Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

györgy spiró

Uri recalled almost nothing about being dragged away for the first time—only the smell of chicken droppings, his father placing him on his shoulders and carrying him long distances, which felt so good that he would dream about it even now, at the age of seventeen. In his dream, he wished he would wake up to see his father standing above him, saying “Come on, my boy, hop on my shoulders again.” All that had remained of the temporary exile was that his mother, Sarah, would still cry out from time to time at the memory of an elegant utensil she had once owned. It had been tucked away and not returned by the non-Jewish freemen, also clients of their patron. She would moan on and on about that. The truth is that several of them had been honest enough to hand

back the valuables that had been deposited with them, and to this day the family still ate out of such vessels, as the father would sometimes note, though that did not hinder Sarah in her lamentations. Thesedays, his fatherno longer looked up, but dourly spooned in his food. If he ever looked at his wife, at the repulsive sight of her kerchief-covered head, profound disgust shot from his eyes: it was not the thieves he hated, but her. And he held his tongue. Divorce was difficult for a Jew in Rome: there were so few of them. Divorce was easy in Judaea, and that was not just hearsay but written law: If anyone found another woman more beautiful than his wife, that was, in itself, sufficient grounds for divorce. A man could divorce, and he could even drive his wife away if

164