The Diamond Setter

by Moshe Sakal

  At first Shayu settled in a small studio apartment in Jaffa and worked odd jobs. He liked Jaffa more than its northern neighbor, since life there reminded him of his hometown. But when the riots began, in the spring of 1936, he thought back to the pandemonium in Damascus during the Druze uprising and the subsequent French bombings. Fearing a war would break out, he decamped to Tel Aviv. With the money he had brought from Syria, he bought a building on Plonit Alley, in the heart of the first Hebrew city.

  And all those years Sami kept thinking about Gracia.

  Every year on the Jews’ festival of trees, the day he had first laid eyes on her in Damascus, Sami sent Gracia a crate full of oranges he had picked himself. Year after year, he went to the same tree in the orchard and selected the finest fruits. The sweet golden treats hidden in the tree reminded him of the pins embedded in Gracia’s hair. With infinite care, he wrapped each orange individually, put a card in the box, and sent it to Damascus. Every year Gracia sent him a terse thank-you letter. Only in 1939, after the Arab Revolt, did she finally acquiesce to Sami’s request to meet her in Beirut.

  Privately, she could not explain why she had agreed, since for years she had steadfastly refused every suitor, and there was ostensibly nothing about Sami that should compel her to make an exception. She sought advice from Mona, her sister and confidante, who told her it was probably related to age. For it was in those days that Gracia turned fifty.

  Sami told no one of his planned meeting with Gracia. He was especially afraid to tell Hassan, as he did not know how his friend would react if he knew he was in love with this woman, who was not only ten years older than him but also Jewish. Back when they had first set eyes on Gracia, Hassan’s uncle had told them, “Gracia always says she will never marry. She wants to keep her freedom.”

  What exactly would Sami offer Gracia when they met in Beirut? He considered this for many nights, as he lay in bed listening to Suad breathing while she slept. He had no answer. Even if Gracia decided to leave Damascus and follow him to Tel Aviv or Yafa, would he leave his wife and daughter? Where would he live with Gracia? And how would he protect her and himself in these days of madness?

  Gracia asked her nephew Rafael to accompany her to Beirut. She was afraid to go alone and wanted to take advantage of their time together to tell him she had decided to give him the blue diamond when he married. Rafael had finished school and was working with his father and brother at the Bourse in Damascus, and planning to study medicine.

  Sami did not want to travel alone either, and suggested that his daughter go with him. And so, while Sami and Gracia sat in the hotel restaurant, Rafael and Laila met for the first time in the garden café. The first thing Rafael noted was that one of Laila’s eyes was blue and the other was brown.

  Throughout their evening together in the restaurant, Sami and Gracia gave no thought to the two youngsters. They sat talking for a long time. Gracia wore a long-sleeved black dress and a chain of red gold around her lovely neck. Her face, which was less made up than it had been when Sami first saw her, looked slightly pale to him now, and he longed to caress her cheeks and plant a kiss deep in her neck. Gracia said nothing, but her penetrating gaze bore into him. After dinner they left the restaurant, and Sami took a key out of his pocket and let them into one of the hotel rooms. They did not emerge until much later.

  The next morning, Sami and Laila boarded the train back to Yafa. The conductor blew his whistle to hurry the last of the passengers aboard, and Sami felt his heart plunge. Something fateful, he sensed, had almost occurred in his life, but it had changed course at the last minute and dropped away from him.

  In the tense years of the Second World War, Sami and Hassan began speaking seriously of marriage between their children, Laila and Abed. Although at first it seemed little more than a whim shared by two old friends, it soon turned out that Abed was interested in the beautiful Laila and that she was not indifferent to him. They decided to wait until Abed finished his medical studies in Cairo and returned to Yafa.

  At times, when Suad’s depression worsened, Sami would travel with her and Laila north, to Lebanon. He insisted on accompanying them all the way to the convalescence home in Aley but always made a point of returning to his business in Yafa that same day. Suad lay in bed at the resort in Aley for weeks, refusing to get up. It was in this mountain resort town that Laila met Rafael again, this time with his new wife Adela. She spent her days with the couple, and their love eased her loneliness.

