CHAPTER 15 - The Armenian Massacres, Avshalom in Jail and Sara Comes Home
 |
| Sara with Rifka’s Letter |
Haim’s apartment in Istanbul. Sara at her window, with a letter from Rifka.
We hear Rifka’s voice over: “My dearest sister, how I wish you’d join us in America where everything is so nice and free - ”
Sara regards a photograph of Rifka in a pretty tea gown and Alex in British Army uniform standing in the Californian sunshine
Rifka’s voice: “We have no news of Absa. I wish with all my heart, that you had taken him instead of me. I’d give him to you if you were free and we were all together again!!”.
 |
| Sara's Mind is Cleared |
Sara's face barely registers Rifka's renunciation of her once was fiancé but with that startling revelation Sara’s mind is cleared and in the second half of August 1915, while Haim was away on a business trip to Vienna, with a number of orders for German uniforms, Sara started making arrangements to leave Constantinople and to return to her family in Zikhron. She finally left on November 25, 1915, voicing her intention to the housekeeping staff and the few friends, including Ronya, that she had made in her short sojourn in the city, and promising to return to Constantinople after a few months.
 |
| Sara in Travel Costume |
We see her in travel costume, with hat and veil, her face in shadow, bars of light from the slatted window across her gaze. Her suitcases by her side.
 |
| Wedding Photograph & Sara's Note |
Naturally, she writes to Haim. As she leaves we see a note addressed to: ‘Haim Abraham’ leaning on the wedding photo on the mantelpiece.
Strangely enough, Aron would continue to be in touch with Haim. Although he was upset about Sara's unhappy marriage - for which Haim was obviously blamed in the Aronson household - but the elder brother would continue to correspond, as if nothing was amiss. He was not fool enough to sever all ties with his former brother in law and actually had the gumption to ask Haim - when he needed - to borrow money. He also made use of Haim’s ability to send letters between Germany and Turkey to relay his own messages. He would garner snippets of information through his letters to Haim and his brothers Moritz and Mony, as they all had contacts with the political and diplomatic world of both the Germans and the Turks.
Expedient, but necessary, in Aron’s opinion.
Even Avshalom, despite his awkward position, would not hesitate to contact Haim when he needed help. Once he found himself in Damascus, requiring money and he asked for it. Whether that much-put-upon husband telegraphed him the cash is not known. And whether Haim was aware of Avshalom's role in Sara's running away, is also not clear, though rumours of the nature of ‘Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire’, were certainly rife...
Now the spies were facing another difficulty. The British had decided the information had to be in code.
****
 |
| Toba at her Typewriter, Atlit |
Aron’s office, Research Station, Atlit. Toba at a Corona typewriter, pulls out a page of unintelligible, cryptic letters from the typewriter. Plenty of exclamation marks and dots and dashes.
Aron studies the page and shakes his head: “Too easy.”
Toba replies: “Not if we write it in say - Aramaic.”
“Aramaic?! But no one speaks Aramaic anymore.”
Toba nods: “Exactly. So let’s go and see the Rabbi”.
****
 |
| Rabbi ‘Davening’ in Synagogue |
The Synagogue, Zikhron Ya’akov. The Rabbi reads from his prayer book, while we hear the sound of men ‘davening’ with tefillin, at the morning service, the Shacharit.
A shelf of old, holy books behind the praying congregants from which Rabbi Kornveld reaches for an Aramaic Bible and hands it to Aron.
 |
| Efraim & Aramaic Text |
Among the praying men, the father, Efraim pleads silently, with that hidden and recalcitrant God:
“May my daughters come safely home again”.
****
 |
| Istanbul Railway Station, August 1915 |
Istanbul Railway Station. Sara's comfortable train compartment, a rug across her knees. Steam, smoke, heat, bustle, Turkish Soldiers everywhere, being deployed to the front. Food and tea sellers hawking their wares.
Sara, at the window of the Turkish steam train, as it gathers speed puffing out of the station. The pleasant, green country-side calms her as she drinks a cup of apple tea served by a waiter with a fez and a tray of glass tea cups.
