Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “She has suffered so much . . . You know what, Wädi? I wonder how the survivors of the camps are able to live . . . If you had seen them . . . The first time I went to one of these camps and saw the survivors, I thought I was being faced with a legion of ghosts.” Ben’s voice trembled.

  “Sara has been getting better ever since she came to Hope Orchard. The first time I saw her I was taken aback, she seemed like a broken doll; now she can laugh, make jokes, enjoy certain things, although every now and then her eyes slide off into nothingness and a trace of pain appears on her lips.”

  “The devils made her prostitute herself, they mutilated her, tortured her children, killed them . . . No one can escape unhurt from such suffering.”

  “The task is to learn to live with it,” Wädi agreed.

  In the middle of February 1947 Jerusalem was shaken by an unexpected piece of news. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had taken a step that annoyed a great number of people—he had asked the newly formed United Nations to look for a solution to the problem of Palestine.

  Mohammed went to Hope Orchard with Wädi to talk to Louis, who was in Jerusalem during those days.

  “This is because the negotiations failed. We are stupid. We should have negotiated among ourselves, just as the British invited us to do, but by refusing to do that we are now in the position that Britain wants to get rid of the problem,” Mohammed said regretfully.

  “It’s not just because of that. I think that the British are not prepared to continue this war of attrition with us. They are not so worried by the attacks on their interests as they are by the loss of authority. They are no longer in control of Palestine. That is their problem,” Louis explained.

  “So the British want to wash their hands of the whole thing?” Wädi asked.

  “Exactly,” Louis replied.

  “There must be other reasons,” Mohammed insisted.

  “Well, they think it would be impossible for the Arabs and the Jews to come to any agreement, so they prefer to pass the hot potato to someone else,” Ben said bluntly.

  “Now they are going to put together another one of their commissions, made up of people who don’t know anything about Palestine but who want to impose their decisions,” Mohammed said regretfully.

  “But you said it, Mohammed, the fault is ours for not having reached an agreement. We still have time,” Louis said.

  “It’s not possible if you continue to bring your people over here,” Mohammed said and looked at Ben, as he knew that this was his principal activity.

  “And what do you want us to do? Let them die in refugee camps? The British camps are not the same as the Nazi camps, of course not, no one mistreats them, they have food, sanatoria . . . But they are prisoners nonetheless. The survivors don’t have anywhere to go. Do you think that England would be willing to accept them? Not even the United States, which sympathizes with our situation, is all that generous when it comes to providing visas. We will not allow ourselves to be sent to ghettoes again. We are going to take back our home and we will come here and we will stay here.” Ben spoke so directly that even Louis was impressed.

  “You cannot bring all the Jews of Europe,” Mohammed said.

  “All the ones who want to come will come.” In Ben’s voice there was no defiance, just the statement of a decision that was irreversible.

  What Mohammed didn’t know was that Wädi and Rami had themselves once helped Ben and Ezekiel bring in a group of refugee Jews who had arrived on one of those old tubs that could barely float. Old cargo ships that should have been decommissioned long ago, and that were the only hope for those men and women who have been evicted from their own lives and who were now taking their last chance.

  One night, Ben had come to Wädi’s house, asking if he could borrow Wädi’s car. He did not hide why he needed it.

  “A boat will come in at dawn this morning, with twenty adults and some children. We need cars to transport them. I need to borrow your car, Ezekiel will drive it and I’ll take mine.”

  Wädi didn’t have to think twice.

  “I’ll come with you and I’ll ask Rami to come as well. Maybe he can bring his father’s car.”

  If Mohammed and Yusuf had found out about this they would have been angry with their children. But the two younger men did this because of their indelible friendships with Ezekiel and Ben.

  Ezekiel was the first of them to get married. At the end of May he celebrated his union with Sara. Miriam seemed to be resigned to this marriage. It was not that she didn’t feel affection for Sara, but she was sad that she would not see any grandchildren from this union.

  Salma told Mohammed that Marinna had tried to cheer Miriam up by telling her that maybe Ezekiel and Sara could adopt one of the children who had lost their parents in the concentration camps.

  “I’m not sure that Sara will agree to Marinna’s idea. I have noticed that Sara turns her head away whenever she sees a child. She doesn’t want to see them because they remind her that she had two children herself,” Salma explained to her husband.

  Mohammed and Wädi listened in silence to Salma. They knew that she worried about Sara, for whom they had all conceived a great affection.

  Although tensions between the Arabs and the Jews grew worse every day, none of the Ziads missed Ezekiel’s wedding.

  Miriam had decorated the garden at Hope Orchard. The smell of jasmine mixed with the odor of the roast lamb that the guests ate.

  “What’s wrong?” Wädi asked Ezekiel as he served him a piece of lamb.

  “I don’t know . . . I should be happy, but it’s not exactly happiness that I’m feeling.”

  “You’re scared. I understand you. You are going to take a journey into the unknown because Sara . . . Well, Sara has suffered a lot.”

  “Will I be able to make her happy?”

  “What are you saying? Of course you will!”

  “I don’t know why she agreed to marry me.”

