My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (25 page)

Appelfeld reflected on the gap between Ben Gurion’s proclaimed egalitarian and united Israel and the real Israel of the fate-stricken who were now huddled in immigrant camps and housing estates. He reflected on the gap between the pious pioneering rhetoric of Zionism and the new Israeli reality of restless drunks and gamblers and whores who
could not find peace of mind. He reflected on the gap between the mobilized monolithic upstairs-Israel and the cacophony of downstairs-Israel. What he saw was an inebriated and licentious immigrants’ Israel trying to forget all that had happened.

In the last days of his army service, Appelfeld studied on his own, passed the matriculation exams, and was accepted to the Hebrew University. He rented a cheerless room in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood. The boy who never attended first grade was now the student of some of the world’s most renowned scholars: he studied Yiddish with Dov Sadan, Kabbalah with Gershom Scholem, and scriptures with Martin Buber. But Ervin was not impressed by his progress. He had no bearings. He lacked a well-grounded identity and was struggling to contain the numerous transformations he had gone through in a decade. Alone in his room in Rehavia, Appelfeld tried to decipher himself: what had happened to him and who he was; from what sea he had come and on what shore he had washed up.

The one place Appelfeld felt at ease was in Café Peter in Jerusalem’s verdant German colony. Here people spoke the Austro-Hungarian German of his childhood and served the Austro-Hungarian dishes of home. At the elegant tables sat elegant ladies who resembled his mother. Here there was no melting-pot edict. Here he could remember his mother and long for her. He imagined that though murdered, she would somehow return. In Café Peter, in 1956, Appelfeld could bring up from the cellar of his memories what the Israel of 1956 kept locked away. In his notebook he jotted down a few lines, then some sentences, then broken paragraphs. Slivers, scraps, fragments. One story, two stories, three. The story of a people gone up in smoke. The story of a world gone up in smoke. The story of a boy who witnessed pre-Holocaust, Holocaust, and post-Holocaust life. And now, a decade after the Holocaust, sitting in a Jerusalem café, he tried to collect himself. To rehabilitate himself, to define himself and to find his own voice.

When his family arrived in Jerusalem, Erik Brik had already gone through five metamorphoses: sheltered childhood in prewar Kovno; persecuted childhood in the wartime ghetto; a childhood of hiding in the wall as the war drew to a close; a refugee’s wandering childhood
when the war was over; a respite in the Jewish Agency’s mansion in the years following the war. But when the Briks settled down in a small apartment on the edge of Rehavia, the eleven-year-old told himself that what was before would not be again. This is our homeland. This is the final beginning. Here he would take root.

The beginning was difficult. Erik was gentle and chubby and well-read. He loved the opera. The Israeli-born sixth-grade Sabras ridiculed him. They saw him as a weak and pale Diaspora Jew. But within months, Erik proved what he was made of. He acquired Hebrew and got rid of his Lithuanian accent. He viewed himself as someone who was born in Israel and acted accordingly. He didn’t tell anyone about Democracy Square or the Children’s Action or the ghetto or living in the wall. Within a year, it became apparent that Erik was gifted. He was brilliant in math and history, but he also became president of the student council. He was an enthusiastic boy scout, first a cub scout, then den chief, then troop leader. As president of his student council he was chosen to meet Ben Gurion at his famous retreat in the desert. Because of his role in the boy scouts he led work camps in the kibbutz and intended to settle in a kibbutz. Brik internalized the collective values of old pioneering Israel. He identified completely with the Jewish state that gave him refuge. He saw Israel as a dynamic, enlightened, and constructive entity headed for the future. The boy who changed his name to Aharon Barak was now determined to erase his Kovno past and join the Israeli future.

Not so his parents. Leah Brik had been a respected high school teacher in Lithuania, but in Israel she taught third grade in a working-class school. Zvi Brik had been the head of the Jewish Agency in Kovno, but in Israel he was just a clerk. Both felt they didn’t receive the recognition they deserved. Both were not fulfilled professionally and realized they never would be. And the Holocaust refused to let go. Zvi had lost his parents. Leah had lost her father, mother, a brother, and a sister. The family was small and sad and had few true friends. There was anguish at home, and much crying. All Leah and Zvi had was their son, on whom they were totally focused. Aharon was promise. Aharon was hope. Aharon was an arrow shot from a hopeless past to a hopeful future.

