CHAPTER 19 - Avshalom’s Decision, the Privations of War and Death in the Desert

Avshalom Waits

Night. The tower room at Atlit, overlooking the sea. Joe in the background checking his gun, Avshalom staring from the open shuttered windows with binoculars.

In the distance the sea. No ship in sight.

Absa & Joe Waiting for the Ship

Joe throws down his pistol: “Well, where in hell is he?”

Avshalom drops the binoculars: “Whatever he’s up to, he's not coming back any time soon!”

 ****

Sara at the Window

Sara sleeping uneasily gets up and looks out of the window. Then she tip toes downstairs.

 ****

Downstairs in Aron’s office. Dawn. Avshalom and Joe still cleaning his gun - listening to the crackly radio.

We hear the BBC: ‘British Forces have successfully repelled an attack by the Turks on the Suez Canal.’

Then the buzz of Turkish censorship blocks out the broadcast.

Avshalom angrily turns off the radio.

    “We've lost enough time already! I can’t wait any longer.”

Joe, who feels like he too has been waiting forever for some action, responds immediately: “You're crazy! But I'll come with you.”

Avshalom’s anger turns to a wide grin. That unlikely pair, Absa and Joe, hug.

As Sara enters - barefoot, still in her nightdress.

Absa approaches her and kisses her lightly on the head.

    “I’m going.”

    “I know - ”

    “There's no other way,” he says gently. “And Leo will be back to take care of you.”

    “So that's all in order then,” Joe says breaking the tension. “If the missus says so.”

And they all laugh, though Sara has tears in her eyes.

**** 

A Farewell

Sara alone in the stone watch tower. Tears stream down her face.

Suddenly one of the shutters bangs shut, Sara jumps. Avshalom stands behind her.

     “It's not that I don't trust him - he’s just so impulsive!” she says.

Avshalom reassures her: “The Bedouins love Joe, even the Turks get on with him. Anyway it's settled, we're going.”

He kisses her again: “Will you wait for me?”

    “I’ll wait forever my dear one,” she answers.

    “Oh my love, my love - ”

He takes her in his arms, they pull their clothes off and make love tenderly on the red sofa of the little tower. Their love is calm and peaceful - a farewell.

****  

Absa & Joe Depart for the Desert

Outside the Aronson house in the Moshava. Abu Farrid holding the reins of two horses saddled and ready to go. Joe and Avshalom are in Bedouin dress. The story is that they are going south on 'locust business'. 

Sara in the doorway of the house as Avshalom and Leo say farewell. Sara places a bag of dates in Absa’s rucksack.

    “I’ll look after her,” Leo promises.

Avshalom grins: “Just don’t look after her too well!”

He turns to Sara, taking the little pottery figurine of Aphrodite from the capacious pocket in his robes.    
        
He hands her the little goddess.

    “Whatever is written, is written, my love.”

He kisses her, then goes.

Sara is left holding Aphrodite in her hand. She dashes a tear away.

Avshalom is only twenty seven years old, an age when youthful rebellion and conviction, often override common sense and caution. But Sara believes in him with all her heart and as she prays for his safety, she knows that nothing will separate them ever again. Not even death.

****

Sara's Letter July 1917

It is a full six months later when Sara finally writes to Rifka and Alexander in America of her lover's journey into the unknown. She still does not know his fate:

‘Our dear one set off on his journey with his usual goodwill and positive outlook, knowing what danger he was putting himself in, however much we talked and however many tears we shed, our hearts will not be lightened. The disaster is truly great so why keep rubbing salt into our wounds.’

  **** 

Joe & Absa in the Desert

A flame-colored red sky - sunset over the Judean desert as Absa and Joe set off, en route to the Sinai Peninsula, disguised as Bedouins.

Avshalom’s thoughts are not known to us, but in his previous writing he talks of such an apotheosis as the one he is now experiencing: 

‘The past galloped over the mountain. It was like the dying echo of a distant thunder. Here the past comes to life in a hazy murmur and heart-trembling. The past is the most persuasive advocate, its plea draws out thick forests shrouded in mystery, and goatherds crowned with curls like demigods, and sunburnt maidens singing like murmuring springs, and warriors rushing like streams...’ 

