Nani Haim Tibi

"Young Carpenter"
    "So, you see," Meme Milli said, "you're named after my husband - your grandpa Nani."
    I stayed at Meme's house while Mom was at the doctor's office’
"Tell me more, Meme," I asked. "What happened to him?"
"It all started many years ago," Meme continued. "I was very young when my parents died. My mother was a maid for a rich family, and after she died, they brought me up to be their maid. My older sisters were already married and lived out of town. I washed floors and dishes, I dusted, I did the laundry, I did everything around the house. One day a gentleman came and asked my keepers to let me go so he could marry me, and so he did. This gentleman was your grandfather. He was a divorced man who had a daughter from his previous marriage. His daughter stayed with her mother. Your grandpa was a merchant, so every morning I would prepare his lunch, and he'd go to his store and return late in the afternoon. It was nice not to work as a maid anymore. Not long after, your father was born, and then his sister, Rosete, then his other sister, Fortune, his brother, Rone, and last, but not least, his youngest brother Claude. I'll tell you more about them later.
    It was in a nice summer day. We were vacationing in the Beach town Nabbel. We were there for the summer. Your Grandpa was staying in Tunis for the week and every Friday he would come to join us on the beach. “One Friday afternoon my husband came back from work and said, I don't feel well, dear. He looked very pale and weak. I put him to bed and went to get the doctor. The doctor checked his temperature, gave him something to lower it, and left. The next morning my husband was dead.
    I was lost, I didn't know what to do, my oldest son, your dad, was only 11, and my youngest was two years old. I didn't know how to read or to write, and I didn't have a job to support my family. All I knew was how to be a maid. That wasn't enough for a woman and five children. Your father had to help to support the family. The town's rabbi advised me to have him Bar mitzvah at an early age because he would have to take a lot of responsibilities for a young boy. The following week we went to the synagogue and your father read the Torah at the age of 11.
    “The first trade he tried to learn was carpentry. The old carpenter gave your father a sheet of sandpaper, a tabletop, and told him to smooth it up. Your dad took the sandpaper and started to work. After an hour or so he called his boss and showed him his progress.
'No good, the boss replied, it's not smooth enough yet'.
“Again your dad rubbed and rubbed for another hour. But the boss wasn't satisfied.
“'How long should I do this?' asked your dad, eager to finish this boring job.
“'Until you smell onion!” Answered his boss jokingly'.
“At lunch time your father ran home, took a big onion, and ran back to work. Fifteen minutes later he called his boss.
“'Look', he said, 'it's ready, I can smell the onion.'
“The boss was in shock. He didn't know what to say. The fine wood was ruined. It was all covered with onion juice.

    Of course, your father had to look for another job. He tried the tailor, the cook, the blacksmith and so on. He was just too young for anything. At last, after a long time he found a job that he liked. This job had artistic challenges. He became a jeweler's apprentice. At that same time my oldest sister who just lost her entire family for a horrible sickness, moved in to live with us. We both found jobs with the same rich family who raised me. Life was difficult, but we managed well and nine years later we started our travel to Israel.

“Now it's time for your lunch and a nap. Next time maybe I'll tell you about your Uncles Rone and Claude."

***

 

1959

    “Mommy, Mommy! Come look who’s coming.” I rushed home yelling. “Come Ima it’s Uncle Robert, he came with a big army truck.”

    Everyone in our family knew; Mom was a great cook. In every opportunity they have they would stop by for lunch or dinner. On the other hand, I could never figure out why. I didn’t like her food. It just didn’t taste good to me. Most of the time, it was too spicy. Anyway, Uncle Robert had an afternoon pass, and he came with his army truck for a short visit. Both Avi and I loved it when relatives serving the army came to visit. They always had something for us. Chocolate bars or chocolate covered waffles from the army cantina. Uncle Robert was a truck driver in the army. This time he came with a huge truck and he parked it in front of our shack on the sand dunes.
    It was Friday afternoon and Mom made her usual “Couscous” with chicken vegetable soup. Uncle Robert loved it.

“So, what’s new?” He asked.
“Oh, nothing much.” Said Mom. “I’m starting to work soon. Eli offered to teach me the trade of diamond cutting. He is very good at that, you know. I’ll be working half a day so we can save some money.”
“That’s nice,” said Uncle Robert. “But, what about the children?”
“Oh, I found a solution for that.” Mom replied. “Nanou is going to the nursery school and Yaffa the teacher there has a daughter Avi’s age. She asked if I could bring Avi too so they can play together. All I have to do is to pick Avi when I pick Nanou after my work. It turns out great. Yaffa gets to keep her job teaching and I get to go to work for half a day without worrying about a babysitter.”
    All that time while Uncle Robert was having lunch Avi was playing with some of his friends around the army truck.
“Look in here!” said Itzik the red head kid. “It’s a dead porcupine; your uncle killed it with his truck”
“No He didn’t!” I said when I walked out, hearing the conversation. “It was there before, and you shouldn’t be playing with it, anyway.”
    The kids didn’t listen to me and kept playing with the dead porcupine. It was laying there for two days now waiting to be picked up by the town’s service. The kids were poking it with long sticks now, trying to make it move, revive it, or god knows what. They kept playing with it until Uncle Robert came out with Mom to say goodbye to us.
This goodbye was the longest goodbye I can remember. You see, Uncle Robert Started his truck and about to drive away but he couldn’t. His truck got stuck in the deep sand dune. No matter how much he tried he just dug himself deeper in. before too long, all the men in the neighborhood were there, trying to push the truck out of the sand. After 3 hours finally they succeeded pushing it on top of wood planks and out of the sand. Uncle Robert said goodbye again and this time drove away waving from the distance.
    The next morning Avi was rushed to the hospital with high fever. He caught “typhus”. Probably was stung by a mosquito or a tick that carried the virus, from the dead porcupine. He had to spend 2 months in the hospital. With such high fever, we didn’t think he would make it. To our delight when Avi came back home, he was stronger than ever, his tales I will tell you later.

