Raquela

by Ruth Gruber

  Golda’s voice grew a little softer. “We know what you have suffered. But we’re asking one more sacrifice. Those of you whose turn it is to go to Palestine in December—we’re asking you to give your certificates to families with babies.”

  A man in a tattered raincoat shook his fist in the air. “Hitler did enough to me in Europe. Now I’ve been in this hell for six months. I want to get out!”

  “Listen to me!” The voice pealed forth across the crowd of angry people.

  They grew silent.

  “Friends, hear me out. They’re talking about us right now at the United Nations. I am sure you will not have to remain on Cyprus much longer; eventually all of you will be released and you will all be free to come home to us.”

  Derisive laughter filled the cold winter air.

  Golda looked down from the crates. “You must believe me. Whoever gives up a certificate now will be on the quota in January. If we delay getting the children right out, they may be dead of typhus. We want them to live. We want you to live. We want all of you to come home.”

  “She’s right!” a woman called out. “I’ve waited so long, so many years. I can wait another month. Golda, take my certificate. I have no babies anymore to be saved. My babies are dead.”

  A few days later a “baby transport” sailed from Famagusta to Haifa.

  NOVEMBER 29, 1947

  Raquela sat with the Jewish doctors and nurses in an iron hut, listening to the shortwave radio.

  At Lake Success, New York, the nations of the world were about to vote on the UNSCOP recommendations—whether or not to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

  In Jerusalem, David Ben-Gurion sat at his desk surrounded by the leaders of the Jewish community.

  In the camps in Cyprus the refugees waited to learn their fate. A Jewish state, they were sure, would set them free.

  The vote on partition was beginning. Raquela put her head close to the radio. Her temples throbbed. The roll call began:

  “Afghanistan votes no.”

  “Argentina abstains.”

  “Australia votes in favor of partition.”

  Raquela held her breath. Would Golda’s prophecy be fulfilled? She remembered Golda’s voice, speaking in Dhekelia…You will all be free to come home to us.

  The votes continued. The Soviet bloc and most of Latin America were voting in favor of partition. Even the Commonwealth countries were breaking away from the motherland. The United States and France voted yes. The eleven Arab states voted no. Great Britain abstained.

  Raquela looked up at a calendar on the wall. It’s the twenty-ninth, she thought. She had long ago decided that twenty-nine was her lucky number.

  From Lake Success she heard a voice tallying the results.

  “Thirty-three in favor. Thirteen opposed. Eleven abstentions.”

  Tears rolled down the cheeks of the doctors and nurses.

  A new voice came over the radio, speaking from Jerusalem:

  “Tens of thousands of people are in the streets, singing and dancing. Mobs are crowding into the courtyard of the Jewish Agency. Mrs. Golda Meir has just appeared on the balcony.”

  Golda’s voice entered the iron hut. Raquela shut her eyes. She saw Golda again, her dark hair pulled back, her words simple, forceful. She was describing the Jewish State that would be born of this vote:

  “The Jewish State will offer equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens. The Arabs have nothing to fear; we reach out to our Arab brothers the hand of friendship.”

  The doctors and nurses sprang up, hugging and kissing one another, then linking arms and dancing the hora.

  Raquela ran through the hospital compound into the prison wing. “Wake up! Wake up!

  “What’s the matter? What’s happened? What now?”

  “The UN has just voted. We have a state!”

  Cries of joy swept through the iron wings of the maternity ward.

  A woman reached up to touch Raquela. “My baby was born in Cyprus, but he will grow up free. In a Jewish state.”

  A young woman turned her head to the wall, sobbing. “If only my mother and father could have lived to see this day.”

  Lili began the Shehekhiyanu, the prayer of thanksgiving. A hush fell on the crowded maternity room. Even the infants were still. Raquela, Gerda, the mothers and nurses and aides, all joined Lili in the prayer.

  “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Who has sustained us and brought us to this day.”

