Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “We will ask him before doing anything. I don’t think that Wädi will let us choose a wife for him. He’ll want to choose for himself.”

  “But he has no time to look for one, he works all day,” Salma protested.

  “Even so, it is he who should choose,” Mohammed said.

  Salma did not protest. She enjoyed the company of her son and her husband. She had never felt closer to them.

  Their routine was broken by the arrival of Ezekiel.

  Miriam had not been able to resist going over to the Ziads’ house to tell them that her son was coming home.

  “We’re going to go to Haifa to fetch him,” she said excitedly.

  Wädi did not hesitate: he said he would go as well. He was curious to know if the war had changed Ezekiel. No man emerges cleanly out of such an experience.

  If Wädi was surprised to see Sara, then he said nothing, and when Salma said that it was clear that Ezekiel was in love with the girl, still he said nothing.

  It didn’t take long for Ezekiel to find a moment to speak to his friend alone. Wädi listened to him patiently, understanding that his pain at his father’s death and the loss of his sister had in some way mingled into the pain felt by Sara. He realized that Ezekiel was so set on saving Sara because it was his way of saving Samuel and Dalida, and maybe of saving himself as well. Ezekiel had fought in the war, but it had not been enough to stop his sister and his father from dying in the gas chambers.

  “What do you think of Sara?” Ezekiel asked him, sincere and direct as always.

  It took a moment for Wädi to give an answer. When he looked into Sara’s eyes he saw a reflection of the hell that this young woman had lived through. He did not think that Sara would ever be cured. So he tried to find the words that could most help his friend.

  Little by little Sara made her presence felt as a silent figure in their lives. She liked to go out wandering, with no clear idea of where to go. Sometimes she met Salma, who always invited her in to have a cup of tea. She accepted with a nod. She sat in the kitchen and sometimes let her eyes fall half shut, and sometimes closed them entirely. Salma made no effort to bring her out of herself. She would just carry on with what she was doing, although she was always aware of every movement Sara made. Sara would stay for a while, then get up, say thank you, and return to Hope Orchard.

  “I’m worried about how silent she is,” Salma confessed to Wädi and Mohammed.

  “When you have lived in hell, it is difficult to return to the real world,” Wädi said.

  “My son, I know that the war was terrible and I shudder to think about what this girl has been through . . . She had to be a prostitute in the hope that it would help her recover her children, and then she found out that they had been tortured and subjected to experiments . . .”

  Sometimes Salma would go out with Miriam on the walks she took with Sara. She went alongside them and sometimes they made it as far as the Old City to see Yossi and Yasmin. Miriam’s brother-in-law was still working as a doctor. Mikhail was normally absent. Neither Yossi nor Yasmin would say where, but Salma didn’t need anyone to tell her, she was sure that he was an active member of the Haganah.

  June 1946 was the month chosen by General Evelyn Barker to strike at the Zionist organizations that were still acting freely and defying the British Empire by bringing boats filled with refugees over to the coast of Palestine, or else attacking British installations.

  Dawn was about to break on June 29 when General Barker’s men began to visit the houses of the main Zionist leaders and arrest them. By midday they had arrested hundreds of people.

  “I’m going over to Hope Orchard,” Mohammed said to his wife.

  Salma did not dare protest. She had been worried all day, and had gone to the door of the house several times, anxious, to see if anything odd was happening around them. But she didn’t see anything that aroused her suspicions.

  “I will go with you.”

  Mohammed would have preferred to go alone, but he could not refuse her, so they both went to Hope Orchard. It was strangely silent and the door was locked. Mohammed rapped on it gently with his knuckles and they both waited impatiently. After a while Miriam opened the door, with Marinna standing behind her.

  “We were worried . . . ,” Mohammed said.

  They invited them in, and while Miriam made them a cup of tea, Marinna explained the situation.

  “Mikhail came last night to tell us what was going to happen . . . He has been able to escape, thanks to Igor. But we are worried about Louis. We haven’t heard from him since he left yesterday morning.”