***

 

Trip North
    Dad had a new friend. His name was Tuvia. Tuvia worked with Dad. He cuts the diamonds to give them a round shape. Dad polishes the diamonds and gives them their facets and brilliance.

 "How old are you, young man?" He asked me the first time we met. I liked it when people called me "young man." It made me feel important.
 "Four," I said, "I will be four at the end of the summer on Rosh Hashanah."
 "Oh, yes?" he replied, "I have a daughter who is almost your age. Her name is Anat, and she is three and a half. Would you like to meet her?"
 "Yes" I said. I was very pleased to be able to meet his daughter. You see, don't tell anybody, but I loved playing with girls. They don't fight as much as boys, and they let me play daddy when we play “house”.
 "I also have a son," he said. "He's two years old."
 "That's like my brother. What's his name?"
 "Yuval, and you will have the chance to meet them both very soon. We are going on a vacation together next weekend."
 "All right!" I replied happily and rushed to tell my brother the news.
    That morning I woke up very early, even before Mom and Dad turned on the radio with the musical clock program. Every morning they would wake up at 6:00, turn on the radio, and the classical music program would wake me up. This time I couldn't sleep late. I was thinking about the trip all the time at the kindergarten.  That afternoon as soon as Dad came home, Mom packed all the suitcases and sandwiches for the road.
    Anat had long black hair and big brown eyes. She was, unlike her brother, very polite and gentle. Yuval, her brother, had a bad mouth and bad manners. It was very difficult to hear anything when he talked because he didn't talk. He yelled and screamed and cursed and what not.

    I sat in the back seat of the big station wagon with Anat. We played games, sang songs, and had fun for most of the ride; that is, when Yuval was not interrupting.
We drove north on the new shore highway. The sea was on our left and the orange orchards on out right. That time of year the orange flowers were blooming, and their strong smell cast a spell on all of us. We stopped at Caesaria and saw the old Roman ruins. We passed near the prehistoric cavemen digs and the banana fields. For dinner, we stopped at a forest park near Haifa.

    It was getting dark when we started climbing the high mountain of Kibbutz Idmit.
"We will spend the night here," Tuvia announced. "They have nice accommodations, and we can eat breakfast at the kibbutz's dining room."

    A kibbutz is a communal village. All the people who live in the kibbutz work in the fields, in the kibbutz's schools, in the kitchen, or as housekeepers. They don't get paid, but they get a house, food, clothing, and all their needs are provided for. The income from their work is shared by all the kibbutz members - comrades. The children in this kibbutz live in the children's dorms, and their parents live in the adults' living quarters. There are no poor or rich people in the kibbutz; everyone is equal. If the kibbutz is rich, everyone in the commune is rich. If the kibbutz is poor, no one is rich in the kibbutz.
    Avi and I got a room next to Mom and Dad's room, and in front of Tuvia’s children's room.
"Be nice to your brother," mom said before she left for her room. Yea, like I planned to be mean to him; it was always him that started those fights.
 "Remember you're the older."
 "O.K., good night!" I replied.

    The loud shot woke me shortly after I fell asleep. The commotion outside the door intrigued my curiosity, and I opened the door.
 "Go back to your room!" someone ordered.
I hated it when some adults thought that we children should not be allowed to know anything. I closed the door and waited for the commotion to pass.
I heard someone mentioning poachers, but we were not that close to the border, and we were very high on top of one of the steepest mountains in Israel. You see, there were poachers that snuck across the border, Syria or Jordan, to steal food or livestock. Sometimes, they got caught, and sometimes they committed murder.

    I opened the door again, peeking to see if anybody saw me. The door in front of me opened slowly and the long black hair of Anat was the first thing I saw coming out.
 "Poacher?" she asked softly.
 "No, there are no poachers in this area," I tried to calm her fear. "Let's go see."
 "Can I hold your hand?" she asked. "I'm afraid a little".
 "Of course," I said. "I'm not afraid, I'll protect you"
We walked out the door of the building into the darkness. The people were gathering at the far side of the kibbutz. We heard them talking about an Arab shepherd that lived next to the kibbutz. He had an old rifle. They were thinking maybe it was he who shot the gun. It had come from his direction. Hiding from the adults, we slowly walked toward the crowd. Then we heard the weirdest noise. It was like a cry, like something we never heard before.
 "Leopard, leopard," someone yelled.
 "Bring a net," someone else yelled
Someone ran back to the kibbutz's center and shortly after returned with a wide net. We heard before about people who had seen leopards, but it was very rare. Leopards are extinct animals in Israel, and this one could be the last leopard. That is why they wanted to catch him alive.
    The crowd surrounded the wounded leopard, and someone threw the net on it. It didn't take long for the crowd to disperse, and we found ourselves alone. It was only then that we saw where we really were.
The kibbutz Idmit was located on a very high mountain. The view was of all the Galilee, the northern part of Israel.
"Look how beautiful this is," Anat said squeezing my hand gently. "What is there?"
"Haifa," I said proudly. We just learned in the kindergarten about Haifa, the port city of Israel.
"And that?"
"Nahariya I think."
We sat on a rock looking at the lights of all the towns and villages around us flickering, holding hands, and listening to the sound of the wounded leopard crying in the dark.

***

 

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