As the train flashes past, her face registers increasing horror and dismay. The trauma and horror of what she witnesses will stay with her for the rest of her life.
 |
| Armenians fleeing |
 |
| Dead Armenian Children |
 |
| Armenian Woman |
Turkish Soldiers driving refugees with rifle-butts. Piles of shoes at the side of a road. A dead man, his guts spilling out into the dust.
 |
| Armenian Displacement |
A deserted village, a woman running down the road, her hair on fire. Looters rifling through the clothes of corpses, piled by the side of the train track. A hanged man in a tree, as wailing Armenians bury their dead. Children among the bodies. An elderly, beggar woman, with a claw for a hand, presses her face against the train window, begging for sustenance.
 |
| Sara in her Train Compartment |
Sara presses her handkerchief to her mouth, she wants to vomit. Her terror and repulsion are indescribable as the gruesome sights keep coming, flashing past in a nightmare of staccato images.
****
 |
| German Medic & Photographer Armin Wegner |
Others will describe the horrors of the massacres. One such, young Armin Wegner - himself, a German soldier, a medic, pacifist and human rights activist - was also a witness to the Genocide. He took horrifying photographs on his own nightmarish journey, documenting the plight of the victims. Later, he wrote in ‘The Road of No Return’, based on a collection of letters he had written during what he called the ‘martyrdom’ of the Anatolian Armenians: ‘Like a wild beast, the Turkish Soldiers, Officers, and gendarmes swept down on this welcome prey. All the crimes that had ever been committed against women, were committed here. They cut off their breasts, mutilated their limbs, and their corpses lay naked, defiled, or blackened by the heat on the fields...’
 |
| Armenian Massacre, 1915 Photograph by Armin Wegner |
Disobeying orders to censor news of the massacres, the young pacifist continued to gather information and took hundreds more photographs in the Armenian deportation camps in Deir ez-Zor. These were some of the first incontrovertible images which would act as direct evidence of the atrocities to which the Ottoman Armenians were subjected. Through a series of safe routes and diplomatic connections, Armin was able to smuggle out some of his documentation to American and German sources. When one of his letters was intercepted, as a punishment, he was made to serve in the cholera wards, where he became severely ill. In late 1916, Armin was recalled to Germany for his actions. On his return, he secretly smuggled out more photographs of the brutal actions he had witnessed.
Turkish railways - perhaps the same train in which Sara travels - were used from as early as 1915 when Armenian women and children from Zeitun were deported on trains to Konya and later marched into the Syrian Desert. Concentration camps were set up by railroad stations where tens of thousands were held before deportation. According to the deputy director of the railway, Franz Günther, another German in the service of the Ottoman Empire, an average of eighty eight Armenians were packed into a single cattle car - meant for only thirty six passengers - and newly born infants were taken from their mothers and simply thrown out of the train to save space.
German archives hold a vast amount of such first hand reports, their complicity undeniable. As will be written by a future British Australian, human rights lawyer: ‘It had full knowledge of the massacres and deportations and decided not to use its power and influence over the Ottomans to stop them.’
‘Turkiye’, as it likes to call itself, still denies the Genocide.
****
Sara's tear-stained face as we hear her voice: “Why are they going like sheep to the slaughter? What if they do this to our people too?”
The train puffs in to Haifa station. Sara is back, travel soiled and exhausted, and met by Aron and Abu Farrid on the platform
She falls into Aron’s arms: “It’s too horrible, whole villages, an entire people - Will we be next!?”
****
 |
| Eitan Belkind writes of the Armenian Massacre |
Sara’s outraged reports were quickly verified by fellow spy, Avshalom’s cousin, Eitan Belkind’s own ones. In the city of Urfa he witnessed the first massacre of the Armenians. He claimed to have personally witnessed the burning of five thousand Armenians.
