AS THE SOLIDLY BUILT POLICEMAN wheeled him down the corridor, nurses and doctors avoided looking at him. Normally when patients were well enough to leave the hospital, those doctors and nurses who had cared for their health acknowledged their leaving as a rite of passage. If they were important people, some of the staff lined up in congratulations, wishing the patient continued good health and fortune.
But everybody knew, without even looking at the handcuffs that tethered his wrist to the armrest of the wheelchair, that Bilal would be getting no such reception. Only Yael came to the door of the men’s surgical recovery ward to wish him good-bye.
She stood at the window of the ward and watched him being wheeled into an ambulance to be driven to police headquarters, where he would be processed, arraigned by a judge, remanded in custody to await a trial hearing, and then shipped off to prison. She prayed that, for the sake of his mother and father, he’d plead guilty so that his trial and the awful evidence that would doubtless be presented would be over quickly.
When the ambulance disappeared from the hospital grounds and into Jerusalem’s frenetic traffic, she returned to writing up patient notes for the three operations she’d performed that day, showered in the doctors’ rooms, and prepared for her dinner with Yaniv. Part of her wanted to have dinner with him: he was bright, knowledgeable, and certainly handsome, and the advantage he held over other men she’d recently dated in her small hospital world was that he wasn’t medical. But another part of her had dubbed him Ivan the American, and she wondered if, when this was all over—when things had settled down—there could possibly be a future relationship; they were culturally the same but from different parts of the globe. Or was she being just a tiny bit xenophobic and naïve?
They were going to dine in a new French restaurant that had recently opened in the exclusive Mamilla shopping mall near the Old City. For the occasion, she’d brought to the hospital her favorite red dress with a revealing but still modest neckline and black patent high heels. She quickly called in to the hospital’s hairdresser for a comb-through and style.
Rather than drive and try to find parking, she took a cab to the Mamilla and walked down the flight of steps and along its length, passing Jews and Arabs, Orthodox and secular, young and old, until she entered the restaurant. She was seated and then waited ten minutes for Yaniv to arrive.
He apologized for being late. “The reason I was delayed was because I was interviewing the foreign minister and he insisted on reframing my questions so he gave the answers he wanted. I told him I’d dump the interview unless he was willing to answer the questions. It was a bit of a tussle . . .”
Yael listened and might have taken Yaniv’s story as bragging and name-dropping designed to impress her, but he delivered it with such nonchalance that he might have been speaking of his conversation with a shopkeeper.
“But I won,” he added as he sat down. “You can always get them where you want them, if you know how to be forceful but patient.”
He asked about her day, and she told him briefly about the three operations and saying good-bye to Bilal. The questions he asked her seemed to casually and easily move past friendship into the territory of interviewer and interviewee, and she wondered whether he was using her as a source for a story.
“You sound sorry that he’s in police custody,” said Yaniv.
“He may be a murderer but he’s also a kid who’s fucked up his life. There’s tragedy there as much as anything else. Things should have been different for Bilal . . .”
Yael couldn’t help but remember Bilal’s words to her: “It’s so easy for you, Doctor . . .”
“A different time, different circumstances,” she continued. “Life might have been very different for him and a generation of Palestinians who’ve been raised as victims, and to hate.”
“How was he when he left the hospital? Full of bravado?”
“Of course. But . . .” She thought back to him as he was being wheeled down the corridor. “It was hollow. There’s more going on in that head of his than militant rhetoric.”
“Not surprising when you think about where he’s going.”
“Hmmm . . . not just that . . .” Yael sipped her wine and didn’t elaborate.
When he’d finished a mouthful of lamb, Yaniv said, “Did the Shin Bet guys get tough? Or are they saving that for when he’s out of sight?”
“They’re not stupid; in the hospital it’s just questions. He refused to answer. But he was rattled. That’s for sure.”
“If a group of black-suited Shin Bet officers visited me while I was handcuffed to a bed, I’d probably be rattled too.”
Yael shook her head. “No, there was only one Shin Bet man who actually interviewed him.”
Yaniv raised an eyebrow. “Only one? I know them. They’re usually in pairs.”
“I met him as I was going into Bilal’s room. He was even wearing a yarmulke, which I found odd for a Shin Bet guy.”
“It’s also odd that a Shin Bet officer would question someone alone. Those guys are pretty officious and love their procedure.”
“He had this odd white streak of hair down the middle, graying at the sides. With the yarmulke, it looked almost funny.”
Yaniv suddenly looked up at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Dark gray at the sides, white down the middle. Lean build. Really dark eyes?”
“Maybe. Yes. I think so. Why?”
“I’ve never spoken to him, but if it’s who I think it is, he’s a seriously heavy player. Division head.”
“So?” said Yael.
“Seems a bit heavy for a kid who fucked up his mission. That level, he’d be doing policy or dealing with the heads of Hamas or Hezbollah. Not some failed wannabe.”
Yael shrugged. But Ivan the American wasn’t willing to let it go. “Why would a top-level Shin Bet commander come out of the office for a kid like Bilal? And on his own?”
Yael remained silent. She didn’t see the cause of his sudden interest.
“What did the kid say about this man, Yael?”
“Nothing,” she replied. But she knew from his reaction that there was far more to it than that. “Yaniv, what’s going on?”
He frowned, and shook his head slightly. “Probably nothing.”
“Come on, don’t bullshit me.”
“No, honest,” he said, and tried to concentrate on his meal. But she remained absolutely still, looking at him intently. Knowing that the spotlight was on him, he said softly, “If it’s the guy I think it is, something doesn’t seem kosher. That’s all.”
She looked across the table; he seemed to be a bit distant. This was a new Yaniv, one she hadn’t seen before. Up until now, he’d been the reporter on a mission, somebody who she half knew was just using her to get to a story; but now she thought she could perceive a different man, an investigative reporter, maybe even in the Woodward and Bernstein mold, making agreements with sources in back alleys, having whispered conversations with people known only by their code names.
Suddenly, she saw him not as a reporter out for his own glorification but as a professional journalist who’d bust down doors to get at the truth. And she liked what she saw.
Central Area D Prison Facility, Dead Sea, Israel
“IS THIS THE ONE?” asked the Israeli admissions clerk as Bilal was wheeled into the prison reception area.
The policeman who was pushing him nodded. “Bilal haMitzri. Just brought down from the Jerusalem Hospital via Police HQ.”
“Why’s he still in a wheelchair? Can’t he walk?”
“His doctors have said he has to be in the wheelchair until your prison doctor says he can get out of it.”
“Bullshit. You!” barked the clerk. “Can you walk?”
Bilal didn’t answer, so the clerk asked again in broken Arabic, “Can you walk?”
Bilal tried to raise his arm, but his left wrist was constrained by the handcuffs. The clerk said to the policeman, “Undo his cuffs and see if the bastard can walk. Just tip him out of the chair.”
Within a moment, Bilal was on his feet, clutching the desk for support. “Sign the paperwork and he’s all yours,” said the policeman.
