The Liberation of Celia Kahn

by J David Simons

  Jonny would come down to see her soon anyway. He came at least twice a day, showed his concern, practised his bedside manner, but happily he didn’t stay too long, realising that having him witness her constant retching was as embarrassing to her as it was uncomfortable for him. He was probably off somewhere playing cards, happy again to be in the company of soldiers, drinking their heads off, talking their strange Tommy talk with words like “whiz bangs” and “Blighty”, smoking their coffin-sticks and telling tall tales of Kitchener’s Army. The ship was full of these eager young men in uniform, no doubt a stint in Palestine offering an easier tour of duty than in the old days being dug down in trenches in northern France. She’d also spied a group of nuns crowding the passageways like flocks of trapped birds, their faces virgin plain and earnest, off to the Holy Land to see where Jesus had walked, stumbled and died. There were tourists too, mostly American and Canadian, they had started out in New York, she hadn’t seen much of them, just on embarkation at Liverpool on their way back up to the upper decks. Well-dressed they were, the men in their fancy suits, one even with a top hat, the women with their mink coats over summer dresses, all these strange accents exciting her. The furthest she’d been from home on a boat was down the water on a Clyde steamer to Dunoon and Rothesay. And even then she had been seasick.

  The ship rolled slightly and she had to steady herself. It was such a monster of a vessel, this Empress of Scotland with its two giant funnels and six decks above the water line, yet the merest wash in the water seemed to rock it in its tracks. If she had been honest with herself, she hadn’t expected to be travelling third class. What with the size of the Levy family home, she’d imagined a more romantic voyage. As Agnes would have said – come the revolution and we’ll all be travelling first class. It was a sentiment Jonny’s father hadn’t approved of, the senior Mr Levy so dismayed by his son’s abandonment of his medical career that he left it up to his son to finance the price of his socialist ambitions. And certainly her own parents hadn’t been too keen about her plans. She had waited until the Friday night dinner to tell them.

  “Pa-le-stine,” her mother had shrieked as her father ignored the proceedings behind the Jewish Evening Times. “Tell me I didn’t hear correctly. You are going to Palestine?”

  “That is my plan.”

  “Your plan? Who has a plan? To live from day to day, that is all we can hope for. But a plan? Please God tell me you have a plan to marry this Jonny Levy?”

  “No, mother. I do not have a plan to marry Jonny. We are merely travelling together to Palestine.”

  “How can you do such a thing?”

  “What thing?”

  “To be like this. With a man?”

  “It is the modern age, mother. I don’t need a chaperone for everything I do. I thought you would be happy for me. Isn’t that what good Jews are supposed to do? Return to the Holy Land. And then the Messiah will come.”

  “To marry this doctor would make me happy. Then the Messiah will come. But this? What does his father say?”

  “To be honest, his father is not happy either.”

  “You see. Someone in that family is talking sense. Anyway, you cannot go. I forbid it.”

  “You cannot stop me.”

  “Papa. Tell her. She cannot go. If she goes, she will be dead in my eyes. I will have no daughter. I will say Kaddish for you like a mother in mourning.”

  Papa Kahn lowered his newspaper. He was not happy to be interrupted in his usual Friday evening ritual, the reading of the obituary columns in Yiddish. “Please calm down, Martha. Let us see if we can talk about this reasonably.”

  “There is no reasonable talk in this matter. And where is Mendel? He is the one to put such ideas into her head. All this talk of socialism and revolution. This Glasgow is a fine place for us Jews. What need is there to go digging holes in Palestine.”

  “Scotland was not such a fine place for Avram,” Celia countered.

  “Avram was an isolated incident,” her father said. “There is no real anti-Semitism here. The Protestants and Catholics are too busy hating each other to bother with us Jews. Believe me, Celia. I know what real anti-Semitism tastes like.” Her father waved his hand over the proceedings as if this somehow would calm everybody. “Now,” he said firmly. “Please tell us about these plans of yours.”

