TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
September 1954
Money bought power, even within the family. With the most money and the biggest house, at thirty years of age Arie was beginning to act like the patriarch. His call for a family meal was like a summons.
While Tamara and Rachel prepared dinner in the kitchen, he and Peter drank orange juice as they contemplated the kids yelling and rolling across the floor.
Ido had wrestled Estie to the ground and was sitting on her. Combining their four-year-old strength, Daniel and Carmel pulled him off. They all ended up rolling on the floor, tickling each other and laughing. How bizarre, Peter thought, Tamara’s brother and sister fighting her son and daughter, aunt and uncle wrestling with niece and nephew. The minute age difference between Tamara’s children and her siblings confused the generations.
Sitting down for dinner, Peter told Ido to calm down. Ido was still breathless and had kicked his sister under the table. Now Peter was telling his brother-in-law to behave.
Tamara came in beaming, carrying a large dish, which Moshe helped place on the table. “Food is ready, and it’s just right,” she said happily. Arie told her to wait. “I have an announcement.”
“Wait till after dinner,” Tamara said.
“What for? This is a celebration, they should know what we’re celebrating.”
“No business during dinner.”
“This isn’t business, it’s pleasure. It is for me, anyway.” A glass tinkled as Arie tapped with his fork.
“Ladies and gentleman, your attention, please.” Peter and Diana, Moshe and Rachel, Wolfie and Mayan, looked toward the head of the table, where Arie stood with a raised glass. Ido and Daniel were staring at each other, seeing who would blink first.
“I won’t take a moment, because we all want to eat this wonderful meal that my beautiful wife has prepared, but I’d like to share with you my latest news. There has been a big development. Feather Products Limited is the new Israel distributor of…” He beamed around the table, enjoying his dramatic pause. “Of … Peugeot, the French car manufacturer. That means I’ll sell their cars, we’ll set up garages to service them and sell spare parts, and I hope to expand into gas stations to fuel them and everyone else. As you know, there are very few private cars in Israel but as the country grows, and more roads are built, every family will have one. It’s going to be a huge business and we’ll be in on the ground floor. And mostly, I’m happy to add, the investment comes from the bank and third-party backers. Very little of Feather Products’ money will be needed in direct investment. And the loan interest is favorable. We’ll pay it off with profits from car sales. So tell your friends, come buy your Peugeot 203 from me.” He drained his glass with a flourish and sat, smiling at Peter.
“That’s wonderful,” Moshe said. “But I don’t know anyone who can afford to buy a car.”
“Nor do I,” said Peter.
“Well, I do,” Arie said. “And Peugeot will be the car of the future here. Now, Tamara, serve the food.”
“I hope it isn’t cold.” Tamara served beef stew in an Italian porcelain tureen, with mashed potatoes that soaked up the gravy, and on matching porcelain side plates a coleslaw salad. The red wine was a nice little one, Arie said, from Cyprus.
“I saw that,” Tamara said to her father who had swapped a glance with Rachel. Moshe laughed out loud. “And I know just what you’re thinking,” she said.
“What am I thinking?” Moshe said with a wink to his wife.
“You’re thinking, where’s the rice kushari? Oh, what would you give to eat a good rabbit mulukhiya?”
Moshe hooted with laughter and slapped Rachel on the knee so hard she yelped in protest. “Indeed, my wife, when will you make mulukhiya again for your husband? Real Egyptian food.” He turned the salad over with his fork. “What is this anyway, this yekke stuff, coleslaw and beef stew. Ya Allah, is this Munich or the Middle East?”
“Well, I have to keep my husband happy, right? That’s my duty,” Tamara said. She caught Peter’s eye, who raised an eyebrow as if to say, Is it? “It’s excellent, Tamara,” Peter said. “Right, Wolfie?”
“I’m staying out of this. I’m lucky to have anything to eat.” Wolfie was on leave from his base in the Southern Command, near the Egyptian border. After his compulsory thirty-month service he had signed up as an infantry officer with the regular army.
“On the kibbutz all we eat is cucumbers, tomatoes and mystery meatballs. This is all amazing. Thank you, Tamara, and you, Rachel,” Mayan said.
“Well, there must be something right about your kibbutz diet; look at you,” Arie said.
Tamara glanced at Peter and rolled her eyes.
As Tamara cleared the plates away and served coffee, Diana, holding her twins, apologized for not helping: “I wish I could but I have a boy on each tittie.”
“Don’t worry, please,” Tamara said. She didn’t want Mayan’s help either, saying, “You’re guests here, relax and enjoy.” Tamara didn’t want anybody else in the kitchen. She had prepared a surprise for her father. And when she presented it, her face lit up at his reaction.
