Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  Omar greeted Ahmed and Hassan with a large smile.

  “Come in, come in, your sons are already here, you have two wonderful sons, Hassan. I want to say how much I love the energy that your oldest son Salah shows.”

  “Jaled is more reflective,” Hassan replied, flattered.

  “Too prudent, I would say, just like his Uncle Ahmed.”

  This comment made them feel uncomfortable, but they could not think of anything to say to their host. If on previous visits Omar had given the occasional sign that he was a man of high position, then tonight he had outdone himself, and showed them that his was one of the most important houses in all Jerusalem.

  Yusuf was the most important guest, and people gathered round him asking for news of Sharif Husayn.

  “There’s not a great deal I can tell you, all I can say is that the sharif is in constant contact with Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner for Egypt.”

  “So they do support us . . . ,” Hassan summed up.

  “No, not exactly, let’s say that the British can use our help, and that they can accept some of the suggestions that Sharif Husayn has made. Also, we have an unexpected ally, a British officer named Lawrence, whom McMahon has put in charge of communicating with the sharif,” Yusuf explained.

  “The Jews are not looking to make the British their allies,” one of the guests said.

  “They are divided, some of them are happy to remain subject to the sultan, and refuse to support any action that might put his position in danger; while others want to have the British on their side and have offered to fight alongside them. But as far as I know, the British are not particularly enthusiastic about having them for allies, although they have allowed them to form the Zion Mule Corps,” Yusuf said.

  “Cemal Pasha has arrested and deported hundreds of Jews, he doesn’t trust them. The Jews are suffering too,” Ahmed said, looking fixedly at his future son-in-law.

  “That is true, so I hope they will realize that like us they have no other option than to fight against the Turks,” Yusuf replied.

  They ate and talked until well into the night, then one after another little groups began to say goodbye to their host, thanking him for the evening and promising to see him again in two days’ time for Yusuf’s wedding.

  That night Ahmed went home in a better mood than on previous occasions. Omar had congratulated him for putting together a group of men who were ready to fight.

  “You know them, and you will give them their orders when the time comes. They will answer to you,” Omar said, with a certain degree of solemnity.

  As he walked past Hope Orchard he was surprised to see lights burning there even though it was nearly midnight. He approached the farm to see if there was any problem he could help with. He was surprised to see Anastasia there.

  “We’ve found out that they arrested Louis a few days ago. They have deported him to Egypt, but not only him, they burst into Jeremiah’s house this evening and took him away, too. Anastasia has come to ask for help. Her children are very scared, Cemal Pasha’s troops took Jeremiah without the least consideration for his family. We can’t do anything now, but we will try to get him freed tomorrow,” Samuel explained.

  Anastasia came to Ahmed and asked him insistently to take charge of the quarry.

  “My husband trusts you, you know what needs to be done until he returns,” Anastasia said, and he calmed her down by saying he would take charge.

  Ahmed appeared at the quarry when it was barely dawn. He stood outside and smoked as he watched the men arrive. The first to come was Igor, who said that he should have waited for him.

  “I didn’t sleep at all last night either, if I’d known you were coming I could have come with you.”

  When the rest of the quarrymen had arrived Ahmed explained the situation, and they all said how much they regretted what had happened to Jeremiah. They had heard rumors that the owner of the quarry was one of the leaders of the Jewish Zionists, and they knew about his socialist ideas, but they had never imagined that anything like this could happen, although in those days anyone could end up falling foul of Cemal Pasha’s anger.

  After bringing the men up to speed, Ahmed told them that they should work as if it were just another day at the quarry, and not to lose time discussing the situation. They would work as if the boss were still there.

  When the day was over, some of the men came up to him looking worried. They were the ones who came to the secret meetings.

  “We should be careful,” said one man who had a large mustache.

  “We are careful. Don’t worry, what has happened to Jeremiah has nothing to do with our activities. Cemal Pasha wants us all to be scared,” Ahmed replied.