It took half an hour to strip Bilal, examine his orifices, ask him searching and personal questions about his sexuality and drug dependence, his parentage, relationships, affiliations to organizations, religious inclination, and more. He was given prison clothes to wear, and his personal clothes were put into a cardboard box for storage until he was released. His wallet, phone, bracelet, and watch, which had been taken from him when he was shot, were still in Jerusalem under the watchful eye of the hospital’s security until they were released by Shin Bet.
“Which means, you murdering bastard, that for the rest of what remains of your life, you’ll be living in prison garb, and you’ll never see these clothes again,” taunted the clerk.
Bilal lowered his head, a mixture of fear and anger welling inside him, and shuffled slowly beside the prison guard from the outer reception areas through a series of electrified doors and steel security barriers into the prison compound proper.
The astringent reek of antiseptic tried but failed to mask the reek of urine, vomit, and sweat that pervaded every corner of the prison. It took days, sometimes weeks, for newcomers to acclimatize themselves to the stench, something between rotting meat and decaying vegetables. Three times a day, prisoners with mops and buckets would trundle along corridors, sloshing the acrid disinfectant over the floors and halfway up the walls in an attempt to overcome the damage done by the prisoners the previous night. The game, when the lights were out, was to see how far each prisoner who was in a normal cell, not isolated, could piss across the corridor. Immune to further punishment and increased restrictions on their privileges, the inmates used their arcs of urine as both a demonstration of masculinity and a way of showing their contempt to their Israeli captors.
From dawn until well after lights-out, the prison was a clamor of noise and din. A bizarre combination of yells, catcalls, obscenities, and prayers. The noises of men locked in cages traveled down corridors, and Bilal, petrified but trying to look brave, at first attempted to block it out with his fingers in his ears, but when that proved useless, he tried to determine where the noises were coming from. But they were all around him.
As he walked toward the cell where he would be spending much of his time until he was tried and sent back to this prison or assigned to a different prison, Bilal hesitated at the entryway. The guard had to push him forward. It was typical of first-time prisoners, the sudden and wrenching realization that this, not parks or cafés or the houses of his loved ones, was now where he’d spend his days. It had a steel bed, a steel urinal, and a steel sink, but these didn’t make it much more than the sort of cage where animals spent their lives as captives of a zoo.
Sitting alone on his bunk, Bilal, terrified of the melee of foreign sounds from the prison compound, tried to prevent his head from exploding in panic. It was all part of the insinuation of new and unwelcome experiences he would suffer every minute of every day of his confinement.
Bilal continued to stare at the same spot on the wall, wondering why he was here and what sin he’d committed against Allah for his god to let him live and be treated in such a cruel and vindictive way. Every hour, guards would slide away the hinged plate from the spyhole of his isolation door, look at the inhabitant, and ensure that he was still alive and breathing.
They’d seen a thousand prisoners like him come and go: shocked, angry, vengeful, and swearing retribution. But the ones they worried about were the quiet ones, those who held everything inside until something, some minuscule incident like a dirty plate or the doors opening later than normal, would drive them over the edge. Then they’d either try to harm themselves or they’d suddenly lash out unexpectedly and could be very dangerous.
After a full day of observation, some of the guards began to think that this one was different. This kid wasn’t coming out of his shell at all. He remained almost catatonic and must have felt totally dissociated within his new and unaccustomed surroundings. And so he was put on suicide watch, and the guards reported back to the prison governor that Bilal seemed to be spending every minute of his time inside his cell, mumbling prayers from the Koran.
A week later they were increasingly worried. Initially he’d been examined by the prison doctor, who looked at the wounds he’d suffered and the way that the surgeon in the Jerusalem Hospital had repaired his body. It was an excellent job and he’d recovered well.
But because of who he was—somebody who’d attacked the holiest place of Judaism—his isolation had been ordered by the governor so that he didn’t become a local hero and a rallying point for the other prisoners. Not that there was much chance of that, according to his guards. He was utterly featureless, uncharismatic, and everyday—hardly the stuff of heroes.
In his second week of incarceration, he received a visit from his imam. Normally, when a holy man came to visit a prisoner, the mood picked up. But when he was told of his imam’s visit, the Israeli guard was surprised at the consternation on Bilal’s face.
Still, he appeared to be growing more resilient day by day. Though he was still on suicide watch, there was less concern for Bilal’s welfare. He was no longer as morose but was now talking to fellow prisoners in the exercise yards, occasionally being impertinent to the guards, and once or twice managing to smile.
The imam had been to the prison before, several times, leaving his home in Bayt al Gizah and traveling down the steep road that descended into the lowest region on earth, the Dead Sea. The prison, designated as Central Area D, was hidden behind a wall of palm and date trees, in the afternoon shade of the massive white cliffs. Farther south along the road that led down the rift valley toward the Gulf of Eilat were the oasis at Ein Gedi, the ancient Essene settlement of Qumran, and the Herodian fortress at Masada. Not that the imam had visited those archaeological areas.
Since leaving the Al-Azhar University and mosque in Cairo and coming to Bayt al Gizah to be the imam to his beloved Palestinian people, he had made fools of the Israeli security services, had gathered around him a young coterie of eager shahids—all prepared for martyrdom—and was about to unleash a furious assault against the Jews and their arrogance. But first he had to take care of a little disappointment called Bilal.
He’d hoped that Bilal, the most anxious of all the young men within the imam’s group to prove his love of Allah, would have brought some small measure of destruction to Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter. Of course it was absurd to think that he could have done much damage, despite what the imam had told him: the security services were hypervigilant around the Wailing Wall. But the whole purpose of sending Bilal to his death was to breach the Jews’ security, even for a few minutes, perhaps to explode a bomb, and thus to show the Jews that they were vulnerable. Yet, he had failed in his mission, no bomb had gone off, there was no shahid, and another Palestinian freedom fighter was made to look like a buffoon in the world’s media. Instead of bringing down the Jews’ Holy Wall, he’d singed his hair and discovered a priceless Jewish treasure!
But it got worse, for now there was even the possibility that instead of dying as he should, he’d told this doctor about the Bayt al Gizah group. And worse, a thousand times worse, Bilal indicated that he’d somehow seen him with the Jew from Shin Bet whom he’d met with the old rabbi from Neturei Karta.
The boy had to die, for he was a captive and the Jews would no doubt torture him and extract the information. Fortunately, because of his injuries, he hadn’t yet been questioned, but it would only be a matter of time.
Bilal was led, handcuffed to a guard, into a reception room. It was bare with not a touch of humanity to soften its symmetrical gray lines, its imposing steel furniture bolted to the floor, including a single heavy table.
The imam was seated as Bilal was led to the chair. “My son. How are you? Is Allah the Merciful being good to you in this place of punishment and retribution? Have you made friends with your brothers here?”
Bilal smiled at his imam but the priest knew immediately that it was a forced smile. This wasn’t the Bilal who had been his willing acolyte in the mosque. “Imam, I’ve spoken to nobody.”
