“For a fee, of course,” Samuel added.
“For a fee? Yes, well, we paid our tribute, the same as other infidels, but apart from that no one bothered us. If only the European kings had been like the Ottoman sultans.”
“Do you really think that?” Samuel asked.
“Yes, of course I do. That’s why I think we should be careful before breaking with the status quo.”
“Recently it doesn’t seem that the Sublime Porte has been that appreciative of us,” Samuel replied.
They didn’t settle their argument, but they reassured themselves that even though years had gone by, their friendship remained intact and they could speak sincerely, although Samuel did notice a change in Louis. Not just in his appearance, for he now had an enormous mustache, but also in his character—he seemed more reflective and above all keen to see Palestine as a Jewish homeland within the Ottoman Empire. He didn’t care, he said, if they had a sultan in Constantinople.
“Look around you. Don’t you see just how much Palestine has changed?”
Samuel had to admit that he was right. There were schools, and a lot of the first immigrants had become a new class, an agricultural class, and not only that, Hebrew had returned and was now the primary language of the country, although Yiddish was still common. The landscape had changed as well, there were ever more suburbs being built up outside the Old City, and then of course there was Tel Aviv, a Jewish city, entirely Jewish. Yes, Louis was right: Palestine had completely changed its skin during the years he had been in Paris.
8
First Tears
“The sound of a key turning in the lock brought them back to reality. Hanna, Aaron Zucker’s daughter, came into the salon and was surprised to see Marian still there.
“You’re back so soon! I thought you’d come later,” Ezekiel said to his granddaughter.
“But it’s almost six o’clock! Haven’t you finished your interview?” she said to Marian, without hiding the annoyance she felt to see her still there.
“I’m sorry . . . Time ran away from us, rather.”
“And I bet you haven’t eaten!” Now she turned to her grandfather, but with an evident note of anger in her voice.
“Of course we’ve eaten! Ms. Miller helped me make a salad.”
Marian apologized. She knew she had to leave. But she could not leave her work here half-finished. She felt somewhat manipulated by this man, who had dragged her into an endless conversation in which both of them were filling in the gaps in two parallel histories. Because that’s what they indeed were, parallel, without any possibility of meeting each other, though they might appear to touch.
Ezekiel saw that she seemed a little disappointed and, to her surprise, he suggested that she return the next day.
“Would you like to come tomorrow?”
She accepted happily.
“If it’s not too much trouble, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’ve come to do otherwise.”
“I know, come tomorrow. It’s very stimulating speaking with you.”
“But I think you’ve already given Ms. Miller too much time. Take care,” she said, speaking now to Marian, “my grandfather cannot spend all day talking. If you want, I can help you with all the information you might need about the settlements . . . although it’s a policy I oppose absolutely.”
“Come on, Hanna, let me decide. I like speaking to Marian. I’ll expect you here tomorrow at eleven o’clock, alright?”
Hanna went with Marian Miller to the door and said to her as she let her out:
“Please, don’t tire him too much. He’s still recovering from his last heart attack.”
“Heart attack? I didn’t know . . .”
“He’s survived three so far. The doctor says he doesn’t have long left. He was in the hospital a couple of days ago.”
“I promise I’ll try not to tire him and I’ll finish my job as soon as possible.”
“You do that.”
She felt dizzy. She had spent the whole day in the house swapping stories with that man. They could write a book together: The idea made her smile.
She drove slowly, trying to remember every word. Ezekiel had opened the door to certain people whom she could almost see. She arrived back at the hotel exhausted, wanting only to have a shower and go to sleep so as to stop thinking.
In the morning she arrived at the agreed-upon time. She had gotten up early for a stroll through the Old City. She left the American Colony around eight o’clock, when Jerusalem is already awake, and she walked briskly down to the Damascus Gate. At this time, hundreds of people were already going through it in both directions.
The shopkeepers were getting ready to open up, and the women were pausing in the marketplace, looking with their expert eyes at the produce that had just come in from the nearby farms.
She stopped in front of a stall that smelled of cinnamon and pistachios. She couldn’t resist the temptation, and bought herself some sweets.
Without a clear plan she walked through the Old Town, left the Arab Quarter behind and entered the Christian Quarter, and from there to the Armenian and finally the Jewish quarters.
She couldn’t overcome the sense of discomfort she felt when she saw these Jews in their black coats with ringlets peeking out from under their hats.
It was past ten o’clock when she walked quickly through the Damascus Gate to get back to the hotel and pick up her rental car. This time she drove quickly to Ezekiel’s house, she guessed that the old man was one of those people who was inflexible with regards to punctuality. His granddaughter Hanna opened the door.
“I have to go now, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. My grandfather did not have a good night, but he says he’s fine.”
She gave her a paper with her mobile number written on it.
“I’ll be in class, but I’ll leave my mobile on. I’m worried, so if you see that he’s not looking good, give me a ring. And please, don’t tire him out like you did yesterday.”
