When I suggested to Sara that she come with me to Palestine she fell into one of those silences that caused me so much pain. I knew that I should give her time to think, so I decided not to pressure her. Meanwhile, I received an unexpected visit. Ben, my dear Ben, sent me a telegram to say that he would shortly be arriving in London.
Vera insisted that he stay at the house, although she regretted having only a single guest room, the one where Sara was staying. I laughed at her worry. Ben was like me, we were both children of Hope Orchard, who had grown up sharing everything, none of us who lived there had anything of our own, everything belonged to everyone, no one sold or bought anything unless the whole commune agreed. Then we had finished our youth in a kibbutz, so sharing a room with me in Vera’s house would really not be a problem.
I went to meet him at the airport. We hugged for a long time. We felt that we were brothers, not just for the childhood we had shared, but also because we had learned to survive together, and the first time we had been called upon to kill a man, he was at my side and I was at his.
Vera and Gustav greeted him with such warmth that it was impossible for him not to feel at home. Sara didn’t pay him any attention. She had been sunk into her own thoughts for days and barely spoke.
Vera surprised us with a Russian dinner. I don’t know how she managed it, but we ate pickled cucumbers, borscht, and blinis with salmon, and we toasted each other with an old bottle of vodka that she had been saving. We enjoyed ourselves, forgetting that we were only survivors and the next day would remind us of this reality.
Sara seemed absent, although I think that from time to time she showed a glimmer of interest.
Later, before going to bed, Ben and I had a chat.
“They’re good people,” he said, referring to Gustav and Vera.
“Yes, they are. I’m only finding out now, when I was younger I couldn’t appreciate what they were worth. I suppose that because they were related to Katia it was hard for me to love them.”
“And Sara, is she important to you?”
I explained her story, and how I had fallen in love with her the first moment I saw her, and that I was willing to do anything to help cure the wounds that had clawed their way into her soul.
“She made an effort to live thinking that she would get her children back, but when she found out that they had been murdered, she gave in, she had nothing left to live for.”
“Do you think she loves you?” he asked skeptically.
“I don’t know, I don’t think so, not yet. She needs to get well, to find her desire to live once again. I trust that my mother and yours will help her find it.”
Yes, I trusted my mother and Marinna. If anyone could help Sara it was them. Marinna was as strong as her mother Kassia had been before her. Ben had inherited her strength and his father’s prudence. Igor was a man who never acted on impulse, who liked to weigh the pros and cons of what he did, and who had taught Ben and me as children to think before we acted.
“Sara will get better only if she wants to get better. I think that you will suffer, and that you are perhaps obsessed with her, but not really in love with her . . . You don’t know her at all. And if, as you told me, they sterilized her in Auschwitz . . . Well, if you marry her you won’t be able to have children.”
If anyone else had said this to me I would have gotten angry, and I would have told him not to stick his nose into my life, but this was Ben, who was, like Wädi, more than a brother to me.
Later on he told me that he was not going to go straight back to Palestine.
“The Haganah wants to help all the camp survivors who want to come to Palestine. You know that the British don’t want to grant anyone permission, so we have no option other than to take them over the border illegally. I am part of a group that is going to work in Europe buying boats and then taking survivors across to our coasts. Why don’t you stay and help us?”
If I hadn’t met Sara then I would have signed up for this adventure, but my only obsession was her. I wanted to offer her a home, a place where she could get well again, and I knew of none better than Hope Orchard.
Ben gave me news of the Ziad family. Wädi had survived the war fighting in the sands of the Tunisian and Egyptian deserts, and his father, Mohammed, had stayed loyal to the Nashashibi family and had stood against the mufti.
I was proud of them, and comforted to know that we had fought on the same side, against the same enemy.
I asked him about Aya and Yusuf, and their children Rami and Noor, and about Naima, Salma and Mohammed’s daughter, with whom Ben was in love.
“They married her off,” he said, without bothering to hide how much this upset him.
“But she’s just a girl!” I said indignantly.
“No, she’s not. She’s twenty-two years old.”
“And . . . Who did they marry her to?” I was curious whether I knew Naima’s husband.
“We don’t know him, he’s the oldest son of Yusuf’s sister. You know, Yusuf, Aya’s husband. He’s named Târeq and he is a successful merchant. He has a house in Amman and one in Jericho. They have already had their first child.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I know it had to be like that. They would never have let us get married.”
“I don’t know why . . . After fighting in this war I think we have another one about to start, the war of prejudices. What’s the harm in a Jew marrying a Christian or a Muslim? People can pray to whichever deity they want, or not pray at all, but as the famous rabbi Jesus of Nazareth once said, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,’ and I don’t think that God would mind whom we fell in love with.” I was angry. I was upset at Ben’s sadness, for all that I had always thought that his flirtations with Naima were nothing more than the expression of adolescent stirrings.
“Well, we have other battles to win now, and the most important one is for the Jews who have survived to now have a home,” Ben replied in resignation.
