Chapter 3
The bride of the sea
“You see, in this silence in which all things abandon themselves and seem close to betraying their ultimate secret, we sometimes expect to find a fault in Nature, the dead nub of the earth, the weak link, the thread that untangled finally places us within reach of a truth.”
— Eugenio Montale
"Do you know what Jaffa means in Arabic?" Salim asks. "Literally it means The Bride of the Sea."
He is over 80 years old and almost blind. In 1947, upon the proclamation of the birth of the State of Israel, he had to flee, abandoning his family home in Jaffa. He has lived as a refugee ever since, in Refugee Camp No. 0 in Nablus in the West Bank. To Jaffa, which is now a picturesque suburb of Tel Aviv, he never returned.
His Bride of the Sea is a white widow whom he could no longer embrace. In his own home, other young families have taken root: Jewish refugees from Europe who escaped the tragedy of the Shoah have taken the place of Arab families, creating another generation of refugees. In Jaffa other brides, who escaped the fury of Nazism, celebrated their marriage to life, to a new history, to the Promised Land.
I was at a flea market in Jaffa when I came across the old wedding photographs of these European women who landed in Tel Aviv in the aftermath of World War II. I was immediately reminded of Salim and his dull eyes, filled with nostalgia and regret. "I pray to God that he kills my enemies," he had told me at the height of bitterness, "so I won't have to kill them."
In this corner of the Middle East, God is always involved. Whatever one does and whatever one calls Him, He is there, hopelessly mixed with the disputed land, inextricably embraced by the people who lives here. Depicted as a bride, according to an ancient idea of the Kabbalah, is the Shekinah, the majesty of God who wanders in exile with His people, and every Friday night when the whole Israel pauses to celebrate Shabbat, it is she who is welcomed with songs and celebrations.The Bride is a symbol and allegory of lost land and denied identity.
Says the Bride in the Song of Songs: "On my bed, along the night, I searched for the beloved of my heart, I sought him but did not find him."
