by Asen Djinah
‘Ima, why have they taken Jaffar’s mother and father away?’ she finally asked her mother.
Eliana cast a stern look in her direction to keep her quiet.
As Jaffar absent-mindedly soaked his bread in the milk, his mind went to one particular day, a few weeks ago. He knew that something was wrong that day when he went inside for lunch. His mother had laid out some milk and bread and instead of waiting for him she had gone into her sleeping area behind the curtain.
‘Ummi, will you come and eat with me? I have washed my hands,’ he called out to his mother.
‘I am not feeling well,’ Feryal replied from behind the drape, ‘After you have eaten, go to sleep.’
‘Can I come and sleep next to you, Ummi?’ Jaffar persisted.
‘No, go to your own sleeping rug,’ his mother replied.
From that day onwards, Jaffar ate his lunch alone and took his afternoon nap in his own sleeping area. Even at night his mother no longer came to tuck him in. It was Thawfik who would come to put him to bed. Without his mother’s hair to comfort him, Jaffar found it difficult to fall sleep and would lie wide awake, late into the night.
‘What have I done that ummi does not want to be near me,’ he kept wondering.
Whenever Jaffar came indoors his mother would hurriedly go behind the curtain. And poor Jaffar could only catch glimpses of her. On a couple of occasions he thought he heard his mother sobbing, but when he called out there was no answer from the other side of the curtain.
‘I must have heard wrong,’ he told himself, ‘Ummi must be fast asleep. She must be very ill.’
Feryal no longer came outside to cook and it was Thawfik who did the cooking in the evening, after work. Jaffar did not dare ask his father about his mother, in case it started an argument between his parents. He felt miserable and although he went out to play with his friends, his heart was not in the games anymore. And now the guards had taken both of his parents away.
When Doran came home that evening, he was shocked to hear that his friend had been taken away along with his wife. He held Jaffar tightly as he thought about the situation. After a while he turned to his wife.
‘Eliana, we must leave. The same people in the courtyard who reported Feryal to the authorities will undoubtedly notify them again when they see Jaffar is still here in the morning. If we don’t leave tonight, he will be taken away too,’ he said gravely.
‘Where have they taken Ummi and Abbi?’ Jaffar interrupted.
Eliana turned to the young boy and laid her hand gently on his head.
‘We will explain everything later, but first we need to leave. Otherwise the guards will come in the morning and take you to a place that you will never be able to leave,’ she said softly.
Taking control of the situation, Eliana turned to Doran and gave him instructions.
‘I will start packing and the children will help me. Doran, you need to hire a porter with mules to carry our things,’ she said with a sense of urgency.
Doran immediately left on his errand.
‘The porters will surely demand double the rate at this time of the night,’ he thought dispiritedly as he made his way out of the courtyard.
With Doran gone, Eliana gathered their few possessions and utensils, and tied them in bundles with Devorah’s help. After she had finished, she peeked out into the dark courtyard and saw it was quiet.
‘Jaffar let us go quietly to your home and pick some of your clothes. Devorah, you stay here and wait for us. We have to be very quiet,’ Eliana told the young boy.
Together, Eliana and Jaffar stealthily crossed the courtyard. By the weak light of her lamp, they quickly gathered the boy’s clothes and some of the kitchen utensils. They carried the bundles back with them and waited for Doran. Eliana forced Jaffar and Devorah to lie down and get some rest, while she too dozed off, her legs stretched out and her back against the wall.
Despite going to the different porter stations in town, Doran could not find anyone willing to disturb their animals in the middle of the night. He grew frustrated and was tired from walking all over town. Finally, just before dawn, he managed to hire a porter with two mules after agreeing to pay the hefty asking rate.
‘Please hurry, I want to leave before it gets bright,’ he urged the porter.
However, by the time they reached the courtyard it was already daylight and the other families were up. They stared in silence as they watched Doran and his wife load up the mules. Jaffar saw his friends standing by their parents and watching him, but he did not acknowledge them. By now he had realised that it was their parents who were responsible for his parents being taken away. Jaffar felt no regret as he left his home and holding Devorah’s hand proudly, he followed the mules out of the courtyard. As they made their way to the opposite side of town, Doran called Jaffar by his side.
‘For a while, we are going to stay in a tent at the edge of town in a Jewish community. You will be safe there. I don’t think that the families in the courtyard will report you, now that you are gone,’ he reassured Jaffar.
Overnight, Jaffar’s life had been turned upside down. Not only had he been separated from his parents, but he had been forced to leave his safe and comfortable life behind to start a new life in unfamiliar surroundings. With so many unanswered questions on his mind and such uncertainty about the future, he was no longer the young, carefree boy. Never again would he be able to see the world around him with the same innocent eyes.
‘I have to go and look for ummi and abbi,’ he thought with desperation, although he did not have any idea where to start.
Doran understood Jaffar’s state of mind and kept the young boy busy. After he had set up his tent outside the town, he called the young boy to his side.