The imam smiled and nodded, trying to offer the youngster some sympathy in his expression. “My boy, you’re afraid, and fear is to be expected. When you’re removed from the love and wisdom of your father and those consolations that can be offered by your mother, it’s natural for you to feel alone and afraid. But remember this, Bilal: in here, in this very prison with its walls and wire, you have a father . . . In here, Bilal, you have the presence of Allah, of God Himself. In here is the God of Ibrahim and his son Ismail, the very God of Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him. Put your love and faith in Allah, and nothing may harm you.”
Bilal nodded. He’d been trying to find Allah in the prison since he was sent here from the hospital, but the noises, the disruptions, the shouting, the anger, and the threats that reverberated around the walls and filled every space made Allah a distant ghost.
The imam turned around to see how far away the Israeli guard was before he spoke. The last thing he wanted was to be overheard. Fortunately, the guard was at the other end of the room, reading a newspaper.
He whispered, “Tell me, Bilal, to whom have you spoken?”
“I swear, imam, I speak to no one.”
“You must think hard. You were drugged, Bilal. Your mind affected and under the Jew doctor’s knife.”
Bilal looked at the imam and didn’t answer. He didn’t know. The imam smiled and nodded in reassurance. “Don’t worry, my son. Allah will never blame you for falling foul of the Jews’ tricks. But how can I and your brothers in Bayt al Gizah be assured of your silence?”
“I promise you, imam, by all that is holy, in the name of the last and greatest prophet, Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, that I will die before I break my oath.”
Bilal was going to say that he’d never spoken to anybody about the Jew with the white hair, and the rabbi in the room in the village near Bethlehem, but caution made him hold back.
The imam smiled again. “I know that, Bilal, my son. I know that. Now I have to leave you. There are other brothers I have to speak with.”
THE BONES OF AHIMAAZ, the former high priest of Israel, were never found. Nor did anybody ask after him. Only his wife and children wondered whether they’d ever see him again and whether he’d found his long-lost brother Azariah.
Yet, strangely, as Ahimaaz’s body decayed and dissolved into the ground after he died of thirst in a distant cave far to the south of Jerusalem, his reputation grew, and the days when Ahimaaz had been high priest of Israel became golden. As Rehoboam ruled after the death of Solomon, the children of Israel looked back on past glories and feared what would happen to their nation and to them as a people.
Through arrogance and stupidity, Rehoboam caused the land of Israel—twelve tribes bonded together into a nation by King David and King Solomon—to split into separate lands in the north and south. Judah and Israel, though not enemies, lived side by side for four hundred years as two separate nations with separate capitals, temples, and kingly families. They even took separate names, the south becoming the Kingdom of Judah, composed of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the northern ten tribes becoming the Kingdom of Samaria.
But other nations grew in size and ferocity, and when the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III, destroyed the northern kingdom, he sent the inhabitants into exile. Two hundred years later, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Judah.
It had been four centuries from the time when Solomon the Wise laid the first two stones of his temple in Jerusalem until its devastation in the wreckage of Jerusalem left by the invading Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar emptied the land and took the Jewish people into exile to live within the boundaries of the fabulous city of Babylon, where they formed their societies along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And in those fifty years of exile, Jerusalem became overgrown with weeds and decay, and the Jews in Babylon grew lazy and indolent, removed from the harshness of their land and out of the sight of their god.
For fifty years the Jews lived by the waters of the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, which were the lifeblood of the Empire of Mesopotamia, and which made it one of the most fertile areas of the world. Some of the Hebrews remained faithful to their religion and their god; others eased into the comforts and wealth of Babylon and began to worship stone and wooden idols.
And it was an easy life, even for the Hebrews. Apart from dates, which grew everywhere and provided the people with food, wood, and fodder for their cattle, the Jews luxuriated in plentiful supplies of wheat, barley, lentils, onions, and leeks. Wherever they walked in the land between the two rivers, there were grapes and olives and figs. Spices and fruits grew everywhere, and medicines made from the herbs became readily available to the poor as well as the rich.
It was a land of plenty, unlike the harshness of Jerusalem and much of Israel, which was dry and often barren. And so, because they were exiles far from their land, as one generation succeeded another, the love of Jerusalem and the worship of Yahweh dimmed, generation after generation.
Few who were born in Babylon looked to the south where the land of Israel lay; fewer still had any desire to go there. Only a handful of older ones who did remember Israel yearned for the land, and they wrote psalms and songs to the distant glories of Jerusalem, but their yearnings fell on deaf ears.
Certainly few remembered Ahimaaz, the man who was once high priest. The descendants of those Israelites who sat beside the languid waters of the rivers of Babylon may have known his name, as they knew the names of Moses and Aaron, Joshua and David, but to them these were figures in the history of their people, as remote and invisible as God Himself.
Neither did the exiles in Babylon remember Ahimaaz’s colleague, the much lesser figure of Gamaliel, son of Terah of the tribe of Manasseh, who had collected taxes so that King Solomon could build his temple. For unlike the descendants of Ahimaaz, who handed the mantle of priest down the generations, the offspring of Gamaliel failed to make a mark on the people; and as one generation succeeded the next, they changed their occupations from tax gatherers to merchants to landlords to financiers of caravans carrying goods from place to place, and now were counselors to the rulers of Babylon.
All was well with Babylon and the Children of Israel, until the appearance beyond the horizon of Cyrus, king of Persia. In the few years since the people of Babylon first heard his name, Cyrus the Great had conquered the lands of foreign kings and was now marching toward their city. The people were gripped by panic.
And the exiles from Israel, having long experience of fighting would-be conquerors, were more afraid than most. The Israelites held Nebuchadnezzar’s successors in low regard, and now that King Nabu-na’id had usurped the throne and was ruling with his son Belshazzar, things had gone from bad to worse. Learning of the rise of Cyrus, Nabu-na’id tried to make an alliance with the pharaoh Amasis II of Egypt and had even approached King Croesus of Lydia, but they’d rebuffed him, and so, like a spoiled child, he’d amused himself with things inside the city and paid no attention to the outside world. King Nabu-na’id spent all his time building temples and improving Nebuchadnezzar’s hanging gardens, waterways, and parks, and had no interest in defending the nation against the rise of the Persian Cyrus the Great, for his ministers had assured him that there was food for years within the city, and the walls were impregnable.
But the conquest of the impregnable walls of Babylon proved to be so simple, it came close to engendering respect among those captured. Not a stone from a catapult hit the wall, not a spear was thrown nor an arrow loosed. Indeed, until the Persians were inside the walls of the city, nobody in Babylon was aware of their capture by the Persians.
Arrogantly celebrating a feast day of their god Marduk, and all but a few guards watching what was happening in Cyrus’s encampment outside the walls, the people of Babylon were rejoicing while Cyrus’s engineers executed one of the most brilliant plans in military history. It was audacious—many thought it impossible—yet it happened, and with a minimum of deaths the city fell without a fight.
