I’m going to visit it with Madame Habib again next Friday. And this time I shall have a story to tell the women as well as the children.
Josie’s Journal – Monday 22nd September, 1941
This evening is the beginning of Ramadan, which Nina has been explaining to me. She and her family will be fasting during the hours of daylight for a whole month until the next new moon appears and then it will be a time of feasting and celebration called Eid al-Fitr. Before the sun comes up, each day will begin with prayers and a meal called suhur, which is sort of like supper; when the sun sets, her family will eat an evening meal called iftar, which is sort of like breakfast. It seems that during Ramadan the days are turned upside down. Until this year, Nina has only fasted for some of the time but now she’s 13 she’s going to go the whole day without food and water. It’s part of being grown-up.
I’m in my room writing this and listening to the call to prayer. The muezzin’s voice is resonating on the evening air and it sounds even more solemn than usual to me, knowing that this is the start of a very holy month for my friend. I’ve decided that when she comes to the house I won’t have anything to eat or drink either, so that I can support her in her fasting. After all, it would be pretty mean to eat cakes and drink lemonade while she’s not allowed to. But she’s promised that I can come to her house when the Eid celebrations begin and we’ll have an amazing feast.
We’ve taken a large supply of books out of the library as I think reading will be a good distraction for Nina if she’s feeling hungry or thirsty and will help the time to pass more quickly. When I told Mademoiselle Dubois about this plan, she suggested we might enjoy the works of Jules Verne as they are exciting tales of fantastic adventures. We have Journey to the Centre of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and she’s promised to reserve a copy of Around the World in 80 Days as soon as it comes back in.
I’ve also been working on a new project with Miss Ellis, studying the history of the United States of America. She says it’s always important to understand the background of a country if you’re going to live in it. There was a war in America called the Civil War and the President at the time was Abraham Lincoln, a very tall and kind man who wanted to abolish slavery. He made a famous speech at a place called Gettysburg, where more than fifty thousand soldiers from both sides of the divide lost their lives in a terrible battle, which Miss Ellis says actually still has great relevance for the war that’s going on in the world today. The newspapers report that many, many soldiers are being killed in the fighting. There are also some really terrible stories beginning to emerge about what the Nazis are doing to the Jewish people they’ve sent to camps in Europe – they make our time in the A?n Chok refugee camp sound like a holiday in a nice hotel in comparison. I’ve been having quite a lot of bad dreams again and I keep thinking about the girl I saw in Marseille who didn’t get on the ship. I still look out for her, hoping to spot her face in the crowds when I go to the library or the Habous. I wonder where she is now. There’s still been no word from Uncle Joseph either and Maman’s eyes grow dark with sadness whenever his name is mentioned. It’s very frightening to think that so many people can just disappear. I never used to imagine it could ever happen to us. These days I’m not so sure.
But when Miss Ellis read me the words of Abraham Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, they made me feel a bit stronger. I’ve decided to copy them out here in my journal to remind myself that I can make a difference – even to events that seem so enormous – just like in Nina’s very ancient auntie’s story about the mosquito drinking the sea. Because words can inspire people, whether you are the President of America or the Dreamseller of Casablanca:
‘It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’
Miss Ellis has a way of making you see that everything is connected, just like with my project on the harbours of Morocco from El Jadida to Mogador. She took my schoolbooks away for quite a long time when we returned from that holiday and when she gave them back to me she said I’d done an excellent job. I got an A+ for it. She also said, with a bit of a twinkle in her eye, that Papa had informed her how especially hard I’d worked. From that, I deduced he’d told her about nearly being arrested by the policemen and how they’d confiscated his notebook but my project had saved the day.