The Land Agent

by J David Simons

  I was pleased also to see my parents. They are elderly and frail now, each suffering from their own little illnesses. My father was suffering from heart problems and forgetfulness when I left for Palestine. I never expected to see him again, he whispered to me as much when he kissed me goodbye on the platform at Central Station. Yet, here he still is in this world, becoming more religious the closer he gets to death. As for my mother, she is so shrill and robust, I think that death itself is frightened to pay her a visit. My brother Nathan, I just saw the once, and only for a short time. He is such a successful businessman now, the finest tailor in the city, providing suits to the highest levels of society. He refuses to mention names but he tells me he boasts a duke and several of the richest merchants among his clientele. Perhaps even one John Armstrong McKenzie has had a suit made for him by Nathan Kahn. He remains unmarried and I have a sense he always will.

  As for me, I feel that I started to recover as soon as I set foot in the Highlands. I cannot fully describe what it feels like to walk on a land that is free. The people of Scotland surely do not appreciate how lucky they are to have access to this space, this wildness, this beauty without worry or dispute. Who owns that loch down there? And those mountains? And that gorse? And that stream? That wild hare? I do not know. I do not care. Possibly some laird somewhere in his fancy house but he is not chasing me off his land unless I come armed with traps and a shotgun for the purpose of poaching. It gives me so much happiness to feel this liberated. I want to go outside and dance barefoot on the heather, to try and embrace this landscape in the gather of my arms. But I know I cannot grasp such beauty. For it is not there for the ownership but for the enjoyment and appreciation.

  Palestine is such a different land to this one. It is a place so parched in places that every little patch of greenery represents a triumph of nature over adversity. Land and water, water and land. What a struggle we had to procure both. Yet here I can step out of the cottage door and drink cool, clear water from a mountain stream to my heart’s content. I can bathe myself in it, launder all the clothes of the shire in it without a thought for its source or its availability. But what I miss about the Holy Land is the light. There was such an intensity in that light, Charlotte, I cannot describe. When I was bathed in it, I felt as if I were being kissed by God.

  Yes, Palestine. It seems so far away now. It seems as though what happened that night in Kfar Ha’Emek happened to other people living in another world. You asked me my reasons for leaving Palestine but I was not ready to tell you. Now that I am here in the Highlands away from everything, I feel able to tell you that story. I will just get up and make myself a pot of tea before I begin.

  Shoshana and I woke up the four children that remained and took them from their newly built children’s house into the dining room. It was not the practice of our settlement or in true socialist principles for the women to be the only ones to look after the children. But we were under threat and all of our principles went out of the window that night. It was the men who guarded the perimeter with their knives and guns, and it was we two women who were left to be the child-minders and run the supply line. Two of the children were Shoshana’s. The other two belonged to a woman gone to Tiberias for the day but unable to return for the fighting taking place all along the valley. We made beds for them underneath the tables then went about making coffee, tea and sandwiches to take out to the men. There were shots throughout the night, each one making me jump in my skin. Shoshana and I told the children it was firecrackers for an Arab festival. They seemed happy with that explanation and went back to sleep.

  At midnight I went out with my provisions for the men on the perimeter. It had been a cloudy night with only a hazy moon and a few stars and I was thinking we were going to get some much-needed rain. I could see this reddish glow not that far off in the distance, it was only later I realized these were the flames coming from the burning of our ancient olive grove. It all started with just one shot, then a pause when my heart leapt up my throat and I dropped to the ground. After that, there was a frenzy of shooting just like Jumping Jacks going off all at once on a Guy Fawkes night. I covered my ears, put my head down, and waited. Waited for the noise to pass, waited for death, I did not know which. A stray bullet even whistled close by me and into the wall of the cow-shed. Just as quickly as it had started, the shooting stopped. That was when the shouting began.

  We lost two men that night. Barak, a stocky little fighter of a man who had been with us from the beginning, was shot in the chest. He died a few hours later despite all Jonny’s attempts to save him. The other was dear Amshel. He was killed instantly with a bullet to the face, dropped down dead right beside Lev. He wanted nothing to do with our socialism, he even used to mock us about it. In the end, he died defending it.

  We don’t know exactly what happened at our settlement that night. We don’t know if we were attacked by bandits from across the border in Trans-Jordan or we were part of the general rioting that took place across Palestine. Our men claimed they shot at least two of our attackers but no bodies were found in the fields. The next day, we buried Amshel and Barak at the small cemetery we have close to the Centre of the World. It is a very beautiful spot, I am sure I described it to you once before. The rain fell as we put the bodies in the ground.

  While we mourned for the passing of our two comrades, the news of what else had gone on in Palestine that night began to arrive on our doorstep as travellers passed through on the road between Beisan and Tiberias. There were stories of riots in Jerusalem and a massacre in Hebron. We heard of murders and rapes, the bodies of burned women, young children found with their heads cut off. We heard the riots were spreading to Tel Aviv and to Safed in the north. For one week, I felt we were living in a hell on earth, never knowing when our turn might come. Our only hope came from the six rifles Lev and Mickey brought us. With them, we felt we could fend off any attack. I promised myself though that if my future was to depend on the need for guns, there was no place for me in this land.

