Recap: Dovid’s parents finally get through to a rabbi in Syria, so now they hope to be able to work on rescuing Jews. Dovid’s father is niftar. He doesn’t want his mother to keep working on this. She shows him a journal from a Jewish girl in Syria so he will understand how much the Jews there need help from Jews who can help.
Father whispered to mother, “We keep things low profile and the business will be okay.”
“But, Jacob,” Ima whispered, “they’re shutting down Jewish businesses. I’m worried.”
“Hashem will help.” Aba pointed up to the sky.
I moved away from the doorway. I’d been listening and that was wrong. My stomach knotted. Things were tense here with Assad passing rules against us all the time; ever since the Yom Kippur War with Israel winning, the Syrians hated anyone Jewish. They thought we aligned against them. Stella, my best friend, had told me that things were getting worse now for us. She’d heard her father speaking about it with her uncle. Any Jews employed by the government are terminated immediately because of Zionist leanings.
Stella spat on the ground. “Zionist leanings. It’s pure anti-Semitism. They’re mad because Israel won the war, so they’re taking it out on us.”
Her father lost his job yesterday. Ima was worried about our livelihood.
I ran outside. I needed a sympathetic ear. I ran over to Stella’s house. Stella is one year older than me. She’s 13 and she’s a real musician. One day, I want to be as good as her. She plays the violin and anyone who hears her stops and begs for more.
Stella was outside, hanging laundry in the back rock courtyard. Her baby sister Badia was crawling around.
Just then, Badia started crying. Something long and slimy was slithering near her.
“Oh, look, it’s a garden snake.”
Stella grabbed the baby, and we rushed inside.
“It wasn’t poisonous, was it?” I asked. My heart was thumping.
“I don’t think so.” Stella was examining Badia for any tooth marks.
“She’s fine,” Stella said. Her voice was shaking.
“I want to move to a place with no snakes and no human snakes,” I said.
Stella put her hand to her lips. “The walls have ears.”
I knew what she meant. There were spies everywhere in Damascus. Assad wanted to keep the Jews walled in and trapped. It wasn’t fair.
“Come, would you like some apricots?”
We headed into the kitchen. She carried Badia on her hip.
We sucked on dried apricots and Stella showed me the new globe her family bought. “Look, here’s our country, a tiny spot compared to all the big continents.”
She didn’t dare say she’d like to go somewhere else. Instead, she said, “I like to think of a place with mountains and snow. It would be very different from here,” Stella said.
“I like being near the sea. The thrashing waves calm me.” I pointed to areas in the United States that bordered an ocean.
Stella pointed to Israel. It was so tiny compared to all the other countries. There was a certain pull or longing for that place more than any other. Of course, we didn’t express it out loud. You could be thrown into jail if someone heard you say anything positive about Eretz Yisrael.
We played a game of cards, and then I had to go home for my piano lesson.
“See you tomorrow in school,” Stella said, as she walked me to the door.
I ran along the rocky path towards our outer courtyard. Ima was outside, hanging laundry.
“Mrs. Thorn is inside. She’s angry that you are late.”
“Sorry.” I rushed into the living room. The grandfather clock showed that I was late. I was three minutes late.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for wasting my time.” Mrs. Thorn was not a friendly kind of person.
She wore her usual black burka. Her eyes were small and dark and there was something unsettling in the way she stared at me with something close to contempt. Her mouth always turned down in an unfriendly frown. We sat down at the upright piano. We were one of the few families who owned a piano. It was handed down through the generations. My grandfather tuned it for us every few months.
“The F major scale on beat!” Mrs. Thorn demanded.
I flexed my fingers and tried not to think about Mrs. Thorn listening. I thought about ocean waves, and soon my fingers were flying over the keys.
“The relative minor scale D minor, now.”
I played the D minor scale and then I pulled out my finger exercise book. The notes flowed like a waterfall. I practice an hour a day. Mrs. Thorn doesn’t ever compliment, but she didn’t criticize the exercise.
We worked on a Bach invention. She marked out the rhythm and showed me which parts I needed to practice more.
Next, she showed me a page of a Mozart sonata. I studied the notes. Then I began playing without looking up at the music.
“You must have played this piece before,” she said.
“I didn’t––”
“It’s obvious you did. Don’t lie. Is it something Jews do?”
I was taken aback by her comment. I’d never seen the piece before, but she was always right, so there was no point in contradicting her.
At the end of the lesson, Ima brought her an envelope with money.
Mrs. Thorn took the envelope without saying thank you.
She headed towards the door.
I thanked her for the lesson. She nodded and left.
I mentioned to Ima the comment she’d made about Jews.
“We live in an Arab country that is hostile to us. There is nothing we can do about it.”
Part of me wanted to stop taking lessons with someone who accused me of something I didn’t do, but the lessons were something my parents were so proud of. I couldn’t stop; and besides, I loved playing the piano. I would just have to ignore her nastiness.
Ima called me into the kitchen. Stella was there. “I heard you playing. It was great,” Stella said.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
We walked through the courtyard. Stella and I raced towards the fountain. We both removed our sandals. The day was warm, and we dipped our feet in. She splashed me and I splashed back.
After a while, we continued on our walk. We passed the tall rock wall that marks the end of the Jewish quarter.
She leaned against a carob tree. “I’m trying out for a concert,” she said.
“Whatever concert it is, you will win,” I said.
“It’s an international concert. If I win, they will send me abroad to perform.”
“They?”
“My teacher gave out the forms in school today. She said the government wants us to represent Syria to make the government look good.”
We both made a face. Assad’s government was the opposite of good.
“They’d let a Jew go?”
Stella put her finger to her lips.
I shouldn’t have said the word.
“Come on.“ She started back towards my house.
She whispered in my ear, “They don’t care, as long as you are good enough to beat the competition.”
“If you go to another country, would you––”
Again, her finger flew to her lips.
She couldn’t say it out loud, but I realized that if Stella left Syria, which is almost impossible for a Jew to do, then chances are she would try to escape and not come back. That is what anyone would do. Only the consequences could be very bad for her family…
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of an historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishing, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishing, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams (a novel, Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022), and Alaskan Gold ( 2023-2024).
