Amber Dream

II.

On Shabbat evenings the little ark, tossed about in the rough billows of ordinary life, would suddenly seem to travel to times beyond memory, still inscribed in the course of the moon and stars and mellowed by the living, golden dance of candle lights, or to float in a protected harbor of suspended time.

Until one day, the magical crystal hourglass shattered to pieces, the confusing uproar of time rushed, muddying everything. The harsh, metallic voices of the radios were pouring the hatred of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Jacob, the only male educator of the Château had up to now been content to chant the Shabbat prayers, glorified by sweet ruby wine and to read in a ringing Morocco splendor or rolling “r’s”, his own naïve biblical adaptations.

What he dutifully read now, was as naïve and emphatic as ever, but Sara did not feel like smiling anymore. Children were ‘edified’ to hate those “inhuman, ruthless blood-drinking Arab monsters, slaughtering Jewish little children” and “we” hoped they would be “crushed down to the last, as they well deserved”. To enhance the pedagogical effect of those subtle political reports, it was decided that from now on, two of the older children would read them each Shabbat. Flore and Sara were next.

As the wave of time abruptly slapped her face, Sara leaped wide-awake into uneasy awareness. Something was wrong, both true and terribly wrong! For once, as Flore and Sara sat on their beds that Friday evening, the positive-negative pattern of their entwined lives, apocalyptically reversed: it was Sara, bursting with fiery indignation and Flore struggling, ashen-pale in the agony of some untold, conflicting emotions.

“It’s too simple! It’s a caricature” stormed Sara, “of course some Arabs are fanatic and their methods are inacceptable, but it’s too easy, they have lived on that land for centuries, from their point of view, they are right too, just as the Jews have a right to come back to the land of their roots, the only place where they can really defend themselves, where nobody can tell them ‘Hey dirty Jew, you are not German, or you are not French, why do you breath my air?’ It is not just black or white, it is so entangled, the Arabs and the Jew, in a way… they are both right and wrong”.

Flore lifted her head, in her golden almond eyes, an infinite love seemed to conflict with some strange contradiction of fear and hope:

“You know... I am half-Arab”, she blurted out.

“Yes, I know you come from Tunisia” interrupted Sara as a matter of fact.

“No, I don’t mean a North-African Jew, my Father is a Muslim”, she went on tentatively. “My real name is not Flore, it’s Ferida. I hate it!” she declared in that absolute, passionate tone that would become her innermost soul, later on. “We all changed names when we came to France, Marjorie was Monia and Max: Mourad”.

“But I thought Mansour was a Sephardic name!” exclaimed Sara, too stunned to really digest the news.

“Al-Mansour. We are the descendants of the Caliphs of Baghdad!” proudly corrected Flore, “my Mother, my uncles, they all wanted to cut-off the ‘Al’ to sound more Jewish, I was the only one to oppose, without my consent they are powerless, it’s ‘Al-Mansour’ whether they like it or not!” she burst out in the same intransigent way she had denied her Arabic first name a few minutes earlier. A whole life, torn between extremes, already lay in that paradox.

The unique flamboyant Flore was suddenly back to herself in a crescendo of exuberant laughter.

 _I told you I was half Arab, it’s even more complicated, and our family is such an explosive, crazy mixture: only my maternal grandmother was a Polish Jew, her husband was an Algerian Kabyle; then my Mother married a Tunisian cousin and guess what! My Father’s great-grandmother was a Scottish aristocrat, a Christian!

_But do you feel more Jewish or Arab?” asked Sara, wondering if she was not dreaming awake some apparition of the very Princess Scheherazade

_None or both of them! My Father wanted me to become a Muslim; he forced me to learn the Koran and literary Arabic, what a torture! I hate religions! I believe each of us has his own God, a personal magical music of his.

_ If I may ask… I know your parents divorced, but how did your Father let your Mother take the children away, to say nothing of placing them in a Jewish institution?

_ Do you think she asked for his permission, snarled Flore. When she discovered he had a mistress, she came to his office like a tornado and smashed everything to pieces, nothing like my Mother for magnificent, volcanic scandals; she’s an artist, a genius in her own way! Then one night, with the help of my uncles she managed to take us to the airport, we came to France without anything!

_ Do you keep in touch with your father?

_Oh he writes, he wants me to come back to Tunisia, and asks me  not to forget my Muslim inheritance, he manages to cajole Marjorie and Max, they are younger, they forgot everything, they answer his letters, not me! I hate him, I’ll never forgive him! Now he married that woman and he already has children with her.

_ You have half-brothers and sisters!

_ I only have one sister and one brother: Marjorie and Max, the others are nothing to me, they don’t exist!

_ So you feel closer to your Mother?

_My Mother! I think she cannot stand me, she nearly died as she gave birth to me and she was only sixteen! She prefers Max and especially Marjorie, she finds her so pretty”.

Flore’s heart seemed as divorced from itself as her Grandmother’s Eden had been torn apart by the Holocaust. Hurling away both traitors, beyond all forgiveness: the Muslim Father who had betrayed them all, the Jewish Mother, denying the treasury of her double inheritance, she consumed herself in her own unique holy war, to reconcile all in the same love and the same hatred!

Sara suddenly jumped to her feet: “My God, you cannot read that!” she blurted out. Before either of them had time to realize what was happening, an unlikely tornado-Sara dashed out the room. Half sleepy Tamara had hardly opened her door that Sara was charging, out of breath:

 _I am against it! It’s a caricature; I’m not reading Jacob texts!

 Tamara lifted her long thin hand, no… it did not slap, but just gently caressed her face!

 _Of course you’re not, if you don’t feel like it. You, when you wake up, it’s one extreme to the other!

 _Flore is not either!” attacked Sara, still unrelenting.

 _It goes without saying!” teased an amused Tamara. “What are you doing here? Off to your bed!” she scolded mockingly.

No one heard of the readings ever after. Flore and Sara’s dreams were now interwoven in the same pattern, one flamboyant and one smoldering pale.

***

[Thank you so much, for telling me if the story is of any interest to you up to now; I didn't add explanatory notes to some the words in italics, do you think they would be necessary? Thanks for any suggestions or comments!]