Raquela

by Ruth Gruber

  The jeep stopped in front of her tree-shaded stone cottage. She thanked Ze’ev, picked up her suitcase, unlatched the garden gate, and ran across the little patio, shouting, “Mama! Papa!”

  “Raquela!” They flung open the door. Her mother reached her first and lifted her arms to embrace Raquela. Papa folded her in his strong arms.

  “My child,” he whispered.

  “Are you all right?” Mama asked. “Let me look at you. You’re covered with dust. Are you feeling all right? Even your face is all gray, like a mask. I can’t see what you look like.”

  Raquela laughed. “I’m fine, Mama. Especially now that I’m home. All I need is a good shower.”

  “Come on inside,” Mama said, businesslike. “Now I know why I saved all my water today. I must have felt you were coming home.”

  As they entered the house, Papa explained. Jerusalem had no running water. The Arabs controlled two of the pumping stations that brought water to Jerusalem—at Latrun and at Ras el Ein. They had cut off the water supply, hoping that thirst might make Jerusalem surrender. But Israel held two other stations—at Babel-wad and, not far from it, at Saris, and was already beginning to lay pipelines. Meanwhile, the little water they had was brought in by trucks and horse-driven carts and was carefully rationed.

  “We use the water five ways,” Mama said. “Drinking, cooking, bathing, sponging the floor, and finally the toilet. Today is so special we’ll celebrate. You’ll have the water.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Raquela protested. “You can’t be without water.”

  “No, no, you’ll see.”

  In the bathroom Mama gave instructions. “Now undress and step over here.”

  She placed a large basin inside the bathtub. Raquela stood in the basin and dipped a bar of soap in the pail of water Mama held. She was a little girl again as she scrubbed and soaped her hair, her face, her body, until she was coated with lather. Then Mama, now standing on a chair near the tub, spilled the pail of water on Raquela’s head and watched it flow into the basin.

  Raquela stepped out of the basin, clean and refreshed. The soapy water was saved; Mama assured her it would serve two more purposes—the floor and the toilet. Raquela, dressed in fresh clothes, joined her parents in the living room, full of energy, eager for news.

  “How are Jacob and Yair?”

  “Thank God, well,” Papa said. “They’ve been on different fronts in the war.”

  Mama smiled mysteriously. “You have a new brother.”

  “What? Have you adopted a baby?”

  “We adopted him, but he’s no baby. He’s just two months younger than you.”

  “Where is he?” Raquela glanced swiftly around the living room.

  “Sh-sh, he’s sleeping. We’ve given him our bedroom.”

  “I can’t stand this suspense. If I have a new brother, I’d like to know about him.”

  “All right, sit down,” Mama said. “I’ll tell you.”

  Raquela settled herself on the sofa. Mama sat beside her, watching her face. “You know, there are so many soldiers in the hospitals, nearly every family in Jerusalem has taken in a wounded boy or girl. We try to help them get better and at the same time we free the beds in the hospitals.”

  Raquela nodded.

  Mama went on. “They sent us this nice young man—handsome, good character. His name is Itzhak Elkhanim. He’s from Hungary. His family were all killed in the concentration camps. He himself survived Auschwitz.”

  “But what’s this about adopting him?” Raquela asked.

  “Not so fast.” Mama put up her hand. “Don’t be in such a hurry. I’ll tell you. He fought in the Old City; an Arab put six bullets in his stomach. He and his best friend, who was also badly wounded, crawled to one of the first-aid stations that we had set up in the Old City. His friend bled to death. But our boys were able to get Itzhak to the Bikur Holim Hospital.”

  Raquela waited for her to go on. Bikur Holim was the large red hospital on Straus Street, right off Jaffa Road.

  Mama had jumped off the sofa. “You must be hungry. I’ll get you some food; I bet you haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “Mama, lunch can wait. I want to hear about my adopted brother.”

  “All right, then.” Mama perched next to Raquela again. “In the hospital they performed a temporary colostomy. Then he was brought to us. Papa and I took turns taking care of him. After two weeks he needed another operation. We took him back to the hospital. And we nearly lost him. He was critically ill. Now he’s with us again, slowly convalescing.” She paused. “I’ll let Papa finish the rest. I’m going to fix you some food.”

