Leon Uris (36 page)

They found the ghetto and were taken in and fed and sheltered. Their rags were exchanged for new clothing. They had to rest several weeks before they were fit enough to continue the journey.

Late in the spring they went on again, fully recovered from their winter’s flight.

Although they did not now have to contend with the elements they had to move with greater caution, for they had left the Pale behind and could no longer depend on protection, food, and shelter from the Jewish communities. They skirted the Black Sea south of Rostov and moved deep into Georgia. All their food now was stolen from the fields—they never let themselves be seen by daylight.

As winter came on again they were faced with a tremendous decision. To hole up in Georgia, to try to get through the Caucasus Mountains in winter, or—to attempt a boat across the Black Sea.

Each plan had its dangers. Although trying the mountains in winter seemed the most foolhardy their urge to leave Russia behind was so great that they decided to risk it.

At Stavropol at the base of the mountains they staged a series of robberies which completely outfitted them with clothing and food for the assault over the mountains. Then they fled into the Caucasus toward Armenia with the police on their track.

Through another brutal winter they moved deep into the mountains, walking by day, climbing the treacherous passes in the dark, and pillaging the countryside. The first year had hardened them and made them wise—the obsession to get to Palestine was greater than ever and drove them onward. Yakov would babble passages from the Bible by the hour to drive their bodies forward. They made the last part of their push instinctively, in a numbed daze.

And in spring they received their second miracle of rebirth. One day they stood up and for the first time breathed free air—as they left “Mother Russia” behind them forever. As Yakov passed the border marker into Turkey he turned and spat into Russia.

Now they could move in daylight, but it was a strange land with strange sounds and smells and they had no passports or papers. All of eastern Turkey was mountainous and the going was slow. They went to work in the fields in places where they could not steal food, but twice that spring they were caught and thrown into prison briefly.

Jossi reckoned they would have to give up thievery, for it was too dangerous being caught; they might be sent back to Russia.

In the middle of summer they passed the base of Mount Ararat where the Ark of Noah had landed. They pressed on to the south.

In each village they asked, “Are there Jews here?”

In some there would be Jews and they would be fed and clothed and sheltered and sent along their way.

These Jews were different from any they had known. They were peasants filled with ignorance and superstition, yet they knew their Torah and kept the Sabbath and the Holy Days.

“Are there Jews here?”

“We are Jews.”

“Let us see your rabbi.”

“Where are you boys going?”

“We are walking to the Promised Land.”

It was the magic password. “Are there Jews here?”

“There is a Jewish family in the next village.”

Never once were they refused hospitality.

Two years went by. The brothers pressed on doggedly, stopping only when exhaustion overcame them or they had to work for food.

“Are there Jews here?”

They pressed over the Turkish border into the province of Syria and another strange land.

In Aleppo they received their first taste of the Arab world. They passed through bazaars and dung-filled streets and heard Moslem chants from the minarets——

They walked on until the blue-green of the Mediterranean Sea burst suddenly before them and the howling winds and cold of the past years were exchanged for a blistering heat of one hundred and twenty degrees. They plodded down the Levantine coast wearing Arab rags.

“Are there Jews here?”

Yes, there were Jews, but again they were different. These Jews looked and dressed and spoke like Arabs. But yet they knew the Hebrew language and the Torah. Like the Jews of the Pale and the Jews of Turkey, the Arab-like Jews took the Rabinsky brothers in without question and shared their homes and their food. They blessed the brothers as they had been blessed before for the sacredness of their mission.

On into Lebanon they walked—through Tripoli and the wildness of Beirut—they neared the Promised Land.

“Are there Jews here?”

The year was 1888. Forty months had passed since that night Yakov and Jossi fled the Zhitomir ghetto. Jossi had grown into a lean and leathery giant six feet three inches tall with a frame of steel. He was twenty years of age and he wore a flaming red beard.

Yakov was eighteen and also hardened by the more than three years of travel but he was still of medium height with dark sensitive features and was filled with the same intenseness he had had from childhood.

