Chapter 1
Jordan Valley, Israel
5 April 1969
After lunch I went to the library to borrow Anne Frank again. Queenie had turned the air-conditioner on in the children’s house, which meant it was 43 Celsius outside. Or more. Hot enough to fry an egg on a car bonnet. Apparently. I would like to check whether this is true, but Father doesn’t own a car. He drives Community-shared ones, and you can’t break an egg onto one of those, whatever the weather.
Normally in the summer, no one can sleep after lunch, we toss and turn, sweating into our beds, until Queenie says it’s three o’clock, the end of rest-time. But occasionally it gets so hot she takes pity on us and turns on the air-conditioners, only for an hour; it’s like throwing hundred-shekel notes into a bonfire, she says. Then the children fall asleep, even Leo and Saffi do. But today I just couldn’t drop off, however many songs I went through inside my head. And Queenie said I may go to the library instead. Only me. Even though it was rest time!
I love Queenie, she looks after all us children. She’s too young to be our mother, but she can make you feel precious with a flash of her smile. Sometimes she kisses me goodnight. Just me. She is the most beautiful woman I have seen in real life. Her hair is dark and straight, soft and shiny, and sometimes she wears it in loose plaits. I’ve tried to plait my hair the way she does but it’s so thick and stiff the plaits look like bunches of straw. Queenie wears cut-off jeans and rings with big stones.When she walks, her hips move up and down, up and down. I practise walking that way too, Mother saw me once and said I looked ridiculous, as though I was desperate for a pee. I love Queenie as much as I love Mother. Sometimes more. In the library, I borrowed Anne Frank and was reading as I walked back. The afternoon wind crept among the houses, a cockerel crowed beyond, a tractor was on its way home to the shed. The pavements are quiet at rest-time. Community Members are in their rooms. But today, a voice said,That book looks interesting.
I looked up. It was Micah Ashkenazi, Saffi’s brother. Wearing army uniform, crumpled and dirty. Shoes dusty, I noticed that straight away. His eyes were squeezed nearly shut against the sun, so his face seemed like a smile. First, I looked around, wondered whether he was talking to me or maybe to someone behind me. But there wasn’t anyone else. Still, I wasn’t sure. He’s even older than Ester, that’s my older sister, maybe twenty years old, why was he talking to me? What’s so interesting about what I’m reading?
I stood still, we both did, and the moment stretched like a piece of pink Mastic gum you pull out of your mouth with two fingers, teeth holding on to the other end and it gets longer and longer, you can’t pull it any further, your arm is too short, and you lose. But here, today, the Mastic snapped.
It was him who spoke first. I was saying that’s an interesting book. He was still grinning. I know, I said. I’ve read it. Twice already. And what do you think of it?
That put me on the spot if I wasn’t on it already. Anne is so clever and nice; she laughs even when her life is so hard. I want to be able to write just like she does.Though I know how her story ends, I never can help hoping she will be saved instead of die in the Nazi concentration camp. But I wasn’t going to say all this to Micah, he’d only tell Ester, and together they’d laugh and call me silly. Also I was feeling nervous with his nearly-shut, staring eyes. So I said, It’s good. Then I smiled, and walked on, still reading.
I’m going to keep a diary just like Anne Frank and if I die in the next war or in a Syrian bombardment my diary may be published and I will become famous in death.And if I don’t die first I may be a famous writer like Jules Verne or Enid Blyton, or my very favourite, Erich Kästner. In his books children always sort things out themselves, the adults never have time to notice what’s happening around them. I love Erich Kästner, but I would never be able to write like him, or even near.
My name is Abbie. I’m nine years old and nearly a half. I can skip two ropes on the double, which my brother Tommy still can’t and he’s twelve already. I’m good at swimming, and next year Father and I are going to swim the Annual Crossing of the Sea of Galilee, three kilometres long! I live in a Kibbutz Community by the river Jordan. We are Socialists, and everything is shared like it should be in a big family.
If I become a famous author I will just keep writing more and more, and children all over the world will wait for my latest book to be translated from Hebrew into their languages and their grandmother might bring them my books as presents when she comes to visit.That’s what I really want. And for Josh Pasternak to love me (but I know that will never happen).
3 May 1969
I will never be rich like most famous writers because my money will belong to our Community. You can’t have a private income at the same time as being a Socialist and that’s why after my grandfather Arthur died and left Mother an Inheritance she gave it all away. Her brother, Uncle David, lives in Tel Aviv with his wife Betty, where he is a big businessman selling airconditioners. He offered to open a bank account for Mother where she could keep the Inheritance and no one in the Community need even know. And she need never use it, he said, but Ester, for example,may one day want to go to university and then Mother would be able to help her out. But no, Mother wouldn’t have it.The Community would pay for Ester to go to university, as long as she becomes a Member, and as long as she studies something useful such as book-keeping or even medicine, Ester is that bright and clever she could be a doctor if she put her mind to it.
Ester says she won’t go to university, even though she’s the best in her class at all the difficult subjects. After military service she’s going to live in Tel Aviv and do a Working Class job, where you work long hours for hardly any money and have dirt under your fingernails. Being Working Class is a step towards The Revolution, Ester says. But Mother and Father think she will change her mind. Like Micah Ashkenazi did; everyone had been worried when he joined the Communists, and look at him now, an officer in a secret crack unit. Mother and Father say Ester will go to university, whatever she thinks or says now.
Uncle David said that their father, my Grandfather Arthur, would not have been happy for Mother to hand over her Inheritance to random strangers. But Community Members are not random strangers. And Mother is not permitted to be in possession of private money, stashed in secret bank accounts or not.
Also, Grandfather Arthur most certainly did know what Mother would do with her Inheritance. But David doesn’t believe this, not for a moment. He himself had been certain that Mother would—yes, he was going to say it whether she liked it or not—he had been certain that she would grow out of it. But Mother is a grown woman in her thirties, how dare David suggest she doesn’t know her own mind? In any case, it was too late—the money was already in the Community Treasury; David may as well stop haranguing her.
