So few of us left.
The tanks are firing at us,
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .
Our  homes, exploding —
Skeletons
Headless 
Guts tumbling down
In broken stone
Soot
And human remains.

1950s, Haifa

Images of the land, spaces of the heart. 
After moving from darkness to darkness
— Gdansk, Lublin, Warsaw, Berlin —
I finally arrived in Israel, in 1951,
A small child with a small family
In the shadow of a much larger people
Perished in World War 2.

The bright light and warmth cradled me.
I could be a real child at last 
In a home, my home, high up a mountain.
“This is your room, Chava.
Here you can stay forever.”

I wandered about alone in the fairy tale city of Haifa
Spreading from the blue water, up the sun-green paths
To where the mountains touched the sky.

Each smiling face warmed my heart more and more. 
“So you’re Evushia’s niece.
Nice girl, good girl.
Send Evushia my love. Tell her I’ll be over to visit soon.”
Nice girl, safe girl.
Everybody Jewish.
I could roam free.

Tatoosh worked in a business with plastics.
Mamooshka played cards with her friends. 
My little sister, Fela, slept in her own sunny bedroom.
High up overlooking the sea.

And that left me and Uncle Lev, my father’s brother.
He had come to Israel with us.
Such an odd man, everybody said.
So tall, and slim, driving his motorcycle,
My arms tight around his waist.
So much more exciting than my tatoosh
Who worked and slept.
That’s all.

Uncle spent hours on the balcony
Tapping on the tabletop —
Tat-tat . . . tat-tat . . . tat-tat-tat-tat . . .
Staring down at the blinking specks of life
Dotting the mountain that fell into sea-blackness.
“Uncle, Uncle tell me what you’re thinking,” I would say.
“Tell me what you see.”
 
“No one is interested,” he’d murmur
Before he got tired and had to lie down. 
But his breathing went too fast
Too fast to fall asleep
“The war killed my heart,” he said.

Image of my Uncle Lev waking up screaming —
Stop the firing 
My home is falling 
Make your heart move
Or you will burn us alive.

Image of Auntie Evushia’s mouth
Moving all the time —
Joking, gossiping, and selling things.
Her purse, never closed,
Rattled with parcels, coins, candy
And everything I wanted.

She was the only one who could make Mamooshka laugh.
“Evushia, the lucky one,” she sighed  
“Came here in the 30s.  Nothing ever happened to her!”

1950s, Montreal

A cold, rich wind blew us far away to America, to strangers
As Tatoosh hated Israel —
Too little, too hot, too Jewish!

I was now Eve 
Kept alive by my memories
As snowballs pounded my back and head
—Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat  —
Coming from specks of giggling children.

I worked hard to fit in
— Even pretending to be as Jewish as them —
To learn the language
The walk
The way they talked.

Image of me standing outside in the cold —
Trying to understand the jokes
Waiting for the snowballs to stop
Waiting to be invited in.

Uncle, Uncle tell me what you think
Tell me what you see. 

1960s, Haifa  

Though settled in Canada,
I yearned for Israel.
My parents paid for my frequent trips
To visit Uncle Lev and Auntie Evushia
And to meet suitable Jewish boys.

 “Why don’t you operate on your breasts?” my mother would shriek.
“They’re too big!”
Auntie laughed when I told her this
While shopping in the tiny shops of Hadar.
Everyone yelled a greeting at her . . . and at me.
She got me my first birth control pills. 

Images of crutches, canes, men hobbling everywhere —
- What happened to them?
- Ah, the Arabs, she would shrug.

Auntie complained about Uncle Lev
How he was still a young man
Time enough to have a family
To earn a good living.
But instead he tapped away his life
Staring at the sea.

        * * * *

Uncle, Uncle, tell me what you’re thinking
Tell me what you see.

April 1943,  Warsaw Ghetto

The Germans decide to liquidate the Ghetto.
Their tanks, explosives, 
Handguns, fire bombs, and soldiers
Pursue us few remaining Jews.

Rivka and I are like mad bulls
Fleeing the flames  
Through narrow pipes
Beam to beam
Around smoking holes
Dropping down, down
To the nearest cellar.  

Tat-tat-tat-tat . . . tat . .  tat . . . tat —
Stop the firing 
My home is falling 
Make your heart move
Or you will burn us alive.

- Who’s Rivka?
- My daughter.
               
1960s, Haifa 

Eli was my early love,
A curly-haired Moroccan
Who sold vegetables at the market.
He lived at the very bottom of the mountain
Far from my family at the top.
“Ah, an Arab,” said Auntie.
“But  a Jew,” I added.

