Louis-Philippe Dalembert

Passage from The Mediterranean Wall:

I F I F O R G E T Y O U, J E R U S A L E M … translated by Marjolijn de Jager

After a good hour on the road, the convoy stopped on a half-deserted beach where inflatable dinghies were waiting, lazily rocked by the backwash. All told, Shoshana counted seven of them. The motors, already running, were spluttering like consumptive cats, one after another ready to give up the ghost, before suddenly resettling and going back to a more regular purr, causing the water to spew white foam. Standing at the helm, the pilots glanced indifferently at the arrival of the pick-ups. One of them was finishing a cigarette, taking a final drag so powerful it seemed like the last smoke of a condemned man. As he inhaled his cheeks grew hollow while his chest swelled. About thirty, his face deeply lined from exposure to sun and salt water, he exhaled the smoke in small puffs, inspected the butt carefully to make sure nothing was left, then flicked it into the sea.

Vehicles crammed with men were already waiting on- site, coming from who knows where. Perhaps from Tripoli or Zuwara, which had additional retention centers; perhaps from the hangar where Ariel was being held. Once she had her feet on the ground, Shoshana scanned each face by the pale meager light of the distant crescent moon. With a little  luck, her baby brother would be among them. Thinner. Bearded. Changed, almost like a stranger to her. But very much there. She would have recognized him by his smile, that eternal adolescent smile of his. For he would have recognized her first and smiled at her. The face of an already completed woman, no longer changing very much. Beaten maybe from the ordeals of the preceding months but not to the point of being unrecognizable. Her brother’s on the other hand, would be. He must have grown into a real little man. Or a tall one, she wouldn’t know. How many months had it been since they last saw each other? Kissed each other? Since she’d scolded him for some never-ending inanity before he tried to hug her, so she’d forgive him. ‘Come on, big sis. After all, I’m your precious brother.’ She’d try to escape from his embrace, but he was faster, would quickly catch her again. And she’d be his prisoner. Prisoner of her younger sibling’s enveloping affection. And her own affection for him.

‘You said so yourself: I’m your sister, not your mother, not your girlfriend. You won’t bamboozle me,’ she’d respond in a vain attempt to hide what she called her Achilles heel, her inability to refuse her brother anything. Shoshana had to defer to the evidence: not one of these faces, ashen from the long wait, the exhaustion, and the mistreatment, smiled at her. Her heart knotted up in disappointment. But just in time she held back the tears that were welling up in her eyes. Not make a spectacle of her weakness. It would make her appear too fragile.

The embarkation took place under the tense gaze of armed men in uniform. Policemen or soldiers, Semhar thought, unable to explain their presence to herself. At this stage, no one would think of fleeing. Instead, they were all in a hurry to be at sea, to vanish from under the eyes of their tormentors. Indeed, it wasn’t unusual for a rival group to take advantage of the moment that they weren’t at sea yet, to seize the merchandise. For the Uncle, whom Semhar would never see, it was simultaneously a matter of honor and credibility. If he let it happen, he would lose a juicy deal in the end. And for those who were about to leave, everything would start all over again. For they’d have to pay again by working for other masters.

Semhar clambered aboard, incited by the ‘Yallah! Yallah! ’ of the smugglers. She felt a wandering hand across her chest by way of a farewell. There were about fifty in her group. The inflatable dinghy sank to its brim under the passengers’ weight. All of them black. Some had found refuge in the back of the dinghy; others on the edge where, shifting their bottom, they’d managed to put down one cheek. They were so closely wedged in that there was no risk of falling overboard during the trip unless they capsized during the embarkation. Still, Semhar tried to steady herself more by placing a firm hand on Shoshana’s thigh, right beside her.

The two friends were almost settled when some minibuses showed up. After they stopped, a cluster of men, women, and bawling kids, mostly Arabs, came out. Dressed as if for a cruise, suitcases in hand, they were directed to three still- empty dinghies. In the interim, two armed men sat down on board of the already filled ones, one up front, the other in the back. When everyone was in place, the one who seemed to be the leader gave the departure signal. In a barrage of noise and foam the dinghies pulled away toward the open sea. Only the drivers of the vehicles who’d helped with the boarding of the recent arrivals, remained behind. The boats followed each other at a safe distance, forming a single, long wake in the water, the three with the Arabs heading the procession. Semhar and Shoshana’s dinghy were sixth in line. In just a few  minutes the convoy had moved away from the coast.

[…]

A sudden sense of emptiness overcame Shoshana. Seeing the dinghy widen the distance to the African continent filled her with sorrow. Yet, her decision to leave had ripened over a long period of time. It had taken a while for her to accept the idea that her motherland could not nurture her. That there was no future for her there. She had dreamed so much of this departure. She’d struggled, overcome a thousand torments, confronted hell and high water. Now that she was on her way to fulfill her dream, she felt like weeping. It had overtaken her suddenly. And not only because she was leaving her younger brother behind without knowing what would become of him. Rather than going toward the unknown, she felt as if she were going into exile. As if she’d been banished. Without any possibility of going back. She knew that once she was on the other side she’d have to learn to hide in the shadows, live clandestinely for years on end before she’d be settled and able to return home. ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?’ she recited in silence. And if one of her people were to die in that period of time, she wouldn’t be able to go home to lay him in the ground; recite the Kaddish of the mourners for his soul to rest. Hence the need to weep, as she did when she was a child and would go sit by herself on the bank of the river, before it died. There, she’d let the flow of the water carry her grief of the moment. She made a huge effort to get control of herself. She watched the dinghy, nose in the air, cut its path across the gentle waves that were hurrying to meet it.

The driver was whistling. Standing at the bow, surrounded by seated passengers, he was the only one whose face was, if not  serene, at least neutral. Dressed in a green padded K-Way the color of goose-droppings, the wind in his hair, both hands on the helm, his eyes didn’t leave the dinghy in front of him. Very soon, Semhar could no longer see the shore on the horizon.  Although she’d grown up on the coast, it still impressed her. Truth be known, she’d only once in her life set foot on her father’s fishing boat. She’d been forced to insist, beg, sulk, and resort to every kind of pressure typical of her tender age. Her father knew her cantankerous side and had given in. But he swore it would be the first and last time. Whatever happened. His daughter was not going to be a fishmonger. And in spite of Semhar’s sly attempts, he’d kept his word. That day, they’d taken a ride that to her seemed fantastic, even if the shore remained in sight throughout. She’d felt like the princess of  the waters. The queen of the Red Sea. She was ten years old.