So then there was relief or a ceasefire, Mother said, as they all went right back to normal, which is David keeping quiet, and Aunt Betty dominating every conversation. Betty has many friends, all with important jobs like running half the army or being surgeons, or otherwise they don’t work at all but meet with their girlfriends at cafés and eat shop-bought cake. Shopbought cake is something I’d like to try one day. But Mother can’t abide sitting at cafés, being served by lowpaid workers. She did not leave London and come to live here, in The Back of Beyond, only for her children to grow up spoilt and bourgeois. Besides, she says in English, which is so embarrassing when there were people all around. Besides, you know, money doesn’t grow on trees.
But the issue of Mother’s inheritance didn’t go away. Every time she and David talk on the phone he just can’t let it rest. Mother and Father don’t have a telephone in their room, but our neighbours Jacob and Ruth do, because Jacob stood on a mine in the Sinai War, 1956. It was a miracle he didn’t die, and he still has metal pieces all through his body. So to make sure he has a comfortable life after doing his duty to our country the government gives him a telephone and a car.And because he is 79 per cent disabled he doesn’t have to hand over these luxuries to the Community.So David sometimes telephones Jacob, after nine o’clock, cheap time, and they hang up straight away, to save on David’s bill, and then Jacob’s wife Ruth walks over to call Mother. And Mother goes to wait by the phone until David calls again after five minutes, or longer if the lines are busy, the whole Nation uses the telephone at nine o’clock, cheap time.
The next day Mother has news. Manu, Betty’s brother, stood up during Passover meal and declared himself a homosexual. Being homosexual means you might leave your wife and children and run off to live with another man; Father’s friend Jonathan did this and was never seen again.
But Manu never married in the first place and he hasn’t run off, so I don’t know how he is being a homosexual. Mother said she will explain when I’m older. But Leo knows and he told me, it means Manu likes kissing another man. On the lips—which is disgusting. I sometimes imagine myself giving Josh a kiss on his cheek and holding his hand. I must close my eyes when I think of that.
Now Mother says she won’t talk to David on the phone anymore, the man is obsessed, he is obsessed with money, Father will have to do it instead. Father hates the telephone. And he hates to talk about money. He was a child in Yugoslavia when the Second World War started and his parents sent him and his sister Deborah to safety in Palestine.They themselves stayed behind to make more money before going to Palestine also. Then the Nazis invaded their town and shot them into the Danube, the same river Father and Deborah had learned to swim in when they were small children. All the Jews in the town were shot into the river. The fish must have thought Christmas had come early, Manu said at New Year. Mother and Betty frowned. Neither of them likes Holocaust jokes.
Father thinks if his parents hadn’t been greedy for more money they would have gone to Palestine sooner, with him and Deborah, and been saved. So now he won’t answer David’s calls either. It’s her inheritance, her brother, Father says, as he sits outside on the boulder for a smoke without inhaling.
10 June 1972
Last night there was a bombardment from across the Syrian border. Queenie came to the children’s house to take us down to the bomb shelter. She said to stay calm, as though we wouldn’t, and to take just a pillow, but I stuffed my Anne of Ingleside book inside the pillow-case, and the torch Grandma Rose gave me for secret reading. We went down to the bomb-shelter, where I got a bunk next to Saffi.We lay in the darkness, listening to the bombs, like far away thunder. In the bunk above, Leo was making strange noises, pretending he wasn’t scared. In the end Josh rolled over and flicked him hard on the head and that was that, quiet, except older boys snoring.
With my torch under the blanket I read Anne of Ingleside. I cannot get enough of Anne. Last Friday, it was family time, half past four, I was still reading and didn’t go to the parents’ room. So Father and Tommy went looking for me, searched all around, even took a tractor as far as Abudiya, the Arab village on the other side of the Jordan. Then Saffi’s brother Micah told them he’d seen me by the pine grove behind the children’s house, and there I was, sitting on top of the bomb-shelter, reading without a care in the world.Tommy came up behind and twisted my arm so it hurt, said he’d wasted a whole hour looking for me, and I must say, Sorry, Sir! But I know Tommy loves driving the tractor, Father always lets him even though he’s only fourteen.
I finished the book but couldn’t sleep. I thought of Anne, long ago and far away in America, knowing nothing of wars, while we have already known two. Anne Shirley is my favourite person. I wish my name were Anne Shirley instead of A-bi-gail-Bos-ko-vitch, jagged and long. Anne Shirley sounds like a smooth pebble, bouncing once, twice on the water, then sinking silently, no fuss. She could be a line in a romantic poem. You wouldn’t use “Abigail Boskovitch” in a poem, except maybe a limerick. Anne hated her red hair, but when she grew up it turned a beautiful auburn. Rita dyes her hair a colour called Auburn Sunset; Leo told me it comes from America where they have time to make up such names. But Rita’s hair is orange, like the persimmon father brought home from army reserve duty, and it’s a waste of money, says Mother; she should let it go grey like all the other Members do.
One of my eyes is brown and one grey, and that’s worse than having red hair. Queenie says no one’s perfect, and to stop looking down all the time, you’ll have a hunched back and who would marry you then, eh? Look at me when I’m talking to you, Mother chides, people will think you have no manners! By “people” she means the English side of our family; here in Israel no one is bothered by such things. But I don’t care about the English and what they think of children with bent necks and abnormally coloured eyes.
In books, I love Gilbert Blythe who loves Anne Shirley. She only realises that she also loves him at the very end, lucky he proposes to her again after she’s turned him down. If Josh ever asks me to walk out with him I would say yes.He is the one I love in real life, and thinking of him lying in the next bed but three pushed sleep even further away. I lay awake until all the sighing and creaking had stopped, though not the snoring, and not the far away bomb-thunders.
In the morning I woke up to see Leo’s leg dangling through the gap between the two bunks.He was prodding me in the ribs, so I squeezed his toe, tight until he begged for mercy. After lunch Mother came by to say Father had been called up in the night, to join the fighting. The bombardments had stopped and we were allowed outside. Lessons were as usual except history—Solomon had also been called up. Solomon is our history teacher and Father’s commanding officer in the Infantry. He’s a lieutenant colonel, and Father only a captain.
