Ishmael's Oranges (13 page)

‘Gertie didn't want to talk about her mama or papa or the brothers she'd left behind. She didn't want to eat or sleep. She just wanted to see that sister of hers. I thought it was a strange thing to rescue a child from murder only to have her die of sorrow in a safe place. Then I found out that her sister was living just a few miles away, so Dora and I took turns to walk Gertie there every Friday before prayers. It took us four hours there and back but we never missed a Friday. I'd listen to her and her sister talking away in German and Yiddish, and it did my heart good. But that was before the war. Her family went to the Camps, and they never came out again. Then the sister moved away because their house was bombed. And that was the last Gertie saw of her, apart from letters.' Tears were running down Judith's face, and she didn't dare wipe them away.
Gertrude, Esther und Daniel
, she remembered. Rebecca's voice was running
on.

‘You don't know how hard it was for Jews when the war came. The Nazis had plenty of friends here who thought they had the right way with us. When the dockyards were bombed I saw it in people's faces. They thought we'd brought a plague on them. Maybe they were right. Wherever we go, hate follows. We always dream the next generation will shake the curse.' She sighed and squeezed Judith's
hand.

‘I said something terrible to Gertie.' Her confession was a relief. ‘She didn't like my nickname and I was angry, so I told her I wished I wasn't a
Jew.'

Rebecca smiled and tapped Judith on the cheek. ‘You and that name of yours!' she said. ‘Let me tell you something. Your name has a very impressive history. When Nebuchadnezzar sent a wicked general to destroy the Jews, young Judith came sneaking inside his tent. And then do you know what she did? She got him drunk and cut his head off. His army ran away. So Judith saved her people. A modern woman, my Judit. Not a bad name to have, don't you think?'

Judith forced a smile. From inside the haze of exhaustion, Peggy, Kathleen, Gertie and the faceless children of the
Kindertransport
all seemed to be calling her. She wanted to lie down and block them
out.

‘You're tired, Bubby,' she said, standing up. ‘Let me get you a cup of tea.' Rebecca nodded and said, ‘Let me give you something first,
mommellah
.' A pale arm was pulling open the bedside drawer, and Judith saw an envelope with her name on it, in Rebecca's slanting scrawl. ‘I was saving it for your Batmitzvah, but I've finished it already so you should have it. Don't read it until the day, though. It's bad luck.' Judith took it carefully and her grandmother settled back down onto the bed and closed her eyes. ‘What is it?' Judith whispered, feeling the weight of paper inside.

‘Nothing special,' came the answer, even softer. ‘But promise you'll read it when the time comes.'

Judith said, ‘I promise,' but this time Rebecca showed no sign of hearing. She stepped quietly from the room, stopping at the door to look back at the sunken form in the bed. ‘I love you, Bubby,' she heard herself saying. But her grandmother was already breathing gently, lost in the beguiling sleep of old
age.

She set the letter down on the bed, which still bore the imprint of Peggy's invitation. After a moment of hesitation, her hand eased under the envelope flap. Several sheets of paper fell out, crossed with Rebecca's writing. She read the first
line:

Judit, my darling girl,

Today is your Batmitzvah – such a special day for you, to become a grown woman. I know that you will do everything so beautifully, and that you will make us proud.

Her eyes blurred and she rubbed them, pressing fierce hands down until they ached. As her room came into focus again, she saw her swimming bag hanging over the doorknob. Pulling it down, she clutched it to her chest. The bright red canvas was still musty with friendly smells, the sharpness of chlorine and damp rubber. Kath had drawn a yellow heart on the fraying corner, on her first day at Wearside. She felt the hard outline of tomorrow's Junior Tryouts schedule pressing against her shirt.

Shame and revulsion rose inside her; pulling out the schedule she ripped it up and thrust the pieces under the bed. Then she opened her cupboard door and pushed the bag into the depths at the back, heaping shoes on top of it until it was buried, until she could pretend it had never existed. Then she curled back under the blanket, Rebecca's letter falling to the floor.
Make us proud
. How could she, with only a hole inside her where certainty should live?
I'm not a mensch, Bubby
, she whispered to the pillow.
I'm not, and I never will be.

There was no frantic scurrying to get Salim's mother back, no threats or phone calls or demands. She was gone as completely and irrevocably as if she had just lifted herself out of the
sea.

Even in his anger at being left, at being cast on the scrapheap of her life, Salim could not find it in his heart to hate her. Pain pulled the needle of blame towards the Jews, towards fate, and most of all to his father. He came running out of his room that day and pulled Abu Hassan's hand; clutching it to his chest he begged him to find her. ‘She can't be far,' he sobbed, feeling his stomach twist and the shame of water leaking down his leg in a child's grief. But Abu Hassan just stood there, his mouth gaping, his eyes muddy pools. Something came out of his throat that sounded like ‘No, no,' and then he turned away from his son, as Salim screamed, ‘It's your fault! You made her miserable! You did everything wrong! Now we have nothing.' Tareq pulled him roughly into his arms, half a restraint, half a hug. He whispered into his hair that he should never blame his father, who loved him despite everything. ‘He only can't tell you because he's old, and life has buried his words.' But at that moment Salim knew only rage and despair; so much that if Abu Hassan had still owned the Orange House, Salim felt he could have burned it down himself.

At night there was a cold space beside him where Rafan used to sleep, an empty room where all three brothers had once lain and plotted their return. And his dreams were full of his mother, of opening the door of strange houses he did not recognize, and finding her there.

