Yasmine (29 page)

I had barely started attending to Hizkel's immigration issues, and already this took up what little free time I had. Michelle's letters remained unanswered, and when I phoned Yasmine she wouldn't agree to meet me and she cut the conversation short. What on earth was going on?

I took Hizkel to the Ministry of Absorption, where we were met by a friendly, roly-poly receptionist. She put him down for a course in Advanced Hebrew at an intensive study centre, and advised him to defer his claims while the status of the “prisoners of Zion” from the USSR was being defined. “Their privileges are being extended,” she explained. He stared at her, uncomprehending, but could see she meant well. “In the meantime, get your documents ready,” she instructed him.

“What documents?” he asked.

“The verdict from your trial and statements of witnesses that you were a ‘prisoner of Zion'…”

“Witnesses? Very well, I have some names for you to write down: Shalom Salah and Yussef Basri, who were both hanged, and Abu-Salah el-Hibaz, my student and subordinate, who kept the weapons for Jewish self-defence in the basement of his bakery and sang Hatikvah on his way to the gallows…”

The woman's eyes widened, and Hizkel stopped, afraid to
slide back into the nightmare from which he had just been freed. “I'm sorry,” the woman said drily, “this is the procedure.” She frowned and played with the pencil, searching for a solution. “Why don't you go to the Association of Immigrants from Babylon?” she said brightly, as if it was an original idea. “They have people from the Zionist movement who can give you letters of recommendation.” She thrust her head forward, eyebrows raised, to see if he would come up with more information. Seeing that there was no getting through to her, he got up and dragged his damaged leg out of the office.

“Come on son, let's get out of here and breathe some fresh air,” he said gloomily. From the car park I showed him the government enclave, the offices of Prime Minister Eshkol and Finance Minister Sapir, as well as the new Knesset building.

“Why don't we go to Stad Nawi?” Hizkel cut in. Nawi had led the clandestine Zionist movement in Iraq, and I knew that Hizkel was devoted to him and regarded him as his mentor. “An excellent idea,” I said and went to my Minister's office in the adjacent building to tell Levanah I was going to Tel Aviv.

Once there, we went straight to the headquarters of the Labour Federation on Arlozorov Street. The huge building, popularly known as the Kremlin, dwarfed its surroundings. We passed through the gates and crossed the vast front lawn.

“His office is in this building?” Hizkel said in amazement.

At the information desk I asked about the department for the integration of immigrants from Iraq. The clerk stared at me. “Excuse me, comrade” – stressing the last word – “are there any immigrants from Iraq? I thought they all arrived long ago.”

“We are looking for Stad Nawi.”

“Who? Osnavi? You sure he works here?”

“Stad Nawi – two words. Professor Nawi, sir.”

“Here there are no sirs and no professors. We are all comrades, comrade.” He leafed through a thick notebook. “Do you mean Comrade Naveh?”

“He changed his name?” asked Hizkel.

“He did not change it, comrade, he Hebraised it. Comrade Ben-Gurion required all public representatives to Hebraise their names,” the man explained, clearly enunciating every word. “So, you want Comrade Na-veh,” he hummed to himself, then nodded. “He's on the basement floor. Go down the stairs, then turn right and he's at the end of the corridor.”

Hizkel straightened his back, tried to overcome his limp, and walked ahead. I had heard a lot about Stad Nawi, a writer who translated the Bible into Arabic, as well as the writings of Mendele and Yosef Brenner, and was the director of the Frank Ini Jewish School. As soon as he arrived in Israel he joined the ruling Labour Party, believing it was his destiny to become the Minister of Education and Culture. Needless to say, this never happened. After a lot of effort his followers found him a position in the Labour Federation as supervisor of the social integration of Iraqi immigrants. About eighteen years yearlier, when he first arrived in Israel, he came to our tent in the immigrant camp to tell us there had been signs of life from Hizkel, but I hadn't seen him since although I heard him mentioned now and then, and I used to see his name on the stencilled newsletters that Father received from time to time, giving details of social and educational activities organised by the Association of Immigrants from Babylon. And now here he was – bent over his papers in a small, damp and gloomy office. He pushed up his reading glasses and looked at us for a long moment.

