by Lucy Lipiner
25
Kibitka, Our Hut
Late in 1941, before the winter rains turned the hot, dusty streets into mud, Papa found us a place of our own—a hut, or kibitka, with a dirt floor and walls of hardened dirt mixed with straw.
The one room had a low ceiling, two cots, a small table, one small, iron stove, and a little kerosene lamp. During scorching summer days, we washed the dirt floor with a bucket of water. The water seeped into the dirt floor and kept our little room cool all day long. Our hut was part of a compound with a courtyard. The owners of the property allowed us to use the courtyard, which was a blessing on hot summer days and nights.
The narrow dirt alleyways of Leninabad were lined with hardened dirt walls, heavy doorways here and there, with no windows anywhere to be seen. Who knew there were homes behind those walls? Those streets were extremely claustrophobic, twisting every which way with no particular logic, sometimes just leading to vacant and foreboding stretches of land. It seemed so strange, so uninviting.
We lived in the old part of town on a crooked, narrow alleyway, Madanyat 195, which ran perpendicular to a wider street called Lahuti, always crowded with shoppers and Tajik men riding their donkeys, seated on “saddles” that were doubled-up carpet bags. Sometimes, the donkeys were encouraged to gallop, usually with a gentle and sometimes not-so-gentle kick to the belly of the poor animal.
Mama warned Frydzia and me to be careful at all times. “Never enter deserted places,” she always told us. I was still very young, but she was determined to keep her little girls safe from abuse by strangers. She was especially uneasy about sexual abuse. The women in the region were in some ways protected from sexual abuse by the clothes they wore. We did not wear such clothes.
But as we grew taller, our dresses got shorter, and with our bare legs, we were more at risk for sexual abuse. One day, she brought home some fabric from some place, I’ve no idea where. By hand, she sewed a piece of fabric into the hemline of our dresses. Mama was pleased to see us in dresses that reached below our knees.
She worried so much about our safety in the streets. I think she wished that she could keep us locked up in the hut. Maybe she was right. In some ways, we were like baby animals in the wild. You either survived or you didn’t. It was a wilderness out there; that was something I did not understand as a child.
So Mama taught us well in the best school of all—the school of survival. “Lusia, don’t look at me like that,” she would say to me. “You think you are cute with those innocent blue eyes, but that alone will not keep you safe. If you see two or more boys or young men, turn around and walk—or better yet, run—the other way. They will not hurt you if they don’t see you, so stay out of sight.”
I learned well and knew never to enter deserted places. But I learned soon enough that crowded streets were not always a safe haven for little girls.
Sometimes, inappropriate touching occurred in full view of others—people who did not intervene or respond in any way to a child’s cry for help. Such was the culture of that land. Still, I felt much more secure in crowded streets, as opposed to deserted places. Vacant or abandoned spaces—there were many of them in old Leninabad—frightened me the most.
One day, I took a shortcut crossing a vacant lot on my way to school. I saw a man and a woman in a tight embrace leaning against a wall. I was not quite nine years old and very naive about sexuality. Only later did I understand that the two people in their passionate embrace were having sex. But at the time, I believed they were doing something I wasn’t supposed to witness. I needed to run fast, and I did. I ran faster than ever in my entire life.
One day, as it was bound to happen, I had to fight off a stranger who was touching me inappropriately. The Tajik man was young, maybe even a teenager. He grabbed me from behind and managed to hold me with just one hand. His grip was like steel around my middle. With his other hand he tried to reach under my dress. I screamed, which attracted a lot of attention.
I managed to free myself by kicking and scratching. He didn’t like being scratched, so he let go and slapped my face. Then he laughed. For him, it was a game. But for me, the awareness, the very experience of being assaulted that way, became all too real.
Mama was right; it was a wilderness out there in those streets. Over time, I learned to protect myself. I was mindful of men watching me or following me too closely. I was a fast runner and learned to look for ways of escape, usually by darting down crowded alleyways. Finally, I understood my mother’s warnings.
26
Rachel and Her Family
Our immediate neighbors, a family of Bukharian Jews, owned our hut and the rest of the compound. The matriarch of the family next door, Rachel, was probably in her forties. She was older than my mother. Her husband had run away in the 1920s, in the early years of Bolshevik ascendance. He fled to Palestine through Persia and promised to send for his family. Sadly, it did not work out that way.
Rachel’s oldest son, Abram, maybe in his twenties, was the man in his family in every sense of the word. Abram was very resourceful. He was an entrepreneur, which, in the Soviet Union, was frowned upon; indeed, it was illegal most of the time. But Abram provided a decent livelihood for his mother and his two younger sisters, Sara and Zina, by dealing in foreign currency, an activity strictly forbidden under Soviet law. So, while providing for his family, Abram was also risking his own life and theirs due to his profession.
It was through Abram’s profession that I glimpsed, for the first time and only for a brief moment, the US currency. In my mind, everything American was strong and solid, and the American money looked solid to me.
I liked Abram a lot. He was strong and handsome. His strength meant stability to me. I thought, how wonderful that my father’s name was Abraham, a name which was very common among Ashkenazi Jews, and that Abram was the same name among Bukharian Jews. It felt good, as if there were a real kinship between us.