  “I can give you a hundred reasons, most importantly that she loves you, which is more than reason enough.”

  “Do you really think she loves me?” Ezekiel asked, moodily.

  “If Sara is capable of loving anyone, then it is you she loves,” Wädi replied.

  Ben came up to them with a glass of wine in his hand. Rami joined them as well. Mohammed looked at the group thoughtfully, but he stopped being worried when he saw them laugh as if they were still the carefree group of youngsters that they had been in the past.

  Wädi thought about Anisa. He would have liked her there with him. But he had not dared to invite her because he was unsure whether she would have accepted.

  Anisa was not like any of the young women he knew. She commanded respect, but she was friendly and cheerful, always ready to help others. But she was also prudent. She did nothing without thinking it through twice. He was annoyed that she had not yet accepted his proposal. When they were together he had no doubt that she would end up accepting, but as soon as he separated from her he began to doubt that she would ever give him a positive response.

  Rami pulled him out of his musings by slapping him on the back.

  “We’ll celebrate my wedding with Shayla soon, and yours with Anisa, I hope.”

  “She still hasn’t said that she wants to marry me.”

  “Have you asked her again?”

  “No. She’s said that when she makes up her mind she’ll let me know.”

  “And you are going to wait and not insist?”

  “You don’t know Anisa. She won’t let anyone pressure her.”

  “It’s not about pressuring her. It’s about reminding her that you are still waiting for an answer. You can’t wait your whole life.”

  “Yes, yes, I can. I want to marry her, so I will wait until she makes up her mind.”

  “My father is worried,” Rami said, lowering his voice
and changing the subject.

  “Mine too. He thinks that the Arabs are making a mistake by not receiving the United Nations delegates. The Jewish leaders are meeting with them, and they will shift the balance in their favor,” Wädi replied.

  “I know. The Jewish Agency men will not leave their side for a moment; also, the British government’s decision not to allow the boats filled with concentration camp survivors to land is creating sympathy for the Jews among the delegates.” Rami sounded truly worried.

  “You know what, Cousin? Sometimes I’m really not sure what we need to do. I am moved by the plight of these people who have survived Nazism and who now need a place to live, but at the same time I realize that the Jewish Agency will not settle for a home within a greater Arab state. They want their own state. They don’t say it openly, but that is what they desire.” Wädi’s words were prophetic.

  “I think the same. I have told my father and I have told Omar Salem.”

  “Omar Salem is a just man, but as stubborn as many of the rest of our leaders. They don’t realize that the battle now needs to be moved to a different field. We need to explain to the men of the United Nations what it is that we Arabs want.”

  “Our family owes a great deal to Omar Salem. He has always trusted my father, and has had him as his right-hand man for many years, and he has put me in charge of his farming business. But you are right, he is a stubborn man, who thinks that reality ought to conform to his own desires, and who does not see how matters really stand.”

  The two cousins talked until the last guests left Hope Orchard.

  Mohammed thought that in the next few months the United Nations delegates, in spite of the refusal of the Arab leaders to meet with them, would pay more attention to the attacks carried out on the British by the men of Lehi and the Irgun. It was an undeclared war, a war of attrition with victims.

  Mohammed could not have been more wrong. If there was something that weighed on the mind of the delegates it was the idea of bringing the British mandate in Palestine to an end, and this is what they recommended unanimously. Also, the delegates from Uruguay, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Canada, Peru, Guatemala, and Sweden all proposed the partition of Palestine as a solution to the problems faced by the Arabs and the Jews. It was only the delegates from Iran, Yugoslavia, and India who offered the solution of a federal state.

  Omar Salem called for a meeting in his house. He was indignant at what the United Nations delegates had proposed.

  “We will not allow it,” he said to his guests, who included Yusuf and his son Rami, and Mohammed and his son Wädi, as well as other prominent figures from Jerusalem.

  “And how are we going to stop it?” Rami asked.

  “Simply by refusing it. We will never accept that Palestine be divided and a part of it handed over to the Jews. We will fight to the death.” Omar’s answer was firm.

  “Yes, we will fight and we will die, but will we win?” Wädi’s question irritated Omar Salem and his guests.

  “How dare you question our victory?” Omar replied, clearly annoyed.

  “I dare not assume that the war will be won. Only a fool would do otherwise.”

  Mohammed looked at his son with pride. Wädi was a free spirit who didn’t bow before any man, no matter how powerful. He was always respectful, but he did not confuse respect with submissiveness.

  Omar cleared his throat uncomfortably at Wädi’s boldness. Yusuf looked worriedly at his nephew. He could see his wife’s rebelliousness in Wädi, and he thought, not for the first time, that the Ziad family was arrogant. Aya could be arrogant on occasion, and his son Rami had also inherited that predisposition to facing up to everyone without thinking about the consequences.

  “My nephew is too prudent,” Yusuf said, trying to calm the situation.

  “It is not prudence, it’s common sense,” Rami said in the face of his father’s furious glare.

  Other men joined in the discussion and supported their host. They would do whatever had to be done to stop Palestine from being cut in two. They would never allow such a ridiculous decision.