“Hizkel? Hizkel, my son?” he whispered. He struggled out of his chair, came around and hugged Hizkel, kissed him and wept on his shoulder. “Thanks be to God… Wondrous are His ways…” he murmured. He was an old man, his eyesight and hearing were failing, and he looked tired and distracted. His desk was piled high with papers, pamphlets, stencilled circulars, and on the floor too were stacks of books and yellowing newspapers. “Why was I not told that you were free? Why? A new generation here, they know nothing of the past…But I mustn't complain, what matters is that my pupil who followed in my footsteps has been freed from the clutches of the evil ones, may their name be obliterated…Dear God Almighty, is it a sin to wish to be free in your own country among your own people?”

His speech was disjointed and his loud voice betrayed his deafness. Hizkel looked around the neglected room in a buried corner of the immense building, only half listening to his old mentor, and his eyes showed the depth of his distress.

“May I offer you coffee?” the old man asked, bending down to pick up a thermos flask.

“No, thank you,” said Hizkel. “We have just had some.”

“Or we can go to the cafeteria. They don't bring refreshments to this office…”

“No, it is not necessary. We've come to see you.”

I spotted a big photograph of Stad Nawi in the uniform of an officer in the Iraqi army – a handsome, straight-backed young man with a moustache, a regimental baton tucked under his arm, his eyes staring ahead proudly. I shifted my gaze from the photograph to the man crouched behind the desk, and Hizkel too looked from one to the other. I thought he was seeing himself in that sad transformation.

“Hizkel, my dear,” the old man chuckled with amusement. “Who would have imagined it – the whole of Babylon's Jewry upped and abandoned the land of onions and garlic…Who would have thought it? Even Ben-Gurion did not believe it. I met him in his office in Tel Aviv. He paced up and down and showered compliments on our community.” His weak eyes glowed.

Suddenly serious, he went on to say: “Only one thing is eating away at my liver. No, not the properties we left behind, not the way that we were driven out of our native land, not that. Such things have been known to happen in the world. What hurts me is that we left behind our spiritual treasures, the rabbinical colleges of Sura and Pumbedita and Salaat Zilkha, the Torah scrolls and the holy books, the books of philosophy, entire libraries, our people's spiritual inheritance…And my own vast library. In my dreams at night I walk through it, clean the dust from the volumes, kiss the wisdom of the ages…” He took a large handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose and mopped his forehead. “I have spoken here with the people in charge of culture, but their hearts are obtuse. Ignoramuses, simple-minded revolutionaries who want to discard our heritage. Their heads are stuffed with socialism, with vain dreams and nonsense…”

Hizkel was embarrassed. He looked at me and then down at the pamphlets. He almost took one from the stack, but didn't.

“I intend to write the history of the Jewish community of Babylon, the second exodus of the descendants of Abraham our patriarch…The new generation here, they know nothing, they have not even heard of the first exodus…”

“Blessings be upon you, Stad Nawi. You were our column of fire,” said Hizkel, and at last he got round to introducing me, mentioning my position in East Jerusalem.

“So you are the brother of Kabi Imari! Why did you not say so? Kabi Imari was my brightest student, the editor of our school magazine. Such talents, the Imaris, always excellent writers. And now, the younger brother, advisor to the Minister on Arab affairs. A very important position, and a great responsibility laid upon you.” He sat up straight in his old chair, tightened his old tie and went on.

“Beware, my son, the Arabs here are not the same as the Arabs over there. Here they have the blood of our Matriarch Rebecca in their veins. Cunning and brazen they are. In Jaffa did they not murder Yosef Haim Brenner in cold blood, the man whose books I translated? What harm had that fine, suffering thinker done to them? It breaks my heart…Today everyone is exulting, but who can foretell what the future will bring? An idea is burgeoning in my mind which they will call insane – give it all back to Hussein, and do it now, while the Arabs are beaten and confused and weakened, before the venom of revenge spreads through their veins. Who knows if a second opportunity will arise to purchase peace and recognition. For life is not literature, you cannot write drafts, you write the final version at once. But no one listens to me. Why, they do not even listen to Ben-Gurion!”

