A flash of orange hurtles through the space between their shoulders. Genek flinches. Herta covers Józef’s face instinctively with her hand. They are three of twenty Polish recruits wedged into the bed of an old pickup, sitting hip bone to hip bone on slabs of plywood running the length of the bed. They’ve all come from different camps—released as Genek and Herta had been, on amnesty—to fight for the Allies. Their bodies are in bad shape—riddled with boils, ringworm, scabies, their hair sweaty and lice-infested, pasted to their foreheads. Tattered clothes hang loosely over gaunt frames and a foul odor surrounds them, following the truck like a repulsive, malodorous shadow. A few of the sickest lay crumpled at Genek’s and Herta’s feet, incapable of sitting up on their own, hours, it seems, from death.
They’ve been driving for three days, skirting the coast of the Caspian Sea on a narrow dirt road flanked by sand dunes and the occasional palm tree. “I suppose we’ve nearly reached Tehran,” Genek says. They stare wide-eyed at the Persians lining the dusty thoroughfare, who stare back at them. “We must look pitiful,” Herta whispers.
Tehran marks the end, for now, of their 5,000-kilometer journey. It’s been a year since they were released from their work camp in Altynay, nine months since they finally left Wrewskoje, Uzbekistan, where they’d been forced to spend the winter. January and February were tough on them. Subjected to a diet of eighty grams of bread and a bowl of watery soup a day, their midlines had been whittled away until they’d lost a quarter of their body weight. Were it not for the blankets Anders had issued, they’d have frozen to death.
But they were lucky. Hundreds of others who’d come to Uzbekistan as they had, to join the army, were laid to rest in Wrewskoje. Every week, a carriage would clatter through the village to collect the skeletal remains of those who had lost their battles with malaria, typhus, pneumonia, dysentery, starvation. The dead were gathered up with pitchforks and heaped into piles outside the city. When the piles rose too high, someone would smother the corpses in crude oil and burn them, causing a sickly smell that hung in the air long after the bodies had turned to ash.
By March it was clear that Stalin either wasn’t able or wasn’t willing to properly feed or equip the exiles who’d enlisted in Anders’s Army. There were 44,000 recruits, according to the registrar, awaiting orders in Uzbekistan; rations issued by the Soviets, however, were maintained for 26,000. Furious, Anders pushed Stalin to allow him to evacuate his troops to Persia, where they would come under the care of the British. When Stalin finally agreed, Genek and Herta set off on another four-month exodus, traversing 2,400 kilometers of endless steppe and desert through Samarkand and Chirakchi to the port of Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan, on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. There, they were surrounded by NKVD toting large canvas bags; “Drop the belongings you can’t carry,” they were told—a rather pointless order, as most had nothing more to their names than the shirts on their backs. “Money and documents, too,” the NKVD added. They’d be searched on embarkation, they were told. “Anyone trying to smuggle money or papers out of the country will be arrested.” Genek and Herta had used the last of their zloty months ago. Their Polish passports had been confiscated in Lvov. They said good-bye to their amnesty certificates and nonresident permits issued in Altynay, along with their foreign passports issued in Wrewskoje. Without a single coin or form of identification in their pockets, they were true nomads. But it didn’t matter—whatever the requirements to get them out of the grip of the Iron Fist and into the caring hands of the British and General Anders, they were more than willing to oblige. It wasn’t until they finally climbed the steep gangway to board the Kaganovich, the rusted-up freighter that would deliver them to the Persian port of Pahlevi, that they smelled their first hint of freedom in the hot, salty air.
After a few days at sea, however, that smell was quickly overpowered by one of vomit, feces, and urine. For forty-eight hellish hours, they stood shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of other passengers on board, their shoes drenched in excrement, their scalps sizzling beneath the blaze of the relentless sun, their stomachs churned by the never-ending ocean swells. Every square centimeter of the ship was occupied: the hold, the deck, the staircases, even the lifeboats. Dozens died, their limp bodies held aloft by outstretched hands, passed overhead to the nearest opening on the vessel’s railing to be tossed overboard, where they were swallowed by the sea.
Genek and Herta finally arrived in Pahlevi, a Persian port on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, in August. Numbed by fatigue and dizzy with hunger, thirst, and seasickness, they learned that the last vessel to cross the Caspian, carrying with it over a thousand souls, had sunk. They slept for two nights on the beach in Pahlevi under an open sky until a caravan of pickups arrived to take them to Tehran, where they were told a division of the Polish Army awaited.
A second sphere sails overhead, and this time Genek reflexively catches it. Why would the locals taunt such a pitiful-looking group of people, he wonders? But when he opens his hand, he finds an orange. A nice one, too. Fresh. Plump. The first piece of fruit his fingers have touched in over two years. He glances over his shoulder to see if he can spot whoever threw it, catching the eye of a young woman wearing a maroon headscarf, standing on the sidewalk with her hands on the shoulders of two young boys in front of her. She smiles, her brown eyes soft and full of pity, and suddenly it’s clear: the orange wasn’t hurled as a sign of disrespect—it was a gift. Sustenance. Genek’s eyes well up as he rolls the fruit between his palms. A gift. He waves at the Persian woman, who waves back and then disappears into a cloud of dust. Genek can’t remember the last time a stranger did something nice for him without expecting something in return.
He digs a dirty fingernail into the orange, peels it, and hands a wedge to Herta. She bites off a piece and holds what’s left of it to Józef’s lips, laughing softly as his nose crumples. “It’s an orange, Ze,” she offers. A new word for him. “Pomarańcza. Soon enough, you’ll learn to like it.”
Genek peels off a wedge for himself and closes his eyes as he chews. The flavor explodes on his tongue. It’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted.
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