Stela Kamal was troubled. Her husband, usually so courteous, so concerned about her condition, had hardly exchanged six words with her in two days. He had returned home late from the museum, barely touched his dinner, and shut himself up in his study. In the morning he had said little at breakfast, and left early. When Stela went to tidy the study, she found his desk strewn with pages, some heavily corrected with many crossed-out sentences, some balled up and tossed onto the floor.
Serif usually worked calmly. His desk was always impeccably neat and organized. Almost guiltily, Stela smoothed out one of the discarded sheets. “Nazi Germany is a kleptocracy,” she read. She did not know the word. “Museums have a duty to resist the plundering of cultural heritage. The losses in France and Poland could have been stanched had not museum directors offered up their skill and expertise to facilitate German looting. Instead, to our shame, we are become one of the most Nazified professions in Europe.…” There was nothing else on the sheet. She picked up another crumpled ball. This one had a heading, heavily underlined: ANTI-SEMITISM IS FOREIGN TO THE MUSLIMS OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA. The page seemed to be an article, or some kind of open letter, decrying the passage of anti-Jewish laws. There was much crossing out, but Stela could read parts of sentences: “…only a lightning rod used to draw the people’s attention away from their real problems.”…“Provide help to the poor among the Jewish population, whose number is much higher than commonly estimated.…”
Stela crumpled the paper and swept it into a rubbish container. She pressed her knuckles into the small of her back, which was aching a little. She had never doubted that her husband was the wisest of men. She did not doubt it now. But his silences, the crumpled pages, the alarming sentences…She thought about speaking to him of these things. All day, she rehearsed what she might say. But when he came home, she poured his coffee from the džezva and said nothing.
After a few weeks, the arrests began. In early summer, Lujo was ordered to report for transport to a labor camp. Rashela wept and pleaded with him not to answer the summons, to flee the city, but Lujo said that he was strong, and a good worker, and would manage. He took his wife’s chin in his hand. “Better this way. The war cannot last forever. If I run away, they will come for you.” Never a demonstrative man, he kissed her, long and tenderly, and climbed aboard the truck.
Lujo did not know that there were no labor camps, only places of starvation and torture. Before the end of the year, he would be marched into the hills of Herzegovina, where the limestone is eaten away in a maze of wormholes. Rivers vanish there, running through the underground caverns, suddenly bubbling up again many miles distant. With other bruised and emaciated men—Jews, Gypsies, Serbs—Lujo stood at the lip of a deep cave whose floor he could not see. A Ustasha guard slashed his hamstrings and pushed him into the abyss.
They came for Rashela when Lola was out delivering fresh-pressed laundry. The soldiers had lists of all the Jewish women whose husbands and sons had already been deported. They herded them into trucks and deposited them at the ruined synagogue.
Lola returned to find her mother and sister gone, the door wide open, their few possessions tossed around in a vain search for something of value. She ran to her aunt’s flat, a few streets away, and knocked until her knuckles ached. A Muslim neighbor, a kindly woman who still wore the traditional chador, opened her door and took Lola inside. The woman handed her water and told her what had happened.
Lola fought back the panic that emptied her mind. She had to think. What should she do? What could she do? The only single idea that made its way through her confusion was that she needed to find them. She turned to go. The neighbor laid a hand on her arm. “You will be recognized out there. Take this.” She handed Lola a chador. Lola flung the cloak around her and set off for the synagogue. The front door, splintered by hatchets, hung loose on broken hinges. There were guards there, so Lola crept around to the side of the building, to the small room where the siddurim were stored. The window had been shattered. Lola took off the chador and wrapped it around her hand. She worked a piece of jagged glass loose from its lead surround, reached in, and slipped the catch. The frame, empty of its glass, tilted outward. She pulled herself up to the sill. The small room was in disarray, the shelves pulled down and the prayer books they had contained shredded all over the floor. There was a foul smell. Someone had defecated on the pages.
With the strong arms formed by lifting wet laundry, Lola hoisted her own weight till her ribs rested across the sill. Kicking, scrambling, the lead edge scraping through her clothes, she wriggled her way through the opening and dropped as gently as she could to the floor. Then she cracked open the heavy, polished-wood door. A pungent stink, of fear and sweat, burned paper and sour urine, filled the desecrated sanctuary. The ark that had housed the community’s ancient Torah, carried safely from Spain so many centuries ago, gaped open, blackened by flame. The damaged pews and ash-filled aisles were packed with distraught women, old, young, some trying to comfort infants whose cries were amplified by the room’s high stone dome. Others hunched over, head in hands. Lola eased her way slowly through the crowd, trying not to call attention to herself. Her mother, her little sister, and her aunt were huddled together in a corner. She came up behind her mother and laid a hand gently on her shoulder.
Rashela, thinking Lola had been caught, let out a cry.
Lola hushed her and spoke urgently. “There’s a way out, through a window. I got in that way; we can all escape.”
Lola’s aunt Rena lifted her fat arms and made a gesture of defeat that took in her wide body. “Not me, my darling girl. My heart’s not good. I’ve got no breath. I’m not going anywhere.”
Lola, frantic, knew that her mother would not abandon this beloved older sister. “I can help you,” she pleaded. “Please, let’s try.”
Her mother’s face, always lined and careworn, seemed to have fallen suddenly into the deep, folded creases of a much older woman. She shook her head. “Lola, they have lists. They would miss us when they load the trucks. And anyway, where would we go?”
“We can go to the mountains,” Lola said. “I know the ways, there are caves where we can shelter. We’ll get to the Muslim villages. They’ll help us, see if they won’t.…”
“Lola, the Muslims were here at the synagogue, too. They burned and broke, looted and cheered just like the Ustashe.”
“Just a few of them, just the louts—”
“Lola, darling, I know you mean well, but Rena is ill, and Dora is too little.”
“But we can do it. Believe me, I know the mountains, I—”
Her mother laid her hand heavily on Lola’s arm.
“I know you do. All those nights at Hashomer, I should hope they taught you something.” Lola stared at her mother. “Did you really think I was asleep? No. I wanted you to go. I’m not like your father, worried about your honor. I know you are a modest girl. But now I want you to go away from this place. Yes,” she said firmly, as Lola shook her head. “I am your mother, and in this you must obey me. You go. My place is here with Dora and my sister.”
“Please, Mamma, please let me at least take Dora.”
Her mother shook her head. She was struggling hard to contain tears. Her skin had turned blotchy with the effort. “Alone, you have the best chance. She’d never keep up with you.”
“I can carry her.…”
Dora, clinging to her mother, looked from one to the other of the people she most loved, and, realizing that the result of the argument would be the loss of one of them, began to wail.
Rashela patted her, looking around, hoping the outburst wasn’t drawing the guards’ attention. “After the war, we’ll all find each other.” She reached both hands up to Lola’s face and stroked her cheeks. “Go now. Stay alive.”