“If Sara were a Muslim I would not let anyone try to take her away from me,” I insisted stupidly.
“But she’s a Jew.”
Ben changed the subject and told me the news he had from our home. Louis was still coming back and forth from Ben-Gurion’s headquarters, and my Uncle Yossi was still a doctor, although he had had some health problems himself. His daughter, my cousin Yasmin, was dedicated body and soul to the Haganah, as was her husband Mikhail.
“Yasmin was depressed for a long time after she found out that she couldn’t have children. But my mother said in her letter that Mikhail had told her this didn’t matter and that now the two of them are closer than ever.”
I was upset that Ben had to go to Rome, and was impatient for the British authorities to give permission for Sara to come with me to Palestine. We celebrated joyfully the day that Gustav came round with the anxiously awaited document.
Vera said goodbye, saying that we would always have a place in her house, and Gustav promised that he and his mother would come visit us.
I had a British passport. I had served in their army and felt ambivalent toward them. I admired their discipline and bravery, but I did not trust their intentions. I had learned that the British always placed their interests first in any situation, whatever kind of situation it was, and that Palestine was nothing more to them than a file in their geopolitical archive.
My mother was waiting for me at the port in Haifa, which was where our ship docked. Igor and Louis were with her. I could see her among the crowd on the wharf as our ship approached. She was walking impatiently from one side to another, incapable of controlling her nervousness. I was nervous as well. I had told her nothing about my father or Dalida in the letter I had sent her to tell her that I was coming across with Sara, so my mother didn’t know that she had lost her husband and her daughter in Auschwitz.
>
I had scarcely put my feet on dry land when she came up to hug me, and held me so tight that I thought she would break my ribs. I hugged Igor and Louis once I had gotten myself out of her embrace. Louis was older. His hair was grey, almost white, but he was as strong and warm as always. Igor was sadder than I remembered, but he seemed happy to see me.
Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and shouted “Wädi!” Yes, it was my friend’s hand, and if I had been moved to embrace my mother, the presence of my friend meant that I could no longer contain my tears. Some people looked on in surprise to see an Arab and a Jew embracing as if they were brothers. In their eyes I saw that Palestine had changed and that the breach that had started to open between the Arabs and the Jews was getting ever wider. But I did not want to distract myself with bitter thoughts and instead I enjoyed this reunion with my dear friends.
Sara said nothing, and she looked more fragile and insecure than was normal for her.
“Mother, this is Sara . . . I wrote to you about her in my letter . . .”
My mother embraced her affectionately and presented her to the men. They were surprised to see how comfortable Sara was when they shook her hand.
“Well, I see that you’ve prospered,” I said when I saw Louis’s truck, a slightly more modern model than he had been in possession of the last time I had seen him.
Marinna was waiting for us with Aya and Salma at the entrance to Hope Orchard. Noor, Aya’s daughter, was there, but I did not see her older brother Rami, nor any sign of Naima.
Marinna and Aya hugged me tight, but Noor was shy and did not allow me to kiss her. She had become a very beautiful young woman, and they said that she would be married soon.
Although neither Sara nor I were hungry, we couldn’t refuse to eat the food that Marinna and my mother had prepared. Sara especially liked the pistachio cake that Salma had made, following Dina’s recipe. My father had loved Dina’s cakes, I thought with nostalgia, evoking in my mind the profound friendship that had united them.
“They are all so old,” I thought, when Mohammed and Yusuf arrived later on. Mohammed’s hair was grey, and Yusuf, who had always seemed to be such a gallant man, now walked with a stoop and his eyes, which had been so lively, were now faded.
It was not until late in the afternoon, when everyone had gone home, that my mother asked me to come talk to her alone.
Marinna was helping Sara get settled in, and Louis and Igor were having a cigarette by the door to the house.
My mother looked at me and I read in her eyes the question: Where are my husband and daughter?
I tried to control my feelings as I told her that they had been murdered by the Nazis. That Samuel had died the day he arrived at Auschwitz, but that Dalida . . . I cried as I told her that these devils had made her into a prostitute and, not content with crushing her soul, they had experimented on her body, trying to apply the form of sterilization that had been thought up by the mad killer, Dr. Josef Mengele. I told her how both of them had fought in the Resistance, and how they had saved the lives of others, the lives of Jews who, thanks to their bravery, had cheated their appointment with the gas chamber.
My mother trembled. Her whole body trembled. I don’t know how she managed to deal with my tale. I didn’t spare her a single detail. She had a right to know the entire truth.
I embraced her, trying to control her convulsions, and we both sobbed and groaned, unaware that Louis and Igor had come in quite a while back.
The next day at breakfast I told the rest of the group what had happened to Samuel and Dalida, and explained in detail what Auschwitz was like. I was telling them about the extermination camp when Sara came into the room. I stopped talking at once. To the surprise of us all, Sara, after sitting down, took up the conversation and told them how she, Dalida, and others had all lived through hell, sharing all the details of what happened in that land of the Devil.
