NO, NO, MY SON! I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU ALONE!

It was a very hot, dry day. My mother (Malka, who was called Manye) and her escorts walked slowly along the long sand road that led to the Respublikaner Bolnitze, the Republican hospital. I held her hand on one side and her sister Chana grasped her on the other side as we led her to the hospital. My mother mostly walked with her eyes closed from weakness, and my eyelids became stuck together due to the sweltering heat. In any case, it was hard for me to look at her scorched, exhausted face.

In my thirteenth year, my imagination was highly developed. As we walked, I pictured what my mother was going through as she walked the same road to the same hospital where her husband, my father, had been brought a year ago. He had not returned home.

What further agonized me was that my mother’s hand that I held gently in my own bore no resemblance to the warm and firm though soft hand that I once knew. Her hand, with the skin that hung on it, lay weakly in my hand. Only her sister Chana spoke a little bit and raised our spirits somewhat.

I haven’t yet mentioned how many times my mother asked to stop, to rest. “Oy, my dear ones. My feet – they don’t want to move.” The reason was simple. Her feet were swollen like logs of wood. The hunger disease (when the digestive system stops working because of starvation) and dysentery sapped my mother of the last of her strength.

In the reception area of the hospital there was no vacant seat or bench. It was packed with the sick and their escorts. It was with difficultly that my mother found a place to sit on the floor in some corner. That is where she rested, half lying and half sitting.

After a wait of a good few hours, it was her turn to see the doctor. Chana showed him the referral from another doctor in the old city. The doctor at the hospital did not even examine my mother or ask her anything. In a resolute, unemotional tone he said, “The hospital is not a place for sick people like these.” When my mother moved away, he angrily asked her sister, “Why did your doctor send her here? The hospital is not a kladbishtze (cemetery).”

Chana was momentarily stunned and couldn’t utter a word. Her head whirled, but she quickly recovered and pleaded with the doctor and sweet-talked him. My mother also managed to utter a few heartfelt words and looked up with her big, sad eyes, but nothing helped.

Then I opened my mouth and was ready to yell at the doctor: You thief, wicked person, despicable man! But I immediately caught myself in fear that I would make things worse. Somewhere deep inside me, an odd, little satisfied feeling crept in that my mother would not remain at the hospital. But my mother hoarsely said to the doctor, “I cannot go back. I am staying here.” He did not respond.

My mother dragged herself to a chair not far from the entrance to the hospital. She seated herself and said to Chana, “You go home and I will stay here alone. They will have to accept me here at the hospital.”

Aunt Chana and I looked around for a way of taking her home. We did not have to search far. Near her chair was an arba (a two-wheeled wagon) harnessed to a donkey. A Bucharian Jew put a little girl on the wagon (apparently his daughter who had been released from the hospital). Even before Chana finished asking him whether he could take my mother on his wagon too, and whether he was going to the old city of Samarkand, he answered warmly, “Ah, what’s the question? We have One Father. Of course I will help. Who else will help – the Ishmaelites?” And he helped put my mother on the high wagon.

As we went through the streets of Samarkand that were paved with cobblestones, the wagon bounced around so much it was hard to look at my mother’s face. The hard boards of the wagon must have been very painful for her skin and bones.

The alleyway where the clay hut we lived in was located was very narrow. Not only could the wagon not enter but even the donkey could not turn around within it. Chana and I carried my mother into the little room in our weakened state and she fell onto the mattress.

Her sister Chana stood near the one, crooked window and gazed dimly at the horizon, at the blinding sun which set and dipped into a sea of red. I stood near the mattress as though paralyzed, G-d forbid, because of my forbidding thoughts. I absolutely could not banish from my mind the last, nightmarish thought, how they removed my little sister a”h from this clay hut. My mother had held her daughter, unable to cry out anymore; just sobbing in a voice that burst forth from the depths of her heart, like she did now.

