by Arnold Zable
‘Suddenly they are surrounded by Estonian guards. The prisoners knew there was something unusual happening back in the camp. As they approached, they saw the German Commandant standing by the window of the barrack drinking vodka, and they heard the sound of shooting.
‘The prisoners were passing a toilet block, a wooden building with a big window. They ran into the building and climbed out the window. They reached a wire fence, broke through the wire and started running to the forest, everyone in different directions, and the guards were shooting.
‘About fourteen people survived. Some were captured by the guards and brought back to camp. Drabkin had four brothers with him in the camp. The youngest disappeared when they were running for the forest and he assumed he was killed. His name was Isaac.
‘In fact he did survive. Drabkin met him after the war. He was an eyewitness and what he saw is now on record in the Holocaust Centre. Isaac said he saw Hirshke shot and killed by the guards as he was running.’
I cannot yet let go of Hirshke. I am burdened by the gravity of the story and the need to honour the nuances. Something eludes me. The story remains incomplete. I return to Phillip’s house weeks later, and step out of the car to the quiet of a suburban morning.
Minutes later, Phillip and I are standing before the geisha silkscreen. He points out details only an educated eye can appreciate. ‘The painting is a few hundred years old,’ he says, ‘maybe much older. The partition between the two screens is a means of protecting the work from earthquakes. When a quake strikes, the painting can be quickly taken down and folded.’
Phillip delights in his knowledge. He ushers me closer and points to the older geisha. ‘You see? She is wearing an obi, a wide sash over the waist of her kimono. It is an important part of her attire. It shows her higher status. Her pupil is not yet entitled to it.
‘Artworks hanging on the wall are rare in Japan. The Japanese prefer to have a view of the garden, the living landscape framed by a large window. Look carefully,’ Phillip says, bending forward, gently touching the silk. ‘You will see that the screen is made up of small squares, each about five inches square, glued together to produce the larger material.
‘Japanese artists are very sensitive. They are trying to say things that are very important to them. Their work is rich in symbols. I am not an artist. I cannot express such things as an artist. It is even more difficult to express subtle things in words. Only the poets really know how to do it. You see, this is why I loved Hirshke.’
We return to the table, to the same positions we had during our previous conversation. The silkscreen of the geishas remains the backdrop. I ask Phillip about the incident that first drew me here: the night of the reading in the cellar, and the poems.
‘Yes,’ says Phillip. ‘I think that the song about the partisan girl, “Quiet the Night”, was the more important of the two poems for Hirshke at the time he wrote them. It was the first one he read. He was a fighter, a member of the partisan movement, but he was not a killer. Everyone loved Hirshke. I have not heard or read one unkind word about him. He was a dreamer, he loved life, he loved people, and I think he loved the partisan girl.’
‘Her name was Vitke Kempner. At the time that Hirshke wrote the poem she was already in the forest, blowing up trains with explosives. Together with two companions, she blew up a German military transport carrying two hundred soldiers on the outskirts of Vilna.
‘Then she walked three days and nights with wounded legs and feet back to the ghetto. It was the first of many acts of sabotage by the partisans of Vilna. Hirshke honoured the deed in his poem, and he himself selected the captivating music.
‘It is said that Vitke had a lover in the forest. As far as I know, for Hirshke it was love at a distance. All he could do was write the poems, and this one was both about her and about resistance in the form of the partisan girl. You see what it was.’
I am beginning to see, to fill in the picture. On the surface, there is a cellar, a single candle. And beneath the surface, the flickering flame of love, even amid the brutality and slaughter. Now I see the picture anew: the four friends huddled around a makeshift table, and, at the helm, a poet in hell, clinging to his humanity, extracting fragments of poetry from the horror. The two poems are inseparable: partisan girl and partisan anthem: love and defiance, longing and rage, acting in tandem. Together they complete the picture.
