Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “Come on, don’t fight. Let’s celebrate Lord Balfour’s declaration, it’s more than we could have expected from the British. And you, Jacob, tell us why Lord Balfour has been so generous to us,” Kassia interrupted in order to stop the argument.

  “As far as I know, Lord Balfour and Dr. Weizmann have known each other for a while. Weizmann is an important man, no less than a professor of biochemistry at the University of Manchester. He has powerful friends in British high society. He knows the prime minister, Lloyd George, he knows Herbert Samuel and Winston Churchill. He is a very influential man.”

  “You forgot to add that apparently he’s making a major contribution to the war effort,” Samuel said sarcastically.

  “Yes, apparently Weizmann has found a way of making acetone on a large scale, which you should know about, as you’re a chemist,” Jacob snapped.

  “Acetone? What do the British need acetone for?” Ruth asked.

  “It’s a solvent that you need to make cordite explosives,” Samuel explained.

  As the months went by, Samuel accepted that a breach had grown between him and Jacob. Sometimes he came across Jacob and Ariel talking, and he was hurt when they changed the subject as he came in. He didn’t dare ask them what they were talking about, or what they were getting involved in, but he knew that whatever it was they could not count on him. This distance from his friends at Hope Orchard brought him closer to Yossi, the son of Rachel and Abraham, who was a permanent source of information.

  Yossi, just like his father, had some of the most important men in Jerusalem among his patients, and when these men put themselves in Yossi’s hands they ended up letting their tongues run loose and sharing their worries with their physician.

  “Why do you think Britain has decided to ‘give’ us a homeland?” Samuel asked.

  “I think that, as well as fitting their interests, it is also written in the Bible.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “For the English, the Bible is an important part of their education, so they know it well and have no doubt that this is the land of the Jews. But also, my friend, the British have not taken this step all by themselves; as far as I know, the French agree with Lord Balfour’s declaration, and they tell me that the president of the United States has given it his approval. The Bible is important for the Americans as well, and they have no doubt that this should be the land of the Jews.”

  “It’s an original answer, but it probably has little relation to reality . . . No, I can’t believe that their belief in the Bible would have led them to make this decision.”

  “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one.”

  Samuel had decided to dedicate all his time and effort to the laboratory that he had set up when he had returned from Paris. Yossi Yonah had convinced him to manufacture medicines.

  “You are a pharmacist more than you are a chemist, so why not earn a living from your knowledge? We need to have someone who can help with people’s pain.”

  So he had set up the old shed as a laboratory once again, and spent the large part of each day there. Yossi had recommended to him a pharmacist from Moscow named Netanel. He had come to escape the fury of the Tsarist regime. He was a pharmacist with a good reputation in the capital, a widower with two sons who were strong Bolshevik supporters. One of them had died in prison, and the other had begged him to leave Russia.

  “When the revolution triumphs, then you can go back, but now, so that I can fight without putting you in any danger, you have to leave here,” he had said.

  Netanel had not wanted to abandon his house and his ever-dwindling possessions, but more than that, he did not want to be so far away from the only son he had left. But in the end he had given in. He didn’t want to keep on having his head down, afraid of the sudden arrival of the Tsarist police, seeing the fury in the eyes of some of his neighbors, who blamed the Jews for all the defeats suffered by Russia on the battlefield. So he prepared his escape in secret and said nothing to any of his neighbors until the eve of his departure to Odessa, from where he would embark for Palestine. Now he thanked God for having made the decision that had brought him here to Jerusalem two years ago. He had arrived without knowing anyone, with only one address to go to, that of an old doctor named Abraham Yonah, who people told him helped Jews such as him. His world had collapsed that day when he got to the house and was told by the woman who opened the door that the old doctor had died, and it had reassembled itself only when he was introduced to the doctor’s son, Yossi Yonah.

  It was a stroke of luck that Yossi introduced Samuel to Netanel. He reminded him of his father. Netanel was a man accustomed to suffering. They got on immediately. And Samuel offered him a bed at Hope Orchard. With his help they set the laboratory going. They worked from dawn until dusk. They also employed Daniel, the nephew of Yossi’s wife, Judith.

  Daniel was scarcely more than a boy, bright and willing, and his mother Miriam had wanted him to become a rabbi. But he showed no interest at all in religion and defied his mother by refusing to study. Miriam grew desperate, although she forgave him because she knew in her heart that he was weighed down by his father’s death. Her husband, serving in the Turkish army, had died at the start of the war and had left behind a widow and this adolescent son. Judith helped her little sister as much as she could, and convinced her husband to recommend Daniel to Samuel as an assistant.

  “Daniel will carry on going to school, but he doesn’t want to be a rabbi, so he should at least learn some trade. He could help Samuel in the laboratory, talk to him.”

  As well as Netanel and Daniel, Samuel had Marinna working with them.

  “But I know nothing of medicines,” she said.

  “You’ll learn. We need someone to make sure everything keeps running. You will be our boss,” Samuel suggested.

  Kassia encouraged her daughter, as she didn’t want to see her breaking her back harvest after harvest. Marinna deserved more.

