Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  Netanel was better than he had expected. One of his legs was broken, and a knife cut that went from his right eye down to his chin had marked him forever.

  Anastasia came close, and Samuel looked at her sadly. He could still see in that face the remnants of a love that she had once professed to him.

  “You mustn’t worry more than you have to. The house is in order. Dina is taking charge of everything, and Aya and Salma have helped much in spite of the protests of their children. For all that Rami calls Aya to come and be with him, she has not left Ruth and Marinna alone for a moment, and has even helped Kassia, who normally insists that she doesn’t need anyone to help her. My daughter has also come to lend a hand,” Anastasia said.

  “I’m fine, and this arm doesn’t stop me from doing anything,” Kassia assured them.

  “I won’t let you force yourself, I’ve said that I’m not going to leave you alone until I see that everything’s going alright,” Dina insisted, standing in front of Kassia.

  The two women were friends. They were the same age and they had shared this farm for the last two decades. They knew each other far too well.

  Samuel understood that without Dina and her family they would not have been able to continue. He was amazed that Aya and Salma were always coming and going to help them with what they needed. Normally it was Aya who came first thing in the morning, while Salma went to Hassan and Layla’s house. Dina had taken control of the two families, and although Samuel could not help but notice that the woman had grown old very quickly, he still saw in her the same energy as before, which compelled her to help everyone as much as they needed.

  Aya and Salma both tried to take their children to the neighbors’ house as little as possible. They didn’t want to make Marinna even sadder than she already was, as she still had to recover from the loss of her child.

  Their life started to take on a routine shape. Samuel seemed better, as did Netanel. The Moscow pharmacist insisted that he could return to his work even though he had not completely recovered from his wounds. On one of her visits, Miriam also told Samuel that her son Daniel was keen to return to the laboratory.

  “As soon as Yossi allows him to come, he will come, even if it’s on crutches.”

  Samuel was most worried about Ruth, not just because of the extent of her injuries, but also because the woman seemed to have fallen into a depression from which it seemed almost impossible to remove her. For all that Kassia jollied her along, Ruth seemed to have lost the will to live. She said nothing, she didn’t even say anything about the pain that the knife must have caused, leaving a web of scars on her arm and her face. Her silence, according to Kassia, was the worst thing.

  One day, when Dina came to bring them their supper, Samuel asked her to tell Mohammed that he wanted to talk to him.

  “I need to understand, Dina, I need Mohammed to explain to me why this tragedy has taken place.”

  Dina looked at him apprehensively, but agreed. She herself had not stopped asking her son to explain why this had happened. Like Samuel, she needed to understand.

  If it hadn’t been for Cemal Pasha, that bloodthirsty wretch who had taken Ahmed’s life, she might almost have felt nostalgia for the time when they were all governed by the Ottoman sultan, she confessed to Samuel with a blush, and he agreed with her.

  The next day, Mohammed came to see him on his way back from the quarry. He seemed tired and worried.

  “Are things going well at the quarry?”

  “Yes, as they should, but the men are restless. Nabi Musa has left scars on everyone, scars that cannot be seen,” Mohammed replied.

  “We would not be men if we felt no pain or anger for what has happened. We have all suffered.”

  “Yes, we have been wounded, too.”

  “We . . . you . . . Why do we speak like this, Mohammed? Who are ‘you’? Who are ‘we’? Aren’t we the same as we’ve always been? What makes us different?”

  “We are Arabs, you are Jews, the others are Christians . . .”

  “So? Who cares which God each of them prays to? And what happens if we don’t pray?” Samuel looked Mohammed right in the eye.

  “I hear you speak and I think as you do, but then, when I go away, I see that things are different, that men are different.”

  “Different? I don’t think that we are different. We have two hands, two feet, a head . . . We all are born from a mother. We all feel fear, love, hatred, ingratitude, jealousy . . . Who says that we are different? No one is better than anyone else.”

  “You are wrong, some men are better than others, Samuel. My father was one of them.”

  “Yes, you’re right, some men are good.”

  “You are good, or so my father told me.” Mohammed’s eyes were sincere.

  “Your father illuminated me with his goodness, but I am not like him, although I don’t think I am wicked either. I am a man, Mohammed, a man like any other man. For many years I lived with the stigma of being Jewish. At the university I was different from the rest of my friends. And it was not because I had done anything that they hadn’t done, but simply because the very mention of the fact that I was Jewish was enough to make them see me differently, make me feel different. A single word, ‘Jew,’ and I was made into a different, a special person. Some of my friends said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t care that you are a Jew,’ but that was condescending in itself. Now you and I are different because you are an Arab and I am a Jew. It’s madness!” Samuel’s lament had a trace of bitterness in it.

  Mohammed lowered his head for a moment while he organized his ideas. Once more he was confused.

  “We want the same land,” he finally managed to say.

  “We share the same land,” Samuel said sincerely.

  “It was ours before you came.”

  “It belonged to the Turks, who governed here for four hundred years. In spite of them, it is the land of your ancestors and of mine. I don’t feel that it’s mine, just that our roots are here, and that is why I came.”

