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for us to have a good life, no more and no less. But every night before I fell asleep I’d think about what love was, and I couldn’t get this story I’d heard about your great-grandfather Raphael out of my head.
    â€œOne day, so I heard, Raphael was walking down one of the alleys in Safed toward the Yosef Caro Synagogue, immersed in himself and murmuring a prayer. His eyes half closed, he accidentally bumped into a young girl. Raphael was startled, and when he raised his head, his eyes met hers, blue as the sea and deep as a well. Her hair was pulled into two golden braids and her skin was white as snow. Raphael, who felt as if he’d seen the beauty of the Divine Presence, quickly covered his eyes with his hand and hurried on his way. But in all the days and nights that followed, he couldn’t clear the girl’s image from his mind. It came to him in the morning when he said the morning prayer, and at night when he said the evening prayer. It came to him in the mikvah ritual bath, and it came to him when he lay down to sleep. He didn’t understand what he was feeling. He only knew that her blue eyes had hit him like a bolt of lightning. Dio santo, he thought to himself. It’s a sin, what I’m feeling for this strange woman, a sin.
    â€œHe decided to fast even more and swore he would keep away from places where women were permitted, for he knew that his betrothed was waiting for him in Jerusalem. But the image of the Ishkenazi girl in the alley haunted him like an evil spirit and allowed him no peace. No matter what he did, he could not drive the girl from his thoughts, and he soon found himself lying in wait for her at the top of the alley where he had first bumped into her. He saw her leave one of the houses and followed her, but when she turned and transfixed him with her blue eyes, he again fled for dear life.
    â€œThat same day Raphael decided he’d return to Jerusalem earlier than planned to rid himself, once and for all, of the dybbuk with the blue eyes. He couldn’t even imagine speaking to the girl who came from the Ishkenazi community, for he knew that things like that were forbidden, a sin. Do you understand, Gabriela? A sin!”
    I didn’t really understand what the Ishkenazi community was, and certainly not what sin meant, but Nona didn’t notice. She carried on telling the story as if possessed by a dybbuk herself, absent-mindedly rocking me on her knee as if she forgot I was there, and probably went on talking even after I fell asleep.
    When I woke up, it was quiet and only the murmur of praying and calls of the congregation from the nearby synagogue could be heard. I found Nona sitting pensively in Nono’s chair. “Good morning, querida mia,” she called to me even though it was already evening and dinner was on the table in the yard. Every now and then when I slept over at Nona’s, she’d bake borekitas especially for me and make me sütlaç with the Star of David just the way I liked it.
    â€œAnd not a word to your mother, Gabriela, so she doesn’t get used to it!” she said. “Let her go on making borekas for you and not ask me to do it.”
    Like the rest of the family, Nona didn’t know that Mother bought ready-made borekas from Kadosh, and believed that she baked them herself. My mother had made me swear never to tell anybody, and I kept quiet.
    Nona carefully peeled a hard-boiled egg and split it into four. “Eat, eat, good girl. You need to grow.” Then she sat back down in Nono’s chair and continued the story from where I’d fallen asleep a few hours earlier.
    â€œDo you understand what happened, Gabriela? Raphael, may he rest in peace, fell in love with the Ishkenazi girl from Safed, and it was absolutely forbidden for Spaniols to marry Ishkenazim. It was the time of the Turks, when there were maybe six thousand Jews in Palestine and almost all of them lived in Jerusalem. At the