In 1954 Barak graduated from high school with honors. Because he wanted to continue studying, he didn’t join a kibbutz but studied law at the Hebrew University. By 1956 there was a consensus among the Jerusalem
faculty: Aharon Barak was a judiciary genius. When he married and set up house in 1957, many of his friends had no doubt that one day the young groom would be Israel’s chief justice.

At Lydda airport Louise Aynachi discovered that half of the suitcases she sent from Baghdad were gone and the others had been broken into. The family had no clothes, no food, and the children were crying. From the airport she was taken to a cold room at the end of the terminal. A brusque nurse went through her hair, looking for lice. Although she didn’t find any, without giving notice, she sprayed Louise’s hair and body with DDT. Then she sprayed Louise’s husband, Naim, and then their children, Huda, Nabil, and Morris. Naim was shocked: “From whence have we come,” he asked, “and how far have we fallen?”

After the Aynachi family filled out all sorts of bureaucratic forms, the Jewish Agency staff put the family on a truck. For three hours the truck rocked along in the dark, heading for an unknown destination. It arrived at what seemed to be a military camp: army tents surrounded by barbed wire. Louise tried to quell her fears so that her children would not be frightened. She took whatever belongings were left and piled them up in the corner of their assigned army tent. She did her best to put the children to bed on the straw pillow and under the straw blanket. The next morning, when Naim woke up, he was bursting with rage. “In Iraq we were distinguished guests at the king’s palace, and here we are nothing. We are not respected, we are not honored, we have no property. We are nothing but homeless refugees in a tent.”

One blow followed another. Before the Aynachis had left Baghdad, the Iraqi government had confiscated their assets because they had chosen to immigrate to Israel. When they arrived in Israel it turned out that the small amount of money that Naim had managed to smuggle out via Iran had been stolen by the moneychanger he had put his faith in. On top of that was the DDT, the humiliation of life in a tent, the condescending attitude of veteran Israelis, the scornful attitude of the Ashkenazi immigrants. And the fact that in Israel, Jewish Baghdad was not perceived as the cradle of a great civilization but as the unknown territory of barbarians. Within one week, the Aynachi family experienced a sudden fall from paradise to humiliation and depravation.

Louise held on. Even when it became clear that the money would not arrive, she didn’t crack. Even as she struggled in the chaos of the refugee camp, she stood firm as she confronted the insults and the degradation. She pretended that all was well for the children’s sake, that this was some sort of sandy summer camp and not the end of the world. Just a short detour on the way to a new adventure and to a new life in a new land that would eventually reveal to them its milk and honey.

From the Atlit immigrant camp the Aynachi family was transported to a
ma’abara
near Netanya—from a tent to a tin hut, from dampness to heavy heat, from shock to depression. Yet after a few months Naim found an apartment in Holon, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. He found work in Tel Aviv’s Atara coffeehouse. The apartment was nothing like the villa on the Tigris, and work in a coffeehouse was nothing like the work of a textile executive. But there was a home for the eight family members that Naim was taking care of (grandparents, aunt, wife, and children), and his job was not shameful. So after a year Louise felt that they were rising from the deep pit into which they had fallen. Unlike many other men who had emigrated from Iraq, Naim was not broken, he was only very sad. For his remaining days, Naim would remain sad.

More bitter was the fate of Louise’s father. Less fortunate than his son-in-law, Eliyahu Yitzhak Baruch did not find a suitable job in Israel. His property, assets, and money were lost when he left Iraq. And when he and his wife left the immigrant camp, they had to settle for a shabby one-room apartment in Struma Square in Holon. Each morning Eliyahu Yitzhak Baruch left the one-room apartment for the Lodzia women’s undergarment factory; throughout the day, the former train company executive would stand by the gate of the factory with a peddler’s cart trying to sell gum, candy, and chocolate to the impoverished workers. And each evening when he returned to his small apartment in Struma Square, Eliyahu Yitzhak Baruch remembered the Tigris. His heart would cry as he remembered the Tigris, until it could no longer endure the pain and stopped beating.