  “And what should we do? Should we allow you to appropriate our lands step by step?” Mohammed looked him straight in the eye.

  “To keep your land? We bought this land from the Aban family, don’t you remember? The Jews who have arrived here have bought land from whomever wished to sell it; as far as I know, no one has stolen any land. I don’t like how you’re talking, Mohammed, you’re back once again to ‘you’ and ‘we.’ Can’t we live together? Haven’t we been good neighbors all these years? Your mother has been looking after us for weeks, there hasn’t been a single day when she hasn’t come by with one of her stews. Your sister Aya has not only helped Kassia with the hardest tasks, but she also looks after Marinna. She spends hours with her, sometimes they speak, sometimes they’re silent, but her mere presence makes Marinna feel more comfortable. No, here at Hope Orchard we are not ‘you’ and ‘we,’ we are the same. Tell me where you see the difference.”

  “You should have been a poet. When I hear you speak your words convince me and move me, but I have already told you, out there things are not the same, and not even your words, for all their good intentions, are going to change the world.”

  “The world will be what we want it to be,” Samuel said.

  “I’m sorry, Samuel, I am truly sorry, but things are not going well. There are people who think of the Jews as a danger for the future, for our interests. They are worried that the Jews are still coming to Palestine, but they are worried above all by the promises the British have made. They have promised you a home in a land that does not belong to them. Lots of us curse the statement Balfour made.”

  “Help me get up. I want to go out, because now is the jasmine hour. I like the smell of jasmine. Your mother gave Kassia a cutting when we came to Hope Orchard.”

  Mohammed helped him get up and noticed how thin Samuel was. They left the house slowly and walked along th
e fence until they reached a little stone bench. Samuel took out his tobacco pouch and started to roll a couple of cigarettes. They smoked in silence.

  They felt comfortable with each other, so they didn’t need to say anything to enjoy the moment when the sun started to sink away, leaving a red glow in the sky.

  They were tapping the ash off their cigarettes when they saw Louis approaching. Samuel smiled to see his friend. Louis, in his own way, had taken control of Hope Orchard. Night after night he came back there to sleep and to see that all was in order in the house, where everyone else was recovering from the wounds they had suffered on Nabi Musa.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Louis said to Samuel as a greeting, and hugged Mohammed as he did so.

  “It’s always good to breathe the night air,” Samuel said, taking out the tobacco pouch again and offering it to Louis, who accepted with a smile.

  “How is Ruth today?” Louis asked worriedly.

  “She hasn’t said anything apart from a couple of words to thank Dina for the pistachio cake she made for her.”

  “I don’t know why she is so downcast.” There was a slight tone of reproach in Louis’s words.

  “We’re talking about what happened,” Samuel said, changing the subject.

  “It’s not that hard to understand, the thing is that you have a romantic vision of the world and you refuse to see things as they are in reality,” Louis said, slapping his friend on the back.

  “That’s what I was saying to him,” Mohammed said.

  “Reality is nothing but a reflection of the actions of men, so reality can change,” Samuel insisted, unwilling to change his position by even an inch.

  “The world is changing. I admit that it is because of men that this change is taking place, it cannot be otherwise, but the important thing to note is that sometimes forces are set into motion that cannot be stopped. Now the great powers are carving up the Middle East; they will reach an agreement that they will want to impose on us; some people will accept it, others will not . . . but it will have consequences for us all, for all the Palestinians, the Jewish Palestinians as well as the Arab Palestinians.” Louis was solemn.

  “Things are changing; of course, the British now govern in Palestine. They’re expecting the high commissioner to come today,” Mohammed remembered.

  “Yes, that’s it, Sir Herbert Samuel has already arrived, and it was a real spectacle. The British have a greatly theatrical sense of power. He was received with a seventeen-cannon salute. As far as I know, he is going to install himself at the Augusta Victoria, and he wants to meet with representatives of all the different communities,” Louis continued explaining.

  “He’s a Jew,” Mohammed said, and this word was more than a simple acknowledgement of the high commissioner’s religion.

  “Yes, he’s a Jew, but that’s not a sign for good or for ill. Maybe it will be worse for the Palestinian Jews because Sir Herbert will want to show that he is impartial— which may even lead to some injustices against us,” Louis said.

  “It’s hot,” Samuel complained, batting away a mosquito that was investigating him, about to find a place for its needle.

  “Well, it’s the thirtieth of June, what do you expect? We could carry on talking under cover and then you wouldn’t have to fight with the mosquitoes,” Louis suggested.

  “I’m going home, my mother must be complaining about how I’m always late. Maybe my little Wädi is still awake. Salma knows that when I get back from the quarry I like to play with my son for a while.”

  Mohammed said goodbye to them all with a certain degree of relief. He was too tired to carry on talking about politics, because that’s what all this was about in the end. And he had not lied about wanting to see Wädi. He wanted to see his son and give him a hug.

  Samuel leaned on Louis so he could walk. He still felt weak, even though it had been more than two months since that stray bullet had hit him.

  They went into the house and saw Kassia reading. Igor and Marinna were in their room, and Ruth was dozing.