  “I’m going to sail to Palestine with Jonny.”

  “And when did you become such a Zionist?”

  “I am not a Zionist. I am a socialist. I want to see what this kibbutz is like. I want to go somewhere where I can make a difference, do something useful in the world.”

  “This Jonny’s kibbutz?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where is it?”

  “It is south of the Sea of Galilee. Close to the River Jordan.”

  “And what of your relationship with this Jonny Levy? Is it an honourable one?”

  She wished she knew what her father had meant by that question. Even now as she stood under these stars and this moon in these Mediterranean waters, she still desperately wanted to know. What was an honourable relationship? One where she had refrained from intercourse before marriage instead of behaving like some kind of common prostitute? Or one where there was true love and respect for each other? “Which one did you mean, Papa? Because it would have told me so much about you if I had asked, instead of me just answering: ‘Yes, it was an honourable one.’”

  Uncle Mendel had come in then, happy to be back home from the Highlands, his enthusiasm quickly deflating once he had gauged the family mood. He held back from saying anything during the Sabbath meal but later in the evening he eased her gently into an armchair by the fire. He squatted next to her on the lid of the brass coal-box, a glass of Shabbos wine in his hand, the ruby liquid glowing in the flames.

  “This what you do is a brave thing,” he said.

  “I am not brave, uncle. In some ways, the opposite. I fear for what happened to Avram. I fear what happened to my friend Charlotte. I am escaping my fears.”

  “Sometimes to run away from danger is the braver thing to do.” He picked up a poker, prodded away at the coals, until the fire sprang back to life. “Look, Celia. A Zionist I am not. If a homeland for themselves the Jews want, then it can be in Australia or Uganda for all I care. But this idea of kibbutz interests me. Socialism and Jews together. It is a potent mix. I am interested to find out if it can work. You must promise to write your poor old uncle.”

  She looked at the fire, how she used to stare at the flames for hours as a child, at all the different worlds and stories she created there. “I promise.”

  “Now tell me. With this Jonny Levy, what is your plan?”

  “The plan is to wait and see.”

  “There you are.”

  Jonny sauntered up to her with his sweater tied over his shoulders like some Monte Carlo millionaire, he was an old hand now at these shipping voyages, knowing just the right clothes to wear. He gently laid his hand over hers, the railing wire digging slightly more into her skin, she didn’t mind, she would have felt there was something wrong between them now if he didn’t touch her. She looked down at their clasp of fingers, this touching of skin, the back of his hand tanned already from a sun she had yet to see. This union of flesh feeling quite natural, at least here on the ship, caught in limbo between the past and the future, wondering how she would feel when they were both together on dry land with their lives stretching before them.

  “How’s the patient?”

  “Better thank you.”

  “I can fetch you some soup and bread.”

  Hot soup. She could probably manage that now. But she didn’t want to break the spell. “It’s all right. I don’t feel like eating just yet.”

  His fingers relaxed over hers, she moved her head so that it rested lightly against his shoulder, she looked out over the moonlit water, the hiss of the hull steaming across the flat sea, the warm breeze of a Mediterranean night. She felt she could stay like this forever. Please don’t p
ull into port, captain. Just keep sailing on. To Australia and back again, if you must. She heard the sound of an accordion. A violin. The melodies familiar. Jonny pulled away to see what was going on.

  “Come, Celia. Come and see this.”

  She walked over to where he was standing, her legs still a bit wobbly, she grasped the railing again, looked down onto an open lower deck. A violinist. An accordionist. People dancing. They were Jews. Orthodox Jews. The men with their skullcaps and ringlets, their black medieval garb, the women in their modest dresses on a separate side of the deck, their heads covered with scarves. Clapping their hands, and laughing, and singing on this moonlight night. To some melody buried deep in her own soul that spoke of vast forests and icy winters, wild bears and wooden huts, silver candlesticks from Napoleonic times. She found herself patting her own palms together in time to the beat.

