FOUR
Three years passed. Dror and I made good use of it, backpacking up the coast of Australia, snaking through southern Mexico and driving across the mainland of the US in a beat-up Oldsmobile. Route 66, just like Jack Kerouac. Dror was doing pre-Med classes and I was finishing my Communications degree. Our respective studies forced us to separate numerous times. Finally I finished my degree and, before the graduation ceremony, flew to the US to be with Dror. Again, Dad paid the way. As he would continue to do, always supporting our relationship. Somehow understanding how important Dror was to me.
We lived in a tiny old caravan in Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco. It was parked in someone’s backyard and leaked throughout winter. I got a tattoo of a wolf howling at the moon, shopped for ripped jeans at thrift stores, spent sunsets at the beach photographing seagulls, and generally dusted off my Sydney identity with gusto. My parents were increasingly well-known in the arts and financial circles. I wanted none of it.
I saw a flyer for an environmental program in Israel: a large eagle released into the sky in the middle of the desert. Dror deferred his studies once again and came with me. He was happy to live anywhere in the world, but Israel was something different. A part of him. His country. His home. A concept I found difficult to identify with.
As a child, Dror dreamed of becoming a Nazi hunter because his family tree had been decimated in the Holocaust. He grew up on a kibbutz with a secular Zionist ideology, and on weekends in the city heard stories from his grandparents. His grandmother, a survivor, had told him tales of her personal victory over the Nazis. ‘They had a gun to my head.’ She’d re-enacted and described how she’d outwitted them. His grandfather had seen his parents shot in the street, then escaped Eastern Europe, only to be imprisoned in a gulag in icy Siberia, his blue eyes and blond hair giving the Soviets enough cause to believe he was a German spy. He escaped again to find refuge in the forest. Eventually Dror’s grandparents made it to Israel.
Dror’s father,Yaakov, was born as his parents escaped Poland; and his mother, Anita, was born in Romania. Yaakov had fought in Israel’s three wars against its neighbours. In 1978 Anita,Yaakov, Dror and his sister, Ayalla, had moved from kibbutz Ein Carmel to LA so Yaakov could study at the University of California. They had never planned to stay in the States and their house was completely Israeli in its culture, Dror and Ayalla growing up speaking Hebrew and discussing Israeli news and history. Dror believed not only in peace but also that Israel was the safe haven and true homeland of the Jewish people, a country to be fought for and protected for the continuation of his, or ‘our’ (he reminded me), ancient culture. In Israel, national service is compulsory for all eighteen-year-old boys and girls, but since Dror’s family had left when he was a child, he was exempt. Yet Dror had not only served but also volunteered for one of the toughest army units, the Paratroopers.
One humid afternoon, back in Tel Aviv on a break from the environmental program, I felt a rush of blood to my head.
‘I must dedicate my life to helping animals,’ I told Dror when my eyes opened. ‘That’s my destiny. I’ve been doing stuff for ages that doesn’t have much to do with animals.’ I grabbed his arm and pleaded softly, ‘But I can’t forget it. Will you make sure?’
My eyes filled with tears. He looked shocked. I felt like I’d been spoken to by God. Or it may have been the forty-degree heat.
After Israel, we returned to Santa Cruz so Dror could finish his undergraduate degree. The environmental course in Israel had influenced him. He decided to give up his pre-Med track and focus on Biology with a view to a PhD in Wildlife Ecology. He would try to combine a profession with his passion for hiking and nature. I waitressed and studied ecology, oceanography and wildlife photography.
Emile and I met in London and decided to track down an ancient relative in Lithuania, Uncle Chatzkel; no one we knew had met him and he had been mythologised in our family. He was reputed to be a famous Lithuanian lexicographer as well as a Holocaust survivor who had lost his two children to the Nazis. My cousin, Rod Freedman, would later make an award-winning documentary about him. The trip brought Emile and me close; it was the first time we had travelled together as adults, away from our parents’ influence, and sibling rivalry had turned into friendship. We started to speak regularly on the phone.
After his graduation, Dror and I travelled to Alaska where we met my father for a ten-day biking trip. Dror and Dad bonded, just as I hoped they would. At the end of the trip, Dror and I started a month-long camping expedition. Pristine wilderness. Raw adventure. Few people so I could relax. Dror’s hand in mine. Wildlife viewing in abundance: rabbits, caribou, moose, bears, eagles. Heaven.
