Yiddish for Pirates(42)



“Next year in Jerusalem …” several of the old Jews murmured, repeating the words of the Haggadah.

“We shall never have Jerusalem, not in this life. Not on this earth,” Do?a Gracia said.

“But when the Messiah comes …” one man began, but then was quiet, looking over the horizon to the distant end of the world.

“Maybe in the lands of the Great Khan,” another said. “Far from the Church and our kings. I hear there are Jews …”

“Or in Cipangu or Cathay.”

“Or Ethiope.”

“We’d have to travel to an entirely new world to find a land we could call our own.”

“Maybe the new islands discovered in the Ocean Sea.”

“Maybe,” Do?a Gracia said. “But I fear that even the moon would not be far enough.”

For now, we remained on the Turkish ship.

“Kemal Reis,” I heard the sailors sing. “Kemal Reis.” It was some time before I understood that “Kemal Reis” was the admiral of their fleet, on their way to land soldiers at Malaga.

Except for those currently engaged in the delicate art of midsea brawling, enslaving and plundering.

Ech, if only we’d been captured later, we’d not have been captured at all.

“They call Ferdinand a wise ruler?” Sultan Bajazet said after hearing of the 1492 expulsion order. “He impoverishes his own country and enriches mine.” Then he sent a decree to his provinces to welcome those expelled—both Jews and Muslims—to his empire.

“Excellency, how many to exclude?”

“None is too many.”

Turkish death, keneynehoreh, did not await the Jews, but rather those who treated them harshly or refused them admission.

But sometimes history doesn’t wait for the future. A few days after our capture, Sarah was carried onto a boat bound for the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul where she would become an exotic kaleh-moyd concubine in the Seraglio, the Imperial Harem.

Or, she’d have an audition.

She kicked and wept and clawed.

“Monsters,” she said. “Devils.”

I could do nothing but follow and become witness. When all was quiet, there’d be my words, and they would offer some comfort.

Once history is over, memory is all that’s left.

Later, a merchant sailor who had once sailed with Do?a Gracia told me what I did not know then—no one but the midwife of heaven, her sleeves rolled up in the sweet soup of stars, could have known then—but Sarah’s womb was filling with Inquisition baby, its father, a Father, and killed by Moishe.

Her audition would not go well.

Feh.

May the Sultan’s shmeckel become like a hedgehog or sea urchin: spiny and round and considered a delicacy when cooked and sliced thin.





The Turks sailed and prayed. Five times a day the renegadoes crouched beneath the billowing sails and spoke to their Adonai at Mecca. Starboard, larboard, toward bowsprit or rudder, as the direction of the ship changed, east moved about as if it were the sun in its orbit around the earth.

It would be another century before Copernicus had the seychl to say, “That’s a tall story you tell me, Ptolemy,” but for now, Sarah’s world was the centre of a sorry tale told by Turks and, except for the downward davening, it was much like being on any ship.

Except that these turbaned swabs treated her well.

“I will not eat,” she moaned, refusing the food that they brought on large brass platters. Yogurt, nuts, dried fruit, mutton and noodles instead of the usual shipboard salt goat. These Turkish sailors intended to keep her succulent—zaftik—for the Sultan or his princes. I’d seen the harem. It was a gold cage for birds with splendid plumage and quick brains. As long as you were happy inside such a cage, you were happy. And so if once or twice you had to shtup in the dark on a soft bed surrounded by perfume, silks and jewels …

So I’d help her escape. My sea-green maideleh.

To be imprisoned on a boat is to have the ocean for a jailer. We would have to wait until landfall.

I cannot read, least of all the stars, so I was unable to determine our position, but as the waves began to rise and the wind whinnied through the rigging, I could read the sails’ pages and knew they foretold storm.

The sailors motioned toward an indistinct ridge of land.

“Sicily,” they said.

The captain and quartermaster would not alter course for the island, one large pock out of Ferdinand’s many on the pimpled face of Europe. Instead the bo’sun called, “All hands ahoy! Tumble up here and take in sail.”

The clouds collected in dark scrolls. We were close-hauled on the wind, and nearly keeled over.

“Got in Himl,” I said. “Or wherever you are.”

The great hoofs of sea beat our bows like a meshugener shmid hammering at an anvil. The water shpritzing over the deck turned the crew into world champion shvitzers swimming through hell. The halyards had been let go, and the great sails filled out and backed against the masts. The wind shrayed through the rigging, loose ropes flew about. Orders were shouted from sailor to sailor.

“Tie the boom!”

“Seize the mainsheet!”

“Reef the mizzen tops’il, lad!”

A boychik of a sailor was ordered aloft the mizzen—to where I hid. He climbed and laid out on the yard with all his strength. As he did he vomited into the black sky and I saw his frightened-wide eyes look right at me. I climbed beyond the reach of his arm and his outpourings, higher up the mast, but the sharp whip of the wind lashed me and I was blown over the shuddering black back of the sea, far from Sarah, safe harbour, or solid things.

Gary Barwin's Books