The ache in his heart refused to fade with the months. Most of all he grieved that she had taken Rafan and not him, hooks of jealousy and sorrow catching him whenever he tried to
rest.

But despite himself he spent hours picturing where she might be, a flutter of excitement in his throat. Maybe the tall boulevards of Europe, or the bright streets of Beirut. And then the pain of her escape became somehow animating
–
cutting through his ties to Palestine, letting his imagination float upwards into the sky, over Nazareth's crowded tenements into the great unknown.

In one concrete way, his mother's flight did set him free. Buoyed up by Abu Mazen's blood money, and with two fewer mouths to feed, Abu Hassan became more persuadable on the matter of how to dispose of his remaining
son.

Nadia and Tareq truly loved Salim, and worried for his future. Sensing trouble ahead if he stayed in Nazareth, they began to concoct a plan. Suppose, Tareq said to Abu Hassan one night, Salim were to improve his English and learn a proper trade? If he were to go and stay with Hassan in England, he might be able to send money back here and be a better support to his father.

Abu Hassan was quick to acquiesce. After all, he was too old to be looking after a teenage boy. Visas these days were not hard to come by if a sponsor could be found.

Salim was elated when Tareq broke the news to him. He agreed to work hard, get good grades, stay out of trouble and not to upset his father. He longed to leave the dusty powerlessness of Arab life and remake himself. Every speck of desire to stay in this new land of Israel had been extinguished.

On his last night in Israel, he gathered together his clothes, books and flimsy photographs. The clothes went into a small black bag. He laid the pictures carefully in the bin on the floor. Reaching into the back of his cupboard, he lifted out a shoebox and opened the
lid.

The photograph of the Orange House had yellowed after so many years. It was the first time he'd looked since coming back from Tel Aviv. What was the point of it now? He tipped it into the bin, hearing the sad little thud as it hit the bottom. Then he sat down on the bed, breathing
hard.

After a moment, he bent down slowly and retrieved it. The baby boy's eyes stared at him from the frame, accusing. Salim answered:
I have new dreams now
. But he pushed it quickly into his suitcase.

In the autumn after his seventeenth birthday, as the orange harvest season approached, Salim stood at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv to catch the El-Al flight to London. In his pocket he carried a one-way airline ticket, his Israeli passport, his national identity document and his Palestinian birth certificate. His father had given him the equivalent of one hundred British pounds to start him in a new life. This was his total legacy from the past, the last gift of the Orange House.

Tareq and Abu Hassan walked him to passport control. Nadia had been unable to contemplate coming too, overcome with grief. Salim had felt tears welling up when he hugged her goodbye, aware that in some ways she too was losing a
son.

Tareq leaned over to give Salim a rough embrace, pulling the young man tight to his chest. ‘God bless you, God bless you,' he repeated, tears wetting his cheeks. ‘Take care of yourself. You know that you always have a home with us
–
always.'

‘I know,' said Salim, deeply moved. He wanted to tell Tareq how much he loved him, that he had been brother and father to Salim all at once. But with his own father standing nearby, he could not bring himself to say it. All he said was, ‘Tell Nadia goodbye. Tell her I'll eat, and study
–
and I'll miss her yelling at me.' Tareq nodded and turned away, to allow Abu Hassan the last farewell.

The two stared at each other slowly. In the harsh light of the departure hall, Salim saw more clearly than ever how old his father had become. He remembered they were Abu Hassan's second family, the last gasp of a long life. He saw the weakness in his body and legs, and the greyness of the old lips, and a tenderness came over him that he could not explain.

He reached over and put his arm around Abu Hassan's shoulder.

‘Goodbye, Baba,' he said softly, searching for words that were both true and kind. ‘I'll… I'll write to you often. Take care of yourself.'

Abu Hassan brought up a shaking arm and let it lie for a moment around his son's back. He pulled Salim to his chest quickly, and Salim felt the old heart hammering against his ribs like a woodpecker's beak. Then Abu Hassan let go and said, ‘
Ma salameh
'
–
go in peace. Salim stood for a moment, then hoisted his rucksack on his shoulder and turned towards the gates.

It was all too quick, the jump from one life to another. Within the hour, Salim sat strapped to his seat while the El-Al plane rose out of the clouds of yellow dust sent skywards by the summer
heat.

They crossed Israel's narrow waist before the jet had risen. Looking out of the window, Salim saw the strip of land so many had fought over, as it slipped out of view. It was so small that it took his breath
away.

As they reached into the radiant blue sky, he felt as if he was entering a void inside himself as profound as the one outside his window
–
a terrifying, exhilarating emptiness ready to be filled.

Four hours later, they touched down at London Airport. The grey and gloomy skies and great green expanses were oddly refreshing. Salim was ready to welcome the differences between the world he'd left and the one he would soon belong
to.

As he stood in line to show his passport and visa, he watched the other faces standing next to him
–
some dark, some fair, all with the same contained expression. He wondered how many were like him
–
starting over again. He looked across at the fast moving line of British passport holders. He promised himself that next time he would be standing in that
line.

Waiting in the arrivals hall was one familiar face. Hassan
–
still broad, fleshy and jolly
–
was standing waving frantically, a smile smothering his face. ‘My God, Salim!' he said, rushing over to give his brother a hug. He was bundled up in a bulky jumper and a black leather coat. ‘You look just the same. What a mug you have! Like a movie star! I'm going to take you out, and maybe I'll have better luck with the girls!'

‘Not if you wear that sweater, you idiot,' Salim laughed. He was genuinely happy to see him, relieved to find something familiar here to cling to. Hassan slapped him on the back and said, ‘Come on. Let's go home.'