My mother, you ask? She was—how shall I say it?—different. No woman among us in the camp, or out there in the grazing fields, was as captivating as her.
It was not just her beauty, nor was it the regal manner in which she carried herself, as if her tent served only as a temporary, makeshift shelter, a place to stay until the completion of some new, modern wing in an imaginary palace. If there was something that set her apart from all other women, it was her garments.
She would never wear a burka, unlike my grandmother Sarah, bless her soul, who must be turning in her grave, horrified at the thought of modesty lost. Instead of the traditional loose clothes covering the entire body, my mother adorned herself with exotic silks, bought from merchants in Damascus, which hugged her figure tightly. The silks, I mean—not the merchants.
She collected an array of translucent, sheer veils of fantastic rainbow colors, which she wore, I am told, on her wedding night. My father found it enchanting. The first time he had actually seen her face was, of course, the morning after. With the veil removed, she had fainted upon seeing him. It was not the excitement of first love. No—it must have been the corset, a tight undergarment contraption which, according to gossip, she had brought with her from the North, to keep her figure in shape.
Everyone knew she was homesick. It was no secret she would have done anything, back then, for a trip back home—but this being the middle of nowhere, far away from the towns and the settlements, out there in the densely populated regions to the west of us, there was no bus to be found. And my father insisted that a plane ticket was out of the question.
So instead, my mother decided to acquire stuff: ornamental purses of different shapes and sizes, an assortment of extravagant fur hats, imported from her faraway birthplace, and numerous pairs of snakeskin shoes with high heels, which were ill suited to the desert sand—all of which caused a stir among the local people.
A Favorite Son
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Audiobook
In this plot of mistaken identity, Becky instructs her son to cheat his elderly father Isaac, who is lying on his deathbed. Will Jacob pretend to be that which he is not? Is he ready for the last moment he is going to have with his father?
★★★★★ "A lively psychological study of family and of greed and longing for paternal love and more. It works spectacularly well."