  DECEMBER 1947

  The air of the maternity ward had changed. The prehistoric monster had been transformed. On sunny days rows of white diapers flapped outside the huts like flags in the wind. On rainy days the wet diapers were strung on lines inside the arched walls. The nursery at the far end of the ward, heated by a small kerosene stove, became a white island of bassinets lined with sail cloth and protected with white netting. The babies nestled in pieces of army blankets that had been softened by countless scrubbings and purified by the sun.

  A new midwife arrived—Hava Rosenbusch, a dark-haired, blue-eyed woman. Originally from Germany, where her father had been a doctor, Hava had been a classmate of Raquela’s in nursing school. Hava’s coming made Raquela’s life easier. They shared their days and nights and the burden of responsibilities for the maternity ward.

  Even Old Battleship’s tyranny in the dining room was circumvented; the doctors and nurses convinced a British officer that they needed a separate kitchen for their kosher diet. They found an empty hut and moved in; now they had rooms of their own and their own dining area where they no longer had to jump when Old Battleship entered. Here they could relax together.

  “May I help you, Sister?”

  Raquela, holding a warmly wrapped premature baby in her arms, looked up.

  A young British soldier stood in the doorway.

  “You know about premies?” she asked.

  “My sister had one. I used to feed him all the time.”

  He tiptoed toward her and looked down at the tiny bundle. “Why don’t you let me feed the baby?”

  Raquela wasted no time accepting. She gave him a white apron, a diaper for his shoulder, and a surgical mask, which he put over his nose and mouth. He settled himself comfortably in a chair. Raquela handed him the baby girl and a bottle of milk. Tenderly, he fed the premature baby. Raquela smiled at the paradox—a premature refugee snuggling in the arms of a British guard.

  The young soldier looked longingly at the white island of babies. “It’s a bit of home here,” he said. “Not like the rest of this bloody camp.”

  He lifted the baby over his shoulder, carefully rubbing her back until he heard a tiny burp. “Guess she’s had her dinner. I’ll come back and feed her again if you’ll let me.”

  “You’re welcome anytime.”

  “I’ll bring my buddies, too, if I may. By the way, Sister, my name is Richard.”

  The next night, Richard appeared with another soldier. “We guard different gates,” he explained. “But we each left a buddy on duty. They’ll come to feed more premies for you when we get back.”

  They fed the babies; then Richard and his friend tucked them in their cribs, wrapped them in extra blankets, and warmed them with hot-water bottles. Raquela invited the young men to stay for a spot of tea. She fixed a tray with American biscuits and the canned peaches she received from the JDC, and soon, joined by more young nurses, they sat around the coal-burning stove, chatting as if they were in an English drawing room.

  Raquela kept their nocturnal visits a secret lest Old Battleship have them punished for invading her domain.

  Soon Raquela’s six weeks would be over. Meanwhile, she was determined to use every day to win more concessions for her mothers and babies. She had to sign for every diaper and shirt she requisitioned from the neat stacks on the shelves of the Red Cross hut. Colonel John Richardson, a pleasant, sandy-haired Englishman in charge of the hut and its sorely needed supplies, told her one day, “I’m being shipped back to Engla
nd soon. From now on, when each baby leaves the hospital to go back to the camps, I want you to give it an extra shirt and diaper.”

  “You’re very kind, Colonel Richardson.”

  A few days later he entered Maternity. “Nurse Levy,” he said, “please come with me.”

  She followed him to the Red Cross hut. “I want to give you all these diapers and shirts. But you’ll have to find a place to hide them.”

  Raquela stared at him, “I…I can’t find the words to thank you, Colonel. What a gift for these new mothers.”

  The colonel explained. “My replacement has just arrived. I’m afraid he’s so hostile to your people he won’t even give you the things you’re entitled to.”

  Raquela yearned to say yes immediately. The kindly Englishman was offering her a bonanza. But it was too big a haul to accept on her own. She ought to get permission from Dr. Mary Gordon, the JDC’s medical director.

  “Can I let you know in a few minutes?” she asked Colonel Richardson.

  “You’re not turning me down, are you?”

