The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi

sleep.”
    â€œShe’ll come to you in a dream and tell you you’re doing the right thing,” I said. “She’ll tell you that if she hadn’t passed away she would have carried on telling me our family story herself.”
    â€œAll right.” Tia Allegra sighed. “May God forgive me if I’m making a mistake.”

 
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    â€œF ROM THE DAY HE MARRIED Mercada, my father Raphael Ermosa, may he rest in peace, became a hardworking man in a class of his own. He’d get up early every morning, bless the Creator for restoring his soul, put on his phylacteries, hurry to morning prayers at the synagogue, and afterward, while the other worshippers chatted, Raphael would already be on his way to his father-in-law’s shop at Souk al-Attarin, the perfume market. His father-in-law had brought him into the business right after the wedding. Senor Yochanan Toledo was a big merchant who imported spices and other goods from Lebanon and Syria. As well as turmeric and cinnamon, cardamom, curry, and cloves, he sold medicinal herbs for relieving pain and warding off the evil eye, and he traded with Jews and Arabs alike. There was a big demand for medicinal herbs in those days because many people in Jerusalem were sick.
    â€œRaphael Ermosa fell in love with the market’s vibrant atmosphere. He loved the long lines of fellahs, the Arab farmers from the villages around Jerusalem who brought their produce to market every morning. He looked on amazed as the Arab women carried their wicker baskets filled with fruit and vegetables on their heads.
    â€œThere were a thousand smells in the market, the intoxicating fragrance of flavors from all over the world: the smell of burnt chickpea clusters that were sold in the market’s alleys by vendors calling ‘ Hamla malana, hamla malana! ’; the smell of pita bread baking in the tabun; the sweet smell of tamarind juice; the stink of the dung dropped by donkeys loaded with sacks and jugs that passed through the narrow alleys; the smell of the people, Arabs and Jews, who shouted, jostled, shoved, and together with all the other scents and flavors formed a colorful throng.
    â€œWhen Raphael’s firstborn son, your grandfather Gabriel, reached the age of twelve months, he went to Souk al-Khawajat and ordered a gold bracelet for Mercada. He’d kept the vow he’d made on his wedding day to make his wife the happiest of women and treated her like a princess.
    â€œAnd Mercada, the weeping girl who had been scared to death of the moment she would have to leave her father’s house and marry, became an industrious, assertive woman, a balabusta, as the Ashkenazim say, who took good care of her husband and children. She ran her family with an iron fist and her home was held in high esteem by neighbors and relatives. And the more strength, influence, and power she gained, the more she treated her husband like a king. She was an inquisitive woman who didn’t stop at cooking, cleaning, and raising her children. As the years went by, Mercada became a well-known healer who was in great demand by the residents of the Jewish Quarter. Her expertise was in livianos, curing anxiety and fears.
    â€œAnd yet Raphael still searched among the Ashkenazi women in the market for the girl from Safed. Even though he’d done everything in his power to expel her from his heart, more than once he found himself thinking of her. Sometimes his feet would carry him to the Mea Shearim quarter, where the very religious Ashkenazim lived, and he’d wander between the closely packed houses and through the alleys, surreptitiously glancing at the women. Even if she were covered from head to toe, as was the custom with pious women, he would have recognized her by her blue eyes. But he’d never see her.
    â€œIn the early years of their life, Raphael and Mercada lived in a house next to the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not