Musa and I tried to split up many times but we just couldn’t do it. Like two drops of mercury we were constantly coalescing. Such was the chemistry of our love, or passion. I remember one other time when I had split up with Musa, I went to Daniel with my mind made up. I would go to a nunnery! I thought that behind the walls of a convent I would be able to hide from illicit love.
Daniel produced beautiful Italian sweets, chocolate-covered cherries somebody had brought him, and he put on the kettle. He infused tea very well, with great concentration, sometimes in the Chinese, sometimes in the Russian manner. He rinsed the teapot with boiling water and covered it with a towel. Later he poured it into the teacups. We were up there on the mountain at the Church of Elijah late one evening. I was waiting to know what he would say, because my desire to go into a nunnery was immense, almost as great as my love.
“My child, it seems to me you want to go to a nunnery to run away from love. That is not a correct decision. You should enter a nunnery because you love God, not because of your love for a man. You should not deceive yourself. It would only make matters worse. When you recover from your love, we will talk about this again.” I kept on and on, “I want to go to a nunnery! I want to go to a nunnery!” At that he got really angry. I don’t think I had ever seen him so angry.
“What do you want to bring to God? Your amorous sufferings? Is that what you want to bring him? What will you do there? Perhaps you are a great prayerful saint? Perhaps with your prayers you will preserve the world like the thirty-six Jewish righteous men? Or can you meditate? Perhaps you are St. Francis de Sales or St. Teresa of Ávila? Perhaps you want that samovar gold halo to gleam above your head which they paint on Eastern icons? Don’t talk rubbish! We have so much to do. Work here!”
I still could not hear what he was telling me. I was even inwardly rather indignant. I suppose I had been half-expecting him to praise me and bless me, to be touched by my resoluteness, but he was angry. His hand flew up and a cup fell from the table and smashed.
“If you cannot change anything, endure. This can’t go on forever. One of the three people always gives in. You should give in, you should remove yourself, but if you can’t, then wait. Do not try to bind yourself with vows. Monasticism is a hard path which few can bear. I, for one, cannot bear it. It is so hard for me to be a monk. Throughout my life I have been in anguish, without children, without a family, without a woman. But my life was given back to me so many times that it no longer belonged to me and I brought it as an offering, because it really no longer belonged to me. Understand, I do not regret having taken the monastic vows. I affirmed them and with God’s help I shall live as a monk to the end of my days, but I would never, never do you hear, bless anyone on their way to this path. If you want to serve God, serve Him in the world. There are plenty of people here who need your service.”
Once more Musa and I found ourselves on the crest of some wave of love and ran away to Cyprus. We lived there for four months. He wanted us to get married. I was so troubled and longed to die just to get all this over with. That was when Daniel told me, “It is time to stop, otherwise somebody will die.” I wanted it to be me. I even prayed that it should happen of its own accord. I did not consider suicide, it was too simple a solution and I knew that for Daniel that would be a terrible blow. He felt responsible for me.
At the height of all this passion a telegram arrived in Cyprus from Musa’s father to tell him that David, his middle son, had been knocked down by a car. He was fifteen then. We got on the ferry and returned to Haifa. The boy underwent a four-hour operation but did not regain consciousness. He was in a coma. Daniel and I prayed in the church for two days without a break.
I vowed at that time that there would never again be anything between me and Musa, and at that same hour he, quite independently, made the same vow. There was no collusion. We both recognized that we had to give this up. The boy recovered.
From that time, Musa and I saw each other only occasionally in church. We stood side by side and prayed together but said not a word to each other.
In 1987, when the first Intifada began, the Muslims murdered Musa’s entire family. His uncle owned a small restaurant by the bus station. It was a busy spot and all sorts of people would come together there because they liked his courtesy and conscientiousness. They were celebrating the birthday of Musa’s father. The whole family had gathered in the restaurant when Muslims burst in and killed everyone. They were terrorists. They wanted to use the café as a meeting place but the uncle had turned them down. Then they ordered him to sell them the café. They said they would pay money but the uncle had to get out. He refused, so they took their revenge. Four men, two women, and three children were murdered. Musa’s son David was in England at that time and had been unable to get back for his grandfather’s birthday. A great deal was written about the tragedy at the time.
But you know, Ewa, nobody said a word about what was the most important aspect of this atrocity. The situation of Arab Christians in Israel is far worse than that of the Jews themselves. The Jews live on an island in a sea of Arab hostility, but the Arab Christians are under suspicion from both sides. Daniel saw that better than anyone here. He had an extraordinary sense of humor. He once told me that a lack of magnanimity on the part of an elderly woman called Sarah and her unreasonable jealousy led to a family conflict which assumed the proportions of a global catastrophe. If she had had a big enough heart to love Ishmael, the elder brother would not have become the sworn enemy of the younger Isaac. I talked to Musa a lot about that. I have kept only three letters from him, one of which is devoted to his experience of what he called “being an Arab.” He didn’t study only botany at university. He was well versed also in philosophy and psychology but abandoned them in order to dedicate himself to what gave him most joy, plants. He came from a good family. His ancestors planted orchards for all the rulers of the East, and the Persian Gardens of the Baha’i Temple in Haifa were designed by his grandfather.
In the last years of his life, Daniel used to call me “daughter.” How about you, Ewa?
8. December 1966, Haifa
R
ECORDING OF A TALK BY
B
ROTHER
D
ANIEL AT THE
C
HURCH OF
E
LIJAH BY THE
S
PRING
Eldar has made a marvelous table at which a multitude of people can sit. Our thanks to you, Eldar. Put the plates in the bowl, we can wash them later, but don’t put the glasses away. Somebody is bound to want to drink. Yes. It is far better now, the table is excellent. Hilda will make us tea and Musa will make coffee. He does that better than anyone else. And a cup for me, okay?
Last week I was guiding pilgrims in Jerusalem and happened on a cemetery near the Old Town where they are conducting archaeological excavations. We were shown some very interesting burials of the second century where Jews and Christians were buried together, all members of one family. It was a time of coexistence for Jewish Christianity and Judaism, when everybody prayed together in the synagogues and there was no conflict between them. Of course, Jews who were the disciples and followers of Christ did not yet call themselves Christians. Of course, early Christianity was intimately connected with the Jewish milieu of that time, if only because that was the milieu from which Jesus himself came. Jesus’s mother was the Jewess Miriam. He spoke the Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic tongues. When he was eight days old, the rite of circumcision was performed upon him. Jesus, as we know from the texts of the New Testament, observed the Sabbath and attended the Temple. As modern specialists in Jewish letters of that time have shown, he expressed his teachings in the same language and used the same examples as the rabbis of that time.