The Ancient Mariner
When she was born her mother was upset she had not given birth to a boy. Her father said, ‘I am not upset. I am glad I have a daughter.’ He named her Amal, meaning hope, and he took her to many places in his dark green Morris. Every Friday, the day of rest, he drove her to the Tigris, to walk along the banks of the river. As they walked he sang to her from the repertoire of Umm Khultum, the grand diva of Arabic music.
One morning as father and daughter were strolling by the Tigris they came upon a gathering of people dressed in black, weeping. ‘What happened to these people?’ Amal asked. ‘They have lost their son to the river and they are waiting for his body to rise to the surface,’ her father replied. ‘Bodies can float,’ he said.
‘In the ocean, many times I wanted to die,’ Amal would tell me years later. ‘I was waiting for the angel of death, but I remembered what my father told me and I held onto the body of a woman. And I heard music. I heard Umm Khultum, and the songs my father sang when we walked by the Tigris. Maybe this saved me.’
I first met Amal in July 2002. She appeared distracted, and anguished. Her gaze was directed at me and beyond, to places far distant. In time I came to understand that it took in the streets of Baghdad, the banks of the Tigris, her perilous escapes in the dead of night, black seas beneath black skies, and the moment the boat sank, Friday, October 19 2001. ‘At ten past three in the afternoon,’ she said. ‘I know because the watches stopped at this time.’
It was the first of many times I heard Amal recount her tale, fuelled by a desperate need which increased as she approached her final months: ‘My brother, when I die, you must tell my story, and the story of what happened to the people who died in the ocean. Tell the people about my father, and the songs he sang when we walked along the Tigris.
‘Tell the people I love music, I love colour, I love movies. Tell them I love Baghdad, but when I see it on the television, when I see the bombs falling, when I see what they do to the people, I do not know my city. It has a different colour. I do not know that colour.’
Five years after her death I am fulfilling my promise. Yet each time I sit down to write, anxiety rises for fear I will not do the story justice, will not find the words that convey the terror and beauty of Amal’s telling, the fire in her eyes, the look of incredulity and wonder she retained even until the last days before she died, four years after I first heard her tell it.
I recall the many places I heard her recount it, in the various dwellings she lived in, across the northern suburbs of the city where the new communities have settled, within walking distance of stores stocked with fashionable hijabs and emporiums boasting Ottoman treasures from Turkey, shops with businesses named after ancient kingdoms—the Phoenician Café, the Euphrates hairstylist—miniature replicas of Baghdad and Beirut, Istanbul and Ankara.
I recall the public gatherings at which I heard Amal speak: the town halls, schools, mosques and churches, at a memorial service in the national capital, and in a packed cathedral in Sydney where she embraced a fellow survivor. Oblivious to the audience, the two women were weeping and swaying, and Amal was saying, ‘I am still in the water with the dying!’ And the night she stood on stage at the Melbourne Town Hall before an audience of two thousand, her headscarf glowing in the spotlight, her black robes all but lost to the darkness, and her expression of childish wonder as she prefaced her umpteenth telling by saying, ‘When I was a child, my dream was to become a singer, an actor. I dreamed that one day I would become famous. Today I received the Oscar!’
I reflect on the talks she delivered within hours of completing y
et another course of chemotherapy, the night she pleaded with nurses and doctors to allow her temporary leave from her hospital bed to speak, as arranged, at a memorial meeting. And the late night phone calls, Amal ringing because she dreaded the dreams that awaited her when she succumbed to sleep, fearing her nightly return to the ocean: ‘My brother, I am not like I was before. I cannot sleep. I am afraid I will see the ocean. I think I lost something in the ocean. I want to go back to the ocean. I want to ask the ocean, what did I lose? Is there something the ocean has to tell me?’
She says that every night she sleeps on the water. She is alone, and she cannot breathe, and there are people shouting, ‘Get back, get back, it’s dangerous, you are going to drown, you are going to die,’ and she puts her hand out to prevent herself from sinking, and wakes covered in perspiration. She welcomes the pre-dawn birdsong, the greying light seeping through the blinds, her return to the routines of the living.