THE RIVER EUPHRATES RAN underneath the walls of the city, but massive iron girders had been constructed at the base of the walls and deep into the river. Some youths had died trying, but it was now recognized that nobody could hold his breath long enough to swim under the iron girders. So when he knew that the city was celebrating a religious festival, Cyrus ordered the vast river to be diverted. Huge blocks of stone were built into a wall in the river’s path, and the flow diverted away from the city. The water stopped flowing through Babylon and was sidetracked into the desert, where it flooded the ancient sands. The level of the river quickly fell, and a small detachment of men was able to walk chest-high through the water until they were inside the wall, where they fought a troop of guards and opened the massive Ishtar Gate. Cyrus’s troops swarmed into the city and took possession while men and women slept soundly, confident they were safe from invasion.
The following day, after his surrender, a shocked King Nabuna’id assembled with his family on the top of the ziggurat of the Temple of Etemenanki in the middle of Babylon to await the arrival of King Cyrus and the certainty of torture and execution. The entire citizenry also assembled, and all the streets leading to the capital were bursting with terrified men, women, and children wailing and praying, waiting to hear their fate. Would they be enslaved? Raped? Murdered?
Arriving on his golden chariot, King Cyrus walked up to the top of the ziggurat in the unusual silence. Even the birds of the city were quiet. The citizens as well as slaves and prisoners held their breath as he began to speak, and were astounded to hear him begin by blessing their god, Marduk. Then he blessed the people in the name of Marduk. Then he said, “Hear me, people of Babylon. Only a fool would destroy a city of this beauty, one of wealth and one producing such an abundance of food.
“I say to all the slaves gathered before me that you will be free men and women as of this day. I will allow you to remain in Babylon should you wish it, and you will live here as freedmen and -women, or you can return to your homelands. I am told that there are 150,000 Jews in exile in Babylon. You are allowed to return to Israel, where you will rebuild Jerusalem and pay me and my heirs a tribute for my protection. There is no reason to allow Israel to remain barren and unproductive, earning me no tribute, while you Israelites are living in Babylon. Return home, rebuild your nation, and all will benefit.”
Hearing these words, words that had never previously been spoken by any conqueror in history, the people rejoiced with cheers and screams and praise.
Less than two weeks later, a column of Jews, stretching from the east to the horizon on the northwest, trudged slowly westward out of Babylon toward Damascus. They could have walked directly south toward Jerusalem, but the roads were full of bandits, and the Damascus road to the west was guarded by soldiers and was well used by merchants. It was safer to travel by the western route and then south down the coast. Once they were level with Jerusalem, it was an easy road from the sea, up the rugged hills, to the City of God.
Once they reached Damascus and replenished their supplies, the Jews had two choices. They might travel farther westward toward the coast of the Great Sea and the cities of Tyre and Sidon before heading south to follow the sweep of the land toward Israel and then up the hills to the ruined city of Jerusalem. Or they could walk the route in the hills of the King’s Highway and from Damascus they could reach Hazor and then Shechem before climbing to Jerusalem. Joshua, descendant of Ahimaaz and leader of the Jewish people, told his Council of Elders that they should take the advice of travelers and merchants in the marketplaces of Damascus before deciding. Much depended both on what the weather had done to the roads and whether brigands and bandits were active in the areas.
Some of the community rode out of Babylon on wagons, some on horses, some on donkeys and asses and mules, but most walked. Fathers carried young children on their weary shoulders; mothers hefted heavy sacks full of whatever possessions they could carry. Most of those who had decided to leave Babylon were exultant to be returning to the land that they remembered from stories told to them by their parents and grandparents, or from the sermons they heard in the synagogues; yet others, despite wearing a broad smile on their faces, were wary of the difficulties that lay ahead, both on the road and when they reached the ruined city of Jerusalem.
It was the tenth day since the gates of Babylon had opened and the Jews had walked slowly, majestically, out of the city as a free people, their heads held high, westward as the sun rose behind their backs in the eastern sky. Merchants had trodden this road many times on their way to trade in Damascus, but few of their families—indeed, few of the Jews who had lived in Babylon for two generations—had been this far from the city.
The noise of the cheering for their freedom was still ringing in high priest Joshua’s ears, ten days’ walk westward from Babylon. Those who were intent on leaving Babylon had packed their few possessions and trudged behind him and the other religious leaders. More than fifty thousand Jews decided to return to Jerusalem, but twice that number determined to remain in Babylon, fearing that the one hundred days of traveling were too much for them to undertake, knowing that there would only be fifteen days on which they could rest for the holy Sabbath. And when they arrived in Israel, there would be no relief from exhaustion, as they would immediately have to rebuild the derelict cities and the devastated land.
The road to Damascus was pitted in places, and wagons found it difficult to negotiate the dips and ruts and surface erosion. Where the people traveled through a valley, the path was often well marked; but when they had to climb over a hill that had been more exposed to rain and wind, and where large boulders had fought their way to the surface, the going was slower and more tortured.
The high priest, Joshua, wasn’t surprised but was horribly disappointed that only a third of the Jews of Babylon had opted to return to Israel. But he had great pleasure in welcoming as a fellow traveler one of the richest Hebrews in Babylon, Reuven the merchant. Although neither man was particularly aware of it, the stories that were his family’s history told of Reuven’s ancestor Gamaliel as a close friend and associate of Joshua’s ancestor Ahimaaz.
Reuven’s wife, Naomi, was pregnant, and the sudden and unexpected status of fatherhood changed him. He and Naomi had been trying for years to have a son, but the Almighty hadn’t favored them. And then, just when Cyrus began his siege of the city of Babylon, Naomi announced that she was with child.
The moment Cyrus freed the Israelites from their Babylonian captivity, Reuven announced that he and Naomi would travel to Israel and establish a branch of his business enterprise in Jerusalem, its capital.
For Joshua, it was a coup to have such an important man making the journey. Most of the wealthy, established Jews hadn’t wanted to leave their homes and businesses and the comforts found in Babylon to go to a desolate, overgrown, parched, and infertile landscape. Reuven’s decision had influenced only a few of the wealthy members of the Hebrew community to leave Babylon, and so a diminished number of Jews traveled west to Damascus and then south toward Jerusalem.
Riding on a wooden wagon, Joshua said to Reuven, “It’s going to be much harder to rebuild the land with so few people, but our journey is supervised by the Almighty One and so we will be safe.”
Reuven looked at him in amazement. “Tell me, Rabbi Joshua, do Jews ever die?”
“Of course.”
“But why, if Adonai is our God and He protects us, shouldn’t we live forever?”
“Reuven, don’t be silly. You know that God . . .”
The merchant laughed as the rabbi tried to argue, and said, “You’re as much of a fool as is this god of ours. You have a big task ahead of you, Joshua. Not only clearing a devastated land and rebuilding a city, but establishing farms, growing food, setting up trading links for merchants who have little connection with Israel . . .”
“Life will be hard for us all—even for you, Reuven.”
The merchant laughed again. “Some of us only know how to make a bed from straw. But others, like me, know how to make our beds from the down of birds. Trust me, Joshua, my wife and I won’t suffer hardships.”
“But how?”