‘With your father gone, you will have to come and work with me. We will set up shop in a different part of town where no one knows us,’ he told him.
Jaffar nodded to indicate that he understood.
The very next day, Doran took young Jaffar with him to find a new place to set up their stall, away from the market area. Doran decided to go all the way to the caravan stop, where with all the traffic in and out of town he hoped it would be easier to find customers. As they carried their tools on the long walk to the north of town, Jaffar struggled with the load, being not used to heavy work. By the time they reached their destination, the poor boy was hot and sweating. Doran found a suitable place in the shade of a boarding house and laid out his tools.
‘Jaffar, you will have to call out to attract customers. Don’t worry, I will show you how. Customers are more likely to respond to you than to a Jew,’ Doran told him.
The young boy tried to put his heart into the job, since despite his young years he realised that from now on he must work to earn a living. Yet his mind kept going back to the events of that dreadful night, distracting him from his work. Although Doran could see the anguish on Jaffar’s face and sense the turmoil inside the young boy, he did not know how to comfort him.
Later that afternoon on the way home, Doran turned towards the distraught boy.
‘Jaffar, when things settle down and we are certain the guards are not looking for you, I will start making enquiries as to where the guards have taken your parents. I will take you there to visit them, I promise,’ he said solemnly.
‘But when?’ Jaffar insisted impatiently.
‘First, I have to find out where they have been taken, but I cannot draw attention by approaching the authorities directly. I will have to be discreet,’ Doran replied.
‘Uncle Doran, I don’t understand why they have taken my parents away. Do you know why?’ Jaffar asked once again.
‘This is a question that you will have to ask your parents when I take you to them,’ Doran replied evasively.
Doran knew why the guards had come for Thawfik and his wife since his friend had confided in him a few days earlier. But he could not tell Jaffar; Thawfik had made him promise to not tell anyone.
It took over a week fo
r Doran to obtain information about where Jaffar’s parents might have been taken. During that time he had faced incessant pestering from the impatient boy. Doran was relieved to see that despite his distress, Jaffar had settled into his new routine and was able to carry out simple repairs. He found that customers responded positively to the young boy’s touting and they were getting enough work to get by. Doran kept quiet about his findings as he knew that Jaffar would not give him any respite unless he took him there straight away.
‘You have to take him to see his parents, even if you are not sure they are there,’ Eliana said when Doran shared his findings with her.
Doran decided on a day and made the necessary preparations. He had to arrange for a camel as he had been told the place was more than one day’s walk away. He also had to buy enough provisions to leave for Eliana and Devorah as well as for the journey, all out of his meagre savings.
A few days later, Doran woke Jaffar up just before dawn.
‘Jaffar, get up. We have an important day ahead. Today we are going to look for your parents. Eat something and get ready, for we have to leave soon,’ Doran told him.
Although Jaffar was only half awake, his foggy mind still made sense of what Doran had said. He stood up quickly from his sleeping rug. He had been praying for Doran to be successful in locating his mother and father and it seemed that God had answered his prayers.
‘Do you know where they are?’ he asked.
‘I am not sure. Let us pray that they have been taken to the place I have been told about,’ Doran said, before leaving to pick up the camel a neighbour had agreed to lend him.
Jaffar quickly ran out to wash. Eliana had a bowl of cold milk and some bread ready for him, which he gulped down as quickly as he could. In the meantime, Doran was loading the camel. As they approached the crouched animal to mount, little Devorah ran out.
‘Jaffar, I have made a special prayer to help you find your parents. Ima has helped me write it on a piece of parchment and I have put it in this little tefillin – amulet. Let me tie it to your arm,’ the little Jewish girl said.
When Jaffar nodded, Devorah added, ‘I will tie it on your left arm, close to your heart.’
During the past week that he had been living with his new family, Jaffar felt welcomed and loved. Despite their poverty, Doran and Eliana shared their meagre meals with the young boy and treated him like one of their own.
‘What would have happened had Doran and Eliana not taken me in?’ Jaffar thought gratefully.
Every night as he lay on his sleeping rug in a corner of the tent, tears would run down his face and he tried his hardest to not sob aloud. He was heartbroken at the loss of his parents and could not imagine ever getting over his grief. All he knew was that he had to find them. On the third night after first arriving in the Jewish community, as he lay on his rug silently sobbing his heart out, the curtain moved and he saw Devorah’s face staring down at him through the gap. He swiftly turned away, ashamed to show his tears to the little girl.
‘Go away, leave me alone’ he muttered.
But after a while he felt his head being gently stroked; Devorah was trying to comfort him. With his back to Devorah, he covered his face with his folded arm so she could not see his tears. With his hand reaching behind him, he inadvertently touched the long plait hanging down in front of her dress and instinctively started to caress her hair, just like he used to do with his mother. The two children did not exchange a word, the little girl consoling the distraught boy and Jaffar finding comfort with her hair.
After a while Jaffar fell asleep, exhausted by his tears and his long working day. It was only when she heard his steady breathing that Devorah gently untangled her hair from his fingers and returned to her own sleeping area.