In his subsequent book ‘That’s How It Was’, Eitan tells the story of his investigative journey with an undercover Armenian friend, Shirinyan, and another friend: ‘On the second day of our journey, we saw a corpse flowing in the Euphrates. We were surprised but the soldier accompanying us reassured us that this was a body of an Armenian. We found out that there was a camp nearby, on the other side of the Euphrates where deported Armenians were being held. Our friend and guide Shirinyan turned white and asked us to cross the Euphrates and go to the Armenian camp. We found several hundred people in the camp living in small handmade huts. The territory was clean; the huts were built on one line. We passed by huts and looked inside. We saw women and children. In one of the huts, our guide found one of his aunts, who told him that all the men had been killed; only women and children remained. Our guide had no idea what had happened to his nation. Shocked, he began to cry on his aunt’s shoulder, but my colleague, Jacob Baker and I tried to cheer him up and said that we still had our duty to do. We went on; the further we traveled the more floating corpses of Armenians we saw. After six days, we reached Der-el-Zor, an important city of the region. We paid a visit to the military Commandant of the city, the Circassian Colonel Ahmab Bey. We presented our papers and explained the purpose of our journey.
My friend Jacob Baker was allowed to leave, but I and my guide, Shirinyan were arrested. Later Jacob Baker visited us and said that we were detained for being Armenians! ‘No matter how much I tried to explain things to the Commandant,’ said Jacob Baker, ‘I could not persuade him. I have sent a telegram to the chief in Damascus.’
I was kept in custody for two days until a telegram came with order to release me. It turned out the Commandant believed I was also Armenian my first name Eitan, when written in Turkish with the sound “i” presented by two dots and the character “t”, written with two dots above, so the Commander read my name as ‘Etian’, which sounded perfectly Armenian. The situation was soon rectified and I was freed. I do not know what happened to our friend Shirinyan.
After three days riding, I reached Aram-Naharaim where I witnessed another terrible tragedy. There were two camps next to each other, one Armenian and one Circassian. The Circassians were ‘busy’ with exterminating the Armenians. There were also Arab Sheikhs, who selected beautiful Armenian girls as their wives. Two women approached me and gave their photos to me. Should I ever get to Aleppo and find their families - whether their families were alive, was unknown - the women asked me to send their greetings to whoever I find there. The Circassian officer seeing me talk to the two Armenian women ordered me to leave but I stayed to see what would happen to the Armenians. The Circassian Soldiers ordered the Armenians to gather dry grass and pile it into a tall pyramid, then they tied up all the Armenians who were there, almost five thousand souls, their hands tied together and put them in a circle around the pile of grass and set it afire in a blaze, which rose up to the heaven together with the screams of the wretched people, who were being burned to death. I fled from the place I could not stand this horrifying sight. I rode as fast as I could, wishing to get as far from the place as possible. After two hours of crazy gallop I could still hear the screams of the poor victims until they died out. In two days I returned to that place and saw the burned bodies of thousands of people. I must mention that all the time I was in Aram-Naharaim, I was unable to eat the splendid fish from the Euphrates, which I liked very much, remembering that those fishes had fed off the corpses of murdered Armenians, including young children. I was also unable to have sexual relations with the Armenian girls who were offered me by Doctor Bhor and pharmacist Arto.
In my trips in the south of Syria and Iraq I saw with my own eyes the extermination of the Armenian nation, I watched the atrocious murders, and saw children’s heads cut off and watched the burning of innocent people whose only wrongdoing was to be Armenian. I also suffered horrible torments in prison; and my dear brother Naaman and his friend Yosef would be killed. And yet despite all this, I will not feel true to myself unless I write down what I carry in my heart. I pitied the Turks, who fell so ignominiously at the end of their power in the East because of collaborating with the Germans. On the advice of the Germans the Turks perpetrated brutal massacres of the Armenians with the hands of the Circassian Muslim fanatics. While still in Damascus... I gave my records about the Armenian massacres to Yosef Lishansky in case my letters might be opened by the censors.’
And he adds: ‘When we returned to the testing station I stayed with Sara. She told me that my records of the massacres, which she had sent to Egypt to her brother who presented the report to the British army, had made a great impression on them.’
