The Second Ceremony

All the time I was with the school principals and Boaz, I knew that Asher had sent us to do these things. His trip to Peru and his death there had brought us to Peru and had given us the mission of helping these people.
We eventually found a computer store and bought two computers for the schools, but by then it was about one o'clock, too late to go back to the school supply shop and buy everything the principals planned to buy, because the High Mountain Rescue Unit had planned a ceremony at their headquarters.
The unit's driver was waiting for us in their pickup truck at the market to take us to the headquarters. He is a short, stocky, powerful, good-humored, patient man, and because of his huge head, he got the nickname "Cabezon." The rescue unit's headquarters was in a half-built, outlying neighborhood, a drive of about twenty minutes.
When we got there, the equipment that Ofer had bought with Robert in Lima was spread out on a table - all kinds of high quality gear for climbing, camping, first aid, and communications. The members of the unit were quietly inspecting the equipment.
Meanwhile I looked at some of the pictures on their bulletin board and got a better idea of the kind of work they do. There were photographs of the men on mountainsides in the snow and on rafts in the river. Aside from Colca Canyon, there is another very deep canyon in the area, the Cotahuasi, where people can also get into trouble. The rescue unit has to be prepared to go where people probably shouldn't have been in the first place.
The ceremonies that Ofer and Robert planned were important, though they weren't attended by anyone beside ourselves. They gave our presence an official quality, which partly defused the emotional tension and made it easier for everyone to express and control feelings. The men knew that we were the parents and siblings of a young man we cared intensely about, and we knew that they had exerted themselves beyond what could be expected of them to find him, when they still thought he might be alive, and to locate and recover his body, when we knew he was dead. They did it because Ofer had bonded with them so closely that they adopted his concern, because he made them realize how important it was for us to bring him home for burial, though in their belief system, it probably would not have been so important.
Though the atmosphere among the men of the rescue unit was ordinarily relaxed and informal, for the ceremony they briefly took on military severity, lining up at attention, saluting, and speaking with stiff formality.
Again we emphasized that the equipment had not been purchased with our own money, but with money that we raised from friends and relatives, who had heard the story and identified with it.
Later we ate at a nearby restaurant called Fresno, which you will not find in guidebooks or on websites, a totally local place that served large quantities of ordinary, well cooked food for very low prices (according to our standards). After our late lunch, we went back into Arequipa and gathered up all the loose ends of the day. We met the school principals again, went back to the school supply store (Robert came with us to expedite things), laid out $950 in US dollars for it, and went back to the hotel to rest up after seeing all the school supplies loaded onto the back of the pickup truck.
I enjoyed the intense bustle of the streets around the market. I was getting used to the look of the people: no one seems to be fully European; you are treated to a huge variety of indigenous countenances.
In his emails, Asher expressed enjoyment at being in a world that wasn't yet entirely corrupted by global mega-capitalism. I can see that, but I can also see thousands of people scrambling to make very small amounts of money. Tiny little Daewoo taxis with 800 cc. motors race about the streets of Arequipa and Lima, and the fare for a short ride is about a dollar. So how much could those drivers be earning in a day? There's such great charm in the air here, that it's hard to avoid romanticizing the poverty.

