The Lost Worlds of Rhodes by Nathan Shachar

Author:Nathan Shachar [Shachar, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Jewish
ISBN: 9781845194550
Google: av6jX8tIDSUC
Publisher: Apollo Books
Published: 2013-01-15T03:37:19+00:00

9

A New Career – Going Away Forever

On emigration

Until he set out on the long journey, via Suez and Mombasa, around the Cape and then up the Congo River, the only part of the planet Issachar Avzaradel had ever set foot upon was the island of Rhodes. But now, suddenly, at fifteen, he found himself alone in a Congolese jungle.

“There I was, among gorillas, green snakes the size of bicycle tyres, insects to freeze your blood and a green wall of wilderness.”

His brief in the wildly unfamiliar environment was not merely to survive, but to establish a trading post and to set up a dry-goods store.

“There were the Jews I worked for, in the main towns of Congo Belge, and some Greeks and Lebanese who kept me in stock. But they were hundreds of miles and several weeks’ journey away.”

He was on his own, in an area yet unpenetrated by Europeans.

“There was no system in place, colonialism wasn’t operative there. That’s why boys like me were thrown in. Areas under Belgian control already had shops and busy traders. In fact, I was colonialism. I was supposed to do it, to forge one more link in the trade-system and connect the natives to the global economy. It was really the same idea as in the Ottoman empire: the country people had no money. In order to buy kerosene lamps and matches they needed credit. They were outside the money circuit and would have to pay in kind. It meant that I didn’t only have to figure out what kinds of goods they would like. I also had to figure out what they could produce a surplus of, and which of those commodities were worth shipping downstream to the ports and across the seas with a profit.”

Quite a few Rhodian boys had gone before him, and were spread out across the central African river systems. Some failed the rough baptism of fire, went mad or came down with malaria. But it was said of those who prevailed and set up shop that they could run a business anywhere. Not one of them had asked to go to Africa. Most went because their families on Rhodes could no longer feed themselves without remittances from abroad. Some had to leave the island because the Italian race-laws of 1938 revoked the residence rights of those who had moved to Rhodes after 1919, mostly from Salonica, where fires and hostility had tested the Jews since the Greek takeover in 1912, or from Izmir after the massacres and fires in 1922.

Dispatched at a bend in the river with some sacks and a gas stove, Issachar was on his own. There were no phones, no one to ask for advice. Mail went by river, and only reached the stops along the main artery. From there, it was sometimes taken by missionaries paddling dugouts to the outer reaches of the water system. But it usually got lost.

Issachar could read Dante in the original and the Bible in Hebrew. But he had no skills, no experience and no preparation for the task in hand.

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