My grandfather was preoccupied with lighting the small kerosene lamp. He was mumbling something, maybe T’hillim, maybe finishing Mincha. Then he said in a measured, calm voice, “Listen children. I see in her return to the house, in her not remaining in the hospital, a good sign from Heaven, a good sign! She will be well and live long.”

Zeide supported his statement, as was his wont, by saying that Hashem had enabled him that day to procure a loaf of well-baked white bread for my mother. He had even cooked something for supper for all of us, potato soup. Hashem would help!

When Zeide’s lamp began giving off light and Zeide spoke, my mother stopped sobbing. Chana turned from the window with eyes that suddenly seemed alert, and I was momentarily released from the memory of the horrifying picture in my mind. Within a short time, my mother raised herself up; seemingly with strength that was not hers. She got up and fell upon me and hugged me with her thin, frail arms. She whispered in my ear in a different, clearer voice, “No, no, my son. I will not leave you alone, no! Hashem will not allow that to happen. I will fight with all my might and Hashem will help me.”

I realized that my mother had heard what the doctor said when he did not want to admit her to the hospital, since in a strange voice and with odd clouded eyes, though with a piercing gaze, she mumbled that she would purposely spite that doctor, survive the debilitating diarrhea and remain here for her child; and to spite all the doctors she would not refrain from eating; she would eat everything. Even doughy foods, even baked goods, even unboiled water and fruit, and she would prevail!

My mother stood by her words. Immediately, that same evening, as though with renewed strength, she ate the soup that Zeide cooked; not with the white bread but with pieces of lepyoke (Uzbeki bread). I was somewhat taken aback by the complete transformation of my mother’s attitude and spirits. I always knew that my mother, deep inside, was strong and possessed a tremendous willpower, but to such an extent?

Zeide-Rav noticed this too. After eating in the little courtyard, Zeide spoke to me about my mother being a great woman with mighty soul powers. She is a heroine! So I should be a shtikel mentch (somewhat mature) and have the brains to help her in her very difficult battle for her life; at the very least, I shouldn’t ruin things.

But what could I do? I was already greatly pained that I hadn’t done anything to save my two sisters.

I would berate myself, saying: By others, a boy of 12-13 is a gantzer ya-tibe-dam (important person). He does business in the market; he runs here and there and brings money home. As for me, Heishke? I’m a little worthless kid, a “mama’s boy.” I hadn’t earned a single ruble! What was worse, lately, thoughts of my father’s opinion about me had come to mind, that deep inside I was a yesh, an egoistic crybaby (as described in the books), and that is where my fears and my shyness came from and who knows what else, even though I did not fully grasp the logic in this.

I did not fall asleep that night until very late. I felt I must do something to help my mother recuperate. To look for better doctors? (Where? How? Instant disappointment). To bring in money even though Zeide was already doing that himself? So I would help him. (Was I willing to go to the market to sell pieces of soap that Zeide cooked in the hallway? Oy! How would I be able to force myself to do that?)

I tried to think of how to help my mother, at least in the house. I thought and thought – had I really done nothing to help her up until now? It had been many long months that my mother waited until Zeide and I were asleep at night and then she went about with a T’hillim in her hands that was tattered and wet with her tears. She would whisper and cry, say the words and cover the soft pages with warm tears. More than once I heard her cry with halting breath, sobbing and saying, “Master of the universe, where are my children? Take me to my daughters.” And still I lay there like a worthless fool.

My mother’s words jolted me awake in the morning, “…To spite the doctors.” She explained something to Zeide; surely in response to the question as to why she was cooking a sort of soup with dumplings made of roasted pieces of dough, but I was pleased that she was still diligent and was eating with superhuman efforts and trying with all her might as Zeide put it, “to be victorious in war” – with herself, her stomach, to eat all the things the doctors said were not good for even a healthy stomach.

I managed to watch over my mother for only a few days until I fell ill with a severe case of typhus.