Exiles

1

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I a number of tourists arrived in Jaffa who, because travel was disrupted, could not return home. Ita Bloch, a young woman from Vilna, a pharmacist, was one of them. As was Menahem Gut, a sickly young man with glasses, an accountant by profession. The others were students, fine young men in student attire. Throughout the voyage to Jaffa, they, along with the young woman from Vilna, had been the life of the ship.

In addition to the gear they had acquired in Odessa, they bought, collectively, two sets of binoculars and a Baedeker travel guide. Upon approaching the gates of Constantinople, they began, in the words of Menahem Gut, “to lap up the Orient”. One member of the party, who had a camera in his suitcase, took pictures of the Bosporus at sunset, the Sea of Marmara at sunrise, as well as a structure with barred windows which, they imagined, was some pasha’s hidden harem, but was, in fact, merely a bathhouse.

In Constantinople, led by a guide, they went up to Fera, saw the Dolma Palace and the Byzantine Hippodrome, and from there they moved on to the famed Hagia Sofia Mosque. They walked in the middle of the street. Crowded together like a small flock of sheep, they followed their guide, who prodded the stragglers as well as those who were sidetracked by curiosity. At a turn in the road, they sighted their first caravan of camels, followed by a small agile donkey,...