The Man on the Railway Handcar

This is similar to the hancar I saw but the levers were further back and more upright. There was room in the centre for a chair on a small platform

Once in the Spring of 1939, when I was no taller than a mandrill but a deal more troublesome, I climbed to the top of an eight-foot dry-stone wall overlooking the Jaffa to Jerusalem railway line.  I could only accomplish this feat because our Greek landlord’s Arab workers had built a ramp against the wall while our family was on furlough.  The workers had stretched out on to steady their aim as they took pot shots at passing trains. 

If Dewya, our fourteen-year-old maid of all work, and my mother had known about that ramp, neither of them would have allowed me to play in the olive groves by the boundary wall.  My father knew about the ramp but, unlike my mther, he never stopped me doing anything just because it was dangerous. 

So there I was perched high above the railway line, waiting.  It was that time of the year, when winter rains were past and spring ones had not yet started.  Flies swarmed over goat poo on the narrow path between the wall and railway line.  I liked the animal smell. It reminded me I was back home in Palestine.  My bottom enjoyed the gentle heat from stones warmed by spring sunshine.  Brown lizards darted across the stones.  One ran across the back of my hand and disappeared into a crack.  I wanted it to return so kept my hand still until I had to move to scratch at biting ants. 

At last there was sound, but not the roaring and whistling of a majestic engine preparing to leave Jerusalem station, instead a low rumbling noise. An inspection handcar appeared round the curve in the line. 

Brown-capped prisoners, with chains round their ankles, worked levers attached to the sides of the trolley.  In front, two men in railway uniform examined the track.  At the rear, a pair of railway police with astrakhan kalpaks held tommy guns at the ready.  In the centre, a white-bearded man sat on a chair, his hands tied behind his back.  His suit was European, but he wore a shepherd’s white keffiyah fastened with a black iqal.  He gazed ahead, chin held high, reminding me of a picture in my bible of Jesus before Pontius Pilot.

Ten minutes after the trolley had passed, the steam engine arrived with a satisfactory ear splitting clacking.  I stood up to wave but, to my disappointment, iron shutters hid the windows of every passenger carriage.  There were even shutters on the guard’s van.  As I ran back down the ramp, I wanted to cry but didn’t, because my father would have said that was sissy.

This memory remained for twelve years uncontaminated either by photos or other people’s reminiscences, and typifies my childhood, a background of political turmoil setting off the dramas of family life.

At the time, I didn’t mention the trolley to my parents.  Normally I told Dad all about my day as soon as he came home, but in early 1939 his Post and Telegraphs job took him to Jericho everyday and I was asleep before he arrived home.  I didn’t tell my mother, because I didn’t want to get into trouble for climbing the wall. 

I did tell Dewya when I returned to the house.  She said that the British should have put the Grand Mufti on the trolley.  I remember that because  she spat on the floor after she said the word ‘Mufti’ and she had to wipe the spit up quickly before my mother found out.  I discovered much later that Dewya’s guardian uncle belonged to a political party opposed to the one led by the Grand Mufti and many people she admired had been assassinated.

It was 1950 before I mentioned the incident to my mother, I forget in what context, but she told me firmly that the British had never treated Arabic prisoners that way, so I must have made it up.  I consigned the incident to a mental cabinet, labelled ‘imaginary memories.’  There it remained until shortly after my mother had died in the 1980’s when I read a book that referred to the British placing Arab hostages on inspection trolleys during The Rebellion. 

In 1938 I assumed the government had put the notable  and  fellaheen prisoners on the trolley so Arab rebels would blow them up instead of the train.  Strange as it seems to my adult self, it didn’t occur to me to ask why railway employees and policemen should co-operate in their own sacrifice.  I now know that Arab dissidents had detonators sufficiently sophisticated to allow a light trolley to pass over them.  Line inspectors used the trolley so they could signal to the train behind if they found  signs of sabotage.  Adding a very visible, handcuffed Arabic effendi to the inspection trolley and using fellaheen prisoners to propel it was merely a piece of theatre designed to discourage urban Arabs from supporting rural zealots in their efforts to rid Palestine of both the British and the  Jews.

Once I discovered my memory had not tricked me, I asked myself why my mother had denied the existence of that hostage with such vigour.  My mother had been noted for valuing honesty above all virtues so I was certain she had not deliberately lied even though every grown-up in Jerusalem must have known about the hostage. 

However,  I had realised by then that someone so relentlessly honest as my mother needed the protection of a robust subconscious.

 Early in her life, my mother had acquired the notion that God had created the British as a special vehicle for spreading the gospel and to this purpose had endowed them with moral superiority.  In the late nineteen thirties, she would have found nothing immoral in putting an Arab civilian on humiliating public display.  Like everyone else, however, her notions of morality changed over the years.   By 1950, she regarded such behaviour as Nazi-like and cruel.  To concede that a British government was capable of such an act would have undermined her belief in God’s choice of the British as his chosen servants.