  “There’s really not much more to tell,” Papa said. “When he wakes up, you’ll meet him yourself. You’ll see why he walked right into our hearts, and, since he had no parents, we adopted him.”

  After a scrambled-egg-and-salad lunch, Mama tiptoed to the bedroom.

  “Come here, Raquela,” she called out. “Itzhak is up.”

  Raquela entered the bedroom. A young man looked up at her, smiling; his face was pale and drained; he had dimples in his chin and his cheeks. His eyes were dark; a neat black mustache lined his lip.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Are you asking as a nurse—or as a sister?”

  Raquela chuckled. “Both.”

  “In that case, I’m already feeling better.”

  They chatted for a little while. “You rest now, Itzhak. We’ll have plenty of time to talk. I’m home now for good.”

  She plumped up his pillow and straightened his covers. “Goodbye…my brother,” she said.

  She went to her childhood bedroom. Mama had already fixed it with freshly washed sheets that smelled of the Jerusalem sun and wind. She lay down and was asleep instantly.

  The next morning Raquela walked to the bus stop and caught the bus to Zion Square. She walked up Rabbi Kook Street to the corner of the Street of the Prophets where the old English Mission Hospital now housed Hadassah A.

  It was a massive Romanesque structure that curved around the street with balconies, tall arched windows, and annexes with sloping red-tiled roofs. It was topped by a steeple, and surrounded on all sides by a stone wall and thick trees.

  She entered through a courtyard and walked up the stairs to the department of obstetrics and gynecology. In the hall she saw the back of a familiar figure. “Arik!” She started to run.

  He wheeled around. “Raquela!”

  He gathered her in his arms. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

  “Arik. It’s so good to see you. Are you well? Are you working too hard?”

  “I’m strong as an ox. But let me look at you.”

  Then he stood back. “My God, you’re more beautiful than I remembered.”

  All around them, nurses, doctors, patients, were scurrying through the narrow stone corridor. The hospital, in the July heat, was bedlam.

  “I’ve got to talk to you, but it’s so hectic here,” he said. “It’s been so long. I’ll be free in a couple of hours and we can go off somewhere for coffee.”

  “Fine. Why don’t I go right to the maternity ward and pitch in. I’ve brought my uniform.”

  He kissed her. “I’ll pick you up the minute I can take a break.”

  Raquela, in a fresh uniform, entered the nursery. The infants lay in cribs against the rough stone walls, yet the warmth, the cacophonic sound, unlike any in the world, of a dozen babies’ announcing their presence enveloped her.

  One nurse was on duty. The rims of her eyes were swollen and red. Her body sagged with fatigue.

  “Are you a new nurse here?” she asked Raquela.

  “Not really,” she said. “Just an old one come home. Why don’t you lie down for a while?”

  For the next three hours Raquela changed diapers, fixed formulas, bottle-fed babies, and brought hungry infants to nursing mothers.

  The Jerusalem sun was setting over the Old City; the mountain winds were cooling the nursery. Raquela tucked bla
nkets around the infants—not coarse army blankets but soft white ones. It was twilight when she felt someone looking at her. Arik stood in the doorway.

  He was smiling. “Even the babies are happy you’re home. It’s as if you never left us.”

  He planted a kiss on her cheek. “I’m free now. As soon as you’re ready we can leave.”

  Raquela called the nurse on duty, and soon, still in their hospital uniforms, they walked out into the courtyard.

  Zion Square was crowded with soldiers and their girls. Boys who seemed barely old enough to shave and men who looked like grandfathers strode the streets in motley uniforms and an incredible assortment of stocking helmets, GI overseas caps, French berets, Italian fedoras, Australian profile hats—mirroring all the countries they had come from. Unabashed, the soldiers stood in the middle of the square, clinging to their girls, kissing them, their bodies speaking the fear they might never hold each other again.

  “Let’s go to the Patt Bakery,” Raquela said, “for old times’ sake.”

  In the bakery Mrs. Patt, catching sight of Raquela, came from behind the counter.

  “Welcome home, Raquela.” She embraced her, her blue eyes wide with pleasure. “And good evening, Dr. Brzezinski.”

  Raquela returned the warm greeting.

  “Is Shula around?” she asked.

