The Shores of Ashkelon

Michal Govrin

Beyond the Border

Just then, Asher was driving south along the dunes in the direction of the border, deep in thought. Hunched beside him in the cabin of the pickup was an emaciated stranger with a sunken mouth. His oversized clothes were tattered, and his bony hands trembled nervously on his lap. Between them sprawled Mercury, moaning softly, strangely. The three of them drove on in watchful silence, their odors commingling as they joggled over the potholes.

Please, Asher muttered to himself, please let us pull off this humanitarian stunt without any trouble. He would never have become involved in this affair if recent events had not re-opened the old wound. The night before, when he cut the engine outside his lonely hut and Mercury leaped down, he could hear gunfire from the cliff and the shouting of an army patrol in pursuit. Another infiltration by Fedayeen, he thought, and turned to look at the rustling reeds under the cliff, worried about Alex wandering alone at night. After changing Mercury's water and filling his bowl with food, Asher poured himself a glass of whiskey and went outside for a smoke. The silence was broken by receding gunfire amid the roaring of the waves. He leaned against the wall over which a passionflower vine with purple and blue striped blossoms had climbed, and inhaled the cigarette he held between his thumb and ring finger.

Only then did he notice that Mercury was nowhere to be seen. He didn't come running out of the darkness when Asher called his name. Asher stubbed his cigarette out and walked along the shore, crying "Here boy! Here boy!" but his voice was swallowed in the breaking waves. He knew Mercury would return in his own good time, as he had the night they met at the bend in the path when the Canaan puppy took his time before presenting his furry head for a pat between the eyes. But no sooner did Asher go back inside the hut than his heart sank. The emptiness was only too apparent without Mercury's solidity beside him.

He didn't come back next morning either. Asher drove by the wholesale market to unload the empty bottles and load more supplies on the pickup. He tried hard to suppress the fear that last night's military action might have something to do with his missing dog. He was about to set off for the club that afternoon when suddenly he heard barking. He ran outside. Mercury lapped up the water in his bowl and devoured his food, but when Asher approached him, he edged out to the yard and then to the sand, turning his head as he did so to make sure Asher was following him.

"Where the hell are you leading us?" Asher scolded as he ran after him along the cliff to the narrow ledge where rocks fell into the sea. His suspicions grew along the way but when he followed the dog into a cleft, he shrank back with alarm. He should never have left the hut without a weapon, he chided himself. What blindness! A man emerged out of the shadows, tattered and worn and clearly terrified. He began to jabber wildly in Arabic.

This was surely the infiltrator who had been pursued by the patrol since the day before, but they had made a big mistake: the infiltrator wasn't there to bring death. He took a tiny bundle out of his pocket with a pinch of earth inside and tried desperately to explain to Asher. He had apparently crossed the border in a fit of madness, to look for an abandoned well or gravesite, to gather soil for a sick mother, a dead grandfather...

Out of his babble of Arabic words Asher only grasped the word "Kalb," dog, and noticed the way Mercury was nestling at the man's feet.

"Shwoyeh, shwoyeh, easy now," Asher said, signalling the man to calm down with one of the few Arabic expressions he knew, although he had spent nearly two years around Majdal. To hell with his own problems, he thought. How could he turn this desperate man over to the army with Mercury whining at his feet? Who knew how many months of prison and interrogation he would have to face and then endless Israeli and Egyptian negotiations before he was released, if ever, to his home across the border. Asher knew it was crazy, but he had to do it, compelled by an inner turmoil.

Later it seemed utterly incomprehensible to him that he had driven straight to the border with the man. Perhaps it was fatigue or his worry over Mercury or the state of agitation he had been in since Gerry's last performance. He had done nothing to prevent the man in the suit from dragging the girl off the dance floor. Or maybe it was because of Mercury, who sat vigilantly at the Arab's feet, looking up at Asher and whimpering as though trying to explain something Asher himself had guessed long ago. He would not have been rewarded with a messenger from the gods if the dog's former owners had not wallowed in the dust when the trucks crossed the border. Maybe that's why he never asked the man's name.