1939 Intimations of Mortality at the Jerusalem Post Office

The Main Post Office in Jerusalem

The episode, which was to have a huge impact on the way I view the world, started with my left school shoe disintegrating when I was five.  My mother reluctantly admitted that it was beyond salvation. Since my school operated a strict uniform policy and my only other shoes were a pair of scruffy sandals, before I could return to school we would have to go into town to buy another pair.

My father, a telecommunications engineer,   had left the family chequebook in his workroom in the main Jerusalem Post Office.  He gave my mother the key to the drawer where he kept it, before jumping into the P&T van that took him to Jericho,  where he was currently working on an automatic telephone exchange.

My mother was in a hurry because she was teaching that afternoon so we raced up to the Bethlehem Road but missed the always-overcrowded Arab bus coming from Bethlehem. The cleaner Jewish bus my mother preferred stood at its terminal on the other side of the level crossing. 

To my delight, and my mother’s exasperation, the gates swung shut in front of us.  I pressed my face against the wire gate as the awe-inspiring engine thundered past.  It was a freight train so there were no passengers to wave to but I was not too upset.  My father had told me that I could learn more about the economy of the country from its trains than I could from any book.  I hadn’t understood what he meant but I enjoyed counting the different types of rolling stock.  Iron wagons like giants’ wheelbarrows piled high with huge rocks; steel gaz containers shaped like enormous spectacle cases with red sea shells painted on their sides; wooden sheep trucks with narrow slits below their roofs; secretive packing cases on wheels filled with unknown treasure, and post office vans with barred windows.  In those vans, Dad said, postal workers sorted parcels and letters for streets in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Gaza.  I knew all about sorting mail.  When my mother had been seriously ill, Dad had taken me to work and left me in the Post Office sorting shed with the foreman I called Mr Parcelchief.  Mr Parcelchief taught me how to take parcels from sacks and throw them into the correct rope net trolley when he read out the name of a country.  I hoped I would see him again when we collected the chequebook.

The Egged bus was still there when the gates opened, with plenty of empty seats because no Arabs travelled on a Jewish bus in the summer of 1939.

We left the bus outside the main Post Office, in my childish opinion, the most elegant building in all Jerusalem.  The doors, set in giant sized arches, led into an enormous hall paved with white marble.  The counters of grey marble shone like mirrors.  Gleaming pillars, as tall as the ones Samson had pulled down, supported a carved ceiling from which hung chandeliers on rods twice the length of broomsticks.

My mother moved to the bank of brass boxes that glistened across an entire wall, unlocked our box, and took out letters she put in her pocket to read later.  Then, to my joy, we headed for the door in the back wall that opened into the sorting shed.

Mr Parcelchief, wearing his usual crimson fez and smooth grey checked suit with thin red lines running through it, salaamed my mother as we entered, then waved at me. 

‘Hello Miss Chiefhelper.  Ready for work?  Here’s a parcel for India.’

 ‘You don't have to tell me what’s on it now,’ I told him proudly, ‘I can read.  Sometimes I can even read double writing.’  I threw the parcel into the correct bin.  He clapped, just like in the olden days. 

My mother was already striding up the stairs to Dad's office. 

‘I'll come and help again in the summer holidays,’ I promised Mr.  Parcelchief, before running after her.

 My mother took the chequebook from Dad’s desk and looked at her watch.  ‘Gracious, half past ten already!’

To save time we left by the fire escape at the rear of the building.

At the shoe shop, the assistant x-rayed my feet before producing a pair of black school shoes. 

As we left the shop, with my shoes in a beautiful gold and green cedar of Lebanon patterned paper bag, my mother looked at her watch again, before dragging me helter-skelter to Jaffa gate.  A fire engine speeding past, bells clanging, held us up as we tried to cross the road but we managed to catch our bus just as it was pulling away.  However, it was not long before the driver came to an abrupt and unexpected halt.  Police had barred the way ahead with oil drums.

My mother looked at her watch and blew out her breath in frustration.  ‘Not another protest march!’

The driver reversed the bus and took us through unfamiliar narrow streets but ended up back on the Bethlehem Road near the station.  We jumped off at our usual stop and raced downhill so my mother wouldn’t be late for work.

Half way up our drive, Dewya, our maid-servant came running to meet us, holding out a slip of paper. 

‘Mrs Foster, Mrs Foster, Mr.  Foster rang.  He says to call him straight away on this number.  It's very urgent.’

My mother shot ahead.  When I reached the house, my mother was standing in the hall with the phone pressed to her ear.  The one-sided conversation I overheard went something like this.

 ‘What?’ Pause  ‘Oh no!  What time did it happen?’  - pause, ‘We were in the shoe shop then.’  pause – ‘We went out by the back way.’  A much longer pause – ‘Oh no! .’  She sank down on the hall chair - ‘All right then.  I'll expect you when I see you.’  She put the phone down and placed her hands over her eyes.

I went closer.  ‘What's happened?’