Always one to see the poetry in everything, finding literary sources in every encounter, he continues: 

‘And when I descended to the plain, thousands of bells rang in my ears, echoing Brand’s words to Ibsen... and their slogan is worthy: ‘A living people, though scattered and small, fortifies itself in its misfortune and rises through its pain; and its dimming gaze, like a fading eye, becomes the gaze of the soaring eagle, intoxicated by the blue, extending its wing mightily to rise against the burning sun, and in its revulsion towards the enemy and the oppressive dark, its weakness becomes strength, and its despair a source of hope; but a people who do not rise to the sublime in its suffering, and does not direct its heart towards a great and noble goal, will not merit salvation; it will die without hope for redemption.’ Indeed, brother Ibsen!’  

So he concludes defiantly, spurring his trusty steed ever onwards. 

Avshalom and Joe ride their horses through the darkening hills.

Joe urges his horse on with a wild “Yahoo”. Avshalom catches up with him. Our view recedes, until the figures disappear into the red-tinged landscape and it is night.

  ****

Sara in the Tower Room with Aphrodite

The Research Station at Atlit. Sara has returned to the tower room - Avshalom’s room - where she feels his presence most strongly. A jar of wild flowers, bauhinia, lilac dwarf chicory, deep blue Syrian cornflowers and tiny bitter-blue lupins, a photo of Avshalom on horseback and the one of her and Absa from the Damascus studio on the table. She places the Aphrodite lady back in her place. 

She opens his cupboard and takes out his tweed jacket - the one worn in that Damascus studio portrait. Inside a pocket, she finds a few fragments from his tobacco pouch and she buries her face in the scent of that jacket and the smell of her darling’s tobacco.

After Absa’s departure, the entire responsibility for running the station and being ready for the contact, falls upon Sara. This time, her darling is not there to share the burden. Leo tries to be helpful, but he only irks Sara. She works ferociously as if to keep the demons away. She doesn’t worry about her own safety but is concerned only with the well-being of the workers and the work she needs to do. She does not lack courage - God forbid - but in the back of her mind, she fears that any mistake on her part might bring disaster not just on Zikhron but on the whole Yishuv. During the day Sara sits at her desk as secretary of the Research Station, preparing a report on the locusts, studying Aron’s maps and reports on activities at the front. And at night, she works by candlelight, writing coded notes, putting them in the tin box, wrapped in oilskin, in the leather brief case.

Leo at the door watches her, then he takes the satchel down to its hiding place in the cellar.

Goliath, the big dog, who is also waiting for his beloved master, whimpers unhappily in his sleep.

**** 

Zikhron Ya’akov’s Main Street

Zikhron Ya’akov’s main street where Sara goes to check on her father, whom she has left in the care of Zvi and his wife, knowing that at least the grandchildren might cheer up the old man.

A sadly depleted little street in wartime. Sara hurries, with a Turkish newspaper under her arm. Shops empty, townsfolk suffering and afraid, a young woman with child on her hip, begs in a doorway, a Turkish soldier walks down the street bayonetting bags of corn on the front doorstep of a shop. When the shopkeeper protests, the soldier fires a warning shot and then another.

The bag of corn spills its kernels onto the pavement where the young woman with child, quickly picks up a few of those grains.

****

‘Traitors’ Executed in Damascus

Back at the Research Station - she does not dare to be away too long for fear the ship might come - Sara reads the newspaper: ‘Twenty-one traitors in Damascus and Beirut executed for anti-Turkish activities.’ Some are Arabs, some Jews, all share the same fate. All Sara can think is of the poor women who loved them..

‘A Thousand Kisses’

She opens the mother-of-pearl box she has brought from home and takes out Avshalom’s poem; ‘The Ballad of a Thousand Kisses’, kisses it, then tenderly places the much fingered pages back in the box.

   ****

The Turkish Front Line

Sinai Desert, the Turkish Front Line. Two men in Bedouin clothes stop at the check post - a Turkish patrol lets them through.

It is dusk. Date palms and a well, a small oasis known to Joe, who as we have heard, ‘knows the desert like the back of his hand’. Long haired goats gather at the muddy waterhole. The two Bedouin men stop to drink. They pull back their hoods and we see Avshalom and Joe.

Absa washes his travel-grimed face and takes out his tobacco pouch.

Bedouin Horseman at Dusk

At a distance, a Bedouin on horseback, watches the strangers with interest, as Absa lights his hand rolled cigarette.

   ****

Planting Crops, Praying for Rain

Sara, Leo and local workers plant crops in the fields at Atlit, praying that rain, not locusts will come.