Later in the afternoon, he reckoned, an emergency response unit would replace the day patrol. It wasn't far from the border to the UN Post. He knew most of the guys there from the club. They would often come by for an after-duty whiskey. His heart was pounding. With any luck it would all be over soon. So he hoped, at any rate, as he drove on with the strange duo, Mercury and the terrified Arab.

The pickup wound slowly south over the dunes to the border. The sun was beginning to set, throwing shadows over the scanty vegetation as the pickup approached the border kibbutzim Yad Mordechai and Zikkim. On the horizon he could see the white expanse of Gaza shimmering in the hot air like a mirage.

Asher tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He couldn't imagine what the hunched and emaciated man was thinking, he didn't dare. Let it be over already, let him disappear on the other side of the border, back where he came from.

Mercury kept whimpering, almost like a puppy again. "Hush, hush," Asher ran three fingers over his fur, but Mercury wouldn't stop, and the whimpering accompanied the creaking of the pickup.

"Oh hell," muttered Asher as the tension mounted, suddenly overwhelmed by anguished visions from long ago when he administered the Arab DP camp in Majdal. He feared they would haunt him forever, the faceless women in embroidered gowns, the prancing urchins, the men wandering aimlessly around with downcast eyes, waiting for their fate to be decided by the armistice talks. He had been too self-immersed, a three fingered soldier who couldn't shoot in charge of food distribution and the day-to-day routine. He didn't talk to anyone, not to them, and not to his parents in Tel Aviv. He buried it all under the scar that slowly formed. And then, on the last day of the evacuation, in June of 1950, everything exploded. They had been loaded onto canvas-covered trucks where they sat, grouped in families with their bundles and limited possessions. The Arab dignitaries and military government representatives handed each head of family a wad of bills and collected their signatures on the agreement. Some chickens that had managed to escape pecked at the piles of discarded clothes, old tires, and sheep droppings in the camp. The dogs that circled the trucks were sent away but returned with a whimper, and suddenly, in the midst of all the commotion, Yoskeh had arrived and told him that his mother was waiting for him at headquarters. He left everything in a panic. What had brought her to this shadowy precinct?!

He caught sight of her in a flowered dress and cloth hat standing anxiously in the narrow lane outside the Majdal administration building.

"What's wrong?!" he jumped out of the jeep.

"Nothing, I came to find out."

"What?!"

"About the family," she repeated looking up at him. Only then did he realize what he had wrought. On a brief assignment to Tel Aviv months earlier he had dropped by to visit his parents whom he hadn't seen since his hospitalization when Mother lost control and stroked his forehead, and Father said, "Come Gusta, we have to leave Asher now so he can rest." For a moment everything was forgotten as he rushed upstairs to the small apartment on the second floor of the housing project with the modest furniture and the piano. He found his parents grown suddenly old.

Mother asked him to sit down and eat something and Father remained standing, his weatherworn head held high, stoic and erect. They waited quietly for him to finish the mashed potatoes and fish filet, "All there is these days, what with the food rationing," Mother apologized, watching him hold his fork between his thumb and ring finger. She never said a word about that or about the piano lid which would remain closed now, no more Chopin and Liszt and the jazz improvisations that used to fill the house.

"So how is it going these days?" they'd asked and he muttered something about the truckloads of arriving refugees, as they were known collectively, no need for details or descriptions of their bewilderment, their tears and the tent camps that grew and grew. Maybe he had mentioned "Rumania", "the Port of Constanza," "Bucharest," and hadn't noticed his mother's distress. He was blind to his parents, barely aware of himself. They would walk past each other, deep in silence, like blinkered mules. And all of a sudden there she was with her cloth hat and her pocket book... how many buses had she schlepped on to get to the administration building, this planet of refugee absorption camps and DP tents?!

