Last night I read “Dawn” by Elie Wiesel. Despite my fatigue, I stayed up into the late hours of the night captivated by the beautiful words Wiesel used to compose the novel that raises questions of existence and meaning of war.
The book is about a young Jewish man Elisha who survived the Holocaust and was recruited to Israel as a fighter for the freedom of Zion from the occupation of the British Mandate. The British captivated an Israeli and sentenced him to death by dawn. The Zionist resistance took a British Hostage and threatened to execute him if the Jewish fighter was not released. The British did not concede, and Elisha, the young boy, was chosen from the entire resistance to murder the British Officer. The book is dedicated to the emotional turmoil Elisha experiences in the process of becoming a murderer.
It is chilling to think of the comparison between the Israeli resistance in 1948 and the Hamas movement today. How are they different? Both organizations used terror as a means to achieve their end.
I think there is one clear difference, which my next post will be about.
Below I copied an excerpt from the book that made me cry.
“I had met Catherine in Paris in 1945, when I had just come from Buchenwald, that other magical spot, where the living were transformed into dead and their future into darkness. I was weakened and half starved. One of the many rescue committees sent me to a camp where a hundred boys and girls were spending their summer vacation. The camp was in Normandy, where the early morning breeze rustled the same way it did in Palestine.
Because I knew no French I could not communicate with the other boys and girls. I ate and sunbathed with them, but I had no way of talking. Catherine was the only person who seemed to know any German and occasionally we exchanged a few words. Sometimes she came up to me at the dining-room table and asked me whether I had slept well, enjoyed my meal, or had a good time during the day.
She was twenty-six or –seven years old: small, frail, and almost transparent, with silky blonde, sunlit hair and blue, dreamy eyes which never cried. Her face was thin but saved from being bony by the delicacy of her features. She was the first woman I had seen from nearby. Before this—that is, before the war—I did not look at women. On my way to school or to the synagogue I walked close to the walls, with my eyes cast down to the ground. I knew that women existed, and why, but I did not appreciate the fact that they had a body, breasts, legs, hands, and lips whose touch sets a man’s heart to beating. Catherine revealed this to me.
The Camp was at the edge of a wood, and after supper I went walking there all by myself, talking to the murmuring breeze and watching the sky turn a deeper and deeper blue. I liked to be alone.
One evening Catherine asked if she might come with me, and I was too timid to say anything but yes. For half an hour, an hour, we walked in complete silence. At first I found the silence embarrassing, then to my surprise I began to enjoy it. The silence of two people is deeper than the silence of one. Involuntarily I began to talk.
“Look how the sky is opening up,” I said.
She threw back her head and looked above her. Just as I had said, the sky was opening up. Slowly at first, as if swept by an invisible wind, the stars drew away from the zenith, some moving to the right, others to the left, until the center of the sky was an empty space, dazzlingly blue and gradually acquiring depth and outline.
“Look hard,” I said; “let’s go on walking.”
As we walked on I told her the legend of the open sky. When I was a child the old master told me that there were nights when the sky opened up in order to make way for the prayers of unhappy children. On one such night a little boy whose father was dying said to God: “Father, I am too small to know how to pray. But I ask you to heal my sick father.” God did what the boy asked, but the boy himself was turned into a prayer and carried up into Heaven. From that day on, the master told me, God has from time to time shown himself to us in the face of a child.
“That is why I like to look at the sky at this particular moment,” I told Catherine. “I hope to see the child. But you are a witness to the truth. There’s nothing there. The child is only a story.”
It was then for the first time during the evening that Catherine spoke.
“Poor boy!” she exclaimed. “Poor boy!”
She’s thinking of the boy in the story, I said to myself. And I loved he for her compassion.
After this Catherine often went walking with me. She questioned me about my childhood and my more recent past, but I did not always answer. One evening she asked me why I kept apart from the other boys and girls in the camp.
“Because they speak a language I can’t understand” I told her.
“Some of the girls know German,” she said.
“But I have nothing to say to them.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said slowly, with a smile. “All you have to do is love them.”
I didn’t see what she was driving at and said so. Her smile widened and she began to speak to me of love. She spoke easily and well. Love is this and love is that; man is born to love; he is only alive when he is in the presence of a woman he loves or should love. I told her that I knew nothing of love, and I didn’t know it existed or had a right to exist.
“I’ll prove it to you,” she said.
The next evening, as she walked at my left side over the leaf-covered path, she took hold of my arm. At first I thought she needed my support, but actually it was because she wanted me to feel the warmth of her body. Then she claimed to be tired and said it would be pleasant to sit down on the grass under a tree. Once we had sat down she began to stroke my face and hair. Then she kissed me several times; first her lips touched mine and then her tongue burned the inside of my mouth. For several nights running we returned to the same place, and she spoke to me of love and desires and the mysteries of the heart. She took my hand and guided it over he breasts and thighs and hands that could set a man’s heart to beating and turn his blood to fire.
Then came the last evening. The month of vacation was over and I was to go to Paris the next day. As soon as we had finished supper we went to it for the last time under the tree. I felt sad and lonely, and Catherine held my hand in hers without speaking. The night was fair and calm. At intervals, like a warm breath, the wind played over our faces. It must have been one or two o’clock in the morning when Catherine broke the silence, turned her melancholy face toward me, and said:
“Now we’re going to make love.”
These words made me tremble. I was going to make love for the first time. Before her there had been no woman upon earth. I didn’t know what to say or do; I was afraid of saying the wrong thing or making some inappropriate gesture. Awkwardly I waited for her to take the initiative. With a suddenly serious look on her face she began to get undressed. She took off her clothes and was completely naked before me.
“Take off your shirt,” she ordered.
I was paralyzed; there was iron in my throat and lead in my veins; my arms and hands would not obey me. I could only look at her from head to foot and follow the rise and fall of her breasts. I was hypnotized by the call of her outstretched, naked body.
“Take off your shirt,” she repeated.
Then, as I did not move, she began to undress me. Deliberately she took off my shirt and shorts. Then she lay back on the grass and said:
“Take me.”
I got down on my knees. I stared at her for a long time and then I covered her body with kisses. Absently and without saying a word she stroked my hair.
“Catherine,” I said, “first there is something I must tell you.”
Her face took a blank and anguished expression, and there was anguish in the rustle of the breeze among the trees.
“No, no!” she cried. “Don’t tell me anything. Take me, but don’t talk.”
Heedless of her objection I went on:
“First, Catherine,” I must tell you…”
Her lips twisted with pain, and there was pain in the rustle of the breeze.
“No, no, no!” she implored. “Don’t tell me. Be quiet. Take me quickly, but don’t talk.”
“What I have to tell you is this,” I insisted: “You’ve won the game. I love you, Catherine… I love you.”
She burst into sobs and repeated over and over again:
“Poor boy! You poor boy!”
I picked up my shirt and shorts and ran away. Now I understood. She was referring not to the little boy in the sky but to me. She had spoken to me of love because she knew that I was the little boy who had been turned into a prayer and carried up into heaven. She knew that I had died and come back to earth, dead. This is why she had spoken to me of love and wanted to make love with me. I saw it all quite clearly. She liked making love with little boys who were going to die; she enjoyed the company of those who were obsessed with death. No wonder that her presence this night in Palestine was not surprising. (Dawn, Elie Wiesel, pp.41-43)