Purchases Continued

There were a lot of clerks in the school supply store, most of whom were not doing very much. You'd never see that kind of inefficiency in an Israeli shop (not to mention an American store). Wages are apparently low enough in Peru that employers can afford to hire a lot of people. That's good for the customers, and the store, which was very large and carried a large and varied stock, was also well organized and clean.
Boaz and I waited on the sidelines for a long time, while the two school principals consulted with the salespeople, diligently writing down the prices of every item. Then, without buying anything, they told us they wanted to get the computers first and then come back to purchase the school supplies, when they knew exactly how much money was available. So off we went to buy computers. On the way we were joined by another teacher from Cabanaconde, a short man wearing a well pressed sport shirt, who seemed to know his way around.
Like the visit to the school supply shop, this quest took us to places where most tourists in Peru would never think of going. The first stop, a brisk ten minute walk farther away from the central square than the market, was an electrical appliance shop, which sold televisions, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and a a huge assortment of other appliances, but not computers. As carefully as the principals had done their homework by compiling detailed lists of the supplies they needed, they hadn't found out where computers were sold in Arequipa.
Upon the advice of a salesperson in the appliance store, we then took two tiny taxis a branch of the Saga Falabella chain of department stores, where you definitely don't feel as if you're in a poor, underdeveloped country. We were out of the tourist zone of Arequipa and out of the lower class neighborhoods as well. Saga Falabella doesn't sell to the kind of people who buy in the central market. As composed and self-confident as our school principals seemed, it was pretty clear that they don't patronize Saga Falabella either. Norma, who could probably hike up and down the Colca Canyon without any problem, hesitated before stepping onto the escalator.
There was a small computer department on the lower floor, but no one seemed very interested in selling anything to our group, which would have seemed a bit puzzling to anyone who noticed it: three rural educators, an unsophisticated looking teen-aged girl (Norma's daughter), and two Gringos. Boaz thought that the sales staff might have taken the people from Cabanaconde as a bunch of country bumpkins who had come to gawk but not to buy, but finally someone did pay some courteous attention to us, but, as it happened, they only had one computer in stock, and we wanted to buy two.
Not having been to Cabanaconde yet, I suggested to Norma in my rudimentary Spanish that they might deliver the computer there, and she dismissed the idea out of hand. Now that I've seen how far away it is from Arequipa, and how bad the roads are, I understand why my idea was preposterous.
So off we went in search of another computer store. Time was passing, we weren't making much progress, and Boaz and I were getting a bit antsy.

Purchases

The market in Arequipa isn't for tourists. They sell the things that local people need there. I bought myself a broad rimmed black felt hat to keep the sun off my face and to make myself feel a little better.
That same afternoon we went to an entirely different kind of market, high-end shops selling expensive goods for tourists - sweaters woven of fine alpaca wool, scarves, and jackets - set in a series of renovated cloisters. While the others were shopping, I listened to a couple of indigenous musicians, who were playing pan pipes and various Andean flutes. I talked to them a little and eventually bought a disk from them.
The next day we did shopping of an entirely different kind. We had decided to give about $3,000 of the money we raised in Asher's honor to the schools in the village of Cabanaconde attended by the children of Diego, the man who found Asher's body. We had given Diego the promised reward of $1,500 last January, and we thought that if his good deed was also seen by the people of the village as benefitting them, he would arouse less envy. We also thought such a gift would be an appropriate gesture of gratitude for the people's concern.
Through Robert, Ofer had asked the principals of the kindergarten and the elementary school to prepare lists of materials and equipment they needed, but we weren't sure whether they had really done that.
At nine-thirty in the morning, a striking group assembled in the lobby of our hotel, not the type of visitors tourists customarily entertain. Robert came with a few of his men, uniformed policemen packing revolvers, and that rather took the desk clerk aback. He also brought the two school principals and the teen-age daughter of one of them, who was studying tourism in Arequipa. Norma Maquesilva, the principal of the kindergarten, which serves about seventy children aged two through five, is a short, sturdy woman of about forty, dark-skinned and indigenous looking. Mario Maque Castelo, the principal of the elementary school, with about 170 pupils from first to eighth grade, is a taller man, also dark-skinned, perhaps a few years older than Norma. Both of them had an air of quiet dignity and seriousness. We immediately saw they had done their homework diligently. They had long and clear lists of everything they wanted to buy for their schools and the children, including two computers.
Boaz and I went shopping with them, while Judith and Hannah tried to find someone to frame the certificates of gratitude we had prepared for all the policemen who helpedus, and Ofer went with Robert and his men to do some more shopping for equipment.
Robert and his driver took us in the police vehicle, a rather old white Nissan pickup truck, to a large school supply store at the outside corner of the market building. Boaz and I tagged along with the two principals, with whom we could hardly talk, since our Spanish is rudimentary, and their English even more rudimentary. But it was a treat to see them in action.
Before buying anything, they priced every item, trying to plan things so they would have enough left over to buy the computers. They stood at the counter, consulted with the salesgirls, and made lists and calculations, working slowly and with infinite patience, betraying no emotion.

