Israela: Final Edition

By Dr. Batya Casper

As their lives unfold, the three women find themselves facing choices they would never have envisioned.

In my heart, I call to their mothers, 'Take your sons to your houses. Bind them to your chair

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inks and Bindings, LLC
• Release date: Jul 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886150506

Dr. Batya Casper

Dr. BATYA CASPER is a retired director, actor, and a teacher of theater. She has lived in Israel intermittently since childhood. She currently resides in California near her family.

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Copyright © 2022 by Batya Casper

ISBN: 979-8-88615-049-0 (Paperback)

979-8-88615-050-6 (E-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

BOOK FOUR

BOOK FIVE

BOOK SIX

BOOK SEVEN

CAST OF CHARACTERS

BOOK ONE

One

RATIBA

1964

I wanted doves with dancing girls and Ibrahim riding through his village on horseback. Ibrahim laughed, wanting to know what century I was living in. He said only I would want such an event. Said I was a contradiction of willfulness and sentimentality, sounding like Orit, my sister, who muttered things like that about me on a permanent basis. For his part, Ibrahim wanted me to wear the dress his mother had worn, which Kasim said was the color of wine, stitched with gold thread, coins jingling from its veil. According to Ibrahim, Kasim had kept it in a box specifically for this occasion. But Kasim said, No, it won’t be worn again. I wanted to ask why not but didn’t. Instead, Orit and I took the bus to Haifa for a dress that was white as a cloud, which we embroidered just the same. Stitches in green and gold down the bodice, making me look like a five-year old.

I begged my father-in-law, Please, don’t hire a hall for the ceremony. Let us marry on the slope of the hill among the trees and the breezes at the back of your house. He shook his head, No, he said, We’re not poor. We need to entertain our friends in style.

So, we congregate in Ibrahim’s village, west of Jerusalem, in the presence of Kasim’s family and friends, in a hall where toasters and dishes and sets of silverware grow into a marriage mountain in their tinsel wrappings on the table near the door; where blue and gold plaster covers the walls; paper flowers gather dust in the corners, and a crown in the center of the sky-blue ceiling hangs during the ceremony, immediately and ominously, over our heads. When I enter, the women—-Orit, playing her part among them—-vent their excitement in a burst of ululations, scaring the devil out of me, as my mother would have said, because I wasn’t expecting it; then the atmosphere eases as a lute plays around us in doves of sound. I clamp onto Orit’s arm, first stifling the need to squeak like a mouse the way I do when I’m excited, then, just as suddenly, repressing the urge to cry, refusing to let go of my sister, to let her move away. This is the defining moment of my life, I tell myself, biting my lip. Don’t botch it. We gather for the ceremony.

For the second time in two weeks Kasim separates me from Orit, draws me to one side—-all the while refusing to look me in the eye.

You are a good woman, Ratiba.

Woman? I’m not yet twenty.

Tell me now, it’s not too late. Would your parents have blessed this union? Kasim’s shoulders, his body—-so different from my Ibrahim’s— bloated beneath his kaftan; the skin on his hands, on his face—thick, oiled for this occasion; his eyes with-holding, the eyes of a man who has no woman.

It’s hot. Overcrowded. Damask panels —gold—have been draped over the windows. The ceremony has not started, yet already the hall is begging for air. Why is my father-in-law pestering me about parents? About unions, as though I were some national entity. Why now? Again? At the last minute? If I changed my mind, would he send everyone home? Of course, I say.

Good, and Kasim shuffles, in his specially ordered slippers, ahead of me, into the crowd.

We have gathered. Kasim is addressing us in front of his guests: The marriage of a man and a woman, he says, is the meeting of two souls. From this day on, you are like the wheels of a carriage. If you work in rhythm with each other, knowing each other’s thoughts, anticipating each other’s moves, you and your children will be happy. Ibrahim takes my hands in his. He’s looking only at me. I see nothing, hear nothing, care about nothing but him, my husband: my husband’s breath brushing my face, the orange of his eyes melting into mine, his scar, forever white above his lip until, like a bullet shot to heaven, the women pierce the air again with their voices, protecting us from harm.

Now the women are chanting al zaghareed, congratulating me on my choice of husband and my decision, from this point on, to tend to his needs. Men are gathered down the center of the room, dancing. Women cluster around, clapping, throwing seeds at us. The singer is wailing; the yarghul is droning in my head.

For a moment, my heart catches like a fishhook in my chest, frozen by the absence of my parents, refusing to beat, refusing to release its flow of blood.

Ori…Raula, I can’t…

What can’t you?

This. Can’t do it. Can’t breathe.

