1
When I was a little girl, my grandmother, Hilde, used to tell me that people often could be best described as colors. She described my sister, Liora, as a bright, bright orange, wild, brilliant, and headstrong. “And you, Ayelle,” she said. “You are a deep green. Thoughtful, sensitive, with a gentle strength.”
I absorbed her description carefully as I did with everything she told me. “Isn’t green kind of boring?” I asked.
“Boring!” Her big, dark eyes widened in surprise. “Green is the color of leaves. Of trees. It’s the color of life. Green can never be boring.”
That is how my grandmother used to talk to me.
I was only a child then, but I still believe colors are the most accurate description of a person’s essence. If I had to pick one color to describe my grandmother, I would choose a rich purple, the color of a summer night sky. Lively, imaginative, and absolutely never boring. The reds and blues of my grandmother’s purple blend together, the combination softening the passion of red and the sadness of blue. The dark shade conceals depths of emotions, washing over her secrets with magic, whimsical brushes of color.
2
On a stifling August afternoon in 1937, Hilde Haskel ordered a coffee at the Romanisches Café and found a seat near a window. The summer sun brightened Berlin. Trolleys glided along Budapester Strasse. Children gathered around an ice cream cart parked on the sidewalk. And in the distance, a wistful red balloon disappeared into the sky over the dense trees in Hilde’s favorite part of the city, Tiergarten Park.
There was no doubt Berlin was beautiful on its surface, but the barbarism that had seeped into its soul...
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