Marian promised that she would try to finish the interview that morning.
Ezekiel was sitting in front of the French window that gave onto a view of the mountains of Judea. He seemed distracted, distant.
“I brought you some sweets, I hope you like them,” Marian said, trying to put on her best smile.
“Sit down, did you get enough sleep?”
“Yes, more than eight hours. Hanna said that you didn’t have a very good night . . .”
“We old folk don’t sleep well and my granddaughter was worried for no reason. She wanted to call the university and stay here with me, but I insisted that she go. It’s better this way, don’t you think? Whose turn is it, yours or mine?”
“I don’t want to tire you out . . .”
“And have me lose your account of what happened to the Ziad family? Come on, where were we?”
“The First World War was about to start.”
“Right, well, it’s my turn to listen.”
Dina was worried. She had gone to the market that morning along with Zaida her mother and her daughter Aya, and had heard rumors of the imminent arrival of the pasha Ahmed Cemal, the head of the Empire’s navy, the governor of Syria, and the commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army. If the rumors were true, Cemal was an unpredictable and bloodthirsty man, ready to take to task all Arabs who dreamed of a nation of their own, alongside the empire.
She was afraid for Ahmed, and for her own brother Hassan, who both so often participated in meetings to discuss the Arabs’ imminent independence from the Turks.
She had heard a tanner talking to the butcher, and both of them thought that the future would be uncertain.
“Women always trust the market gossip,” Ahmed said.
A few days later, he went with his wife to watch Cemal’s triumphant entry into the city. They returned in a state of shock at all th
e ostentation with which the pasha surrounded himself.
“It was a procession the likes of which I’ve never seen, they threw rose petals and people sang enthusiastically. I didn’t see him very well, but he didn’t look that tall,” Dina told Aya, who was anxious to hear all the details.
Scarcely a week later, Ahmed went to one of Omar Salem’s meetings.
“It seems that Cemal Pasha trusts only the Germans,” Salem said bitterly.
“Yes, since the three pashas have been governing, their officers are now all Germans,” Hassan added.
Ahmed listened to them in silence, worried by the degree to which the two men were agitated.
“Well, there are Arabs and even Jews in the sultan’s army,” he plucked up the courage to say, but without much enthusiasm.
“But Cemal doesn’t trust us. They say he has come to try to crush any chance of a rebellion,” his brother-in-law Hassan said.
A servant entered and whispered something in Omar’s ear. Omar stood up with a smile.
“My friends, we have an unexpected visitor, Yusuf Saïd is here.”
The young man, a friend of Hassan and Layla’s sons, was received with friendship by the host and his guests. He seemed tired, as he had just, as he told them, arrived from Cairo.
“I went to your house,” he said to Hassan. “Your wife, Layla, told me that you were here. Omar, please forgive me for coming to your house uninvited.”
“You are always welcome here. Tell us about Sharif Husayn and his sons, Faisal and Abdullah.”
“The sharif is being extremely cautious, but he thinks that this might be our moment. It was not long ago that Abdullah himself was in Cairo to find out what the British think about the future.”
“And what do they think?” Omar wanted to know.
“They have their own commitments, they listened with interest, they promised nothing. They seem convinced they will win the war. We need to be prepared in case that happens.”
They spoke for a long time, and in spite of Yusuf Saïd’s prudence, they reached the conclusion that the sharif would be better disposed toward the European powers if they could guarantee their help in his dream of creating a greater Arab state.
“Of course the Sauds will dispute Husayn’s leadership,” Hassan dropped into the conversation.
“Yes, but don’t forget that Husayn’s legitimacy derives from his ancestry: He is a descendant of the Prophet,” Yusuf said.
Night had already fallen when Ahmed went home with Yusuf accompanying him, along with Hassan and Hassan’s two sons. Yusuf was going to stay in Hassan’s house. He said he wanted to rest before continuing onwards to Mecca.
Dina’s face lit up when Ahmed told her that Yusuf was in her brother’s house.
“I think this young man is interested in Aya, and he’ll do what it takes to see her.”
“Woman, there are only a few meters between our two houses. You have to keep an eye on our daughter, don’t leave her alone, you don’t want Yusuf to think that we want to marry her off,” Ahmed said.
“Leave it to me, I’ll be very prudent. I hope that Layla is supportive, you know what my sister-in-law is like.”
“Supportive of what?”
“Of engineering a meeting between Yusuf and Aya.”
It was their nephew Jaled who came the next day to invite his uncle and aunt to dinner.
“My mother wants to honor our guest and thought that a family dinner would be the ideal activity.”
Zaida and Dina were enthusiastic and continued with their matchmaking plans. They made Aya put on her best tunic and veil.
“You must be modest, don’t look into his eyes, and don’t speak to him unless he speaks to you first,” Zaida, her grandmother, counseled.
“But you must think I’m stupid!” she protested.
“You are a good Muslim girl. Don’t forget that men do not like girls who are too forward.”
