Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  Moshe introduced Eva and his three children. The other couple was a teacher and his wife, who had managed to escape with their elderly parents. The third woman, strangely quiet and with a lost expression on her face, had joined them during the journey. The troops of the White Army had destroyed her village and killed her husband and her children. The woman, who said her name was Sofia, had survived, although she did not know how. They had found her sleeping in the open and had decided to bring her with them. What else could they have done to help her?

  They had listened to Moshe in silence, moved by the description of so much suffering. No less tragic was the story that other Ukrainians told, although they, unlike Moshe, who wanted to stay near Jerusalem, had decided to join the collective farms. Yossi looked at Samuel and Louis, knowing that neither of them could object to these people joining Hope Orchard.

  By the time Samuel and Louis came with the Ukrainians, Kassia had already found them a place to stay, emptying the new storeroom where they kept the tools and the implements for working the soil.

  “You’ll have to build a house, but we will help you. We work here without distinguishing between one another, there is no work that the men do that we women don’t do too. Hope Orchard is not a collective farm, although we work according to similar rules. We all decide everything as a community, and we share what we have,” Kassia explained to the new arrivals.

  “And the important thing is to get on well with your neighbors,” Marinna added.

  “They are Palestinian Arabs, and we have strong ties that bind us. We owe them a great deal.” Samuel’s words sounded like a warning.

  Leaving behind Moshe, his wife, and his three children, the rest of the group set out toward the Valley of Jezreel. Thanks to Yossi’s work on their behalf, they had been accepted into a kibbutz, as the Jewish collective farms would soon be called. Kassia felt disappointed. She would have liked them to stay, but she understood the urge that led some men and women to want to be part of a kibbutz, where they could work at bringing their utopian dream of an egalitarian society into the real world.

  Samuel noticed that Mohammed seemed upset when he told him that a new family had come to Hope Orchard.

  “The lands won’t give so much,” Mohammed said.

  “Well, we’ll have to work out what to do somehow. We can’t leave them to the whims of fate. Kassia is right, we are getting old, and we need young people’s energy. Also, you won’t be affected by our increasing the size of our community. Your house and your farm belong to you,” Samuel reminded him, upset at Mohammed’s lack of enthusiasm.

  “Yes, you were very generous to us,” the young man replied without much enthusiasm.

  Ruth did not seem to be very enthusiastic about the presence of Moshe and Eva either.

  “We’re not young anymore. We felt like pioneers years ago, and we were dreamers, but now . . . We were good as we were,” she confessed to Kassia.

  “You’re right, but it’s precisely because we are getting old that we need young people to continue the work. Marinna and Igor can’t do everything; Louis comes and goes, and Samuel and Netanel have their laboratory.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they stop working the land,” Ruth reminded her.

  “Not enough, and we can’t do everything ourselves.”

  “Igor and Marinna will have children.”

  “I hope so, but until that happens . . .”

  It was not long before Marinna announced that she was pregnant, to the joy of the two soon-to-be grandmothers. Igor seemed happier than Marinna.

  “At last, a child in Hope Orchard!” Louis exclaimed when he heard the news.

  “Well, there are already three children, Moshe and Eva’s family,” Marinna reminded him.

  “They’re nearly men already, and anyway, I meant a child of ours, from this family,” Louis said as he hugged her.

  “Now that we’re all celebrating Marinna’s pregnancy, I have some more news for you.”

  They all fell silent, expectantly waiting for Samuel’s announcement. Kassia looked worried, Ruth curious, Louis disconcerted.

  “I’m going to marry Miriam,” he announced with a smile.

  For several minutes, everyone spoke at once. Not that they hadn’t suspected the existence of a special relationship that Samuel and Miriam had tried to hide from the rest of them, but everyone had just felt they would never get married. Miriam was a widow and had a son, Daniel, who appeared to be the most precious thing she possessed in the world, and Samuel seemed to have grown accustomed to his status as a bachelor. Also, he had recently turned fifty, and there are few men who undertake the adventure of marriage past that age.