  “But what if they suspect us?” one of the other men said.

  “Yes, we will be careful, Cemal Pasha hates patriots, if he knew what we think then we’d all be for the noose,” a young man said.

  “Go home and don’t worry. Jeremiah’s friends will bribe someone for him to be set free.”

  “What will happen tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is a day of rest, and it’s my daughter’s wedding, nothing will happen,” Ahmed insisted, trying to cheer up his men.

  He walked home alone. Igor was a discreet young man who, when he saw Ahmed stand aside with a group of men, knew he shouldn’t wait to accompany him. Also, he preferred to be alone that evening. He was worried, and not just about Jeremiah’s arrest. Every day Cemal Pasha was acting more and more cruelly. He refused himself nothing, while the whole city suffered in poverty.

  A little before he reached home, Ahmed saw Samuel waiting at the entrance to Hope Orchard; he was smoking and seemed distracted. Ahmed went up to him.

  “Is there any news of Jeremiah?” he asked, hoping that Samuel would say that he had been freed.

  “Yes, and it’s not good. They are going to deport him, him and more than five hundred other Jews. Cemal Pasha is threatening to disperse the Jews throughout the empire. You see, it’s not been any use at all for us to support the Sublime Porte in this stupid war. They have even deported one of the men who has done as much as anyone to support the empire. Yes, they’ve told me that Ben-Gurion is being deported as well.”

  “What are we going to do?” Ahmed asked, worried about the responsibility that would now fall on his shoulders at the quarry.

  “What do you think we can do? Maybe Cemal Pasha will decide to deport us tomorrow, as he has deported Jeremiah, or Louis, or so many other people. Jacob wants us to forge new alliances, he trusts the British. He says that if they win the war it will be they who decide the future of this country.”

  “I don’t know . . . He may be right. Are you going to ask them for help?” Ahmed wanted to know.

  “Help? More likely we’ll have to offer them our help. There are already some Jews who are fighting for them. As you can see, we are divided, some Jews are in the sultan’s armies, and others are fighting for the French and the British.”

  “And the Russian Jews?”

  “Yes, I mustn’t forget Mother Russia,” Samuel said bitterly.

  “We have to make it through all this . . .”

  “We will try, Ahmed, we will try. I went with Yossi to find out what was happening with Jeremiah, and they nearly arrested us, too. You know that Raquel, Yossi’s mother, is a Sephardi. She has always felt grateful to the Ottoman Empire for welcoming the Jews to Thessaloniki when they were expelled from Spain. This is our fate: to be expelled, to be persecuted, to be exiled . . . Raquel has always felt safe under the protection of the Turks, and has instilled in Yossi a special devotion to the sultan. Yossi says that his mother is more Turk than Jew . . . but now Raquel is a stranger in her own land. I don’t know what old Abraham would have thought about this all . . .”

  “We are all strangers in our own land, don’t forget that Cemal Pasha feels no pity for the
Arabs either, and that not a day goes past but that there is a new body hanging at the Damascus Gate or the Jaffa Gate.”

  “You’re right, my friend, we’re all suffering from the same causes. I’m afraid, Ahmed, that the world as we know it is crumbling away, and from now on we will all be chess pieces, whether Germany and Turkey or the Allies win the war. No, nothing will be the same from now on.”

  “Will you go back to France?”

  “No, not unless they deport me, but if they do, then I will have to go, I suppose. I cannot carry on looking for a homeland forever, I’ll make do with this one, the land of my forefathers.”

  “I understand, you’re a Jew.”

  “Sometimes I ask myself what it means to be a Jew. For years I fought hard not to be one, I wanted to be just like everyone else, I couldn’t bear being made to feel different. You can’t imagine the efforts I made to change the way people looked at me, judged me. Everything bad that has happened to me has happened because I am a Jew. My family was murdered in a pogrom, I lost my mother, my brother, my sister, my grandmother . . . Who would want to be a Jew after all that? Not me.”

