Cassim and I shake our heads. “No, we come from outside of Boston and New York,” Cassim says. “We are somewhat far from there.”
“I have one cousin there, in St. Louis, Missouri. Reuben is his name. He is a very successful businessman. He’s in middle management! I thought perhaps if you met him you could give him a message from me . . .” he says, looking disappointed. “Maybe you might see him one day,” he says, brightening. “If you do, you tell him his cousin Ellis is waiting for him, I am now the caretaker of Alibag Synagogue and am waiting for him here. You will tell him?”
Cassim and I nod, unsure what else to do.
After tea, we take a tour around the synagogue, and I take some pictures of the renovation in progress. Mr. Ellis shows us a candle resting on a table toward the center of the room and tells us that one of his primary responsibilities is to keep the flame lit. Once a day, he changes the oil, which he demonstrates for us. As we are speaking, two white-haired ladies enter the synagogue. The decorative ends of their saris are draped over their heads.
“Shalom, Shalom!” Mr. Ellis says, greeting the ladies. In Marathi he explains who we are and our purpose here. They nod at us in greeting, and we nod back. The ladies say something to Mr. Ellis in Marathi, and he opens the Ark to reveal ornate silver scrolls with the Sefer Torah inside. The ladies approach the Ark and reach their hands out, palms facing the Torah. They close their eyes, and each says a short prayer. Then they kiss their fingertips in short, repeated motions, thank Mr. Ellis, and nod at us again to say goodbye.
“Do those ladies live in Alibag?” I ask.
“No, these ladies are from far-off villages, but perhaps they have some work in Alibag, so they come here. Before going home, they give respect to God in the synagogue. It’s like that.”
When we go outside, I ask Mr. Ellis if I can take his picture.
“Welcome!” he says. “Shall I sing a song?”
He begins to sing a favorite Bene Israel song. The words are Hebrew, he tells us, but the melody is from a Marathi film popular in the 1950s. It has a beautiful, mysterious sound, and I photograph Mr. Ellis singing on the porch while Cassim records the performance with my video camera. Cassim asks me to move out of his shot, and I walk into the yard. Mr. Ellis thinks I am losing interest.
“I have another song!” he insists, and breaks into a rousing rendition of “Havah Nagilah.” He knows only the chorus, which he repeats, and then he breaks into a small jig, lifting his knees in the air and jumping around the veranda. Small children from the neighborhood peek inside the gate, watching Mr. Ellis. “The children, they love this one!” Mr. Ellis exclaims.
We make a small donation to the synagogue and bid our grateful goodbyes to Mr. Ellis. As we are driving down the lane, Cassim says, “Sadia, turn around.”
Mr. Ellis is standing in the middle of the road, dancing to his a cappella rendition of “Havah Nagilah.” He is surrounded by a group of children, who are clapping in time to the music.
“That’s right, children!” we hear Mr. Ellis say. “Ha-vah na-gi-lah. . . . Ha-vah na-gi-lah. . . . Ha-vah na-gi-lah. . . .”
“I think this man is very happy to serve God,” Vinod offers as we drive away.
WE SPEND THE NEXT THREE DAYS driving from village to village in similar pursuit. It seems that, the farther we get from Bombay, the more obscure
our mission appears to the people we meet along the way; but I am thrilled by the occasional moments when we ask for directions to synagogues and see a flicker of recognition cross people’s faces. Every time we reach a new village, Vinod leans his head out the window and makes a smacking sound with his lips, calling the attention of the old men we find sipping tea.
“Why are you making that sound?” Bimal asks, annoyed.
“It’s a Marathi greeting, yaar,” Vinod says, looking ruffled. “These people understand it.” He scowls at Bimal and does it again. “Uncle, Uncle,” Vinod calls. “Israeli masjid, Israeli masjid ?”
In Bombay, directions work on a system of landmarks; addresses are used only in the context of their reference points to hospitals, police stations, and cinemas. In the villages, the landmarks are temples, trees, and houses, which blur together in our unfamiliarity. We move through the small lanes in series after series of circuitous spins.
We take turns leaning out the window: “Israeli masjid, Israeli masjid ?”
I try to make the smacking sound myself and fail miserably. Instead, I begin to jot down people’s responses to our questions, trying to feel useful.
Underneath a tree, by the side of the local PCO phone booth and paan shop, an elderly man sits on his heels, smoking a beedi cigarette.
“Israeli masjid . . .” one man says, thinking it over. “Oh, you mean the people who build the tent every harvest and dance in it?” he asks Vinod, who translates.