****
 |
| Sara at Home |
Sara walks into the house with a weary Aron, who has actually just returned from Damascus ‘on locust business.’ Brother and sister hug, but there is no joy in them.
Sara sits down - shell-shocked. “The things I’ve seen...”
Aron: “My God! We’ve heard stories - but everything’s censored.”
“What’s going on, Aron? Where’s Absa?!”
Aron is determined to keep the news of Absa’s arrest and imprisonment from Sara, at least, for the time being. He answers, a little vaguely.
“He’s gone. He left a week ago. Your mad one. To investigate the locust swarms coming from Egypt.”
Sara looks nonplussed.
Just at that moment, Leo walks in, in a tremendous hurry, having only just heard the news himself, and before Aron can stop him:
“He’s been caught - a few kilometres from no-man’s land. He’s in jail. They want to hang him as a spy.”
Sara calmly takes her hat off “Now perhaps you’d better tell me what’s really going on?”
****
After returning to Zikhron, and hearing about her beloved, Sara is in a state of numb shock. But she keeps herself occupied and is active in the kitchen and the garden, which are all in a state of neglect and chaos. Rifka has gone and the little maid, Ayla, is no longer there. As if by rote and familiar routine Sara devotes herself to the care of Efraim. He is more frail than ever and although he is happy to see her home, he wants her to do ‘the right thing’ and write to Haim, so that he does not worry. Sara wrote those letters to her husband, promising to come back ‘after a few months’. She even asked him for money, saying she would be back for Pesach, or after she had helped her family and particularly her dear father, to create some order and to prepare some home cooking. Not that there were many ingredients with which to cook. The shop shelves were empty. The fields and orchards were bare. So Sara turned her attention to growing vegetables in the back garden and kept a few chickens for eggs in the summer house that had once been Alex’s tryst place.
Whether she had originally intended to come back after a few months or whether she had departed with no intention of ever coming back, is not clear. It seems, however, that Haim expected at first that she would return. At least, out of embarrassment and fair-mindedness, he did not chastise her, hoping that after sometime with her family, she would indeed, return as a good wife should.
****
 |
| Yosef 'Joe' Lishansky |
Naaman Belkind, receives a letter from his jailed cousin, via the Watchman, Yosef Lishansky, who we shall call Joe, though the pronunciation of his nickname is more like. ‘Yo’.
‘Tell Aron that my morale is high,’ Avshalom writes in that letter couriered by Joe. ‘They’ve examined all they have to examine, and now I’m writing poems. Don’t worry about mother. She is the bravest of us all. You can tell her anything, but Aunt Sonya and my sister Shoshi, best not tell anything.’
Absa’s mother is Fanny Belkind, Naaman’s aunt - and the family are still struggling to arrange a sufficient bribe to get the prisoner transferred.
 |
| Joe Lishansky in the South |
Joe Lishansky, the latest recruit to the group, comes from the settlement of Rushama in the deep south of the country. A stocky man, in his thirties, with auburn moustache, and an easy joking manner, a wild man, untamed by convention or caution, open to any dare or dangerous adventure. A real cowboy, he could ride before he could walk, and knew how to hold and use, a sawn-off shotgun. Proud of his appearance, smart, but with only a basic education, he lived on his wits and when those failed, he used his muscles - of which he was also very proud. He had a tongue that wagged and told tall tales and hips that swaggered when he walked. He showed no respect for station or hierarchy and was rude to everyone who irritated him, especially if they were in a position of authority. He could also be charming if he thought that was to his advantage, and he scrubbed up well if that suited his needs. He was a master of disguises, his qualities, more suited to a highway man than a spy, though his charisma and motivation, made him a suitable candidate for both.
The only person who inspired any deference on his part, was Aron, but the feeling was not mutual and Aron suspected him from the start.
Unafraid of anything, and friends with the Bedouin, he begins to work with Naaman in the area around Be’er Sheva where the Germans and Turks are stationed and where Absa is incarcerated.