  I know that you read the reports of what happened that week in your own newspapers. One hundred and thirty Jews and more than one hundred Arabs were killed. Many more injured on both sides. There were stories of hope too. In Hebron, for example, some Arab families did their best to protect their Jewish neighbours from being massacred. But in the end, it was all about the mistrust that exists between Arab and Jew here in Palestine. At first, Charlotte, I wanted to write the word ‘hatred’ but I don’t think that is fair. After all, we are two great nations born of the same father Abraham. A brother should not hate a brother. It is not a hatred but a mistrust. A mistrust that I feel will never ever go away.

  I was surprised by the attitudes of the few remaining members of our settlement after that week of riots. Most decided to stay. I don’t know if it was because they had a stronger belief in what they were defending or because they had nowhere else to go. America is mostly closed to Jews these days unless they have money to bring with them and there is much talk of anti-Semitism in Europe. I was lucky. Scotland is not closed to me and I have rarely experienced any anti-Semitic behaviour here.

  As for Lev, I think it will take a lot more time for him to recover, for the wonder of this place to seep into his soul, for the wilderness to heal him. The terrors of that night continue to plague him. I can see it in the heaviness of his heart and in the restlessness of his dreams. He is down at the loch now, trying to catch fish. I fear he has no clue what to do with a rod and a line, and that it will be porridge rather than trout we will have for our supper tonight. I need to remind myself to be patient and to indulge him when I can. It is not often a man sees his brother die in his arms.

  So, Charlotte, that is the story of that fearful night now told. It feels so much better now that I have written down these words. I hope that it marks the end of one chapter in my life and the beginning of another.

  I look out of the window of my uncle’s cottage and see that Lev is approaching. My goodness, he carries a lar
ge fish in one hand which he is now showing off to me. He is smiling.

  With all my love

  Your friend, as always

  Celia

  Epilogue

  Madame Blum never fully recovered from her grief over Sammy’s suicide and died peacefully in her sleep soon afterwards. Her property was sold and turned into a guesthouse by the new purchasers who, for reasons unknown, called it after the name of the previous owner. In the 1960s, ‘Madame Blum’s’ became well known as a hostel and message hub for travellers passing through the Middle East, alongside other legendary outposts such as Uncle Moustache’s restaurant just inside Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, and The Pudding Shop opposite the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

  Mickey Vered (originally Michael Rosenblatt from Manchester, England) continued to run a successful import/export firm in Haifa. However, his business was merely a front for his efforts in helping re-organize the Jewish underground defence force known as the Haganah. Mickey became instrumental in smuggling large caches of weapons into Palestine from Europe. He was arrested several times by the British security forces for his clandestine activities but never imprisoned. He was killed in 1947 from injuries sustained when a faulty grenade from one of his illegal shipments blew up in his face.

  Rafi Melamud remained on Kibbutz Kfar Ha’Emek after the riots. He served three two-year terms as kibbutz secretary and was responsible for introducing modern farming and irrigation methods into the settlement. He returned to Poland in early 1939 in an attempt to bring back his remaining family members to Palestine. Unfortunately, he got caught up in the German invasion of Poland later that year. Records show that he was shot (not gassed, as originally thought) in Majdanek concentration camp in December 1943.

  Amos Tzedek remained on Kibbutz Kfar Ha’Emek for the rest of his days. His strong leadership and socialist ideals meant the settlement always kept to the political left of the wider kibbutz movement as it developed through the decades. Kfar Ha’Emek remained one of the few settlements where children were brought up separately from their parents. It also has survived entirely on the labour of its own members and has never employed workers from outside, whether Arabs or Jews. Amos went on to become the principle archivist at Kfar Ha’Emek and a small museum was built in his name to host his work. He died in 1994 at the age of ninety-two and is buried at the small cemetery alongside the viewing point known locally as the Centre of the World.

  Gregory Sverdlov and the Palestine Electric Power Company went ahead with their plans to build a hydro-electric power station by damming up the River Yarmuk. The land that had never existed on any map was flooded and submerged in the process. For fifteen years, the power station supplied electricity to both the Jewish and Arab population alike until it was blown up in 1948 in a raid by pan-Arab forces in Israel’s War of Independence or Nakba (the catastrophe) as it is known by Palestinian Arabs.

  Zayed and Ibrahim Daraghmeh The British administration provided the Daraghmeh tribe with land just south of Beisan along with a certain amount of monetary compensation. The tribe elder, Zayed, died shortly after the move. It is thought Ibrahim was killed in the above raid to blow up the hydro-electric power station owned by the Palestine Electric Power Company in 1948. More recently, the Israeli Army has attempted to force the Daraghmeh tribe to leave its current site, destroyed many houses and outbuildings with bulldozers and cut off water supplies to the area. The confiscated land is to be used for the expansion of Jewish settlements in the region. The Israeli Supreme Court is currently considering claims by the Daragmeh tribe asserting their lawful right to remain on this land as granted to them under the British Mandate.

