53 pages • 1 hour read
Elizabeth GraverKantika
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Constantinople, 1907”
In 1902, Rebecca Cohen is born to a prosperous Sephardic Jewish family. Her father, Alberto, owns a textile factory and has connections to prominent individuals in Constantinople. Their mother, Sultana, is involved in local charitable efforts. Rebecca is a happy, active child who loves to sing and draw. She speaks Ladino at home and French at the Catholic school she attends. These remain the two languages she’s most comfortable with throughout her life. She and her best friend, Lika, are so close and so similar that they are sometimes mistaken for twins. Rebecca draws attention from boys, including Lika’s cousin, Samuel. Although he makes a favorable first impression on her, she dismisses him from her mind after learning that his family is poor.
Alberto divorced his first wife, Djentil Nahon, before marrying Sultana. Her mental health declined after she discovered that she could not have children, and her neighbors now regard her with suspicion. Rebecca and Lika often visit Tiya Djentil to run errands and listen to her tell stories about spirits. She lovingly tends to her elderly mother, and Rebecca marvels that the woman can be “at once so lost inside her fantastical worlds and so capable and caring at the same time” (15). One day, Tiya Djentil tells the girls a horrifying story about a hotel in Spain that hides a rug and tapestries made from the skin of Jewish people in its basement. Sultana feels sorry for Djentil because, although Sultana has experienced child loss, she has six healthy children.
As the years pass and the Cohen family grows, their finances shrink because Alberto is “a distracted, half-hearted businessman” who prefers to spend his time gardening and gambling (7). When Rebecca is 10, Djentil Nahon’s mother dies while Rebecca and Lika are at the Cohens’ summer home. The girls’ mothers plan to organize a community fund to help Djentil with the funeral arrangements. However, Alberto loses his sense of decorum and shouts that this would bring him shame by making it appear that he cannot support his ex-wife. After her mother’s death, Djentil’s desperation for Rebecca and Lika’s company increases, and the girls are relieved when their mothers tell them to stay away from her.
War breaks out when Rebecca is 12. Her Catholic school is suddenly closed because the French nuns who run it are considered potential spies. The next year, the military takes over Alberto’s textiles factory. Lika must abandon her studies and work full-time to help her family save for their passage to America. When the friends say goodbye, Lika says that they will see each other again.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Istanbul, 1924”
The Cohens are in dire financial straits because Alberto misplaced the deed to his factory, and the army won’t restore his ownership without it. His eldest daughter, Corinne, lives in Cuba with her husband. Rebecca works for a dressmaker and has no marriage prospects, Elsa and Josef are still in school, and Marko and Isidoro are working low-paying jobs. Alberto fears that his sons will be forced to labor for the army.
At Sultana’s request, the 70-year-old Alberto asks the Jewish Refugee Relief Committee to help him and his family relocate. The committee suggests they go to Spain because the Spanish prime minister is offering citizenship to members of the Sephardic Jewish community. Spain’s motivation seems to be improving its trade relations rather than a sincere desire to make reparations for expelling its Jewish population centuries ago. The relief committee finds Alberto a job as a shammash, or caretaker, at a synagogue in Barcelona.
Alberto is meant to return to the refugee office and accept the committee’s offer, but he wanders the streets and contemplates the changes in his city and in his fortunes instead. He thinks of the displacement of the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities. He stops at a mosque to pray and then hurries to the refugee office, thinking, “I need your help. I accept your offer. I will scrub your fucking floors” (48). A member of the relief committee tells Alberto that he should plan to arrive in Spain by early January and that they will need to cover the moving expenses themselves.