  “Which man in his right mind would allow a foreigner to come into his house and take over his garden?” one of the guests asked.

  “Only a coward would permit it,” another replied.

  But Rami and Wädi were not cowards, they just had no illusions. The reality was that the British wanted to leave Palestine, they were sick of their humiliation at the hands of groups such as Lehi and the Irgun, who dealt them blow after blow. They didn’t care if the guilty men were found and hanged, the Jews would never stop. Neither did the British know how to bring a halt to the brewing problem of the struggle between the Jews and the Arabs to take control of Palestine.

  Mohammed was the first to see Anastasia’s car approaching. After Jeremiah died, she had decided to hand the running of the quarry over to Mohammed and Igor. She had never visited, not even when her husband was alive, so her presence worried them.

  He went to greet her, but he sent one of the men to warn Igor first of all.

  “I’m pleased to see you, Mohammed.”

  He greeted her awkwardly. It had been a while since Anastasia had broken her links with Hope Orchard, and as a consequence he saw her very rarely: She had not even come to Ezekiel’s wedding. But Anastasia was the owner of the quarry, and was there in that capacity.

  The men looked at her, uncertain and worried. Igor approached to greet her.

  “What a surprise. I didn’t know you were going to come,” he managed to say, as confused as he was.

  Mohammed and Igor met with Anastasia once a month to tell her how things were going at the quarry; so something serious must have happened for her to turn up without warning.

  “I want to speak to the two of you,” she said, and started to walk to Igor’s little office without further preamble.

  She sat down behind the desk and looked at them for a long time before beginning to speak. Mohammed thought that she was treating them as if they were a couple of schoolboys caught committing some minor crime.

  “I’m going to sell the quarry. I’m leaving Palestine.”

  Neither Mohammed nor Igor knew what to say. They stood in silence, looking at her.

  “There is a man who wants to buy it, a friend of Omar Salem. It’s a good offer, but before I sign any agreement with him I wanted to tell you that if one of you, or both of you, want to buy the quarry, then it’s yours. The price will be a fair one.”

  Igor had passed sixty already, he was a little older than Mohammed. He felt strong and capable of working, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea for him to buy the quarry. Why should he? His son Ben had already found his own place in the world, he was dedicated to the Haganah body and soul, and wanted nothing more than to help organize the secret transport of Jews into Palestine. No, Ben would not want to take charge of the quarry, and he said as much to Anastasia.

  “And what about you, Mohammed?” she asked.

  “I would have to speak with my family . . . As you know, my son Wädi is a teacher and works in a printer’s shop. As for my nephew Rami, he is happy working for Omar Salem. I would like to talk to my brother-in-law Yusuf and my son, if you would give me some time to think . . .”

  “Two days. I need a reply in two days.” Anastasia’s voice was cold as ice.

  “You said you’re leaving Palestine . . . I didn’t know you wanted to go,” Igor managed to say.

  “You didn’t need to know. I’m going to Europe, to London. My children don’t want to hear anything about the quarry, they don’t really want to have that much to do with me either. As you know, they live in a kibbutz. They are too busy preparing for the new state. I don’t care, everyone has to choose his own destiny, and my destiny is not here. I am tired of fighting, of waiting for I don’t know what. I feel that my life has passed me by,” she said emotionlessly.

/>   And that was the last thing she said. She got up and closed the meeting with a slight nod of her head.

  They walked her to her car. She showed no interest in even having a look at the quarry.

  Igor and Mohammed felt uncomfortable with each other. They had worked together all these years, but had maintained a distance that neither had tried to overcome. They were not friends and had never been friends, and when they met at family celebrations they avoided one another. The love they both felt for Marinna had sunk an unbridgeable gulf between them. Igor had suffered for too many years, knowing that Marinna loved Mohammed, and Mohammed had never overcome the jealousy he felt to think that Igor shared his bed with Marinna every night.

  Salma listened with concern to what her husband had to say to her. He seemed knocked out by Anastasia’s decision to sell the quarry.

  “I knew she would do it one day,” Salma affirmed.

  “Yes? Why was that?” Mohammed asked ill-humoredly.

  “She’s a strange woman, apparently indifferent to everything that surrounds her. When her children were younger she was friendly toward them, but never seemed to really love them. She behaved toward Jeremiah in the same way. It was clear that he was very much in love with her, and a good husband, but I don’t think that Anastasia ever really loved him either. I think she was happy with what she had, with Jeremiah, but she would have preferred to have had another kind of man at her side. Jeremiah was a hard worker, and honest. But she didn’t love him, although she was always decent toward him.”

  Mohammed was surprised by Salma’s acute judgment. He had not been able to read so much in Anastasia’s inscrutable face.

  Wädi was upset to see how worried his father was. He would have liked to tell him that he would take over the running of the quarry, that he would work cheek by jowl alongside him and would enjoy knowing that the quarry was his, but he didn’t want to lie to him or to himself. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life cutting stones out of the guts of the earth.

  “It’s a good business,” Mohammed said.