Sara sees one of the worker’s wives and her hungry children begging for food. Hurriedly she gives them a few packets of the precious seed grain.

Ever practical Leo is incensed: “We haven’t enough for ourselves!”, he hisses.

    

    “They have even less - ” says Sara in placid rebuke.

****

Sara in the Zikhron Kitchen

Back home for a night in Zikhron, Sara shelling a handful of peas - all that her vegetable garden has yielded and with which she must make do with a couple of unkempt looking onions and a straggly carrot or two. She looks up as Leo arrives sweating on the doorstep, lugging two huge bags of grain.


    “Where on earth did you get that?”


    “Don’t ask - just help me - ” says an exhausted Leo.

In the back room which acts as a store room, Leo pulls the heavy bureau out of the way and rolls away the rug, revealing Aron’s cleverly, concealed trap-door, which he lifts to expose the steep metal ladder, descending into the earth.

Sara & Leo in the Cellar

Sara carrying a kerosene lantern, leads the way in the darkness. Leo dumps the sacks in the deep cellar that runs beneath the house, barred by a grated door, that leads to a copse of thick bushes on the outside.

Later, they eat directly from the pot of soup that Sara has made, dipping their spoons each in turn and slurping the contents with no ceremony or self-consciousness.

    “Tomorrow I’ll make bread to take back with us,” she says.

Sara & Leo Plan for an Uncertain Future

Leo nods but he is more than usually preoccupied. He is loathe to leave Sara but when it becomes obvious that no messages will get through from Aron, he begins to make plans to go to Istanbul to get a visa for Romania, from where, his idea is to get to Aron in Egypt. All this with the use of another forged Spanish passport, obtained from a Spanish-Portuguese Jewish official from Istanbul, covertly in Jerusalem, who makes good money from desperate Jews wanting his services. Getting out of Palestine is easy with a little baksheesh. Getting out of Turkey, will prove a little harder.

****

‘Haim Cohen’ & Jewish Passport Official, Istanbul

Turkish Passport Office. Istanbul. Leo holds out the forged Spanish passport in the name of ‘Haim Cohen’.
        
    “I'd like a visa - for Rumania - ” he says, as if that were the most ordinary request in the world.

The passport clerk, who so happens to be a Jew from Jerusalem, now in the employ of Turkish customs - there are many such who work in the Ottoman civil service - checks the passport, then Leo, with his very obvious, Slavic features and owl-like blue eyes.

    “Look my friend -” he says, “You’re as Spanish as a Russian Samovar - Get out of here quick, before they hang you too!”

Leo finds himself stranded, with his money running low. Desperate times require desperate measures and he tries to earn a little money by selling matches outside a Jewish theatre in the city, which despite the war, is still showing, of all things, rather risqué, Ladino cabaret. Here he bumps into someone he knows by sight, a German-Jew, Dr. Arthur Ruppin, an agronomist, also from Palestine and head of the Zionist Office in Jaffa - in which capacity he seeks to get visas for Russian Jews to get to  Palestine from  the Ottoman Empire. These Russian émigrés who had settled in the métropole of Istanbul love the theatre - whether in Yiddish or Ladino. And the bawdier, the better. The play is actually called ‘Tevye's Ottoman Daughters’. 

Dr. Ruppin & Leo/'Haim Cohen' outside the Theatre in Istanbul

 

At interval, Dr. Arthur Ruppin sees Leo outside the theatre and greets him with: “Shalom, Mr. Schneersohn! Are you enjoying the show?”

Leo, aghast at being recognised - and at being reduced to the status of little match girl - responds quickly: “Yes, yes, of course. But my name is Haim Cohen.”

Fortunately, Dr. Ruppin catches on quickly: “Of course, Mr. Cohen!” he says and buys two boxes of matches, further embarrassing poor Leo.

Haim Cohen spends another few weeks with very little money and finally he discards his pride and visits Dr. Ruppin who so happens to ‘need some urgent secretarial assistance’ and thus Leo manages to find food and lodging for a few more days. His diary records that his austerity has left him almost starving. He returns to Ruppin who having had his suspicions and being a frank man, asks: “Are you going over to the British?” Leo answers in the affirmative, explaining his difficulty in returning home for an important mission. Ruppin raises his eyebrows and tells Leo/Haim to come back in two days and fortuitously he manages to get Leo a job as assistant to a German official, a Mr. Mauer Klein - also a Jew - who had been tasked to survey the forests of Palestine - and the usefulness of that wood for the building of Turkish railways for the expansion of troop carrying - and who is on his way to Palestine. 