  “You mustn’t blame the Almighty, he knows why things happen.”

  “Do you think I can find any reason, any justification for my family being killed simply for being Jews?”

  “My friend, we cannot understand the reasons of Allah.”

  “I don’t want to make you worried on the eve of Aya’s wedding. Let’s talk about more cheerful things. I still haven’t seen Mohammed . . .”

  “He will be back tomorrow. I hope everything is alright . . .”

  “You mean with Marinna and Kassia? Don’t worry, they won’t do anything that could upset the wedding. Marinna suffered a great deal from the separation with Mohammed. They grew up together, they fell in love, and it has not been easy for either of them to face the fact that they cannot fulfill their dreams.”

  “I think a great deal of Marinna, I think there would be no better wife for Mohammed, but I know that in spite of you all . . . Well, you are not religious, or at least not practicing, but she will never convert to Islam.”

  “You are right, she will not. But at least you and I can understand the pains of despair, of first love. Religion is such an absurd thing, to stop two young people who are in love from being together. The day will come when this is not a problem, and I hope I am alive to see it.”

  “Mohammed has suffered as well.”

  “I know. You know what, Ahmed? It seems to me absurd that men can fight simply because we believe that the God we pray to is better than the God they pray to.”

  “We don’t fight.”

  “You’re right, it’s the Christians who don’t tolerate the Jews, although the Muslims have also deported people from Sepharad. They don’t let you carry on being who you are. They have wanted to impose their truth and kill for it; at least the Jews and the Muslims are capable of living in peace and respecting one another, even if our youngsters are not allowed to fall in love. At least we don’t kill each other.”

  The shadows fell on this piece of land that the two men shared as they smoked one cigarette after another. Neither was calm enough to sleep, and well into the night neither could relax.

  The day was festive. Aya was shy and beautiful. Marinna and Kassia, Dina and Zaida, they had all helped her dress in her bridal gown.

  Mohammed and Marinna had greeted each other normally, but immediately thereafter had avoided each other. Mohammed looked after the guests, and Marinna stayed with the women. She heard Aya’s nervous little comments and took her hand to try to calm her down.

  Dina had made every effort in preparing the wedding, and had been helped by her ever-generous brother Hassan. She wanted to make a good impression on Yusuf Saïd’s family. She knew how devoted Yusuf was to his mother. Dina had told Zaida to pay attention to anything this woman might want. As for Layla, Dina had to admit that her sister-in-law was, when she wanted to be, quite charming, and so she had told her to look after Yusuf’s sisters.

  She was worried by how pale Aya was, and had been afraid that she would burst into tears during the wedding. She did not look happy, for all that Dina tried to calm herself down by thinking that it was normal for her to be scared. Dina, too, had been scared on the day she was married to Ahmed, but then she had said to herself that she would not have wanted a different husband. They had been happy together, and their married life had been made bitter only by the loss of their two sons. She still cried over little Ismail, and the child who had been born dead and whom she had not been allowed to see.

  In the end, though, everything had happened as predicted and her daughter became Yusuf’s wife. She looked around and was happy to see Aya surrounded by women, with Yusuf’s mother behaving affectionately toward her, and Marinna protecting her. What a shame that this Jew had not wanted to convert to Islam! She would have been a good wife for Mohammed.

  The men seemed to be satisfied, talking together as they ate. Dina kept on serving food and heard little fragments of various conversations. Some people were murmuring in low voices about the latest hangings, and the deportations of Jews. She pouted, she didn’t want the day to be spoiled with people talking about things that had them all worried. She smiled when the musicians hired for the party by her brother Hassan arrived.

  “Are you mad? Why did you think of hiring musicians?” Ahmed reproached her.

  “I told you, they are a present from my brother Hassan . . . You didn’t tell me not to do it . . .”