We were strangers in that land, and we were strangers to them. Only several weeks earlier, they hadn’t even known us, yet they took us in, and more than that, they took us into their hearts. It really felt like we were family.
For us, an invitation to supper was a lifesaver. I recall how we sat in a circle, their family and ours, on the floor covered with Oriental rugs. We ate, all of us using our fingers only, from one common platter full of aroma-filled, steaming rice pilaf.
They were good people. Sometimes, it seemed to me that they assumed responsibility for us. They did not believe that we were savvy enough to understand that land and its people, which indeed was true. Both the land and the people were foreign to us in so many ways. Papa did not have a clue how to earn money and not get caught by the police. Most activities that people engaged in were illegal. Anything legal did not put food on the table. We were running out of things to trade for food.
27
Winter 1941/42
We settled into our tiny hut under difficult conditions. Mama and Papa shared one cot, and Frydzia and I shared the other. The cots were so narrow that it was impossible to turn from side to side without the other person turning as well. I slept rolled into a fetal position, with Frydzia spooned around me, her body pressed into mine, her arm resting on my thigh or the nook of my waist. This is how we always slept. I couldn’t fall asleep any other way. Frydzia and I needed privacy, with Papa sleeping only a few feet away, so we all perfected a technique of dressing and undressing under our bedding.
Life was a struggle that first winter. We had little food, no running water—actually, no one had running water or electricity in the old town of Leninabad. The only source of light during long winter nights was a kerosene lamp, which we used sparingly. Like everything else, kerosene was available in the black market at exorbitant prices. It was such a joy sitting around the table when the lamp was lit. Our small, iron stove stayed cold most of the time for lack of firewood. The cheapest and more available kindling—flat, round cakes of dry manure mixed with straw—burned well in the stove but gave
off a terrible smell. Most of the time, we preferred wearing our coats to lighting the smelly stove. Fortunately, the winters were short, usually ending in late February.
But we were besieged by infectious diseases. People everywhere that savage winter of the war were dying of typhus, tuberculosis, malaria, and dysentery. Typhus—caused by lice, which were everywhere—was the most dreaded disease of all and the number-one killer that winter. Members of our extended family were not immune.
Cousin Solomon—the father of Syma, Frydzia, and Lily—came down with typhus and was dead the next day, and he was only in his early thirties. The family escorted him to the Bukharian burial grounds. The women and children stood behind a stone fence, along with Uncle Beno—who was Solomon’s brother. As a Cohen (the priestly and most noble caste), Uncle Beno was not allowed near the grave, as Cohens were not allowed contact with the dead. So he stood with us women behind the stone fence, climbing to the top of a large stone, struggling as he leaned over to catch a glimpse of his brother’s burial.
This was the first time I had gone to a funeral. I could not understand why someone young and healthy like Cousin Solomon, who only a day earlier had carried two buckets of water, was not returning home with us. I had seen death before. I saw dead people after the bombings when we were fleeing into eastern Poland, and I saw dead people in Siberia. I understood that the sleep of the dead didn’t look like ordinary sleep.
Cousin Bella, Solomon’s young widow, couldn’t provide for her three little girls, so she placed the two older ones, Syma and Frydzia, in an orphanage. While her mother worked in a factory, little Lily was cared for by her grandparents, Tante Esther and Uncle Benjamin.
Uncle Beno came down with typhus next. With great effort, Papa managed to buy the right medicine in the black market. Uncle Beno survived.
Doctors were powerless to help the sick and dying. There were no medicines available, except in the black market. The Russian doctors made house calls, but they were as poor as everyone else and often accepted food as payment. One time when Papa was sick with very high fever, Mama offered the visiting doctor some watery soup. He graciously accepted and sat down, and without any words spoken between them, he ate the soup and departed.
Papa was the first in our immediate family to come down with typhus; at least, the doctor believed that’s what it was but conceded that he could not be 100 percent sure.
During his delirium, Papa kept pointing to one particular spot on the wall. He tried desperately to tell us something— something about the wall and something about keeping us safe. Papa eventually recovered, even without medicines. Days later, he explained his incoherent babblings. Apparently, he had carved a hole in the dirt wall of our hut where he had stashed two gold coins “for a rainy day.” Two gold coins was a treasure. I didn’t know we owned such wealth. He explained that these gold coins must never be traded for bread. They were to be used only if our lives were in danger. Possibly, we were to use the gold coins to bribe our way out of the Soviet Union.
There was more to this—a whole itinerary of possibilities. Papa thought we might be able to cross the border into Afghanistan and, from there, take a route to Iran. In Iran, he explained, we could conceivably hook up with the Anders Army, led by General Wladyslaw Anders, whose troops were reforming themselves as the exiled Polish army with a sizable contingent of Polish civilians. They were crossing via the Persian corridor into Iran, Iraq, and Palestine to join up with the British to fight the Nazis in North Africa. Papa believed that being Polish as well and speaking the Polish language, we might possibly be a part of that transport and just might reach Palestine somehow.
