“Where are you going?” asked the driver.
“Dubrovnik,” said Lubji, with a smile. The driver shrugged, wound up the window and drove off without another word.
Several tractors, two cars and a lorry passed him before another car stopped, and to the same question Lubji gave the same answer.
“I’m not going that far,” came back the reply, “but I could take you part of the way.”
One car, two lorries, three horse-drawn carts and the pillion of a motorcycle completed the three-day journey to Dubrovnik. By that time Lubji had devoured all the food the farmer’s wife had supplied, and had gathered what knowledge he could on how to go about finding a ship in Dubrovnik that might help him to escape from the Germans.
Once he had been dropped on the outskirts of the busy port, it only took a few minutes to discover that the farmer’s worst fears had been accurate: everywhere he turned he could see citizens preparing for a German invasion. Lubji had no intention of waiting around to greet them a second time as they goose-stepped their way down the streets of yet another foreign town. This was one city he didn’t intend to be caught asleep in.
Acting on the farmer’s advice, he made his way to the docks. Once he had reached the quayside he spent the next couple of hours walking up and down, trying to work out which ships had come from which ports and where they were bound. He shortlisted three likely vessels, but had no way of knowing when they might be sailing or where they were destined for. He continued to hang around on the quayside. Whenever he spotted anyone in uniform he would quickly disappear into the shadows of one of the many alleys that ran alongside the dock, and once even into a packed bar, despite the fact he had no money.
He slipped into a seat in the farthest corner of the dingy tavern, hoping that no one would notice him, and began to eavesdrop on conversations taking place in different languages at the tables around him. He picked up information on where you could buy a woman, who was paying the best rate for stokers, even where you could get yourself a tattoo of Neptune at a cut price; but among the noisy banter, he also discovered that the next boat due to weigh anchor was the Arridin, which would cast off the moment it had finished loading a cargo of wheat. But he couldn’t find out where it was bound for.
One of the deckhands kept repeating the word “Egypt.” Lubji’s first thought was of Moses and the Promised Land.
He slipped out of the bar and back onto the quayside. This time he checked each ship carefully until he came to a group of men loading sacks into the hold of a small cargo steamer that bore the name Arridin on its bow. Lubji studied the flag hanging limply from the ship’s mast. There was no wind, so he couldn’t be sure where she was registered. But he was certain of one thing: the flag wasn’t a swastika.
Lubji stood to one side and watched as the men humped sacks onto their shoulders, carried them up the gangplank and then dropped them into a hole in the middle of the deck. A foreman stood at the top of the gangplank, making a tick on a clipboard as each load passed him. Every few moments a gap in the line would appear as one of the men returned down the gangplank at a different pace. Lubji waited patiently for the exact moment when he could join the line without being noticed. He ambled forward, pretending to be passing by, then suddenly bent down, threw one of the sacks over his left shoulder and walked toward the ship, hiding his face behind the sack from the man at the top of the gangplank. When he reached the deck, he dropped it into the gaping hole.
Lubji repeated the exercise several times, learning a little more about the layout of the ship with each circle he made. An idea began to form in his mind. After a dozen or so drops, he found he could, by speeding up, be on the heels of the man in front of him and a clear distance from the man following him. As the pile of sacks on the quay diminished, Lubji realized he had little opportunity left. The timing would be critical.
He hauled another sack up onto his shoulder. Within moments he had caught up with the man in front of him, who dropped his bag into the hold and began walking back down the gangplank.
When Lubji reached the deck he also dropped his sack into the hold, but, without daring to look back, he jumped in after it, landing awkwardly on top of the pile. He scampered quickly to the farthest corner, and waited fearfully for the raised voices of men rushing forward to help him out. But it was several seconds before the next loader appeared above the hole. He simply leaned over to deposit his sack, without even bothering to look where it landed.
Lubji tried to position himself so that he would be hidden from anyone who might look down into the hold, while at the same time avoiding having a sack of wheat land on top of him. If he made certain of remaining hidden, he almost suffocated, so after each sack came hurtling down, he shot up for a quick breath of fresh air before quickly disappearing back out of sight. By the time the last sack had been dropped into the hold, Lubji was not only bruised from head to toe, but was gasping like a drowning rat.
Just as he began to think it couldn’t get any worse, the cover of the cargo hold was dropped into place and a slab of wood wedged between the iron grids. Lubji tried desperately to work his way to the top of the pile, so that he could press his mouth up against the tiny cracks in the slits above him and gulp in the fresh air.
No sooner had he settled himself on the top of the sacks than the engines started up below him. A few minutes later, he began to feel the slight sway of the vessel as it moved slowly out of the harbor. He could hear voices up on the deck, and occasionally feet walked across the boards just above his head. Once the little cargo ship was clear of the harbor, the swaying and bobbing turned into a lurching and crashing as it plowed into deeper waters. Lubji positioned himself between two sacks and clung on to each with an outstretched arm, trying not to be flung about.
He and the sacks were continually tossed from side to side in the hold until he wanted to scream out for help, but it was now dark, and only the stars were above him, as the deckhands had all disappeared below. He doubted if they would even hear his cries.
He had no idea how long the voyage to Egypt would take, and began to wonder if he could survive in that hold during a storm. When the sun came up, he was pleased to be still alive. By nightfall he wanted to die.
He could not be sure how many days had passed when they eventually reached calmer waters, though he was certain he had remained awake for most of them. Were they entering a harbor? There was now almost no movement, and the engine was only just turning over. He assumed the vessel must have come to a halt when he heard the anchor being lowered, even though his stomach was still moving around as if they were in the middle of the ocean.
At least another hour passed before a sailor bent down and removed the bar that kept the cover of the hold in place. Moments later Lubji heard a new set of voices, in a tongue he’d never encountered before. He assumed it must be Egyptian, and was again thankful it wasn’t German. The cover of the hold was finall
y removed, to reveal two burly men staring down at him.
“So, what have we got ourselves here?” said one of them, as Lubji thrust his hands up desperately toward the sky.
“A German spy, mark my words,” said his mate, with a gruff laugh. The first one leaned forward, grabbed Lubji’s outstretched arms and yanked him out onto the deck as if he were just another sack of wheat. Lubji sat in front of them, legs outstretched, gulping in the fresh air as he waited to be put in someone else’s jail.
He looked up and blinked at the morning sun. “Where am I?” he asked in Czech. But the dockers showed no sign of understanding him. He tried Hungarian, Russian and, reluctantly, German, but received no response other than shrugs and laughter. Finally they lifted him off the deck and frogmarched him down the gangplank, without making the slightest attempt to converse with him in any language.
Lubji’s feet hardly touched the ground as the two men dragged him off the boat and down to the dockside. They then hurried him off toward a white building at the far end of the wharf. Across the top of the door were printed words that meant nothing to the illegal immigrant: DOCKS POLICE, PORT OF LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND.
8.
St. Andy
12 September 1945
DAWN OF A NEW REPUBLIC