Ayana Touval (left) with her parents in 1942. Courtesy of Ayana Touval
I have a falling apart album of black-and-white photos. Among the pictures of me as a radiant baby is a small paper print of a photo negative. On it you can see three adults and a little girl. I am the little girl, and I am holding my mom’s hand. Next to her is my father and a person who is unknown to me. My mother has a scarf on her head, and she holds a little hat in her spare hand. I remember the scarf, and I remember the hat.
It is a picture taken on a sunny day in Korčula in 1942.
Korčula is an island in the Adriatic Sea, to which we escaped from Zagreb.
Korčula is the island where my mom got blue veins standing in a long line for water and bread.
It’s the island where my grandmother waited in vain for a ship that would bring my grandfather.
It’s the island the Italian government called “Libero Confino.” Meaning, of course, “Free Confinement.”
The scarf on my mother’s head survived the war and even immigrated with us to Israel. And it was in Tel Aviv that I put it on my hair, heading to the beach with my dad. My mother said, “Hey, why did you take my scarf?”
And I pleaded,
“I love it. Let me have it today.”
And the obvious happened. A big wave snatched the scarf. I returned home shattered. My mom immediately saw that the scarf vanished and said,
“I knew when you left the house that I’d never see it again.”
And to this day, those words resonate painfully. Because the scarf was from Korčula. From the time that my family called the emigrazia*.
And emigrazia attached special auras to stuff.
Growing up and getting absorbed in daily life made me less attentive to mementos that were stored in my house. But one day, I got curious to peek into a box that contained my father’s documents and memorabilia. And here in Bethesda, Maryland, that little hat from the photo in Korčula popped up. My father kept it. My little red hat was for a long time in my basement—my hat from Korčula, from emigracia. From the time when my parents listened to the staticky radio to hear where the Germans and the English were.
The hat is red. It reminds me of my grandmother who would put the kapica on my head before leaving the house. It reminds me of the wolves that tried to devour us. It tells me that they didn’t.
*emigration
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