“You don’t think that I would have turned my back on everything I’ve built during my lifetime? I have good people working for me in my businesses in Babylon. I will develop trading routes into Israel from Damascus, Tyre, and even as far as India. I intend to establish a series of caravanserai throughout the country, and my caravans will bring precious merchandise from the east and return with what Israel can produce and sell. So where once, hundreds of years ago, the caravans used to visit Jerusalem, I will reestablish that trade. It will take two or three years, but it will happen.”
“With God’s will,” said Joshua.
“No, with my money and brains,” Reuven said sharply.
ONCE BILAL HAD BEEN RETURNED to his cell, the imam was led to the general population area of the prison by a scrawny and impassive guard. The two men walked along stinking corridors and through guarded doorways until they reached the inner exercise yard, surrounded by ten-meter-high walls and guard towers every twenty yards.
In the exercise yard, there were hundreds of prisoners, most of them Palestinians, many of them terrorists, as well as Arabs from other nations who had committed crimes while they were in Israel, such as burglary, crimes of violence, and offenses against the state. The moment the imam entered the large area, people milling around or playing basketball or other games stopped almost immediately and began to gravitate toward him. Few knew him but almost everybody smiled at the preacher as they gathered in a large circle around him, hoping that he’d come there to pray with and for them and to offer them solace.
He smiled at the crowd and said to the Israeli guard, “Out of courtesy to our faith, I ask you to leave me while I pray with my brothers.”
The guard turned and walked back through the door into the corridor. The imam looked at the prisoners, and said loudly, “As-salamu alaykum.”
Almost as one, they responded, but some, more formally, replied, “Wa alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatu Allah wa barakatuh.”
The imam held up his hands and said a blessing over all the prisoners. They responded to him and waited for a lesson from the Koran, but none came. Instead, the imam said softly, knowing that he was being viewed with suspicion by the guards, “Are any of you brothers living in the K wing?”
He noticed that two of the men nodded, although they looked surprised and were immediately suspicious. “Let me speak privately with you. For the sake of the Jews, let it look as though I am giving you a private blessing. Other brothers, I beg you to crowd around so that I can speak to these two brothers privately and not be observed too keenly.”
The crowd milled around the imam and the two residents of K wing. He put his arms around their shoulders and spoke quietly to them both as though he were praying silently for their souls.
“Your name, brother?” he asked.
One man said he was Mahfuz. The other told him he was called Ibrahim.
“Have you met a young man whose name is Bilal? He came here from the hospital. He was the boy who—”
“He tried to blow up the Jew temple,” said Ibrahim. “Yes, I’ve seen him. He stays in his cell most of the time. He seems as though the sky has fallen on his head. Why?”
“I’m worried about him,” said the imam. “He is a dear boy, and he was once a good Muslim. I pray for him every night, I beg Allah to look after him and protect him, but I think that the underhanded Jews have offered him . . . no, I don’t know, it’s not fair of me to say . . . it’s not his fault . . . but since he’s been here, he’s changed. He talks to them of things, and he won’t tell me of what he speaks. Would you brothers take care of him?”
BILAL NOTICED the change of attitude among the other prisoners during the first exercise period the following day. His guard checked on him through the peephole in the door, opened it, and walked inside. Sitting on his bed, Bilal looked up, stood, and walked beside his guard in silence along the corridors until they came to the large dining hall where prisoners were already seated at bare steel tables, gulping down bowls of oats, pita bread, and lentils. Although he was allowed to eat with the other prisoners, he was always carefully scrutinized by the guards.
Bilal stood in line for his food, and when it was his turn to be served by one of the trusty prisoners, the food was slopped onto his plate; then, checking that the guard wasn’t watching, the trusty spat into the food. Revolted, Bilal began to object, but the prisoner standing beside him turned and hissed, “Shut your fucking mouth or you’re dead. Go eat your shit and I hope you choke.”
In surprise and shock, unsure what to do, Bilal walked from the food table to find a seat beside other prisoners who he was beginning to recognize. But the moment he sat down, the others looked at one another and shifted away from him, further isolating him.
The guard noticed and came over to speak to Bilal. “What’s wrong here?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Bilal.
The guard carefully scanned the prisoners, who averted their eyes.
“If there’s any trouble here, even the slightest, I’ll have you all in the punishment cell before you can blink. Got that?”
The others at the table shrugged, but the guard stood close beside Bilal. It was something well noticed by all of the prisoners in the room.
When the guard had departed, Bilal whispered to the nearest inmate across the table, “Why are you treating me like this? What have I done?”
The tension in his voice was palpable, but it didn’t impress the others at the table. “You piece of shit. We heard about you singing to the Jews.” It was the only reply, and the inmate stood and went to sit elsewhere, soon joined by the others, leaving Bilal alone at the table.
Bilal’s mind devolved into a panic. How could he convince people that he wasn’t saying anything? Why didn’t they believe him? Why didn’t his imam believe him? Had his imam said something to these other prisoners? He started to shake but fought to control himself, and found a kernel of courage as his hand gripped the table.
He turned to the next table and said, “You just remember who I am and what I did to the Jews. Anybody who comes near me gets his throat torn out. Understand?”
The Israeli guard turned when he heard the commotion and quickly walked back to the table. “I already spoke to you all. What’s going on?”
Another prisoner, eating his oats, said softly, “He doesn’t like the food . . .”
IT TOOK LESS THAN AN hour for the guard’s concerns to be transmitted to the governor of the prison. Many years’ experience foretold what the next steps might be. The prisoner Bilal had to be protected until Shin Bet had finished with him and drawn from him everything he knew. He’d read the initial report about the boy: they considered him a dumb, talentless kid who’d probably been led astray by some local firebrand. They’d get around to interviewing him within a week or so, certainly long before his trial, but he’d have to wait his turn. Despite the potential of the atrocity he could have committed, he’d done nothing except cause annoyance, and he was way down on the list of terrorists who needed to be interviewed. But it was a delay that made the governor worry.
In a cell within K wing, two floors lower than where Bilal was incarcerated, Ibrahim lay on his bunk, waiting for the guards to turn out the lights in the corridor, which extinguished the light in his cell. The two other men with whom he shared the space were already snoring. But patience was one of the attributes that determined survival or death in the Israeli prison system, and in the seven years he had been there, Ibrahim had learned the art of patience.
Punished to residency in K wing for beating another prisoner into a permanent coma, Ibrahim had learned to live with the restrictions. While the other prisoners were allowed to mingle, watch the communal televisions at night, and enjoy limited interaction, Ibrahim shared his days with terrorists, failed suicide bombers, and those who had fired rockets into southern Israel or been caught by the Israel Defense Forces during incursions from Gaza. His only society was the two other prisoners with whom he shared his cell, and the four hours a day—two in the morning and two in the afternoon—when he was allowed under guard into the exercise yard or the meal hall with the other prisoners.
