by Ruth Gruber
“Josh,” Raquela said, “my women are clamoring to know when we can all leave. Have you got any word?”
“Nothing yet on Cyprus closing down. But we’ve heard Egyptian planes have dropped bombs on Tel Aviv. The Arab armies are massing at all the borders.”
She looked sadly at the people parading and waving their banners in ecstasy. In a few days, perhaps, they would be descending the gangways of Ike’s and Gad’s ships; immediately the men would plunge into the fighting, and the women and children into the war.
“I’m going back to the hospital,” Raquela said. “One of the nurses is holding the fort until I get back for the day shift. Will you let me know the minute you hear anything about closing the camps?”
She taxied back to the hospital. She found Gad waiting in the entrance to Maternity.
“Raquela,” he said, “we’ve got to celebrate the birth of Israel. Can you and Esther get off tonight and come out to the Pan York! Bring your bathing suits. Ike wants us to have dinner on the Pan Crescent. I thought it would be fun if we swam from my ship to his.”
“A night swim? It sounds fantastic, but is it safe?”
“Ike and I do it all the time.”
After dusk Raquela and Esther, dressed in summer cottons and carrying bathing suits, taxied to the Famagusta harbor.
A full moon threw stabs of light into the sea.
Looming up, the Pan York and the Pan Crescent seemed like two giants chained and fettered in the black water.
Aboard the Pan York Raquela saw two British soldiers patrolling the ship. Gad kissed Raquela and greeted Esther.
“We have to be careful,” he whispered. “The soldiers mustn’t know what we’re planning.”
“Why?” Esther asked. “Is it illegal to go swimming?”
“Off these ships it is. Remember, technically, we’re still their detainees.”
An explosion detonated under the water. The two women flinched.
“What was that?” Raquela asked.
“A little game the British play with us every night. They drop one or two small bombs around us in the water to make sure we don’t have any frogmen trying to free our ships. Don’t worry. They’ve dropped their quota for tonight.”
Raquela looked across the water at the Pan Crescent a hundred yards away, its decks festooned with lights.
“Why don’t you two go into my cabin,” Gad suggested, “and put your bathing suits on under your dresses. The crew and I already have our bathing trunks under our pants. The British mustn’t see us in bathing suits.”
Soon Raquela and Esther were back on the deck, their dresses concealing their swimsuits, waiting with Gad until the patrol moved out of sight.
“Okay, everybody,” Gad commanded in a low voice.
Swiftly, they stepped out of their clothes, hid their dresses and shoes in a box on the deck, and climbed down the Jacob’s ladder. A dozen or more crew members surrounded the two women as they swam through the dark cool water toward the Pan Crescent.
Gad reached Raquela with long smooth strokes. He drew her to him in the water and kissed her. Her face glistened with pleasure. She raised her head high in the salty water, tried to tread water, put her hands around his neck, and returned his kiss. The moon made a path to Ike’s ship; she could see him standing with his crew on the deck.
“We’d better get out of this moonlight,” Gad said, “or the soldiers on one of our ships may see us.”
Raquela turned over and floated luxuriously, letting the water lap over her. Gad swam at her side, guiding her.
Arik, she thought, in a million years you couldn’t guess what I’m doing right now.
After a while she turned over, moving her arms rhythmically in a breaststroke.
“Have you seen Esther?” she asked Gad.
“She’s probably swimming with the crew, but I’ll go check. You keep on heading toward the ship.”
“Hi, Raquela.” Esther splashed beside her. “I haven’t had this much fun since I got to Cyprus.”
A bullhorn shattered the night.
“Attention! All personnel! Have sighted frogmen! Alert all naval craft!”
Raquela and Esther sped toward the Pan Crescent, their hearts racing faster than their strokes.
A motorboat pulled up beside them. Strong arms reached down and dragged them into the boat; soon half a dozen of the crew were hauled up.