15 July 1972
The night we buried Lady I lay awake in bed, thinking about her life, how she broke her leg and Father drove us to the veterinary’s big house overlooking the Sea of Galilee; how I used to check her for ticks, behind the ears, between the toes, pull them out, burn them until they explode in a puff and good riddance. I remembered the litters she had every year, we would fill a canvas sack with grass to make her comfortable, and give the puppies names. And then how upset we were when they were taken away by Chaled the Arab builder, to live in his village, according to Queenie, but actually he had them drowned, we found that out later; you can’t have dogs running around procreating without control and giving us all rabies,Tommy said sagely.
Lady died in the big dog clear out. There had been a rabies case, and everyone was told to keep their dogs indoors while the strays were rounded up. A notice had gone up in the Dining Room. But us children were away staying in another kibbutz by the sea. No one at home thought to take Lady in, not Mother or Father, maybe they don’t know I’m the one who’s always feeding her and looking for her when it’s time for her vaccination. She belongs to all the children in Squill Group but no one takes care of her like I do. Did.
And that’s how she ended up being shot like a stray. Mona found her in a bin.We gave her a solemn burial in the eucalyptus grove outside the security fence, it overlooks the bridge over the Jordan so a nice view for her. Instead of a headstone Ori put up a cross over her grave, he’d seen them in a photograph that shows how many American soldiers died in Vietnam. It’s a Christian thing, but we didn’t mind, the adults don’t know, or they might tell us to take it down.At least,Ori’s parents would, it was Christians who killed their family in the Holocaust. Father doesn’t hold a grudge against Christians even though they also murdered his parents, he’s been an orphan since he was eleven, that’s younger than I am now. I miss Lady every day, but that’s not why this summer has been a sad one, which I will write about next and pray to G-d even though I know he doesn’t exist that no one ever reads this diary but me.
That night, after the burial, as I lay awake, remembering Lady’s life, a secret thing happened.The moon was up and then someone was standing in the doorway, a tall broad shadow. Leo and Sara were asleep. The shadow was still, but after a while he stepped in and stood over my bed. It was Micah, Saffi’s older brother. I thought perhaps he was looking for her but he wasn’t. I didn’t answer when he sat on my bed and said Hello Abigail, no one else calls me Abigail, only Grandma Rose, and How are you? I said, Okay and he carried on asking questions in a quiet voice, about my day and favourite subject at school, a hushed close voice, as though we were friends and always did have conversations in my room after lights-out. He said, it was difficult to find you; he had gone into another room first. Someone,maybe Anya, was awake, and he told her he was looking for Saffi. Who was he looking for, was it me I didn’t ask, just lay there, quite calm.
It was Friday, he was home for the weekend.There had been a party in the Dining Room, he said.Next year when we’re thirteen my class will be allowed to go to such events, but I didn’t say so, it was embarrassing that Micah was sitting on my bed, he’s Saffi’s brother, also Ester’s friend, ten years older than us, what if Leo or Sara wake up, what if someone saw him walking into the children’s house, bold as brass. All I could do was sit up a little and pull the sheet over my pyjama top, it had got tangled between my thighs in the heat of the night. He noticed pretty soon that I was hardly saying anything and so he stopped talking too and sat quietly and I lay in my bed wishing he’d go away quick but saying nothing. It was exciting too.
His hand dug in under the sheet and held my hand; was this instead of asking me to be his girlfriend I wondered, will I say yes even though I’m still waiting for Josh? The skin on his hand was rough and hard near the knuckles like Father’s, and my hand was lying there as though it were a wet floorcloth after Queenie had pulled it out of the bucket and wrung all the bleach water out with her strong hands; I didn’t move at all. Numbness crept up my arm and my shoulder stuck to the pillow. I lay quietly, breathing shallow, in-out carefully, quietly in-out, what shall I do, nothing, look away, nothing, just lie back. We sat like this a long while, the moon crept off my bed, across his lap.
What were we doing here, what’s next, and then he held on tighter to my hand and also moved forward, he was going to kiss me maybe even on the lips his face was close up, I could smell cigarette smoke, Grandma Rose smell, but not so nice, also his lips were thick and fleshy, I didn’t think I wanted them to touch me and my head went back into the pillow I was holding my breath he was too close, so close in the end I had to move, to use my right hand, the one he wasn’t holding, to hold him back slightly, which meant my hand on the front of his shoulder, I did it gently, weren’t we friends? And he sat up again but looking at me straight in the eyes, smiling, finally I breathed in and the air filling my lungs was light like a relief.
So I was quite still, and he was holding my hand, the left one, and my right was on the front of his shoulder, not really holding him back anymore, just resting, I wanted to take it away, not to be taking part in this thing that was going on, what’s going on here Queenie says when she walks in on us and we’ve done something wrong, what’s going on here anyway I didn’t know, but also had to be so still like a statue not move a muscle so I left it there, my hand. And his shoulder was thick and hard not bony like the shoulders of boys I know, Leo or Tommy. Because he is a man with a man’s shoulder. Micah smiled a Cheshire Cat smile; what did it mean? I was confused just as Alice was in the Wonderland wood.
Was he happy sitting here with my hand upon his thick man shoulder? Was he thinking, this is what I want to do now with this very girl called Abigail? My stomach made a knot and squeezed it tight, I let my hand fall onto my lap. He smiled that confusing smile.Then he moved towards me again. Was he going to kiss me again, was it because I let my hand fall off his shoulder instead of keeping it there and being still? And he was not as handsome now, his head too big, ears out to the sides, his nose weighed him forward, some of his curls touched the side of my forehead, thick lips smiling, seeping smoky breaths onto my face.
I’ve seen such scenes before, in the movies Ester calls “romantic”. But this was not a movie.
