Leah's Journey

by Gloria Goldreich

  The merchants pressed their sales with urgent confidences, oily whispers of sacrifice and esteem.

  “I promise you, my good sir, this I give you as a bargain for only ten pounds. Also you must do me the great honor of drinking a small coffee with me. I say ten pounds and I am losing money, but even so, I know you go soon to fight for freedom so I will make you a special price of nine pounds. But please, you must take more sugar in the coffee and drink while my servant wraps your excellent purchase.”

  Patrons thronged to the sidewalk cafés with their round tin tables shielded by striped umbrellas whose brave reds and bright greens had long since been faded by the relentless desert sun. The waiters scurried about, always hurrying, always delayed. They wore black pants that glistened with grease and sweat, bright red cumberbunds, and shirts that had been pounded to a startling whiteness on the riverbank. The thin, busy waiters, who balanced several tall glasses of cold coffee on their arms with mysterious dexterity, knew everything about the life of Cairo. They knew who was in the city and who had left. Points of origin and final destinations were their secrets, transmitted from ear to ear for a modest baksheesh, or tip.

  Salim, the headwaiter of the Cafe El Ibrahim, opposite the British Embassy, offered his information with the ice water he served after each cup of Turkish coffee. Sir Archibald Wavell was in earnest conference with a man named David Arthur Sandford. This Sandford, Salim confided, was a peculair man who drank only hot water and honey. In the café, the merchants absorbed this knowledge as though it had an obscure value, and the journalist at a nearby table noted the name of Sir Archibald’s visitor in his orange Penguin paperback. Within hours he knew that Sandford had been consul at Addis Ababa and lived in Ethiopia as a gentleman farmer and confidant of poor Emperor Haile Selassie, who had been exiled by the Italian Fascists.

  It was Salim whom the merchants asked about the identity of a bearded stranger in British uniform who sat picking at an order of eggplant fried in sesame oil and reading a Hebrew newspaper. He was a Palestinian Jew, Salim told them, named Avram Akavia. It was truly miraculous but this infidel Jew spoke an impeccable, classical Arabic. The merchants nodded admiringly and switched to usage of a Delta dialect.

  The journalist had no need to research the background of Avram Akavia. He was known throughout the Middle East as the Jewish secretary to Major Orde Wingate, who, in turn, was known as the T. E. Lawrence of the Jewish community of Palestine. Just as Lawrence had dreamed of an Arab army, so Wingate imagined regiments of Jewish soldiers. The journalist shrugged at the thought. Jewish soldiers, indeed. He was a Londoner and knew the East End well. What sort of army could be raised from among those earlocked, bearded merchants of Whitechapel or the pale students of law and medicine who haunted the inns and academies? Of course, he had been to Palestine and he had to admit that the pioneers on the new agricultural settlements there were a different breed. Still, what could they do with that swamp-ridden Galilee that the Arabs themselves had deserted? The Zionists were mad, and Wingate, for all his brilliance, had been affected by their madness.

  But still, what the hell was Wingate’s secretary doing in Cairo, eating eggplant in the fall of 1940? Idly the journalist juggled his pieces of information, handling them in his mind like the isolated, ill-fitting sections of a jigsaw puzzle, moving them about until at last, by some obscure, chimeric connection they came together and he understood that Orde Wingate would be involved in a campaign in Ethiopia. Of course, that was it—and that accounted for the moderately inflated numbers of RAF troops in Cairo. He looked up as two young RAF men whom he had not seen before sat down at a neighboring table. Poor chaps, he thought. They think they’re still on parade, ridiculously got up like that in khaki, sporting their wool berets in the desert heat. They somehow did not look British. Red hair, like the taller boy’s coppery crown, was common in Wales. They were Welsh, he decided. Satisfied, he slipped a half-crown, covering both payment and insurance, into Salim’s outstretched hand, and left.

  The two young airmen put their red berets on the table, loosened their ascots, and asked Salim to bring them large Coca Colas.

  “Americans,” the waiter reported to the leather merchant who sat in the doorway puffing on a nargileh. He did not bring them Cokes but set before them large glasses of orange gazoz, in which small pieces of shaved ice floated like deadly slivers of glass. The shorter airman lifted the glass and twirled it around.