Inspired by a ray of soft light on a rainy day, we had hiked to the top of a hill. It was covered in lilac wildflowers. I hadn’t washed my hair in a week and my fingernails were caked in dirt. He proposed.
‘What? No grass ring?’ I asked.
He had no money, no smooth moves and no particular plan. He loved me and wanted to marry me. I was twenty-two and when I called my parents from the Anchorage bus depot to tell them the news, they thought I must be pregnant.
‘Oh, that’s a relief,’ my mother sighed when I told her I wasn’t. ‘Well, come back and I . . . oh, I mean, we . . . we’ll plan the engagement.’
We returned to Australia, planned the wedding, and I started a Masters in Environmental Studies, while Dror began an Honours research program in eastern grey kangaroos. Without a word of discussion, Dad cleared all Dror’s student debt and paid his way as an international student until his visa kicked in.
Saving animals didn’t feature and messages from God, it seemed, were put on the backburner. I did want to save one animal, however. Her name was Winnie and she had thick golden fur and a stark black nose that looked like she had stuck it into a pot of paint. Dror and I picked her out from the RSPCA where her name, on the kennel, was Minnie, same as my gran. She looked at me through the steel door of the kennel with such puppyhood joy and boundless potential for love. Bronnie and Taurus had been loyal to the whole family but Winnie became my best girlfriend. She slept on our bed, by my feet. I loved her unconditionally, relishing each opportunity to be close to her warm body. Flea picking, scraping poo from the carpet, apologising to picnickers when she stole their BBQ chicken or blotting up blood from the couch when she got her first (and only) period: nothing affected my love. My patience with her was infinite and this surprised me. I shared with her the matters of my heart, things no one else knew. She understood. To me, animals felt pure, loving and easy to understand. Humans often depleted me with seemingly opposing qualities, sometimes generous and altruistic while at others manipulative, flawed and unkind. But often I wished Winnie could talk back to me. Tell me what she thought, about her life and her universe.
I wondered if having a child could be like that. If, after pouring in love and devotion, you could produce a friend you never tired of being with. I started to imagine a baby girl. I would strive to be the best mother. Ever. Have the perfect mother–daughter relationship, the ultimate intimacy.
Dror and I got married. I finished my Masters in Environmental Studies and then worked at a host of environment-related organisations in communications and PR. My grandmother died. I cried for a week, shocking myself with grief and the mysterious well of tears I had stored. Dad was beside himself with sorrow. We sat for days after the funeral in my parents’ house, in shiva, the traditional Jewish period of mourning where you stay at home. Dad and I sat side by side and hand in hand, occasionally hugging our heartache away. He grew his beard and it was tinged with white like the fur of a wise old wolf. I missed Gran terribly, her wrinkled cheek, her wet apron, her soapy gloves, her mung beans and gardening scissors . . .
And despite my grief for my grandmother, I still couldn’t tell, let alone talk about, how I felt in everyday life. I had stopped hyperventilating. Rather, physical symptoms like stomach cramps, nausea, headaches and tiredness told me I was scared or upset.
One morning when I was twenty-six and on my way to work, I passed a man curled in the foetal position on a faded red blanket. I put the change from my soy latte into his empty cup before weaving through the mobs of commuters crowding through the underground maze of Sydney’s Central train station. I looked no one in the eye.
You have no reason to feel sad. Get your shit together! I told myself. That poor guy has nothing, no one. You, on the other hand, have it all, you big whining, self-indulgent, melodramatic spoilt brat. I thought of my mother’s voice in Morocco. How could I be so needy when so many other people went without the basic necessities of life?
But every morning for months the tears continued.
Partly it was the disillusionment of working in the communications department of a large environmental organisation. It was still new and I had thought it would be the job to satisfy all my needs, that the humble inner-city offices were merely a front and beyond the grey doors I would enter a Disney-esque world: everyone working together, singing perhaps, to save Bambi from the evil hunters. Together we would save nature from the destructive human zombioids. But in reality it was similar to any other workplace: politics, jealousies and copious Friday-night beer drinking and even meat—at their own functions. To think.