  Mrs. Patt shook her head. “Shula’s in Tel Aviv—in Army Intelligence. Come along.” She took them to the garden. “You’re both my guests. How about some of my apple strudel? With this rationing we can only make a little, and I save it for my special friends.”

  “I dreamed about your apple strudel in Cyprus,” Raquela said.

  Mrs. Patt ushered them to a table in the garden.

  All around them doctors and nurses in uniform nodded and exchanged greetings with Arik. Several, catching sight of Raquela, came to their table. “So good to see you back with us, Raquela.”

  A wave of nostalgia swept over her. This garden, the Patt bakery, the people—they were all part of her past.

  Arik was studying her face, beaming. “Now my friends will know why I haven’t stopped smiling all afternoon. I haven’t felt this good since you left.” He reached for her hand. She felt a glow of warmth.

  “You can’t imagine how I felt,” she said, “when I learned that you weren’t with Dr. Yassky on the convoy. That you were safe.”

  “It was the worst experience of my life. I stood on the roof of the hospital, watching through binoculars. I was in charge of the hospital, and my friends were in the buses, being burned alive. It was horrible—the worst nightmare. We couldn’t rush down to save any of them. We had no guns. We had nothing to fight them with.”

  Raquela shuddered. “What it must have done to you—seeing it all happen before your eyes.”

  “Awful. It aged us all a hundred years. We were desperate. We had more than seven hundred people in our institutions up there—doctors, nurses, students, professors, workmen—and, most serious of all, more than a hundred fifty patients. We couldn’t get down for three weeks, surrounded all the time by Arabs. We were able to hold out because of one man: Benjamin Adin, the driver.”

  “I remember. He used to pick me up during the curfew. We called him the meshugana—the crazy guy.”

  “Crazy like a fox. He refused to let us starve. He would take his truck and drive through Sheikh Jarrah like a shot to bring us supplies. He even brought us matzoh and sacramental wine so we could celebrate Pesach. We had Seders all over the place—in the hospital, in the nursing school, everywhere. I went from one to the other—”

  “Like the prophet Elijah,” she said, laughing.

  “If you can picture Elijah dropping in at every Seder to sip wine and tell some Sholom Aleichem stories.”

  “Only you would think of Sholom Aleichem to make the people forget for a little while.”

  The waiter brought their coffee and a small square of strudel.

  “Mrs. Patt must really love you, Raquela,” Arik said. “Do you know what our rations are this week? I can tell you exactly. Each of us gets one tomato, half a carrot, one cucumber, two onions, one green pepper, and a few string beans.”

  “My God, that’s a starvation diet.”

  “You’re right. It’s so ironic. We’ve got this UN Truce Commission and Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator. They say that there mustn’t be any improvement of any kind during the truce. If we had no food at the beginning of the truce, we should have none now. It’s madness when you think that UN officials, supposedly idealistic and humanitarian, spend all their time figuring out how to keep Jerusalem starving.”

  She put her hands to her face. “I feel so guilty. Mama made me a scrambled egg for lunch. I may have used up the family’s ration.”

  “Things are a little better now. We’ve got a tough Jerusalem boss—Dr. Dov Joseph, a former Canadian. He’s head of the Jerusalem Emergency Committee. He’s finally made the UN agree to let more food come up to Jerusalem in convoys. Now we’re getting an egg a day and some milk and cheese, and once in a while some frozen fish. But I can tell you, Jerusalem is still hungry.”

  The waiter refilled their cups.

  Arik sipped slowly. “It’s only since the truce that we can even have coffee in a café. During the fighting everything was shut down.” He looked at her. “Now I want to hear about you, Raquela.”

  For the next half hour she entertained him with stories of Old Battleship, of the kindly British officer who gave her his supply of diapers for her babies, and of the homesick Tommies who fed her premature infants. Then she told him of the frustration and despair of the young men of military age whose wives and babies were evacuated. “They’re still there, Arik. I don’t know what’s going to happen to them if the British don’t free them soon.”

  “Did you meet anyone special?”

  She took a long swallow of coffee. “Some wonderful people. Real heroes. The people who ran the JDC. Dr. Harden Ashkenazy.”

  He nodded. “The army is sending him every tough head injury. He’s already training other surgeons in neurology.”

  Raquela hardly heard him. “And I met the captains of the two biggest illegal ships.” She paused.

