Cyprus, 1947

A small taste of the novel I am writing.

Cyprus, 1947

“There’s no point in resisting,” the man pleaded to me in Yiddish. I didn’t know why he singled me out. But it was clear. His soft skin and bouncy curls gave him away—he’d spent the war in the United States Army, not the camps. He wasn’t some do-gooder here for us, or even for the British. At that moment, I couldn’t tell which side he belonged to. He might as well have been Chana’s brother, I thought.

Others booed and hissed. A can of mackerel in oil flew past him. I shouted, “Are you brave enough to throw that at the British? If not, you’re a miserable coward.” He smiled, pleased as if our exchange had won him some small victory. I pressed on. “How did you end up working for the English anyway? Aren’t you ashamed?” The smile vanished. He turned and walked away. I hoped Chana was watching—seeing me take control. The man would never interfere with another boarding, making it easier for the British to act unchecked, without American Jews watching their methods. He would carry the memory of my derisive look every day until he died of a heart attack in Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side in 1976, his loving children and almost as loving wife, two infidelities and one disputed paternity excepted, by his side.

He was gone when the tear gas hit. The shouts had mostly died down when I saw it—a small metal canister soaring in a perfect arc, thrown by someone who knew exactly what they were doing, trailing smoke. Someone else shouted first, “Gas!” The canister hit the ground with a muted thud, releasing a white cloud that spread fast. We all knew how gas moved by now.

Maybe I would have savored the bitter irony of Jews getting gassed by the British Army—if I weren’t so busy choking. But the worst wasn’t the breath. It was my eyes—burning, coated with liquid fire, every blink driving the poison deeper. I wanted to claw out each eyeball, rip it from its socket, and stomp on it with both feet. Instead, I rolled on the deck in agony, crashing into others with heavy thuds. If we were still moving, maybe we were still alive.

And everyone was. But one. I didn’t see her. I was blinded and carried off the ship by two men whose faces I would never know, because I couldn’t open my eyes. But she was real. Splayed like an abandoned rag doll, eyes shut tight. When she inhaled the toxic cloud, a man fell into her, crushing her lungs. The rancid poison lingered in her bronchi and bronchioles too long, causing relentless spasms and swelling that sealed every escape route from the burning. Fluid and inflammation made each breath impossible. The fire inside her chest burned hotter than the gas itself, and in the end, her body gave up.

But not before they lifted her as if she was still alive. “Heave! Ho!” they called, as the last ragged breath left her. She slipped away to the future her rabbi father had promised her. “In the World to Come, Olam Ha-Ba, the righteous are rewarded with closeness to Hashem, a light so pure even the wisest prophet could never comprehend it.” Those words comforted her still, as the mysteries of the universe unfolded.

The mucus oozing from her mouth was the only hint of the savage damage her lungs had taken. By the time they laid her down, she was just another Jew choked to death by gas. Like father, like daughter—breathless, floating into the next world, where justice still reigns.