What would they say if they saw us? I turned my head. He sat up again.The hand holding mine let go and then he sighed. Not smiling anymore, he stood up, walked out of the room. The moon out in the pine grove was toying with some fireflies. Afterwards, looking at the sky getting lighter behind the trees, I wondered if the thing had happened at all.
The next day was Saturday. I went to help Father feed the cows.We took out the green John Deere, and I sat by him on the fender. Father was talking about engines, why you must check the oil level every single morning, when I saw Micah coming towards us on a bicycle. I looked away feeling tight in the stomach, if he is here, in the Community, then last night did happen in real life. My cheeks felt hot.
I prayed to the God I don’t believe in that he should ride his bicycle right past us but Father saw him too. Ah, he called, Look who’s here, and he turned off the engine, they talked for an absolute age, what was Micah doing in the army, he’s just finished officers’ training course, with distinction, well done, good, and where next; and what he thinks about the inter-party talks, will they form a coalition, will a Labour government continue to build Settlements in the Occupied Territories, yes certainly, Micah says, if they want to hang on to power, Father nods his head then shakes it. Father thinks all building projects in the Occupied Territories should stop right away, the Settlements are a thorn in our side, also a waste of money, well, Micah agrees, of course, but he’s a realist, we must accept the status quo, hmmm, we’ll have to disagree on this. Etcetera.
They were talking and talking and I was trapped. Micah was there, leaning against the bonnet, ignoring me as though he hadn’t sat on my bed the night before and tried to kiss me not even once but twice. I wondered, should I walk away, my heart was beating, beating from having him near, but also that paralysed floor-cloth feeling from last night. So I sat, stupid and small. I’m twelve years old and know about how people have babies; but kissing on the lips I’ve so far only seen in films. Hello Abigail, Micah is saying and his eyes, light blue in the sun, smile at me. Again. I smile back, but only with my mouth, I think. Father is also looking. They are both smiling. Aren’t you going to say hello? says Father. Another knot in my stomach, squeeze.
Hello, I say. Pause.
Father chuckles into the silence.Well, we must get on or we’ll be late for lunch. He turns on the engine, and we speed towards the cow sheds. Ah, Micah, Micah, he says, Micah is my kind of lad. But there’s no need for me to answer, Father has lost half his hearing defending the Jordan Valley from the Jordanians in 1948, barricaded in the police station the British abandoned during the War of Independence, leaving us to fend for ourselves against seven Arab armies.
Mother wishes he’d been more careful when blowing up that bridge which stopped the Jordanians driving straight into the Jordan Valley, he was the one who carried the dynamite over to the bridge. I’m so proud of him but now Mother has to suffer, Father can’t hear half of what she’s saying or is it that he’s just not listening. Oscar are you listening to me she says and I do not know what’s so annoying about someone being a little deaf sometimes like right now Father is intoning Micah, Micah my man, and I didn’t have to say anything, he couldn’t hear me anyway over the engine roar. Since that day, Micah has not been back. Saffi says the army is on High Alert, tensions at the borders, so his weekend leave was cancelled. I don’t care when he takes his leave, but I keep imagining seeing him in the distance through the corner of my eye, especially on Friday nights.
4 August 1972
Anya joined our class after the last bombardment. She’s from Odessa. That’s in the USSR, not Russia, says Ester, Odessa is in Ukraine, which Russia has oppressed since the Revolution and still does. Ester never misses a chance to give me a lecture.What a shock Anya had, coming to live here! First, the heat. It’s June and already forty degrees, Mother simply cannot face another summer like the last one, she longs to, spend August with Aunt Rachel in London. If only she could get Committee Approval to travel. If only we had money. It’s been fifteen years, she truly does miss England, where people like to complain when it rains, instead of being grateful. A short stay in Hampstead would be something to look forward to in this hellish oven where only mosquitoes thrive. Mother has had twenty years to get used to our summers and she hasn’t managed yet.
But Anya is here for the first time. Her white skin turns red in the sun, and when we go to the Sea of Galilee she has to sit in the shade instead of bouncing pebbles or playing Bulldog in the water. Collecting mussels from the sea bed she wouldn’t do anyway, because she can’t swim. And she wouldn’t eat them afterwards, mussels aren’t kosher, she said, and we tried not to laugh.
In Odessa, Ukraine, as well as sending her to secret Hebrew lessons, her parents bought her a pair of sandals in preparation for coming to the “Holy-land”.The sandals are a townie sort with covered toes, and if that’s not ridiculous enough, they are also shiny red, which is a colour only babies wear. Leo sniggered when he saw them, but I told him it’s not her fault. In the afternoon, she came out to play barefoot like the rest of us but it’s too late in the year to get used to the heat on your feet. You should start about Passover when it’s not yet hot, then by June you can walk on the pavements even at noon. Black tar roads are the worst. You must run across quickly or you’d get blood blisters. So Anya had to wear her embarrassing sandals until Queenie took her to Dov the Shoemaker for a pair of biblicals, brown, now she looks normal. Then, after lunch, Queenie asked me to take Anya to the clothes store so she can get summer clothes. Why me? I was looking forward to our Siesta.
Queenie calls it Siessstahh, in a rolling winding kind of way, like the Spanish say it—that’s our reading-in-bed time and my book is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Agnes is my thirdfavourite character after the two Annes—Shirley and Frank. She’s patient and graceful, waiting and waiting for David Copperfield to notice her, just as I wait for Josh. Why me, I asked, but Queenie said she has a headache and to please not argue. Why can’t Anya go alone? Because I asked you to go with her, Queenie snapped and turned away, continued washing the shower floor. Sometimes she can be mean or angry but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you anymore.
The clothes store isn’t a shop, it’s where all our clothes are kept, and every new season the oldest children go there to check which clothes still fit, and which they have grown out of, those they give back to the store. I explained this to Anya as we walked along the pavements, she was wearing her new sandals but not me, I was barefoot. The heat at noon makes you breathe carefully and walk slowly, it presses down, wraps around you like a too warm woollen blanket you can hardly bear. So we rushed from one ficus tree shade to another, slowing for the cooler air, then fast through the next sun patch to another shade. Slow, fast-fast-slow, even stand still, wait for the fire on the soles of my feet to go out.