  “Will she come to live here?” Kassia wanted to know.

  “Yes, I think so. Miriam thinks that Daniel would not like to see me in his house, taking the place his father used to occupy, and so it’s better for the two of them to come here. Well, what do you think?”

  They congratulated him sincerely. They loved Samuel and appreciated what Miriam was worth, and they had grown fond of Daniel. It would be good for the kid to have a father.

  “We’ll need to make the house bigger,” Kassia said enthusiastically.

  “Well, maybe it’s not necessary. Miriam and I will sleep in my room and Daniel can take the one that used to be Igor’s before he married Marinna.”

  “And what if you have children? It’s better to make the house bigger,” Kassia insisted.

  “Children? What are you saying? I’m not of an age to have children!”

  “No, but Miriam could still have children,” Kassia replied.

  “She’s not a child,” Samuel reminded her.

  “No, but she’s thirty-five, and at that age women can still have children. My mother had me when she was forty,” Ruth replied.

  They told the Ziad family the good news. Aya already knew about Marinna’s pregnancy, even though her friend had sought to hide it. She’d guessed when she saw her moving and above all when she saw her put her hand over her stomach, trying to protect the child she carried inside her. Mohammed was surprised at Samuel’s decision. He couldn’t imagine him being married. But he was extremely sincere in his congratulations. Dina promised to cook the wedding cake, the pistachio cake that Samuel liked so much.

  “I’m happy to see you married before I die,” Dina said to Samuel.

  “Come on, as if it were so terrible to be single! And don’t pretend to be old, we’re the same age,” Samuel replied with a smile.

  “It’s not good to be alone,” Dina replied.

  “I’m not alone, I’ve got you all, Kassia, Ruth, Marinna, Igor, Mikhail . . .”

  “Mikhail? I think we all have everyone apart from that boy. He loves you, yes, but in spite of himself. You know what? I’m glad you’re marrying Miriam, she’s a good woman. I feel so sorry for her sister Judith. Do you think she’ll ever see again?”

  “Yossi doesn’t think so.”

  “Why did that madness have to happen?” Dina said, remembering Nabi Musa.

  “We have to forget it, we all suffered its consequences.”

  “Judith can never forget,” Dina said.

  Having decided to get married, Samuel still felt a little doubtful. It had been Miriam, in any case, who had asked for his hand.

  “We are too old to hide ourselves away like teenagers. We should get married. We are good together and although I’m not the woman you might have dreamed of, we can be happy. I will not deceive you, I will never forget my husband; but he is dead.”

  Samuel accepted Miriam’s reasoning. Like her, he, too, was tired of hiding. They were like two adolescents afraid of being caught in the act. She was right, she was not the woman he had dreamed of, Irina was the one who always appeared in his dreams, but he was resigned to the way things were. They would be good together.

  Daniel did not seem
enthusiastic about the news. He liked Samuel, but he didn’t want to see him in the role of his father, which was why Miriam had decided to come to live at Hope Orchard. That way, Daniel would not have to see Samuel sleeping in what had once been his father’s bed. The only thing she regretted was being away from Judith, who needed her so much; she agreed with Samuel that she would work at Hope Orchard but would go to Yossi and Judith’s house every day to be with her sister and help her brother-in-law.

  They got married in a synagogue in the Old City. All of the Ziad family came to the ceremony, and Samuel knew that Mohammed’s friends would throw it back in his face. Even Hassan, Dina’s brother, came, along with his wife Layla and his son Jaled. Mikhail was there, too. In the last few months he had come often to Jerusalem to be with Yasmin, the daughter of Yossi and Judith.

  The young couple were sad that what had happened on Nabi Musa meant that they had needed to abandon their plans to leave and start a life together in Tel Aviv, but Yasmin would not have been able to leave her mother to her fate, and neither would Mikhail have asked her to, so they had to manage with seeing each other two or three times a month.

  Samuel had been worried that Mikhail would laugh at the idea of his getting married, which is why he delayed telling him about his plans; although his reaction was essentially sad, he congratulated Samuel.

