Jaffa Beach: Historical Fiction (49 page)

They spoke Arabic, though Rama tried to throw in a few English words for Shlomi’s benefit. Nur brought a fresh pot of coffee and a tray of pastries. “Turkish coffee, the way you like it piping hot and without sugar.”

Musa laughed. He had taken off his jacket and Shlomi saw a white tailored shirt and an unobtrusive navy blue silk tie.

“It’s good to be with you,” Musa sighed. “The older I get, the more I feel the need to be with my family. My travels tire me, every few days in another city, each with its change of food and climate. I shouldn’t complain, I make a good living and by not staying in one place, it helps me otherwise….” The phrase hung in the air.

Amina took his hands and spoke in a soft voice. Shlomi saw a cloud passing over Musa’s face. Already accustomed to the dark, he could distinguish his father’s features. Musa looked like Omar
Sharif, tanned, dark eyes, the silvery hair at his temples giving him a distinguished look.

“Not Samira again,” Shlomi heard his outburst. “That old rag finds Selim in every young man she sees. She’s crazy. Don’t tell me she was able to play detective in the Jewish country.”

Musa got up and paced the room. “How many times I have told you to stop mentioning my foolish marriage and my son. I forbid you to talk about them. My past is dead,” his voice cracked.

“Your wife is dead but your son is alive. We have the proof,” Rama said, “Please calm down and listen to Amina.”

Musa stopped pacing the room and stood in front of them.

“I don’t understand why you want to open my wound again.”

“Please sit down.” Nur begged, “All we ask from you is to have a little patience and listen.”

“You know how much we love you,” added Rama.

The family conferred quietly. Suddenly Shlomi saw Musa jump up. “An impostor!” he said. “It was easy to fool Samira, but to fool you, too,” he pointed an accusing finger at Amina.

“Everything I’m telling you is true.”

“This individual must’ve heard of the Masri family’s wealth. God only knows how much we left behind. Shrewd, as all Jews are, he could forge papers and demand an inheritance. Sisters,” Musa said sarcastically, “your hearts are soft and innocent. You’ve seen too many romantic movies.”

He took his coat.

“Stop,” Shlomi opened the folds of the alcove’s curtains. “I didn’t know I was your son. When I found out I was devastated. My mother died in an accident when I was not yet four years old. Strangers, people who raised me, told me that my father was a hero of the War of Independence.”

Shlomi, excited and fearful at the same time, felt his heart beat as strong as at the start of a concert. He faced Musa. “I am not an
impostor. I don’t want your money.” He took off the chain hanging around his neck, and threw it toward his father.

“This should prove who I am.” The sisters gathered around Musa who held two amulets in his hands.

“I remember,” Rama screamed joyfully. “Suha wore them all the time!”

Musa fingered the
hamsa
. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. “Probably stolen,” he whispered.

“My adoptive grandfather gave them to me the first day I went to school. ‘
A mezuzah
and a
hamsa
, for good luck,’ he said. ‘They belonged to your mother.’”

Musa’s face was cut in stone.

“I didn’t want to meet you,” Shlomi continued quietly. “I wrestled with myself. My future lay before my eyes; a clear-cut path. Long ago I stopped wondering who my parents were. Gone were the days when I dreamed about a father reading bedtime stories, taking me to soccer games or shooting baskets together. My adoptive grandfather, my violin teacher, was too tired, too old, and too worried about his wife’s mental illness.

“Did my mother cuddle me when I had a bad dream or a cold? I never got a mother’s kiss before going to or returning from school.”

His throat was as dry as a piece of papyrus, but he could not stop. Words were hurtling out of his mouth as if they’d waited a lifetime to be heard.

“Only two years ago I heard that the stories I was told when I was a child were lies. The truth was that I had a Jewish mother who ran away from her orthodox home. And what about my father, I asked? Your father is Muslim.”

“Enough,” Musa screamed, as perspiration rolled down his cheeks. He rapped his fist on the table, “Enough.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Shlomi asked.

He opened his violin case and threw a photo on the table. “This is the only picture I have of my mother, at twelve years old. I received it not long ago, and I’m not even sure that this is she.”

The three women stretched their necks to see.

“It’s Suha,” Rama whispered. “She wore similar clothes when Musa brought her to our home.”

Amina and Nur nodded.