  “I didn’t tell you to do it, either.”

  Kassia came up to them, smiling.

  “It’s a wonderful wedding, a shame that Anastasia didn’t come . . . She would so much have liked to have seen your daughter . . .”

  “I can understand that she wouldn’t want to come with her husband in prison. But I will take her a plate of sweets, at least then she will enjoy something of the wedding,” Dina said.

  It was at this moment when they heard shouts and noises and saw some men forcing their way through the crowd. Everyone fell silent. They were some of Cemal Pasha’s policemen. One of them went directly to where Ahmed was standing.

  “Ahmed Ziad! You are arrested for conspiracy against the sultan, and for taking part in illegal activities against the Empire,” he said, as two other policemen took Ahmed’s arms.

  “What’s going on here? There must have been a mistake. My father hasn’t done anything. We are loyal subject of the sultan.” Mohammed had gotten between the policeman and his father.

  “You are Mohammed Ziad, we know about you. For now we have no orders to take you with us, but they will come. Get away from me, or else . . .”

  Mohammed did not stand aside. One of the policemen pushed him so hard that had it not been for Samuel, he would have fallen to the ground. Samuel then spoke to the policemen.

  “I am Ahmed Ziad’s landlord, and I can confirm that he is a good man and a loyal subject of the sultan, as are we all. Anyone who has informed you otherwise is a liar.”

  “So you support the traitor, maybe you’re a traitor as well,” the policeman who was in charge said.

  “I will make a formal complaint . . .”

  One of the policemen hit him in the face and broke his lip. Samuel did nothing, but Mikhail came forward.

  “Enough! How dare you? This is a wedding. This man,” he said, looking at Ahmed, “has done nothing, nor have any of us who are here. There must have been a misunderstanding . . .”

  They hit him, and then they hit Mohammed again, as he tried to force his way to where his father was and free him. But it was useless. In spite of the protests of everyone present, they took Ahmed away.

  Dina hugged Aya, both of them terrified and crying, and the guests took their leave, keen to get away from this unlucky house.

  “Someone betrayed him,” Yusuf said as soon as the guest
s had left.

  “Betrayed him?” Samuel said in surprise.

  “Yes, someone has denounced him. It must have been one of the men who . . .” And he fell silent. He knew that Samuel was Ahmed’s friend, but he didn’t trust this Jew, he didn’t know him, and he wasn’t prepared to put himself in the hands of a stranger.

  Samuel’s gaze sought out Mohammed and he asked him:

  “What is your father caught up in? Tell me, it’s better that we know so we can figure out how to help him.”

  “If you haven’t been able to help Jeremiah or Louis, much less will you be able to help my father,” Mohammed said angrily.

  “You can trust me,” Samuel said, although Mohammed’s reply had hurt him.

  “I know I can, but there are things that . . . well, that we shouldn’t even share with you. I’m sorry, Samuel, thank you for your help, but now you need to let the family decide what to do.”

  Samuel turned on his heel and left the house, followed by Kassia, Jacob, Ariel, Igor, Mikhail, and Ruth. Marinna stayed with Aya, who was still weeping uncontrollably. Mohammed looked at her and she stared back at him defiantly, but made no effort to leave.

  “Marinna, it is better if you go. For your own good, for your own safety, there are things that . . . Well, it’s better if you don’t know them.”

  “So you do not trust us,” she said angrily.

  “Of course I trust you! But it is better, just for the time being, that you are not here. I will go speak with Samuel as soon as I can.”

  She left without saying goodbye, and Mohammed, who knew her well, knew that she would never forgive him for having treated her as an outsider.

  The two families stayed clear of each other for a few days. It was not until a week later that they met again.

  A large group stood at the Damascus Gate, waiting for dawn to break. That morning there would be several men hanged, and as usual their families and friends were waiting, hoping to be able to say goodbye, or even impart a look of consolation to the condemned men.