  “You should have gotten married a while back, and it’s for the best that you’re marrying Miriam, she’s a good woman.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” he said with relief.

  Mikhail was silent for a few seconds and then looked him straight in the eye.

  “When I was a child I dreamed that you would marry Irina and would be with us forever. I thought about me, and only me. I had lost everything: my parents, my country, my fate, I only had you. I felt betrayed when you left; I will never forgive you.”

  “I know, you have not forgiven me even now.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, I stopped trusting you when you left. Marie said that when I became a man I would understand you.”

  “And do you understand me?” Samuel said, anxious to hear the answer.

  “Although I might be able to understand you, I will never forgive you.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes and both felt the urge to hug the other, but they were not able to.

  “Marie loved you very much,” Samuel said, to break the tension.

  “Yes, she was the best person I have ever known, apart from my parents. She was a mixture of grandmother and mother. I will never forget her.”

  This conversation gave Samuel some measure of the serenity he needed to marry Miriam.

  Living together was much easier than they had imagined. Miriam was a strong-willed woman, but she never lost her temper or even raised her voice. Samuel and the rest of the Hope Orchard inhabitants were surprised that she spoke to her son in Ladino.

  Miriam had told Samuel that she had learned Spanish from her grandmother, her father’s mother. Judith and Miriam’s family were Sephardi on their father’s side. On their mother’s side, their family had lived in Hebron since time immemorial.

  “My mother’s family was not very wealthy, they only had a house and some land to cultivate and a few domestic animals. My father was born in Jerusalem, as his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather had been, although we were originally from Toledo, in Spain. When their ancestors had to leave Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella’s edict of expulsion, they fled to Thessaloniki and made a good living as traders.”

  “Why did they leave Thessaloniki?” Samuel asked.

  “One part of the family decided that having lost one homeland, they had to recover their old homeland, and came to Jerusalem. They became dealers in oil. My father spoke to my mother in Spanish and my grandmother spoke to us both in Ladino. It’s such a beautiful language! You know, Judith and I keep the key to my forefathers’ house in Toledo as a very precious treasure. We always dream about going there . . . My grandmother said that Toledo was more beautiful than Jerusalem, but she never saw it, she’d heard her mother tell her this, as her mother’s mother had told her mother, and all the way back through the centuries up until today.”

  Miriam’s parents had met by chance. A relative of her mother who lived in Jerusalem had fallen sick, and became a patient of Abraham, Yossi’s father. When Miriam’s mother went to Jerusalem with her parents to visit her relative, she met the man who would become her husband and with whom she would have two daughters.

  Later, Judith would marry Yossi, Abraham’s son, and Miriam would marry an officer in the sultan’s army. They had been very much in love when they married and were very happy.

  One morning, Mohammed came to Hope Orchard. Dina had a high temperature and it was difficult for her to breathe.

  Samuel got dressed as soon as he could and woke up Daniel to go looking for Yossi. Igor offered to go with the young man, because it was dangerous to cross the Old City at that time.

  Samuel did what he could to bring Dina’s fever down, he knew which medicines to use, and although he suspected what might be the cause of Dina’s illness, he wasn’t a doctor and so he counted the minutes until Yossi’s arrival.

  “She has pneumonia,” the doctor said, and asked Samuel to give Dina one of his preparations.

  Aya was very pale and trembled, she could not imagine life without her mother, so when Yossi left the room after being with Dina she followed him.

  “She’s not going to die, is she?”

  “We’ll do everything we can to cure her,” Yossi promised.

  Dina was still young, although the loss of her husband Ahmed had added years before their time. She felt tired, and had she been a different kind of person, she might have given in.

  A few weeks of anxiety passed. Aya did not leave her mother’s bedside, Salma looked after the house as well as Rami and Wädi. Mohammed counted the hours he spent at the quarry, always anxious to get home as soon as possible. Hassan and Layla came by every day to see the patient. Even Jaled, who was still in Faisal’s army, got permission to come and see his sick aunt. As for Kassia, she did not leave Dina’s bedside, taking turns with Aya so that the younger woman could rest. All the inhabitants of Hope Orchard lived through this illness as if they themselves were suffering from it. They all loved Dina, and owed her a debt of gratitude for holding everything together after the Nabi Musa riots.

