Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

thinking of Alexandra’s gravestone and the Herakleitos inscription: Identical are Beginning and End on the Periphery of aCircle. My search, too, had come full circle.Holding the necklace suspended between my hands I handed it back to her. She smiled.My friends waited for me after the performance. I introduced Eliso as my cousin. They thought I was putting them on.Eliso prepared a late supper. "Have you been to Georgia? What do you know about us and our grandparents’ lives?"I had given some thought to what I wanted to ask her. There were so many questions. Where to start?"About you, Sophia, and the time after 1939, I know near nothing. The war cut us apart. My father left in 1918, as youknow. Between 1918 and 1939 Alexandra wrote seven letters to Otto, which I found after father’s death. He told memany stories from his childhood, which sounded like fairy tales. I am a physicist, which allowed me to visit Georgia andsearch for Alexandra’s traces. I fell in love with Georgia, but besides her grave in Zaguramo my search yielded preciouslylittle. I did learn that Alexandra went to Central Asia in 1943 with other Germans from Georgia. Konrad was over seventythen? You must have been born about that time. In 1939, in her last letter, Alexandra wrote that Sophia was about to getmarried, but did not mention her future husband’s name. Is he your father?"Eliso nodded.She had produced a few squares of khachapuri and some walnut-filled aubergines from the refrigerator. She lit a candleand filled two glasses with Georgian cognac.As she lifted her glass her intense eyes met mine. "To the memory of our dead."She sighed. "1943, that fateful year…"Her eyes were far away. "My earliest memories are of that year. I was three. In January my father died in the battle ofStalingrad. During the hot summer Christine Ortaladze, Alexandra’s closest friend, contracted poliomyelitis and diedunder Alexandra’s helpless hands. And later that year, Stalin, the Georgian monster, ordered all Germans deported toCentral Asia. Konrad and Alexandra did not fall under that order, but their close friends in Elisabethtal did. 1943 was thelowest point in Alexandra’s life. Konrad persuaded her to volunteer her services as a medical doctor to the Germandeportees. They left with that transport. Sophia and I stayed behind."She looked at me. "Have you heard of these people?"I nodded. "From Alexandra’s letters I even know of Dato Ortaladze and Berta and Wachtang Eberle and SagdullaBakhrami. Entirely by accident I met Susanne Eberle on the street in Tbilisi in 1982. She told me that Alexandra haddelivered her in Shakh-i-Zabz and was buried in Zaguramo—but she was too afraid to tell me more. I figured thatAlexandra had returned to Tbilisi after Stalin’s death. What happened to Konrad? I always assumed that Alexandra haddecided to accompany the German colony to Uzbekistan. She made all other decisions in their lives."Eliso remained silent for a while.Deep shadows had formed around her eyes. "Konrad was seventy-four when he persuaded her to leave Tbilisi.Alexandra was in such a dangerously depressed state that he had to do something decisive to rescue her. He knew thathe would never return. He died in Shakh-i-Zabz in 1954 and is buried there. When Alexandra returned a year later, shechose me as her close companion. For ten years she lived with us. Unbroken and a formidable, outspoken person. Shecould be very warm and would protect me like a lioness, but she intimidated me often. Several secrets surrounded theirleaving for Uzbekistan and Konrad’s death, which she never explained to me."She rose and retrieved three photographs from her bedroom, a formal picture of a soft, blond Georgian woman in herforties and another of a Muslim grave. A narrow stele crowned by the hat of the Dervishes. Its weathered inscription wasin Russian. I could barely decipher the name, Konrad Rost and the dates 1869-1954. The third photo she kept in herhand.Eliso said, "This is my mother, and the grave is Konrad’s. Why does it look like a Muslim grave?"An intriguing question. Yet it opened up an unexpected explanation of why Konrad had taken depressed Alexandra toUzbekistan.I hesitated. "It will shock you. Konrad was an initiated Sufi. Three weeks before Otto left for Germany, they celebratedKonrad’s initiation at the Halveji tekke in Shavnabada. The conical object on his grave stone is the Dervish hat he wasgiven then.""What," Eliso exclaimed, "Grandfather Konrad, a Moslem? You cannot be serious—but Alexandra also used to call it aSufi hat."I shrugged. "It is improbable that he ever converted to Islam—although I do not know what happened in Uzbekistan—butwithout doubt Konrad was a Halveji. It is a long story, which all started with the necklace you wear. It is a Sufi necklace,which Konrad made for Alexandra in 1899."She touched the necklace. "I do, of course, know that Konrad made this necklace. Alexandra gave it to me before shedied. She told me that it had mystical powers to protect me, but she did not explain why-a Sufi necklace?“She shook her head. I told her the story of Henri Halvejian, the necklace, and of Konrad’s initiation at Shavnabada. "Inow see another, additional explanation for Konrad's taking Alexandra to Uzbekistan. Konrad introduced SagdullaBakhrami to the Halveji tekke at Shavnabada. Sagdulla became Konrad’s connection to the Central Asian Sufis. Hecame from an old Uzbek family."216