Arequipa - Day One

Boaz and Hannah were both confident that we were doing something important and necessary, but I still had my doubts. Boaz had spent a good deal of time in Arequipa during the search for Asher, a period of intense anxiety, uncertainty, and helplessness. Despite their best efforts, no trace of Asher could be found. Returning with us wasn't easy for Boaz. Going there at all wasn't easy for us.
I found myself entertaining the semi-mystical idea that we had removed Asher's body from Peru, but we hadn't freed his soul - not a manner of thinking with which I feel at all comfortable.
We walked a few blocks down the sunny street from our hotel to the Plaza de Armas, the central square, with the cathedral or large church, that lies at the center of every town in Peru. I still wasn't feeling the altitude, though Arequipa is nearly 2,400 meters above sea level. We turned into a little alley with half a dozen restaurants on it, and I got so annoyed at the hawkers outside them, who wouldn't stop waving menus in my face, that I refused to go into any of them. We went on to the main square, only to be assailed by another flock of menu wavers, but we had to eat somewhere, so we had lunch on a balcony overlooking the Plaza de Armas. The food was good, and the view of the plaza was worth the extra price of eating in a tourist restaurant.
I was far from used to being in Peru.
We spent the afternoon exploring Arequipa, so by the end of the day I was feeling more at home there. Ofer led us to the city's main covered market, which covers a large city block, not too far from the central square. The last photographs that Asher sent us by email, including the last picture that we have of him were taken in that market.
Naturally, when we got to the market and saw what Asher had photographed, we were overcome by deep sadness. That was one of the hardest moments of our trip, but, as with many other of the hard moments, it was mingled with the bustle and excitement of the market, with the attraction of the very things that had caught Asher's eye.

Moving on to Arequipa

I was not attracted by Lima.  We had spent a few hours in the center of the city  on the day before Yom Kippur, which was a Peruvian national holiday.  The Plaza de Armas and many of the huge churches and public buildings were impressive, but the sky is gray, the city sprawls, and the general poverty is fairly evident.  

At the small ceremony we held in the synagogue there, we met three members of the High Mountain Rescue Unit: the commander of the entire unit, which functions in three locations in Peru: Arequipa, Cuzco, and Huaraz; Robert Grandez, the commander of the Arequipa unit, who had worked with Ofer in searching for Asher; and one of Robert's men.  They wore dark green, impeccably pressed dress uniforms and looked very formal and impressive.

After we reached Arequipa, we got to know Robert and the rest of his men quite well, though we were separated by the barrier of our ignorance of Spanish.  If we had arrived in Peru without any contributions for the High Mountain Rescue Unit, simply for the purpose of expressing our gratitude personally, I think their response would have been no less cordial and sympathetic than it was.

Judith, our daughter Hannah, our son Boaz, and I flew to Arequipa, but Ofer took the overnight bus with the policeman.  There was no money to spare for air fare for them.  In fact, we even had to pay for their bus fare.  The unit's budget is extremely limited.

Arequipa, from the moment we landed at its small airport, was a welcome contrast to Lima.  True, even from the plane you could see that it was also plagued with poverty: it is surrounded by tin-roofed, adobe houses, more like outlying villages than suburbs, but the sky was perfectly clear, the sun was bright, the air was brisk, and the steep mountains all surrounding the city looked  like a painted backdrop, too impressive to be real.

Judith had found a good hotel for us near the center of the city, but not on a noisy street, very close to the Convent of Santa Catalina, one of the major tourist attractions, which we eventually visited.  

Though we weren't really there as tourists, along with the knowledge that we were closing in on Asher's memory, there was the constant effort to see and decipher this new and unfamiliar country.  Arequipa, with its white stone, Spanish colonial architecture, is very attractive.  None of the buildings are taller than two or three stories at most - probably  because of the constant threat of earthquakes.

We decided not to go and see the hostel where Asher had stayed.  It was enough to know that he had spent the last days of his short life in this city.

A Hard Day for Jews All Over

One is not exactly expected to enjoy Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a fast day, but we observed it in the Conservative Synagogue in Lima and enjoyed it even less than we would have, had we attended services in our home synagogue, with our friends, in Jerusalem.

There was a weird mixture of familiarity and strangeness about the congregation: a couple of hundred of well-dressed Ashkenazi Jews very much like the congregations Judith and I knew when we were young - but they were all speaking Spanish.  

After even a day or two in Peru, you realize that European-looking people are the distinct minority there.  Most of the people you see on the street are what the Peruvians call "indigenous" - dark skinned, black haired, almond-eyed native Americans.  There were a couple of indigenous Peruvian converts to Judaism among the others, but most of the people could have been relatives of ours, by their looks.  We didn't exactly feel at home, because we are used to Israel by now, but it was a memory of home, and it was impossible to forget even for a moment why we were in a synagogue in Lima and not in Jerusalem.  