He will become invaluable to Nili, and also the cause of all the disasters to come.
****
Naaman describes him to Aron: “Name’s Joe Lishansky. Knows the desert like the back of his hand. Mates with every Turk or Hun you’d wish to meet - ”
Aron agrees to take Joe on, though he has some reservations. Joe can maintain contact with Avshalom, to pass notes smuggled out of the prison to Aron in Atlit. There is some reason for Aron’s qualms. Joe is not entirely unknown to him and his reputation certainly precedes him.
Joe Lishansky was born to Adina and Yaakov Tuvia Lishansky in a shtetl in the Ukraine. When he was still a teen, his mother and most of his siblings perished in a fire and Joe immigrated with his father to Palestine where they lived at the home of Israel Lishansky, Joe’s half brother, in Metula. One day, Joe’s father went to Jerusalem and never returned. His fate remained unknown. Joe continued to live with his uncle’s family, did reasonably well at school and went to a seminary in Jerusalem, but any academic endeavours, were interrupted after two years due to lack of funding. He traveled to Egypt, where he managed a farm and after another couple of years, returned to Palestine, where he married Rivka Lifshitz, daughter of farmers from the moshava, Beit Gan, where two children, a daughter and son were born.
 |
| Joe with his wife Rivka & Children |
At first Joe worked as a Watchman, and through this, tried to gain membership of the HaShomer organisation. The group required candidates to go through a trial period before deciding whether to accept them. Joe was assigned to guard duties in Rishon-Le-Zion, and in Menachamiya. When Arabs attacked the latter in February 1915, the Guards shot and killed the leader of the rioters. The policy of HaShomer was to avoid killing Arabs to prevent getting entangled in a blood feud or being sanctioned by the Turks. Joe was accused of killing the unfortunate rioter without sufficient justification; eyewitnesses actually said the shooter was another Guard. Joe was hidden in a safe place for a time, fearing blood revenge, Hashomer sanction or Ottoman intervention. His acceptance into the group was denied, even though he was an excellent guard and horseman. The rejection stemmed not just from the supposed murder, but from divergent views between him and the leaders of the group, who were radical socialists. Joe was openly dismissive of such ideology and vehement about disagreeing with HaShomer’s policy of only targeting Arab rioters and not the villagers.
Personal issues also worked against him. Israel Shochat, the Herzl-bearded, sharp-profiled, fundamentalist, one of the founders of HaShomer, later wrote: ‘For a very long period, Yosef Lishansky was a candidate for membership. He was a good guard, knew how to use weapons; familiar with the customs of the area and Arabic - yet he was not accepted as a member and was even removed from guarding duties because he displayed weakness of character, a tendency for adventurism, and arrogance.’That ‘weakness of character, tendency for adventurism, and arrogance,’ would finally lead directly to Joe’s end and the destruction of all Aron had, so painfully, built up.
****
 |
| Joe & Sara with Toba & Nissim Rutman |
Sara senses Aron’s reluctance to involve Lishansky in the spy work and decides to legitimise the new recruit’s involvement with a photograph. Her best friend, Toba Gelberg - happy to have Sara back - and Nissim Rutman, Toba’s boyfriend, are brought along too as a counterpoint. They are all members of the spy organisation and who knows when they’ll all be together again. Against a painted sky in Zikhron’s busy, photographic studio, Toba’s oval face and big eyes, her fiancé Nissim’s arm around her, and in the front, a very young, and innocent-looking Joe, and Sara looking anxious, as well she might.
Her loved one is still in jail. The bribe has not been accepted.
****
 |
| Avshalom, Beaten and Battered |
Turkish Prison cell, Be’er Sheva. Avshalom, beaten and battered with a black eye, cuts above his eye lid and rope burn marks around his neck.
German Commander Von Kressenstein, rigid and unsmiling, the perfect Nazi Stormtrooper prototype, stands in front of him, black, polished, booted legs spread wide. In the background, a Turkish Prison Captain with a hunk of coiled rope.