  Soon all the important people in Jerusalem came looking for the medicines that Samuel’s little laboratory made.

  “I told you this could be a business,” Yossi reminded him.

  If it hadn’t been for the war, then Samuel might almost have been happy. But the war reached even Hope Orchard, and they bore their part of the consequences of the conflict.

  One morning Cemal Pasha’s police burst into Hope Orchard. They beat everyone brutally and threatened the women as they tied Jacob’s and Ariel’s hands.

  “You’re not getting away either,” they said to Samuel, who asked for an explanation and was instead given a punch that sent him reeling.

  When the police left with Jacob and Ariel, Samuel tried to console Kassia and Ruth, who remained weeping in silence.

  “I’ll go right now and find out why they have been arrested. There must have been some kind of misunderstanding. I sent some medicines to one of Cemal Pasha’s lieutenants only two days ago. Don’t worry, I’ll get them set free right away.”

  It had barely dawned when Samuel went to Yossi’s house for advice and help.

  “I’ll go see this Turkish officer you introduced to me and will ask him to free Ariel and Jacob,” Samuel said to him.

  “Ever since General Allenby took Gaza, Cemal Pasha has grown even more mad.”

  “Yes, I imagine that the British bombardment of the German headquarters at the Augusta Victoria hospital hasn’t helped Cemal’s officers stay in a good mood either.”

  Along with Yossi, Samuel went to the officer’s house and was grudgingly received. The man listened to what they had to say and ordered them to report back to the headquarters at the Augusta Victoria a few hours later. But he didn’t promise anything.

  When they got back late that morning, the officer was in a bad mood.

  “So you live with spies and you come here to ask for them to be pardoned?”

  “Spi
es? No . . . no . . . You must be mistaken. My friends . . .”

  But the officer wouldn’t let him continue. He stood up and kicked a chair, then turned to look at Samuel.

  “We are going to hang your friends, and you too, if you insist on asking for them. They are dogs who work for the English.”

  “There must have been a mistake . . . I assure you that my friends are innocent of what you accuse them of.”

  The officer opened the door and ushered in a man of nondescript aspect who didn’t even look at them. Samuel thought he had seen him before, but where? Or was it just his imagination?

  “Say what you know about the men who were arrested a few hours ago.”

  “They are spies. They have been working for the British for several months. They are passing information about the strategic points in the city’s defenses, about troop numbers, about Cemal Pasha’s comings and goings. They give all this information to another Jew. A man who owns a hotel close to the Jaffa Gate. This man takes the information to the British.”

  “You are wrong,” Samuel said with conviction.

  “I’m wrong? No, you’re wrong. They didn’t trust you, that’s why you have no idea what they were doing, if it were not so then you would have been arrested as well,” the man replied indifferently.

  “What’s going to happen to them?” Yossi asked.

  “They will be hanged as traitors.”

  Samuel and Yossi begged the officer to do whatever he could to save the lives of Jacob and Ariel, and even went so far as to offer him money. He made them no promises.

  “They are traitors and have to pay the price, the same price as others have paid.”

  They left the headquarters with their heads hung low, fearing the worst. Not much time had passed since several other Jews had been hanged, accused of helping the Allies. Aaron Aaronsohn had organized a spy ring codenamed “Nili,” but all its members had been arrested and the Turks had shown them no pity, not even to the women among them.

  “I had an argument with Jacob because he said we should help the Allies,” Samuel explained to Yossi.

  “They did what they had to do, we have to take sides. I also argued with my wife and my mother and my sister-in-law Miriam—they are all Sephardi, and their forefathers came to Thessaloniki and were able to live in peace within the Ottoman Empire. Elsewhere the Jews were persecuted, but here the sultan received them generously. The Turks have never cared about our religion, they only wanted us to pay taxes, and that was why they let us live in peace. I understand their loyalty, but the empire is dying and the Turks have seen us as enemies for quite some time now. Cemal Pasha is a bloodthirsty brute, how many of us has he deported already? Jacob and Ariel decided to defend the future.”

  Samuel was surprised at Yossi’s words, but he didn’t reply, he needed to put his emotions in order, because he could not imagine Ariel and Jacob being hanged.

  They met Igor on the way back to Hope Orchard, who was himself trying to find out what had happened to his father.

  “What are you doing here? I told you to go to the quarry, and that I would look for your father,” Samuel scolded him.

  “Do you think I could go to work as if nothing had happened? Tell me, what is my father accused of?”

  They explained, and saw how sadness flooded Igor’s eyes.

  “They’ll hang him, like they did to those poor wretches from Nili. Their hands didn’t tremble when they put the noose round the necks of women, and they won’t now, when it’s my father and Jacob.”

  “Did you know they were working for the British?” Samuel asked.

  Igor took a while to reply. It seemed as if he were looking for the right words.

  “It wasn’t difficult to imagine, didn’t you hear what they were saying? Only a blind man could have missed the fact that Jacob and Ariel were working for the British. Once I asked my father if he was involved in anything. He hated lying, so he asked me not to ask him anymore; it was his way of saying yes, but of keeping me safely ignorant at the same time.”