One Friday morning, I packed my bags
To go with him to Eilat for the weekend.
Auntie begged me not to go.
- You don’t know what he can do to you so far away from home.
- Why, because he’s a black Jew?

In the bus, Eli’s leg locked against mine.
He pulled my chin toward him
Bent over
Closer
And suddenly  —
What if  . . .
I snapped back.
What if Auntie’s right?

So six hours later, upon arriving   
I turned around
And took the last bus back to Auntie and Uncle Lev.

        * * * *

Uncle, Uncle, tell me what you think
Tell me what you see.

April 1943, Warsaw Ghetto

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat- tat-tat-tat-tat. . . 
We enter a cellar 
Arms, legs, twisted together
Human sacks, one piled on top of the other.

In this choking-hot chamber
No one can cough or cry or moan
Shhh. . . . 
Or else German boots and dogs smash through
And that is the end
Shhh. . . shhh.



Summertime, 1967

Expo, the world fair, exploded in Montreal.
Everyone seemed to be celebrating but me.
The snowball season was over, 
Not the strangeness.    

But in Israel, right after the Six Day War,
The real party began for me.

Haifa was —
The beaches, Bat Galim, Ha-Carmel, Dado,
The sunsets and the promenades
Where most of the people looked like my parents.
Life was beautiful.
Haifa’s name said it all.

I was fixed up with a friend of the family,
This time, a proper Israeli man of European origins
With the shiniest black leather shoes I ever saw.
“Such a great future,” said Auntie.

He took me in his car to a quiet place
High up on Mt. Carmel, right near Auntie’s home.

Image of a bear attacking a honey pot.
He fell on me
Pinning me down hard.
I blubbered how I was ill
How I might bleed all over his car
How much Auntie liked him and his family.
“Just take me home,” I begged.

He finally threw me out at my door.
Auntie shrank back in disbelief.
                      
1970s

Then came the time of my undoing
— as my mother put it —
The protest years that entered my body like an incurable virus.

While many of my generation were settling down and starting families,
I was still exploring what my space was —
Political or personal
The world or me. 

I quit university, wandered around,
Financed by my parents’ silent cash.
By day I ranted against dirty capitalists.
Nights I crashed in the mansions of their children, my comrades.
 
Whenever things got too hot,
I returned to my space with Auntie and Uncle Lev.

Uncle was now weaker, his legs swollen up.
No more motorcycle rides.
I asked him what his doctor said.
“Let the doctors go to hell.
“No one can cure my good-for-nothing heart.”

        * * * *

“What happened with Rivka?” I asked.

April 1943, Warsaw Ghetto

The people in the cellar finally let us stay.
Shh. . . shh. . . shh.
Tat-tat . . .  tat-tat-tat-tat  . . . tat-tat . . . .   
Things hard and soft
Falling above us
Making our hearts shake.

There is a 10-year-old boy
Ugly freckles and red hair.
Can’t talk
Just cries all the time.
My Rivka, not much older
Lies down beside him on the floor
And strokes and strokes him.
— Stop, I order her
— Her hands ignore me
Silence for a while
Then he starts howling again
Devil boy!

The people want to throw him out.
“Why should one person endanger us all!”
Go,  not go —
Go. It is decided.
The mother lifts the boy out of bed.
His redness covers her bent form. 
They leave.
A cry. Rivka!
I slap her.
Everything goes still.

            * * * *

Images of Israel in the 1970s — bigger and scarier.
An Arab terrorist bomb exploded in a Jerusalem supermarket.
Hijackings, ship-jackings,
Athletes killed in Munich.
Israel almost lost the Yom Kippur War.
The PLO, al Fatah, the PFLP, the General Command, the DFLP, Al-Sa’iqa, Abu Nidal. 
Enemies everywhere.

“They hate us,” Uncle would gasp.
“Want to throw us all into the sea.
There will never be peace with the Arabs.
Believe me.”

Tat-tat-tat-tat . . . tat . . . tat . . . tat —             
Stop the firing 
My home is falling 
Make your heart move
Or you will burn us alive.

1980s

I finally entered into an uneasy space.
ME first —
MY career and MY family.
But my visits with Uncle continued. 

April 1943, Warsaw Ghetto

Tat- tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .
Our building is on fire.
The flames lick down to our cellar.
Smoke fills us.
I crave to cough, burst out.  
Shh. . . shh. . . shh.

        * * * *

Images of the first Intifada in the late 1980s.
Palestinians in the occupied territories
Using stones, bricks, clubs, knives, and Molotov cocktails
To attack and kill Jews.