The Boche does not beat about the bush.
“And now, you will tell me who sent you and for whom you are working?”
Avshalom answers as he has before. The response that gave him his black eye and his first encounter with the rope.
“I told you. I’m a scientist. I went into the desert to search for the source of the locusts, as the Pasha commanded.”
“A scientist?” says that representative of the Central Powers, incredulously, “Wandering around in no man’s land? And you expect me to believe that?”
Von Kressenstein gestures to the Captain who raises the coil of rope and removes Avshalom’s filthy shirt and begins to strike Avshalom’s back, again and again.
****
Turkish Prison cell, Block Seven, Be’er Sheva. Through the bars, Absa smoking nonchalantly, in his dirty cell, his shirt tied around his waist, oozing, red welts stripe his tanned back. On the other side of the bars, the Prison Captain, watching over Avshalom, pockets a handful of notes, from our friend, Joe, who hands Avshalom some cigarettes and his blue-bound notebook, through the bars.
On his way out, Joe, almost collides with Von Kressenstein, as the Prison Captain slips the notes into the capacious pocket of his dull green, army jacket.
“And how is the prisoner today?” the German Commander inquires curtly.
“We will continue to interrogate him,” says the Captain whose jacket has some stains on it.
Von Kressenstein responds casually, as if dealing with the life of a fly: “I would prefer to hang him, but yes, interrogate again, by all means. Only do a proper job of it.”
The German work ethic at odds at all times with the slovenly, lazy Turks - or so Von Kressenstein believes in his inestimable superiority, tinged with the racist, Aryan, rhetoric, which would define the next War and the fate of millions the world over.
****
 |
| The Prison 'Interrogation Room' |
The Prison interrogation room, a torture chamber, in all but name, complete with racks, ropes, spiked batons and whips. The Prison Captain regards the groaning, Avshalom, who has been severely beaten around the head and again on his back.
“And now, you will tell me who sent you?” he asks with the usual pitiless menace of those paid to enforce the dirty work of their superiors.
Avshalom, his eyes puffy, his back sore and bloodied, his head spinning, responds: “Yes, I will tell you the same thing, I went into the desert to search for locusts. And I lost my way.”
****
Light enters through the barred window of his cell. Absa, unshaven and unkempt, writes on a scrap of newspaper with a stub of pencil - both items delivered by fearless Joe.
We hear Absa’s voice, though his lips are sealed: “The Ballad of a Thousand Kisses - Oh Sarale - how I would like just one of those kisses on my poor forehead.”
He takes the scrap of paper, and folds it like a small bird, throwing it through the bars of the cell into the bright, but oh so distant, sunlight, where it is caught by a pair of flour-dusted, dark hands.
****
A huge black, prison door, heavily guarded. A row of barred windows, set high into the prison wall as a stream of German and Turkish Soldiers walk in and out of the building.
 |
| Buying Bread at Be’er Sheva Jail |
Outside the prison we hear the shrill sound of a warbler bird trilling loudly. The usual crowd of wives, petitioning for their menfolk, and a number of Bedouin women selling pita bread at exorbitant prices to those same pitiful women, who wait patiently in the dust, in the vain hope that even a crumb will get through those locked and guarded portals to their loved ones. The buying of bread for prisoners is permitted by the prison authorities - with a little baksheesh, naturally, to grease the transaction - prison rations being in extremely short supply.
A particularly down-at-heel, dark-skinned Bedouin woman, with her trays of rounded pita, looks coyly at a German soldier who grins back. To his horror and disgust, this would-be-Delilah, returns his smile, revealing a gaping, toothless mouth.
The dentally-challenged lady with her trays of pita bread, is solicited by a second, stocky-looking lady, one enveloped in a dirty, navy blue kaftan and with a tinkling, face veil hung with many metallic coins. The bread seller selects a particularly nice, large pita, which the stocky gypsy, pays for with a few coins.
