Six Thousand Miles to Home

by Kim Dana Kupperman

  SUZANNA HAD WATCHED HER MOTHER SLEEP during most of the ride through the Alborz Mountains. She did not wake her, either, for it was better that Mama not see the precipitous and winding roads from the bus window. At certain moments, Suzanna wished she had been riding in one of the many covered lorries transporting the civilian refugees from the Caspian Sea to Iran’s capital city. Those passengers couldn’t see the dangerous route they traveled. The caravan of buses and trucks slowly advanced, single file, on the narrow roads through the mountains. Patches of snow and ice made the traveling more unpredictable and dangerous.

  She wished Peter were still with them. Suzanna had grown accustomed to his presence, the safety and assurance of a strong, good person with a pleasant nature, common sense, and quick wit. If he were here, he might name the bird flying overhead, which Suzanna watched from her window. Or, he might recite some bit of history about Persia. Or tell her about the legend of the Simorgh who saved a boy left to die on a summit here. Had her family traveled to this country before the war and under different circumstances, they all would have been keen on these mountains. She found them breathtaking, even if she was a bit frightened to be riding in a vehicle on their slippery, narrow slopes. God dwelled in steep and dramatic places like this. But even if they were in a place close to the divine, Suzanna remained watchful as they traveled, which is what her brother would have done. What Mama would have done if she weren’t sleeping.

  When Mount Damavand came into view, the refugees were invited to disembark from the transports, stretch their legs, and view the legendary mountain. Suzanna looked on the landscape and felt a magnetic attraction to the iconic and sacred snow-capped peak that rose from the Central Alborz Mountains, the dramatic backdrop to the City of Tehran. She wanted to speak to these mountains, tell them her hurts and triumphs as she once spoke to the Beskidy Mountains in Poland when she was a girl. Only now, the confidences she wished to impart to this range of massive snow-capped peaks were much heavier. In time, she would come to understand this particular moment as the one that marked a separation—from the horrors of the recent past—and which graced her with the fortitude she needed to make a new life in a foreign land.

  They arrived at the main refugee camp in Tehran to the ordered chaos of places where misery is met with offers of assistance. Polish Army auxiliary groups, British military, and a variety of international and Jewish relief organizations facilitated the processing of arrivals. As she waited, standing in one queue after another, Suzanna watched other refugees as they sought out their loved ones. Too many faces caved with disappointment when a child or spouse or parent or betrothed or other relation or friend wasn’t found among the newly arrived civilians. So much sorrow was on display. And to what end? Why couldn’t this war be done, and with it all the suffering it caused? Suzanna knew the answers were not for her to know. But she would be less than human if she didn’t ask such questions.

  Once they were assigned a tent, they settled in and slept. But before she closed her eyes, Suzanna made her secret, symbolic seder “plate” and covered it with the corner of her blanket. Tomorrow would be the first day of Passover.

  IN THE MORNING, Josefina and Suzanna made their way to the canteen. Ahead of them on the line were a father and his son. The man, Josefina guessed, was roughly Julius’s age; the boy was about ten or eleven. When they turned and saw the two women standing behind them, the man gallantly offered to trade places.

  “How very kind of you,” Josefina said. She had grown greatly tired. Now, it was as if everything dreadful were catching up with her, weighting her eyes, face, and heart with a profound fatigue. She needed to rest, and for a long time. The generosity of this small kindness offered by a stranger made her take notice.

  “Madame,” the man said, extending his hand. “Dr. Naftali Lekarz at your service. But please, call me Nick.” He smiled. The boy clung to the man’s jacket sleeve. “This is my son, Alec,” he said. Like all the boys and girls among the refugees, this boy had been very hungry not so long ago.

  It pleased Josefina when Suzanna stepped forward. “It’s very generous of you to let us have your place in the queue,” she said. She knelt down so as to address the boy at his eye level. “Thank you, too, Alec. Hmm …,” she said. “Do you think they have any sweets here?”

  He looked to the ground and shook his head no with a weary disappointment, as if to say he hadn’t been anywhere of late where sweets were available, and certainly no one gave any away in the places he’d been.