“Leave,” Musa cried, pointing his finger to the door. He dropped to the nearest chair. “I can’t take any more.”

Pale, Shlomi closed the violin case.

Amina ran to him. “Please don’t go. If you go now, everything is lost.”

Shlomi didn’t answer. He felt a lump in his throat. He kissed Amina’s hand, and turned to the door.

“
Wait,” he heard a hoarse voice.

Shlomi stopped in his tracks. The figure who approached him wasn’t the assured man he had seen entering Nur’s home. With his shoulders drooping, his face ravaged, he extended his hand.

“If you are my son, or if you are not, you crossed an ocean to meet me. I owe both of us a chance to get to know each other better.”

After he left Nur’s apartment, Shlomi needed to call D’vora, the person closest to him. He wanted to tell her about meeting his father, and what had happened, but she was in Puerto Rico. What time was it there, same as in New York? Maybe she was just in the middle of a rehearsal or a concert. He called but there was no answer.

As in a slow-motion movie, his mind rekindled the entire afternoon, especially the scene after his father became a reality. Shlomi left, with the two of them deciding to meet the next day alone. Musa handed him his business card and asked Shlomi to call him in the morning.

Instantly, Shlomi responded with his own business card.

“Shlomi Gal,” his father read. “Shlomi Gal,” he repeated with a sarcastic smile. He turned to his sisters, “Does this sound Arabic to you?”

“It’s a stage name,” Amina said quickly. “It’s what artists, movie stars do. They choose a name easy to remember.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but this is my name.”

In the silence that followed his words Shlomi let himself out.
Am I going to call my father tomorrow? Maybe I should forget about it? Tomorrow’s encounter could resemble two ships sliding toward one another, getting closer, but moving in different directions
. Musa said that Shlomi crossed an ocean to meet him. But the real ocean between them was an ocean of feelings and resentments, of memories and long years they did not share, different languages, cultures, religions.

No, he would not be a coward. He would call Musa. It might be possible, the thought warmed Shlomi’s heart, that his father could leave aside for a moment his disappointment and hurt and share with him his memories of his young wife, memories their son was so eager to hear.

As other times when he thought about his mother his hand moved to touch his amulets. No amulets. Did he, in the emotion of those moments, forget them or did Musa surreptitiously take them?

He walked for hours, daydreaming. It was dark, and he found himself on streets he didn’t recognize. From afar he heard the call of the muezzin. He looked for a taxi. None in sight. People streamed toward the mosque. What if somebody snatched his violin? With his heart in his mouth he ran until he saw the sign for the underground station. Only then did he start to breathe freely.

Musa could not fall asleep. The charms he set on a small pillow next to him brought memories he thought were buried long ago;
embracing Suha and feeling the warmth of her body heat the amulets while his head was hidden between her two pigeon-size breasts, listening to her wild heartbeats. Earlier in the evening he made copies of the picture; she looked only a couple of years younger than the day he met her, the day his fate was sealed. Musa worked his camera and took a number of pictures, changing the exposure each time. He would return the amulets and the picture tomorrow.

Though Shlomi Gal said he’d call at nine in the morning, Musa was ready and waiting at eight.
Will he call
? Musa jumped when the telephone rang. After they exchanged salutations, Musa said, “I have a Greek friend who owns a luncheonette in the University district. Colleges are still on vacation so the place will be quiet. My friend would make sure nobody disturbs us.”
Did I sound too anxious?

Musa arrived early and sat at a table from which he could watch the door. His son entered at eleven o’clock sharp. Like Musa, Shlomi was casually dressed; slacks, an open shirt and a dark red sweater, similar to the one Musa had chosen for himself that morning. When Musa introduced Yanni, the Greek owner, Shlomi exclaimed, “Greek food is my favorite. I could eat spanakopita and tarama every day.”

“A guest like you is what my heart desires,” Yanni smiled happily.

In the ensuing silence, father and son watched one another, not knowing who would speak first. Yanni brought coffee. “It’s strong, Mr. Gal,” he said, “real Greek coffee, bitter, too.”

“Yanni,” Musa said, happy for the diversion, “my sister Amina told me that Mr. Gal is a well-known violinist.”

“Would you play at my daughter’s wedding, Mr. Gal? We Greeks love music!” Enthusiastically, Yanni raised his arms, snapped his fingers and started the first steps of a fiery Syrtaki.