They stood upon a hill. Below them was a valley. Yakov and Jossi Rabinsky stared down at the Huleh in northern Galilee. Jossi Rabinsky sat down upon a rock and wept. Their journey was over.

“
But the Lord liveth,
” Yakov said, “
which brought up and led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country and from all the countries whither I had driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land.
”

Yakov put his hand on Jossi’s shoulder. “We are home, Jossi! We are home!”

F
ROM THE HILL
they looked down onto the land. Across the valley in Lebanon rose the towering snow-capped peak of Mount Hermon. Below them stretched the Huleh Lake and marshes. There was an Arab village nestled in the hills to their right. Jossi Rabinsky experienced the greatest exaltation he had ever known! How beautiful the Promised Land looked from here!

He vowed to himself, as young men will at such times, that he would return someday and from this very spot would look down on his very own land.

They stayed there for a day and a night and the next morning began the descent in the direction of the Arab village. The white-colored mud houses clumped together in a saddle of the hill were dazzling in the morning sun. The farmlands and olive orchards sloped from the village toward the swamp of the Huleh Lake. In the fields a donkey pulled a wooden plowshare. Other donkeys carried small harvest upon their backs. In the vineyards the Arab women labored among the grapes. The village was as it must have been a thousand years before.

The distant beauty of the village faded with each step they took nearer and was soon replaced by an overwhelming stench. Suspicious eyes watched the brothers from the fields and the houses of the village as they entered the dirt street. Life moved in slow motion in the blistering sun. The road was filled with camel and donkey excrement. Swarms of giant flies engulfed the brothers. A lazy dog lay motionless in the water of the open sewer to cool himself. Veiled women ducked for cover into squalid one-room houses made of mud; half the huts were in a state of near collapse and held a dozen or more people, as well as pigs, chickens, mules, and goats.

The boys stopped at the village water well. Straight-backed girls balanced enormous urns of water on their heads or were busy kneeling and scrubbing clothing and exchanging gossip.

The appearance of the travelers brought immediate silence.

“May we have some water?” Jossi asked.

No one dared answer. Haltingly they drew a bucket of water, splashed their faces, filled their canteens, and made off quickly.

Further on they came upon a dilapidated shack which served as a coffeehouse. Listless men sat or lay around on the ground as their wives tilled the fields. Some played backgammon. The air was foul with the mixed aroma of thick coffee, tobacco, hashish smoke, and the vile odors of the rest of the village.

“We would like directions,” Jossi said.

After several moments one of the Arabs pulled himself off the ground and bade them follow. He led them out of the main area to a stream; on the other side of the stream was a small mosque and a minaret. On their side was a nicely built stone house set in the shade, and near it a room which served as the village reception room. They were taken to the room, told to enter and be seated. The high walls of the room were whitewashed, and thick, well-placed windows made it quite cool. A long bench ran around the walls. The bench was covered with bright pillows. On the walls hung an assortment of swords and trinkets and pictures of Arabs and visitors.

At last a man in his mid-twenties entered. He was dressed in an ankle-length striped cloth coat and a white headdress with a black band. His appearance immediately indicated that he was someone of wealth.

“I am Kammal, muktar of Abu Yesha,” he said. He clapped his ringed hands together and ordered fruit and coffee to be brought to the strangers. As his brothers went off to carry out the order a cold half silence pervaded the room as the village elders filed in one by one.

To the boys’ surprise, Kammal spoke some Hebrew.

“The site of this village is the traditional burial place of Joshua,” he told them. “You see, Joshua is a Moslem prophet as well as a Hebrew warrior.”

Then, following the Arab custom of never asking a direct question, Kammal set out to find out who the visitors were and what their mission was. At last he suggested that perhaps the boys were lost—for no Jews had ventured into the Huleh before.

Jossi explained that they had entered the country from the north and sought the nearest Jewish settlement. After another half hour of roundabout questions Kammal seemed satisfied that the two Jews were not scouting for land in the area.