As the lights went out, he listened to the muted noises of the prison suddenly erupt into a cacophony of catcalls, whistles, shouts, screams, guffaws, and obscenities. He heard men walking about in their cells, rattling their metal plates against iron doors or bars. When the glare of the light ended, the prison erupted into the raucous symphony of the night. It was the ideal time for him to continue fashioning the strip of metal he’d stolen from the prison workshop into a knife. It was a difficult process, but one he’d practiced many times growing up in his hometown of Nablus. People often thought that the dagger they were forming had to have a sharpened edge, but Ibrahim knew that was nonsense. The only thing it needed was a sharp point. Once he’d plunged the point into Bilal’s chest, the entire knife would slip neatly between his ribs and into the kid’s heart; then he’d twist it around a couple of times to ensure that the boy’s organs were ripped apart, and that would be that. Or maybe he’d tear his stomach apart and let him die slowly and painfully as his guts spilled out onto the floor and his body drained of blood.
Whatever path he chose for Bilal’s end, it would be good night and sweet dreams, traitor! Collaborator! And the chance that this deserter, this informer, would enjoy his seventy-two virgins in heaven would end as his lifeblood oozed out of his body and down the prison’s gutters. Ibrahim smiled to himself as, masked by the commotion of the other prisoners, he unscrewed the top of one of the posts of his bed and took out the makeshift dagger.
NOW THAT BILAL WAS GONE from the hospital and the chances of Yael seeing him again were remote, the question of their linked blood grew greater in her mind. As a prisoner on remand, there was no reason medically or professionally for her to visit his family, especially after Fuad had treated her so suspiciously when she’d asked him about his ancestry. And so Yael felt strangely isolated, as though she had a major problem but nobody with whom it could be shared.
So she decided to follow their historical relationship, if indeed one existed; to become a researcher of records, a tracer of families, hopefully unraveling the mystery without reliance upon Bilal or Fuad or others who might or might not have any real knowledge, and who were reluctant to tell her anything. And from what little the family had said, the answers could be in the tiny Druze village of Peki’in, just south of the border with Lebanon, in the north of the Western Galilee. With determination, sipping a cup of coffee in the doctors’ recreation rooms, she made a decision.
It took her a week, and some deviousness, to arrange for her two-week temporary residency in the hospital in Nahariya, the most northerly major city in Israel and the closest place of any importance to Peki’in. It was where she hoped to find the linkages that would tell her how Bilal’s maternal mitochondrial DNA came to be shared with hers.
Yael had worked in the hospital in Nahariya before, in the weeks leading up to the Lebanon war with Hezbollah the previous year. Rockets rained down on towns in Israel from across the border, and when Israel retaliated, they found the targets they hoped to take out were nested by Hezbollah in civilian areas—in mosques, in schools, and on the tops of private dwelling places. Hezbollah’s tactics were cruel, well knowing that Israel’s army wouldn’t want to bomb the rocket launchers for fear of harming innocent people, and if they did, the world’s media would excoriate the Israel Defense Forces for bombing civilians.
Yael sewed up the resultant bullet holes and shrapnel wounds while inevitably the world’s leaders decried Israel’s attack on civilian targets. And so the cycle continued. As she thought of returning to Peki’in, Yael found the experience had affected her more deeply than she had realized.
How quickly situations could change. When she was there only last year, the hospital was frantic with Israeli wounded. Yet, in the months and years leading up to the Lebanon war, the hospital had treated free of charge many sick Lebanese who had walked or been escorted across the so-called friendly fence. But then, at the instigation of their Iranian puppet master, Hezbollah began to fire rockets into Israeli territory. Salvos of indiscriminate rocket attacks rained down on the northern towns and communities. The Western Galilee Hospital, where she was working, took a direct rocket hit and the treatment of sick Lebanese came to an abrupt halt.
Operating in what was effectively a war zone, she’d befriended many of the medical and nursing staff. And to escape from the pressure of the emergency room and surgical ward, she and some friends would take a road trip into the countryside and to villages like Peki’in.
So after Bilal gave her the information about his mother possibly having been born in Peki’in, once she’d finished her work for the day, Yael had gone to a private office and phoned the hospital’s director, a Palestinian thoracic surgeon named Fadi Islam Suk.
“Darling,” he said over the phone, delighted to hear her voice, “are you coming to visit?”
“Fadi, I need a favor.”
“I’ve seen you on TV, Yael. I don’t know there are any favors a lowly doctor like me can do for a celebrity like you.”
She could almost see his broad toothy grin down the phone line.
“I need to get away from Jerusalem for a while. I was wondering if you could request me for some filling-in or other work. I’ve got some people to see up there, but my boss almost certainly won’t give me any time off unless I’m needed, if you know what I mean.”
“You have a lover in the Galilee and you want to spend time here with him? Oh, I’m devastated; I thought I was the only man for you,” he said.
She laughed at the friendly jibe. But even as she did, Yael was strangely aware of the contradiction in the way she saw a fellow doctor and the way she felt visiting Fuad’s village.
“I could certainly do with somebody of your skills. We’ve got a list that is growing longer and longer by the day. Shall I phone Pinkus and beg?”
“That would be good,” she said. “But make sure you tell him that only my skills or my knowledge of the hospital will do, or he’s likely to send somebody else.”
IT WAS AT NIGHT on the road from Damascus that the Israelite exiles understood the reality of their journey. When they lived in Babylon with all its oil lamps and nighttime fires obscuring the firmament, rarely did anybody walk beyond the gates after the sun went down. So it was only on very few occasions, and always within sight of the walls, that anybody other than merchants sleeping in tents or under blankets to ward off the cold saw the full panoply of the night sky.
As they slept under the brilliant and luminescent stars that shone radiantly in the pitch-black desert sky, Joshua felt closer to Adonai than he ever did when he had prayed in his synagogue of Babylon. Even Zerubbabel, whose name meant child born in Babylon and who was the leader of the Jewish community, felt closer to the Almighty.
On the twentieth night since the beginning of the return, when the exhausted community had lit their fires, cooked their bread and lentils, and begun preparing to say their evening prayers, Joshua’s thoughts were interrupted by a visitor. Living communally in the open air, people tended to mix more frequently than when they retired to their houses, and Joshua welcomed Reuven as he sat on a mat beside the blazing fire.
“So, merchant,” he said, “how is the travel with you?”
Reuven shrugged. “I’m a merchant. I travel a lot. But all you do is sit on your bottom in the synagogue and tell people what to believe. How are you faring? Do you miss your comfortable bed? Are you getting used to a mattress of stones and a pillow of rock?”
“May I help you, merchant? We haven’t spoken in some time. Do you wish to ask a service of me, Reuven, or are you here to seek my advice?”
The merchant threw a stick onto the rabbi’s fire. The days in the desert were stiflingly hot, but when the sun sank below the western horizon, the nights turned to freezing in the time it took a man to yawn; and where one moment people had sweated under their protective clothes, the next they were hurriedly lighting fires to protect themselves from the bitter cold.
“Neither,” said Reuven. “I’m here to rest my bones and warm my skin beside your fire.”
The two men sat in the glow of the flames, staring into the burning straw and wood and dung, which flared and popped and glowed. Joshua remained silent, waiting for Reuven to open up to him.
