Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Ben-Gurion’s message was blunt: we shall fight the war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.

  Ben and I asked Louis to let us join the Haganah. Officially the Haganah did not exist, but everyone knew that it did, so we didn’t beat around the bush. We had heard enough conversations over the years to know that Mikhail and Louis were part of that clandestine organization. Dedicated to protecting the settlements, it also stood up to the Irgun and the Stern Gang, two organizations characterized by violent and even terrorist methods. Just after the publication of the White Paper, the Irgun had placed bombs near the Jaffa Gate that had killed nine Palestinian Arabs.

  Louis took our petition seriously, but he rejected it.

  “I think it’s good that you want to help, and I’ll tell you how. To start with, you can deliver messages.”

  “I’m seventeen, I can do more important things,” Ben said angrily.

  “I’m almost fourteen, and I’ve heard that men my age are trained in the kibbutzim to help with defense of the settlements,” I said, trying to convince Louis.

  “If we have to we’ll go to a kibbutz and then no one will stop us from fighting,” Ben warned.

  We hadn’t realized that Kassia had been listening to us.

  “Are you crazy? Don’t we have enough problems with Moshe without you coming along and breaking our hearts?”

  “Come on, Kassia, they’re not children anymore and sooner or later they’ll have to take on their responsibilities.”

  “Responsibilities? What do you mean? The Arabs are not our enemies.”

  “But the British are,” Louis replied with disdain.

  “And we’re going to fight them with children?” Kassia was getting ever more angry.

  My mother and Marinna came in at this point. They had just been out beating down the olives.

  “What’s going on? Why are you shouting?” Marinna asked.

  Kassia explained, and Marinna grew angry at all three of us, Louis, her son Ben, and me. My mother tried to calm her down.

  “They want to have adventures, they’re at that age, and they want to join the Haganah because they don’t know what it means.”

  “Of course we know!” Ben interrupted, upset at my mother’s condescending tone.

  Louis ended the discussion by saying that he had to leave, but as he was on the threshold he cast a glance at Ben and me that made us think all was not yet lost.

  It may seem odd, but for the six years of the war there was a kind of truce between the Arabs and the Jews. Maybe this was because, in spite of our having spoken out against the White Paper, it remained a clear possibility that the Jews would not have their own homeland in the future, or else because the British were still trying to prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine, even as they knew that those who attempted to get out of Germany were doing nothing more than trying to escape from the claws of their worst enemies, Hitler and his henchmen.

  In spite of our mothers’ opinions, Ben and I started to work as messengers for the Haganah. In 1940 we were asked to smuggle weapons and messages from one side to the other. I think that my mother and Marinna both decided that Louis would use his good judgment to ensure that we were not placed in too much danger.

  Louis had put us under the command of Mikhail, and my mother tried to convince Kassia that my regular visits to Yossi’s house were to see him and Yasmin.

  “Ezekiel is a sensitive boy. Ever since the death of Judith he has not missed a chance to help his uncle and his cousin,” she said, proudly.

  My cousin Yasmin knew what we were up to, but she, like her father Yossi, showed a certain reticence with regard to our actions.

  The most difficult thing of all was for me not to be able to tell Wädi what we were up to. Louis had been strict on this point.

  “The Haganah does not exist,” he insisted.

  “But I have heard him tell Mohammed that you must be a part of it,” I protested.

  “He can think what he likes, but he has no proof. I know that Wädi is very important to you, you owe him your life, but now the lives of a number of people depend on your silence. What you know does not belong to you, and so you cannot make any use of it.”

  I felt bad. There was a knot in my stomach whenever I was with Wädi, because I was unable to tell him what I was doing.

  The scars on Wädi’s face reminded me that I owed him my life, although he never mentioned it, and if I did then he made light of the fact.

  Wädi had decided to be a teacher and was in training. He had received a good education at St. George’s School, and his teachers emphasized the help he gave to the weaker students. He was especially protective of his sister Naima, who trembled whenever she heard her mother tell her father that they had to think about finding her a good husband. When Wädi told Ben this, his face grew bitter. He was in love with Naima, for all that he had told his parents that he would not take a single step that might compromise her. Marinna would have liked to allow her son to follow his heart, but she knew that this would have created problems not just with Salma, but with Mohammed as well. If she and Mohammed had had to give each other up in an age when there were far fewer problems between the Jews and the Arabs than there were now, then the situation now was impossible. And Marinna was firm, and Igor was inflexible. He had even threatened to send Ben to England to be with Samuel if he did not give up thinking about Naima. Ben knew it was impossible for them to send him to England. The war was approaching its peak, the British were trying to keep the Jews under control, and they wouldn’t have given the necessary permissions to send a young man to London. Why would they need to do such a thing? We weren’t important people, all in all.

  Today, with hindsight, I think that Ben was more interested in Naima than she was in him. She was flattered that Ben felt so nervous in her presence and spent hours standing at the fence that separated their two farms, trying to see her. She watched him from the window and if she could get away from her mother she ran to be with him. But such occasions were infrequent, as Salma was always watching over her daughter.