“Alḥamdulillāh,” Praise the Lord! he cried, clapping his hands in delight. “You are your father’s daughter after all.”
She gave Rachel the first helping, telling her father, “Ladies first, not like in Egypt.”
“I agree,” Moshe said. “But still, real men don’t wait, it is the law of the desert. And of course Ibn Tulun wrote…” and he sank his fork into Rachel’s slice of konafa, even as Tamara served him next.
The dessert was perfect: baked golden brown, a pie from thin strands of pastry filled with double cream and cheese, topped with halved almonds, all drenched in heated honey water.
“Delicious,” Moshe said, helping himself to another piece. “Now I feel at home.”
Konafa was the favorite Ramadan dessert, for one month Egypt’s national dish. It took two and a half hours to prepare and bake.
It was all gone in ninety seconds.
As she contemplated her father licking his plate, Tamara’s smile was one of pure satisfaction. But after the children fell asleep on the floor, sprawled across cushions, their limbs all jumbled up, it hurt her to hear him complain.
Wolfie had asked him about his new job.
“It isn’t working out for me at the foreign ministry,” Moshe said as the adults sat smoking in the garden. The harsh tobacco smell mingled with the sweet scent of citrus carried across the orchards and strawberry fields. “They just don’t want to hear me. To them I’m an aging Egyptian professor while they’re all young graduates from Europe and America or sabra ex-army officers and they think they know it all. There is a groupthink you can’t argue against.”
“What do you mean?” Peter asked. “What does the group think?”
“What worries me most is that they’re looking for any reason for war with Egypt. Egypt is the bogeyman, the ultimate military threat, and when I disagree they all say it’s because I’m from Egypt, that I can’t see the wood for the trees. Apparently being an Egyptian is a disadvantage when trying to understand the Egyptians.”
“But there is a real threat,” Arie said. “Every day there are attacks across the borders, from Sinai, from Gaza, they’re killing our people.”
“Of course, but it doesn’t justify going to war. Anyway, we’re retaliating and killing more of them.”
Peter listened with interest. Moshe always had a counterargument, and whether he was right or not, it was good to hear the other side. “Doesn’t Nasser mean it when he says Israel is the natural enemy of the Arab people? A plague?” he asked.
“Yes and no,” Moshe said. “Look, take all his war talk, his speeches, that’s all for the Arab street, and then look at what he’s really doing. The first thing Nasser did when he took over six months ago was to reduce his defense budget. He moved his troops away from our border. There are not-so-secret peace talks between Egypt and Israel, everyone knows that. Does that sound like someone planning a war? Nasser personally has nothing against the Jews, he grew up next to a synagogue, Jews owned the house he lived in, and they were friends. If anyone is rejecting the idea of peace it’s Israel, because we don’t want our hands tied by agreements—we want to manufacture excuses to take more land.”
“And we need it,” Arie put in, getting heated. “We need more land, we’re too small to survive more wars.”
“True,” Moshe said. “But why fight more wars? Isn’t it a better solution to give up on more land and just make peace with what we have? Anyway, the Egyptian military is a joke.”
They all looked at Wolfie. He should know, he was a paratroop lieutenant near the Egyptian border. He smiled. “You talk. I’ll smoke. My lips are sealed.”
“Then how can you smoke?” Mayan said, and they laughed.
Arie said, “Still, there are twenty-three million of them and one point five million of us…”
Moshe interrupted him. “Take their air force. Out of thirty aircraft, only six can fly at any one time. They don’t have spare parts, no maps, no functioning airfields, no ammunition. You know how many tank shells they have? Enough for one hour’s combat. One hour. Peter, what do you think?”
“If Wolfie’s lips are sealed, mine are sewn shut with steel wire. But look, there’s some truth in everything you’re all saying. From my point of view, the only thing that counts is that Israel must be ready for anything. War, if we can’t avoid it. Peace would be better, but to make peace we have to be strong, and that means preparing for war. But in the meantime, who wants to make peace with us?”
“Egypt!” Moshe almost shouted. “Did you hear anything I said?”
“I did,” Peter said softly. “I hope you are right but I fear you are wrong.”
“Excuse me for saying this,” Diana said, “but Moshe, is the real reason you’re upset with the Ministry because you’re not part of the Ashkenazi white boys’ club?”
“That’s just another way to muddy what I’m saying. We’re heading for an unnecessary war.”
Tamara touched her father on the knee. “Abba, why don’t you leave the foreign ministry? Be a journalist. Write for a newspaper. Israel needs to hear different voices and nobody understands Egypt better than you.”
Moshe squeezed his daughter’s hand. “Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve thought about that. Maybe I will. If they’ll have me.”