  “How I envy them,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  “They seem so committed. So sure of themselves. That this land they are going to is their land. While this Palestine means nothing to me. I am of Eastern European stock. I am from the shtetl. What relationship do I have with Abraham of Ur of The Chaldees? With this Middle Eastern camel merchant?”

  “Why don’t you wait until you get there. Then see how you feel.”

  He had been right about the light. She had her face tilted to it now, letting the sun warm her skin, she could feel her Glasgow cheeks red-burning in its glare as she waited to disembark. The ship was anchored offshore, swaying slightly in its moorings, people crowding in on her as they waited for the doreys to come alongside, take the passengers ashore. She couldn’t find Jonny but she decided she would get off anyway, meet up with him on land. A battalion of soldiers had swarmed around her, she could hear their saucy comments, unusual to find a young woman without a chaperone or without one of the stewardesses assigned to protect her from such behaviour. She wondered how they would survive in this heat with their thick serge uniforms until their quartermasters provided them with their khaki. For her part, she wore her only decent summer dress.

  “Any more women back there?” one of the crew shouted. “Any more women? Room for one more.”

  “Come on, love,” one of the soldiers ahead of her called, couldn’t have been more than eighteen, his pale skin already peeling and scabby from the sun. “Female boat only up front.”

  He drew to the side to let her pass as did the rest of his group until she reached the top of the external stairway hanging off the side of the ship to the boat below.

  “On you go,” the crewman said. “There’s more of your kind down there.”

  She shrugged, not sure what he meant, made her way down the stairway, holding on carefully to the railings against the sway of the ship, some of the soldiers more cocky now with their comments. There were six Arab men sat relaxed at the oars of the dorey, dressed in loose robes, some wearing fezzes, all of them smiling, looking genuinely happy in their task. Crowded at the rear of the craft by the fluttering Royal Navy Standard were some of the Orthodox Jewish women she had seen dancing on the deck. They looked terrified, whether by the prospects of the row into shore or the possibility they might, God forbid, inadvertently come into contact with a male oarsman. Three nuns sat in the middle of the craft looking equally uncomfortable. A crew member took her hand, led her into a space at the prow.

  “It’s so small,” she said.

  “The bigger boats are for mixed company,” he said with a cock of his head towards the rear of the boat. “Them women wouldn’t travel with the men. They weren’t too happy with the rowers either. That’s us,” he shouted up the steps. “Cast off.”

  The crossing to shore was rough but remarkably, she didn’t feel ill at all. The rowers stuck to their task, some of the women letting out little gasps in unison if the boat rose forward on a wave. She watched Haifa draw closer, the crowds on the pier, its dockyard sheds, the waiting train, the palm trees, the low, sun-bleached houses scattered along the shoreline, across the hillsides surrounding the bay. She tried to imagine someone making a similar arrival on Glasgow’s Clydeside. It would be like one of these photograph negatives – where Haifa was white, Glasgow was grey. The boat pulled into the pier. The Jewish women started to shriek, rushing to step off onto the jetty as soon as the vessel tethered. When she eventually disembarked, she saw these women further ahead, beyond the wooden decking of the pier, kneeling down on the ground, kissing the dusty soil.

  She found herself a rough seat on top of a pile of jute sacks, waited for Jonny, not sure how she would spot him amidst this chaos in the harbour area. The army was there trying to assemble its troops as they disembarked, passengers stood around not knowing what to do next, all kinds of boats pulling in quay-side either dumping more passengers or with cargo stacked high. Donkeys came and went with their loads. An Arab boy, he couldn’t have been more than ten, manoeuvred a liquor wagon through the crowd, another came with a tea urn and flatbreads for sale. And there was a man leading a camel as easy as if it were his bearded grandfather he was escorting through the crowd. The train stood waiting, impatient, coughing out its smoke, everybody asking what time it would leave. And it was hot. Still mid-morning, yet she could feel the rays bearing down on her skin, the trickle of sweat down her spine. She tied a scarf around her head, would have loved to take the tea on offer but she didn’t have any money. Here she was, a powerless, penniless woman in a strange land surrounded by strangers, with only one man she knew within a radius of three thousand miles.