Sultana takes the news well, grateful that their sons will be able to avoid conscription and optimistic about returning to their ancestors’ home. Rebecca has noticed that her parents are preparing to move the family, and she grows frustrated when her father tries to dodge her questions. Alberto bends the truth and tells his wife and daughter that he has been offered a position as a cantor, or hazan, at a synagogue in Barcelona.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Barcelona, 1925”
The Cohens’ new home is attached to the small synagogue where Alberto is the custodian. His children are pained to see him going about his work “with a mix of martyrdom and fury, or maybe penitence or its performance” (60). When they try to help him, he lashes out at them. Rebecca notices that her siblings are also different and more guarded since they moved to Spain. On the other hand, Rebecca likes Barcelona. She uses her sewing skills to craft fashionable, modern clothes for herself and is excited by the way she turns men’s heads.
Alberto orders his children not to tell anyone that they’re Jewish, which confuses them because they thought the Sephardic community was welcome in Spain. Rebecca applies for work as a dressmaker. A woman commends her skills but then hurries her out the door when she realizes that Rebecca is Jewish. The woman advises her to introduce herself as Marie Blanco Camayor and pretend to be Christian. On Shabbat, the synagogue’s small congregation gathers without a rabbi. The Cohen family has a picnic in the park. Still, they make sure the windows and doors are shut when they hold religious ceremonies.
Rebecca finds work at a small, stifling shop that sews cheap neckties. The owner gropes her, and she pricks him with a pin. Sometimes, she and the other girls at the shop sing while they work. She gives half of her wages to her mother and saves the rest so that she can establish a private dressmaking business.
One day, Alberto hires a mason to put broken glass on the brick wall around their residence. Sultana protests that this will “cause more problems than it solves” (85), but he insists that he’s protecting her and their children. The couple has an argument that ends in him calling himself a failure and saying that he’s lost his faith. The next day, Sultana receives a letter from Corinne informing her that she is pregnant. Before they left Turkey, Alberto filled a suitcase with seeds and bulbs from his garden, but he hasn’t planted them even though they’ve been in Barcelona for months. Sultana dumps the suitcase’s contents in the synagogue’s small garden. At first, Alberto is furious, but then he joins his wife in planting the bulbs and seeds. Afterward, the couple goes inside and has sex for the first time in months. When she tells him that Corinne is expecting their first grandchild, he cries and promises to try to be better for his family.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The novel’s first section presents Rebecca’s happy childhood in Constantinople and the Cohen family’s displacement to Barcelona after World War I, giving rise to the theme of Displacement and the Meaning of Home. This theme has a major impact on the characters’ sense of identity and belonging. Rebecca lives in many places over the course of her life, but, to her, home means “the beautiful time” of her youth in Constantinople (30). When the Cohens leave Turkey, the protagonist loses not only the comfort of her familiar surroundings but also the “cushioned freedoms and unspeakable good fortune of her childhood” (2). Adding to the Cohens’ sense of displacement, they do not feel safe practicing their religion and culture openly in Barcelona, and Rebecca struggles with employment discrimination and language differences. When a woman advises her to pass as Christian by calling herself Marie Blanco Camayor, the young woman sees in the alias a reflection of the loss of her home and identity: “I am from blanko, nothingness, the self-erased, wiped clean” (73). Her father is also deeply impacted by the family’s displacement. Alberto falls into anger and despair after losing his identity as a provider and as a man of means in high standing in his community. At the same time, he sees displacement as part of Jewish identity: “We have to leave because we’ve always had to leave, even if he doesn’t remember, not in his heart; he is no Wandering Jew” (58). Alberto’s attitude toward displacement reflects the novel’s twofold nature as an exploration of one family’s journey and as a look into the history of the Sephardic Jewish community.
Elizabeth Graver develops the theme of Cultural Preservation Amidst Change through the family’s efforts to hold onto their Jewish faith and Turkish roots after they move to Spain. During her childhood in Constantinople, Rebecca attends a Jewish gymnastics class where she’s taught that “to be a Jew is to be strong is to be proud” (12). Her family strives to retain this pride even as they conceal their Jewish identity from the public eye in Barcelona for their own safety. This is illustrated by a scene in which the Cohens perform a ceremony to mark the end of Shabbat: “Then it’s wine and laughter, fire and spice, the old familiar words, though uttered softly here and with the windows closed” (71). The image evokes an insulated warmth, underscoring the comfort associated with familiar practices even in a less-than-welcoming setting. The characters’ efforts to preserve their culture while adapting to their circumstances reflect the historical experience of the many Jewish people who pretended to be Christian in their public lives in order to navigate antisemitic environments.