She says there are nights when she gets out of bed, dresses, steps outside, and wanders the streets to prevent her dreams from returning. She tells me of her late afternoon forays, riding the trains to the city. She sits apart, but she is among people, listening to a walkman, to music, always music. Leaving the train at Flinders Street Station and descending the steps to the river to walk its banks as she once walked beside the Tigris.
She cannot stop thinking about the tragedy, cannot erase the images. She says she wants to paint what happened in the ocean, to paint the corpse that saved her, paint the children asleep on the water, paint the mother and newborn baby still attached by the umbilical cord asleep upon the ocean. She has epic vistas in mind: paintings she has seen of the sinking Titanic, panoramas in the manner of Delacroix, Picasso’s Guernica.
Amal knew of such works because her husband, Abbas, owned a gallery in Baghdad selling imported posters of classical artworks and paintings of Baghdad streets, iconic places. She sketched the scene many times in preparation for a canvas. She was desperate to get it right, to portray the individual people, the men, women and children choking on water, the mayhem and horror, the boat going under. ‘My brother, I lost something in the ocean. I want to find it. Maybe I will find it in a painting.’
Now I too am anxious to get Amal’s story right, to find the words that will capture her eloquence, and convey the story with the clarity and poetic vision that was evident from our very first meeting, in the winter of 2002, within weeks of her arrival in Melbourne—in a neighbourhood centre, a refuge named Becharre House after the birthplace of Khalil Gibran, the peripatetic poet, a fitting setting for our first encounter.
The people of the city are at work, the traffic snarls long over. A quiet has settled on the streets. Young mothers wheel prams and strollers. School children walk hand in hand, setting out on an excursion. The morning radiates the blessed ordinariness that Amal yearned for in her years of turmoil.
She sits by a table in black robes and black hijab. A short, rotund woman, she leans forward, her palms facing upwards, fingers curling, imploring. Her hand gestures are expansive, her amber eyes alight with expectation and gentle fury, and she is telling me:
‘When the boat went down, I saw everything. I was like a camera. I cannot forget anything. I want people to know what happened. Maybe that is why I am alive, to tell the story of the boat, to tell about the children and their dreams, and the women and their dreams, to tell of the men and what happened to them in my country. And why the Iraqi people want to escape, why we had to take this boat to save our lives, to save our families. Maybe this is why I did not die in the ocean.
‘The motor stopped and some people tried to fix it. Suddenly the water came up and the women screamed, “We are going to die! We are going to die!” They could not believe it. I looked down and saw the water touch my legs, and I did not know where was my son. I looked down at the water, and it came up quickly. It felt like someone was touching my heart and pushing me down in the water.
‘I didn’t shout, I didn’t say anything. The boat went down quickly, quickly. Quickly. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I saw that I was in the ocean, and I saw there were children under the water with me. I cannot swim, and because I cannot swim I did not breathe, and because I did not breathe I did not swallow water, and maybe this is why I am still living. And when I came up to the surface, the doors of hell opened.
‘My brother, you can’t imagine. I saw children drinking the sea, and they were shouting and going under. I heard one woman saying, “God, I am going to die now,” one man crying, “My wife die, my daughter die.” Someone is shouting, “Oh my family, I lose all my family,” and one woman is screaming, “I lose my children, I lose my husband, I do not want to stay alive, I lose everything.” And my friend is saying, “Please, God help me, help my little son, he is going to die, please help my baby.” And another friend is shouting, “I lose all my daughters. God help me, I lose all my daughters.”
‘And I said, “Oh God, this is hell. What has happened to us?” I said, “I can’t die. I must fight. I am a mother. I must fight because I have a son in the water, and a son who is waiting for me in Iran, and they are going to lose their future. I must fight because I have a daughter who lives in Jordan with her husband and four children. I must fight because I want to hold my father’s hand and walk with him by the Tigris.”