Anya said, What if I don’t like the clothes she gives me? My dad says short shorts look cheap. What is she… religious or something?
Is your father religious?
No. But my granddad was a rabbi, an underground one; before we ran away from Odessa he used to hold prayer meetings in our house.
Well, Sara is the only one who makes a fuss over clothes.That’s what she’s like.
What?
No one likes her. I think she’s nice.
She’s always in trouble and annoying everyone. Even swore at Mona, once.
Why do you share a room with her?
Queenie decides where we sleep. It’ll be someone else next.
In the clothes store Miriam gave Anya an up and down look and offered her a pair of pioneer shorts with elasticated thighs and button fastening on one side, home-made. Anya didn’t look happy, she was probably thinking about what her dad would say, but she said nothing; Miriam looked sour, her face was puckered, she always does look like that, but Anya doesn’t know that. And in that vein, she received two pairs of work-shorts, two for evenings and the same with shirts. Also a hat.And Miriam stares at her still-small breasts.
Do you need any underwear?
Anya went bright red.
No, thank you. Miriam said, Well, if you do have any of your own clothes, I’ll have them marked for you so they don’t get lost in the laundry. She looked a little less cross when she said that.
Things have moved on in our Community in the last years. Children are allowed to keep their own clothes now, if someone buys them any. When Ester was in kindergarten, Grandma Rose brought her a pair of sandals from Tel Aviv, but she had to share them with all the other girls, by rota; her Nanny said it would be unfair otherwise.That’s Socialism.
Ester says, Why should I have had more just because my grandmother can afford to buy it for me? I think so too, most children don’t have grandparents because they stayed too long in Europe and were killed in the holocaust. Like Father’s parents, Irene and Morris. Or some children’s grandparents are Community Members, and so have no money of their own. This is a Socialist ideal: To each according to his needs; from each according to his ability. Or her.
Maybe because she’s a baby, or hasn’t yet got used to all the sharing and being equal,Anya cried as we walked out of the store. Or maybe she was missing Odessa, far away in Europe, or her Mother, working in the kitchen or having an afternoon rest, but Anya can’t see her until family time at half past four.Or did I upset her instead? I sometimes do that without meaning to and people think I’m rude. Mother told me so. But crying where people can see is being selfish which is a bad thing. After all, she did get to keep her nice shop-bought pants, whereas the rest of us wear home-made cotton ones, white and loose.
We walked back to the children’s house. Anya was still crying. I did suddenly want to comfort her, but couldn’t decide what would be a helpful thing to say, maybe nothing was best. Queenie was in the kitchen helping Ori and Shira wash the lunch dishes but when she saw Anya she put her arm round her shoulder and they walked off together. Queenie would have the exact-right words to make Anya feel better. But to follow them would be eavesdropping which you mustn’t do, people will think you have nothing better to think about than other people’s business which is none of yours. So I went to bed, it was rest time, Leo was reading and Sara was pretending to sleep, in a minute she’ll start her fake sleep-talking, for attention. Suddenly I could hear Queenie, she and Anya were in the classroom, next door. Lucky that my bed was by the door. I opened my book. If you’re trying to read you can’t be accused of eavesdropping.
And it was terrible, Queenie was saying, I hated everything: the heat, the food, the communal showers. The other children, they already had each other and didn’t need a new friend, a strange townie like me.
Queenie had never told us that coming to live here had been difficult. You assume everyone loves our way of life. Our Kibbutz is the best place. There are no poor people; the garbage collector is valued as highly as the factory manager. It’s true the farmers are the highest value, but they are the ones safe-guarding our land. We are the defenders of our Country’s borders; every few years our enemies try to destroy us in an all-out war, and between wars they send infiltrators across the border to terrorise our nights. When we are in our beds in the children’s house, with no adults to watch over us, we aren’t afraid of made-up nonsense like witches or giants. We lie awake, listening to hyenas in the fields, and imagining an infiltrator has crept over the Jordanian border two kilometre away, or Syrian border five kilometres away. We think of him lurking in the pine grove outside our window, then we might call out for the night-guard through the intercom box on the ceiling, and if she hears us, after a while she might appear, and might walk over to our parents’ room and tell them I want my mother, but Father would turn up instead, tired and silent, and lie down on the cold marble floor next to my bed and go straight to sleep; he has to be up at four o’clock, and guilt would sit inside my forehead, poor Father, selfish to have got him out of bed; eventually I wake him up and he goes back to bed in the room he shares with Mother by the banana plantation next to the security fence, and finally I can fall asleep.
And the boys of our Country’s Communities are the fighters and officers of our Defence Forces, the IDF. Lots of town-people spend their military service as nonfighting job-nicks. But in our Community, a job-nick without a good excuse, such as polio, or only one arm, would be in disgrace and his parents would not hold their heads high for the shame of it. For example, Gideon Goldberg. He pretended to have a limp, spent a week walking with one leg on the pavement and one off, to make it look real.And now he is a cook (a cook!) in a base one kilometre away, by the Sea of Galilee. Every evening his mother has to get his food from the Dining Room, he’s too ashamed to show his face on weekdays while his classmates are pulling their weight far away in secret locations.
In the afternoon, after talking with Queenie,Anya was smiling and asked to learn how to skip a long rope till it was half past four and family time.
23 September 1972
Last summer, when Lady died and Micah came into my room the night we buried her, was my worst summer so far. The reason it got to be my worst came near the end, after Anya and I became best friends. Her skin was creamy now, and her accent not so strong. Sometimes she laughs too much when there are boys around, but friends are friends, you can’t go around criticising or you’ll end up on your own.We had just moved into our new house in the big secondary school. The school is outside the perimeter fence, beyond the swimming pool. Anya and I share a bedroom. The week before school started, she asked if I wanted to swap secrets. I first thought about the Micah-secret but didn’t want to tell, these words are too hard to say. Then I thought I could maybe tell her about Josh. My love for him is unrequited, he’s never talked to me apart from joining in with Tommy’s teasing, sometimes; Tommy is an absolute idiot who shows off when Josh is around—worships him, he does. Sometimes, I forget about Josh even for two days in a row. But then I see him, and he presses on my chest, tight around my neck. Would sharing him lighten my load? Would his name on my lips carry him off and out from inside me where he perches on top of my heart like a kingfisher? I cannot say it, cannot say, Josh, only in a whisper, alone under the sheets.