This section of the novel also examines women’s experiences with sex, fertility, and motherhood and presents women’s bodies as a site of both joy and pain, introducing the theme of Women’s Strength and Relationships with Their Bodies. For example, Sultana’s experiences with fertility and motherhood include both her great affection and gratitude for her healthy children as well as the agony of child loss. Sultana is contrasted with Djentil Nahon, whose tragic character arc shows how society’s emphasis on childbearing can damage women’s relationships with their bodies and with other people. Because of her infertility, her husband, neighbors, and even Djentil herself try to distance themselves from her. This is seen in her divorce, parents’ exhortations to their children to stay away from her, and the way that she uses storytelling to retreat from reality. From an early age, Rebecca develops a positive relationship with her body. She is described as “beautiful and full of life” (54), and she enjoys the positive attention her appearance garners. In addition, Rebecca protects her boundaries and her body, such as when she defends herself against her employer’s harassment. At this stage of the novel, Sultana, Rebecca, and Djentil represent three archetypes: the fertile mother, the childless spinster, and the beautiful, unmarried girl; as the novel progresses, Rebecca’s growing understanding of womanhood will complicate these archetypes, revealing that women’s strength can express itself in unexpected ways.
Each of the novel’s three major themes has an accompanying motif. Songs help the Cohens preserve their culture amidst change. For example, music helps Alberto remain connected to his faith after he has to leave behind everything he knows: “Her father sings, and in the moment he seems close to his old self, and because there is no hazan to serve as cantor, he may as well be one, and he is complimented on his voice” (70). Like her father, Rebecca loves to sing. As she grows older, singing songs from her childhood helps her to channel her joyful memories from Turkey and to tap into her inner strength, such as when she uses music to lift her spirits in the stifling shop: “Sometimes she sings as she works, and the other girls say she could be a professional” (76). The songs the Cohen family sing reflect their Jewish faith and Turkish roots.
The motif of clothing develops the theme of Women’s Strength and Relationship With Their Bodies. Rebecca is confident and comfortable in her body, and she uses her skills as a dressmaker to ensure her clothes project these qualities despite her limited means: “The more her circumstances are reduced, the more care she takes with her clothes, carrying an instinctual sense of them as both mask and portal” (62). Rebecca also shows strength through her work as a dressmaker when she persists in finding a job despite the employment discrimination she faces.
Gardening advances the theme of Displacement and the Meaning of Home. In Chapter 3, Sultana helps Alberto literally and figuratively put down roots in Barcelona so that they can give their children a stable environment: “And then he is there beside her, they are on their knees, removing dead growth, making room for the new” (89). By unpacking and planting the bulbs and seeds Alberto brought from Turkey, the couple symbolically marks their residence at the synagogue as their home. Like Alberto’s tearful promise to strive to do better for his family, this motif gives the section a hopeful conclusion.
In addition to introducing central themes and motifs, the novel’s early chapters offer foreshadowing. Djentil’s claim that Spain “suffers from a curse” foreshadows the antisemitism that Rebecca and her family face there (16). In Chapter 1, the protagonist and her second husband, Sam Levy, meet for the first time. The encounter is barely a footnote in her mind because of the difference in their financial backgrounds: “A pity, she tells her friend. He might have been someone” (29). Her prideful attitude proves ironic when her own circumstances change. While she dismisses Sam from her mind, it is later revealed that the beautiful young woman left a deep impression on him. Lika’s hope that she and Rebecca will meet again never comes true, Still, their friendship shapes major choices later in the protagonist’s life, such as her decision to marry Lika’s widower and raise her daughter, Luna.