“Yes, yes!” I say excitedly when I understand. The man must be talking about the Sukkot holiday, when Jews around the world build an outdoor structure to remind themselves of their years in bondage in Egypt. At the end of the seven days of Sukkot is the festival of Simchat Torah, when they dance to commemorate the completion of one year’s Torah readings and the beginning of the next. “That’s them!”
“Where are they?” we ask in unison.
Often the reply is “Gone.” We find empty houses and synagogues with their doors shut. I wonder about the lives their former inhabitants are living now. Whether they are in Bombay or Israel, and what they think about the life they left behind here.
In a village called Poinad, we find a small, well-kept synagogue on a residential street. It is painted bright blue, pink, and white and is reminiscent of a cake.
Cassim says, “I keep expecting these buildings to look similar to one another, but they’re all different. I wonder what the significance of the color scheme is.”
We ask neighbors who the caretaker of the Poinad Synagogue is; “Moses” is the repeated reply. We wander around Poinad looking for Moses, whom we find grooming a beautiful chocolate brown horse in a stable off the main road. Expecting an older man, we are surprised to find a boy of about eighteen. His family owns the horse, he explains, which they rent out for weddings and special occasions. He walks us to the Hesed-El Synagogue, which is not much larger than a small bedroom. A large oil lamp dominates the room, which Moses asks me to photograph. He points out the renovations that his family has undertaken, and tells us how much he regrets that they can’t do more. He says his family is one of two Bene Israel families left in Poinad. His older brother has migrated to Israel, and now only he and his parents are left. I ask him if he plans to go to Israel in the future.
“I want to go,” he says, “but I worry about it. Who will look after the synagogue after my father?”
Cassim asks him about the choices of colors. “Are they significant in any way? Are these traditional Bene Israel colors?”
“You like them?” Moses says, looking pleased. “I chose them myself.”
We head farther south, to Murud-Janjira. This area was at one time a Muslim stronghold, followed by a period of Maratha Hindu rule, and it was one of the last areas to succumb to the British. Though it is known as a kind of seaside holiday spot, it seems to be resting on past glories. The main strip of the town is a dusty road populated by ice cream stands and a few restaurants with red plastic chairs. We opt for a small guesthouse, which seems clean and has rooms available: one for Bimal and Vinod, and one for Cassim and me.
The next day, the only remnant of a Jewish community we can find is an old cemetery in terrible disrepair—the graves are overgrown with weeds, and a housing development is encroaching on the property lines on one side. The detritus of the building, the garbage, the storage, and the laundry lines are already spilling out into the exterior fringe of the cemetery. It seems only a matter of time before the housing takes over and the graveyard succumbs to a new identity.
WE DRIVE ALONG THE COAST, then farther inland. Cassim and I are determined to find our twin ance
stral villages: Bhorupali and Chorde. Whereas most of the villages we have visited still exist as footnotes in books, none of my archival searches have yielded any information on either of these two villages. As we get closer to the dot on my map marked Bhorupali, Vinod leans out the window to ask a crowd of young men. “Bhorupali kidhar hai? Bhorupali? Bhorupali?”
“Bhorupali?” the group repeats back to us, seemingly unfamiliar with the name. They either shrug or shake their heads no.
I keep staring at the dot on the map, trying to will the village into existence. Since my map has no modern roads, just a collection of hand-drawn lines, it’s entirely possible that we have taken the wrong route.
“Can I take a look at that?” Cassim says, scrutinizing the map.
Bimal, Vinod, Cassim, and I take turns trying to figure out the right path: through a village, to the left of another one, over a small bridge. This area has sparse vegetation and wide, open-plowed fields. There are very few trees in sight. Occasionally we pass collections of small concrete houses clustered near a cold-drink stand. We get very excited when an old man acts as if he has heard of the place; maybe we are getting closer. He waves us in a new direction, and we are happy to follow. He tells us to look for a large tree and a bus stop. We keep our eyes peeled on both sides of the dusty road, trying to define for one another what constitutes a “large tree.” Determining the definition of a “bus stop” is no easier. Does the bus come to a halt at this bench? This tea shop? Phone booth? Before I realize it, I have dozed off on Cassim’s shoulder.
I wake up two hours later, when Bimal pulls the car to the side of the road. I sit upright, wondering where we are.
“This, I believe, is it,” he says.
In front of us is an unmistakably large tree. We watch from the car as a large red bus pulls up underneath it and a woman and her young son get on board.
“Should we get out?” Cassim says.
Bhorupali, if this is Bhorupali, seems to be not a village at all, but in fact a literal bend in the road. Now that the woman and her son have left, there is not a house or a person in sight. We wander around in a small circle, wondering what to do next.
“I could take a picture,” I say.
“Of what?” Cassim says.
A motorcycle whizzes by us, and Bimal flags him down, asking if this is Bhorupali. They have a short conversation and the man drives on.