  “When this war is over,” Gregory Liebowitz said, eyeing the ice shavings distastefully, “I am going to make me a fortune.”

  “Spoken like a true communist turned socialist turned capitalist,” Aaron Goldfeder replied. “And may an old comrade ask how you are going to make this fortune?”

  “I’m going to import ice-cube trays. First I’m going to bring them into England and then into Egypt. Then I will work my way across Africa. I will consider it an altruistic endeavor—my contribution to the downtrodden of this earth.”

  Aaron laughed, remembering Gregory’s good-humored arguments in the pubs of Bournemouth where they had been sent from Canada to get their initial training. The only places that had been on limits to the RAF troops had been The Prince of Wales and The Golden Swan, and neither proprietor had shown any sympathy for the American predilection for ice cubes in their drinks.

  “Say, look at that guy over there,” Gregory said and pointed to the table where Avram Akavia sat reading a newspaper. “That’s Hebrew the bloke’s reading.”

  Aaron smiled at the anglicism. Gregory Liebowitz, Aaron guessed, would go through life using the English expressions he had acquired so readily.

  “You’re right. It’s a Hebrew newspaper. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I wonder if I could read it.” He stared hard at the man. “I guess he’s a Palestinian Jew. I’ve got family in Palestine. Moshe, my mother’s brother, is on a kibbutz in the Galilee. You know, the rumor is that a lot of Palestinian Jews will be coming out here. This Wingate has a mania about training a Jewish army. He worked with a couple of units in Palestine and thought they were such great soldiers that he’s asked for a contingent to serve with him in North Africa.”

  “Maybe he’ll pass the word about Jews being such great soldiers to the guys in our unit,” Gregory said wryly, touching the small out-puffing of flesh just below his eye.

  Gregory was a short, plump young man with a gaminlike face, gifted with a sharp, swift sense of humor and a fierce instinct for justice. The two qualities neatly balanced each other, giving Gregory the talent for self-mockery. At home it had been Gregory who worked intensely on Movement literature, traveling to migrant encampments in Pennsylvania in vain attempts to organize the itinerant workers, but it had also been a puckish, half-drunk Gregory who drew a moustache on their poster of Mother Bloor. Gregory had joined the RAF in passionate reaction to the Hitler-Stalin pact and had persuaded Aaron to enlist with him. Although he longed to do battle with the avowed foes of humanity, the only wound he had sustained since joining His Majesty’s forces had been earned in a private boxing match with a young giant from the Canadian Rockies named Pierre. Pierre had culminated a series of observations on the cowardice of “les Juifs” and Gregory’s role in the Crucifixion with speculation as to whether a circumcised penis could actually sprout seed to germinate a new generation of Christ-killers.

  “Ah, le pauvre petit. They cut it all away. No juice come from there, bébé—no more little Jewish Christ-killers,” Pierre had said, sneaking up on Gregory as he unbuttoned at the urinal.

  Gregory’s years of fighting in the schoolyards of P.S. 107 and DeWitt Clinton High School had prepared him for such an encounter. Leisurely he turned, pivoted slightly, lifted his penis high, and sprayed Pierre in the face with a forceful stream of urine, aiming the last golden spurt, which stank of ammoniated beer, at Pierre’s eyes.

  “Jewish piss blinds,” Gregory said, calmly buttoning his fly as the astonished Canadian wiped his face with wads of toilet paper. “It’s our secret weapon.”
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br />   He walked slowly out, knowing that Pierre would follow him, his clenched fists ready, when the huge airman, with a curdling yell, hurtled out of the latrine and plummeted with him to the ground. The fight had been a fierce one and Gregory had emerged with two black eyes, one of which never healed properly, a bruised cheekbone, a chipped tooth, the admiration of his entire squadron, and, ultimately, Pierre’s friendship.

  That brawl behind the latrine had brought Gregory and Aaron to the attention of the training sergeant. A few days later they had been separated from their unit and, with another group of selected men, sent to the Middle East for special training. David Goldfeder had often told his son that it was the small insignificant incident that often altered the course of one’s life. His father would be amused to think that Aaron was sitting in a Cairo café because Gregory Liebowitz had been in a fight with a French Canadian backwoodsman.