He drove her in the jeep to the tent encampment. When she got off, a small circle formed around her. She spoke Rumanian, that strange musical tongue of his childhood and the lullabies he fell asleep to. He saw his mother now, short and stubborn. Someone led her between the tents and there another circle formed around her as she continued to question them in her soft incomprehensible language. And he was appalled by the realization that he had never thought to ask what happened to her family, parents, brothers and sisters? He saw her misery as she tried to explain, all the effort it took, and then suddenly she drooped as though something had snapped inside her.

And then Yoskeh ran over and reported that there was trouble with one of the DP families and he was needed urgently. He offered to give Asher's mother a lift to the Masmia junction where she could catch a bus to Rehovot and from there another one to Tel Aviv.

Asher said a quick goodbye and took off in his jeep. When he arrived at Majdal, he saw some Arabs standing woodenly in a row by the fence. "Yallah, yallah! Move it!" he shouted, and then he saw the shrouded corpse they were carrying, advancing as one. "Uma," said the man at the front looking up at him. What could he do? He found himself following them, his gun hanging from his belt just for show. With their long-handled hoes they dug into the dry soil near the palm tree, and Asher watched from afar as they prostrated themselves several times and rose again and returned as one.

Two hours later he saw them climb into a truck at the end of the long convoy that would transport them across the border, a few kilometers away. They too had signed the documents and picked up their bundle of bills with downcast eyes. The man at the wheel examined him. With gratitude? Enmity? Asher couldn't interpret the expression on his face.

It was that memory which pursued him the night he ran out to the beach, with an empty feeling and a bitter taste in his mouth. He might have shot himself, had it not been for the messenger of the gods, the yellow fur-ball who approached him mutely and offered his head for a pat.

The tension continued to mount on the slow drive south. Asher saw the man's trembling hands resting on his trousers. "I don't even know his name. Ali, Abdullah...hell, what does it matter... Just let it be over already," he gripped the wheel tighter.

A short way from the border he stopped the pickup. Mercury continued to whimper. Jutting out from between the rolling dunes was the concrete roof of the UN checkpoint. Asher got out and the Arab trailed after him, waiting cautiously as Asher scribbled a few English words on a slip of paper and handed it to the guard who nodded and crumpled the paper. Asher pointed at the gate by the guardhouse. The man nodded again. But then voices came from the direction of the guard house and a vehicle sped to the gate. Asher was covered in sweat. The activity was unexpected and made a quick retreat impossible. He would have to think of another solution. They returned to the pickup and he started the engine.

Asher was well-acquainted with the fence. One of his old jobs entailed setting up the boundary lines, so he knew how soft the soil was in the area. He drove on along the border and stopped at a spot some distance away, hidden between two sand dunes.

He was so tense he left the door open when he got out of the pickup with the man. He crouched in the sand and started digging. Then he raised the edge of the fence with all his strength and motioned the man to crawl through the gap. The metal barbs sank into his hands, cutting them deeply as the nameless man burrowed his way through the loose sand and the wild shrubs growing there. Asher was nearly blind from all the exertion and didn't notice that Mercury had jumped out of the truck and was burrowing his way through the gap in the fence. The furry back had just finished sliding to the other side when Asher let go and the fence scraped down.

Mercury shook the sand off and raised his head. His whimpering grew even louder than it was that afternoon, and with a shrill yelp he looked at Asher with his moist, brown eyes. The scene would engrave itself in Asher's heart, Mercury with his head high, looking into the distance. The man headed south, turned his head a moment, and walked on. Mercury, his tail between his legs, following in his footsteps. From time to time his yellow back emerged between the dunes and the thorn bushes until he and the man disappeared from view.

Asher waited by the pickup, listening anxiously in the silence for the sound of gunfire. More time went by and no dog ran back to the fence, and Asher felt lost and dizzy. He nodded to himself, "Look at you, man, your heart broken by a brown-eyed dog."