  “I don’t think that they will escape the noose. We offered all that we had to the officer, but he didn’t want to commit himself to anything. We will give him a goodly sum of money tomorrow, all that we can get together. If it will help, I will go plead with Cemal Pasha myself. Yossi has promised to help us, maybe we’ll manage to get them deported, like Louis and Jeremiah were.”

  “I know they won’t be saved. But I know that my father would prefer to die having fought for what he believed in, rather than looking at the world from the outside, which is what you do.”

  Samuel’s face reddened. He felt ashamed and angry at what Igor had said. He was ashamed because the truth hurt, he had chosen to be a spectator, and he was angry because Igor had dared to blame him.

  “We all have our own stories,” Igor continued. “My father never told you how we suffered in Moscow. We suffered for being Jews and we suffered for being socialists. We were a double enemy for the tsar and we had to flee. But my father never gave in. He did not come here just to survive, you’ve seen how he has worked for his socialist principles. I’m not sure that you are really a revolutionary, really a socialist, even though we’ve managed to make Hope Orchard a reality, when before it would have seemed merely a utopian dream.”

  “I wish I could get them deported and save their lives,” Samuel said. He felt very tired.

  “I’ve lost count of all the Jews Cemal Pasha has deported . . . But you won’t manage: they’ll take our money and we still won’t get them back alive,” Igor said, his voice breaking.

  Ruth and Kassia tried to hold back their tears, but it was difficult for them. Dina and her sister-in-law Layla were also taking part in this lengthy vigil.

  “My brother Hassan tells me that the British will soon take the city. I wish they would, they’ll set Ariel and Jacob free then,” Dina said to console the two women.

  “I’ve heard that some Turkish troops are deserting,” Layla added.

  “I can’t bear this city!” Kassia shouted.

  “Calm down, shouting won’t get you anywhere,” Ruth said, taking her by the hand.

  “I can’t bear the explosions, we’ve been hearing the planes for days . . . You say that the British are going to liberate us! Maybe they’ll end up killing us with their bombs, they’re destroying the city!” Anger and fear mixed in Kassia’s voice.

  Marinna came up to Samuel and made a sign that he should follow her to the laboratory, far away from the others’ ears.

  “Tell me the truth, do you think you can save my father and Ariel?”

  “I don’t know, Yossi and I have done everything in our power, but they haven’t guaranteed us anything. There is great confusion in the city, and the Turks are about to lose Jerusalem. But I don’t want to lie to you, I can’t be sure that your father will be safe.”

  The next day, when he went with Yossi to see the officer again, they said that he had been sent to the front line. When they asked about the prisoners, the soldier on duty shrugged.

  “They hanged a few last night. We have too many problems now to worry about traitors.”

  Samuel shuddered. Yossi insisted, putting a few coins into the soldier’s palm, that he find out what had happened to Jacob and Ariel. The soldier was arrogant, but he eventually accepted. He left them alone in a room and took a long time to come back.

  “They were traitors, they’ve been hanged. And now get out, unless you want to end up like them. Cemal Pasha should have dealt with all the Jews like this, or else deported them like he did with the Armenians. You don’t deserve our generosity.”

  They left without saying anything. They didn’t dare go to collect the corpses of Jacob and Ariel. The Turkish army was about to lose control of the city, and there is no more dangerous time than when routed troops are retreating.

  Yossi told Kassia and Ruth that t
heir husbands had been hanged. Dina and Layla embraced the two women, trying to ease their pain. Igor was silent and sat with Marinna, both of them silent and tearless.

  Samuel went up to them without knowing what he could say. He would have liked to have shouted and screamed like Kassia, he thought it would have helped. But they weren’t expecting that of him, they wanted him to remain firm and collected, capable of telling them all what needed to be done, although at that moment neither he nor anyone else knew what to do next.

  The widows were made most distraught by being unable to recover their husbands’ corpses.

  “How are we going to mourn at an empty tomb?” Kassia groaned.

  Igor had gone to the city to try to find someone who would help them locate the corpses of Ariel and Jacob, but Jerusalem was overwhelmed by confusion. British planes had bombarded the Turkish headquarters in the Russian Compound. Nobody cared what had happened to the corpses of those two men. The Turkish officers were arguing about whether to retreat or surrender. On the night of December 9, Jerusalem fell. The Allies had not yet won the war, but at least they held the Holy City.

  Yossi didn’t have a moment to relax. The city had been a battleground and hundreds of helpless people were left behind. Many had died of hunger since the conflict began. And hunger was still taking its daily toll.

  “The only remedy for this disease is called food,” Judith said as she tried to deal with the sick who came crowding to their door.

  But not only did they die of hunger, venereal disease took its own toll in life and despair.

  “And they call it the Holy City! There is no city with more prostitutes in it than this one. I can’t bear these sick children,” she said, upset at that dozens of children who had tried to survive the war prostituting themselves, and who now came looking for some sort of help with the symptoms of syphilis.