Jaffa Beach: Historical Fiction (2 page)

Quickly Shifra added the coin to the money in her tin can. She would hurry to Itzik, after which she would still have time for her own preparations. Every month when her mother went to the Mikve she spent a couple of hours there. At the ritual bath she met women neighbors and had a little
shmus
, talking and gossiping with them, especially now, when she had news, though Shifra was sure that at least half of the neighborhood already knew that she was promised to the
neft
man.

Shifra was out of breath when she arrived home, her arms filled with groceries. She packed two apples and a slice of black bread and threw her mother’s old kerchief over her head. She didn’t want to take any chances. She knew that she was known in the neighborhood as the girl with the golden hair. How many times her friends had told her that she collected the sun in her braids.

There was no mirror in their home. When her sister, before getting married, had asked her father to buy a mirror, he screamed, “No mirror in my house! Mirror is the devil’s instrument. A woman has to be clean and modest.”

Besides the
neft
man, nobody else had told her that she was pretty. And who could believe him, who looked at her with lecherous eyes?

Shifra wore two pairs of underwear, her old shoes and a dark jacket. Still wary of being recognized, she decided to walk randomly around the narrow streets of Geula until she found a way to Jaffa Street.

When she arrived at a wide street that she recognized as R’hov Strauss, she breathed more easily. She knew where she was. At the next corner she’d turn right into Jaffa Street.

Shifra didn’t wait long for the fuming yellow bus. On the top was a sign with its destination written in three languages, English, Hebrew and Arabic. Shifra had a moment of confusion when the driver asked her if she wanted a one-way ticket, or
aloch hazor
.

“Where to?” The driver asked.

“Jaffa,” She mumbled, without looking at him. She handed him all her money, not knowing the cost.

“You have enough to buy a two-way ticket,” the driver said kindly. With her ticket in hand, and her cheeks burning, Shifra made her way toward the back of the bus, where she saw an empty seat.

She sat down and arranged the kerchief to hide most of her face. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears. What was she
doing? How could she do this to her mother? She was sure that her father’s anger would fall on her mother when they found her missing from home.

“
Azoy a bishe!
” Such a shame! Shifra imagined him screaming. “I’ll not be able to look in the eyes of our neighbors. We are going to be the laughingstock of the community. And what am I suppose to tell the
neft
man?” Her mother would be standing there, the person to receive all the blame.

But when the driver announced the last stop before exiting Jerusalem, Shifra, though fearful and uneasy, didn’t make a move. She knew she still had time to return, to tell some lies about where she spent the last hours, but she wasn’t going to do it. Not yet. Instead, she watched enchanted the lovely view of the garland of hills opening before her eyes. She’d never been outside her neighborhood, except on family visits, on Shabbat afternoons to her uncle who lived in
Mea Shearim
.

How beautiful the hills were, each one gleaming in a different color. Shifra thought that she could even hear the birds singing, but she knew that it was only her imagination.

The bus distracted her with its puffing and screeching. She didn’t know that she had boarded the
m’asef
, the bus that stops at all Arab villages and other small communities between Jerusalem and Jaffa, but she didn’t mind. She absorbed the new sights; the way people were dressed, the scraps of conversation she heard in Hebrew, English and Arabic. She saw bearded Chassidim sitting in front and moving their bodies up and down, praying
Tefilas Haderech
, the travel prayer. As the bus sighed and shook, winding down the narrow highway, Shifra was sorry she hadn’t brought her Tefilas Haderech, too.

She knew that when she would return home after seeing the sea, she would have to fulfill the destiny that had been decided for her, but she would remember with pleasure that she had seen her dream. Since her friend Chana had told her about the
yam
, the
sea, she’d had only one wish. To see it with her own eyes! To feel as free as a bird in front of its immensity, to breathe its air! She never forgot her friend’s words.

It was a long bus ride. At the beginning she tried to memorize the names of the Arab villages, Jewish settlements and the cities where the bus stopped, but there were too many to remember. By the time the bus driver announced Jaffa, she woke up from her reverie. She looked out the window. What a bustle, what a mix of people—even Mahane Yehuda market didn’t look like this on its busiest days.

The bus moved slowly along a wide avenue, which the driver called Jerusalem Boulevard. There were many stops along it but she hadn’t glimpsed the sea yet. She panicked. How would she know when to get off? A minute later the driver announced, “Next stop, the Clock Tower, last station.” Shifra saw that everybody was getting up and making for the door. She followed the crowd.

In the street she didn’t know where to look first. There were Arab men sitting in front of their stores dressed in
kafias
and smoking from long pipes, young boys, running barefoot, holding newspapers under their arms and screaming in three languages, “Latest news about the war in Europe! President Roosevelt is confident that…” But Shifra couldn’t hear the end because of the noise of carts driven by donkeys, the honking of buses, and the screams of vendors.

Shifra knew there was a war. She had heard her father telling her mother after reading the
Hamelitz
newspaper, lent from one of their neighbors, “Hitler, should he burn in Hell, he killed Jews. No more Jews in Poland.” Shifra’s mother howled like a crazy dog, “
Oi, mamoushka
, my dear mother, where are you?” Since that day her mother lighted a remembrance candle every evening for one month.

The clock at the top of the tower rang thirteen times. Shifra looked up. It was one in the afternoon. So late already! She had
left home at ten in the morning on a cloudy day in Jerusalem. Here in Jaffa she felt her clothes burn her body. But where was the sea? Shifra was ready to ask an old woman seated on a bench near the bus stop when she saw an English policeman directing the traffic. She approached and asked him, her eyes cast downward, “Please, tell me how to get to the beach.”