He waited for a long time, paralyzed with fear. The last rays of the setting sun touched the sand dunes. Asher, staring out at the distance, did not notice the patch of gold running in his direction and he decided to drive back before dark. He never told anyone what he had done nor did he ever try to search for the emaciated man in the crowded alleys of Gaza after the '67 War when the border opened. He never learned his name or the reason he had sneaked into Israel or whether he was the man he had once seen playing with a yellow puppy. There are things that must remain unspoken, he decided. There are things that must be severed.

Asher drove north, choking in the hot evening wind. He changed gears when he reached the paved road and passed the eucalyptus trees bordering the scattered settlements along the plain, further and further away from the lesson in loyalty taught to him by Mercury, messenger of the gods, who had brightened his lonely life for a few years and had now gone where he had to go. Never again would he see the tail waving freely or run his three fingers through the tangled yellow fur.

He drove along the plain, a plain that seemed as empty as his life. At home he walked past Mercury's empty bowl, poured himself a glass of whiskey and went outside to relax. He stuck his stumpy fingers in his pocket and listened to the murmuring sea. And many years later, whenever he was overcome with longing for Mercury's brown-eyed gaze, he was forced to admit that in his own way, the dog understood a great deal more than he had.

Esther sat on the bus, no longer wearing her blue dress with the shoulder straps or carrying a bag full of books. She hunched down in her seat and listened to the murmuring deep inside her with only the vaguest recollection of what happened to her before she got sick. Tomorrow she would be a soldier and wear a uniform... Even that seemed far away, yet she was aware of some

unfinished business some hazy memory she had to clear up. That's what made her go out. She pressed her forehead to the rattling window. Her face was paler than ever as she gazed at the images floating by, a palm tree by an abandoned minaret, solemn-looking folks hurrying home in the twilight, row after row of workers' houses and white-washed villas surrounded by lawns on the hilltop where the water tower rose. As the bus rocked on, the sounds of humanity welled up inside her as in a seashell. They came from near and far, from the beach, the dusty sidewalks and the little kitchens.

The bus turned down the old beach road, and the closer it got to the cliff the brighter the sky looked. At the last stop, Esther stood up and smiled at the driver who said, "Shalom, be well," as though he too were blessing her. "Last night a patrol was out hunting for an infiltrator," he added with concern." You will be careful, won't you?" and Esther nodded as she stepped off the bus. She did not walk in the direction of the hotel or down the cliff path, but towards the

archaeological tel where she vanished in the midst of the tamarisk grove. This was the direction she dimly recalled, the path her class had taken on the field trip.

The tel was deserted when Esther climbed over the brambles and the mounds of earth and passed the sycamore trees near the site of the Byzantine church where the marble bas reliefs and capitals were stacked. She studied the women on the bas reliefs, one wearing a headdress while a smaller figure whispered in her ear, one bearing a branch, and a third woman with a shattered white face, arms raised and breasts thrust forward, and the folds of her dress rippled by the wind. Her wings seemed poised for flight but her bare feet rested on the ground. Here she was, at last. She leaned against the stone wall, feeling suddenly dizzy, but her eyes were fixed on the alabaster woman.

Slowly she looked down, first at her feet and then at the marble globe they rested on. And then she noticed the man bowed under the weight of the globe, and she glanced down at his crossed legs, his naked organ and bollocks, his broken arms and severed hands suspended, two marble fragments holding up the globe with the alabaster woman on top.

The man stared up at her from the shadows and she was struck by a terrifying thought. Had she not severed the hands that held onto her for dear life, the hands of her parents?!... She staggered. A strong wind blew out of the abyss, lifted her wings and carried her away - from what darkness? ...

She nearly fainted. The marble gleamed whiter in the fading light. As she leaned dizzily against a wall, spikes of kurkar pricked her back. But she couldn't rest. She had to go down to the sea now, to be there before sunset.