Then Kammal seemed to relax a bit; he confided that he was not only the muktar and owned all the land in Abu Yesha but the spiritual leader as well and the only literate person in the village.

Jossi somehow liked this man—for what reason, he did not know. He told Kammal about their pilgrimage from Russia and their desire to settle down and farm in the Holy Land. When the last of the fruit had been eaten, Jossi asked his leave.

“You will find Jews thirty kilometers south. You can walk the distance by nightfall if you stay on the road. The place is called Rosh Pinna.”

Rosh Pinna! How exciting! He had heard the name many times in the Pale.

“Rosh Pinna is halfway between the Huleh Lake and the Sea of Galilee. On the way you will pass a large
tel
. Beneath the
tel
lies the ancient city of Hazor.... May God protect you on your journey.”

The road took them past the fields of Abu Yesha and skirted the forbidding Huleh swamplands. Jossi looked back over his shoulder. He could see the spot from which they had crossed earlier that day. “I’ll be back,” he said to himself. “I know I’ll be back——”

At midday they came upon the large man-made hill Kammal had described. As they climbed upward they realized that beneath them lay buried the ancient city of Hazor. Jossi was elated. “Do you realize that Joshua may have been standing on this very spot when he conquered the city from the Canaanites!” Jossi went about collecting bits of broken pottery which were strewn all about. Since his very first sight of the Holy Land, Jossi had been in such a state of joy that he was completely unaware of the bad mood that had been overtaking Yakov. Yakov did not want to spoil his brother’s happiness so he remained silent, but his sullenness grew by the minute.

At dusk they reached Rosh Pinna, the Cornerstone, the farthest northern settlement of Jews. Their arrival produced a great furor. In a small building which served as the meeting room they were eagerly questioned. But it was forty months since they had left Zhitomir and they could only say that the pogroms that had started in 1881 were getting progressively worse.

Although both boys concealed their feelings, Rosh Pinna was a terrible disappointment. Instead of flourishing farms they found a rundown village. There were but a few dozen Jews living midst conditions not much better than those of the Arabs of Abu Yesha.

“Sometimes I think it would have been better to have stayed in Russia,” one of the Bilus opined. “At least in the ghetto we were among Jews. We had books to read, music to hear, and people to speak to ... there were women. Here, there is nothing.”

“But all those things we heard at the Lovers of Zion meetings——” Jossi said.

“Oh yes, we were filled with ideals when we arrived. One soon loses them in this country. Look at it ... so ruined that nothing can grow. What little we do have is stolen by the Bedouins, and the Turks take what the Bedouins leave. If I were you boys I’d keep on going to Jaffa and get on the next boat to America.”

An outlandish idea, Jossi thought.

“If it were not for the charity of Rothschild, De Hirsch, and De Schumann we would all have starved long ago.”

They left Rosh Pinna the next morning and set out to cross the hills to Safed. Safed was one of the four holy cities of the Jews. It sat on a beautiful cone-shaped hill at the entrance to the Huleh area of the Galilee. Here, Jossi thought, their dejection would soon fade because here there were second-, third-, and fourth-generation Jews who lived and studied the Cabala, the book of mystics. The shock of Rosh Pinna was repeated in Safed. They found a few hundred aged Jews who lived in study and from the alms of co-religionists around the world. They cared nothing about the rebirth of the House of Jacob—but wanted only to live quietly, studiously, and in poverty.

The Rabinsky brothers set out again from Safed the next morning, and crossed to nearby Mount Canaan, and stopped to get their bearings. From Mount Canaan the vista was magnificent. From here they could look back at Safed on its cone-shaped hill and beyond it to the Sea of Galilee. To the north they could see the rolling hills of the Huleh from whence they had come. Jossi loved this view—for before him was the land he had first trod. Yes, he vowed again that someday—someday it would be his.

Yakov’s bitterness began to show. “All our lives, all our prayers ... and look at it, Jossi.”

Jossi put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Look how beautiful it appears from here,” he said. “I tell you, Yakov, someday we will make it look just as beautiful from the bottom of the hill as it does from the top.”