The policeman smiled. “Follow the sun,” he said, but when he saw that she didn’t understand him, he pointed to a street and said, “Take this street, go to the end of it. There you’ll see the beach.”

Shifra forgot to thank him. She ran, her eyes blinded by the sun. When she reached the end of the street a fantastic view opened before her. The azure sea sparkled like millions of diamonds, and the foam formed by the waves’ crest looked like the frost adorning the cakes at weddings. And it seemed endless.

She jumped on the rocks leading to the sea. Shifra didn’t remember if there was a blessing for seeing the sea for the first time, as one says a blessing before eating a new fruit.

On the beach she saw young children playing in the sand, all naked. She couldn’t look at their mothers. She had never seen women so scantily dressed. She blushed. How could women be so immodest? Farther along she saw men wearing only knee-length underwear, playing ball.
Oh, her father was right, saying the world was full of debauchery
.

She wouldn’t get close to these people. She found a place under the shadow of a rock, where she could follow the dancing waves without being seen, she hoped, and far from those people who have no fear of God.

It was so hot! She took off her mother’s jacket and the kerchief covering her head. She placed them on the sand. She did the same with her rubber-soled shoes, which burned her feet and were now full of sand. Shifra felt the pangs of hunger and thirst. She remembered the two apples in the pocket of her jacket. She munched on her apples, her eyes riveted on the sea. With each
wave it seemed to Shifra that the sea was stretching out to her, challenging her to come and play.

Would it be a sin if she took off her stockings and soaked her feet in the water?
She debated with herself.
after all, why did she come
? Shifra wanted to feel the water’s cool caress, its freshness, to take the foam into her hands, to taste it.

She took her black stockings off. She’d wait. People were starting to leave the beach. After everyone left, she’d walk along the beach. She closed her tired eyes.

When she woke up, the sun, a big ball of fire was descending slowly on the horizon. Shifra didn’t know how much time had passed. The beach was deserted. She got up and approached the water. The sand wasn’t hot anymore and it was easy to walk on it. When her feet touched the water, a shiver went through her body. What a marvelous sensation.
Could greater pleasures exist?

Her arms raised, she started twirling, round and round, her hair, freed by the wind, blowing in her face. At last she was alone, Shifra thought, and the sea belonged entirely to her.

How long she danced, how much time had passed, she didn’t know, but gradually the feeling came to her that she was being followed. She didn’t dare look back. All of a sudden she became scared. She looked toward the rock, where she thought she had left her jacket and shoes, but now all the rocks looked the same.
Where were her things
?

She began to run, searching the rocks. When she ran out of breath, she fell on the sand, her eyes full of tears. She couldn’t find her things. The return ticket for Jerusalem was in her jacket.
What was she going to do now
?

She would just remain there until the night jackals came to eat her. That‘s what she deserved for listening to
yetzer hara
, the evil instinct. She bent her head. The bitter tears falling from her eyes prevented her from noticing the barefoot young man who stopped a few paces from her.

2

I
n the spring, returning from the early afternoon prayer at the Great Mosque, Musa liked to take a detour from his regular way home and walk along the water. Today he found a girl asleep on the beach. She looked so small and defenseless, rolled up in an old jacket, a long skirt covering her feet. Her golden braids formed a crown above her head, and her face was the color of alabaster.

An angel
, Musa thought. He crouched not far from her and gazed at her steadily, hoping she’d wake up. His curiosity was aroused, but he couldn’t stay long; he didn’t want to attract the attention of other beachcombers. But her image followed him the entire afternoon.

After the mid-afternoon prayer, Musa decided to walk along the beach again.
Maybe she’ll still be there. Or maybe he’ll discover she really was an angel, that Allah, praised be Him, placed on his way in order to test him
.

Great was his surprise when he saw her from afar, alone on the deserted beach, dancing and twirling, while the late sunrays played with her hair. Musa didn’t dare get closer, but he had to make sure
that she was real and not an apparition. He stopped when she stopped. He saw her turn abruptly and run toward the rocks. She went from rock to rock, looking for something. Her hair was loose and she was barefoot. She stood for a moment, before falling on the sand crying, her head in her hands.

With his prayer rug under his arm and his slippers in his hand Musa, undecided, stood not far from her. He felt the urge to get closer, to maybe touch that marvelous cascade of hair, but it wasn’t in his nature to talk to strangers, much less strange girls. Yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he felt as if his feet were buried in the sand. It began to get dark. Soon the night would slowly cover the beach.
He had to go, but how could he leave her?
She was shivering from the cool breeze. And she still hadn’t seen him. Almost against his will, he approached her.

“
Salaam Aleikum
,” he started the traditional greeting. No answer.

“
Min enta wa-shoo ta’amal hnana, w
ho are you and what are you doing here?” he said in Arabic, but seeing her frightened look, he immediately repeated it in English.

The girl didn’t answer. She looked away. Musa saw that she was quite young, fourteen or fifteen at most. Now sure she wasn’t a dream, he thought that maybe she had run away from home or maybe she didn’t know the way back. “Where do you live?” he asked. “Don’t be afraid. I will not do you any harm. I want only to help.” Then he repeated it in Hebrew “
Ani l’Ezra.”

Still trembling, she looked at him. Even though it was almost dark, he thought she had the bluest eyes, the color of the precious lapis-lazuli earrings his mother wore with such pride.

“Come,” he said, “I’ll take you to my mother. She’s a smart woman. She’ll help you. It’s dangerous to remain here overnight.”

She still didn’t answer, but Musa’s mind was made up. He thought, “I’ll take her in my arms, even against her will.” Still not looking at him, the girl stood up.