The Book of Israela. Rena Blumenthal

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      I did a quick calculation in my head: Y would have to be over eighty years old for this story to be true. It wasn’t impossible—it always astonished me how many young women were attracted to older, domineering men—but it still seemed highly unlikely.

      “And then,” she continued, “the most remarkable thing happened when they arrived in Palestine!” Her face was suddenly bright and full of enthusiasm. “Ibra and his wife had been childless for many years, but as soon as they got here, Sana got pregnant! They were astonished, but Y wasn’t surprised at all. He explained it in almost mystical terms—you know, a real Jew has to live on Jewish land, breathe Jewish air, to be fully alive. The air of the Holy Land, for a Jew, would even cure infertility.” I felt lulled by the joy and enthusiasm in her voice. “It sounds preposterous, I know, but that’s how people thought in those days,” she went on. “Ibra was convinced that the pregnancy was entirely Y’s doing, and not only because he brought them to Palestine. Y had been feeding him herbs, doing kabbalistic incantations, all meant to increase his potency. So when Sana got pregnant, Ibra acted as if she had nothing to do with the whole thing. Just like a vessel, or something. Almost like it was really his and Y’s child.”

      The story suggested a new theory, which she seemed to anticipate.

      “Ibra and Y were so close. So close . . . ,” she trailed off. “Well, you’d think it was ridiculous, I’m sure. But the way he talks about Ibra, you know . . .” She eyed me closely, and I concentrated on keeping my expression neutral. “Sometimes I think it may have been more than just a friendship,” she said in a guilty whisper, “if you know what I mean.”

      “You think it was a homosexual relationship?”

      “Oh, my goodness, you put it so bluntly; no, nothing like that. I mean nothing, you know, consummated. Y’s very squeamish about stuff like that. He hates gay people. Calls it a perversion.”

      “But I thought you were suggesting . . .”

      “Well, yeah, I was. I figure it was like that, but you know, maybe without, you know . . .”

      She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I always thought it was a little strange that Y stayed in Palestine after bringing Ibra over. You’d think there were other people to smuggle out of Syria. But they were so emotionally intertwined, those two.”

      I nodded supportively. I’d had patients before with distant or absent husbands who turned out to be gay, living a shadow life with a man. Was this one of those cases? His idealization/devaluation of his wife, in a classic madonna/whore pattern, might stem from the denial of homosexual preference and a hatred of female sexuality that could never fully satisfy; referring to homosexuality as a perversion was a transparently defensive maneuver.

      Israela leaned forward. “I think it was Ibra’s relationship with Y that caused the death of my great-grandmother, Sana,” she said.

      “She was so jealous?”

      “Oh, I don’t know about that. But there was this other incident, when Grandpa Itzik was a little boy. You have to understand—life in Palestine was incredibly harsh in those days. It was very demeaning for Ibra, after being a successful businessman in Syria. He was a middle-aged man, uprooted from everything that was familiar to him. He struggled to learn Hebrew, could barely make a living. There were very few Sephardi immigrants in those days, and the Ashkenazi elite looked down on them. Y was also Sephardi, of course, but he was young and spoke fluent Hebrew—it was easy for Ibra to become dependent on him. At any rate, from what I gather Ibra would do just about anything Y said.”

      “So what was the incident that caused your great-grandmother’s death?” I asked.