My mouth watered, my tongue laboured through thick cement, and, hoarsely, shyly, it came, Josh. I didn’t think Anya had heard, but it felt good, and I was working my mouth up to saying more.
But she did hear, and she said, how did you guess it was Josh, he was her secret, he’d asked her to be his girlfriend. Surprise was the least of it. Could she be talking of anyone, anyone at all, other than him? She couldn’t know. I would have said something, but my mouth was numb. Dumb.
She asked, what do I think, should she say yes, she wasn’t sure, her father would go mad! It would have to be a secret and she didn’t know if she could be bothered.Yes, she knows he’s popular and clever, quite good looking, but not really her type. She has a type! She just went on and on, he’s too loud, always thinks he’s right, always assumes everyone wants to listen to him. You know, he never even spoke to me before, not once! And now he wants us to be friends. What do you think? Abbie? And, hating myself for being the worst most disloyal friend, I said so maybe say no? But she wasn’t listening, was thinking maybe give it a try, but is it fair? You know Abbie, as I don’t really like him that much? And I do want to have a boyfriend, don’t you? Now we’re in high school, and no bed-time, we could go for walks, sit under trees. It’s quite romantic now I think about it. And it doesn’t bother me that he’s two years older. You know, Ori and I used to kiss, quite a lot when we were walking out; so I know what I’m doing. Anya was going to be Josh’s girlfriend because she feels sorry for him. I said, But do you like him?
It’s okay for you, Anya said, you have Leo.And—you’re a Sabre, a native here. But, you know, it’s not so easy for me. I miss the home we had in Odessa.We were a family then. We didn’t have much food, but we ate it together around a table; and my mother would put me to bed, and take me to school. Here, it’s like I’ve lost my parents; although I still see them every day. And, nothing ever happens to just me. It’s always Us and We. I probably sound stupid to you. But, I don’t know, with all this together and solidarity I often feel quite alone. I said, Leo? He’s not my boyfriend! I don’t even like him—very much!
Later, in bed, I could see the heavy cloud pushing the air aside and engulfing me with a chill, like an evil cradling, slowly suffocating. I stayed in bed for two days after that. The second afternoon, Mother came to see what had happened to me. She made me a cup of lemon tea, stayed a bit, then went home to Father. It’s stupid. I’ve been in love with Josh since I was seven years old, since the day the Six Day War ended and Queenie took us all down to the river. But I’d never thought Josh would want me anyway. I’m not nearly so pretty as Anya with her light brown, hazel eyes and her perfect skin.My skin has turned to spots, my eyes are two different colours and I can’t even wear a bra yet. I have no right. Except, however often I tell myself it’s hopeless, there’s a little bit of stubborn hope.A hope that if, incredibly, miraculously I’m wrong, Josh may one day love me back.
So this is why this summer has been my saddest so far. A week later, Anya and Josh started to walk out together. I’ve seen less and less of her since then.
The Tortoise—a story by Abbie Boskovitch
In the spring of 1967, just before the Six DayWar I found a tortoise on the bank of the river Jordan. Talia, Goldie and Saffi were waiting in the water below as I climbed to reach the swing rope which hung from a high eucalyptus branch. Grasping at a tree root that jutted free of the slippery mud bank, and heaving myself onto shore, I came face to face with its wrinkled head, so close our noses nearly touched. Startled by the encounter, I let the root slip through my hand and fell crashing back onto the other girls. Laughing and spluttering, I recovered myself and again clambered up the bank in search of the creature. It had attempted to avoid detection by slipping sideways amongst the reeds, but I found it and carried it back up the hill.
I made a home for the tortoise in an old grapefruit crate Tommy and I found behind the silo. We filled the crate with straw, added fresh grass and a carrot and placed it outside my parents’ room by the red stopcock. Let it go, Ester said, the poor thing must be terrified, she often spoke of things like Justice and Politics.We ignored her. The tortoise would want for nothing. The next day after lessons I rushed over on my bicycle to see it, but the crate was turned on its side and the creature had gone. It’s hardly surprising, Ester said knowingly, wouldn’t you want to break free? I am free, I retorted fiercely, fighting back tears. Ester raised a dismissive eyebrow. Abbie you’re not, she said. None of us are.
I remembered the tortoise again the next time I swam in the river. The war had just ended, the Six Day War in which our paratroopers conquered Jerusalem and handed it back to the Jews. That morning, the children were let out of the bomb shelter and in the afternoon, Queenie took us all down to the Jordan. Up and down stream we swam, first grabbing onto submerged boulders, pulling ourselves against the current, past the stepping stones and swing rope to where the water was so shallow that when we stood up again our fronts were smeared with black riverbed mud. Then, turning onto our backs, we gave ourselves to the current and, arms stretched over our heads, floated down-stream, squinting into the afternoon sun that drifted in and out through the reeds. Gently, slowly, the river carried us back to the bridge, where our clothes hung like colourful bunting on eucalyptus branches, out of the reach of scorpions and ticks. Back to where Queenie lay snoozing on a flat bank.
Queenie, we’re back! Goldie called cheerfully, beating her naked chest with two fists like Tarzan King of the Apes. Queenie sat up, smiling indulgently at us, the children of Quill group. Everyone okay? She called out. We are, Goldie cried excitedly, All present and correct! Stay nearby, and don’t go near the sluice, Queenie said, already lying back in her sunbathing position. Why shouldn’t we go to the sluice if we want, Saffi muttered, we can look after ourselves, we’re not babies. Queenie’s hearing was so good she could tell when a cockroach was scuttling inside a closed cupboard. She said, Saffi, in future you’ll do whatever you want, but right now I’m in charge. Mildly, she added, There’ll be plenty of time to look after yourself, don’t worry about that. All afternoon we played in the river, basking in the June sun, in our new freedom, in the knowledge that war had been won. Our country was invincible and so were we.