Esther clambered out of the excavation site, and ran through the mounds and brambles till she reached the patch of buttercups on top of the cliff. Suddenly the sea spread before her, rippling out into the distance. Slowly she advanced to the ledge. The warm wind blew through her blouse and hair, and enveloped her still weakened body. She stood on the ledge, listening to a cry that came from afar or perhaps from within. She, Esther, who was she? She took a deep breath, at last, without shame, without guilt, and her tears streamed down, tears over all that had been severed and destroyed, all the beauty that had been revealed, like the words she recited at the graduation ceremony, All night long the flaming seas did spume and churn the tongues of fire over the Temple Mount...Did He kick His throne and destroy His crown? Her teacher claimed it was a poem about destruction and rebirth, but Esther understood the deeper meaning, more love, and more.

And a pain she had never felt before pierced her with a cry of passion. And suddenly she understood that the shadows of home and the happiness she felt that summer went hand in hand, Moise embracing her by the window, Alex's eyes, all growing together out of life and death. Was that what Alex had tried to tell her? Was that the secret of the alef? ... For I have seen my soul and lo, it is black as it is white.

Now she knew she could leave them. She would be a soldier. She, Esther Weiss. Not the other one. She could do it. And she burst out laughing, startled by the sound she made.

Dusk was falling and Esther decided to go home early and get a good night's sleep before her first day in the army, but not just yet. Under the cliff lay the path they had walked on her class trip and she wanted to go down the slope. She strode ahead with renewed vitality, gazing at the sea, which is why she didn't notice that the cliff broke sharply, and when she set her foot down, she slipped. She managed to steady herself with outspread arms. In a panic she tried to turn back, but her sandals kept sliding on the rock and she lost her balance. Just in time she grabbed hold of a bush jutting out of the kurkar that stopped her fall.

The light faded quickly. The murmur of the waves below sounded like prayer. With incredible effort Esther pulled herself up and sat on the ledge. She decided to rest a while and catch her breath before trying to make her way back.

On the other side of the border the two friends plodded over the dunes, Hassan, clutching the little bag with a pinch of earth in his trembling hand and the whimpering dog at his side. They passed the banana grove, a distant minaret, and clay huts where smoke rose from the tabun in the yard with the smell of baking pitas. And as they climbed the hill on the outskirts of Gaza, the city spread out in the distance and below it the refugee camp with its crowded yellow huts nearly obscured by a stretch of sand. A lone palm tree grew next to a minaret where the muezzin was calling the faithful to prayer.

Hassan started down the slope. After two days of tension, his limbs were beginning to relax. He had made it back alive. He paused to look back at the dog who was waiting on top of the dune, whimpering loudly. Hassan called him. The dog had never left his side while he hid from the soldiers in the crevice. Again, he called him, "Kalb! Ya kalb!" but when the dog didn't move he waved a limp goodbye to him and continued down the slope till his footsteps faded between the clay huts.

Mercury stayed on top of the dune, dribbling spittle from his black lips, whimpering as he had ever since he'd caught the familiar scent and discovered the emaciated man hiding in the crevice. Now the sounds rising from the narrow lanes and crowded clay huts made him wobble, mothers calling their children home from play, the bleating of goats, squawking hens and yapping dogs and the commotion of peddlers closing their stalls for the day - forgotten sounds that elicited a long howl from him. He wrinkled his brow and was about to descend through the smoke and sniff around for some food and water next to the prostrate figures on their prayer mats, when some children at the bottom of the hill ran out, batting a piece of wood through the alley and shouting with glee. Suddenly they heard the dog howl. They turned their heads, stopped their game, and pointed at the yellow dog on top of the dune.

"Kalb! Ya kalb!"

The children bounded up the hill.

Mercury got up and fanned his tail trembling for the touch of hands on his fur, the old familiar touch. He stretched his neck out with a mounting howl, choked with joy. The children looked at the crazy howling dog and then waved their sticks and shouted, "Ya majnoon, ya kalb majnoon!"