  “Dinner’s on the table. Dina brought hummus and I made a salad. I think I’m going to go and rest, there’s a lot to do tomorrow. I took some supper to Netanel and I saw that the laboratory needs a good going-over. I need to clean the floor and polish the windows,” Kassia said.

  “Bit by bit, Kassia, we’ve only been working for two weeks,” Samuel replied.

  “And that’s enough. This looks more like a hospital than a farm. If you carry on like this, you’ll get mold in the laboratory. We can’t carry on complaining about what happened. We’re alive, and that’s the important thing.”

  “You broke an arm and got some bruises, but the rest of us weren’t so lucky,” Samuel protested.

  “Just be thankful that the bullet didn’t kill you. Marinna had it worst because she’s lost her son, and poor Judith is now . . . Well, she’s lost a bit of her control, but the rest of you only have your scars. It’s been more than two months, the time for crying is over. You can work more in the laboratory. Netanel is there and he’s older than you. I can’t do everything round here. And as for Igor, he’s gone back to the quarry but even he hasn’t stopped doing his bit around the farm. And while we’re talking . . . Well, this is as good a time as any.”

  Kassia took a deep breath and looked straight at Samuel, and then at Louis. She saw that they had gone on the alert, waiting for what she might say.

  “We need more hands to work the land or else the harvest’s going to go to waste. I think we need to make our community here larger. Miriam told me that there’s a group of Jews in the city looking for work. We can give them a roof and something to do. Why don’t you go to the city tomorrow and meet them?” In spite of the passing of the years, Kassia was still in control at the farm.

  “You want to turn Hope Orchard into a collective farm?” Louis asked.

  “Well, it’s pretty much a collective farm already,” Kassia replied.

  “But it isn’t one,” Louis replied.

  “I don’t know if I could live with strangers,” Samuel protested.

  “And what were we when we came here? We could build another house for the newcomers. Igor works in the quarry, Marinna works in the laboratory, and you . . .”

  “We all work the land, we’ve never stopped doing it,” Samuel protested.

  “You know very well that all the hard work fell on the shoulders of Ariel and Jacob. Also, we are getting old, and we need young people, people with hope, the same hope we had when we came here.” Kassia would not hear anything against her plans.

  “You’re right,” Louis said. “We mustn’t be selfish. We will go see Yossi tomorrow so he can introduce us to these people, and then we’ll decide. What do Igor and Marinna think?”

  “We’ve taught Marinna ever since she was a child that no one should have more than anyone else; that we have to share what we have, that nothing belongs to us.” Kassia was about to become emotional, remembering her socialist ideas, the ideas she had shared with her husband Jacob. How she missed him! Jacob had taught her everything she knew.

  “And Ruth, and Igor? We can’t make a decision without them,” Samuel reminded them.

  “Ruth doesn’t care, and as for Igor, he’s a true socialist. Recently he told me that he thinks he and Marinna should perhaps go to work on a collective farm.” From Kassia’s tone of voice, Samuel realized why she was trying to effect these changes at Hope Orchard.

  “We don’t have enough space for a collective farm, we could have another family here at the most; and as for the land, it’s not going to become more fruitful simply because there are more people working on it.” In spite of his arguments, Samuel knew that he had lost the battle with Kassia.

  Their lives took another turn. Yossi introduced them to the group of Russians who had recently arrived from Paris: two middle-aged men, three women, an elderly coupl
e, and three children.

  One of the men, who said his name was Moshe, recounted what they had had to suffer before reaching Palestine. They had fled Russia shortly after the revolution. They had all collaborated in building the new regime, and Moshe himself said that he had been a Bolshevik. But the revolution had not brought inequality to an end, nor had it erased the stigma of being Jewish.

  “We were living in Kiev, I worked as a journalist and my wife worked for a printer. Mine was a modest family, with no other luxury than books, but even so some of my comrades said that I had too much, so we had to share our home with people who had even less. We didn’t protest. This was why we had supported the revolution. But it was not enough. The new authorities mistrusted the Jews. They said that most of us were not only bourgeois, but also Zionists, and they attacked other Jews for maintaining their traditions, such as going to the synagogue, and a year ago, in 1919, they decided to ban Zionist organizations. They accused us of supporting imperialism. You see that we, who had put all of our efforts into supporting the revolution, suddenly found ourselves under suspicion. Any display in favor of Judaism or Zionism was considered counterrevolutionary. Eva, my wife, was arrested and held for three days. Someone had denounced her for speaking in Hebrew. A false denunciation, because her knowledge of Hebrew is very slight. A good friend who had the trust of the Moscow soviet managed to get her freed. There are Jews who occupy important positions in the new state. Jews who have stopped being Jews, and whose only religion is the revolution. Eva was saved, but not my parents, and not hers either. We are from Proskurov, and the White Army carried out a massacre there, just as they did in Fastov, Berdichev, Zhitomir . . . and so many other places. So, Jews are suffering pogroms once again. It doesn’t matter if a village is visited by White troops or Reds, in the end we Jews become the victims. If there is a place in Russia where the Jew pays dearly, then it is the Ukraine. That is why we ran away. We spent all we had on bribes, but in the end we were able to reach Odessa.”