by Ian Stephen
‘Penalties are indeed listed but it is clear that these are not for society as we know it now and in any case there is the possibility of mitigating such penalties to imprisonment for life.’
I was struggling.
How could you not be struggling? Knowing that one prescribed penalty for an arsonist was to burn him or her. When the guy whose seed is in you escaped from a disabled tank in the battle of El Alamein. So that was one World Religion firmly in touch.
Or was it? Next week, The Two Minute Silence printed a single letter on a single topic, from a main man in our Last Bastion of the Faithful, the official Free Church of Scotland, accept no substitute. It was on ‘The Majesty of Capital Punishment’. A later epistle under the same name likened predatory homosexuals to jackals. Appropriate biblical language, of course.
Which brings us to Palestine. Or rather the State of Israel which was then still occupying significant chunks of territories that their tanks had rolled through, during their own blitzkrieg in the Six-Day War. And perhaps it still is.
At the end of the year-out as a hospital porter I had plenty of dosh. I’d been depositing shift-disturbance allowance and I wasn’t drinking or smoking. Not even tobacco. It was the olaid who said I should get myself travelling. Take another year out before I got back to the course. Maybe take my fishing rod along with me. I didn’t take it on the first trip but it came along on the second.
Thomas
There’s a couple of stories where some guy’s in the cack, usually for carrying out his duty as a Hebridean citizen by carrying out the act of poaching. The laird, being a sporting gent, gives him a chance. There’s three questions. They vary, story to story, island to island but one of them always is, ‘What am I worth?’
You know the answer? It’s ‘Twenty-nine pieces of silver. Because our Lord was sold for thirty and you can’t be worth more than that.’
I’ve heard that there’s a sect which places Judas Iscariot pretty high up the pecking order of apostles. He was the instrument by which we all gained the possibility of redemption. I don’t think he was the one Bob Marley was singing about, but.
I’ve a soft spot for Thomas. Remember he was the one who had to see the nail holes in the hand, to be convinced. Most guys in any of the churches I attended or in the mosque or shrine or maybe at the wailing wall, would say that it’s better to have faith. If you really must, then you can go and weigh up the evidence. Maybe I became addicted to documentary evidence at a very early age. My olman might have had something to do with it.
There was a church group organising a trip to the Holy Land. It was tempting. Most of the arrangements would be made and the itinerary rang with the resonance of The River of Jordan and The Red Sea, The Sinai Desert. Jerusalem and Bethlehem. There wasn’t a lot about the Gaza strip in The Brochure. I asked the olaid if she didn’t fancy that one herself. I could help with the spondulicks.
‘I dinna think so, son,’ she says. ‘Everybody on that bus’ll be trying to be good as gold. It’ll nae be a lot o fun.’
And Kirsty, back in Canada, was planning on a visit. What was winter to us was a mild break for her.
I signed up for a six-month spell as a volunteer on a kibbutz. It was not far from the seaport of Acre. I remembered the Bahá’í World Centre was close to there. There was a shrine in Haifa and a prison where the exiled leader had been held for many years.
And I didn’t know much about Judaism.
I suppose there was still a bit of an idea of the kibbutz as utopian community crofting. Oranges instead of neeps. (By the way you should try roasting peeled swede with Middle East spices and a dribble of salt and honey.)
I didn’t get much of a sense of oranges, far less milk and honey, when I got to the El Al office in London. These dames were scary. An up-against-the-wall search with what I assume, from my very limited experience of recent movies, was a sub-machine gun. I did not find it erotic, since you ask.
You might have heard that the flicks ceased to flicker in SY after they had the nerve to show Jesus Christ Superstar. The fact is that the joint was losing money. Bingo was out of the question and not even a succession of window cleaners’ confessions nor Swedish soft porn fantasia could bring in enough to cover the overheads, behind the Art Deco frontage. Pity it was boarded up because the building matched the transit shed on Number One pier. As long as it stood. It’s gone now because we’ve no shortage of period buildings worth listing, on the Island.
Still, I got the idea that the Israeli army was armed to the hilt and there was a ceasefire agreement that could make the Treaty of Versaille look like a model for a future Europe. Not much of a settlement. Sorry, bad choice of words there.
Which brings us to my jet-lagged arrival at a location which was a jolly minibus drive from the bus terminal at Haifa. I was not the only one on a quest for socialism in action. But I soon found there were other motives for signing up for a six a.m. start and porridge with warm black tea made from a stewed concentrate, served at eight.
There was a very good system to make sure that no-one was isolated. Each new volunteer was assigned to one with a few months’ experience and you both shared the same kibbutz parents. These were mentors.
First, I met Gabriele. I sensed right away I could do worse. She was pretty well my own height for a start, so it was a welcome change from stooping to get eye contact or to avoid intimidating some short guy. She was also wiry like myself but unbelievably fit. She’d go out running, in the cool of the evening, after a full day’s work in the fields. She kept her dark brown hair cropped. This must have kept her cool but it also kept her streamlined. She had a sharp nose and that’s where I got into trouble first. It was probably a mistake to say she reminded me of Concorde.