“I’d do it with pleasure,” Shlomi answered, “but I’m flying back to the United States tonight.”

“So soon,” Musa immediately regretted his rush of words.

“My fiancée is waiting for my return. Also, the concert season is about to start.”

“This brings to mind a question I meant to ask you,” Musa said. “How did you choose your profession? When did it occur to you that you had musical talent?” If the young man was indeed his son, he did not inherit this gift from him, Musa thought.

“It was chosen for me,” Shlomi answered, “by my mother. She loved music. My adoptive grandfather said that she sang me lullabies long after I had fallen asleep.”

Musa shuddered. Many times, coming home from the bank, he’d find Suha singing with her eyes closed, but she’d stop the instant she saw him. “What are you singing, my angel?” he would ask and close her mouth with a kiss. Blushing, she would answer, “Just old melodies.”

After the baby was born, he heard her sing to him softly in a language he couldn’t understand. He knew it wasn’t Hebrew, because in dealing with his mother’s associates he was able to understand a number of words, some quite close to Arabic.

Musa cleared his throat, “My wife sang songs in a foreign language. She said it was a song about almonds.”

“I know the song. It is a famous Yiddish song,
Rojenkis mit mendlen
, raisins and almonds,” Shlomi exclaimed. “My mother spoke Yiddish with Grandpa Otto, who never learned proper Hebrew.”

Musa saw in the young man’s eyes the blue azure of his mother’s, eyes as clear as Jaffa’s sky on a spring day. He wanted to ask more, but Yanni came with a great flourish holding up two steaming plates.

“Spanakopita for your pleasure,” he announced with a booming voice, “and I added Yanni’s famous Greek salad, which I make only for special guests.”

“And what about your father?” asked Musa, “I mean,” under Shlomi’s inquisitive eyes he stumbled on the words, “Your mother
surely remarried, didn’t she?” He continued in the same breath without waiting for Shlomi to reply, “I imagine your last name, Gal, must be his name.”

Musa saw a cloud passing over Shlomi’s eyes. He didn’t answer immediately.

“My mother died in a stupid accident in the fall of 1948. She never remarried.”

Musa waited silently, while a storm was forming in his head.

“Her death was a shock. I was ill for a long time afterwards. For almost twenty years I was spared the details of her untimely death. Only two years ago I heard about it and I was told the truth about my father’s family. My adoptive grandfather told me that my mother was on the way to the hospital where she worked as a nightshift nurse when she heard a man’s voice calling ’Suha.’ Grenades were falling around, but she, joyful and exalted, raised her head to see where the voice came from and didn’t feel the bullet hitting her shoulder. She fell, unaware of the approaching car, whose lights were off because of the curfew. On her deathbed, barely able to speak, she told Otto what happened.

“Later, Mazal, one of Otto’s neighbors found a letter among my mother’s belongings. It was addressed to you. Here it is. I had never opened it.”

Musa’s shaking hands picked up the crumpled envelope. While he read, the quivering of the muscles on his face were enough for Shlomi, to know how he felt. When Musa raised his eyes, Shlomi saw in them an unusual glitter, “I wish I could bring back the past,” Musa said. “I thought I created an environment in which she’d feel like a princess in an enchanted garden. I realized too late that I was mistaken not to share with her my worries or my plans for the future,” he ended in a hoarse voice.

Without looking at Shlomi, Musa pushed the charms and the picture in his direction, “They’re yours.”

For the first time, Shlomi felt pity for the disturbed man sitting in front of him, his father.” I still didn’t answer your question about my last name,” he said, hoping to dispel the gloom. “Otto, my violin teacher, my grandfather, said it was my mother’s idea. She loved the sea and she loved music.
Gal
means ‘wave’ in Hebrew. My mother said that the waves of the sea tell a story, they make music. Gal, she said, was a name befitting a musician; my mother had already chosen a stage name for me, at a time when I could barely hold a quarter-size violin in my hands.”

“I want to hear you play,” Musa said, suddenly animated. “I’m sorry that there wasn’t music in my upbringing. I think it might be too late for me to understand it.”

“Music is like poetry. You are not asked to understand it. Just let it speak to your senses. The love for beauty exists in all of us.”