The singer falls silent. Immediately Umm Kulthum is blasted over the loud- speakers and the men sing along. Orit laughs out loud. Then, in an undertone so I have to read her lips to hear her, This is no time to panic, Ruti. Focus on Ibrahim, and, thrusting me toward him between the lines of dancing men, my sister spins me around until nothing remains but my love of my groom and my need to remain upright.

Again, friends have gathered around Kasim. He looks at Orit, at her complexion that she’s stained specially for this occasion, and says, In the absence of Ratiba’s parents, I felt reassured when I met Raula that my son is marrying into a good Muslim family. Raula’s manner of speech, he pauses, his eyes resting on her, well, it set my mind at ease.

Yes, I think, my father-in-law has a problem with me.

So, Orit is mingling with Ibrahim’s family, people she doesn’t even know. My name is Raula, she smiles at them, keeping her promise to me while handing round glass bowls of dates; of figs. She is listening, releasing her wonderfully light laugh as they talk. Her bangles jingle. She’s drawing everyone to her with her charm and her wolf-colored eyes. I am trussed up in my self-embroidered smock next to Ibrahim; Ibrahim busy being kissed by all the men at our wedding. I feel like a queen bee. Ibrahim looks foreign and adult in his suit. His relatives are circling around me, oohing and aahing, extending their hands, frightened to touch, believing perhaps that I might sting them, wishing us well. My hairpins are digging into my scalp. My shoes are pinching my toes; I should have worn them in before the wedding. I want to take them off, to change back into pants.

A ragged line of mustached men dances al debkeh, Kasim’s neighbor blatantly inspecting Orit for his son as he moves, his wife joining in his game, nodding, elbowing me, smiling in approval. How are they to know she will disappear after the wedding, abandoning our aspirations, I’ll tell them, for the temptations of the United States. I’ll tell Ibrahim too, on a weekly, monthly basis. For some reason, he’ll never tire of asking, What happened to your sister? Why doesn’t she write?

She does, I’ll lie, and he’ll ask why I never write back.

We move outside to the patio on the slope of the hill. Raula helps the women carry trays of cracked wheat and lamb, the aroma wafting after them as they go; sets them on the sheets that cover the ground. See? Kasim is leaning over me, smiling as he talks. I have never seen my father-in-law smile before, You have your trees, your evening breezes.

Raula—I love the way that name teases my tongue— carries the baklava and coffee from guest to guest, and to us, the bride and groom, as we nestle close to each other, responding only peripherally to the wishes of our guests, counting the stars. Love songs are pumped through a loudspeaker. Under cover of the music, I whisper my question to Ibrahim: Someday, in the future, if you stop feeling this way about me, will you tell me? Kissing me like the brush of a butterfly on my neck, then holding my eyes with his, he says, I won’t need to, you’ll know.

ORIT

Shuli said I fell into this world, like many of my generation, from the back alley, off the outstretched arm of my mother. That’s the way Shuli said things. But fate must have been waiting for me—or perhaps I was running after it, because years later, as an adult, I visited Rome. There, in the center of the magnificent Sistine Chapel ceiling, I saw God’s arm stretched out to man’s and I recognized that arm as my conduit to life.

Shuli was my mother. She was gentle when you caught her attention. The trouble was, that wasn’t such an easy task. Because Shuli was rarely fully there, was mostly concentrating on things other than me. I was three years old. I trailed after her from room to room, the metal blinds of our apartment pulled down against the heat, sprinkling eyes of light across the floor that winked and watched me, moving the shadow monsters that lived beneath my bed, under the table, behind the chair, in the corner—a giant one in the corner next to the plant, waiting to pounce. I was clutching Boobie, my comfort blanket, for protection. I’d given Boobie her name. She smelled like candy. I dragged her behind me on the floor, so she collected dust and fluff and bits of things on the way. Really what I was doing was waiting for Shuli to notice me, to pick me up. But when she finally lifted her head out of the storage chest, where she was sorting out clothes, and saw me with my arms stretched toward her, she gave a start as though I’d frightened her. When she did that, I also jumped, and I started to howl.

I thought you were sleeping, Ority. Why didn’t you tell me you were here? But I’d been whimpering for a while. I could feel the snot and the tears being smeared round my face by my free hand. She picked me up.

What is that toy underneath the clothes? I asked.

What toy? There is no toy in there.

The black one.

That’s not a toy, Sweet One, my ima said. It’s a pistol. It kept us safe before we moved here. You must never touch it. If you touch, it will bite you.

Why will it bite us now if it kept us safe before? I wanted to know, but Ima was busy calling my aba.