By the time I am born, in November 1957, the State of Israel is a triumph. The borders are quiet, the economy is booming, the population is approaching two million. The decisive victory in the 1948 war gave
birth to the nation, and the decisive victory in the 1956 Sinai campaign has stabilized it. The superhuman endeavor to absorb nearly a million immigrants was a success. Twenty new cities, four hundred new villages, two hundred thousand new apartments, and a quarter million new jobs attest to an unprecedented historical achievement. By now Svern Sternhell has become Lieutenant Sternhell, who has left the IDF for the Hebrew University to study history and political science. Ervin Appelfeld has become Aharon Appelfeld, who is assembling his first collection of short stories. Erik Brik has become Aharon Barak, who is about to receive his law degree summa cum laude. Louise Aynachi is still struggling in a Holon immigrant quarter, but her three children have gradually adjusted to their new homeland. After a decade of war and frenzied state building, bordering in pace on the maniacal, the first signs of stability appear. The young state ceases to be a makeshift camp. It is no longer perceived as a crazy adventure but as a solid political fact. True, there is no peace. The Arab world still looks upon the Jewish state as an artifice, temporary and despicable. But there is no war, either. The victories of 1948 and 1956 are deterring the enemy. A new alliance with France equips the Israeli Air Force with the most modern fighter jets: Ouragans, Mystères, Super-Mystères. West Germany and Great Britain also assist the resolute state, which had proved just a year earlier that it was capable of reaching the Suez Canal. Relations with the United States are good, relations with the Soviet Union are reasonably good. The world watches the Jewish phoenix rise from the sand. Israeli orange groves, Israeli archaeology, and Israeli science raise international interest and admiration.

The autumn I am born, Rehovot, the city I am born in, is getting ready to inaugurate a nuclear physics department. Niels Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer are about to come to the Weizmann Institute to pay tribute to the promising young physicists of the promising young state. At the very same time, Tel Aviv’s new performing arts center, the Frederic R. Mann Auditorium, is opened. Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, and Leonard Bernstein come to nine-year-old Israel to celebrate with the fine musicians and the enthusiastic audience of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The national project of draining the swamps of Lake Hula in the Galilee is completed. The first supermarket is set to open in Tel Aviv.

As the Russians launch their first Sputnik into space, Israeli newspapers stick closer to home, reporting a staggering rise in refrigerator and washing machine sales. The economic boom and German reparations awaken old appetites: dozens of delicatessens open in central Tel Aviv. As Israel gears up for its tenth birthday, there is a strong sense of achievement and even wonder. A First Decade Exhibition is planned, to be held in the summer of 1958 in Jerusalem, to highlight Israel’s success. The message will be that Israel is now the most stable and most advanced nation in the Middle East. It is the most remarkable melting pot of the twentieth century. The Jewish state is a man-made miracle.

But the miracle is based on denial. The nation I am born into has erased Palestine from the face of the earth. Bulldozers razed Palestinian villages, warrants confiscated Palestinian land, laws revoked Palestinians’ citizenship and annulled their homeland. By the socialist kibbutz Ein Harod lie the ruins of Qumya. By the orange groves of Rehovot lie the remains of Zarnuga and Qubeibeh. In the middle of Israeli Lydda, the debris of Palestinian Lydda is all too apparent. And yet there seems to be no connection in people’s minds between these sites and the people who occupied them only a decade earlier. Ten-year-old Israel has expunged Palestine from its memory and soul. When I am born, my grandparents, my parents, and their friends go about their lives as if the other people have never existed, as if they were never driven out. As if the other people aren’t languishing now in the refugee camps of Jericho, Balata, Deheisha, and Jabalia.

Denial has its reasons. In the first decade, the unique endeavor of nation building consumes all of the young state’s physical and mental resources. There is no time and no place for guilt or compassion. The number of Jewish refugees that Israel absorbs surpasses the number of Palestinian refugees it expelled. And all the while, the vast Arab nation doesn’t lift a finger to help its Palestinian brothers and sisters. In 1957, most Palestinians don’t yet define themselves as a distinct people. They do not have a mature and recognized national movement. The world feels sorry for them, but the world denies them political rights and does not recognize them as a legitimate national entity. It is therefore not without reason that Israel chooses to see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a conflict between states, a conflict between the Israeli David and the
Arab Goliath. It is a conflict that marginalizes the Palestinian tragedy, viewing it as some sort of unpleasant peripheral issue.