No amount of backtracking seemed to help. How it was a compliment – cordiality and co-operation and very elegant lines…I began to realise I was in the company of a very serious woman. I even learned to shut up for long enough for her to tell me why she was here. She was German. Her father was no Nazi – he had been a student of architecture, called up to take his share of sending high explosives, to destroy fine buildings and intimidate the Poles into a quick surrender. He had suffered, like the other survivors and that had not stopped when he reached Vienna, after deserting from the crumbling Eastern Front.
I saw how she sat at the feet of our kibbutz father. He was a very short man. I’d watched him lead work parties. I still couldn’t figure out the physics of his strength and endurance. OK, he was low to the ground but that didn’t explain the weight he could lift on his wiry frame. There was nothing to him but he was one intense wee bastard.
Gabriele asked him about his children. He lived with his wife in this tiny apartment. Their children would visit, like us, on different scheduled nights, to spend an evening.
‘They are not our children,’ he said. ‘They are the children of the kibbutz.’
This time, I knew to bite the tongue. But I ask you to remember I’m from Lewis and at that time a fairly frequent attender of Free Church services. I should know a fanatic when I hear one.
But I think I fell for Gabriele when I heard her ask him about the people who had been on this land before.
‘They made nothing of it. Look what we have done. One side of the fence is still desert.’
By their avocados ye shall know them. I thought it but I didn’t say it. It wouldn’t have helped.
Maybe he was the only one of his family who survived. Maybe the jewellery or savings, diminished by inflation, were just enough to send one child out, before that original blitzkrieg.
Who the hell am I to say that these guys can’t see history repeating itself? As the high explosives make rubble out of concrete and bones in a place called Gaza. But you find yourself looking for a wee Palestinian boy with a sling and a sure eye. Only there ain’t no evil giant to aim for. More conscripts, probably. Like the Yanks who did, or did not, return from Vietnam.
I did join the guilt-torn German volunteer on a few
excursions, on our rare days off. We took a week, in the company of a few others, sharing fuel costs, to travel from hostel to hostel.
An Orthodox man took the time to explain the significance of one of the world’s iconic Walls. He wasn’t a guide and he wasn’t trying to convert men. He was showing kindness to a visitor. Gabriele had touched the one in Berlin but women were not permitted past a fence erected here. The man with the ringlets then bought us steaming and fragrant falafel so he could continue his story.
An Arab shop-owner in Jerusalem old city made us tea and went out the back door to fetch mint, leaving his select items of Bedouin jewellery scattered about the table in front of us. I did think of getting an example for my new German friend but I bought one for my mother instead. We got talking. He just shrugged when we said we were kibbutz volunteers. Well, now we were travelling we would see what we saw and make up our own minds.
He met us in the street that evening and guided me to a café I could trust. He had a word with a man and fixed a price for our group. I was brought into the kitchen. We could have this or that. I pointed here and there and he brought out heaped plates for us all. We savoured the marinated aubergine, the roasted artichoke, wrapped in vine leaves. The saffron rice, the small pieces of grilled lamb on skewers, the round bread from the clay oven.
We happened to be at a hostel on another kibbutz by Ein Gedi on a feast night. They called it the Sabbath though it wasn’t yet Sunday. There was chicken roasted with mild spices and there was white wine for those who wanted, produce of Israel.
Last day of freedom, I went with Gabriele to the memorial sites in the new Jerusalem which was not that shiny. We saw the stained glass windows, designed by Chagall. I was quite fit then but I was breathless. It was not enough to visit one place as a reminder. Even then I could tell there was something compulsive in the need to cross the threshold of every structure which linked to the Holocaust.
Peter
I heard this story through the olaid but indirectly. When I got back home, there was still six months to go before I rejoined the History Honours course at Aberdeen. It might have been panic, wondering if I could thread the shuttle again. Before long, I was surrounded with books and markers. The olaid could see there was something desperate there. She asked me more than once about who I’d met in Israel. There were a couple of Airmails from Germany. One from Finland.
There was still money in the bank and the grant came through OK. The olaid told me there was nothing she needed for the house but she’d been happy looking after the wee car for me. She took her old pal from Westview for a spin now and again. Folk didn’t talk to each other the same, in the new houses.
She nagged me to get out of the history books and dig out my fishing tackle. She remembered I was always buried in angling books. Catalogues from Abu, Sweden. When I was young, I’d show her photos of astonishing and exotic pike and perch from Swedish and Finnish lakes. This fish pornography had taken over from Enid Blyton.
I remembered a standing invite, from two other volunteers. This was a couple, into boats and into catching their own supper. They lived on a small island in the Baltic. You took a ferry from Stockholm to Turku, then a bus which would drop you at a road-end. Half a mile walk to a regular ferry. They’d pick me up the other end. She had been born on the island. Her man was an American who had settled in Canada, after getting over the border to dodge the draft. He still couldn’t return to the USA. Everyone had good English.
They were still analysing their own experience in the land we called Israel. How the actual compared with what they’d imagined beforehand. What they now read about the settlers’ determination to hold on to their hard-won gains.