  “Well, I think our fellow soldiers are getting the message,” Aaron said. “We did all right during that desert bivouac.”

  “Not bad for two kikes from the sidewalks of New York,” Gregory admitted.

  He and Aaron had been the only ones in their group not to panic when a sudden sandstorm swept down upon them. Together, they had controlled the group, ordering the men to freeze in place and to cover their eyes against the angry air-tossed pellets of sand that could permanently injure sight. It was after that storm that they stopped hearing the words “kike” and “sheeny” as they walked by.

  The bearded Palestinian neatly folded his newspaper, summoned Salim, spoke to him in Arabic, and paid his bill.

  “So what do you say, Aaron? You still think your bar mitzvah class prepared you to read this guy’s newspaper? Let’s see.” Gregory stood up and held his hand out to Avram Akavia.

  “Shalom aleichem,” he said, automatically using the traditional greeting extended from one Jew to another. “I have a bet with my friend here that even after five years of Hebrew School he can’t read a word of your newspaper. Can he try?”

  “Aleichem shalom.” The stranger returned the greeting in the prescribed manner and smiled. His skin was tanned to the color of the soft bronze they had seen in the metalworkers’ suq, and when he held his hand out his skin was hard, covered with calluses the texture of worn leather. “My name is Avram Akavia and I am from Palestine. You are British Jews?”

  “I’m Aaron Goldfeder. This is Gregory Liebowitz. We’re American but we signed up with the RAF in Canada.”

  “Ah yes. I have just been reading in this newspaper that you are so interested in that a surprising number of American Jews are crossing the border into Canada to do just that.”

  “Why not?” Gregory asked gruffly. “It is our war, after all. Hitler has said it himself—it is a war against the Jews.”

  “Yes. I agree. It is a war against civilization and democracy. I cannot remember who it was who said, ‘You can judge a civilization by the way it treats its Jews.’ It was your president John Adams, I think.”

  “You’ve got me,” Aaron said, returning the smile.

  He took the newspaper Avram Akavia handed him, glanced at it for a moment, then shook his head ruefully. “I can read the letters but without the vowels I’m lost.”

  “Ah—but a prayer book you can read, can you not?” the Palestinian asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Good. We are lacking men for a minyan for the Kol Nidre service tonight. We thought we should have to leave the camp and go to the Old Synagogue here in the city. But if you can join us we shall be assured of a quorum.”

  “You know,” Aaron said wonderingly, “I’d forgotten about Yom Kippur.”

  “Please then—you will come?” Akavia’s English was clipped, his accent British, but his sentences had the strange convolutions that David’s speech occasionally revealed. Tonight, Aaron thought, across the world, David and Leah, Rebecca and small Michael, would all be going to temple. And he, in this strange city rooted in a desert, would share the same prayers, the same sweet mournful chants.

  “We’ll come. But where will the service be?”

  “The large tent in B Garrison. You’ll see a Jewish flag on the post and a small shield that says ‘Gideon Force.’ Come at seven. Shalom aleichem.”

  “Aleichem shalom,” Aaron replied, wondering at the greeting that came so effortlessly to his lips.

  “Gideon Force,” he repeated aloud as he watched Akavia stride briskly down the street in the direction of the British High Command.

  The headquarters of B Garrison were south of Cairo, where the city abruptly ended and the desert began. Across the endless stretches of pearl-white sand, wooden walks had been stretched to border a military city in transit. Huge mess tents with the odor of bacon clinging to the olive-drab canvas, dormitory tents, their poles sagging beneath the weight of drying laundry, and staff headquarters squatted clumsily on the sandy expanse. Small Arab dogs ran in packs between the canvas shelters, their skin loose across their fragile skeletons. They howled in concert and then sat in mournful silence.

