Vivid fields of yellow rape glinted at me.
I rested my head against the carriage seat and watched idly as the countryside sped by the train window. But it was not my countryside, not Szpitali; it was some foreign land.
It was now September, and we were once again on the move. This time we were en route to the transit camp at Ahwaz in southern Iran.
My thoughts once more turned to Stefan, as they always did. I now felt sure we had lost each other forever. I felt odd today. My legs swelled; it was hot, yet I felt cold, and all at once I shivered and sweated.
Two days ago, Lodzia received the long-awaited letter from Gerhard. He was in Bagdad and complaining it was too hot. Six months ago, he would have given anything for a little heat.
The next thing I saw was Lodzia leaning over me as I came to, and Ella shaking my arm, urging me to wake up.
I was lying in a bed with spotless white sheets, in a proper building with electricity. There were nurses, wearing starched uniforms and everywhere looked so clean. ‘Where am I? What’s happened to me?’
‘You’re in the hospital in Ahwaz. You’ve had malaria.’
‘How long have I been here? Am I going to die?’
‘No, kohanie, sorry to disappoint you; you’re on the mend now. I’ve been so worried about you.’
‘But how’… I tried to raise myself onto my elbows, failed and flopped back in exhaustion.
‘Shh, is it any wonder after all you’ve been through? Your body couldn’t cope and gave up.’
‘What are we doing in Ahwaz?’
‘Don’t you remember? They’re taking us to Africa. We have to go via Karachi and try to avoid German submarines. And from there, kohanie, we sail to Africa.’
‘Did you miss the other ship because of me?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘Lodziu, why didn’t you leave me here and go on without me?’
‘Ahh, Marishu, don’t be so silly. My God, we couldn’t leave you behind. And I have a surprise for you – we shall sail on the MS Batory.’ She smiled then. ‘Ah, do I see a flicker of interest in your eyes?’
This time I managed to raise myself onto my elbows. ‘The Polish ship, Stefan Batory?’
They named the MS Batory after the 16th century Polish King, Stefan Batory.
From the moment I stepped on board I felt secure; it was like a piece of Poland. We were sailing on a Polish ship crewed by Polish seamen.
Escorted by two frigates, we passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman, and sailed south for two days.
The temperature was rising as we navigated what looked like a vast canal with mangrove swamps accompanying us for some ten kilometres or more before the Batory entered a wide bay and docked in Port Karachi.
Our connecting ship hadn’t yet docked and wasn’t due for another week. Meanwhile, we were to await its departure in a tented part of the city – The Country Club near University Road.
The evening temperature was insufferable as the day’s surplus heat continued quivering off the scorched earth, which hurled it back to the heavens. After our frantic arrival in Pahlevi, our anxious journey through the mountains, the well-ordered manner of being processed through and out of Iran, Karachi seemed a million miles removed. It was also all things British.
Noise beset us from all directions. Amid the fretwork of shadows, the dense aromas of spices mingled with the fragrance of patchouli, and did battle with the foetid stench of sewers. For a British penny, street sellers offered rags dipped in water from leather buckets, to refresh us while we fought of flies and mosquitos. There were horses with rickshaws, and women sweeping streets with wide straw brooms. A performing bear and his owner turned tricks for onlookers, while camels pulled a cart full of pipes to some construction project. There were beggars and shoeshine boys, and it seemed as if all life was here.
All life was here. We spent the night in a tent crawling with bugs and insects, thankful when morning arrived and we could get into the open air. We were even more grateful when it was time to board the ship to Africa.
40
We sailed west across the Arabian Sea.
Each day, as the sun set molten bronze and the evening clouds descended, I sat by myself at the back of the ship. Alone with my sorrow, my trail of dreams unfulfilled, its soporific motion hypnotised me as it ploughed up and down through the waves. It soothed me, anaesthetised my pain. After the day was spent, and when only a thread of light remained on the horizon, did I rejoin Lodzia and Ella before climbing into my bunk bed, the tears always there behind my eyes.
Eight days later, the port of Dar-es-Salaam came into view, but something was wrong.
Lodzia was panicking. The insect bites on Ella’s leg which she had received in Karachi, had turned nasty. ‘Look at these livid purple streaks,’ she wailed.
Ella was shaking, and her entire persona had changed.
I felt her forehead. ‘She’s feverish.’
Then Ella threw up.
A concerned fellow passenger said she would get Ella to the hospital with that – and fast.
The tugboat drew our ship into harbour and passengers gathered at the rails to watch. Lodzia was now desperate to get her daughter off and to seek medical help since there was no one on board and nothing was moving fast enough for her.
While Ella was slipping in and out of delirium down on the dock, Africans were awaiting our arrival with baskets of oranges, calling up to us with broad smiles and ‘Jambo mzungu’ (Hello white people). Everyone smiled back and waved. They were friendly, joyful people. Neither Lodzia nor I waved back; we were too busy applying streams of cold compresses to Ella’s chest and forehead.
Everything to Lodzia must have been passing in a blur, but I had arranged we received priority to leave the ship. While the other passengers were being sorted into groups for their onward journeys to the various refugee camps in the interior, Lodzia, Ella and I were rushed to the Sewa Haji hospital in the port area.
Ella had septicaemia.
As if to re-emphasise that someone ‘up there’ was looking after us, a Polish-speaking nurse passed on the doctor’s message. ‘The doctor said it would be best to prepare for the worst, because half of those who have blood poisoning die.’
We both stared at her in disbelief, because she was so matter-of-fact about it all.
Die! How could she die? Ella was perfectly fine yesterday, wasn’t she? Or was she? How long had she had this bacterium coursing through her veins?
‘Tell me what to do,’ Lodzia begged her. ‘I’ll do anything, just tell me what.’ Her entire world had come to a stop.
‘Pray,’ the nursed squeezed her shoulder, ‘and hope for the best.’
Day and night Lodzia sat beside Ella’s bed, watching her dying child clinging to life.
I strolled around the hospital grounds to get some air and to stretch my legs. It was only when I glanced up at the hospital window behind which my young niece had been fighting for her life for the past three weeks, did I realise how ill she was, and might not survive.
Nothing catastrophic had befallen Lodzia or Ella so far – and now this. Who or what determined who was to live or to die, I wondered. What did people have to do to survive? At Vodopad, 43 souls lost their lives, but they were no different from our family. Everyone had the same amount of food and endured the same hardships.
I realised then it was Mama and Tatta who had made that difference. It was their self-sacrificing attitudes that kept us all alive. Mama not only cared for us, but she helped others, sharing our precious food when Sasha’s little boy was ill. Even then, disease and hunger got them.