  “Oh, no. But I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried to Dr. Gordon’s office in the administration building. Dr. Gordon was a South African in her fifties who had served for years as a Jewish officer in the South African army. In the turbulence of the camps she was calm, tough, unflappable.

  Dr. Gordon listened to the offer.

  “Don’t accept it. You’re an attractive young woman, and he’s been here a long time without his wife. He’s going to demand something from you.”

  “I don’t believe that for one moment.” Raquela turned on her heels.

  She sped back to Maternity, looked at her aides, and chose Henya, a small gray-haired woman. She had long been struck by Henya’s urbanity and air of quiet strength. Raquela asked her to come along to the Red Cross hut. On the way, they picked up some laundry duffel bags.

  “We’re back for your offer, Colonel,” Raquela said.

  His face broke into a smile. “I’ll help you.”

  The three of them, the tall sandy-haired Englishman, Raquela, and Henya swiftly emptied the shelves and stuffed the baby’s layettes into the duffel bags. The two women thanked him, dragged the bags to Raquela’s room, and hid them in her closet.

  Henya looked at Raquela’s clothes hanging there.

  Her face changed. “Let me sew something for you,” she said. “In fact, you’re looking at the best seamstress in the whole Caraolas camp. I’ll make you a dress—like from Paris—if you can get me some real silk.”

  Raquela was intrigued. “Maybe we can buy silk in Nicosia.”

  Henya shook her head. “You know the British won’t let me out of the compound.”

  Raquela closed the closet door on the babies’ bounty. “Meet me here tomorrow morning, right after I come off night duty.”

  Raquela could hardly wait until Henya arrived. She had borrowed a dress, a cape, and an ID card from one of the Jewish nurses. The postage-stamp-size picture on the identity card was sufficiently vague to bear a slight resemblance to Henya.

  Henya arrived, breathless with excitement. She tried on the dress. It was a little big. No matter; the cape would hide it.

  “You’ll pass,” Raquela said. “But don’t say a word at the gate. If you open your mouth, they may begin to question you and get suspicious.”

  At the gate, they showed their cards to the soldiers and continued walking nonchalantly until they were on the road.

  Henya took deep drafts of the cool, clean morning air. “So this is what free air smells like.”

  Raquela held her arm. “For today, forget the camps. Forget everything. We’re going to town.”

  She hailed a cab. “Downtown Nicosia, please,” she told the driver.

  Soon they were driving past the circle of fortifications and ramparts that girded the capital city. Within the double walls of brown-earth embankment and green trees, they drove past Gothic churches, domed mosques, and Turkish baths, past palm trees and orange groves. The minarets of St. Sophia, once a great cathedral and now the principal mosque of Nicosia, rose above the narrow streets.

  Henya whispered, “I don’t know where to look, where to throw my eyes first.” She stared at the crowded shops and the white stone houses with overhanging balconies covered with tile. “So today there really exists in the world,” she said slowly, “a place without barbed wire.”

  They left the cab in the bazaar and walked through a network of streets and lanes crowded with villagers and townspeople shopping for fruits and vegetables. They wandered in and out of open shops with huge, cavernous interiors.

  “It’s like the Old City,” Raquela said. “You’ll see—when you get to Jerusalem.”

  “When I get to Jerusalem,” Henya sighed. “It’s more than two weeks since they voted in the UN. What’s holding the state up?”

  “The British still have to get out of Palestine,” Raquela explained as they walked down streets where coppersmiths hammered metal trays and carpenters turned wood into furniture.

  “So when will the British get out?” Henya asked.

  “I heard on the air just the other day—it was about the eleventh or twelfth of December—that Bevin told the House of Commons the Mandate will end on the fifteenth of May, 1948.”

  Henya counted on her fingers. “Five more months! Five more months of imprisonment.”

  Raquela felt a twinge of guilt. Her tour of duty would be ending in three weeks.