Around the corner - the stocky-looking ‘lady’ pulls off ‘her’ veil and reveals the broad, grinning face of our Joe. He tears open the bread, takes out Avshalom’s folded note and whistles his warbler’s song.
Avshalom in his cell smiles and whistles back.
****
 |
| German Officers Drinking in Naaman's Bar |
We hear the sound over of raucous laughter, ribald shouts and the beat of Arabic music. A crowd of Turkish and German Officers stationed at the small town of Rishon, drinking into the night, are served by Naaman Belkind, the chatty young man, we have so recently met and who runs the bar in the local winery. His father Samson, too, was a vintner and hotelier of some repute in the same town, though not perhaps with the same type of establishment. The father’s being more sober and without doubt, glatt kosher, while Naaman’s establishment errs on the side of risqué, some might say, decadent. On a raised stage, a bosomy, belly dancer dances seductively, wobbling, her marbled hips like a gyrating, Middle Eastern, Venus of Willendorf. At a separate table Turkish Officers, all drinking, despite their religion’s prohibition against such imbibing, the Germans in smart uniforms, bristling with pistols and quaffing double pint sized, foaming beers.
At the bar, German Commander, Von Kressenstein, with his pained features and, short-cropped, iron grey hair, summons his adjutant, Felix, the aesthetic looking, pale skinned Ottoman Officer.
 |
| Naaman in the Winery, Rishon Le Zion |
Chatty Naaman with his extravagant moustache, plying the officers with wine - and they are talking unrestrainedly.
The tall Officer - of pale skin and patrician air - Felix - heads for the washroom. As he goes he exchanges a glance with Naaman.
At the front of the bar an inebriated German soldier, trying to paw the plump belly dancer, falls off his stool, cracking his head on the counter to the raucous laughter of the other officers.
Just off the winery, a washroom lit by a bare bulb. Naaman and Felix at the basins, Felix’s pale face in the mirror.
 |
| Albanian Officer Felix Baha-eddin |
Naaman regards him with a questioning look: “You don’t look Turkish?”
“The Empire is a polyglot Monsieur Belkind. I myself am Albanian Muslim. My nom de guerre is ‘Felix’.”
“Ah, Felix Dzerzinky, the famous Bolshevik? But can we count on you ‘Monsieur Felix’?”
Felix answers quietly: “As a member of a minority, I want revenge, for the Armenians and their fate.”
****
In the interim, Joe plays his part to the best of his ability. He returns home every few weeks to his oft neglected wife and children in Rushama in the deep south of the country where he stands lazy guard, at the gates of the desert settlement.
 |
| Joe Lishansky, The Wild Man of the South |
Sometimes a group of Bedouins and their camels and flocks come down to the shared water supply there. He talks freely to the Bedouins in one of the many local dialects, giving them cigarettes in exchange for information. The relationship is open and yet covert. People even call him the ‘Bedouin Jew’, for on occasion he lives like a nomad, sleeping in the open or sharing a tent with one of them. Sometimes he returns to his wife and sleeps at home. But not often.
 |
| Joe at Be’er Sheva Market |
And he continues to keep an eye of Absa’s welfare: buying bread in his Bedouin robes, from his toothless, co conspirator outside the prison in Be’er Sheva and waiting for the little paper birds to fly from that upstairs window. Later, he meets with Aron’s agent, Leo, to convey Absa’s condition and the communication he has received.
****
 |
| Avshalom in his Prison Cell |
Avshalom in his prison cell on a straw pallet, increasingly downhearted.
The Prison Guard shoves a few pita-breads through the hatch: “Are you hungry? Your friends have sent you bread!”
Avshalom takes the pita, hungrily breaking one open and eating a hasty mouthful, nearly gagging and quickly spitting out the mouthful.
Inside is a tiny piece of paper with a message: ‘Sara is home’, it says.
Avshalom grins, then chews and swallows it and quickly scribbles a new note, torn from his notebook.
And taking his just written note, he addresses it ‘To Sara’, folds it into a bird-shaped dart and throws it from the barred window, whistling Joe's bird song.