Then there was the perch fishing. Saltwater perch grew to a very good size. You could cast a spinner from just outside the door. I took one that would do for a starter for us all. Two friends from another island were coming for a supper of elk.
That’s how I heard this tale from a Polish artist on a Swedish-speaking Finnish island. (Did you get all that?)
‘Please call me Andrew. I think you might have difficulty with the Polish version of my name.’ Andrew had married a Finnish woman and taught at Turku and Helsinki universities, for years.
He picked happily at the white flakes still holding to the vertical-striped skin, baked in a crust of salt. ‘Very Biblical,’ he said.
He was retired now. He seemed amazed to find we were getting the banter going. ‘Are you laughing to be polite?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m laughing because you’re funny.’
‘No-one in this country finds my stories funny.’
I thought at the time, this was strange. You would think Poland and Finland had strong similarities in their unfortunate histories. Both had been invaded and torn up between feuding empires. You would think there would be some common ground in the darkest breed of bitter irony. Maybe you needed to know the language to savour Finnish humour. But my new friend was completely fluent.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘are you religious?’
‘You know I am. Unless you’ve been asleep for the last hour. I went to the Holy Land to make comparisons. In my last week, there was one man who walked streets out of his way to make sure I found the way to the bus station, when I asked directions. It was like being in Glasgow. He was a Jordanian Christian.’
‘Not a Samaritan?’ the Canadian said.
Andrew continued. ‘I mean religious with a capital R. Easily offended?’
‘Try me.’
Good. The fish reminded me of something. It’s after the resurrection. Jesus and Peter have got together again. The show is back on the road. But it’s not as good as it was. I think it was Peter who said it first.
‘Lord,’ he said, ‘forgive me for saying this but it’s not as good as it was.’
Jesus said, ‘Peter, you’re an honest man. What can we do about it? Is there anything we can do? Support me.’
‘Well,’ said Peter, ‘that walking on the water thing, that was good. That went down really well with the crowd. Could you do that again?’
But Jesus was nervous. He thought about it. Then he said, ‘We could go out together to the Sea of Galilee when it’s quiet. Have a trial run when there’s no-one watching. Will you help me?’
‘I’m there, Lord. I’m with you.’
So they did go forth together, united, and took possession of a suitable small craft. But Jesus was seriously nervous.
‘Can you remember how we did this?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Peter said, ‘it was the starboard side.’
‘Starboard, you’re sure?’
‘I am.’
‘Are you ready now, are you looking after me?’
‘I’m with you, Lord.’
So Jesus slowly eased himself over the side of the vessel and sank like a stone. Fortunately he still had all that hair so Peter was able to get a hold and pull him, gasping, back aboard.
When Jesus got his breath back he said, at last, ‘That didn’t go so well.’
‘Have to say, Lord, it could have gone better. It must have been the port side.’
‘Sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure, it’s the only one left.’
‘Are you ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
Jesus eased himself even more slowly over on the port side and sank down, just like before.
Peter got hold of his hair again and as he pulled him aboard said, ‘Lord, Lord, I know what it is.’
‘What is it?’
‘Lord, You didn’t have those holes in the feet the last time.’
I laughed. My new friend was surprised. He asked again if I was being polite. But if there was any ice intact on this mild June evening, on an island in the Baltic, circa 1978, it was melted now.
The geographies and the complex histories proved convenient for the invaders who came on the rampage, from either east or west. You just blame an atrocity on the other guy. Strange that both of them had a moustache.
It was a long time after the leader with the heavier and wider model shed the mortal, that there was any sign of the Russian state coming close to an admission of responsibility for approximately 20,000 counts of murder in the woods of Katyn.
You could thus argue that the Second World War began and ended in Polish territory. It was inevitable that the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia would be overrun by the Nazis. The borderline with Poland was the test of the standpoints and alliances. Polish authorities had no doubts about the invasion to come. That’s why they handed over everything they’d discovered, towards the deciphering of messages encrypted by the German forces’ Enigma machines. They gave their information to both Britain and France.
And sure enough an incident was staged to show an apparent infringement of the territory of the Third Reich. It was another couple of years before I’d see an example of how this was reported to the German public.
It was of course at another reunion of volunteer workers, wondering how the hell they had thought it a good idea to support the efforts of those who mainly denied any rights to the previous occupiers of the land they’d taken over. History implies the use of hindsight as a tool.
Gabriele Richter’s mother was hospitable towards her daughter’s friend. She must have been one of the few Germans who failed to destroy her cherished documentation of the myth of Adolf. Frau Richter’s carefully bound copies of the collected, illustrated instalments of the life and actions of Adolf Hitler told me more than any analysis I’ve ever read. You know the word Führer might suggest a guide or teacher as well as a leader. There’s a lot of children and dogs and smiling but on this occasion even the benevolent Führer has lost his patience with the threats from the Polish people. They were astray and in need of strong leadership. That’s one way of presenting an invasion.
But since I really am preaching now, ladies and gentleman, I exhort you. Go thee now. Go and perform the latter-day action which is known unto the multitude as a google. Do a google on blitzkrieg. I did it to check the spelling.