The Sweetness of Forgetting (38 page)

“Okay,” I tell Elida. “We’ll be there around six. What’s your address?”

Annie invites Alain to come with us to Pembroke, but he says that he’ll stay behind with Mamie instead. We swing by the hospital to sit with Mamie for a few minutes, then Annie and I set off again, after promising to pick Alain up on our way home. He’s managed to charm the night nurses at the hospital into looking the other way when it comes to their visitation policies; they all know his story and that he has been separated from his sister for nearly seventy years.

It’s a few minutes past six when we pull off the highway in Pembroke. We find Elida’s house easily enough, thanks to the directions she gave us. It’s a blue, white-shuttered, two-story home in a small, well-kept neighborhood just behind a Catholic church. Annie and I exchange looks, get out of the car, and ring the doorbell.

The woman who opens the door and introduces herself as Elida is older than I’d expected; she looks like she’s in her midforties. Her skin is pale, and she has thick, black hair that tumbles down her back, nearly to her waist. I’ve never met anyone from Albania, but she looks like what I’d expect someone from Greece or Italy to look like.

“Welcome to our home,” she says, shaking my hand first, and then Annie’s. Her eyes are deep and brown, and her smile is kind. “It is just my grandmother and me here tonight. My husband, Will, is working. Please, come in.”

I hand her the box of miniature Star Pies I’ve brought for dessert, and after she thanks me, we follow her inside, down a hallway lined with black-and-white photographs of people I assume are her family members. She tells us that in Albania, the main meal of the day is lunch, but that tonight, they’ve made a special dinner. “I hope you like fish,” she says, turning around slightly. “I have prepared an old family recipe that my grandmother used to make in Albania.”

“Sure,” I say, and Annie nods. “You didn’t have to go to so much effort, though.”

“It is our pleasure,” she says. “You are our guests.”

We turn the corner into a dimly lit dining room, where at the head of the table sits a woman who looks far older than Mamie. Her face is heavily lined, and her snow-white hair has fallen out in places, leaving her with a strangely patchy head of receding hair. She’s wearing a black sweater and a long, gray skirt, and she stares at us with bright eyes from behind enormous tortoiseshell glasses that look far too big for her face. She says something in a language I don’t recognize.

“This is my grandmother, Nadire Veseli,” Elida tells Annie and me. “She speaks only Albanian. She says she is glad you have come and that you are very welcome in our home.”

“Thank you,” I reply.

Annie and I sit beside each other to the right of the old woman, and Elida returns a moment later with four bowls on a tray. She sets one down in front of each of us and takes her own seat on her grandmother’s left side.

“Potato and cabbage soup,” Elida says, nodding at the bowls. She picks up her spoon and winks at Annie. “Do not worry. It’s more delicious than it sounds. I lived in Albania until I was twenty-five, and this was my favorite food when I was your age.”

Annie smiles and takes a sip of her soup, and I do the same. Elida’s right; it’s very good. I can’t put a finger on the spices in it, but it tastes hearty and fresh.

“It’s real good,” Annie says.

“I love it,” I agree. “You’ll have to give me the recipe.”

“With pleasure,” Elida says. Her grandmother says something softly in Albanian and Elida nods. “My grandmother would like to hear the story of how your grandmother was saved, please,” Elida translates for us. Her grandmother nods and looks at me hopefully. She says something else to Elida, who again translates
for us. “My grandmother says she hopes she is not being rude in asking.”

“Not at all,” I murmur, although I’m still confused about what we’re doing here. But for the next twenty minutes, Annie and I explain what we’ve learned recently about Mamie’s past and how she escaped Paris. As Elida translates our words into Albanian, her grandmother listens, staring at us intently and nodding. Her eyes begin to fill with tears, and at one point, she interrupts Elida loudly and says several sentences in Albanian.

“She says to tell you that your grandmother’s story is like a gift to her,” Elida says. “And that she is happy you have come to our home. She says it is good that young people like you and your daughter are reminded of the concept of oneness.”

“Oneness?” Annie asks.

Elida turns to my daughter and nods. “We are Muslims, Annie, but we believe you are our sister, although you are Christian and come from a Jewish background. I married a Christian man from a Jewish background because I love him. Love can transcend religion. Did you know that? In the world today, there is too much division, but God made us all, did he not?”

Annie nods and looks at me; I know she’s not sure how to respond. “Yeah, I guess,” she finally says.

“It’s why I took a job with the Abrahamic Association,” Elida explains. “So that I could work to foster understanding between religions. In the years since World War Two, it seems that much of the brotherhood we once shared has vanished.”

“But what does that have to do with us?” I ask softly.

Elida’s grandmother says something and Elida nods, then turns back to me. “Your call for help came to me,” she says. “In our culture, that means I now have the obligation to assist you. It is a code of honor called
Besa
.”

“Besa?”
I repeat.

Elida nods. “It is an Albanian concept that derives from the Koran. It means that if someone comes to you in need, you must
not turn them away. It is because of
Besa
that my grandmother and I have asked you here tonight. It is because of
Besa
that my grandmother and her friends and neighbors saved many Jews, at the risk of their own lives. And it is likely because of
Besa
that your grandmother was saved too, even if the Muslims in Paris did not call the concept by the same name as we do in Albania. And now, my grandmother would like to tell you her story.”

Elida’s grandmother smiles at us in silence as Elida rises to clear our soup dishes. Annie offers to help, and a moment later, the two of them return with plates full of fish and vegetables.

“This is trout baked with olive oil and garlic,” Elida explains as she and Annie sit down. “It is a common dish in Albania. There are also baked leeks and Albanian potato salad. My grandmother and I wanted you to have a taste of our homeland.”