  Jonny Levy remained on Kfar Ha’Emek for a number of years where he served as the unofficial doctor and medical adviser for the settlements in the Jordan Valley. He eventually went to work at the Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. There he became a leading expert in trachoma and a relentless campaigner for its eradication throughout Palestine by means of improved sanitation conditions for both Jews and Arabs alike.

  Chaim Kalisher returned to Paris in 1930 where he became one of many personal advisers to the Anonymous Donor. However, the more formalised nature of the work there did not suit his temperament and he retired soon after on profits made from his investment in the Palestine Electric Power Company. He took up ornithology and established a reputation for himself as an accomplished amateur with a particular focus on the red-footed falcon. He died peacefully in his sleep on the 13th June 1940, on the eve of the German occupation of Paris.

  Sarah Lindenbaum and her friends from the Young Guard worked for two years on a road gang before becoming part of a seed group for a new socialist settlement in the Jezreel Valley. Sadly, Sarah contracted cholera and died before the project got off the ground. She was only twenty-three years old. Her grave can be found in a small cemetery near Tel Megiddo.

  Charlotte Maxwell married John Armstrong McKenzie, later Lord McKenzie of Springbank. The couple remained strong campaigners for temperance in the city of Glasgow and opened the well-known Grand Temperance Hotel in the Dennistoun area of the city where alcohol was forbidden on the premises. The business of the hotel gradually declined during the 1930s and eventually closed down just before the beginning of World War II. The building took on various guises thereafter but was eventually demolished in 2009 to make way for the construction of sporting facilities in advance of Glasgow hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Lady McKenzie died in 1950.

  Lev Sela (originally Gottleib) went back to Poland to sell his grandfather’s land before returning to Scotland where he used the proceeds of the sale to support himself through a law degree at Glasgow University. He married Celia Kahn in 1934 and the couple had two children, Samuel and Daniel. Lev went on to set up the Amshel Property Company, an estate agency with branches throughout the city and West Scotland. Sammy and Danny took over the business on Lev’s death in 1970. Their own children continue to run what remains a family business to this day.

  Celia Kahn returned to Glasgow where she worked for a number of years in an administrative role for the Women’s Welfare and Advisory Clinic, a birth control centre in the Govan area of the city. After she married, she withdrew from the workforce to raise her children but moved into political activism in the late 1950s and early 1960s when she became involved with the then fledgling anti-nuclear protest movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Celia died in 1980 in Glenkura, Western Scotland while holidaying with her family at her late uncle’s cottage which she and her husband Lev had earlier expanded into a holiday home. Her memoirs From Glasgow to the Galilee are held in a collection by the Scottish Jewish Archive Centre, Garnethill Synagogue, Glasgow.

  The land that didn’t exist on any map. After being totally submerged as a result of the damming work by the Palestine Electric Power Company, this area of land later re-emerged after the hydro-electric power station was destroyed in 1948. The Kfar Ha’Emek kibbutz subsequently used the land for the cultivation of cotton as the years of flooding had reproduced to some extent the conditions of the Nile delta which are ideal for growing high quality cotton fibres. The land was later ceded to the State of Israel in 1958 when the son of the Anonymous Donor in a generous gesture agreed to transfer all PICA-owned properties to the State. There are now proposed plans between the Israeli and Jordanian governments to turn the area into a peace park.

  The Anonymous Donor remains anonymous.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. While every effort has been made to accurately represent the general attitudes and policies of the various real life parties to the issues surrounding Palestine in the 1920s – the Jews, the Arabs, the Zionists, the Bedouin, the British and the French – many of the specific details concerning individuals, organizations, dates, places, geography have been altered to accommodate the narrative of the story.

  To avoid confusion, however, the following are actual events but they may not have taken place at the
exact time specified in the novel. These include the Jaffa Riots in 1921, the Palestine Riots in 1929 – also known as the 1929 Massacres (by the Jews) and the Buraq Uprising (by the Arabs). An earthquake did take place in Palestine in 1927 and the port of Haifa was constructed during the 1920s although it did not officially open until 1933.

  A hydro-electric power station was established at the confluence of the Yarmuk River and the Jordan River at Naharayim (Arab name: Jisr al-Kajami) in 1932 by the famous Russian engineer Pinchas Rutenberg (on which the character Gregory Sverdlov is based only in terms of nationality and profession), partly using land leased from Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan in exchange for electricity. The power station ceased to be operational following fierce fighting between Israeli and Arab brigades in 1948.

  In 1994, Naharayim was the site used for the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty and became known as the Island of Peace. However, that peace was shattered three years later when a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a party of visiting Israeli schoolgirls, killing seven of them. It remains as the site of the proposed Jordan River Peace Park under the auspices of the Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a non-government eco-organization with offices in Tel Aviv, Amman and Ramallah. There are plans, endorsed by mayors and communities in both Israel and Jordan, to re-flood part of the area to create a bird sanctuary. For more information, please visit the FoEME website: http://foeme.org/www/?module=projects&record_id=123