  When she returned to Yafa with her mother, Laila kept up a correspondence with the Jewish couple from Damascus. None of the letters survived, and one can assume they were lost in the journey from Damascus to Tel Aviv.

  When Abed finished his studies, he returned to Yafa as a certified physician. He wanted to be an optometrist in his hometown. Because of the political tensions, Laila and Abed held a modest, almost rushed wedding. They moved into Laila’s childhood home near her grandparents’ house, on the street that would later be named Sha’arei Nikanor. Abed was besotted with Laila and jealous of her, whereas within months of their marriage, Laila simply loved Abed as a given and inarguable fact, not with any sort of emotion that was to be nurtured.

  Around them everything simmered and roiled. It was early 1948, and the city began emptying out. Almost every day there were explosions. People told of riots in Ha’Tikva neighborhood northeast of town, and in Menashiyya, the neighborhood on the beach. At night, snipers fired shots from the southern suburb of Bat Yam toward Yafa and, conversely, from Yafa to Tel Aviv. The Jewish underground movements set car bombs outside cafés, grenades were thrown at bus stations, and when the Saraya House was blown up by the Jewish underground, Sami heard the explosion as he sat in his parents’ café nearby.

  The Bride of the Sea was gradually becoming a ghost town. First the wealthy families left, and shortly afterward the independent business owners, followed by the craftsmen, the salaried employees, and finally the laborers. Sami stood by and watched the processions of vehicles leaving town. He naturally began considering his own departure but was undecided for a long time. The frightening events began to take their toll on Suad, who until then had been almost completely indifferent. At night she woke up terrified, and Sami tried in vain to reassure her. Even the news of Laila’s pregnancy aroused no pleasure in the future grandmother, but in fact only increased her anxiety.

  One morning, after another sleepless night, Laila went to see her father. She told him Hassan had decided to leave Yafa and was urging her and Abed to go with him to stay with his uncle in Damascus. At first Sami tried to hide his affront, feeling he should have learned of this plan directly from Hassan. But in light of the situation, he swallowed his pride and gave his blessing to the trip, which he believed would last only a few weeks. As for him, he was now determined to stay in Yafa.

  Sami remembered well his visit to Hassan’s uncle’s home in Damascus in the 1920s, on that distant day when they had been hosted by Moussa Kadosh and he had first met Gracia. That was where his daughter now wanted to go, and perhaps there she would meet her — Gracia.

  Laila and Abed helped Sami fill sandbags, and the two men stacked them along the walls around the house and inside. They filled the storage room with food supplies. Sami knocked a hole in the wall with a hammer, right where his parents had hidden their valuables during the riots in 1921. He felt around deep inside and extricated a few gold jewels. After giving the jewelry to his daughter, he took a stack of money out of his belt and handed it to her. Laila and Abed took nothing from their home. They left everything just as it was, knowing that at Hassan’s uncle’s house their needs would be met, until it was time to return to Yafa.

  “When things calm down, we’ll come home,” Laila assured her father. And Sami repeated to Suad, “They’ll come home as soon as things calm down.” Suad gave her daughter a long hug, not wanting to let go. Laila and Abed kissed the family goodbye and set off. That was in March.

  After the mayor’s departure, only a few thousa
nd residents were left in Yafa by April. Sami and Suad moved into the well house in the orchard. Sami paid two men to guard the house in Ajami, and every day he made his way there from the orchard to make sure no one had broken in.