As the sun lowered over the old Arab village, turning its ruins to silhouettes, the teenagers came walking down the hill. Ester, Micah and the others were almost grown up and allowed to do anything, even stay out till nightfall.While the younger children had to go to their parents’ rooms at family time, half past four. Ten minutes, Quills, Queenie called from the bank, then we go back!
Let’s see who can get to the shallows with one breath, I told Talia and Saffi. I hadn’t notice Tommy and Josh sitting high above us on the bank. Tommy shouted, Don’t make me laugh little ones, you’ll never do it in one, even Josh and I can’t do that!The two of them were smirking and carving sharp points into branches with pen knives. Then Josh jumped to his feet and threw his pointed stick over our heads and onto the opposite bank. It flew smoothly through the air and landed in the reeds. Yes! They both cried, and Josh ran across the bridge to retrieve it. Holding the stick high over his head as though he’d just won the Olympiad he called out, No one makes javelins like Josh Pasternak!
They’re so stupid, I muttered, my face hot. Yeah, they are, Saffi said, ignore them. Okay, then, I whispered, let’s do it in two breaths. Ready? And the three of us plunged into the green-brown darkness. I reached the shallows and lifted my head out of the murky water. Gasping for air, I rubbed my eyes open and found myself lying prone between Micah’s feet. He was sitting in the shallows, legs spread, heels braced into the mud.The wet, muddy shorts he wore were just an arm’s length away. A long bamboo stick was balanced across his knees like a staff. I thought, does he look like an olden day traveller at rest? Or a muddy buffalo I’d once seen a photograph of in a magazine? Hastily, I stood up, searching for balance as my feet sunk through the soft riverbed. Then I could think of nothing else but to stare at Micah, who stared back with an inscrutable face.
Time seemed to stop.Where did Saffi and Talia get to? The older children were lounging in the shallows nearby, chatting and laughing. No one saw me standing over Micah, our eyes locked in a staring match. At that moment I noticed Micah’s shoulders were stooped, steep slopes like the flanks of the Golan Heights which dominate our eastern skies. I noticed his neck surge forward at a precarious, comical angle, his eyes squeezed nearly shut against the evening sun. And I realised he looked much like my old runaway tortoise. That thought made laughter bubble up in my stomach, spreading into my chest, up my throat and I started to giggle. Micah’s expression was unchanged and I looked down at my mud-smeared stomach. Finally, reproachfully he said, Do you know who I am? Of course, he was Saffi’s big brother, Ester’s friend, our mothers had been schoolgirls together in Krakow and still visited each other’s rooms often. I would sit on the floor, listening as they laughed and talked and shifted to Polish when they thought I was hearing more than a child should. And I would pretend to be absorbed in my game when they cried for their long dead families, brothers, sisters and parents murdered by the Nazis, when they dried their tears and laughed some more over plain biscuits and cardamom coffee. Yes, I told Micah. I knew who he was.
As though I hadn’t spoken, he said, Micah, that’s my name. He picked up the bamboo from across his knees and pointed one end at my chest. Carefully, he rested it where my ribcage undulated under the skin, and I watched as he slowly guided the point down to my stomach, then diagonally up, ploughing a skin-coloured farrow through the black mud, and gradually revealing five pale letters. Transfixed, I stood still. There, he said. His mouth twitched into the semblance of a smile as he placed the bamboo down and leaned back to admire his doing. Actually, he added, as in an afterthought, frowning and gesturing at my chest, Actually, you’re only six, aren’t you? I mean, can you read yet? Do you even know what it says? I’m seven, I said. And you’ve written your name. Micah. He seemed pleased. Good, he said, then you’ll remember me now. And at this he sprang to his feet and walked over to join his friends.
Abbie, what are you doing? Josh’s voice was behind me. Come on, he said, Quills have to go back now, Queenie is waiting for you. I turned and saw him tread water in the deep. What’s this on your front, he asked, squinting in the dimming light, you’ve got something written there. Nothing, I said, wading towards him. It’s nothing, I’m coming. I stumbled and Josh caught my elbow. Squeezing it gently, he held on and said, So we don’t lose you again.We let the current take us back towards the bridge. As we floated past the swing rope where I had found the tortoise before the war I whispered, Micah did it, he wrote his name with a stick in the mud. I didn’t think Josh would hear me, his ears were submerged in the water but he said, Micah? What, Micah Ashkenazi? Why?Why did he do that? I don’t know, I said and wondered if he noticed the tears in my voice, but he laughed, Ya’Allah, he’s so stupid, isn’t he? Yeah, I said, Yeah, he is.
That night, in my bed I woke with a start before dawn. I lay flat on my back, watching shadows glide over the sleeping forms of my friends. Listening to the owl crying in the pine tree outside the window, I held onto my elbow just as Josh had done on our way back the bridge, to Queenie. And I wondered whether it had been the bamboo or Micah’s own finger which ploughed pale, skin-coloured letters through mud on my chest.
14 October 1972
Since last summer and Anya walking out with Josh, I spent more time than ever in my parents’ room. Mother: Is everything alright, darling? They think it odd I should be hanging around with them in the evenings instead of with my friends, being normal. I said, yes. That was the end of the conversation. Normally, Mother would absolutely insist on having an answer. She grew up in London where it’s bad manners not to make an effort at answering questions. People would think you rude. Mother herself is a wizard at small-talking which is an English way of passing the time without allowing the silence in; silence is what they are afraid of. She is driven to destruction when we children forget to say please, is mortified that getting us to write a thank you letter is like milking stones. But everyone knows the Pioneers rejected the European ways and etiquettes when they turned their backs on their old lives in the Diaspora. And that’s like throwing the baby clear out of the bath water, Mother says. She has so many funny phrases she brought over from England along with her strange accent and politeness.