Yehuda, she told him. Put music on, and she became my ima again. "Come Babush, dance with me." Her arms wound around my back and all the way round her too. That’s how long they were. We glided across the room. She was tapping the floor with her toes, stepping on the shadow monsters, killing them. Her hair was caressing me like the wings of a Raven; I was swaying and dipping in the safety of her arms to the strains of Aba’s music. She smelled of the lavender lotion that stood as a fixture on our bathroom sink and never ran out.

There was a gentleness to Shuli that stayed with her, like the bathroom soap, right up to her last, stubborn, miserable days, way after she’d stopped dancing, when she was lying on my dead Aba’s bed refusing to move ore talk. But now, after two minutes of dancing, she said, Okay. sweet thing, go play. She plopped me down as though the music had been turned off. As though I were a package returned to her from a store. So, I sat on the tiles, in the blinded room, and waited for her to notice me again.

Aba walked in, also on his way to some more important chore. He lifted me, raised the shade so that its tiny eyes raced back into the ceiling, like those animals that Aba says rush into the sea when it’s their time for the next world, and the day was there. He set me in the corner of the sofa, tied each of my fingers with colored threads and bits of handkerchief, drew faces on them with his pens. This finger is Ima. He was hugging me, teaching me, as always, the Arabic for mother, Ommy. When you grow up, he planted a kiss on my forehead, you’ll speak Arabic just as well as Hebrew. Aba gave my second finger his voice. This one is me, he said, adding the Arabic for father— Abee. and a thimble for a hat. Then, This one is you, with a tiny cotton ball for hair, and that was my finger. He held up my thumb with a cotton-ball that was even smaller: This is the baby we will have soon, he said, softly, and he emitted a crying sound, making me laugh. Play with us, Ority, he said. We are at a party. We are dancing and eating yummy cake. See? See me lick the crumbs?"

When he wanted to leave me to work at his desk, my aba said, One of your finger people is lonely, Ority, and the others are trying to make her happy. How would you make her happy? He covered me with Boobie, my comfort blanket, placed my thumb, like a stopper, in my mouth for me to suck on, so I had to pull it out before our un-born baby’s face was rubbed off. He put songs on the record player for me to listen to with my family of fingers. I didn’t know that my finger family would develop into my life’s work.

Shuli never spoke about life before Israel, but, when I was old enough for pre-school, she told me how I became her daughter. A woman on a bus gave you to me while I was still in Europe, she said. When she sat next to me, I thought you were the clothes the woman was clutching to her breast. Later, when I stepped onto the curb with you in a shopping bag suspended from my arm, I couldn’t remember what the woman looked like, what she wore, whether her eyes were blue or brown, or even whether she was tall or not. I would never have been able to identify her for the authorities.

Shuli wouldn’t tell me who authorities were, or why she’d need to identify a stranger on the bus for them. Still, this was my story and I loved it. Every night, as she’d bend over my bed, I’d spread my Boobie blanket over mother Shuli’s knee and beg her to tell it to me. She always told it the same way.

World War II was over. I’d watch her chest heave and collapse as she sighed. Then…

‘My name is Haya,’ the woman whispered. ‘I’m working with an organization trying to trace the families of those who’ve survived and are living in transit camps.’

Shuli said that, at that time, she had little patience for other people’s worries because she had worries enough of her own. I’m on my way out of here, she told Haya. I’m waiting for papers, and I’m in a hurry."

Haya told Shuli that I had no name; that she wanted to find me a temporary home, just for the weekend, because the transit camp was infested with lice, because there was no one in the camp to look after me, because she was scared I might die. Shuli told me that when she closed the door of her rented room and lowered her bag onto the floor, I scrambled out of it like a squirrel, wouldn’t let her come near me. Two days went by. I wouldn’t come out from under the table, just stared at her, Shuli said, dirty hair hanging over my face I wouldn’t let her change me. I puddled on her straw rug, the one she said she loved because it had a star woven into the center. She left food for me in my safe place, but I wouldn’t eat it until she turned her back. At the end of the weekend, Haya came back; Shuli saw that she wasn’t tall, had curly brown hair and serious eyes beneath a woolen cap. I was still under the table, clutching the blanket that Shuli had thrown over me, that I wouldn’t let her take from me, which was smelly, she said, from my pee. Shuli said that, when Haya walked in, I squealed like a squirrel and made a dash in her direction. That was the first time she got to hold me. Shuli said I felt like a bird and smelled like a mouse. Haya was grumbling about how they’d been unable to find the refugees’ next of kin and how they didn’t have funds to feed them. Well, you won’t have to worry about this one, Shuli told her, because she and I? We belong together. I will name her Orit."