  Josefina watched her daughter extract a piece of Turkish delight from her coat pocket. Earlier, a generous Persian woman had given them a small box filled with the confection. Before Josefina or Suzanna were able to thank her, the guard at the camp had shooed away the Iranian woman.

  “I have something here I think you’d like,” Suzanna said, handing the candy to Alec.

  His eyes widened when he opened the wax paper in which the Turkish delight had been wrapped. It was snowy with powdered sugar and fine flour on the outside, sweet and smooth and lemony inside. “Thank you,” he said in a small voice. It was clear the boy wasn’t accustomed to such gestures. Strangers didn’t share food at the camp in which he and his father had been.

  “Where are you from?” Josefina asked the man.

  “Warsaw, originally,” Nick said. His eyes were sad, but they still had a light inside. Josefina had started noticing such things about the Poles who had come out of the Soviet Union. She had seen so many whose eyes were dull or lifeless, who looked through you with muddied, long-distance stares.

  “We were sent to Asino,” Nick said. “Past the Urals, past Novosibirsk … in Siberia.”

  Asino was legendary, but not in a kind way. A terrible journey of four weeks in one of those boxcars, worse than theirs had been (if that were imaginable), to a colder place where people were consumed more ravenously by weather, disease, and the inhumanity of their captors and where they died more rapidly. After a short silence, Josefina spoke. “Can you imagine what people will think?” she asked. “Will they believe us when we tell them the places we’ve been, the things we’ve seen, the way people behave?”

  “Likely they won’t be able to imagine any of it,” Nick said. “But look at it this way now: you’re out. Unless you’re dying or very ill and quarantined, you are headed somewhere better. Eventually.” He smiled.

  Josefina hoped he was right. From this short conversation, she understood, too, that if she ever spoke of where she and the children had been or the things they had lived through or seen, she would speak only with someone who had had the same experience. Otherwise, she would adopt a shorthand to talk about it, abbreviating the experience to make the unbearable parts of it disappear.

  DR. LEKARZ WAS AN OBSTETRICIAN, they learned over a breakfast of tea and porridge, and here in Tehran, he was the medical officer in charge of the Polish refugee camp’s hospital. He had been widowed several years before the war started. Alec was just eight years old when the first German bombs were dropped on Warsaw. Like the Kohns, Nick and his son had fled the invading Nazis, only to find themselves in the unmerciful hands of the Soviets. They were deported in February 1940. Miraculously, like Josefina and her children, they had survived. And like Josefina, Nick had his sights set on going to England.

  As they talked, Dr. Lekarz made a casual remark about not caring for pork. Josefina agreed, and they continued to talk, through food, about their Jewishness, but without admitting they were Jews. “The last apples and honey I ate in September in Warsaw …,” said Nick; “My mother made delicious fritters from potatoes and onions in December …,” said Josefina. Though they were speaking as if they might exchange recipes, this odd conversation appealed to Josefina. The absurdity was so frivolous and absolutely delicious, it made her smile briefly. Finally, they both revealed they were Jewish.

  “Funny, isn’t it, how we Jews seem to always find one other?” Nick said. He told Josefina and Suzanna what he had heard about Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto there.
Some of his family still lived in the city.

  “If you can call it living,” he said. “Tens of thousands of people in the Warsaw Ghetto are starving to death.” Over 400,000 Jews were forced to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, with seven, sometimes more, people to a room. Ten-foot-high walls had been erected to keep the Jewish population contained. “It can only get worse,” Nick said.

  Of course they couldn’t yet know how much worse. But just then, Josefina had a great appreciation for the tent she was in and the table where she sat, the hot and adequate food in front of her, the bustle of Tehran beyond the camp. She thought of Julius’s sister, Greta, and her husband, Ernst, and hoped they were not among the hundreds of thousands behind those tall ghetto walls in Warsaw.

  Josefina sensed in this stranger a kinship and she felt him sense the same in her. And when she revealed that she, too, was a Jew from Poland, she said it in a whispered voice. What a relief to no longer carry that secret. To admit her Jewishness felt like exhaling a breath held too long. Suzanna, too, seemed relieved.

  “The tea is strong and warm,” Nick said. “Brewed in that samovar over there.” He pointed to a corner where a huge silver samovar stood in its matronly glory. It had been, Josefina suspected, part of someone’s dowry.