  They stopped in front of a shop that displayed pure silk and damask brocade in its windows. They entered the shop; the shelves were stacked with bolts of fabric. Henya was like a hungry child at a banquet. “That’s the one.” She pointed to a bolt of periwinkle-blue silk with a fleur-de-lis pattern woven into it.

  They bought three yards of the silk, a rainbow assortment of threads, a tape measure, pins, and needles.

  “Let’s have some ice cream,” Raquela said. They sat in an ice-cream shop, talking about the dress soon to be created. Henya, savoring every spoonful, shut her eyes. “Don’t wake me. I’m dreaming this whole day.”

  It was midaftenoon when they returned to Raquela’s room. Henya changed into her own clothes. “I feel like Cinderella after the ball,” she smiled ruefully. “But let’s not waste any time. Do you have a pencil and a piece of paper? I’ll need to take your measurements.”

  Measuring the length she wanted, from the shoulder to the hem, Henya stopped the tape measure just above Raquela’s knee. Raquela looked down. “That’s too short!!”

  “Why do you want to hide your legs?”

  “Skirts are much longer now,” Raquela explained. “It’s the new style by Christian Dior.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He’s the latest rage in Paris.”

  Henya drew back. “There was no Dior when I worked for a couturier in Paris. I was there a few months.” She paused. “I went home to Warsaw to my husband and my two little girls just before Hitler came, on September first, 1939. See my gray hair. I know I look like an old woman. I’m thirty-eight. My hair turned gray overnight.”

  She leaned against Raquela’s small table, unconsciously stroking the blue silk. “One day Nazi trucks came down the street, rounding up all the children. I saw them grab my two little girls and throw them into a truck. I ran after them, screaming, ‘Give me back my children.’ The Nazi officer stopped the truck.

  “‘Which are your children?’ he asked me. I pointed to them.”

  Henya stopped talking. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Raquela’s eyes filled up. Henya went on.

  “The Nazi officer took my two precious children to the back of the truck, where I was standing.

  “‘Choose one,’” he said.

  “I stood there screaming. How could I choose? ‘Give me back my children.’I kept pleading.

  “He laughed and drove away.”

  SIXTEEN

  JANUARY 1, 1948

  Levi, Morris Laub’s ten-year-old son, woke early on the first d
ay of the new year. He wheeled his bicycle out of the garden of their house on Franklin Roosevelt Road.

  Near the Famagusta harbor, he saw the port filled with British naval vessels escorting two huge ships.

  Levi pedaled home as fast as his legs could spin the wheels.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” He woke his father. “The two biggest ships in the whole world are in the harbor.”

  Laub put on his trousers and shirt, jumped into his car, and rushed to the port.

  Raquela had stayed the night with the Leibners after a New Year’s Eve party. Now they too hurried to the harbor.

  They saw British soldiers lining the dock, armed to the teeth, as if they were preparing for an invasion. Out in the water, thousands of men, women, and children were crowding the decks of two huge ships.

  Josh spoke in an undertone to Raquela and Pnina to prevent the soldiers from hearing. “We had word, there are more than fifteen thousand refugees on the two ships.”

  Raquela was appalled. “Fifteen thousand more! Where in the name of humanity are we going to squeeze in fifteen thousand more human beings? The camps are already overflowing. No water. No plumbing. No electricity. My God, there was no privacy before. What will there be now?”

  “The British will have to open new compounds for them,” Josh said. “There’ll be no sleeping for any of us for at least a week until we make life a little bearable.”

  “I’d better get right back to the hospital,” Raquela said, “and see if I can scrounge some more supplies. It’s lucky I’ve got all those extra diapers and shirts.”

  She taxied to Nicosia, entered the hospital on the hill overlooking the city, and hurried to Maternity.

  “Gerda, Lili, Henya,” she called. “We’ve got to get to work right away. Fifteen thousand new refugees are being unloaded in Famagusta.”

  In the early afternoon there was a knock at the white door of the protruding entrance. Gerda opened the door and reported to Raquela.

  “There are two funny-looking shmendricks outside. They say they want to see the midwife in charge. I told them you were busy, but they refuse to go away.”