The evening could not have gone any better. Salah and Jaled had exchanged confidences with their friend and had discovered his interest in their cousin. They reminded him that Aya was barely out of adolescence and said that he should not look at her unless it was to ask her hand in marriage. Yusuf said that this was what he wanted. If Ahmed agreed, then they would get married as soon as was decorous.
The men spoke about the latest occurrences in the city, while the women laid the table with tasty plates of food they had cooked themselves. Yusuf praised Aya’s sweets, and she blushed.
The next day, Ahmed told his daughter that Yusuf had asked to speak with him.
“I think I know what he wants,” Ahmed said.
“What he wants is to ask for Aya’s hand in marriage! Allah has heard my prayers!” Dina said enthusiastically.
“And if that were the case, what would you think, Aya?” Ahmed asked his daughter.
“What does it matter what she thinks? We should be honored to join our family to Yusuf Saïd’s,” Dina protested.
“Woman, children must obey their parents, but I want to know what Aya thinks, I wouldn’t like to tie her forever to a man for whom she feels repulsion. If she is repulsed by him then we will look for another husband for her,” Ahmed declared.
Aya stood up, holding her grandmother’s hand. She was happy, and flattered that a man like Yusuf should have paid her any attention, but in love with him? She didn’t know if she was in love with him. She liked that dark-skinned young man, with his deep-set bright eyes, she liked knowing that he was important, but in love with him? She felt a terror in her stomach. She wanted to get married, yes, but she had not thought that it would be so soon.
“Yusuf is very pleasant,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice.
“I will not make you marry him, you can wait a year or two more,” Ahmed insisted.
She hesitated under her mother’s inquisitive gaze.
“She is not such a little girl,” Zaida murmured.
“If Yusuf wants us to be married, then I will accept him,” she said, and as she said so, she felt a strange mixture of joy and terror. To get married meant to leave this house where she had been born to move across the Jordan River to where Yusuf’s family lived, and who knew, maybe even to go to Mecca. She would have to live with her mother-in-law, and this excited her fears.
Ahmed thought there was nothing more to say. He would visit Yusuf that afternoon, and he now knew the answer to give him if, as he hoped, Yusuf asked for Aya’s hand in marriage.
Over the next few months, the Old City knew what terror was once again. Cemal Pasha mistrusted everyone and had spies everywhere, looking for discontented Arabs or nationalists who wanted to stop being the sultan’s subjects.
It began to be a regular occurrence for the pasha to order those he considered his enemies to be hanged, and to instill fear into the citizens of Jerusalem he had made hanging a public spectacle.
“I went past the Damascus Gate and I went to see what was happening, because there was a large group standing around in silence. They were hanging five men,” Ahmed said with regret.
“You shouldn’t have stopped, you know that Cemal Pasha likes hangings to take place at the Damascus Gate, or else the Jaffa Gate. Please be careful, and don’t go to any more of those meetings at Omar Salem’s house. And the same should go for my brother Hassan, he’s putting himself and his children in danger.” Dina could not stop herself from being worried.
“It was horrible, they took so long to die, we watched their death throes. This man is not human,” Ahmed said, referring to Cemal.
“Shush! Don’t let anyone hear you say things like that. I don’t want to think what would happen if Cemal Pasha knew that you were criticizing him.”
“The Jews are not safe either. I have been speaking with Samuel, and he told me that Cemal had met with some important members of the community and had threatened to send th
em away from Palestine. He has already exiled some Jews to Damascus,” Ahmed explained to his wife.
“As far as I know, Samuel is a Turkish supporter, the Jews like being part of the empire,” Dina replied.
“They live in peace here, which is something that is very important for them, but that doesn’t mean that they support Cemal. Samuel, Ariel, Louis, Jacob . . . they all hate the hangings as much as we do. They are not safe either. Samuel says that they are trying to temporize.”
“What does that mean?”
“To get on well with Cemal, to stop him from doubting that the Jews are loyal to the Empire.”
“It won’t help them,” Dina said.
In spite of the uncertainty and the pain that was felt among the citizens of Jerusalem, Dina carried on preparing for Aya’s wedding. The war was still rumbling on in the European theater, and she felt that all these cities that people were talking about were so far away: Paris, London, Moscow . . . Even so, the devastating effect of the war had reached Palestine. Some of her friends had lost husbands who had been fighting on the front with the Turkish army. She gave thanks to Allah that her husband had been made lame by the accident in the quarry. No one would think to try to call him up. But even though she knew her husband was safe, she couldn’t help worrying about her son Mohammed. She was afraid that they would make him go and fight in this war that had nothing to do with them.
“I’m going to dine at Omar’s house,” Ahmed said, one evening in the autumn of 1915.
“But you’re exhausted,” Dina said, worried that his meetings with this man were becoming ever more frequent.
“Yes, I’ve had a hard day at the quarry.”
“So tell my brother Hassan to make your apologies for you, and that you’ll go another day.”
Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead Page 31