  I was upset by the ever more frequent arguments between the Ziad family and Louis and Igor. I remember a night when Marinna invited Aya and her husband Yusuf to come eat with us, along with Mohammed and Salma, Hassan and Layla, and their children. We youngsters were happy to spend these hours together, and the last thing we wanted was for the grownups to get caught up in an argument. But it was Igor, normally so prudent, who reproached our friends for the mufti’s Nazi sympathies.

  “Apparently, the Germans have promised the mufti that once the war in Europe is finished they will help solve the ‘Jewish problem’ in the Middle East,” Igor said, looking Mohammed straight in the eye.

  Mohammed looked back at him, uncomfortable. Marinna grew tense. She was not pleased when her husband and Mohammed confronted each other. It was not Mohammed who replied, however, but Mohammed’s uncle, Hassan.

  “There are a number of Arabs who agree with Hitler in his distaste for the Jews, but this is nothing more than a coincidence. You have to understand that the Palestinians are worried about any plans to divide our land. We can share it, of course, but should we let it be taken from us?”

  “Palestine is the home of our ancestors. We are not foreigners,” Igor replied.

  “You have to go back to the beginning of time to claim that ownership. You know that none of us sympathizes with the Husseini, and that we are openly opposed to them. We don’t want to swap a British master for a master from Germany, although the mufti thinks that if he supports Hitler then the German leader will help him to seize Palestine without asking for anything in return. We hate the racial theories of the Nazis. But this hatred has nothing to do with the worry we feel when we see how many Jews are now coming to Palestine, and the fact
that the British have decided to divide our land,” Hassan insisted.

  “You should be ashamed that your mufti is a friend of the Nazis while the Jews are suffering Hitler’s terror.” Igor seemed to want to argue.

  “And you should stop taking what doesn’t belong to you.” Hassan’s tone of voice was less conciliatory this time.

  “Supporting Hitler means supporting the persecution of the Jews.” Igor would not let the subject drop.

  Marinna looked at him, upset. The evening that she had promised would be a friendly meeting of old friends looked like it was turning into an open confrontation. It was Kassia who called it to an end.

  “Enough! Igor, this is not the time to argue. I want to enjoy my friends while I have them here. Let’s talk about old times . . .”

  When I think back, I remember my mother’s silent suffering. She and I never referred to my father or my sister Dalida. My mother didn’t speak about her oldest son, Daniel. Everyone else respected our silence. Now I realize that his absence hurt each of us so much that we had opted not to speak about it as a form of self-defense.

  My mother never complained about anything. She seemed to find some kind of relief in working the land, stretching her day out from sunrise to sunset.

  Kassia insisted on working the land, but my mother tried to help her out; not just because of Kassia’s age, but because she had grown worryingly thin.

  “You should take your mother to see my brother-in-law Yossi,” my mother said to Marinna.

  “Miriam, you know what my mother is like, she refuses to go to any doctor. She insists that she’s alright.”

  “I don’t like the color of her skin, or the bags under her eyes. Maybe your husband can talk to her . . .”

  “Igor? No, Igor can’t tell my mother what to do. Maybe she’ll listen to you more than to us.”

  Ben also realized that his grandmother was ill. Obviously worried, he said as much to me.

  “The other night I heard her moaning, I got up to see if she needed anything, and she was vomiting.”

  But Kassia refused to allow any doctor to see her. I think that she wasn’t too keen on living, that she had no more hope left, for all that she loved her daughter Marinna and her grandson Ben. For years, Kassia had been scared that Marinna would end her marriage to Igor, but she had realized that even though Marinna was not in love with her husband, she would stay with him. Time had lulled her love for Mohammed, as she knew that he would never break his commitment to Salma. Marinna and Mohammed had renounced each other, and this renunciation calmed Kassia’s worries. As for Ben, she had no illusions, she knew that her grandson did not need her, or at least didn’t need her enough as to give her a reason to live.

  When Kassia finally went to the hospital she was more dead than alive. The doctor who attended her left no room for doubt: she had stomach cancer, now in its terminal phase. He was surprised that she had not come earlier.

  “I don’t understand,” he said to Marinna, “how she could be coping with so much pain.”

  Marinna started to cry. She blamed herself for not having accepted what Miriam had told her, that her mother was very ill, that she refused to eat, that her vomiting and her extreme thinness were evidently symptoms of some illness. When the doctor told her that she had to stay in the hospital, Kassia rebelled.

  “You know I’m not going to live much longer, why not give me something for the pain and let me die in my bed?” Kassia asked.

  “For God’s sake, Mother, the things you say! Of course you’ll get better,” Marinna said with tears in her eyes.

  But Kassia told her to be quiet, and repeated her request to the doctor to let her die in her bed.

  The doctor refused. He could do nothing more to save her life, but thought at least that she would be better cared for in the hospital. My Uncle Yossi made a sign to the doctor and took him into the corner to talk with him. When they came back, Kassia knew that she had won this final battle.

  “If it’s what you want, you can go home, but you will have to be in your bed, with a drip, and I’ll give you some injections for the pain . . . If you go, there’s not much I can do for you . . .”

  “If I stay here’s not much you can do for me either, except salve your conscience,” Kassia replied.