  Yafa surrendered to Jewish forces in May 1948. Sami Jabali was among the signatories to the surrender agreement, and although it stated clearly that any Arab who had left Yafa and wished to return could apply for reentry permission, the authorities were unwilling to allow Laila and Abed to return. The military government claimed Abed’s application had not been submitted in good faith, having failed to prove that the petitioner did not and would not at any time pose a danger to peace and security.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ACHLAMA

  1

  AFTER HER HUSBAND DIED IN THE SPRING OF 2011, Achlama Javaheri inherited a lot near the flea market in Jaffa, as well as the apartment he had lived in till the day he died. For weeks the apartment stood empty and no one knew what to do with it. It was impossible to rent out, because according to the will, the rightful owner of the apartment was now the elderly, grumbling Persian cat that had lived there since it was a day-old kitten. The late owner had been extremely attached to the cat, despite or perhaps because of its selfish temperament. In their own way, the two had maintained a close friendship that had included many tacit agreements. The cat was unconcerned about its future after its owner died, and if any troubling thoughts did run through its mind, they were difficult to see in the vacant, sunken eyes in its squashed face. Either way, since officially an animal cannot inherit property, the executor of the will decided that the apartment would be registered in Achlama’s name, on condition she took care of all the cat’s needs.

  But there was a problem: The new owner of the property adamantly refused to leave her rented apartment and move into the attractive new property she had inherited. Not only because of her memories, or because of her distress at the thought of living in the home of the man who had hurt her so badly, but also because of the cat. More than she feared angering the lawyers, Achlama feared the dead. And more than the dead, she feared cats and their evil nature.

  After the will was read, it did not occur to anyone to remove the cat from its home, nor to bring in tenants to live with the cat. Achlama cursed and insulted the cat in every language it may or may not have known, and refused to take up residence with it. She appointed her son to care for its needs. The son did not dare defy his late father or his mother, and carried out his job with commendable precision.

  Achlama had immigrated to Israel as a young girl, but her Persian accent still tinged every syllable she uttered. She had spent her whole life hearing jokes about her ethnicity, especially about the Persians’ notorious cheapness, but try as she might, she was absolutely unable to get rid of the accent. It was stuck in her throat like a carp bone.

  Decades earlier, after her husband left her, Achlama had grit her teeth and begun working as a cleaning lady. She got up every day at five and worked until the early evening. For years she hid her occupation from her daughter, telling her instead that she was employed by wealthy families as a nanny. Only her son was in on the secret.

  Her longtime employers were used to her personality quirks. Every week she entered their home like a tempest: First she flung open all the windows, then she put old gym clothes on her slender body and, with rubber gloves on her hands, began throwing away everything she came across: toothbrushes, half-full tubes of toothpaste, old and current newspapers, unused medications, and various other objects she disliked and had no time to ponder the purpose of. When asked how she was, she would answer, “Thank the Lord, thank the Lord,” and resume silently cursing the house and its filthy residents who had never heard of a mop or a vacuum cleaner.

  Once a week, Achlama went into the Great Synagogue on Allenby Street to thank the Lord personally. She did so almost furtively, like a Catholic slipping into a confessional, and when she left she felt pure and cleansed for a short while. She made a point of regularly donating money to charity, because she knew there were always people more unfortunate than her.

  When her children were grown, she began traveling the world, to her employers’ astonishment. Each year she signed up for a package tour with National Geographic, and after she had made her way through all of “Classical Europe,” she moved on to more exotic destinations. Apart from the trips, Achlama saved every shekel she made and hardly ever bought herself anything — except a piece of jewelry from the shop on Plonit Alley once a year on her birthday — and feared the day when her legs would no longer carry her to the apartments she cleaned and her hands would grow weak.

  Once a year she invited her longtime employers to her home for a traditional Persian meal. She set out dishes of rice colored green, white, and yellow, decorated with a layer of potatoes that had cooked at the bottom of the pot; big, moist gondi meatballs swimming in chicken broth; and large cuts of meat nestled in green sabzi leaves. The guests, who knew each other from previous dinners, were allowed to discuss any topic in the world and could even tell ethnic jokes and gossip about Persian celebrities like Rita, Ahmadinejad, and Moshe Katzav. Only one topic was taboo: the host’s profession. The guests were instructed ahead of time not to reveal how they knew Achlama, and although everyone knew very well that she cleaned the other people’s homes, her employers respected her wish. They each had a cover story she had rehearsed with them: Some had met her in India, others in Brazil or Vietnam.

