The bus was almost empty. It grew emptier from stop to stop, until they were the only passengers left: the child went to sit on another bench at the back of the bus, so that it wouldn’t look empty. And Maurice still had to go back to Tel Aviv, not to Dr. Berger, to somewhere else, to somebody else. He didn’t see a penny from Dr. Berger, “who took the money from the poor souls he promised to cure and ran away to France,” said the mother.
PAPERS
THE SUHBA, A group of comrades I established and led, shaped my private-family and sociopolitical personality for many years. Saheb is an Arabic word that means “friend, comrade.” Suhba: the plural of Saheb. The Suhba elected me unanimously as its sociopolitical and cultural-spiritual leader. As a result of my election, I took it upon myself to perform faithfully and in a volunteer capacity this modest role, with all the responsibility it implies. I remember that the first thing upon which we were all agreed and the first condition undertaken by every saheb and sworn to by his oath of honor was: a prohibition on revealing or talking about the membership or the modes of operation of the Suhba. It should be noted that all the friends, without exception, adhered strictly to this obligation. I have declared in the past and I declare again that I take upon myself the consequences of the well-known existence of the Suhba. The Suhba became a household word among considerable sections of our broader public. It is also quite well-known to institutions, political parties, public figures, and leaders in Israel and abroad.
The number of times I was questioned about the Suhba cannot be counted, nor can the number of times attempts were made to sabotage or destroy this body of friends. Some of the questions addressed to me were innocent; others were cunning, self-interested, diplomatic, and undiplomatic. To them all we had a simple answer: a saheb is a friend and suhba are friends. Would you like to get to know them? To the extent that this answer did not satisfy the questioner, who was intent on discovering our sociopolitical principles, we added mockingly: We are not at liberty to discuss our friends and it would be immoral to do so. Did we ask you about your friends? Obviously neither the questions nor the answers interested the authorities and the Ben-Gurionist circles, who never stopped hounding us in order to crush and destroy us. In pursuit of this vile purpose they employed all the methods and means at their disposal, both aboveboard and underhand. Their first target was the head of the Suhba, your humble servant and the author of The Solution? Volumes would not suffice to recount all the tricks they played on me and describe all the obstacles they placed in my path. They even succeeded in separating me from my family by means of libel, slander, and threats. This was the worst blow they inflicted on me, whose consequences and pain are still with me to this day.
Well aware as I was of the degree of cruelty, immorality, lack of conscience, humanity, and democracy inherent in the behavior of those in power, I hid whatever I could about the Suhba from them. First of all I resolutely refrained from officially confirming the existence of the organization in Israel or in the Diaspora, I refused to register the members, to hand out membership cards, to collect dues, and so on. This, in spite of all the “tempting” offers made to me personally and to many other members of the Suhba. It is probably due to these measures that I succeeded in preventing the forces of division and material and moral corruption from doing their contemptible work in our ranks.
My firm position with regard to the social-organizational problem of the Suhba and my vigorous rejection of all complacency and sociopolitical conformism saved us from certain ruin. Experience teaches that destruction and disintegration were the fate of all the ethnic-Sephardie organizations that arose in the State of Israel, after Ben-Gurionism succeeded in destroying the Federation of Sephardim, which was second in size only to the General Federation of Labor. It may well be, too, that only thanks to this firm stance I saved many comrades from falling victim to the degeneracy and cowardice that unfortunately characterized so many public figures from among the Sephardim and members of Mizrahi ethnic groups.
The Suhba was always active in thought and deed. It worked in various ways to deliver its message to the public at large. Hed HaMeorer, the organ of the Suhba, reached all the leaders and important people in the country. The existence of the Suhba as an active organization could therefore not be cast in doubt. My friends and I were always there wherever and whenever our presence was needed and desired. Our center or headquarters operated on the move, like soldiers in the field; we lived among our public, suffering their poverty and their pain. It activated us and we informed it of its rights. Our center would assemble in one of the houses in the neighborhoods and finish its discussions in one of the streets or popular cafés in the marketplaces or suburbs. Sometimes we received a call when we were in the north, and that same day we traveled to the south, and vice versa. In most parts of the country we met friends and Suhba, and sometimes the distant friends came to us. They all wanted to know what was happening, asked questions, clarified issues, and wholeheartedly and generously volunteered their assistance. The membership of the Suhba was diverse, including native Israelis, Ashkenazim, and people from all the ethnic communities in the country. For our part we never questioned them about their political party affiliations. This question was of no interest to us. Every new saheb had to know one simple thing: that the Suhba was the Suhba of The Solution? The solution in which we believed was the solution to the problem of peace, both internal and external peace.
These beliefs were proclaimed in a manifesto pasted up all over the country in the year 1964.
I owe appreciation, respect, and admiration to all those who accompanied the Suhba on its difficult path from the beginning to the present day. These dear friends, despite all the obstacles of poverty, oppression, cruelty, etc., set on their path by a certain doctrine, despite the planned policy of division, reaction, and lying propaganda that was their daily lot, were able to overcome all these things and continue on their path. They stood firm and walked tall in spite of all the obstacles, the dangers, the risks, and the suffering inflicted on them in their private lives and in every step of the way with me.
PIAZZA SAN MARCO: FIFTH VISIT
THERE WERE TWO photographs of Piazza San Marco, one in his possession and one in hers. His conservation instincts were even weaker than hers, because of his personality and because of his history: his history was such that he almost always ran away, leaving everything behind except for a bundle of papers typed on his typewriter (“the memoirs I’m writing”), and afterward, when it vanished at some stage, on the little Olivetti that the mother once bought me as a gift.
He came one day (“one day”—the bubble of air in the bowl of time, the moment of his appearance, which was always “one day”) and said that the apartment he was living in at the time had been broken into, they had smashed everything up, there was nothing left. He was a wreck: the color of his skin, the lines of his wide mouth with its sensuous lips, the nostrils, the inside of his shirt collar at the back of his neck — everything was gray. “I was up all night searching in the mess for that picture of the mother and you when you were little and you came to visit me in Italy. I don’t care about anything except that picture, which I couldn’t find,” he said. His eyes filled. The little stick of ash of his cigarette held motionless in the air pointed down to the floor, dropping at the last minute on its way to the ashtray. “But what did they take?” I asked. He had nothing of value, and what he did have could be bundled up in a single sheet, which is what he did when he moved from one place to another. “I don’t care about anything,” he said again, reached for the plate of cookies, took one, and put it back again: “Only that picture of you and the mother, and the typewriter I work on. That typewriter is my work.” His lower, drooping lip trembled a little: for a moment he looked to me like he sometimes looked to himself, without the effort to make an impression on the world. He made a living then from writing applications to the municipality, to government offices, and to the courts, especially for the owners of stalls in the Aliya market and the Carmel market. He had five or six of these clients. I gave him my typewriter.