If we'd been in Jerusalem, we would have had to face a Yom Kippur eve without the beautiful singing of our friend Gerald Cromer, who always used to lead the congregation in the haunting "Kol Nidrei" prayer, and who died rapidly of cancer last March.  Sadness there, sadness here.

We took a plane from Lima to Arequipa, Peru's second largest cities, high in the Andes, the day after Yom Kippur.  

Our son Boaz, who works as an attorney in Washington DC, flew in and met us in the airport on our way to Arequipa.  It was wonderful to see him, especially since we had just seen him in America a couple of weeks ago.  Boaz had joined our son-in-law Ofer in the search for Asher last year, and he had gone back to Peru after the body was found to help expedite its transfer to Israel.  Understandably, Boaz was not anxious to return.  He had no surprises to anticipate, only reminders of the dreadful time he had spent there before.

But it was good for us to have him with us.  He has a calm, mature presence

Ceremony at Conservative Synagogue in Lima, Peru, Tues. 7 October, 2008

No sign or plaque identifies the low, gray buildings that house "La Asociacion de Beneficiencia y Culto de 1870," the Conservative Synagogue in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. Before entering you are screened through a one-way mirror, and you must pass through two security doors. Once beyond the barriers, you are in a spacious, attractive facility, well-maintained but not lavish or over-impressive - pleasant and comfortable.

In the early evening, two days before Yom Kippur, we held a small reception in the synagogue auditorium (not the sanctuary), attended by Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein, several other members of his community, the staff of the Israeli Embassy in Lima, and two high officers of the High Mountain Rescue Unit of the Peruvian police force, along with one of the men from the unit in Arequipa. They had never been in a synagogue before and had no idea what the building was.

We held the reception there because the World Council of Conservative Synagogues had helped us handle contributions made in Asher's honor, and we were concerned with emphasizing the Jewish and Israeli aspects of our project.

The Rabbi and I both spoke briefly. I spoke in Hebrew, and the Rabbi translated sentence by sentence into Spanish.

Afterward we showed the film that Ofer and Lael Kline made about the search for Asher and the ultimate discovery of his body, emphasizing the devotion and self-sacrifice of the members of the High Mountain Rescue Unit.

I had just arrived in Peru that morning with our daughter Hannah, and we had spent most of the day arranging to receive the funds that we had transferred to the synagogue. We ultimately received just short of $10,000 in cash, and I was extremely nervous about carrying that much money around me in the streets of a city that I imagined to be full of thieves.

The following day, Ofer was due to go shopping with Robert Grandez, the commander of the rescue unit, for equipment that will help the men do their jobs better. In my short speech, I said that the fact that Asher had died in Peru had created a connection between us and the country, a painful connection, but also one of gratitude. I explained that the contributions were not from us personally, but that many of our relatives and friends had contributed generously to this cause, and we hoped that this equipment would help the rescue unit to do its job better on behalf of all other tourists in Peru.

This was the first step in implementing the plans we had been making in the previous months.

If such a ceremony had been held in the United States or in Israel, someone would have made sure that there was press coverage, but it seemed rather clear that the Jews of Lima are interested more than anything in remaining inconspicuous.

It takes a long time to get from Israel to Peru. Hannah and I left for the airport at eleven in the morning on Monday and arrived in Peru at seven the following morning. As usual, before a trip, I was extremely nervous, reluctant to go in fact, and very apprehensive about Peru, though also curious.

Before the trip I had felt listless and indifferent, as if I'd spent all the momentum that had existed in my life before we lost Asher. We undertook this trip out of a sense of duty, not with enthusiasm, and not with the expectation that we would find that cliche of "closure." Before Asher's body was located, we were in terrible doubt, and going back to Peru revived the memory of that period. Once he was buried, our doubt was gone, but so were our hopes.

It was gratifying for us to have the embassy people attend, people we'd spoken to by telephone time and time again during the searches. In a short conversation with our ambassador, a retired Druze army officer named Walid Mantsur, I told him what I've said to many people on many occasions: I didn't want the people who had done so much to find Asher to think that we wealthy foreigners expect poor Peruvians to risk their lives for us. I wanted to emphasize our personal gratitude, as Asher's parents and siblings, for the humane efforts they made on behalf of a total stranger.