  She hoped these gatherings would continue forever, but one fine day a lawyer phoned to inform Achlama that her husband had left her his apartment and the lot, along with savings amounting to a few hundred thousand dollars. Overnight, the hardworking housecleaner became a wealthy property owner. After making sure it was not a cruel joke, Achlama hurried to the Great Synagogue to thank the Lord and then walked to work as usual. With a glimmer in her eyes, she told her employers about her newfound fortune, but in the same breath reassured them that she had no intention of leaving her job. She was determined that her unexpected windfall would not even remotely change her life. Except for one thing: the jewelry.

  Achlama had always had a soft spot for jewelry. Not for nothing was her last name Javaheri, which means “jeweler” or “precious gem dealer” in Persian. Even as a child in Tehran, Achlama loved to stare at her mother’s jewelry and secretly wear it, and she knew she could always put her faith in gold, because gold — even in its raw form, even unpolished and tarnished — meant strength and power and security. Jewelry was the only possession Achlama’s mother had brought with her to Israel: heavy handmade chains and magnificent pendants that were works of art, signet rings embedded with Persian turquoise stones.

  When her mother died, Achlama inherited most of her jewelry, and she fulfilled the vow she had made: Whatever fate had in store for her, she would never sell or pawn these jewels. Achlama always kept her word, even when hard times came and she struggled to make a living. After she caught her son hovering around the jewelry box, Achlama hid it in a hole in the wall, in a spot only her daughter knew about.

  2

  After her husband’s death, Achlama got rid of the blue diamond as quickly as she could. She gave it back to Menashe the jeweler, mumbled a hasty apology, and left before he could say anything about how the stone had come into her husband’s possession. A few weeks later, she plucked up her courage to visit the jewelry shop on Plonit Alley again.

  When she walked into the shop, the jeweler was sitting in his spot working. I was polishing a ring at the machine, while Honi sat on the other side of the counter looking at his phone with great concentration. Achlama stood patiently scanning the turquoise jewels under the glass until Menashe was free.

  Menashe held his torch and put the flame to a red-gold ring. “I want you to know, Achlama, that I kept the jewel for you.”

  “Which one, the turquoise?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you shouldn’t have kept it, Menashe.” Achlama felt guilty.

  At that mome
nt someone knocked on the door. Menashe’s right hand caressed the red button under his workbench. He held up his left hand and signaled, Closed.

  Honi laughed. “Menashe, you act like you’re in the 1970s, back when there was a line of people out the door. Times have changed! People don’t like buying jewelry anymore, they’re not in the mood for it. So someone finally comes to the shop and you don’t let him in?”

  “I don’t like the look of that character.”

  “Take my advice — if you want to make a living, you could stand to be a little less snobbish.”

  “Well, listen to you!” Menashe surveyed Honi through his large safety goggles. “Do you have any idea what happened here in 1991? Let me tell you, it was in all the papers. On the first day of the Gulf War, the buzzer in the shop was broken. And it was precisely then that a young man with a long coat and scarf walked in. He wanted to see some rings, so I showed him a few, and he chose one, but it was too big. And while I start working on it, he pulls a gun on me!”

  “So what do you think Menashe did? Pulled a gun, too, of course,” I added.

  “He almost killed me!” Menashe said. “I escaped by the skin of my teeth.”

  “You were a big hero, Menashe,” Honi said. “There’s no doubt about that. Too big a hero, if you ask me. Why on earth did you pull a gun? What is this, the Wild West?”

  “Those were different times.”

  “Do you still walk around with a gun?” Achlama asked worriedly.

  “No.”

  Menashe doesn’t carry a gun anymore, but I know very well that he doesn’t let just anyone into his shop. He doesn’t discriminate: If he doesn’t want to let you in, you’re not getting in. Doesn’t matter if you’re Mizrachi or Ashkenazi. And if he does let someone in and things get dicey, he’ll hit the panic button, which alerts two places: the pharmacy next door, and the police. The pharmacist will get here first and the police a few minutes later. Most likely, as soon as they arrive the situation will deteriorate, because policemen — unlike doctors, for example — do not follow the imperative, “First, do no harm.”