Ch. 7: Jews in Shushan

(1891)

My newly purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs
parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest
provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim,
agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah
with the receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as 'Ephraim,
Yahudi'--Ephraim the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man
should hear my Elahi Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white
teeth with all the scorn he dare show before his master. Ephraim was,
personally, meek in manner--so meek indeed that one could not understand
how he had fallen into the profession of bill-collecting. He resembled
an over-fed sheep, and his voice suited his figure. There was a fixed,
unvarying mask of childish wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he was
as one marvelling at your wealth; if you sent him away, he seemed
puzzled at your hard-heartedness. Never was Jew more unlike his dread
breed. Ephraim wore list slippers and coats of duster-cloth, so
preposterously patterned that the most brazen of British subalterns
would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and deliberate was his
speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no one. After many
weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.

'There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten.
Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta. To-day
we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to our
people. I am of the tribe of Judah--I think, but I am not sure. My
father was of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue.
I shall be a priest of that synagogue.'

Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by
the ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up in
its midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full
congregation.

Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their
people, Epraim's uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife
Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and
Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one
house, on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre,
rotten bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the
incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening
the children of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and
Ephraim's sons held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never
descending to take part in them. At the back of the house stood a small
brick enclosure, in which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people
after the custom of the