  Gregory and Aaron, in their dress uniforms, walked down the streets of the tarpaulin enclave. Aaron shivered slightly. The chill of the desert evening was always a shock after the heavy heat of the day. They passed groups of soldiers who gathered around a harmonica player and sang the songs of the last war with nostalgic gusto. “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary… Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag… Show me the way to go home…” This war, their own, was still too young to have created a new repertoire so they borrowed from their fathers’ music, because this tentside singing was as important to them as the long desert marches and the daily rifle practice.

  Other groups of men dashed about the sand in improvised games of soccer, and an ambitious group of commissioned officers had painstakingly managed to set up a court for bowls, which they practiced with great seriousness, as though they were playing on a Yorkshire green, not on an arid, endless desert.

  But there was no activity near the large tent over which flew a banner imprinted with a Jewish star, flailing bravely in the mild desert breeze. Here, there was a sweet quiet which Aaron recognized—the strange silence of solitude which encompassed every congregation immediately before the Kol Nidre prayer was offered. The blue-and-white flag, lifted in a sudden gust of wind, billowed out against the sky which had darkened to a pale gray, streaked with the bloody tentacles of the dying sun struggling against the desert night. The sight of the flag moved Aaron to a strange emotion of pride and wonder. It was a paradox of history that a Jewish army of sorts—admittedly wearing British uniforms but still made up of Jews who lived in their ancient homeland—was assembled on the soil of the land they had fled as slaves. In Jewish history, Egypt was the symbol of every land where Jews had lived as strangers and died as victims. The Russia which David and Leah had fled, where Aaron’s natural father had had his skull bludgeoned, had been a modern Egypt. David reminded them of that each year as they sat at the Passover table and read the injunction reminding them that each Jew must celebrate the Passover as though he himself had been released from Egypt.

  Aaron hesitated for a moment before entering the tent, allowing himself to summon up the picture of his family’s seder table, of his father’s calm and comforting voice, his sister’s bright laughter, his small brother’s high sweet voice and always, always, his mother’s large, searching eyes. His letters from home were irregular but comforting. That fall Rebecca had left for Bennington College and his mother had started going into the factory on a daily basis. The only thing that puzzled him was Lisa Frawley’s persistent silence. She had not answered any of his letters from England, and Rebecca wrote to tell him that she had gone away to school for the last year of high school. He had thought that there was something special between himself and his sister’s friend, but perhaps her silence was her way of telling him that what had been was over. She had been so young then. They had both been so young, and the pine needles beneath their yielding bodies had been so soft and sweet. A
confining melancholy sealed him off from the other soldiers in the tent and he was startled when Avram Akavia pressed his hand in quiet welcome and drew him forward to meet the other worshipers.

  In the end there had been no need to worry about a prayer quorum of ten. Twice that number of soldiers stood on the raw-wood tent platform smiling uneasily at each other.

  “Let me introduce you,” Avram Akavia said, and Aaron and Gregory circled the room with him, shaking hands with soldiers named Shimon and Elitzur, Asaph and Chaim, Nehemiah and Ezra. The names rocketed Aaron back to his days at the Hebrew school on Brighton Beach Avenue, to lengthy incomprehensible Torah readings in hot synagogues, but the Nehemiah who stood before him was not a biblical figure but a good-natured, freckled boy who wore a BEF sharpshooter medal on his tunic. Asaph, however, like his biblical namesake, was a medical officer who had earned his degree at the Hebrew University medical school. The last soldier Avram introduced them to was a tall boy named Yaakov, and as they clasped hands Aaron looked up at the Palestinian soldier’s face and experienced a sudden flash of recognition. In those gold-flecked dark eyes he saw his mother’s familiar stare, and when Yaakov smiled his lips fleshed out too fully, as Leah’s did. Avram Akavia had used only first names in the introduction, but Aaron could feel Yaakov looking hard at him.

  “May I ask your family name?” the Palestinian soldier said hesitantly.

  “Goldfeder. I am Aaron Goldfeder, the son of Leah and David Goldfeder. And you—”

  “I am Yaakov Abrahami, the son of your mother’s brother, Moshe.”

  The two young men remained still for a moment and then moved swiftly toward each other and reached out, arm upon arm, the fingers of each biting into the strong arm muscles of the other. They clasped each other’s strength in welcome while their eyes burned in recognition, igniting an affection startling in its spontaneity.