Sunday, August 28, 2011

Gratitude after the Hurricane

Hurricane Irene has come and gone. I am happy to report that we sustained little damage here on Grand Bahama. Our cottage in Abaco was also unscathed even though the winds pounded that island.
So, I am sitting in deep gratitude this Sunday morning, drinking my home-brewed coffee frothed with warm organic milk - a delicious luxury that comes with the gift of electricity.
After two days of unbearable heat (90 degrees inside the house), the air around me is finally cool thanks to a fabulous, functioning air-conditioner.
I feel blessed, really I do.

On the beach after the storm with my husband James and my son Nikolai
(c) Photo Christine Matthäi

As Irene swept her way across the Bahamas and I listened to all the reports of approaching doom, my thoughts ran to my parents and grandparents, to the characters in my novel The Last Daughter of Prussia and what they must have felt during World War 2. At least with a hurricane you know it's coming and when it has thrashed you about, it will leave. Furthermore, however disastrous it may be, a hurricane is still an act of nature and it has a good reason for being – namely to clear the earth of excess heat.
But war lasts for years and bombs can fall at any time. Moreover, war is created by the minds of men who consciously and systematically plan the decimation of whole groups of people, cities, countries.

I thought about evacuation. In hurricanes people often have to leave their homes, make choices as to what they'll take with them. Valuables. Documents. Photographs. What a process - this choosing of most cherished objects, this deciding on the order of value – a revelation I think in letting go and also knowing what is really needed and revered.
I wondered what my grandparents took with them when they evacuated their home in East Prussia. I know of a few things because I have them : a piece of amber, a small bronze fish sculpted by my grandmother, a photograph of their home. However, their reason for leaving was not brought on by a natural storm. Instead, they faced the thundering guns of the invading Russian Army.

As Irene stirred up the air around me I felt like she was also stirring up humanity's consciousness, her winds trying to break the bonds of ignorant thinking, the dangerous idea that we are all separate – beliefs that ultimately cause wars.

God's Pool before the storm
(c) Photo Christine Matthäi

With everyone from the southern Bahamas along the eastern coast of the United States worried about their well-being, I wondered if perhaps we could simply care – just for a moment – about each other.  I thought if we could all do that even for a minute or an hour, what a clean-swept, shiny, energized world this would be.

Bye for now from my windswept beach....
(c) Photo Christine Matthäi

– Marina Gottlieb Sarles


c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.
(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie




Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Excerpt: Dance Me to the End of Love

  This morning I was listening to music while working out at the gym. Of the hundreds of songs on my ipod, one came up that made me stop running –  Leonard Cohen's – Dance Me To The End Of Love. The music moved me so deeply, I had to sit down. All I could see before my eyes were Joshi and Manya –  the main characters in my novel. 
  I ran home and decided to take a small excerpt from The Last Daughter of Prussia to share with you. If you have a chance, listen to the song on You Tube – it's Joshi one thousand times over. 
The first line says, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin."
  I love it especially because Joshi is an amazing violin player and music is what saves him.
(Strangely, this particular You Tube video takes place in a death camp  – which is also where Joshi dreams of Manya.)
  Just so you know,  in the excerpt below - Ben is Joshi's friend and Aztec, Manya's Trakehner stallion.
  The photos were taken by my talented photographer friend, Christine Matthäi who generously lends her work to this blog. 

Lovers
(c) Christine Matthäi
Visit her website. You will be amazed!

Excerpt: 

  That night Joshi dreamed he was flying high above Stutthof prison camp in a body that was light and clean and free. In the distance, where the sandy shore ran beside the Baltic Sea, a group of people was following a flock of cranes into the west. He recognized Manya and called her name, his heart pounding with excitement. She was walking backwards, looking up at a lagging bird when it suddenly swooped to ground and landed beside her boot, turning the sand into ice and changing itself into Aztec. Afraid that Aztec would slip, she began to tug at his reins.
  Joshi rushed forward on the wind to help her, but when he looked down, he saw that he was naked, his legs just skin and bones. Manya didn’t know him anymore and swinging herself onto the stallion, she cantered off.
  “Wake up,” he heard Ben say. Joshi groaned and opened his eyes. “Sorry,” whispered Ben, “but you were shouting for someone and I was afraid you’d wake Esser.”
  Joshi lay still, trying to hold on to the dream.
  “So, who’s Manya?” asked Ben.
  “Along with my sister, she’s my reason for living.” 