Raquela sat on a wooden ledge, searching anxiously for Gad. The British kept scouring the water for more swimmers. Apparently convinced they had captured them all, the seamen pulled into shore. The swimmers clambered onto the dock. Raquela’s teeth chattered with cold and with fear.
“What are you going to do with us?” she asked a British officer who seemed in charge of the soldiers waiting for them.
“Take you to jail.”
“Jail!”
A paddy wagon pulled up. The captured swimmers were loaded into the wagon. Raquela shivered, her bathing suit dripping on the seat as they drove in the night air. She sat close to Esther. They did not speak.
In the Nicosia jail, a guard led them through a corridor. He unlocked the door of a large cell and pushed the crew members inside; farther down the corridor he locked the two women into a smaller, narrower cell. “You sure look like drowned rats,” he said.
Soon he returned and handed them two army blankets. The familiar-smelling blankets had never seemed so welcome. They wrapped them togalike around their bodies and slipped out of their wet suits.
Now warm and dry, they looked around the cell. Two iron cots flanked the walls.
Esther shuddered. “They’re probably full of bedbugs and cockroaches.”
“Still, we can’t stand up all night,” Raquela said. “It must be about ten o’clock.”
The two nurses gingerly brushed the dirt off the cots, then sat down at the edge of the beds.
“I wonder if Gad was caught,” Raquela said worriedly. “I pray he got away.”
They heard heavy footsteps outside their cell. A British military officer rapped his stick on the bars.
“Now would you two like to explain what you were doing? Frogmen, aren’t you?” He glared at them.
“Frogmen!” Raquela gasped. “We’re nurses from the British Military Hospital.”
“You don’t expect me to swallow that cock-and-bull story. No nurses from the BMH would carry on like this. You’re a couple of terrorists from Palestine.”
Raquela pulled the blanket closer around her body. “Please, sir, call the BMH. Ask for Dr. Mary Gordon. She’ll vouch that we’re not terrorists.”
He turned on his heels.
A few hours later, still unable to bring themselves to lie on the cots, Raquela and Esther saw the jailer approach. “You’ve got a couple of visitors. We’ve let them in because they brought you dry clothes.”
He handed them the summer dresses they had concealed on the deck, their shoes, and their purses, which held their wristwatches and ID cards. “I’ll let you see your visitors for a few minutes.”
He returned with Ike and Gad.
“Thank God, you’re safe,” Raquela whispered to Gad through the bars. “I was so terrified not knowing what happened to you.”
He looked contrite. “I saw them catch you. It was too late to help you get away. I swam underwater and managed to escape their net.”
Ike put his hand through the bars and touched Esther’s face.
“Some jailbird!”
“They think we’re terrorists, Ike,” Esther said. “We told some officer to get in touch with Mary Gordon. I don’t think he believed us.”
“We’ll call her ourselves.” Ike tried to reassure her.
“Time up,” the guard shouted.
Alone in the cell, Raquela and Esther changed into their clothes. Sleep was out of the question.
Sunlight began to filter through the prison corridor. Somewhere in Cyprus the sun was rising. Raquela could visualize the people stirring in the tents and huts. “One night behind bars a
nd I feel as helpless as the refugees—like a trapped animal.”
“What a way to celebrate the birth of Israel,” Esther said. “In jail!”
The jailer appeared, unlocked the cell door and handed them each a cup of tea and a slice of rye bread. Famished, they ate the bread slowly to make it last longer.
The hours dragged. When would they be released?
They looked at their watches. Eight o’clock. Nine o’clock. Ten o’clock.
No one came.
Twelve o’clock. The jailer brought two bowls of soup.
“How much longer before we can go?” Raquela asked.
“Who knows? Maybe thirty days.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“But we haven’t done anything wrong!” Esther protested.
“Never met a prisoner yet that didn’t say that. Why did two good-looking girls like you want to blow up those bloody refugee ships?”
“It was only a swimming party,” Raquela said.
“Hm.” He slammed the cell door.
Raquela and Esther sipped the soup. More hours passed. Shadows were growing long in the prison corridor. Raquela looked at her watch. “It’s five o’clock.”
“I’m getting exhausted,” Esther said, “but I can’t see myself sleeping on this bed. Still, I guess if we’re tired enough, we’ll have to.”
Six o’clock. The jailer reappeared, his keys dangling. He opened the cell door.
“You two sure fooled me. It’s the first time I ever locked up nurses.”
Sighing with relief, they followed him outside the jail. In the street, Gad and Ike embraced them.
“How did you get us out?” Raquela asked.
“Hop into the cab,” Gad said, “and we’ll tell you everything. But you’ve got to report immediately to the matron.”
He ordered the cab to drive fast to the hospital.
“It was Dr. Mary Gordon,” Gad told them. “We got in touch with her and she went right to the top, screaming that no one had a right to lock up her nurses.”
“What about the crew?” Raquela asked. “Will you be able to get them out right away?”
“It’s harder with them. But we’ve hired the best lawyer in Cyprus to work on it.”
The cab sped up the hilltop to the hospital. Raquela and Esther leaped out, said good-bye, raced through the complex of Nissen huts, and knocked on the door of Matron White’s office.
The matron was imperious in her rage.
“You—you prostitutes.”
Her huge bosom rose and fell inside her starched white uniform.
“It was a perfectly innocent swimming party,” Raquela said through her teeth.
“I can imagine how innocent.”
“What’s wrong with swimming with our friends? You know how hard we’re working. We’re entitled to some relaxation.”
The matron’s cheeks were purple, apoplectic.
“You don’t even look remorseful. Your own Jewish women are in labor—and you go whoring with sailors in the middle of the night.”
Esther drew herself up tall. “We’d never have been arrested if it weren’t for your Englishmen. They’d arrest mermaids, if they could, and call them frogmen.”
“I don’t know how they bring you up in Palestine. No English nurse would ever behave like you.”
Raquela and Esther stared at her, their faces impassive.
“I ought to have you fired. And I would, if I didn’t need nurses so badly. The two of you—ugh—you’re a disgrace to the profession.”
She dismissed them with a wave of her hand.
Outside the matron’s hut, Raquela and Esther looked at each other. “I thought it would be worse,” Raquela said.
Esther was worried. “We still have to see Dr. Gordon.”
They hurried to Mary Gordon’s quarters.
Her face was sad. “Maybe someday I’ll understand this crazy young generation.”
Events began tumbling over one another.
In Washington, President Truman recognized Israel eleven minutes after Ben-Gurion’s Proclamation of Independence. The United States thus became the first nation in the world to recognize the new state.
The Soviet Union followed. And the third was little Guatemala, whose ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Jorge Garda-Granados, had been a pivotal member of the historic UNSCOP committee whose recognition of the rights of the Jews had started these wheels turning.
UNSCOP had hoped the state could be born in peace. The Jews had accepted partition. The Arabs declared war.
Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, with troops from Saudi Arabia and Yemen—seven Arab states—crossed the borders, invaded Israel, and attacked. The War of Liberation began.
And even as she fought for her life, Israel began to take in new immigrants, sometimes a thousand a day. For was not this the reason she had been created?
When would the men imprisoned in Cyprus be allowed to join her Army? Every man who could hold a gun was desperately needed.
Each day, the refugees in the camps, Ike and Gad on their ships, Raquela and Esther and the staff in the hospital, waited for word from London.
Why the delay? The state had been declared. On the Hill of Evil Counsel, in Jerusalem, Sir Alan Cunningham, the British high commissioner, had closed the door of Government House behind him. The British soldiers and police sailed back to England. British power was ended.
But Bevin had one last card: Cyprus.
He gave new orders.
“The Jews in the camps and aboard the impounded Pan York and Pan Crescent are guilty of having attempted illegal entry into Palestine. As such, they are still internees under our jurisdiction on the British Crown Colony of Cyprus.”
In the tents and metal huts the people reacted first with disbelief, then with outrage.
No one could leave: no men, women, or children. Nor Gad and Ike. Nor would Raquela and Esther and the hospital staff leave so long as they were needed for the thousands who were now beating their fists against the barbed wire. How dare the British hold them prisoners when they had their own state.
Two weeks had passed since Israel’s birth; battles were raging on every front; the Arabs were attacking isolated kibbutzim; Jerusalem was under heavy fire; and the gates of Cyprus were still sealed.
The island temperature rose to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the rage of the people mounted.
For Raquela, surcease came on her evenings off with Gad. But he, too, was restless and angry.
On a boiling afternoon she saw him hurrying toward her across the hospital compound. She ran toward him, trying to read his face.
“You’ve had word,” she said. “You’re free to leave.”
He shook his head. She had read him wrong.
“I came because I couldn’t stand another day without seeing you.”
She nodded. “I need you, too. Even my maternity ward has lost its calm. The women are ready to scream every minute. These last days have made them wild, as if they’re unhinged. I don’t know how much more they can take. Or how much more I can take.”
“Come on the ship,” he said. “Let’s be together tonight.”
At seven, Raquela fled the hospital grounds.
Gad met her on the dock in Famagusta. Soon they were pacing the deck of the Pan York under the watchful eyes of the British patrol.
Gad put his arm through hers. “If we don’t get out of here soon, Raquela, I swear Ike and I will explode.”
Raquela held her hand to her hair, feeling the wind run through it.
“Sometimes I wake up in a sweat,” she said. “I dream you and Ike have somehow managed to sneak out past the British. And I’m not sure whether or not I want you to be gone.”
“You would miss me, Raquela?”
“I would miss you very much, Captain Gee. I love coming out here. I love being with you on your ship. Out here on the water, everything seems timeless. I wish all the clocks in the world would stop ticking. In camp, in the hospital, I have such a sens
e of urgency; I’m as restless as all the prisoners. I must get back to Jerusalem. I must help there. I must help in the war. Time is like something breathless. But here…”
She put her face to his and kissed him.
He held her tightly. The dark night and the dark sea bowled around them.
She looked out at the water. Across the sea lay Jerusalem…and Arik. Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.
They returned to Nicosia and the hospital compound.
A letter from Arik lay on her bed.
Dearest Raquela,
Not a day passes that I don’t think of you. We’ve had to give up the hospital on Scopus. We’ve moved down to the old English Mission Hospital on the Street of the Prophets. We call it Hadassah A. You’ll be working here with me when you come back.
When you come back. She looked around the hut. When? When would Bevin allow the twenty-five thousand remaining refugees to leave? Could she go before then? She went on reading:
I know you worry about us, but with all my superstitions…
She smiled, remembering the red thread he had sewn into her “new look” dress to guard against the Evil Eye.
…with all my superstitions, I am a fatalist. I think we’re all inscribed in God’s Book—who shall live and who shall die.
May 28,1948, the Old City of Jerusalem fell. Starved out of food and ammunition, seventeen hundred people in the Jewish quarter huddled into cellars and ancient synagogues, to save themselves from the bullets and shells of Transjordan’s Arab Legion. Most of the historic synagogues were already rubble. Only the great Hurva Synagogue, its cupola a landmark in the Old City, held out until it, too, was captured. Two rabbis, defying the pleas of the handful of Haganah defenders, walked with a white flag toward the Arab Legion’s headquarters in a school in the Arab quarter, and surrendered.
The Old City, Raquela mourned, where she had walked those quiet Shabbat mornings with Arik. The Old City, where Papa’s family and untold generations of Jews had lived and borne babies and worshiped and died.
The Legion allowed some thirteen hundred women and children to pass through the gates of the crenellated wall into new Jerusalem. But the Arabs took the men, young and old, to a prison in Transjordan. Three were Hadassah doctors.