  “You don’t need to be worried, Louis won’t let himself get caught,” Mohammed said to calm her down.

  “What about Ezekiel?” Salma asked.

  “He went with Igor . . .” Miriam’s voice was anguished.

  “Mikhail will know how to look after them,” Mohammed assured them, although he was worried himself.

  They spent a good part of the afternoon talking about the political situation. Sara seemed anxious. Ezekiel’s absence affected her and, unable to stay still for more than a few seconds, she walked from one side of the house to the other.

  In the late afternoon, worried about the arrests, Wädi, too, came to Hope Orchard.

  “I met Omar Salem, he tells me that the British aren’t going to stop with the arrests. General Barker would like to have arrested Ben-Gurion, but he couldn’t find him, he seems to be out of Palestine.” Wädi sounded worried.

  “The British are more than ready to stop illegal immigration and show the Zionists who the boss in Palestine really is,” Mohammed said.

  Sara was more and more agitated as she listened to them, and suddenly started to scream. She ran out of the door and started to race toward the olive trees. Wädi ran after her and when he had caught up with her it was all he could do to hold her still.

  “Nothing’s going to happen . . . Trust me . . . Ezekiel will come . . . I’ll go and find him myself . . .”

  But Sara kept on shouting with ever greater urgency. Marinna caught up to them and hugged Sara to try to calm her down.

  “Come on, don’t cry, don’t worry, this is nothing new, nothing’s going to happen,” she said as she held her tight.

  “They’re going to kill us . . . them too . . . I know it . . . They all hate us . . . They want to kill us . . . ,” she shouted.

  Without Mohammed and Wädi’s help, and especially without Salma’s assistance, it would have been impossible for Miriam and Marinna to have made Sara come back. Strange as it may seem, Sara seemed to find comfort in Salma. When Salma went over to the young woman and stretched out her arms, Sara ran to her and huddled close. Salma spoke to her in a low voice, and stroked her hair as if she were a little girl.

  When they finally got home, both Wädi and Mohammed were even more worried.

  “I hope nothing happens to them,” Mohammed murmured.

  “Allah does not will it. I feel so sorry for Sara’s suffering . . . I don’t know what we could do to help her,” Salma replied.

  They spoke for a while about the situation. Omar Salem had been right when he had said that the British would round up the Zionists. Hundreds of people had been arrested, and they thought that Ezekiel and Igor could be among them.

  They went to bed apprehensively, not knowing what could have happened to their friends.

  If the men eventually did drop off, Salma could not close her eyes and after a little while she got up. She made herself a cup of tea and sat on the old rocking chair to mend one of Mohammed’s shirts. It was dark night when she heard a noise in the garden. She went over to the window but couldn’t see anything. She did not dare go out, neither did she think that she should wake Mohammed or her son, so she sat in silence, trying to see what she could make out in the shadows of the night. She looked at the clock, it was three o’clock in the m
orning, and although it was springtime in Jerusalem, it was cold. She soon heard another sound, footsteps coming up to the back door into the kitchen, where she was sitting. She thought that it might be some scoundrel with who knew what on his mind. She thought she heard someone call her name. No, it couldn’t be. She was going to turn the light out, but she heard her name called again and distinguished Igor’s voice. She opened the door in a fright and found Igor and Ezekiel with Mikhail. They seemed exhausted. She let them in without asking any questions.

  “I’ll call Mohammed and Wädi.”

  “Thank you, Salma,” Igor replied, looking at her so intently that she turned her head away and went off to wake her husband and her son.

  Mohammed smiled in relief when he saw them, and Wädi gave Ezekiel a hug. They asked them to tell at once what had happened.

  “I hid them in the house of a rabbi friend of mine, but it’s not safe, which is why I brought them here,” Mikhail explained.

  “You did well. No one will look for you here,” Mohammed said without a shred of doubt.

  “Louis is on General Barker’s list, it’s a good thing that he’s been in Tel Aviv for several days now, it will be easier for him to hide there. We are all on Barker’s list, or at least Ezekiel might be the only one who isn’t; they don’t have any cause to mistrust him, he was in their army until recently,” Mikhail continued.

  “They are looking for you as well,” Wädi said to Mikhail.

  “Yes, they are looking for me as well,” Mikhail replied.

  “So you should stay here too,” Mohammed said.

  “No, I have to go. There have been thousands of arrests, more than three thousand, and some of the men brought in are with the Jewish Agency. Also, the British seized important documents during the raids . . . ,” Mikhail carried on explaining.

  “If you go they will arrest you,” Salma said, coming into the room with a tray covered in cups of tea.

  “I have no option other than to take that risk,” Mikhail said heavily.

  Igor insisted on accompanying Mikhail, but he refused the offer.

  “You can’t do anything, and it’s not good for us if you are arrested, so the best thing for all of us is if Mohammed hides you here. As for Ezekiel, I don’t think anything will happen to him, he’s not on the British list . . . ,” Mikhail continued.

  “But all of us who live at Hope Orchard are suspicious, don’t forget that they are looking for Louis . . . ,” Igor argued.

  “We’ll take that risk. I think Ezekiel can go home first thing in the morning, but you will stay here.” Mikhail was giving Igor an order and he accepted it, albeit unwillingly.

  Mohammed asked Salma to make up Aya’s old bedroom so that the men could rest. Mikhail thanked him, but he didn’t stay. The night was still his ally at this moment.

  “I don’t need to tell you that no one can know that Igor is here,” Mikhail warned him before leaving.

  “No one will know,” Wädi assured him.

  “You should behave normally, go to work. Do what you do every day,” Mikhail insisted.

  “Don’t worry, no one will suspect that Igor is here.”

  Mikhail left, his mind at peace. If there was anyone he could trust, it was the Ziads. He knew that if it were necessary they would put their lives at risk to protect Igor.

  “You need to rest, even if only for a few hours,” Salma said, and invited them to go to Aya’s old room.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep,” Ezekiel replied.

  “You should at least try, you don’t think well when you’re tired, and tomorrow will be a complicated day,” Salma replied.

  When Salma and Mohammed had gone back to their room, Wädi went back to the kitchen to wait for Ezekiel. He knew him too well not to think that his friend would be there waiting for him, needing to talk.

  The kitchen was in shadow, scarcely lit by the reflection of the moon on the windows.

  “My mother was right, you should try to sleep.”

  Ezekiel started when he heard Wädi’s voice.

  “It’s not easy feeling like a fugitive in your own country,” he said to his friend.

  “Mikhail has said that the British have no information on you. You are not one of the chiefs of the Yishuv, and as far as I know you don’t belong to the Haganah or any of the other groups that attack the British.”

  They looked at each other in the darkness. Wädi knew that Ezekiel had to decide between trusting him or not answering.

  “If you ask me whether I am ready or want to fight with the Jewish defense groups, then my answer is yes. What else could I do? I fought alongside English soldiers in the war, we risked our lives together, we killed together. It is difficult for me to see them as my enemies, I cannot see them like that, for all that they are now persecuting the Palestinian Jews and refusing to allow the survivors of the extermination camps who so desire to find a home here.”

  “You cannot allow yourself to be neutral,” Wädi replied.

  “You’re right, I can’t allow myself to be neutral. But I don’t like the idea of fighting against people who were until just yesterday my comrades. If they make me choose, and they have made me choose, then my loyalty is for my family and my friends. You know, my father never knew where he was from. When I was little I heard him speaking to my mother. She knew where she was from, she was born here and she feels Palestinian, just like you. But my father was born in a village in Poland that belonged to the Russian Empire, his family was killed there in a pogrom, then he fled with his father to Saint Petersburg and became a man there. His mother was French—Jewish, but French. He spent a long time in Paris, then he came to Palestine. I think that until he met Katia again, he was happier here than anywhere else.”