  “It’s the little luxuries—an hour designated to drink tea and eat a snack. A conversation … mere trifles. Yet they keep us attached to our lives, keep us in time,” Josefina said. Through all the coming and going, she thought.

  Nick looked at her and smiled. “Some Tehrani Jews have helped open a camp for Jewish refugees,” he told Josefina. “I’m taking Alec there. I think the food may be better than the rations here. Probably more of a family atmosphere, too.”

  Persian hospitality was renowned, Nick said, though Josefina already had experienced and appreciated the generosity of strangers in Iran. The Jewish relief agencies, he explained, were dedicating resources to help their Jewish brethren in Tehran. “Maybe the two of you could come there,” he said.

  Josefina nodded as he spoke, glad for the information and his suggestion. But she was thinking how strange things sometimes were. Her son, Peter, was headed toward Palestine right now with his countrymen, disguised on paper as a Roman Catholic, while she and Suzanna were in Tehran among the Iranians, about to renounce that very same disguise in order to benefit from the charity designated for Jews.

  “Of course,” Josefina said at last. “Of course we’ll go there, too.” After all, hope was much less tiresome than despair.

  A Small Repair of the World

  13 APRIL 1942, TEHRAN

  ELEVEN DAYS AFTER PASSOVER, Soleiman was taking his morning coffee at Patisserie Park when he saw his friend Haji Aziz Elghanian approaching. Dressed in a double-breasted suit and tie, Haji Aziz walked everywhere he went and when he called on friends and family, he always came bearing flowers. Today he cupped a handful of jasmine blossoms in his hands. The delicate blooms contrasted with his serious expression.

  “Kwush-āmadi, my friend,” said Soleiman, rising to greet and welcome Haji Aziz. They made small talk, and when Haji Aziz said there was something important to discuss, the two men went back to Soleiman’s house. The cook arranged the fragrant flowers to float in a bowl of water on the breakfast table. They drank tea and ate the light, puffy white-flour bread called nan barberi with feta cheese and sour cherry preserves. Haji Aziz spoke of his concern for the Polish refugees.

  “I hear even more will be coming,” he said. “First, to Bandar-e Pahlavi and then to Tehran.” The organizational issues were immense, Haji Aziz explained. If people didn’t take action to help, a crisis would erupt.

  Well-respected in the Persian-Jewish community, Haji Aziz had already started to mobilize well-to-do Jews in Tehran to assist with sheltering and feeding the Jewish refugees.

  “The soldiers will be moving on,” he said to his friend. “But the old and infirm, the women and children … for now they will stay.” They were malnourished, Haji Aziz told Soleiman. Some were dying. A good number were orphans. Some were or had been diseased with typhus and smallpox. The refugees needed everything: food, clothing, medical care, soap, blankets, money.

  “Most of all, Soli,” he said, sweeping his gaze out toward his friend’s large and comfortable house, “there are many women and children who need homes. It is not good, especially for Jewish ladies and girls to live in tents … like soldiers.”

  Not only did Soleiman understand immediately what his friend was suggesting, he knew—as most truly charitable people know—that he’d offer assistance before he was asked. As a prosperous bachelor, Soleiman had abundant modern resources, space, and food. “Of course, Haji Aziz,” he said. “Of course I will help … I can even take in a family.”

  They finished breakfast. The sour cherry preserves left a clean, early-summer taste in Soleiman’s mouth. Rahman the gardener had bought the nan barberi from the bakery just before the shop opened; he always chose the warmest and best baked. They were lucky to have such bounty at a time when others were displaced and hungry.

  Certainly, he mused, the family he would take into his home would miss the foods of their own country. Soleiman knew that cherries—which he also loved—were part of Polish cuisine. Perhaps the refugees would stay through the approaching cherry season. In the meanwhile, he’d set in front of his guests a jar of homemade sour cherry preserves at their first breakfast in his house, as a way to comfort them with a little taste of their homeland. The table would be decorated with fresh flowers from the garden. He’d send the housekeeper to freshen up the guest bedrooms and make sure the towels were folded straight off the line when they smelled most like sunshine. Soleiman would personally place a cake of soap, the special lavender kind from France, in the washroom.