****
Aron’s office at the Research Station in Atlit. Aron, Sara and Leo talk.
“So, he’s in good spirits?” Aron is sceptical.
Leo nods: “Writing poetry”. Joe adds, “To you Miss Sara.”
Sara’s heart flutters. It is as if she is coming back to life, an ardent spark ignites her previous commitment and banishes her present malaise. Her mind is clear again; the fight must go on.
“We must do something,” she says with quiet conviction.
Aron retorts more sharply than he should: “I’m not a magician! And where is this Lishansky?”
Leo looks nervous, fearing Aron’s temper: “He’s already here.”
“What?! Why didn’t you say so?!” Aron snaps.
All these shenanigans, Sara’s low mood and Absa’s foolish adventures have tested his patience to the limit.
 |
| Joe in Bedouin Attire with Leo |
On cue, Joe in the atire of a rather effeminate Bedouin, swaggers into the room, whistling his trilling, bird song loudly.
“Joe Lishansky, sir,” he says with another swagger, bowing deeply, “At your service mein Kapitän.”
Not a greeting designed to please his leader, sworn enemy of the Huns - nor to Aron's mind the dress of any sensible man or prospective spy.
Joe kisses Sara’s hand with a flourish. Another source of annoyance to Aron.
From the moment they meet, Aron feels ambivalence and irritation towards the new agent. Their characters are so different, their social backgrounds, so at odds. Aron is a scientist, educated, cultured, travelled, part of a discrete elite, while Joe is a drifter, a fly by night, a big mouth, who neglects his wife and kids and spouts the slogans of the labour camp, and although he has been rejected unequivocally by HaShomer, still holds many of their principals. As for his ridiculous dress! Their different views will created constant conflict between them.
A furious Aron glares at him: “Things couldn’t be worse and you’ve got the bloody nerve to come here whistling and say - Avshalom’s in - ‘good spirits’!?”
Joe, unaware of the effect he has on Aron - or perhaps only too aware - smiles broadly:
“Writing poetry - actually, to you, Miss Sara. In French.”
He hands her Absa’s folded note which, without missing a beat, she put in her pocket.
“Thank you Joe’” she says, but her heart is beating louder than a Bedouin drum.
Aron glares at her and then back at Joe: “I couldn’t care if he’s writing in bloody Japanese! How are we going to get him out!?”
“Ah..” Joe waves his index finger about: “I told him you had it all stitched up. What with your connections and all that.”
“You did, did you? Did you tell him how?”
Sara interjects: “Appeal to your Pasha!”
Joe wags his finger again: “Exactly mein Kapitän!”
Aron glares at him, then turns to the window, his purpose clear again:
“Too risky - but the locusts and a couple of bags of gold may help.”
****
 |
| Sara in the Sisters' Bedroom |
Sara in her room. Rifka’s presence every where. Her dresses hang in the cupboard, her pretty hat on a coat-stand. Even the bottle of ‘Spanish’ hair dye still on the dressing table.
Sara opens Avshalom’s note and kisses it gently.
‘To Sara My dearest one.’ the letter begins. ‘I know that being a son of a race destined also for fire and sword, it is fitting for me to be prepared every day ‘to witness the casting of fate’. And nothing, ever, will be mine as inheritance, unlike the people where there is still hope. And since I have inherited a bundle of sorrows, perhaps one day I will give it up, when it becomes too heavy. And I, the weak and the lost, have come this far to weave an illusion of strength, like a redeemer and saviour. How great, how great the distress! Only you can save me.’
She understands her loved one’s dilemma, his sorrow, his vulnerability and his fear of weakness and failure, but she knows also that she cannot stop what is already set in stone: ‘the casting of fate’, as Toba once called it.
Sara takes the letter and considers throwing it on the fire, then she places it in the mother-of-pearl box at her bedside. The iridescent box, like opal, now blue, now silvery purple, always changing colours, a Pandora’s box of sorrows and hopes, a sacred container, a canticle for love.
****
Comments
Post a Comment