Hizkel still said nothing about the reason for our visit.

“Stad Nawi,” I intervened. “My Uncle Hizkel needs testimony to prove that he was a ‘prisoner of Zion' in Iraq.”

“Do you have work?” the old man asked Hizkel. “It is a comrade's right to work,” he said, adding bitterly, “So they tell us.”

Hizkel said nothing but shrank back in his seat. This
fifty-year
-old man looked at us like a timid child. My heart ached for him.

“They want testimony that you were a ‘prisoner of Zion'? You? Do they not know this without a document?” The anger in old Nawi's voice became more intense, and his face grew more commanding. “Very well, we shall give them a document.” He took a sheet of paper and wrote on it in unsteady but curling script all the testimony that was needed, and added a few lines of praise for the man. “I do not have headed stationery,” he explained simply, “but they all know who I am.” He folded the paper, stuffed it into an envelope and handed it to Hizkel.

Hizkel signalled to me to get up. “May God give you long years,” he said to his old mentor.

“Do not fret, my son. I shall talk to the comrades. We may find you a post in the Labour Federation,” Nawi said, and wrote down some telephone numbers. “This is my number and this is the number of my niece. She is a nurse in the Federation health service. She lives across the street from me. If you do not find me at home, you can leave a message with her.”

Afterwards we sat in silence for a long time on the edge of the lawn. Hizkel kept on pulling up stalks of grass and crushing them. Now and then he rubbed his damaged knee and grimaced in pain. “A great and brave man,” he said at last. “His finest hour was in Baghdad.”

“Patience, brother,” Father advised him when we got back. “Rest a little. Take a week's rest for every year in the prison. What's your hurry? Travel around the country, read…” He offered him books in Arabic and English, newspapers and magazines from the Arab world. Hizkel said neither yes nor no, but took the bundle Father had prepared for him and went into Kabi's room, which was now his.

The prolonged stay at our house was wearing him down.
Mother said he shut himself indoors, woke up often in the night, made himself tea in the kitchen, smoked and stared at nothing, often forgetting to drink the tea he'd made. Noises and voices bothered him. The doorbell or a knock at the door made him jump, and he needed to be told who had come and why. The sound of the power drill on the hill above the neighbourhood alarmed him. He was impatient to get a place of his own and a job and to be independent. Once more we went to see the plump lady at the Ministry of Absorption, and this time he was informed he could have a one-room flat in an immigrant hostel in Kiryat Yovel, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

“Charcoal on their faces!” Mother protested. “Better a tent in an immigrant camp than such a room.” She wouldn't let him leave. “Our house is empty. Kabi is away. You're no trouble! On the contrary, now Abu Kabi has company in the house.”

One evening, while we waited for him to return from his regular walk – “a prison habit”, he called it – Mother said to Father that it was time to find him a wife.

“What kind of a marriage are you thinking of? What will they live on?”

“Maybe he'll be lucky and have a son to say Kaddish after him.”

Father smiled. “A man doesn't beget a son just for the sake of Kaddish…What he should do is go to Hadassah and get his leg treated.”

“I am blowing on the dying embers and the soot flies in my face…In Baghdad he was a river, here he's become a desert. I can't bear to see him like this, it breaks my heart. I found him Rashel, damn her, now I'll find him a new wife.” It was the first time I heard Mother cursing Rashel.

Hizkel rejected any discussion of Rashel. The very mention of
her name caused him grief and embarrassment. Outwardly it seemed as if he had recovered from the torture, the years in prison, the crushed knee, the unfulfilled dreams – but not from his abandonment by the wife of his youth. My Uncle Hizkel never said a bitter word about Rashel or about the Muslim lawyer who saved him from the gallows and later married her. He hated no one, he said, not even her. But he saw her in every woman, and none of them was she.

For some reason he didn't want people to know that he was free, not even his old friends from the movement. He didn't renew old contacts, didn't seek out friends and refused to be interviewed in the papers, even anonymously. He wanted to forget and be forgotten, to merge into the crowds in the streets and be unnoticed.