The Diamond Setter by Moshe Sakal

Author:Moshe Sakal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Pained by the sorrowful melody, Sami stared down at his shoes. The scent of Gracia’s fingers still lingered in his nostrils, and he smelled it as though he were already missing it, years later.

While Sami was lost in thought, Hassan’s uncle leaned over and whispered, “You see that woman? Just the way she sings to us now, she once sang for the Turkish sultan! This Jewish woman was known not just in Damascus, but throughout the Empire. What a voice she had! And how beautiful she was!”

“More beautiful than she is now?” Sami protested.

“When she was sixteen she was as lovely as the bud of a jasmine flower and as wild as a desert foal. She comes from a very poor family, but thanks to her talent they want for nothing, as you can see. She married off her sister Mona to the son of one of the wealthiest Jews in our community.”

“And who is her husband?” Sami asked in a whisper and looked back at the singer, whose eyes were now closed, her right hand suspended up above her.

“She is not married.” Hassan’s uncle chuckled.

The melody suddenly plunged and curled in deep tones, as though the ground had dropped away from beneath the sad love song, but the sounds kept hovering above the abyss that opened up at their feet. Before Gracia climbed back up to the high notes, she lingered for an instant and looked at her older sister, Mona, who sat erect and expressionless. Sami listened to the final notes of the song: “I shall fall silent, my lips are sealed.”

When she finished singing, Gracia bowed deeply amid a flood of applause, and the young couple went over and kissed her. When Sami looked away, he felt an inexplicable sense of dread crush his chest. The singer stood beaming at the couple, and they thanked her again profusely. The boy, Rafael, pushed his way between the three adults and looked up proudly at his aunt.

After the guests and hosts bid them farewell, Sami and his three companions walked home. On the way, Hassan’s uncle told them about a famous diamond that the Turkish sultan had given the Jewish singer years ago. “A blue diamond,” he explained.

“Did you ever see it?” Sami asked.

“No, no one has seen it, except perhaps her blind sister.” He laughed. “She keeps it very safe somewhere. They say it brings bad luck, but she doesn’t believe in that.”

Years later, on Ha’Kovshim Street in Tel Aviv, after a futile attempt to persuade Gracia to sing for him, Sami tried to reconstruct the voice in his imagination. His failure was not due to the many years that had passed, but because of something else, something secret and untouchable.

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