One of them crouched down, picked up a stone and threw it at the dog on the dune. The others hurriedly gathered stones and pelted him, laughing all the while.

"Kalb majnoon! Ya kalb majnoon!"

They ran towards him and Mercury shrank back but a sharp stone hit his chest and he jumped out of range with a great howl.  For a moment he stood stock still, his breath whistling shrilly and his tongue hanging out as he watched the children approach. Then he pricked up his ears and suddenly bowed his head and tore away.

He scrambled over the dunes, suddenly old and tired, bypassing the soldiers at their army posts, redolent of gunpowder, grease and the remnants of canned spam. His yellow fur made him nearly indistinguishable against the rolling sand as he struggled on, dribbling spittle and sweat, guided by his inner compass from one world to another, ignoring the fences and the roar of the boundless sea. He ran gasping and panting towards the lonely hut, the rattling truck, and the stumpy fingers that stroked him between the eyes. Or maybe he was guided by the ancestral memory of the Canaanite dogs who had waited for their seafaring masters on the shore in ancient times and now lay buried around the cliff, their howling still audible over the roaring waves.

He paused at the border and approached the place where Asher had lifted the fence and he had wriggled away. He sniffed the loose soil and the crushed bushes but now the heavy coil of barbed wire below the fence was weighed down, its spikes hidden in the sand. Mercury dug hurriedly, kicking up the dirt. Then he pressed his belly down on the sand. He nearly made it through when a barb caught on his fur. He pulled back in order to release it, but the barb dug

deeper. He moaned, trapped where he was, digging in the sand with the steel spike in his flesh. A howl of pain rent the evening air. Back and forth he moved, groaning as the barb wire spike ripped into him until he managed to break free. His fur was torn and bleeding. He licked the wound and stumbled on, crazed with pain, panting and drooling and leaving a trail of blood. When he reached the cliff that rose to the archeological tel, he knew, with his last bit of strength, that he was almost there.

Esther tried to get up. She had to pull herself out before nightfall. She leaned forward but pieces of karkur broke off and rolled into the abyss. She sat still with a beating heart, suspended midair. The sea waves darkened. Tattered clouds obscured the lingering light. Her legs were scratched. From the crevice below came the roaring of the waves.

Mercury climbed the cliff, his eyes veiled with burning pain, blood dripping from his mangled fur. He had passed the ancient dog cemetery and the marble columns jutting out of the tel. Here the precipice zagged abruptly and tongues of sea water showed between the crevices. The sound of falling stopped him in his tracks. He pricked up his ears. There was a familiar smell nearby. Cautiously he approached the edge of the cliff. Esther heard him and turned around.

"Mercury?" she gazed into the brown eyes watching her from the precipice above.

Mercury groped his way down, limping slowly, his tongue hanging out.

"Mercury..." she reached out to lean against him.

"Take it easy, boy, or we'll both fall," she laughed when he nuzzled her face. "Just a minute," a wave of joy filled her. She hugged his neck, ran her hand down his steaming fur and clung to him.

When she let go of his wet and matted back, she was horrified to see the blood on her hand.

"Mercury...what happened?" She ran her finger over the torn flesh and hugged him gently.

"Mercury..."

But her movement displaced another slab of kurkar. Mercury slid away. He looked at Esther, deliberated a moment, and began to search for a foothold. Step by step he made his way down the steep slope till he reached the shore. And then, in the twilit air, his tail taut and his ears pulled back, he ran to the beach club.

Esther followed the wounded dog with her eyes and managed to free herself from the crevice. She inched her way down the cliff in Mercury's footsteps, moved to the wide part of the ledge, raised herself on her scratched hands and knees and slowly, carefully, stood up.

The above is a chapter from Michal Govrin’s book, The Shores of Ashkelon, which has been published in French and in German, but has not yet appeared in English.

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