My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner by Meir Shalev

Author:Meir Shalev [Shalev, Meir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4298-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

17

When my sister was two or three years old our mother began to travel with us from Jerusalem to Nahalal by train: Jerusalem to Lydda, Lydda to Haifa, from Haifa a bus to the Nahalal junction, and then by foot or by catching a ride on a horse-drawn wagon.

Those journeys were less exciting than traveling with Motke Habinsky in the village tanker, and far shorter than the trip made by the vacuum cleaner, but they still had their own thrills. My father, who was more of a worrier than my mother, insisted on dispatching us to the train station in a taxi, and I recall words passing between them over the waste of money. He would come with us in order to help her board the train, and to bid us farewell as one did before a journey in those days.

The train station was on the other side of Jerusalem. We would leave the house at dawn, traversing unfamiliar neighborhoods, and board the train using a metal ladder consisting of three levels. My mother would board first with my sister in her arms, quick to find seats on the left side of the carriage. My father would then board with the suitcase and help me climb up. He placed the suitcase in the rack above the seats and scrutinized the faces of the other passengers to discern whether there were any “unpleasant people.” Concerned but smiling, he whispered something to my mother, kissed her and us good-bye, and alighted, waving to us from the platform as we waved from the window.

The stationmaster’s whistle sounded, the engine wheezed and sighed and began to move, and within minutes our window became the frame of an unfamiliar landscape, as if we had crossed an unseen border and traveled to a different land.

The first trains of my childhood were pulled by steam engines, and I can recall their pleasant, beautiful whistle and the loud, creaking protests made when the metal wheels met curves and bends. No one yet knew that in America someone had invented something called “air-conditioning.” All windows were open and ash particles spewed by the engine borne by the wind blew straight into the carriage.

The trip started with a descent to the Refa’im stream, which we knew from stories our father told us about King David, then on to Soreq stream, familiar from stories about Samson. At that time, Refa’im served as the border between Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan. Our mother pointed out the Arab farmers on the other side as they worked small, neat plots of vegetables and watered them with the Jerusalem sewer water that ran in the ravine.

The train traveled slowly, and I was glad we were sitting on the left side of the carriage, facing the farmers. We waved hello and several waved back. The tracks were right on the border; each morning they were traversed by a lone carriage carrying several sappers on the lookout for mines and bombs, and in the first and last carriages of our train sat several armed border patrolmen.

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