Marinna couldn’t bear what she was hearing and burst into tears. Louis and Igor seemed to have been struck dumb. Palestine had received clear news of the Holocaust, but when the events were told by a survivor the horror acquired an extra dimension. Sara revealed her forearm and showed where she had been tattooed with her number.
We all cried, and hugged each other, and were made disconsolate by the tragedy, astonished by the scale of the evil. Louis slammed his fist down on the table and stood up. He looked at us all and said:
“Never again. No, never again will we Jews allow ourselves to be persecuted, killed, tortured, treated as if we were not human. Never again will we be subject to anyone, will we tremble thinking that we can be expelled from our homes, from our villages. No, it will never happen again, for we have our own land, however small it may be, and all the Jews in the world know that they have a place where they can be born, and live and die. We will never allow more Holocausts to take place, never again allow another pogrom. It is over, over for good.”
After having heard Sara speak, no one dared question my desire to join my life to hers. And if my mother regretted that we could not have children, she never said anything. We had survived, and that was enough. She couldn’t bear any more losses. Not only had she lost her husband and her daughter, but also Daniel, her firstborn son.
From what my mother told me, my half-brother had fallen ill suddenly. He was tired and weak, and the leaders of the kibbutz called my mother. In spite of Daniel’s protests my mother and my Uncle Yossi went to find him and took him to Jerusalem. The diagnosis could not be any more devastating: leukemia. The word alone was a death sentence. Daniel lived barely six more months.
My mother cried as she told me of Daniel’s suffering, and I blamed myself for not having been able to know him better, for we sincerely loved each other. Some nights, when I was on watch, I had thought of my brother whom I had never learned to appreciate like he deserved. He was like a foreign body in our lives, he felt like that and we made him feel like that. He never understood how his mother could have married again, how she could have shared her life with another man, could have had other children, could have torn him out of his home and brought him to that community of unknown people. I think that Daniel started to feel happy in the kibbutz, there he was himself and himself alone and counted on the respect and attention of all the others. I might have asked myself why he had to die just when he was finally happy. But I didn’t ask that question, because I had come from living among the dead, and so Daniel’s death was just one more loss.
I said to my mother that I would wait until Sara was ready to marry me and that meanwhile I would go to the university and work at Hope Orchard just as my father had before me. She didn’t argue. It was decided, I would become an agricultural engineer. I could think of nothing better.
14
The First Catastrophe
“Ezekiel looked straight at Marian and she jerked herself upright. She had listened to him with such attention that she had barely moved. Shadows had forced the afternoon sun out of the room some time ago.
“I’m tired,” Ezekiel murmured.
“I’m sorry, I should have gone a long time ago. Your grandchildren will be angry with me and with good reason, I make you speak and speak . . . and you still have to get better.”
“We haven’t finished, but there’s not much left, is there?”
Marian couldn’t help smiling. This old man was stubborn and as tough as iron.
“I have some other interviews to do. If you think it’s a good idea, I’ll call you in two or three days . . .”
“Yes, call me, it’s your turn to speak. I suppose that your Palestinian friends will have told you the rest of the story.”
She grew tense. She didn’t know how to interpret Ezekiel’s words. Yes, she knew the rest of the story. She had been told it with no details left out.
“I will tell you everything I know. But rest now, I’ll call you. I have a couple of interviews lined up in
Ramallah, and I also want to go to Bethlehem.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
When she got back to her room at the American Colony she felt the need to call her ex-husband. It was eight o’clock in Israel, one in the afternoon in New York; Frank would be in his office.
She still needed him. Just hearing his voice made her calm again. He had always been prepared to leave whatever he had going on to attend to her needs. And what Marian most needed was to speak, to say the words out loud that she had been forming in her head.
Frank’s secretary seemed not to recognize her voice.
“Mr. Miller is busy, can I take a message?”
“I’m Ms. Miller,” Marian replied drily.
“Ah! Ms. Miller, I didn’t recognize your voice . . . I’ll see if Mr. Miller can speak to you.”
A second later she heard Frank’s voice and sighed with relief.
“How are your investigations going?” he asked.
And Marian told him about her last visit to Amman, as well as everything that Ezekiel Zucker had told her that day.
“Don’t you think that you should consider the story finished? Write your report and come home. You are taking advantage of Michel’s patience, and he is your boss after all.”
“I can’t write the report if I don’t have both sides of the story,” she said in her defense.
“Marian, it’s me you’re talking to, we all know what this journey means to you. You have become obsessed with Palestine and that’s not good, not good for your work or for you. Come back, Marian. If you want we can meet in Paris. I’ll be there in a few days.”
She hesitated. She needed to know that he would support her, and that he would be there for her, whatever she did.
“I can’t, Frank, I can’t leave yet.”
Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead Page 75
