The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem Read Online Free

know where Hollywood was, and come back as a famous film actress, and then Mother would stop calling me “primitive” and stop saying that I was different from everyone else and asking how, how had she had a daughter like me. And so I would practice until I made it to Hollywood.
    At every chance I got, when Nono and Nona’s yard was empty, I acted like I was living in a movie. I was named Natalie, like Natalie Wood, and I’d dance for hours in James Dean’s arms, and when James and I finished dancing I’d bow to an imaginary audience. One time after I finished dancing I heard loud applause and shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!” I froze and saw the whole neighborhood standing by the fence. Embarrassed to my core, I ran into the house and directly to Nono’s room, lying on his bed and burying my head in the pillow, my eyes filled with tears of shame. Nona Rosa, who witnessed the whole scene, didn’t come after me. A long time later, when I came out of the room, she sat in her armchair in the living room, looked at me, and said, “Gabriela querida, why are you embarrassed? You dance so beautifully. You should tell your mother and father to enroll you in ballet lessons with Rina Nikova.”
    Of all our family I was closest to Nona Rosa. While Nono Gabriel was alive his and Nona’s house was the center of the family. We gathered there on Friday evenings for Shabbat, and on Saturday mornings for huevos haminados that we’d eat with cheese-filled borekitas and sweet sütlaç rice pudding, on which Nona would draw a Star of David with cinnamon.
    After Shabbat breakfast we’d play in the yard, Mother, Rachelika, and Becky would chat, and Father, Rachelika’s Moise, and Becky’s Handsome Eli Cohen would talk about soccer. There was always shouting because Father was a Hapoel Jerusalem fan and Eli and Moise were Beitar fans. That’s how the time passed until lunch when we’d eat macaroni hamin. After the hamin Nono would take his afternoon nap, and we children were sent for a nap too so we wouldn’t disturb him. Mother, Rachelika, and Becky would carry on chatting, and Father, Moise, and Eli Cohen would go to my father’s sister’s house. Aunt Clara and her husband Yaakov lived on Lincoln Street opposite the YMCA stadium, where every Shabbat afternoon there was a Beitar Jerusalem soccer game. “Watching a game from Clara and Yaakov’s balcony is better than sitting in the reserved seats,” Uncle Moise would say.
    My little brother Ronny and I nicknamed Uncle Yaakov “Jakotel” after we saw Jack the Giant Killer, which translated to Jack Kotel Haanakim in Hebrew, at the Orna Cinema maybe a hundred times, because the usher there too had been in the hospital with Mother during the war. “It’s lucky that Mother almost died in the War of Independence,” Ronny would say. “Otherwise how would we get to see movies for free?”
    After Nono died and Nona stopped cooking, the Shabbat lunch macaroni hamin tradition moved to our house, and instead of napping after the meal we’d all go to watch the Beitar game. From below, I felt that at any moment Aunt Clara and Jakotel’s balcony would collapse together with the millions of family members on it, so I’d make sure not to pass under the balcony and instead walked on the crowded side of the street next to the stadium.
    Left with no choice, every Saturday Father was forced to watch the Beitar Jerusalem team with us from the balcony, even though he always cursed “the sons of bitches” and prayed they’d lose. Everyone would yell, “Damn you, David. Is this what you came for? To put the evil eye on the team?”
    Nona Rosa never came with us to see a Beitar game and would go back to her house after lunch. Sometimes I’d walk with her, and while she took her afternoon nap I’d rifle through all her drawers looking for hidden treasure, and when