did. When I sang, everyone stopped talking and looked at me with wide eyes. Afterward they all applauded, and then my uncle took me home. But the next day my father found out what had happened, and he went to my uncle’s house and they had a big fight.”

  “So your dad didn’t know you went to sing?”

  “You see, my uncle wanted to help us. Because in those days we had no money at all. When he took me out that evening, my father thought I was going to have dinner at his house. After the big fight, I stayed home for a few days without knowing what was going on. A week later, Mother came into our bedroom. I sat by the window looking out at the apple trees, and she stood behind me and said, ‘Do you like to sing, Gracia?’ I said, ‘Yes, I love to sing.’ And she said, ‘Then I will allow you to go with your uncle in the evenings and sing. But you must come home straightaway with him afterward.’ I didn’t understand why she said that, but I turned to her, and she kissed me and hugged me tightly. Her cheek was against mine, and it suddenly felt damp, and I said, ‘Dear Mother, why are you crying?’ But she didn’t answer, she just kept hugging me, and the sobs came up and up from her chest, and I wondered if she was ill or if something had happened to Father. In the end she pulled away, looked into my eyes and said, ‘You are a smart girl, Gracia. And you have a great talent. But promise me you will not talk to any men there, no matter what they tell you, and that you’ll come home with your uncle every night. Promise?’ I said, ‘I promise to do anything you ask, dear Mother, just so long as you’re not sad.’ She smiled, stroked my hair, turned and left the room. And so, from that day on, I went to the café with my uncle every evening. After a while they invited us to other places as well. Mona told me she heard there was talk all over town about the Jewish girl with the wonderful voice and the beautiful songs. More and more people came to my shows, and the money went to my family. Our Friday night dinners started being very grand, with lots of meat and fin
e dishes on the table. Even Mona helped my mother cook.”

  “But Grandma was blind.”

  “Yes, but she could do lots of things, like trim the green beans, sort the okra…”

  “Without seeing?”

  “She could feel. She shelled the fava beans and made meatballs, she kneaded the kubeh and stuffed it with meat, and she knew how to shape atayef and fill the crepes with cheese. But I wasn’t allowed to help. They said I had to rest, because I went out singing in the evenings. And so I would lie in bed with my eyes closed and smell all the aromas from the kitchen, and I really was very tired. But I loved to sing.”

  Aunt Gracia stopped talking. She reached out and took an apple from a bowl on the table, peeled it quickly, and cut a piece for Menashe. He grabbed it and munched silently. The apple peel lay on the table in a long green coil.

  “And just as my mother warned,” Aunt Gracia continued, “there were men who wanted to talk to me. I was pretty, but not as pretty as Mona. She was beautiful, but she didn’t know how beautiful she was, of course. I used to describe her face to her, and she would feel it and then feel my face, but how can you explain what a beautiful face is to someone who has never seen any face? She wanted to find love. Every night she told me how she longed to find someone who would know how to touch her and listen to her, and that she would take care of him and know him better than a woman with a thousand eyes could. I promised to find her someone. You think I’m joking? I knew that one day the man who would fall in love with my sister would arrive. And he really did.”