LONDON, 5 September 1973
Dear Dvora,
I’ve temporarily shed my roles of wife-mother-daughter, in-law and out-law, and I’m enjoying my one-ness. I’m staying with Pat. You remember her. We taught school together until she was arrested, jailed, released, then house-arrested before she left for London on a one way ticket. She lives in the East End and has a tough teaching job for which Judo is a more appropriate qualification than an MA in English literature. Tiny flat, peeling plaster, rusted bath, but warm hospitality. We talk till crazy hours about everything except politics. Some of her best friends are Zionists.
Is Ami out the army yet? The last time you wrote, he was “somewhere in the Sinai”. I can’t imagine that child a soldier. I hope he starts painting again, soon.
I’ll send postcards from everywhere so’s you can join me on my travels, vicariously, at least.
Love, Sara
WASHINGTON, 13 September 1973
Dear Pat,
Thanks again for your hospitality. London was marvellous, cool, civilised, as always. I’m still hoarse from all that talk. Yet so much was left unsaid. Should one say everything to friends?
New York was alive, vibrant, scary. I’m used to suppressed violence; here it’s open, raw, physical. My neck hairs stood on end when we drove through Harlem. I’ve never felt that in Soweto. But for someone on leave from authoritarianism, it’s a delight to see errant leaders hauled over the coals on TV.
Washington is, well, monumental. Those marble pillars will make splendid ruins one day.
Love, Sara
MONTEREY, 23 September 1973
Dear Dvora,
By now you’ve received my postcards from Chicago, San Francisco, Yosemite. I hate being a tourist, skimming surfaces. America is evading me. Cannery Row, like other places I’ve known from literature, was a disaster. Tourists, incense-scented shoppes, and not a malodorous cannery in sight.
My one-ness turns to lone-ness and I’m getting homesick. For where? Israel? England? South Africa? I feel fragmented. When I write to you I say, give back conquered territory, peace at any price. Who am I to speak? My children are in South Africa, not in border outposts. And when I write to Pat, I say, Israel has to survive, to have defensible borders.
I’ll write again from Mexico.
Love, Sara
MEXICO CITY, 24 September 1973
Dear Pat,
Mexico’s exciting. Modern industrial in some cities, half-pagan in the country-side. In spite of (because of?) four centuries of Catholicism, peasants still make offerings to the old gods, often with devastating effect. The combined might of the rain gods, Tlaloc, Chac and Cocijo, produced destructive floods last month, and the dead from the recent earthquake are still being counted. Nature’s violent here, a tomb, not a womb. Small wonder the Aztecs bought off Huitzilopochtil with human hearts each day; they had to ensure the daily rebirth of the sun. I’d have hated to be an Aztec mother.
Love, Sara
MEXICO CITY, 26 September 1973
Dear Dvora,
The Pyramids at Teotihuacan are magnificent, mysterious. It’s as well I’m seeing pyramids somewhere. I’ll never get to Egypt.
The picture on this postcard is of the monument to Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec Emperor. First they annihilate cultures, then they put up memorials.
Tonight’s Rosh Hashana. Reckon if I can go to cathedrals, mission churches, mosques and Aztec temples, I can go to the synagogue, without abandoning unbelief.
Love, Sara
YUCATAN, 30 September 1973
Dear Pat,
In Mexico I’m an anthropology student, not a mere tourist, gods forbid. That macabre picture postcard I sent you from Chichen Itza, was of a Tzompantli, a Toltec skull rack. First the sacrificial victims lost their hearts, alive and beating, to the gods, then they had their heads stacked on this grim structure, with its bas-reliefs of death’s head. My Mayan guide assured me that the Maya had been peace-loving, civilised people until the conquering Toltecs introduced human sacrifice. He forgot to add that in pre-Toltec times, virtuous virgins were ceremonially drowned in cenotes to propitiate the rain god Chac.
It’s clear, however, why the Maya had a rain god, not a sun god. It’s 102 in the shade at the moment.
Love, Sara
OAXACA, 5 October 1973
Dear Dvora,
It’s marvellous to escape from one’s own troubled culture for a while, but the perspective’s been disheartening. There’s this recurring theme of fear, ignorance, power abuse, sacrifice, bloodshed. And to what end? The gods are insatiable.
The picture on this postcard is of the ball court at Monte Alban. This ritual ball game was played all over pre-Columbian Mexico. The captain of the winning team was sacrificed to the gods. Some incentive. My fascination with these cultures is wearing thin; they’re all pervaded with the smell of blood.
Tomorrow’s Yom Kippur and I return to Mexico City. I fast on Yom Kippur. Superstition? Propitiation? Identification? Who knows?