That’s how Shuli became my ima.

I was three years old. Here, in Israel. I had a dress, white like a bride’s; like Shuli, my ima’s, exactly like hers. Shuli was getting married. We got ready at the same time. I, putting on my socks as she pulled on her stockings. I checked her dress at the back making sure it looked good. She bent down so I could straighten her veil and once she was anyway on the cool stone floor, she buckled my shoes. What color ribbon do you want? I couldn’t make up my mind, so she tied my hair up in yellow, pink, and blue streamers, intertwined. Stand still for a minute, why don’t you? But I couldn’t so she gave up on the bow. Hurry, I kept telling her, We’ll be late. She was putting lipstick on for the first time ever. How does it look? She was so beautiful with the lipstick. Can I have some? She put lipstick on me, too. Let’s go, I was tugging on her arm, He’ll think we’re not coming. Shuli was hugging me. She was tickling me instead of picking up her key and her purse. He’ll not wait for us! By now I was pushing her from behind toward the door, Ima. Move. We’ll miss your wedding.

People were sitting in rows on either side of us. Shuli was carrying me up the aisle to marry Yehuda, my aba, with me holding the bouquet--white flowers to match my dress. A man in a puffy hat and a white shawl read stuff and sang. That’s the rabbi. Shuli was tickling my ear with her breath, He’s performing the ceremony. My aba wrapped his arms around Shuli after the ceremony, so I was squashed between them in the warm lavender smell of their embrace. He was kissing me with the side of his mouth while staring into my Ima’s dark blue eyes, at the paleness of her skin, at her shiny black hair that she’s curled, just for that day, beneath her veil.

I was four. Ruti was born. Don’t climb into the crib with your shoes on, Ority, it’s new! Don’t pick up the baby! My parents hovered over me, sure that I meant to hurt my new baby sister. I would never hurt my sister.

RUTI/RATIBA

Ibrahim is not home when Orit turns up. Still, I’m furious with her. What if he were?

Ruti, stop pacing, you’re making me nervous.

What does she want of me? I’m fidgety. I can’t keep still. Then, For starters, I tell her, don’t call me Ruti. Even when we’re on our own. I need to call Samah, my sister-in-law, tell her not to come over, because Orit is standing in my kitchen, her skin reverted to its regular pale state and a Star-Of-David suspended from her neck. As though that were not bad enough, she’s wearing an outrageously short skirt and she’s handing me, as a gift, a tray of Carp! Fish! Boiled fish! What is she thinking? - that we are living in the ghettoes of Poland! Never did we eat this kind of food in our parents’ home. Does she think I’ll serve it here, in my new, need-to-impress Arab village? That life here is not challenging enough?

It’s from Zahavi’s Deli, Orit is saying. I wanted to bring you something special.

Why?

To celebrate your marriage, your new home.

I don’t answer.

I couldn’t leave work till late, Rutily. Most of the food was gone by the time I got there.

I have nothing to say.

Everything else was sold out. They told me it’s a delicacy, that it was marinated in a ginger-wine sauce and steamed in cream. It cost me a week’s salary.

I tell her what I should have already told her: Never visit me here again.

What?

You heard me.

She drops onto my stool. Her lips open and close without words.

Okay, I say. You can come. But only if you dress as you did for my wedding, like one of us.

Orit walks out of my door. For a moment, I think she’s going to leave. I turn, wanting to go after her; but no, she wanders around the stubble, then plants herself on my doorstep, scratching at her neck which is always a warning sign. Not satisfied with that, she closes her eyes, angles her face toward the sun as though she’s at a spa; as though I have all the time in the world, as though Ibrahim is not likely to come home at any moment and find her here. I pace on the step above her, at the doorway.

Orit is rubbing her ears. So much for the sun spa. She’s scratching her shoulders. Spots have sprouted beneath her chin. Ruti, she says. This nonsense has gone on long enough.

What nonsense? My marriage?

You have to put a stop to this, Now,

As usual, my sister is ignoring my question.

I’ve no time to talk, Orit, so I’m going to tell you this, one time only: I’m no longer Ruti. I’m Ratiba. I’ve been Ratiba since I moved to Jerusalem and registered at the Hebrew University; since the day I found a job at my Arab newspaper and wanted to try Ratiba on for size. You’ve known this all along.

My voice is level, but my face is burning. I point my head away from her, tilting my chin upward in the way she hates.

Ruti. Orit pleads, Don’t act as though I’m not here.

I give in, a little. Then, You can’t do this to me. Ibrahim will know I’ve lied to him. That we’ve both lied. Kasim will know and that could be catastrophic. God knows how he’ll react. Why won’t you wait until I come to Jerusalem?