Out of the desert darkness, Joshua’s wife, Shoshanna, walked into the light of the fire carrying two cups of hot anise drink and poppyseed cake that she’d baked the previous night. The men took the refreshments and nodded in gratitude. She retired to her tent.
Sipping the aromatic drink, Reuven said, “When my wife first told me that she was pregnant, I was overjoyed. She said she wanted our baby to be born in Israel. I agreed, and we undertook this journey. I’m doing it to increase my trade, but why is it so important to my wife that our baby is born in Jerusalem?”
Joshua began to answer. “Well, our father Abraham—”
“Our home is in Babylon. We could be just as Jewish there as in Jerusalem. King Cyrus has promised us safety and security. Why are we lesser Jews in Babylon? Why are we better Jews in Jerusalem?”
“Yes, we could be both,” said Joshua, “but when God prevented Abraham’s knife from sacrificing his son Isaac in Jerusalem, and when we entered into the covenant of circumcision—”
“We could pray in the synagogue, live our lives according to our customs. Yet, Naomi insists that we leave the comforts of our home to live like desert nomads. I love her and so I agreed. And I’m happy to set up my trading business in Israel. But you haven’t told me why it’s so important.”
“At the end of our journey, we will—”
“At the end of our journey, Rabbi, we will still have to live in tents until we build proper houses. Even Naomi and me. There are no houses for us to buy. We have to build them ourselves. Slaves captured by our Babylonian masters built our houses back there,” he said, pointing to the east. “Yet, we’ve left those slaves behind, and who amongst us remembers how to build a house? Who knows how to quarry and cut rock? How to hew stone? Who remembers skills that our ancestors knew?”
“The Lord God will show us the way,” said Joshua.
“Then pray that He’s listening, priest. Because if He’s not, we’re in serious trouble.”
“Adonai is always listening.”
The merchant looked at the rabbi quizzically. “Really? Was He listening when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and so many Jews died?”
“We were sinners. That was our punishment. But when our sins had been forgiven by the Lord, we prospered in exile. And now that our Babylonian masters have been conquered by Cyrus, instead of us being butchered, the Lord our God opened the Persian king’s eyes and softened his heart and so today we’re free men and women, able to return to our homeland—a land given to us by God on the provision that we remained pure and always worshipped Him. We lost our way and now we are finding it again. Perhaps, Reuven, it is because of men like you—men who have wandered from the path of righteousness, who, like Solomon, have worshipped false gods—that Adonai punished us. Remember the psalm that our fathers composed when we found ourselves in Babylon, when we were led away from Israel by Nebuchadnezzar?
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
They said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How can we sing the songs of thee, while in a foreign land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning.
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
That, Reuven, is why we are returning. Jerusalem is our city, Israel is our homeland. It was and it always will be. It’s what makes us a people. We might live in foreign lands, but our hearts will always belong in the city on the hill.”
“Yours might, priest, but my heart quickens when I trade goods, when I smell leather and know I can make a profit, when I buy beautiful painted pottery or carpets or cloth cheaply and sell it for a fortune in a foreign market.
“No, priest, you pray to your heart’s content, and don’t get in the way of people like me.”
Joshua bridled at the insult. As their journey progressed, Reuven was becoming more and more unhappy that he’d left Babylon, and he was taking out his frustration on his servants, fellow travelers, and now on the chief rabbi.
Restraining himself from answering intemperately, Joshua said, “Perhaps this journey isn’t for you, Reuven. Perhaps you and Naomi should return to Babylon and let pioneers like your fellow Jews pave the way.”
Reuven laughed. “No, priest, my wife wants our son to be born in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem he’ll be born.” As an afterthought Reuven said softly, “And I, too, will be happy that he’s to be born there. He’ll be the first of a new generation of Jews. Who knows what will come of him and those who are born after him?”
It was too much. Weeks of growing insults and aggression caused Joshua to say angrily, “Don’t lie to me, merchant. You’re merely coming with us to make yourself a greater fortune. You see it as a new and brighter opportunity for yourself. This has nothing to do with your wife, Naomi, and your future baby. This is all to do with greed. That’s why you’re here, Reuven. I know the greed in your heart. It has nothing to do with your wife’s desire for a homeland for your son. It’s for money. You’re exploiting your own people for your own gain.”
Although it was dark, Joshua was certain that Reuven was sneering. “The difference between you and me, priest, is that I’m not a liar. I know I can make a fortune and that fortune will be shared by all who work with me—a fortune made by toil and cleverness. Sure, I’ll make a lot of money. I’ve been given a warrant by King Cyrus to open up the trading routes I told you about. But I’m honest in my greed, whereas you . . . you give your people empty lies about a mystical temple and an invisible god of benefit to no one. When they get to Israel, will they see a glowing city on a hill? No, they’ll see desolation. You’ve sold them lies to get them to come with you. I just hope that this god of yours will forgive you.”
ONLY WHEN SHE LEFT Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jaffa, did Yael come to appreciate the antiquity of the land. In Jerusalem, even though the streets were named after heroes of Israel, they were part of her everyday life and so she often failed to appreciate their heritage. Only when somebody asked, “Who was Ben Yehuda?” did it occur to her that the street was more than just shops and traffic, but that its name, and the man it immortalized, was part of the blood, muscle, and sinew of Israel.
Not that Yael was any different from a Parisienne or a Londoner. Just as somebody in Paris might say, “Meet you on the Champs-Élysées,” or a Londoner would arrange to meet at Oxford Circus, so Yael would arrange to meet friends at Ben Yehuda or Derech HaNevi’im without thinking about why the roads had been so named. Who in Paris wondered about the fields or knew that Elysium was the mythological Greek place of the dead, and which Londoner wondered about the circus and what it had to do with Oxford?
But when she left a major Israeli city and traveled into the hinterland, tiny as the country was, she was transported back to ancient and ancestral roots that, she now realized, somewhere in the distant past, she shared with Bilal.
Here was Bethlehem and Nazareth, Dan in the north, Mount Hermon, Mount Carmel, and Mount Gilboa; here the Jordan River, the Jezreel Valley, and Lake Kinneret; here was Samaria and Megiddo and Tiberias. These were names and places familiar to every schoolboy and schoolgirl whose culture was Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. Here was the starting point of much of the myth and mythology that made up the Western world. Where the Greeks and Romans had once spread their culture of Jupiter and Zeus, Poseidon and Athena, throughout the West, all the ancient gods had been trampled underfoot over time by the one god of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Yael breathed in the hot, dry air of the Upper Galilee and drove east from Nahariya to Peki’in, over steep hills and down into deep valleys. It was a tortured but glorious landscape, rocky and isolated, yet with the comforting feeling of white stone towns perched on hillsides. The Upper Galilee, just south of the restive Lebanese border and prey to Hezbollah rockets, was, for all its history of violence, a beauteous place.
As she entered the village of Peki’in, she wondered where in the town center she’d find the records she wanted to examine, if they existed at all. Most of the buildings were typical Galilee stone constructions, and none seemed of sufficient importance to be the town hall.