“It may have been here a long time ago, but it’s been gone for some time,” Bimal informs us. “Basically, it doesn’t exist.”
“I see,” I say, walking toward the car and trying not to sound disappointed.
In our search for Bhorupali, we have lost the better part of a morning and a good deal of momentum. We halt at the next cold-drink stand and sit in a row of plastic chairs underneath a tiny, barely functioning fan. The earth is cracked and dry here, and the air feels heavy. Vinod produces a small green mango from his pocket, and asks the owner of the stand if he can borrow a knife and some salt. He cuts the mango into pieces and sprinkles salt on them.
“This is very good for heat,” he says sagely, offering each of us a piece.
Bimal shakes his head at him.
“You believe in all these old wives’ tales,” he says to his friend.
We sit for several more minutes, trying to cool off and regain some energy, gnawing on our slices of raw mango.
“This is totally weird,” Cassim says.
“Shall we carry on?” asks Bimal.
“Well, let’s look for Chorde,” Cassim says, getting up and trying to sound cheerful.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s find Chorde.”
WE WIND OUR WAY BACK to a recognized road, and follow it, asking directions along the way. After our search for Bhorupali, finding Chorde seems relatively easy. I laugh with surprise when we see a small sign that says “CHORDE” in block letters in English and in Devanagari script. The road to Chorde is so small that we miss the turn twice and have to retrace our route to find it. We go down a long, wide path not accustomed to cars. At the end of the path we see a little cluster of small wood-and-mud structures, a few concrete buildings with tin roofs. The buildings seem to lie lightly upon the land, as if they might pick up and move on.
“This certainly doesn’t look like a village inside a fort,” Cassim says.
“No, you’re right, it doesn’t,” I say.
We pass through passages so narrow that we are looking into the eyes of curious people not three feet away. Clearly our car and unfamiliar faces are an unusual sight. I roll down the window and say, “Chordekar?”
I have no idea if a single Bene Israel family still lives in Chorde, but I figure it’s worth a try. I suppose that it’s possible we might be led to a Hindu family, who will be no less bewildered by our arrival.
“Israeli? Israeli log?” he asks, asking for Jewish people. Bimal rolls the car forward at a snail’s pace, scanning the row of onlookers for a glimmer of recognition.
A tailor, his lap full of shirts, looks up from his stitches. “Abraham Chordekar?” he asks.
Abraham Chordekar. He must be a Bene Israel. I nod vigorously.
We are instructed to take a right, then a left. The right turn reveals a large concrete structure that looks as if it might be the village school. The left yields another row of houses, each one a small square, faced by another row on the right. One of these houses, a blue freestanding building, is the Chordekar home. I notice a mezuzah on the doorframe and feel confident that we are in the right place.
Bimal, Vinod, Cassim, and I get out and approach the house cautiously.
“Hello?” I call out into the darkness of the open doorway.
A tall, lean woman in a pink sari comes to the door, and we try to explain our purpose to her.
“Vinod, can you explain that our great-grandmother was a Chordekar and we have come to see our ancestors’ village?”
I see Vinod’s hands moving quickly, covering the basic points of our journey, and the fact that we are from America.
“America?” she says, her eyes getting big.
“America,” Cassim and I say, nodding and trying to look friendly.
She gestures to us to come inside and pulls out chairs for us to sit on.
When our eyes adjust to the light, we find ourselves in a room that seems to function as living area, kitchen, and storeroom. On the back wall of the room is a stack of canisters that smell as if they are filled with kerosene. To our right is a small color television, and above it, a hanging candelabra and a large bell-shaped oil lamp, the kind I have seen in Bene Israel synagogues. To our left is a ladder that goes up to a second floor. As we enter, two children scamper down the ladder, mystified by our sudden appearance.
Mrs. Chordekar says something to Vinod, who translates.
“It seems that her husband is not well. He is lying down, but he’ll be here in a moment. He has some trouble with his eyes. If I understand her correctly, he is blind, or going blind. She has two children, a boy and a girl. I suppose that they are these children here.” He points at the boy and the girl, who are staring at us with open curiosity. The boy looks to be about ten or eleven years old, the girl about thirteen.
Mrs. Chordekar smiles at us and urges us to sit.
I ask Vinod to ask her if she is from Chorde originally, or from another village. We learn that Mrs. Chordekar was born and brought up in the small Bene Israel community in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat. This was an arranged marriage, and she has lived in Chorde for fourteen years. She has a sister married into a family in a town about two hours away, and a younger brother working there as well. I wonder what it must have been like for her to make the transition from Ahmedabad, a city of over four million people, to the village of Chorde.
The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir Page 18