Because I’m your sister. Because I shouldn’t have to. Because you’re the only family I have, and I live just fifteen miles from you. Then, Ruti, she says— making me want to scream, making me want to close my door forever against her because she won’t call me Ratiba - this is not a game. If you love your husband, you must tell him the truth. There’s no reason to lie.

Easy for you to say.

What am I supposed to do? I go back inside, dump our coffee glasses in the sink. Where was this advice before the wedding? I’m muttering to myself, scared to call out to Orit on the front step for fear Ibrahim, who is miles away at work, will hear me. I spray water over the coffee grains, chasing them down the drain. What about during the wedding? You were happy enough then to play your nice little Arab woman role.

I squirt soap over the glasses. We talked about it when I first met him, I mumble. You promised you’d help me.

She’s standing behind me. I made a mistake.

No, Orit. Helping me was no mistake. Changing your mind—that’s a mistake.

I didn’t think you’d keep this charade going forever.

Charade? This is my marriage we’re talking about.

Orit says she feels awful. I am sorry for her—I don’t think. She’s sitting on my chair, rocking, wrapping her arms around her stomach. How do you do it? she moans—moans, as though this is her problem, and this time I lose my cool for real. Do what? I’m whispering as though Ibrahim is walking up the path, but I’m talking through clenched teeth and my hands are itching to shake sense into her. Live with the man I married? Why is that such a surprise to you? You know how much I wanted Ibrahim; you’ve known from the beginning, the price I’d have to pay.

Ruti, --- Orit struggling to stay calm ---You’ll be pregnant soon. When you give birth I’ll be an aunt, not a make-believe Muslim one with the wrong complexion and a phony address, but a Jewish one who wants to talk to her niece or nephew in Hebrew and celebrate the holidays in her own home with whoever it turns out to be. I’ll want your children to sleep over and do jigsaw puzzles with me on my kitchen table. Will you permit them to visit me? Will I be able to visit them? Will they even know of my existence?

She always could argue better than I.

I told you, only if you come as Raula.

Are you insane? Raula’s not my name. Any more than Ratiba is yours. My name is Orit. Aba nicknamed us Ratiba and Raula as an exercise, nothing more; used those names when he taught us Arabic, so we’d take his lessons seriously.

"Do you think he was playing when he taught us Arabic? Why do you think I started wearing a hijab at university? No one wears hijabs, anymore, Orit. The Arab students thought I was some crazy radical who hadn’t quite made it into the twentieth century. I wore it because I wanted to see what it felt like. I was taking Aba’s teachings to their logical conclusion."

It seems like you overshot your mark. If Arab women don’t wear them, you don’t have any idea how they feel.

Like Orit knows. She knows nothing about the world I live in now.

Then she asks me how I could do this to our mother’s memory, which is a dirty thing of her to do. I decide not to fall for it. As cool as rainwater, as our mother herself would have said, I answer, Our mother had her life journey, Orit. I have mine, and she tells me that the Arab sister who danced at my wedding, meaning her, is dead, and that the Jewish one, meaning her again, wants to be part of my life. Her voice is trembling. I ignore it. I give her what she deserves. Get this straight, I tell her. I’m not Ruti, I’m Ratiba, and I don’t know any Orit.

ORIT

I’ve lost my sister. Several times, I call her home at the edge of the stone Arab hill, but she has changed and privatized her number. For a month, I stalk her neighborhood dressed as Raula, hoping to talk to her as she leaves her home, waiting to apologize as she returns in the afternoon hours, frightened to leave a note for fear that Ibrahim might find it.

It’s not yet 7.00 a.m. in October. Monday. I—or rather Raula— see my sister leave her house by the back door. Ratiba, stop. Talk to me. For a second, her eyes flash dark and shiny, then her curls whip—-an ebony mass, wild-as always into view, and Ruti, my sister, distances herself into a group of mothers and their kids.

I don’t give up. Not yet. I feel phony dressed in the clothes of a make-believe person. To hell with artifice, I think. Next time, I’ll confront her head on, one human being to another, the way we all should in this insane part of the world.

I’m waiting on the corner near the back entrance to Ratiba’s house less than a week later, dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt, my Star-Of-David suspended resolutely from my neck, when Ruti—I’ve determined never again to refer to her as Ratiba—- emerges with Ibrahim. Shoot, what should I do? He doesn’t see me, but Ruti, always sharp—she sees. Ibrahim, I forgot. I left the stove on. She pushes her husband back inside. That’s it. I’ve had it with her. I just hope she has a good marriage, because I’m not going to