Leo's Diary Describing his Journey with Mauer Klein to Palestine

Leo persuades this Mr. Klein, that his work at the Station means he too is a forestry expert and that he is an expert on railway timber. A free trip, and a job Leo quickly relinquishes as soon as he is home, claiming a sick mother, and leaving Mr. Klein none the wiser.

  ****

When he returns, Sara is there to meet him. She describes the endless waiting for word from Aron and from Avshalom, and how hard it has been, not knowing anything. Leo remains at the Station with her, somewhat shamefaced at his neglect of Sara, the failure of his plans and the delay his little exercise has caused. But Sara does not upbraid him, just grateful to have someone to share her heavy burden and to distract her from her anxieties. They work together - there is always something to be done - the local workers - though many have left in Aron’s absence - are still tasked with watering the fields and foraging for anything worth eating and they need their share of that sustenance too.

Leo writes in his diary, that it was then that he realised ‘how strong and how brave’, Sara really was.

They sit together mainly in silence, strong and brave perhaps, but always hungry. It is hard to concentrate with their very spartan, daily diet and grumbling stomachs. Gloomy Leo watching from the balcony with binoculars, Sara writing her notes, a tray at her elbow with two glasses of murky, black liquid and a tiny loaf of coarse barley bread, baked from rough, Arab barley - the only crop that still survives in this time of drought, famine and war.

Leo & Sara at the Station - No more Tea

Leo sips the liquid and spits it out in disgust: “What’s this?”

Sara, still writing: “Dried fig leaves! There's no more tea.”

     ****

Leo Watching the Sea

Leo spends most of the time in Avshalom’s room at the top of the Station, watching the sea. He thinks of what has happened to his friend and in his diary, he recalls reading the Russian poets - Lermontov and Pushkin - to Absa, and how Absa had once written him a poem dedicated ‘To Liova’. He writes his diary to ward off his fears and to pass the time until the ship comes. All the Nili members are consummate journal makers, as if they know, even if they don’t survive, their diaries would. In the midst of his notes on tides, time and lunar phases as well as sightings of Turkish patrols, Leo writes: ‘I see you sitting quiet and wonderful, with your lovely white hands, and your slim fingers, of such beauty as I have never seen.’

Sara at the Station

Yes. Predictably Leo is falling in love with the brave princess in her tower. She however, thinks only of Avshalom.

**** 

Research Station grounds, Atlit. Leo and Sara return from a fruitless trip to the seashore.

As they cross the road approaching the gates of the Station, Leo complains disconsolately: “Still nothing! Frustrated at every turn!”

Sara shushes him and pulls him down into the bushes.

Two trucks full of Turkish Soldiers wait in the Station courtyard. A man in a tarboush wanders around.

Sara and Leo in their hiding place scarce daring to breathe.

Sara whispers: “I'll go ahead. If it’s nothing, I’ll whistle for you.”

Picking Wild Flowers

She crosses the road, humming as she picks a few wild flowers, for all the world, like a silly girl going for a walk.

The Turkish soldiers lift their hats politely as she approaches with her bunch of flowers. The officer in his tarboush asks her something in Turkish. She replies in the negative. Wishing her ‘Salaam’, they climb into the carts and rumble off.

Max - Manasseh Bronstein - runs out of the station and gives the all clear.

Sara whistles Joe’s bird song and Leo comes out of the bushes.

    “What in God’s name did they want?”

    “Nothing! They just wanted to know if we had any bread they could buy,” she says calmly.
    
    “What do they think this place is? A bloody bakery?!”    
    
    “Better that they think that - ” says Max.

Leo bursts out: “Better that there is some action! But there's nothing! It’s as if they've forgotten all about us - ”

    “They’ll be back at new moon, I’m sure of it,” Sara says wearily. “We must continue to be ready.”

****

Leo and Sara waiting and watching in the tower room.

Sara’s pale fingers moving across the keys of her type writer, in the flickering candlelight.

Leo looks at Sara with undisguised love and admiration. 

She looks out of the window and again she seems to see - Avshalom falling in slow motion from his horse onto the sand.

 ****