Chapter 7
They looked an odd pair as they rode on the camel, Jaffar in his typical Arab clothes sitting at the front and Doran with his long black traditional Jewish bekishe behind him. Doran was wearing a large kippah and a strip of black cloth wrapped around his head with his long, curled locks hanging from the sides. Behind him were two rolled blankets and the bag of provisions containing bread and dried dates. A rope over the saddle in front of Jaffar had two waterskins hanging, one at each end. The two had been travelling since dawn and by sunset they still had not reached the place they were looking for.
‘We are lost or you may have been given the wrong information, Uncle Doran. The place may not exist at all,’ Jaffar said, feeling upset.
‘We are on the right track, I am sure of it. I spotted a couple of the markers that I have been looking for,’ Doran reassured the young boy.
‘We have been travelling at a slow pace with the two of us riding on one camel,’ he explained.
Still Jaffar did not look entirely convinced as night fell. They made the most of every minute of light until they could no longer carry on.
‘We will camp here tonight and continue tomorrow. It can’t be very far now,’ Doran said, trying to sound confident.
After eating a piece of bread and a few dates, washed down their parched throats with water, they huddled together in their blankets to keep warm. Despite being tired, Jaffar was too nervous to sleep and kept tossing and turning. Seeing his restlessness, Doran started to chant a Jewish prayer under his breath. After a while, soothed by the soft voice, Jaffar fell asleep.
By mid-morning the following day, Doran finally spotted the mountain he was looking for. He pointed it out excitedly to Jaffar.
‘This is the final landmark,’ he said. ‘The place we are trying to find is at the foot of this mountain. Let us hope your parents are there.’
‘But what is this place?’ Jaffar asked, ‘It is so isolated. Is it a prison?’
‘Not quite, it is more than a prison. Once you enter this type of place, you cannot leave and often don’t want to,’ Doran replied enigmatically.
Doran realised that it was time to tell Jaffar the truth about his parents, since he would soon find out when they reached their destination.
‘Jaffar, we are going to a lepers’ colony. When someone becomes afflicted with leprosy, the authorities take them to such a place to stop others from catching the disease. Your poor mother became afflicted with this dreaded disease and tried to hide it from the neighbours. However, after seeing her wearing her niqab all the time and staying indoors, they became suspicious,’ Doran told the boy.
‘Yes, ummi did tell me that she was not feeling well,’ Jaffar remarked.
‘Fearing that Feryal will pass the disease to them, the neighbours confronted her before reporting her to the authorities. Usually the whole family is taken to the lepers’ colony, but you were lucky the guards missed you,’ Doran went on to explain.
Jaffar had a hundred questions on his mind and Doran patiently explained everything he knew about the disease, how it caused disfigurement and how people believed it was contagious.
‘Your father confided in me a few days before the guards came. He stopped coming to work, expecting the worst to happen,’ Doran told Jaffar.
Jaffar finally understood why his mother had stayed away from him; she was not angry with him, but was only trying to protect him from catching the disease.
‘When they get better, will they be allowed to come back home?’ Jaffar asked naively.
‘There is no cure for this disease. And even if by chance someone is cured, because of the deformities to their face and limbs, they will face discrimination and harassment from the public. So even if they do get better, most prefer to stay in the colony. It is more than a prison. Once someone comes to such a place, it becomes their home and they don’t want to leave,’ Doran tried to explain to the young boy.
They reached the mountain by midday and could make out in the distance a large number of mud huts, clustered together at the base of the steep slope. A five-foot stone wall with a wooden gate surrounded the settlement. As they moved closer, they could see two guards posted at the gate. They also noticed another group of four men
and a dozen camels, loaded with heavy bags, approaching the gate from the opposite side of the track.
‘Let us wait and see what is happening,’ Doran instructed.
He quickly steered the camel out of sight behind a large boulder to survey the scene. The two watched as the group of men reached the gate and started talking to the guards. The men then started to unload large bags from the crouched camels. Once free from their burdens, the camels were let loose to graze on the few bushes by the side of the stone wall. The guards opened the gate and beckoned the men to carry the bags inside.
‘They have brought provisions to the colony. They should be gone soon. No one likes to stay here any longer than necessary,’ Doran explained.
With the gate open, Doran and Jaffar could distinguish another inner stone wall only about two feet high and some fifteen yards from the outer wall. The men dropped the bags on the inside of the inner wall and hurriedly retreated outside the gate. One of the guards called out and immediately a stream of black-clad individuals poured out of the huts. Some were limping as they picked the bags of provisions and they all shuffled back to their quarters. Within a short time, all the bags were taken away and the courtyard was once again deserted. The four men went back to their camels and set off on their way north in the same direction they had come. Doran waited until they disappeared in the distance before urging his camel forward towards the gate.
The two guards eyed the travellers as they approached and when they noticed the Jewish man in his traditional clothes, they grew suspicious.
‘Visitors are not allowed,’ the younger guard said in a stern voice, ‘You need to turn back.’