  “You were born here,” Wädi reminded him.

  “Yes, I was born here, I’m not a man without a country like my father was. You said it, I cannot choose. If the Haganah accepts me then I will fight in their ranks, and even if they don’t, then my war is their war. Tell me, Wädi, do you think that we can all live together?

  Wädi was silent for a while as he looked for an answer to a question that he was not entirely certain of.

  “I don’t know, Ezekiel. Some of our leaders think that the Jews want Palestine just for themselves, that if you keep coming then the Palestinian Arabs will end up being strangers in their own land. They mistrust your leaders, your intentions. Do they have any reason to do so? You tell me.”

  “I don’t know either, Wädi. I could tell you what I think and feel, what I think should happen but may not happen. I think we could share Palestine, that together we could build a democratic state like England. Can we, Wädi? It depends on us.”

  “No, it doesn’t depend on us, that’s the problem.”

  “But it does depend on us not to get dragged along by the general madness . . .”

  They spoke until the light of day allowed them to see each other’s faces. That night they made an agreement: Whatever happened, they would never raise a hand against each other.

  Mohammed went back to Hope Orchard with Ezekiel. Miriam embraced her son, and there was a trace of relief on Sara’s face.

  “You don’t need to worry, Igor will stay with us until the danger is past,” Mohammed said to Marinna.

  She was grateful. She knew that Mohammed, if called upon to do so, would defend Igor with his own life.

  They agreed not to visit each other too much so as not to cause any suspicion in case they were being watched. Miriam was scared of what might happen to Ezekiel, but he calmed her down:

  “Mother, it’s too soon for the British to think of me as an enemy.”

  Mohammed was a little worried that Igor had stayed alone with Salma, and decided to go and look for Naima. It was not hard to convince Târeq that Naima should come back to her parents’ house for a few days.
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br />   “Salma misses her daughter and her grandson. If you were to allow them to come back for a couple of days to the house, then Salma would be the happiest woman on earth.”

  Târeq accepted. The distance between Jerusalem and Jericho was too short for him to worry that Naima and her son Amr might get tired on the journey.

  Salma said nothing when she saw Mohammed coming back to their house accompanied by her daughter and her granddaughter. It was a joy for her to have both of them with her again, albeit briefly. She immediately understood that Mohammed wanted to stop her from being alone with Igor. She didn’t blame him for that. She knew that her husband wanted to protect her reputation, although at that moment it was probably better for no one to be aware of Igor’s presence in their house.

  It was not easy for Mohammed to give shelter to Marinna’s husband. Not that he had hesitated for a moment in giving it. His sense of loyalty and friendship came above any other considerations, but seeing Igor outside the quarry made him realize even more strongly that this was the man who shared his nights with Marinna, and this hurt him, even now.

  One night, Louis came unexpectedly to Mohammed’s house.

  “Igor can go back to Hope Orchard,” he said, to Mohammed’s relief.

  “Are you sure they’re not looking for him?” Wädi asked.

  “They have arrested too many people, and are too busy with the confiscated documents in their headquarters,” Louis replied.

  “The British have good taste, at least. I don’t think there’s a better place than the King David Hotel to set up your headquarters,” Wädi laughed.

  In spite of what Louis thought, Igor was arrested, but he was not imprisoned for more than a couple of days. It was Mohammed who went to the British authorities to ask about Igor, and who managed, via his brother-in-law Yusuf’s contacts, to convince the English that Igor was not a useful prisoner. For himself, Mohammed thought that this was some manner of washing away the guilt he felt for loving Marinna.

  On July 22, 1946, when he heard the explosion, Wädi was at the school. The children shouted in fear. Brother Agustín told them to be quiet, but they paid him no attention. Suddenly, the streets of Jerusalem were filled with shouts of fear, of anguish, of despair.