Life in Safed and first settlement in moshav (village) Nofekh

Name of speaker: 
Yosef Buḥbut
Participants in the conversation: 
Sima Buḥbut
Gender of speaker: 
Male
Occupation of speaker: 
Farmer and employee at the Municipality of Petaḥ Tikva
Age of speaker at time of recording: 
76
Year of immigration: 
1951
Speaker's country of origin: 
Speaker's community of origin: 
Language: 
Judeo-Arabic
Documentation: 
Yaʿel wecsler
Year of recording: 
2019

Translation: 

We lived in Safed for four and a half years. One day my husband told me: "Get up, I'm going to Nofekh Village." My late mother said: “If you love my daughter, you must live next door to me here in Safed. I need Sima's help." My husband had no choice. But in Safed it was very cold and he was used to the heat of the center (Rinatia and Nofekh are close to PetaḥvTikva). All winter my husband sat at home. He was mostly in bed, didn’t work or anything because of the cold.

Safed was not big. A very small town, but overall it was fine. We lived there for a few years and before returning to the village. We had two daughters and two sons.

My aunt, my late mother’s sister, introduced me to my wife. We only had one room, with no kitchen nor toilet, nothing. Only stones, rocks and soil. Reeds, prickly pears and fig trees grew all around us, amongst snakes, scorpions and rats. It was in 1972. It was me, my husband and our eldest daughter who was two and a half years old. Every day we would work on the house for at least four or five hours. Everyone would go to sleep, and I would continue my work, cooking, washing, cleaning and so on.