Love, Sara
MEXICO CITY, 7 October 1973
My dear Dvora,
I spent Yom Kippur at the Museum of Anthropology and didn’t know war had broken out till evening. The first reports are dreadful, and my anxiety about all of you is unbearable. I watch TV, and wonder if your Ami is in one of those tanks rolling over the desert. I want to pack up and go home, and this time I know where home is.
Very little news comes through, and that which does, is conflicting. I tried to phone you but the lines are clogged. Please write. Just a few words. I’ll be back in Johannesburg in three days.
Love, Sara
JOHANNESBURG, 10 October 1973
My dearest Dvora,
Please write, just a few words. I haven’t been able to get through by phone.
Love, Sara
JOHANNESBURG, 21 October 1973
My dearest Dvora,
It was wonderful to hear your voice last night. Telephone conversations are almost as frustrating as letters, except that one receives an immediate reply. I’m so relieved everyone’s well and that Ami is recovering from his injuries. You sounded so weary, so stoic. I’d have been a raving lunatic by now.
I wish the war was over, and that a permanent peace was made. The bloodshed, the dreadful bloodshed.
I’ve not written to Pat since the war. I can’t bear to know what she’s thinking. Our friendship would founder on words like “neo-imperialism” and “expansionism”.
Love, Sara
JOHANNESBURG, 23 October 1973
Dear Pat,
Thanks for your letter. You ask about Dvora. I phoned her two days ago. She and her husband are well. Her daughter and her family got away from their kibbutz minutes before it was overrun by peace-loving Syrians. Her younger son, Ami, was wounded by grenade splinters in his left arm and leg. He’s recovering and will soon be rejoining what’s left of his unit.
Other news. Two of the youngsters from the kibbutz I lived on have been killed. One was the nineteen-year-old son of old friends. I didn’t know the other boy. His parents joined the kibbutz after I left. They could’ve been my sons.
You ask why I haven’t written. I’m afraid your views are the same as those of your fellow exiles, and I can’t bear to hear them at the moment. Yet I need to know what you’re thinking. We’ve skirted the issue for too many years. If you don’t reply, I’ll understand.
Yours, Sara
JOHANNESBURG, 26 October 1973
My dearest Dvora,
It’s hard to write these days. What can I tell you? Our local Zionists have organised a Sacrifice Sale to raise money for Israel. What the hell’s a sacrifice sale, I asked the collector. You give us something you don’t want, and we sell it to someone who does. Now that’s a sensible sacrifice. You don’t lose your heart and head that way. I wanted to show him a drawing of an Aztec sacrifice.
I’ve written to Pat, asking her to tell me her views. I fear I’m losing a friend. Another contribution to the sacrifice sale, but one I’m reluctant to part with. Write soon.
Love, Sara
JOHANNESBURG, 28 October 1973
My dearest Dvora,
My psyche’s slowly catching up with events; I’ve been having dreadful dreams. Last night I dreamed I was standing in a large, barren field, at the centre of which stood a Tzompantli, like the one I saw at Chichen Itza. The heads of beautiful young men were stacked on it. The chaverim from the kibbutz came across the field towards me and said, “Where have you been all these years. Look at our sacrifices.” I turned away and wept.
“I’ll come back,” I said, “but spare my sons.”
“Why are your sons more valuable than ours?” They pointed to the Tzompantli.
I woke, went downstairs, prepared breakfast for David and Gideon, drove them to school, then returned home. I wept till I was weary.
Once I questioned whether one should say everything to friends. Pat, I’m sure, won’t reply to my letter. I hope you will, after I’ve said what’s pressing on my heart. If I don’t say it, it will lie like a shadow between us, forever.
I’m glad I left the kibbutz. I’m glad I don’t live in Israel. I’m grateful my sons’ heads don’t lie on the skull rack, though I’m devastated about those that do.
Yours, with love and despair, Sara
JOHANNESBURG, 14 November 1984
Dear Pat,
I thought of you the other day when I sifting through old letters. They all belong to another life, another time. Only the Tzompantli, the Toltec skull rack, seemed real, and the daily sacrifice of human hearts to the gods. In retrospect, our ideological squabbles seem tame compared with those primal fears.
Thank you for your touching letter. I think and talk in cliches these days; it distances the pain. Hence, “life goes on”. The official communique said that David’s jeep had been blown up by a land mine during the retreat from Angola. Gideon stayed for a few weeks after the funeral, then returned to his ashram. In our day we sought salvation on the kibbutz.
Our plans for the future are vague. We’ll probably remain on in South Africa; there’s little point in leaving. Look after yourself. Life is precious.
Love, Sara