Journey of Strangers by Elizabeth Zelvin

Author:Elizabeth Zelvin [Zelvin, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27: Diego

Months later, I was no closer to finding an occupation that I could believe would engage my mind and heart for a lifetime. Nor had Mama and the matchmakers of the Seville congregation succeeded in finding me a wife. I could not take seriously the prospect of joining my life to that of any of the twelve-year-old nice Jewish girls they trotted out for my inspection. While not as sheltered as they would have been had we all been able to remain in Spain, they were docile and content with the prospect of spending their days managing a household and, eventually, children, going to the mikvah, and looking forward to a new dress for Pesach or a family wedding. Papa and Mama, who had married for love, allowed me to reject these prospects, regardless of what advantages might be obtained by marrying into the family of one girl or another. Everybody else, from Cousin Miriam to Rabbi Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of the congregation, told me with complacency or conviction that love came after marriage. But I could not forget the beauty of the love I had shared with my Taino sweetheart. Having known Tanama and traveled with my sister Rachel, I wanted a marriage of the body, heart, and mind that none of these unfledged girls could provide.

As to Hutia’s conversion and marriage to Rachel, the battle still raged. Papa and Mama, living under the same roof as the thwarted lovers, could not help but see Hutia’s many virtues and how miserable Rachel would be if forced into an arranged match. They came around to a degree of acceptance of the marriage insofar as they refrained from proposing any of the youths of the congregation as a husband. But the rabbis were inalterably opposed to letting Hutia convert, much less dilute the blood of Israel by allowing Rachel to marry him and bear his children.

Hutia refused to be discouraged. He impressed even my conservative brother-in-law Akiva by learning, with Rachel’s help, to read and write Hebrew characters and puzzle out the meaning of the words they formed. He learned to read and write Latin characters as well, insisting that to be worthy of Rachel, he must be literate in Castilian. I discovered by chance that he could also write the beautiful script of Ottoman Turkish, which I doubted many of our Jewish scholars, if any, had mastered.

“You are full of surprises, Hutia,” I said when I came upon him practicing the flowing characters one evening. “As the People of the Book, we take such pride in our intellectual brilliance that it astonishes me the rabbis are not begging you to become one of us. Where did you learn to write Turkish?”

“At the palace,” he said. “Through Hasan, I have become acquainted with all sorts of interesting people: imams and janissaries, dervishes and poets.”

“I never dreamed your visits to the palace had any purpose but to watch cereed with Hasan.”

The very day after my first meeting with the young prince, I had brought Hutia to meet him and watch a game of the remarkable sport.

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