I believed with all my heart that this most exciting adventure would take place and that the dream of reaching Palestine would come true. Unfortunately, Wladyslaw Anders and his troops were known for being openly anti-Semitic, as was quite common in the Polish army and among the Polish soldiers. Papa wisely gave up on that whole idea of reaching Palestine.
My mother carried the dream in the shape of a seashell. It had been sent to her in Poland in the early 1930s by her best friend who had moved to Palestine. Mama held on to it throughout the long and difficult years of the war. I have it still, and to this day, we all treasure the shell. If you tap it gently against a hard surface, you will hear the sound of ocean waves.
28
Spring 1942
Tante Bronia got a job in a factory processing fruit into preserves. The fruit, called uriuk, was similar in taste to apricots but smaller and much sweeter. It was the best fruit locally grown and was most frequently processed into preserves. Tante Bronia’s job was a godsend. Any job in the food-processing or food-packaging industry was a godsend. It was not the wages; they barely enabled workers to feed their families. No, it was the food that was stolen from the workplace that made a difference. It would either be eaten or traded for other necessities.
We were fortunate; Tante Bronia brought us delicious preserves from time to time. A little bit of preserve on a small piece of bread was pure heaven. But we worried about her. It was dangerous to steal on the job. Men and women in white coats were posted in the workplace for the sole purpose of watching for pilferage. You had to be clever and hide the stolen goods very carefully.
It was about this time, in the spring of 1942, that we were awakened very early one morning to a tremor that made our cots shake and move about, a tremor that felt like a real earthquake. Light tremors and earthquakes are not uncommon in that part of the world; sometimes they occur several times a year. What was terribly alarming that particular morning was that we were all awakened from a sound sleep, but Mama was nowhere to be seen! Our hut was shaking, our cots with us in them were moving about, and Mama was gone!
Papa was beside himself. He swayed and staggered about the hut, trying to reach the door. He ran out into the courtyard, all the time calling her name, “Raisil, Raisil, where are you?” It was horrible to see him so distraught. He was crying, although he tried hard not to show it.
Mama returned hours later carrying a large chunk of bread. He screamed at her, “Where were you? Where were you?” She tried hard to explain that she got up at four o’clock that morning to stand in a breadline, but before she could finish a sentence, Papa grabbed a chair and, in a temporary fit of madness, smashed it against a wall. He screamed so loudly! He was incoherent while Mama just stood there patiently waiting for him to calm down.
Frydzia and I sat up in our cot. We held each other in a tight embrace, not knowing what else we could do. I was so frightened. I had never seen my father display such rage. Was this rage more than anything directed at himself? Was it his inability to provide for his family the most basic needs of daily living? Or was it that my father understood better than anyone the dangers that existed for women in the narrow streets and alleyways of that land, especially for women unaccompanied by men?
That same year of 1942, my sister and I started school for the first time in Leninabad. I was almost nine years old, and Mama, as usual, worried about education, rather the lack of it, for her girls. But first, she found a friend for me. Her name was Bronia—like my favorite aunt—and she too was going on nine. It was great having a friend of my own. I hadn’t had friends in years, since the war broke out. After all, when you are always on the run, you are lucky to get to keep your own family.
Leninabad class photo, Lusia front-row center (white blouse), Frydzia back-row on the right of the English-language instructor.
We learned from the family of my new friend that the expatriates from Poland were establishing a school. It was a Polish school; everything was taught in the Polish language, but it was based on the Soviet system and the Soviet curriculum.
In addition to being taught the Polish language, great Polish poets like Mickiewicz, and Polish novelists like Sienkewicz, we also recited poetry by Pushkin, the renowned Russian poet. Later, English-language instruction was introduced, as well as social sciences and mathematics. Later still, we learned algebra, geometry, chemist
ry, and physics. Yet Soviet propaganda was a very important “subject” in our school, as much as in all other Soviet schools.
Our school was small in size and numbers. We were perhaps one hundred students to about twelve teachers. The students in each class ranged in different ages; some students were two or three years older than others. I was one of the youngest and smallest kids in class.
Our teachers were not educators by profession; rather, they were educated men and women who had held various professions before the war—engineers, university professors, writers, chemists, and journalists, all from Poland. We did have two Russian teachers. Serafina Vasilyevna, who was actually a Tartar, taught us the Russian language and literature. I remember her with great pleasure. She was always cheerful, always smiling. When she smiled, her narrow, slanted eyes seemed closed and unseeing. I liked Serafina Vasilyevna. I believe I liked all smiling people.
Tovarish Ivanov—tovarish, of course, means comrade—a strong and muscular man who often wore a tank top, I think to show off his powerful muscles, was our gym teacher. He also taught us war studies. He used to make a great show of taking apart a rifle and displaying all the parts. “Szkenty i knopki, szkenty i knopki.” He would call out the various rifle parts, and we would repeat them by rote. For the subject of war studies, Tovarish Ivanov was properly attired in a Soviet uniform and a peaked cap with a red star on top.
In some ways, our school was like a private school, and we were fortunate in that we were given a very good education. And there was no such thing as elective subjects; everything was compulsory. But the best of all was the piece of bread and a bowl of soup we received daily.