‘You haven’t done what you promised,’ Dror reminded me. ‘Maybe that’s why you’re feeling bad.’
‘I’ve been kinda busy, Dror. Remember? Master’s degree? Starting my career? How would I save animals, big picture, anyway? There are no jobs in that area. No organisations big enough to hire anyone.’
‘Still,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re waiting for.’
The flash of knowledge on that humid day in Tel Aviv six years before returned: I must save animals. ‘I know,’ I said.
FIVE
‘He’s depressed.’ Mum whispered the words as if they might be contagious. We were having lunch in my parents’ garden. I looked over at Dad and could see her point. His hazel eyes were glassy, his gaze unfocused and his hair greasy and limp. Well, he’d never been close friends with the shampoo bottle.
Mum scooped bean salad onto my plate and began to refold everyone’s serviettes and realign placemats with the horizontal lines of the table, her silver bracelets banging on the glass like bells.
Dad and Laurence had just sold their company, Equitilink, for millions. Dad had also finished his role as head of the finance committee for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and had been given the honour of running with the torch through the city streets. Word was getting out and he was being asked to chair various philanthropic organisations. But for him, it was happening too slowly. He had lost his key identity.
He couldn’t relax and allowed no one to mention the ‘r’ word, ‘retirement’, in his presence. He had gone through down times before, but no one had called it depression as such, and he had always come up trumps.
‘I don’t know what to do with him,’ Mum said. She was intensely busy running two gallery spaces with exhibitions turning over every three weeks. She had a group of about twenty-seven artists and worked hard to develop each one’s career, often curating national and international shows and producing extensive catalogues that were academic in nature. For her it was very personal. Many of her artists were considered part of our extended family. Both Mum and Dad often had obligations six nights a week: art openings at Mum’s gallery, dinners for potential buyers, business forum events, invitations to speak, hosting tables at philanthropic dinners . . . It was hard to keep up with it all.
Emile, Mum and I were deeply uncomfortable with Dad’s low mood. We discussed how we could make him better. Fix him. Quickly.
Animals, I thought to myself a week later, walking through the train station. That could be a new focus for him. Dad loved a challenge, especially something others considered impossible. He was the dictionary definition of goal-orientated and that was likely the reason he was now depressed: no purpose to drive him. The rights movement certainly needed a guy like him: powerful, wealthy, smart and passionate. Dad had been a vegetarian for fifteen years. He certainly loved animals, he just didn’t know much about what was happening to them. About factory farming. About fur, circuses, poison, vivisection, traps . . . Once he did, and once he knew how few people were doing anything to help, I was sure he would take action.
This was also my chance to fulfil the self-promise I had made years earlier. It was a win-win. My dad and I always got along well, had an unspoken connection. Being partners? This might just work.
We were walking, slowly, through Centennial Park after a Sunday brunch. His two Airedale terriers pulled on their leashes, giving him a slightly awkward gait. Winnie ran ahead, wagging her bushy tail and sniffing ferociously.
‘Let’s do something together,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe we could start some kind of organisation for animals. No doubt that there’s a need. So much suffering. So much to do.’
‘Sounds like a pretty good idea,’ my dad said deliberately, pulling his hands through his lanky brown hair and adjusting his sunglasses.
‘We can work it out together . . . work together and set ourselves a target,’ I continued. ‘I’m sure we could make a difference. I think we would make a good team.’
He smiled.
I came across an advertisement for an animal rights conference in LA. Five days at a hotel surrounded by hundreds of animal activists watching, listening, reading horrific tales of society’s wanton cruelty. My father crawled out on the fifth day muttering like a madman: ‘Forty-six billion animals. Lift the veil of secrecy. We must lift the veil.’
‘Yes, Dad,’ I replied. Finally, someone in my family got it. Twenty-one years of carrying this knowledge, this horror, in my heart. I was no longer alone. I smiled and squeezed his shoulder. ‘I know.’