There must be a reason, always a reason
Uncle, Uncle, tell me what you see 
Tell me what to do.

1990s               

I introduced Uncle Lev to my husband and daughter
When we visited Israel in 1999 for my daughter’s bat mitzvah.
He was on a pacemaker now. 
Each electrical impulse caused his heart to beat
To work normally
Thank God.    

        * * * *

Uncle, Uncle, tell me what you see.



April 1943, Warsaw Ghetto

Finally it is night
And we rush out of our smoking hell.
We are all soot —
attacking, blinding, entering us.
Out into a courtyard
Coughing
Crunching over debris
Path lit up by nearby fires.  
On, on, to the next  cellar.   

I look for Rivka.
She is gone.
My heart stops.
I run.

Back to the courtyard
And there she is,
An image —
Given and taken away by the smoke
Pulling along a red thing —
The devil boy,
legs broken, fallen from the top floor
Dead.

The gases hide her.
A cough. Thank God. 
There she is
By a tree, shaping branches into a shelter
Where she drags the boy ever so gently.
She kneels down
Wraps herself over him
A shield
A sacrifice to the god of fire.

Stop, stop, Rivka
Let him go . . . you cannot help him anymore. 
Come to me, to your tatoosh.

The flames part us.
Her cough fades away.
I cannot breath.  I must leave. 
That’s the last I see of her.

2002, Haifa

I was in Israel for a conference in May 2002
And visited Uncle Lev in a senior’s home.
(Auntie Evushia had died two years before.)
His heart was still working
Thank God.
 
Jenin.  I brought with me from Canada, the images —
Of the destruction of the refugee camp 
To show my uncle
To ask him what he thought
Ask him what to do.


Jenin, Haifa, Haifa, Jenin.
Two cities sharing rich northern lands
And a family history
Of villagers fleeing from Haifa region
Out of the new Israeli state,
Into the place with the beautiful gardens,
Pigeon towers, plentiful water,
Wheat, olives, dates, carobs, and figs.
Jenin.

        * * * *

I decided to read Uncle the story of one of the residents, 
Hayat’s story.


April 2002, Jenin Refugee Camp

The Israelis burst into our community
With their tanks and bulldozers and missiles.   
A shell lands in our living room.
Kamal is hurt in both legs.
My son and his friend Mahmud rush over to help. 
I put some food in my bag —
Some mussakhan,  a jug of laban mkheed, a bottle of water, olives and figs.
The shebab pull us out the back door just before the next blast 
Inshalla.

I look back
My house explodes in my heart
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .

The shebab drag us to a neighbour’s home.
It is shelled.
To another.
It is shelled.
Finally we stop at a house.
Forty people are hiding in the cellar. 

Kamal pauses, 
- Hayat, I cannot go down the stairs
- You must.  Allah be praised.

But in the end, I have to leave him
Paralyzed on the first floor couch of a stranger’s house
— My food bag by his side —
As missiles hit the second floor. 

I am let into the dark cave filled with many others,
Insects trapped below the earth.  
We listen
To the whistling
the whirring
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .
Crunch
Thud
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .
Crunch
Thud.

We put mattresses over the children’s heads
So they will not hear the sounds of war outside
So they will not attract the soldiers 
Who will take us all away.

Tat-tat . . . tat-tat-tat-tat . . . tat-tat . . .   
Things hard and soft
Falling above us
Making our hearts shake.

A child screams, covering her ears.
- I cannot hear.
- Hush, I say.  Praise Allah for everything, so you will not be afraid
I pray for Kamal lying upstairs.

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat —
Stop the firing 
Our homes are falling
Our loved ones, possessions, memories,
Gone. 

Then silence.
I finally come out and rush upstairs. 
Kamal is in great pain, but alive
Inshalla.

The sun is beating down on our homes, skeletons —
With beds, night-tables, shaving stands showing.
And the human remains
Shame, shame.

I reach my home.
The key.  Where is the key?
I . . . do not need it.
I enter through the holes. 

Picture of my neighbourhood —
Mountains of broken concrete and belongings.
This pile goes with this family; that one, with that.
Back to nature.

I see far distances that I never saw before.
Ah, the red poppies are pushing up through the earth. 
I forgot,
It is Spring.  

Kamal, Kamal, I am coming.  
I will help.
Inshallah.

    *  * * *

Uncle, Uncle see me
I am Chava
I am Eve
I am Evushia
I am Hayat.

Fires, fires from the past
Enter the spaces of the heart
To end the killing
— Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat tat-tat —
And start the beating
—Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat —
Start the beat . . . . beat . . . beat . . beating of my heart.