Photo by (c) Christine Matthäi


Dance Me To The End Of Love Lyrics
Songwriters: Cohen, Leonard;


Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Oh dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Until next time...
– Marina Gottlieb Sarles

c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.
(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Monday, August 15, 2011

Excerpt - The Last Daughter of Prussia

  In The Last Daughter of Prussia, my hero Joshi Karas, a charismatic Roma Gypsy is captured by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp together with his sister Sofia and a gypsy dancer named Nuri. This excerpt describes his first impressions.


The Death Gate that Joshi passes through when he arrives in
Stutthof concentration camp.
Located on the Baltic coast some 23 kilometers east of Danzig,
 it was the first labour camp outside the Reich's borders to be established by the Nazis.
It was set up on Sept. 2 1939
(Photo taken from the Stutthof Museum Guide for Historical Information
- Author J. Grabowska-Chalka)

 Marsch!” barked another voice. “March!”
  Joshi fell in line with about fifty other men, the group quickly moving along the cobblestone walkway that led through the iron gate onto a field. At the edge of the field, he saw a row of shabby buildings under a single common roof. The prisoner’s barracks, he thought, with a sinking feeling. He turned to look for Sofia and Nuri.


The prisoners' barracks Joshi sees when  he and his sister arrive at the camp.
(Photo taken from the Stutthof Museum Guide for Historical Information -
Author J. Grabowska-Chalka)

  He spotted them in a column of women to his left, being directed by a female warden. The warden he noticed was lithe and muscular, pretty too, in a hardened sort of way, with red lips and flawless white skin. In her right hand, she held a whip with long leather tassels. She played with the tassels, making them twitch with such an air of menace that every single woman gave her their undivided attention.
  She decides who lives and who dies, thought Joshi, staring at her thick auburn ponytail held in place by a white pearl clasp.
  In no time at all, the warden had lined her prisoners up in front of a roofless barrack. Sofia stood as still as a tree in the forest, fear shining in her eyes.


High ranking officers in Stutthof
(Photo taken from the Stutthof Museum Guide for Historical Information -
Author J. Grabowska-Chalka)

  He watched the warden saunter past the male guards, a noticeable swing in her hips. Smoothing down her skirt, held at her narrow waist by a wide black belt, she looked boldly at her captives, her voice quiet and severe.
  “You will follow the rules or you will die. Work is your life now, so get used to it.” She paused to take in the faces. “You there,” she called to Nuri. “Can you sew?” Nuri nodded. “Good. You will be sent to the stocking darners’ Kommando.” She grinned as if she knew the job would kill.      
 

This was a car hitched to a locomotive that carried unsuspecting women  skilled at darning stockings
 to their death.
Picked out at roll call, the women were loaded into the special car.
Somewhere outside Stutthof, the car was filled with gas (Zyklon B) and the women all died.
I took this photo when I visited the Museum in Stutthof.
I remember standing there, the silence a loud roar in my ears as I looked into the green forest.
Suddenly, a lark began to sing and I thought there can never be enough hymns here for the dead.
(Photo (c) Marina Gottlieb Sarles)


 “Is she your daughter?” she asked, pointing the whip at Sofia. Nuri was too afraid to answer, but her eyes darted toward Joshi. Curious, the warden followed her gaze. “Ah,” she murmured, “He must be your husband. Or your lover.” Taking her time, she scrutinized Joshi’s face, her eyes slowly roaming over his shoulders and chest, until they came to stop at his crotch. He felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. He was sure this warden got whatever she desired.


                              ***


As I post this excerpt and the photos I think about the terror of that time.
Like life itself, my novel The Last Daughter of Prussia has dark chapters, yet I want you the reader to know that on the pages hope and love are ever-present too.
Until next time...


– Marina Gottlieb Sarles













(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.
(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie