What's in a Name

My mother is a refugee. She is a Jewish Refugee from Lybia , one of more than Million Refugees from Arab countries. My mother was born in Lybia in 1933. She was about 10 when she had entered a Natzi concentration camp called Jiado. It was located in Lybia for the usuall purpose of sending the Jews to death camps in Eastern Europe. When she left the camp she was twelve . Not too long afterwards Arab riots took place in Lybia . Jews were murdered , raped , kidnapped , attacked . The government tacitly encoureged the riots. This was the reason why my mom and her older sister were sent to Israel first . The year was 1949, they were two girls alone here in Israel. Two years later the rest of the family joined them. Like so many other Jews in other Arab countries , the Jews of Lybia left behind land , property , money and a long long past .

Because of the riots, my mother's family had to leave as quietly as possible in the middle of the night . They owned a beautiful big house ,which they left behind . I remember my grandmother talking about her beautifull dishes, carpets and furniture all were left in the house..If people meerly suspected that a Jewish family was about to leave for "Palestine" then , that family's life was in danger (It didn't really matter what they did , their lives were in danger). There was also a two stories supermarket that belonged to my grandfather and many acres of land that belonged to his parents. They had no choice ,and they couldn't take much except for a few suitcases.

Here in Israel along with other refugees my mom's family lived for 10 years in a shack. Other people lived in tents and badly built  little tin  huts. The young state was not ready for the mass of homeless people . They were put in special camps called Maabarot (Passage camps) .  Many think that Israel is a desert land ,but the fact is that in the winter of 1950 for example all of Israel was covered with snow. Have you ever tried living in a tent with children when tempratures are between 15 -5 ? There was a price to pay ,and it was paid.

What was the price?

well...agony , poverty ,humiliation. Most of Israel's criminals were born and raised in those camps. By now there is a second generation... So how come we are not as miserable and hateful as the Palestinians ? Why didn't we attacked Lybians for example - in demand of  our stolen land and property ?

Well...We simply couldn't afford it.

So much for now :)

Something about the Poet Avraham Halfi

I don't know much about Avraham Halfi except that he was a unique poet. Some of his poems are well known in Israel as they were set to music and heard on the radio. I think he liked to drink ,because he wrote a lot about it ,and he must have been very lonely and melancholic since many of his poems deal with loneliness and solitude . He is very Jewish in that that he deals with the riddle of life , with humor mixed with agony. He constantly talks to the almighty and somehow he used birds as metaphore for people or for freedom

,. Here is a few opening lines of one poem that became a song

I'll buy myself a parrot ,
His name will be Yossi
I will talk with him

when nobody listens
And then I will tell him

I'll say..
Sadness is like a glass
and in it bitter wine
made of grapes of the soul

...So that's how Yossi got his name

Yossi and I

It's hard for me to start . I use English so rearly these days . I am surely bound to make mistakes. Would you be so kind to correct me?

My life is not so magical, or exciting . As of now , at the age of 38 I live in the same house I was born in . My dreams are somewhat shuttered . Maybe it's still not to late ,but we'll get to that subject later.

Here is something that has happened a few weeks ago . It was pretty late in the morning ,about nine Am , when my mom came to my bed (Oops , you caught me)   ,and said to me , "Wake up ! there's a parrot outside,  and he doesn't let me hang the loundry" . Behind my parent's house there is a big yard . It is not the kind of neat and tidy gardens that you see , rather a yard that is covered with green wild flowers and weeds that just grow there. There are these polls with loundry lines on them ,and indeed on one of those lines a green parrot was sitting and scrimming...So I got near it . It didn't seem to be frightened ,but was somewhat coutious. I went back home into the kitchen and grabbed a fistacio and when I got back,the parrot was still there on the loundry line as if naturally waiting for me to supply breakfast. When it saw the fistacio seed it got nearer ,and slowly but surely with its beak and funny tongue , took the fistacio from my hand . While holding it with one of its legs , it started gnewing on it ...and I guess this was the beggining of a friendship.

Till next time : )

Nira