When we’re getting on Mother’s nerves by being Uncouth she says, This Country is too hard for me. She means Israeli natives like us are too hard, that’s why we’re called Sabres which is a prickly cactus pear, thorny on the outside, sweet inside. Obviously, she doesn’t mean everyone. Not Queenie. Queenie was born in Kurdistan, is graceful as grace itself, graceful as Grace Kelly, Mother says though the joke only works in English.Or Father, she doesn’t mean him either, he’s a true Gentleman, she’s looking at him side-ways now, you can kick the man out of Europe, she says, and they did, kicked him right out those Nazis and their Hungarian sword bearers; but you can’t kick the Europe out of the man. She doesn’t mean everyone, but we understand, don’t we? And that’s why Mother is desperate to go back to England, even for a short visit, she misses passing the time of day with complete strangers, people in the park discussing the weather, shop keepers asking whether she’s on holiday, because they haven’t seen her before, people to talk to who then walk away, you don’t have to see them again. Here in our Community everyone stays and stays.Or comes back and keeps coming, like Micah, and every time he’s here at Friday Reception meal in the dining room I don’t know whether he’s going to turn up in my room at night or what.
Not to mention that the English would rather be strung up and fed to wolves than neglect to say please or thank you, Mother misses this every day.When you shop in London even if it’s just buying bread there are at least five of each, Mother says. That’ll be three-pound six’ee, please. She does a shopkeeper’s voice, he didn’t go to a good a private school when he was a child and that’s why he can’t be bothered to say Sixty properly, with a ‘t’; and he forgets to put an ‘s’ on the end of Pound. Turning a word to plural in English is a children’s game, add the ‘s’ and you’re done, this person would have no chance in Hebrew where you must consider gender, time and numbers. Mother still gets it wrong quite often; she says Hebrew is going to get her before she gets it.
Thank you! Mother is the customer now, handing over the money. The customer went to a proper school which made her Posh, she sticks her chin forward and her voice is loud and mumbly at the same time, she looks as though her mouth is full of too-hot potatoes.And so on, thank you for the money, thank you for the change, thank you once more, as you walk toward the door, Cheerio, madam, and thank you, come again! We fall about laughing when Mother does English accents—Professor Higgins-posh, Eliza Doolittle-Cockney.
The English are obsessed with Class, and with what type of school you went to. The Class System is a complicated code, called Stereotype. Or Prejudice, according to Ester. We have Prejudice here, too, Ester says, for the different nationalities that make up the melting pot of our Jewish state, the German has his pernickety ways, everything just so; the Moroccan carries a sharp knife in his pocket, Romanians are thieves, Poles like to horde food, Georgians are stupid and that’s why it takes ten of them to change a light-bulb. Etcetera. Of course, none of it is true, as everyone knows. But the English, they take their class system so seriously it’s a great big thing if anyone ever moves up or down; they’d be as famous as Cinderella after she married the prince.And that’s why Professor Higgins will never marry Eliza Doolittle even though they love each other.
Mother said, Abbie will be alright in England, foreign accents fall outside of the class system; she can be herself. But Father said, if Abbie goes to England, she’s sure to marry a tall-dark-handsome man, she’s that pretty and clever, and he will keep her inside his castle in the rainy countryside, where she’ll do nothing but write letters and hunt on horseback. All Englishmen are impossibly tall and most are filthy rich and where will he, Father, be without me to get him through his days. Mother laughs, English men may be tall and rich but they have pale skin and weak chins and hairless chests, and they’ve all been to Posh boarding-schools which stunted their emotions and made them extremely difficult to live with, she’s had to travel all the way here to find a kind, straightforward, hairy-chested man after her own heart, he simply swept her off her feet and everything was lost, she gave up her place at Oxford University, her career as a doctor, breaking Grandma Rose’s heart in the process. And she came to live in this God-forsaken furnace she now must call home, and instead of being rich and working in Harley Street she is a poultry farmer and that must be the come-down of the century, you know.
Father says, Rifka, a come-down? Of the century? Just that, but in a tone, she’s gone too far. Mother was never a Zionist before she came to visit Uncle David in Palestine the summer after her first year at medical school. But then she met Father and that was that. She still gets sad about the life she left behind, and the things she says would make people in the Community talk, if they heard her.We know she doesn’t mean it; she believes farming is our saviour, without it we would still be a nation of pawnbrokers and tailors, living in European ghettos or maybe made extinct by the Nazis.
But she’s smiling at Father now, and he is smiling too and walking over to where she’s standing by the kettle in the kitchenette. She says, You know, there are compensations for this in-ex-pli-ca-ble life choice. She hasn’t noticed Father is right behind her now and she’s speaking loudly as though he’s still in the other room. There are, I promise you, you know, to do with—Oscar, let me down! Not-in-front-of-the-children, Oscar, put-medown. But she’s laughing because Father has picked her up and he’s dancing, practically on the spot because the kitchenette is by far the smallest room in the house, more corridor than a room actually, but with energy, and he’s singing, We’re gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried line, it’s one of her old favourites and the only song in English he knows the words to. Tommy and I make disgusted faces and beg them to stop before it becomes any more embarrassing. Ester says nothing just looks disapproving, but it’s too late, Mother isn’t protesting anymore, she’s singing along:
Whether the weather may be wet or fine, We just scrub along without a care! Then we all three of us give up the protest, it’s better to sit it out:
We’re gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried line, If the Siegfried line’s still there!
Which I doubt, all right, coming sergeant.
The last line Father says in his own version of an English accent, which is a sort of Russian mix, and he carries Mother off, onto the balcony, there’s nowhere else to go except outside. They come back, smiling and exhausted and we stare at them from the sofa, you look like the three monkeys, Mother says as she sits down with a sigh.
Ester can’t let anything go. She says, But the shopkeepers, the people in the park, they aren’t your friends, Mother, they care nothing for you, however politely they speak. At least here people don’t pretend to like you when they don’t.
Mother says, There’s no harm in a little pretence from time to time, Ester. One day, when you finish staring at your own navel, you might think so too.