‘I fought, but I did not shout. I looked at the people. I saw everything. I saw the people’s eyes and they were frightened. I saw one woman floating with her baby. The cord was not broken, and the baby was sleeping on the water. This woman was from Iran and she was seven months pregnant. She told me before we left Sumatra that her husband is in Australia. He has a temporary visa, and she must go in the boat to see him. She is going to follow him, and she feels happy, but when the boat sank I saw her dead body in the water.
‘Another woman, she was sixteen years old, she also was pregnant, and she also gave birth in the ocean. Now she and the baby are sleeping on the water. Maybe they are dreaming. Maybe I am dreaming.
‘And I see the children. I know them from the hotel in Jakarta where we were waiting. The children look fresh. They look like angels. They look like birds, like they are going to fly on the water. One girl, she is eleven years old, and she is lying on the ocean, and her eyes talk to me. They are saying, “What crime have I done?” And I say, “Oh poor, beautiful girl,” and I see her falling asleep on the ocean.
‘Then one big wave carried me away and I started to swallow water. I thought I was going to die, and another wave pushed me under. I didn’t want to die. I pushed down on the ocean with my hands and I came up out of the water, and when I came up I saw my son, Amjed. He is sixteen years old and he was frightened, but I cannot come to him. He was touching a piece of wood, and when he saw me he started to cry, and he said, “Mum, we are going to die.”
‘We can’t believe it. We think it is a bad dream. He said, “Mum, please come and save me.” He said, “Mum, I can’t swim.” He said, “Mum, please forgive me, maybe I have done something bad to you.” He said, “Please come closer, I want to kiss you.” It is hard for me to talk about this, because he is young, and he is my son, and I am his mother.
‘In that moment I saw a woman coming up from the ocean. She was wearing a life jacket, and she was dead. And I remembered in Baghdad, when I was a little girl, and I was walking with my father by the Tigris, we saw many people sitting by the water, crying and waiting for the body to come up to the surface. “Bodies can float,” my father told me, and in the ocean I remembered what he told me, and I held onto the woman with one hand, and I swam with the other hand to my son, Amjed.
‘He took off her life jacket and he put it on me, and he saved me, he saved my life. He kissed me, and a big wave pushed me away, and he shouted: “Mum, I love you, I am sorry we are going to die,” and he said, “Goodbye Mum. Maybe I will see you in paradise.”
‘A wave took me away from my son and he disappeared, and the wave carried me to other people. They were fighting for thei
r lives, and they were shouting, “God help us. God help us.” There were children in the water, and they could not say anything. They could not talk, but their eyes looked to me for help. They knew they were going to die. I could not believe what happened to them. I did not shout. I just looked at the people. I was like a camera, and many people shouted, “God help us. God help us.” There was bread and biscuits, bottles of water and gasoline, pieces of boat, suitcases and oranges swimming on the water, and the people were crying, “God help us. God help us.”
‘After one hour, everything became quiet. I thought there was no one alive. I was alone, and there was nothing, only the sky and the water, and the dead woman. I asked, “Why am I still alive?” And I answered, “Because I am going to tell the world what happened to us. I am going to talk about the children and their dreams. I am going to talk about the men and women who wanted to make a new life for their families.”
‘I talked to the dead woman. I told her, “My sister, please forgive me. Maybe I am hurting you. Maybe it is not nice to touch your body,” and I asked her, “What did you lose in the ocean? Did you lose your husband? Did you lose your children?” I asked her, “Did you lose your soul?” She was a young woman and I could not look at her face. I felt shy. I wanted her to forgive me. The rain was falling and the ocean was angry. I talked with the dead woman and I asked her, “My sister, please stay with me. My sister, please forgive me.”
‘The night was falling, and it was dark, and I could not see my hand. Dead bodies and fish were touching me. I smelled gasoline, and I saw a black island spraying water. I swam to the island and I saw it was a whale, not an island. Then I saw lights moving over the water. I thought maybe there is another island, and I started to swim to the lights.
‘One light was touching my hand and touching the dead woman, then the light was touching the tail of a shark, and the shark was swimming around me. I smelled of gasoline. Maybe this is why the shark went away and did not eat the people in the water.