  “I’m already making a list in my head of what needs to be done,” Soleiman said.

  Haji Aziz clapped his friend’s shoulder and smiled. “The nan barberi is very fresh,” he said. He dabbed his lip and chin with the cloth napkin, folded it, and set it beside his plate. “Mersi. Khaylī mamnūn … tashakkur. Moteshakeram … bisiyār moteshakeram, Soleiman,” he said, using all the ways in Farsi to say thank you and express abundant gratitude.

  The sun shone brightly. The two men rose and made their way to the door and into Soleiman’s maroon cabriolet. Even though it was a lovely spring day, for this ride, he’d keep the top up. He suspected that the passengers who returned with him might want their privacy.

  Soleiman drove to the estate owned by Haji Aziz and his brother-in-law Haji Mirzagha. As they motored, Haji Aziz explained some of the practical matters. Workers had erected tents on the estate’s grounds. Old and young alike lived in the temporary shelters. Clothing donated by relief agencies from America and Europe had been distributed. Of course there wasn’t enough of anything. Those who were sick had received or were still receiving medical care. Nurses and doctors worked round the clock. The Elghanian brothers wanted to provide the refugees with wholesome, fresh food—vegetables and fruits, rice and chicken dishes, and all manner of khoresh. But no matter how much food was prepared, there never seemed to be enough. Regardless, Haji Aziz said in his thoughtful way, though each day was uncertain, a kind of normalcy was slowly returning to how the refugees were living. Plans were being discussed to send the Jewish orphans to Palestine.

  These children, Haji Aziz said, were very troubled by their experiences in the camps. Most of them trusted no one. Many hoarded food. Some ran away and hid when it was time to board a transport or see the doctor. Some were wild, disoriented, injured. All of them were wounded in one way or another. There was talk of starting a school, even if it was a temporary measure. For now, children had lessons in a very makeshift classroom in a tent. Many of them had trouble paying attention.

  Soleiman parked his car outside the gate of the Elghanian property, and the two men walked toward the house. Some of the refugees emerged from their tents to see the man they called The Savior. An old woman with a shawl on her hairle
ss head, wearing a dress and a too-tight sweater buttoned over it, called out to him. “Pan Aziz,” she said, using the Polish form of address for a gentleman, “Mersi, mersi.”

  In the main house, the ground floor and kitchen had been transformed into a central area where the refugees gathered, drank tea, and sought assistance from the Jewish agency representatives who had come to provide it. Soleiman heard people speaking Farsi, Polish, French, English, and on occasion, Russian. He recognized words in Yiddish and even some German. The Tower of Babel has come to Tehran, he thought. All these languages being spoken in his city were evidence of the war’s vast reach. No one was spared. The brokenness of the refugees—their thinned-out shapes, the hand-me-down clothes, the meager possessions, the uncertainty and tragedy of their displacement—made Soleiman eager to provide them not simply with room and board, homemade preserves and scented soap, but with solace. Though he wanted to help them all, he knew he could help only several.

  They walked past a room off the main area. Soleiman glimpsed a tall, poised young woman who was reading to a group of small children seated before her. Most of the boys and girls fidgeted or laughed loudly, as if they no longer knew how to listen to stories. One or two slept. They were clean and dressed in new clothes, but their shaved heads and sallow skin told another story. And their eyes—wide, downcast, darting, some blank—told yet another.

  “Those children are too young yet for school,” Haji Aziz said. “And that remarkable girl reading to them is the daughter of the lady I want you to meet.”

  JOSEFINA KOHN SAT ON A SMALL SOFA in a room that served as a parlor. In a chair next to her sat Heshmat Khanoum, Haji Aziz’s wife. The two women were drinking tea, exchanging an occasional pleasantry in French, but mostly in silence as neither spoke the other’s language. Still, it was so civilized to find oneself in a sitting room, with carpets under her feet, drinking real tea from a real china service. Josefina admired the shape of the sugar dish; she used the little silver tongs to select one of the small cubes. But instead of dropping it into her teacup, Josefina discreetly put the sugar in her mouth. Then she took a sip of the strong, black tea.