  When Dina’s recovery was underway and she felt strong enough to get out of bed, Mohammed asked his friends to come and share Friday dinner.

  They spoke together and laughed, and the meal would have gone on until dawn had it not been for Dina’s condition.

  “Let’s not force things, she’s still convalescing,” Yossi said.

  Violence broke out again on May 1, 1921. This time in Jaffa. A May Day procession of Jewish workers was authorized by the British. They should not have done this. The procession was seen as a provocation by the Arabs. How could they have let such chaos be unleashed? That’s what Samuel asked himself, upset by the news that came from Tel Aviv. Groups of Palestinian Arabs had attacked Jews in the old port and had vandalized shops and houses. Many on both sides were killed or wounded.

  Louis tried to convince Samuel to be part of the secret army being raised, of which he was already a member. But Samuel refused.

  “I have already told you, more than once, that I don’t think the solution lies in a confrontation with the Arabs. Also, I am too old for such shenanigans.”

  “You’re young, you’re only fifty,” Louis replied. “Are you scared of fighting?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never fought, but I know I don’t want to have any man’s death on my conscience. Only . . . only once have I ever felt the urge to kill . . . Yes, I would have killed the man who handed my father over to the Okhrana.”

  “So, you are capable of killing, but that’s not what we
want, all we want is to defend ourselves, we have to be prepared for when things like Nabi Musa happen again, or the attacks at Jaffa. What do you think the British did? People were dead by the time their troops turned up,” Louis replied.

  “We have to put an end to this madness. I will tell Mohammed to organize a meeting with Omar Salem. He is well connected with the main Palestinian Arab families. He knows the Husseini, the Dajani, the Jalidi, the Nashashibi. We must be able to do something that isn’t fighting.”

  “And who will you be speaking for? You haven’t even joined the Histadrut.”

  A few days later, Mohammed told them that Omar Salem was willing to invite them to his house. Samuel accompanied Louis. He needed them to explain why they had allowed the unleashing of such chaos.

  “They say that the Arab police were also involved in the attacks. I can’t understand what happened,” he said to his host.

  Omar Salem respected Samuel. He knew that Ahmed Ziad had trusted him. Mohammed also spoke well of him.

  “What can I say? I know what you know. I’m sorry about these deaths. But did the Jews have to parade through Jaffa? We are worried, more and more Jews are coming to Palestine. They buy up our land, they leave us out of work . . . Our peasants, the fellahin, are starting to be pariahs in their own land.”

  “The same excuse again?” Samuel protested. “You’re right that a lot of Jews have decided to come back to this land, but is that a reason for us to shoot one another?”

  “The British have not fulfilled their promises. They said that they would support us in the creation of a greater Arab state, they promised as much to Sharif Husayn, they promised it to Faisal, and what has happened? They cheated us,” Omar continued.

  “I fought alongside Faisal. We helped the British to defeat the Turks, I fought for the possibility of a fatherland,” Mohammed interrupted angrily.

  “And what do British lies have to do with the Jews? Why attack us? Can’t we share this land? Can’t we live together?” Samuel sounded disappointed and tired.

  “The Jewish National Fund continues its policy of buying our land, and you have to understand that we cannot accept this. What will we have left if they carry on doing this? The British are playing with us. They allowed Faisal to become king of Syria, but which Syria? They cheated us. Syria should include Lebanon and Palestine, but they drew borders between the territories, dividing the Mashriq. The British and the French have divided the Ottoman Empire between them. We wanted to be independent, but they don’t believe that we are capable of governing ourselves, so they have decided to stay and carry out their policy of ‘divide and rule.’ What was accomplished by the Treaty of Sèvres? Don’t you know? It was a betrayal of the Arabs that was signed there. We were treated as if we had not just overthrown the Turks, but had overthrown ourselves as well,” Omar Salem said angrily.