Tell Magazine June 2018 5778

{SORDID BEAUTY}
Shira Sebban
Garishly painted faces leered at Naomi as she scurried nervously down Jaffa’s
dark, unpaved lanes. She shuddered as strange, shadowy figures darted
urgently past the workshops, factories, stores and out-door cafes, where the
smoke of nargilehs mingled with a heady aroma of spice and perfume.
Police seemed to be on
guard everywhere.
Passing a police car, she noticed
some prostitutes sitting in the back,
mostly young girls in skimpy clothes.
“They were waiting to be taken to
the station and charged,” she would
later note in her diary. She had
known of course that prostitutes,
both Jewish and Arabic, had
long been plying their trade in
brothels on the roads between
Tel Aviv and Jaffa, but this
was the first time she had been
so close to the action and her
discomfort was evident.
“Let’s go!” she urged
her companions.
Reluctantly, Aliza nudged
Motke, raised her eyebrows
and shrugged wryly. “You’re
not much of a Sabra
anymore, are you?”
The evening had not been
meant to end this way. Aliza,
fun loving and capricious as
ever, had been keen to hear
Aris San, a 17-year-old, short
Greek singer, who had recently
arrived from Athens and was
already making quite a name
for himself. Motke had been
only too happy to oblige,
driving the women to the wellknown
Arianna nightclub.
The sharp metallic sounds of
the bouzouki wafted through the
thick, sweltering May night air
as they approached the Salonican
Jewish-owned Arianna, the bastion
of Greek popular music in Israel.
Constructed on the ruins of an
Arab building, it was not far from
Jaffa’s old central bathhouse, which
had been converted into another
nightclub known as the Hamam.
“The Arianna looks very ordinary
from the outside,” Naomi would
subsequently record, “but is situated
in beautiful surroundings near the
sea and close to mosques, towers and
ruins of a house – charming indeed”.
A few years later, by the 1960s,
the Arianna would have become a
favorite haunt for army officers and
members of the Mapai Government,
the forerunner of Israel’s Labor
Party. The crowds, which would
line up around the Jaffa Clock
Tower to get in, included such
luminaries as Chief of Staff, Major-
General Moshe Dayan and his wife
Ruth, who would go there to dance
on a Friday or Saturday night.
For Naomi, however, the spell was
broken. The chaotic commotion of
Jaffa was too much for her. Perhaps
Aliza was right… she had
become too Australian.
At any rate, she preferred
Jaffa by day. Hadn’t she and
her cousin Miriam battled
through the bustling maze
of winding, dirty alleys just
over a month ago to visit
the home of the late War of
Independence hero Yitzhak
Sadeh? She recalled stopping
at the end of the street
now known
as Zichron
Kedoshim to see
the house that
had belonged
to the first
commander of
the Palmach, the
elite strike force
of the pre-state
underground
Jewish army,
the Haganah.
CONNECTION WITH ISRAEL &
WORLD JEWRY
Perched near cliffs, with
panoramic views, it had
been easy to picture the
charismatic Major-Generalturned
writer, nicknamed HaZaken
(The Old Man) while still only in
his fifties, hosting his disciples and
fellow warriors, Yigal Allon and
Yitzhak Rabin, in the enormous,
blossoming garden, with stairs
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