  “I want to hear more.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Good grief. I had no idea we’d been gone so long. It’s so good being with you again, sweetheart. Now that you’re in Jerusalem, we’ll have a lot more time to be together. Right now, we’d better get back to the hospital.”

  But there was little time in the next days to be together.

  At six A.M. on July 9, the cease-fire ended.

  Raquela was already at work in Hadassah A when shells began to fall on Jerusalem.

  The Arabs had used the last days of the truce to erect strong fortified positions on the walls and parapets of the Old City near the Tower of David and the Jaffa Gate.

  From the nursery window Raquela could see the new gun positions. She hurried to Arik. “I’m uneasy. I’d like to move the babies to a safer room. I found a good-sized room downstairs that’s like a shelter. It needs to be emptied and cleaned up. Is that okay?”

  He smiled. “I put you in charge.”

  Raquela helped a porter empty the room; the floors were scrubbed, the stone walls washed.

  Back in the nursery she handed each baby to a nurse who carried it down the narrow stone stairs; she brought the last infant down herself.

  Minutes later, a blast pierced the air.

  The massive hospital trembled. The babies screamed. Raquela’s knees buckled.

  She heard a commotion in the corridors and on the stairs. People were rushing up and down; voices called out, “Is anyone hurt?”

  Arik came in, shaken. His kindly face was chalk.

  He took her in his arms and held her close.

  Finally he spoke. “A shell just exploded in the nursery upstairs. It would have killed every baby.” He stopped. “I can’t bear to think—it would have killed you, too.”

  The Old City was gone. New Jeru
salem was encircled by the mufti’s gangs, Kaukji’s pro-Nazi Arab Liberation Army, Arab irregulars and mercenaries, and by Transjordan’s Arab Legion.

  The Arab Legion was the most formidable—twelve thousand soldiers trained by the British, armed by the British, and led by the English general Sir John Glubb.

  King Abdullah* of Transjordan hungered for Jerusalem and the West Bank.

  His desert kingdom of thirty-four thousand square miles on the East Bank of the Jordan had been an integral part of the original territory of Palestine promised by the Balfour Declaration for the Jewish homeland. Then, in 1921, the British had given it to Abdullah as a reward for the assistance of his father, Hussein ibn Ali, in defeating the Turks in World War I. The British had promised Syria to Hussein’s son Feisal. But the French, taking Syria for themselves, kicked Feisal out. So the British consoled Feisal with Iraq and gave his brother Abdullah the largely unpopulated sands on the East Bank of the Jordan River.

  Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, boasted that on a Sunday afternoon with a stroke of his pen, he lopped the East Bank off the Palestine map, took it from the Jews, and handed it on a platter to Abdullah. Even the name was significant: Transjordan—the other side of the Jordan.

  Now Abdullah had crossed the Jordan with Sir John Glubb commanding his Arab Legion. His purpose: to annex the West Bank and Jerusalem. He had, of course, no legal right to the territory. Had the British intended to give him Jerusalem and the West Bank—biblical Judea and Samaria—Churchill would have done it that Sunday afternoon in 1921 when he gave him the East Bank of the Jordan.

  The battlefront was the streets of Jerusalem. Arik, Raquela, every doctor and nurse, and every volunteer worked to exhaustion. Raquela served wherever she was needed—the delivery room, the nursery, tending the wounded, civilians as well as soldiers.

  To get to Hadassah A from the bus, she crept along the sides of buildings, for the Arabs were shooting almost incessantly from the nearby wall of the Old City. The sidewalks were stained with blood.

  The wounded from the streets and the burning battlefields were rushed to the nearest hospitals. Hadassah, after moving down from Scopus, had set up five emergency hospitals in town with three hundred beds. Hadassah A, in the old English Mission Hospital, had been the first; Hadassah B was in St. Joseph’s Convent, a former nun’s school for six hundred Arab girls—a sympathetic French Government official had turned it over to Shulamit Cantor to house her abandoned nursing school. The nearby Straus Health Center and the Hasolel Street Clinic were also converted. But the most exotic facility was the men’s ward of Hadassah D: it had originally been a Turkish harem. Even the wounded enjoyed knowing their upstairs rooms encircled the white-tiled indoor courtyard where once the women of the harem had danced and entertained their pasha.