Wherever you excavate in these parts you can be sure there was already something there in olden times. Not far from that village Daniel showed us an old church. It was in ruins but had not yet completely collapsed. We thought how marvelous it would be to rebuild it for ourselves. After all, we are a community with nowhere to live. We could reconstruct it. Admittedly, there is no water supply and no electricity. The nearest spring is in the Druze village and the electricity lines end there too. We could just about get by without electricity, but not without water.
Daniel said he would try talking to the village elder and see whether they would give us permission to tap into their water supply. If our venture succeeds it will be brilliant. We could leave Haifa and live here autonomously, and it would be a pleasant 5 kilometer walk for Daniel to the monastery. To drive there you would have to make an almost 30-kilometer detour.
Daniel said getting water from the Druze would be far more straightforward than getting permission from the Church hierarchy. Anyway, we went to petition them. He will speak to the Druze elder in a few days’ time. I wanted to go with him but he said it would be better for him to go alone and tell me all about it afterwards.
As I am writing I realize I have forgotten to tell you something important. Daniel says that with my entirely respectable Hebrew I could go to study at university. He promised to find the money for it. There is a preparatory department called Mehina which has a distance-learning course. You go to lectures for a few days each month, and the rest of the time study on your own. After the first year they transfer you to the first year of the Judaic Studies course. I would really like that.
That’s all. I must go to bed now because I have to get up at five tomorrow.
Lots of love to you and all the family,
Your Hilda
Before I had time to post this, Daniel came back from the Druze very pleased.
The main thing is, they will allow us to divert some of their water. What he had to tell me about them was also very interesting. Their village is quite large with modern houses and everything is extremely clean. An old man, evidently a saddler, was sitting in a courtyard under an awning sewing something with a large needle. Daniel told the first person he met he would like to talk to the elder and that person immediately took him to his home for something to eat. Their village elder is a teacher and just at that moment he was teaching at the school. While they were talking, a young man was making coffee. There was a minor commotion at the back of the house and, as Daniel discovered afterwards, they were slaughtering a lamb for plov. They drank the coffee and the house owner, Salim, took Daniel around the village. The first place he was shown was the cemetery.
Twelve people from this village had died in the fighting. One was a colonel, and there were several officers and private soldiers. Salim was very proud of the cemetery and showed it as if to say, “We are a warrior people.” It was strange, because outwardly they seemed very peaceful people, peasants. They had fine orchards and vineyards. They walked on and Daniel asked him why there was no mosque or anything of the kind. They don’t have mosques but they have a khalwah, a house for prayer meetings. Muslims do not consider them to be believers because they have, apart from the Quran and the Bible, some other sacred books of their own which they keep secret from everybody else. They also have a very strange, special doctrine, called Taqiyya. It is a secret teaching, only for Druze. Their elder is initiated into this secret and conveys it orally only to those who are worthy. Their main principle in life, though, is that they live at peace with the religion of the country in which they are dwelling. They have no homeland apart from their doctrine. Daniel even said sadly, “There, Hilda, that is how it should be for Christians, too, that is what was intended, only it didn’t work out. Now we can see that the Druze have managed it. They accept the external, changing laws of the world but live in accordance with their own inner, immutable laws.”
They believe God has been incarnated in the world seven times: in Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and their sacred fatimid Sheikh al-Hakim. They preached their doctrine until the 11th century, but then there occurred the “Closing of the Gate,” and since then you cannot become a Druze. They call themselves muwahiddun. You can only be born a Druze. It is truly a closed religion. You can leave it but you cannot enter it. There is no proselytizing. The gate is closed.
Then the uqqal arrived, their elder and teacher. He was very old and courteous, and they sat and ate plov.
They don’t drink wine, only water and juice. At the end, when Daniel said he wanted to restore the church on the mountain but there was no water there, the elder said there was water. In the old days there was a spring. It had dried up but could be found again. He also said that if the spring did not run again, they would donate their own water. The land there is not Druze. It is Arab, but the Arab village which was there until 1948 has all gone. The ruins are very old. It was the Crusaders who built the first Christian church there. The uqqal said the Druze came from Egypt and the village was already in existence at that time. They had seen the church being built. Daniel has doubts about that but says it is quite likely they did come from Egypt, only much later than the Jews. I found the way he spoke amusing, as if he had been there and seen it all himself.
“Build,” the Druze elder said. “We are the enemies of nobody, neither Jews nor Christians nor Muslims, but we are citizens of this country and we will defend it.”
That’s the kind of people they are, Mother. The elder’s name is Kerim. In a few days’ time Daniel will introduce me to the Druze builder who is going to help us restore the church. Like the Arabs, they are good builders. I am to be in charge of the building work! Can you imagine it? I have to prepare the project, draw up the estimates, find the money, and hire the workers. Please tell that to my stepfather and let me know how he reacts!
Love,
Hilda
2. 1961, Kfar Tavor
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IKTORIA
Dear Wiktoria,
I was so pleased to get your letter! My dear schoolfriend. We shared a desk for four years. The happiest memories of my childhood are associated with you. Do you remember the play we put on in primary school? And running away from home and getting lost? And my little brother was in love with you. I was sure your family had been lost in Russia. What a joy that you survived and have returned. I am so glad you have sought me out, so glad you have obtained an apartment after so many years of privation. How I would love to see you! I can only imagine what you must have been through when you were exiled to Russia. Was that at the end of 1944 or already in 1945? We lived in Kielce until the end of 1951.
It is more than 10 years since we emigrated to Israel. It sometimes seems a very long time ago and our old life seems like the distant past. In all those years I have only been back to Poland once, when Mother died. You can imagine what that journey was like, just sorrows and regrets. Mother never did forgive me for marrying Metek. It still upsets me deeply. I sometimes dream that I and my brother are staying with our grandmother in Zakopane. I remember going to Kraków once on a school trip, but I try not to remember Kielce. It is just too painful.