  December 1941 was a cold month. And I can still feel that cold on my skin when I think about Kassia’s last days.

  My mother kept a fire permanently burning in the fireplace, and Kassia’s bed was filled with hot-water bottles.

  Marinna cried when Kassia couldn’t see her.

  “If only she had paid attention to you,” my mother said.

  It wouldn’t have changed anything, even if Kassia had gone to the doctor months earlier, but Marinna would blame herself for the rest of her life for not having wanted to see how ill her mother was.

  I don’t know what was in the injections that my mother gave Kassia, only that they kept her drowsy.

  It’s not easy to die. I realized this for the first time when I saw Kassia’s agonies.

  A noise woke me one morning, and I found all the lights on and the door to Kassia’s room open.

  She was vomiting, and choking on her vomit as she fought for breath, and every time a breath entered her lungs we heard a dull scraping noise. Her sticklike body was convulsing and it was almost as if it were about to break. She was very upset and she grasped Marinna’s hand and tried to force herself to speak, but nothing came from her mouth except a dull murmur. Ben was standing by my side and trembled. Louis had gone to find Yossi.

  My mother tried to clean the bed and wipe away the vomit, but she took a moment to beckon Ben to his grandmother’s bedside.

  Ben kissed her forehead and took her other hand.

  “Grandmother, I love you, I love you a lot, you’ll get well,” he said in a whisper.

  Kassia made a last effort to hold Marinna’s and Ben’s hands, then a terrifying scream came from her mouth. This was the death rattle. Then she died. Her body fell still and her gaze lost itself in eternity.

  We stayed silent for a few seconds, without daring to move, as if we might wake her. Igor went over to Marinna and tried to get her to stand up, and my mother did the same with Ben. Marinna resisted and asked us to leave her alone with her mother. Igor didn’t want to go, but she shrieked at him and he left the room, dragging Ben with him.

  My mother shut the door, and this was the first time I had seen her look weak. It was not until Louis arrived with Yossi that my mother allowed herself to cry.

  We waited a while until Marinna came out, her eyes were shrunken from so much crying.

  “I have to get her ready,” she managed to say as she held my mother tight.

  As soon as dawn broke, my mother sent me to Mohammed’s house to tell them that Kassia had died. When I got there, he was having a cup of tea before heading off to the quarry.

  “Kassia is dead,” I managed to say.

  Salma was stock-still, waiting for Mohammed’s reaction. He seemed not to have heard me and didn’t even look at me. He stood up and, his eyes closed, leaned his head against the wall. Wädi, who had gotten up when he heard me come in, went over to his father and put his hand on Mohammed’s shoulder.

  “Go with Ezekiel, we’ll come later,” he said to his father.

  We walked quickly and didn’t speak. When we entered the house, Kassia’s body was lying on clean sheets and the room smelled of lavender. My mother had cleaned it from top to bottom. Marinna was on her knees by her mother’s bedside and Igor was making coffee.

  Mohammed went over to Marinna and held his hand out to her. She stood up and hugged him.

  “I’m sorry . . . so sorry . . . I know how much you loved your mother,” Mohammed said, his voice faltering.

  Marinna let her tears carry her away. My mother stretched her hand out to Mohammed and then hugged him, t
oo, to break the tension that had grown up between us. Igor had left the house and Ben did not look away from Mohammed and his mother. I followed Igor with a cup of coffee.

  “Come in, it’s very cold,” I said, just to say something.

  When we went in, my mother was still hugging Mohammed and this made Igor a little more relaxed. Then Mohammed walked over to Igor and hugged him as well. It was a rapid gesture, one that the situation demanded.

  “Kassia was my second mother,” he said as he dried his tears on the back of his hand.

  Marinna found a letter containing her mother’s last wishes. It was very short, in fact she only wanted one thing, to be buried under the olive trees at Hope Orchard.

  We buried her one morning with the Ziad family present. Mohammed and Salma were there, with their children Wädi and Naima; Aya and Yusuf, Rami and Noor; Hassan and Layla, and their son Jaled.

  None of us did anything to try to hold back our tears. Aya held on to Marinna while Ben stood behind his father. It seemed that Igor was hurt that Marinna needed Aya’s support rather than his own; after all, he was her husband. But not a single sound of reproach came from his lips.

  Now that I am old and have so much free time, sometimes I remember those days and ask myself about Igor’s composure and loyalty. I am surprised at his resigned love for Marinna.

  It was Louis who wrote to Samuel to tell him of Kassia’s death, but we never received a reply.

  It was not easy to get back to normal. With Samuel’s absence and Kassia’s death, Hope Orchard seemed to have lost its raison d’être. I knew that this was what my mother thought, even though she said nothing, and I know that she was also tempted to head off with me to the city and to leave Marinna and Igor in charge of everything. But we didn’t, I suppose that she thought that I would have taken it as a loss of my roots.

  Ben continued insisting on his desire to go to a kibbutz. He was extremely admiring of the people our age who were already planning to fight, whether against the Germans, who seemed to be coming ever closer to Palestine, or against the British, who were trying to prevent Jewish immigration, or against the Arab gangs that were opposing the ever-growing Jewish community.