“Thank you,” Annie and I say in unison.

“Ju lutem,”
Elida’s grandmother says. “You are welcome,” she adds in English.

Elida smiles. “She knows a few words of English.” She pauses as her grandmother says something else. “And now, she would like to tell you about the Jews she sheltered in our hometown of Kruje.”

Elida’s grandmother begins to tell us, with Elida translating, that she was a newlywed when the war began and that her husband was a very well-known, well-liked man in their small town, where everyone knew everyone else.

“In 1939, the Italians occupied our country, and then in September 1943, the Germans came,” Elida translates as her grandmother speaks. “Right away, it became clear they were hunting the Jews who lived among Albanians, my grandmother says. Albania, you see, had become a refuge of sorts for Jews fleeing from Macedonia and Kosovo, and from as far away as Germany and Poland.

“In 1943, several Jewish families came to our small town of Kruje, seeking refuge,” Elida continues as her grandmother tells
her tale in her native language. “My grandfather was one of the townspeople who offered to take in refugees. The family who came to stay with them, my grandmother says, were the Berensteins, from Mati, Germany. She can still remember them.”

Elida pauses then, and her grandmother says in slow, careful English, “Ezra Berenstein, the father. Bracha Berenstein, the mother. Two girls. Sandra Bernstein. Ayala Berenstein.”

Elida nods. “Yes. The Berensteins. The girls were very young, just four and six. The family had fled at the start of the war and had been gradually making their way south, in hiding.”

Elida’s grandmother begins to speak again, and Elida resumes her translation. “My grandmother says that she and her husband were poor, and provisions were very low because of the war, but they welcomed the Berensteins into their home. The whole town knew of it, but when the Germans came, no one betrayed them. Once, the Germans came to the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Berenstein hid in the attic, while my grandmother and grandfather pretended Sandra and Ayala were their own children, Muslim children. After that, they dressed all the Berensteins in peasant clothing, and my grandfather went with them and helped them move into the mountains nearby, to a smaller village. After a time, my grandmother followed. They lived there with the Berensteins, helping to protect them, until 1944, when the Berensteins again began to move south, toward Greece.”

I realize there are tears in my eyes as I listen to the story. I glance at Annie and see that she looks equally moved.

“What happened to them?” I ask. “The Berensteins? Did they make it out safely?”

“For a very long time, my grandmother did not know,” Elida says. “She and my grandfather prayed for them every day. After the Germans were defeated in late 1944 in Albania, the country was taken over by Communists, and Albanians were not allowed to communicate with the outside world. It was 1952 when my grandparents received a letter from the Berensteins. They were
alive, all four, and living in Israel. They thanked my grandparents for what they had done, for extending
Besa,
and Ezra Berenstein wrote that he had sworn an oath to repay my grandmother and grandfather, should they ever need help. My grandparents were not allowed to respond, and they feared the Berensteins would think they had died, or worse, that they would think they had not remembered them.”

Elida’s grandmother says something else and Elida smiles and replies to her in Albanian. She turns back to Annie and me. “I told my grandmother I know the rest of the story, and so I can tell you,” she says. “I was twenty-five when Communism fell in 1992, and our country was once again open to the world. But Communism had destroyed us, you see. We were very poor. There was no future for us in Albania, but there was no money to leave. I lived with my grandmother and my parents. My grandfather had died years before. One day, there was a knock at our door.”

“Was it Ezra Berenstein?” Annie interrupts eagerly.

“No, but you are close,” Elida replies with a smile. “Mr. Berenstein had died some years before, as had his wife. But the daughters, Sandra and Ayala, had never forgotten their time in my grandparents’ home. They were in their fifties by then, and they had been working to get my grandparents declared Righteous Among the Nations, which is a title given to those people who helped save Jews at the peril of their own lives. Now they were at our door, nearly fifty years after they first came to Albania for shelter, wishing to repay what my grandmother and grandfather had given to them.

“My grandmother explained to them that
Besa
isn’t to be repaid,” Elida continues. “Not on this earth, anyhow. She told them that it was her duty to help them, her duty to God and to her fellow man, and that she was very glad they had lived and gone on to happy lives. Ayala lived in America by then, and she had married a very wealthy man, a doctor named William. She had converted to Christianity, and they’d had two sons, she told
my grandmother. She said she owed my grandmother everything, because without their help, she and her family would never have survived. She told my grandmother that she wanted to help us get out of Albania and bring us to America. And a year later, after securing visas for us, that is exactly what she did. My parents decided to remain in Albania, but my grandmother and I moved here, to Boston, to begin a new life.”

“Do you still see Ayala and her family?” Annie asks.

Elida smiles. “Every day. You see, I married Ayala’s oldest son, Will. And now, our families are one forever.”

“That’s incredible,” I breathe. I smile at Elida’s grandmother, who blinks a few times and smiles back. I think about how many lives she changed when she and her husband made the decision to shelter a Jewish family, despite the fact that they could have lost their lives because of it. “Thank you so much for telling us your story.”

“Oh, but the story is not finished,” Elida says. She smiles, reaches into her pocket, and withdraws a folded piece of paper, which she hands to me.

“What is this?” I ask as I begin to unfold it.

“It is
Besa,
” she says. “You are looking for Jacob Levy, and your request came to me. My husband, Will, the son of Ayala, who my grandmother saved nearly seventy years ago, is a police officer. I asked him to do this favor, and he found your Jacob Levy, born in Paris, France, on Christmas Day 1924.” She nods at the piece of paper in my hand. “That is his address. As of a year ago, he was living in New York City.”

“Wait,” Annie interrupts. She grabs the piece of paper from me and stares at it. “You found Jacob Levy? My grandmother’s Jacob Levy?”