Soon after, an opportunity came to return to the Israeli desert program we had been at ten years before, to be teachers rather than students. Dror was offered the class on Desert Ecology, and I was offered Environmental Education. Dror pleaded to go, as he missed Israel terribly. I agreed, as it certainly sounded interesting, an adventure, and I had found the desert to be awe-inspiringly beautiful. After we finished our teaching contracts we would embark on a long trip through South America, starting with the Galápagos Islands. We would meet my dad, as we’d done in Alaska, and undertake a bike trip in Cuba before Dror and I backpacked south to Bolivia.
I left my job. Dad and I put the animal idea on the back-burner, promising to return to it later and formulate a concrete plan. Dror was in the final stages of writing up his PhD in Zoology and planned to finish it from Israel. We travelled through Spain. I started hearing strong messages in my head, pounding like a metronome: ‘Baby. Baby. Baby.’ Perhaps it was my biological clock. Dror agreed to start ‘trying’, imagining it would take a while for me to get pregnant, hopeful it would happen at the end of our travels.
We arrived in Israel. Tel Aviv was being regularly attacked by suicide bombers, scores of Israeli civilians killed and maimed, but we were safe in the desert. Sadly, I didn’t like being a teacher: the centre of attention, not a comfortable place for me. And two months later, halfway through the program, I found out I was pregnant. I was sick, exhausted and full of anxiety, terrified I would lose the baby just like my mum had. I wanted to go home. Not only to have my baby, but also to start my own organisation. Dror went to Galápagos and Cuba without me for a few weeks, and I flew to Sydney to stay with my brother and his girlfriend, Caroline. The final contracts of Dad’s company sale were signed. He was feeling better and was now ready to begin our animal organisation.
Dad and I decided to focus our efforts on factory farming. It was there that the greatest number of animals, about five hundred million, suffered under some of the cruellest conditions. It was not only horrendously cruel but, unlike many other animal issues that could partly be justified for conservation purposes or the sake of human health, the silent suffering of factory-farm animals was all for the sake of human profit and, ultima
tely, greed. We registered the organisation as a not-for-profit and talked names for weeks, finally deciding on ARC (Animals, Respect, Compassion), but after an angry call from Planet Ark—ARC being too similar to Ark—we went back to the drawing board. I thought of Voiceless. Dad liked it.
Meanwhile my tummy grew. Often fears overtook me: something would be wrong, test results positive. While my friends talked of natural childbirth I just wanted a baby alive and healthy. Although I knew these were ghosts of my mother’s past, it was stressful. This was to be the first grandchild. Mum was fighting her fears as well, although we didn’t discuss it.
Despite the anxiety, I revelled in my work and my time with my father. Dad and I were on the same page, agreed on everything, and worked together as a seamless team. We wrote our mission and vision statements. We wanted to position Voiceless as mainstream, to be able to not only work at a grassroots level but also to attract the decision-makers and influencers, yet not compromise on our values. So we wrote of a world in which animals were treated with respect and compassion. We met Hugo Weaving on an airplane and, while I was intimidated by his stardom, Dad won him over with his impassioned descriptions of animal suffering and why he felt compelled to act. Having him agree to be ambassador was a great coup. We invited Dad’s favourite author, the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, to be patron, his passion for animals expressed in his many novels and, in particular, in his contribution to a short collection of essays called Lives of Animals. He agreed and we were thrilled. We designed a logo, printed letterhead and business cards, and I wrote the website. We compiled a database made up of animal advocates, as well as friends and family. I felt closer to being superwoman than I ever had before: soon to have my own dream organisation and to be the perfect mother to the perfect daughter I had always wanted.
Dad earbashed all his corporate connections and the politicians he had come to know throughout his career. Some people avoided him and his animal rights spiel at the numerous arts, political and corporate cocktail parties he still frequented with my mother. Others were magnetised by his message and delivery: a wealthy, successful businessman brought to tears by the suffering of piglets. We launched our first project, an inaugural national grants program to build up the animal-protection movement and help existing cash-starved grassroots groups implement their projects to end animal cruelty. We hired two full-time staff, Elaine to run the grants program, and Katrina, who was an animal lawyer, the first in the country. I designed an animal club for schools, and Dad and Katrina planned an animal law lecture series. Holding a big pregnant belly behind a podium at my mother’s gallery, and with the flashes of a few cameras in my face, I gave my first Voiceless speech.
The Miracle of Love Page 4