  That man eventually turned up, all quietly efficient, located their luggage, engaged a porter to put their cases on the train. He bought her some tea and a box of dates – she’d never tasted them before, so sticky-sweet they were on her lips and her fingers, a woman with a jug on her head gave her water in a cup for the rinsing.

  “Don’t drink it,” he warned.

  “What am I supposed to do? I’m thirsty.”

  “Take the tea for now. There will be plenty of fresh water where we’re headed.”

  Thirty-one

  THE TRAIN’S FINAL DESTINATION WAS DAMASCUS. Although Jonny told her they would only be taking it for about fifty miles, first to Beisan, then to the station of their destination – al-Dalhamiyya.

  “al-Dalhamiyya,” she said. What a beautiful word, sounding like a name to describe the arid wind coming through the open windows as the train clattered along. “al-Dalhamiyya.”

  It was uncomfortably hot now they had pulled away from the sea and its breezes. She tried to keep her eyes open, take an interest, but the landscape was so bright in the sunshine, it was hard for her to stare at it for too long. Not that there was much to see in this barren land, a few olive groves on the hillsides, the occasional village, not a soul in sight in the midday sun, except for a couple of Arab men on horseback following the path of the train, their headscarves flowing behind them. The rest of the passengers too had quietened after an initial excitement, the heat and the rhythm of the train lulling everyone into a half-sleep. Only Jonny seemed to have come alive, his face brightening as soon as the train had left Haifa. She had never seen him look so happy, his eyes scouring the countryside, he pointed out this and that feature, it all appeared the same to her. She had her mind more on Charlotte, hadn’t really thought about her on the whole sea journey, yet since she had landed, her friend was much in her thoughts.

  “You have to bring me back one of those handsome princes,” she had commanded. “Like Valentino’s Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. Or if he won’t come to me, then send a telegram. I will sail immediately to the Holy Land.”

  She had arranged for Charlotte to stay on at Agnes’s flat. But the distribution of the caps they now left to others. A Labour councillor in Govan was close to setting up a women’s welfare clinic there with a proper doctor and nurse in attendance. Charlotte had joined the general committee responsible, handed over their completed questionnaires and case notes from the over one hundred women they had already seen by themselves. Fro
m her own ringing of the fishmonger’s bell in Govan to a clinic in that same area of the city, she saw the symmetry in that, the path of her own revolution.

  She awoke when the train reached Beisan. Her sleep had been so deep, it took her a long time to realise that she was now in Palestine. Her eyes so heavy, she could just let her lids fall again, return to her dreamless state. She could smell coffee. The aroma of a strange spice.

  “Cardamom,” Jonny told her when she had asked, her lips so dry she could hardly form the question. “The Arabs use it in their coffee.” He had been out on the platform but it was not coffee he had brought her but a glass filled with the pulp and juice of squeezed oranges. She drank it gratefully, felt she was imbibing the flavour of this land itself, then asked for more.

  “Not long to go now,” he said. “The journey should be more interesting too. The land is more fertile here with the Jordan River. You’ll see fig trees, almonds, apple orchards.”

  She nodded as if she cared. But what did she know of fig trees and almonds? She was a Glasgow girl from the Gorbals. She didn’t even know that figs grew on trees. She looked up as an Arab woman came into their compartment, sat opposite. Her features dark and handsome, her head covered by a long scarf, her wrists and ankles adorned with silver, her leathery feet bare. “We must be the same age,” Celia thought. “But so different. Do you live in poverty? You have no shoes on your feet yet you wear jewellery of silver? Are you rich or poor? If you are poor, you have none of the haunted, pinched features of my countrywomen. How many children do you have? What methods do you use for birth control? How am I to know you?”

  Jonny came back with another glass of orange juice. This time she didn’t gulp it down, but sipped slowly, all the time watching the Arab woman over the cloudy glass.