My mother looked down at me and held my hand even though we weren’t crossing a road.  ‘A parcel bomb.  It blew up in the Post Office.’

That sounded interesting.  ‘Were all the parcels blown up?’

‘Not just the parcels, I'm afraid.’

 I felt my stomach go funny then.  I didn't want to know any more.  I pulled my hand out of my mother’s and went into the kitchen to ask Dewya if I could help lay the table.

Dad came home even later than usual.  I crept down stairs in my pyjamas and peeped round the door of the dining room.  He was spreading small photographs round his dinner plate. 

My mother saw me.  ‘Back to bed, Peggy.’

 ‘No,’ Dad waved a hand, ‘Better to let her look than have her imagining things.  Peggy, these are photos the police took.’

 I forced myself to walk over to the table and peer down at the photos.  Lumps of concrete and pieces of jagged marble covered the Post Office's white floor.  Metal rods spilt out of pillars stripped to their concrete insides, but I couldn’t see any bits of body.  A question popped out of my mouth although I didn't really want it answered.  ‘Who was hurt?’

 ‘They took lots of people to hospital.’  Dad clenched his fists.  ‘Most of them are going to be all right.  One person though, the one who was holding the bomb when it went off, took the full blast. He’s dead, I am afraid.’

‘It could have been Peggy,’ my mother muttered, ‘She was holding a parcel only a few minutes earlier.’

I ran out of the room then without waiting for my father to finish answering my question.  I felt as if I was deep inside my body,  buried so my fleshy outer part could get along without me.

My body crept back into the lounge. It kissed my mother and  father good-night.  I sensed it was smiling at them.  It waited in front of my mother. Hidden inside my body, I wanted her to pick me up, put me on her lap, and cuddle me but she didn’t.

‘Thank goodness she is still too young to understand,’ I heard her say as my body left the room again.

My body and I got together again after I had climbed back into bed, and I knew it had never really left me.  As I lay there, I couldn’t stop thinking of what had happened to a dead dog I had watched decompose day after day when we lived on Mt Carmel and realised that that must happen to most people too.  All that talk about going to heaven was only for special people like my parents.  The blown-up bits of Mr Parcelchief’s body were going to rot and stink like the dog, because he hadn’t been SAVED and one day mine would too because I wasn’t converted and I would be inside my rotting body unable to escape.

I didn’t talk about the bombing again with my parents, and my father didn’t take me to work that summer holiday so it was only when I read a list of pre-war  Irgun attacks a few days ago  that I realised  it wasn’t my friend, the foreman of the parcel department, who had died, but an army officer who had been killed while attempting to defuse  the parcel bomb.

  

Lost Soul

I first bought a book by Malika Gandhi because the central theme of the book concerned the partition of the Indian sub-continent and all the horrors that went with it. That Partition has always interested me because I was involved with another partition that  that followed it - the partition of Palestine in 1948.
I can never understand why the UN voted for the Partition of Palestine after they had seen the tragic consequences  in India and had been warned by the British that partition was not a option  for a country the size of Wales with water resources confined to  particular areas meaning water had to be piped from afar to irrigate the most fertile soils -  but enough of my rant!  I enjoyed the book of Malika;s that I had bought with its mix of history, magical realism and romance. so was pleased to find myself sitting next to Malika in a writers meet-up  in the Midlands and found her an interesting personality.
When she ask me and several others on facebook  to put the promotion of her latest book on my blog I was only too ready to do so.
Unfortunately I didn't realise the transitory nature of the blog tour she was taking part in and when her material arrived on the 15th I set it aside until the worst of a personal crisis I was going through was over. However,  an email on my computer  a few minutes ago alerted me to the fact that this is the final day of her blog tour,  so I've set aside my work and hope this hasn't been composed in too much haste.If you're quick you'll still be in time to buy and claim your freebie
Here is what Malika has sent me.

 by Malika Gandhi

A story of a spirit who has been alone for over a hundred years, who suffers her dead mother’s wrath. Will she ever be forgiven?

.....

When a Soul begins to ask questions, she expects answers. 
Aanchal wanders the lonely haveli (Indian mansion) at night. The villagers become aware of a presence and fear a girl never seen in their midst. 
Who is she and where did she come from? Who turns the lights on in the old ruin every night? 

Aanchal is not afraid of the villagers who want her banished, but she is afraid of her mother's yearly visit from the Other Side. Aanchal wants to be forgiven but will she have to pay a price before she is granted her wish? 

When Kunaal arrives with Jennifer, Aanchal sees the chance to right what went wrong, but she will need help. Will her friends help her? Will her mother's spirit forgive her? Will she finally be ready to cross over? 

Lost Soul - a harrowing tale of expectations and long-awaited hope. 

Free 15-17^th July 2015 – don’t miss out!

Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00THMNDW4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

As a THANK YOU for reading this book, Malika Gandhi would like to offer you a free ebook of any of her other titles. All you have to do is subscribe to her mailing list, and she will get straight back to you!

Just go to this link!

http://eepurl.com/bqdnc5