Would the Druze, who now ran the town, be cooperative or suspicious? Friends she’d asked in Nahariya’s hospital had told her that the mayor was abrupt, defensive, and innately distrustful. There were virtually no Jews left there now, and for a small and seemingly peaceful village, Peki’in had a recent history of riots and violence against Jewish residents. Her friends had begged her to be cautious.
But the amazing blood link between herself and Bilal was something she had to understand. She was haunted by the idea of him in prison, in ways she couldn’t explain or reconcile. Moreover, she couldn’t help but now question who she was. For most of her life, Yael had asked questions about her grandmother, Shalman’s wife, Judit, and the questions had always ended in evasive answers. She was beautiful and clever and brave and died a tragic death just after Yael’s mother had been born; but whereas other Israeli children knew their family histories, hers seemed to be mired in mystery and half-truths. And now it seemed as though she were related to a Palestinian family whose ancestry was utterly unknown to her.
Just what the hell was going on?
GAINING ENTRY TO THE PRISON was difficult enough, but being allowed to speak with a prisoner on remand, a Palestinian about to go to trial for the murder of a Jewish guard, was exceptional. But Yaniv Grossman was used to doing exceptional things. He’d had himself embedded with a forward platoon in a ground assault against Gaza militants, interviewed an AlQassam Brigades rocket maker, managed to get a former Israeli prime minister to confess to defrauding the nation in a land deal, and scored a major scoop when he goaded the French foreign minister into admitting he wouldn’t be unhappy if the entire Jewish population of France left and found another country as a way of halting Muslim violence and fanaticism. That interview had made international headlines and caused the hapless man’s extinction from the political firmament.
With this kind of history and experience, Yaniv was a particularly well-connected reporter. But he’d needed all that influence to get into the prison. It had taken him six days of hectoring and cajoling, but here he was, waiting in the Central Area D prison facility by the shores of the Dead Sea for Bilal to be brought into the room.
The door opened and Bilal entered, followed by a guard. He was led over to the seat on the opposite side of the desk, and Yaniv smiled at him. The guard handcuffed him to the steel chair and went to sit on the other side of the room.
Yaniv would try to speak to him in Arabic, even though his knowledge of the language was clunky and not nearly as fluid as Yael’s. But he thought it might help put Bilal at ease.
“Bilal, my name is Yaniv. I’m a reporter from America.”
“Yes,” said Bilal. “I’ve seen you on television.” Bilal looked him up and down and added, “You look different in real life.”
“Really? Fatter or skinnier?” Yaniv volunteered as a joke. But Bilal only shrugged and looked down at the table.
“This must feel a long way from home,” Yaniv said casually, pointing around the room. He needed to create some point of trust, but he got the sense that Bilal was not the manipulated fool the Israelis probably took him for. If he was too obvious, the boy was likely to smell it and clam up.
Yaniv studied the young man, and wondered exactly what he was searching for from Bilal. Investigative journalism was a dying art in the age of instant online gratification and disposability. It required the time and resources to pursue a hunch to an uncertain end. Bilal was a hunch. Why had such a senior Shin Bet man, and especially this man, interviewed Bilal alone in the hospital? What he knew, what he saw, might lead somewhere, or nowhere.
“How are they treating you in here?” asked Yaniv. Bilal looked up as if the question was unexpected and Yaniv quickly added, “The guards can be real assholes.”
Bilal’s deep dark eyes bored into him.
“You know if . . . if you’re not being treated right, I might be able to—”
Bilal cut him off. “I’m fine. The guards do nothing. They check on me. They see that I’m still here and then they leave me alone again.” His gaze returned to studying the table, eyes well hidden.
“Good. That’s good . . .”
Yaniv had interviewed other Palestinian prisoners and would-be martyrs before. Some were hardened, indoctrinated, full of braggadocio and bullshit, impotently vowing revenge and dire consequences. Others were cold and quiet, and spoke in soft, measured, and controlled voices. While rarer, it was the latter type that was truly unnerving. Yet, Bilal was neither of these. The bluster had gone, seemingly knocked out of him like a gut punch. But neither did he seem resigned to his fate. Something had him rattled, and it wasn’t just cell doors and prison walls.
“What about your people in here? Your brothers?”
Bilal glanced quickly up from the table. His eyes locked with Yaniv’s.
“What do you want with me? I’ve already spoken to the police. Why are you here?”
A nerve had been touched and Yaniv knew it. But he needed to circle rather than aim directly at the target. “Do you remember your doctor? In the hospital—Dr. Cohen?”
Bilal nodded, and his eyes were now fixed quizzically on Yaniv.
“Her name is Yael. She’s a friend of mine. She saved your life, you know?”
“I know.”
“She asked me to come here and make sure you were all right.”
“She brought my father and mother to me in the hospital.”
“Yes, she did. She said they were good people.”
Bilal shrugged. But this time his eyes did not return to their downcast position.
“She’s going to try and help them, Bilal. Help them to come and see you after the trial. To get you things you might need to make it easier in here.”
It was a lie of course, but Yaniv saw that Bilal believed him, his posture changed and he drew a deep breath. He was exhibiting the naïveté of inexperience, with things so far outside of his comfort zone that he was clutching at straws of hope that things might get better. Yaniv wondered how long that hope would last in prison. He pressed on.
“Do you know anyone in here, Bilal? Do you have friends inside?”
“All Palestinians are brothers.”
The words were not a declaration but hollow and empty, and Yaniv knew it. Words Bilal wanted to believe were true.
Looking into the distance, Yaniv said softly, “I’ve got brothers. Three of them. All older than me. We don’t get along. We fight a lot. I love my brothers, but there have been times when I wanted to be as far away from them as I could.”
Bilal studied his face for what seemed like a very long time. Yaniv thought he was about to speak, but there was only silence and the strange pleading stare. He tried another direction.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Bilal? Anybody I can talk to, anything you want to tell somebody on the outside?”
Suddenly Bilal’s brow creased. “Why? Why are you here? Why do you want to help me? You’re a Jew. You should hate me for what I did.”
Yaniv feared he’d gone too far, too quickly. “I don’t think you were born to kill anyone, Bilal. I don’t think that’s who you were meant to be. Someone’s changed you into someone you’re not, and I don’t think that it’s fair. And whatever you’re going through in there”—Yaniv gestured past Bilal to the prison beyond—“might be something I can help fix.”
And the mask cracked. There were no tears. No scowl. Just a series of muscles letting go across Bilal’s brow and down his jaw, and his face seemed to sag under its own weight.
“Nobody can help me. I am alone. I should have died in the tunnel. But Allah . . . He didn’t take me. I’m still here. And now . . . Nothing is like it should be . . . Nothing feels right anymore. What I do, what I did . . .” Bilal didn’t, or couldn’t, finish the sentence.
“We can help you, Bilal. Dr. Cohen and me. We can help you,” Yaniv lied with all the sincerity in the world—a sincerity welling up from the excitement of possibly uncovering a story.
Bilal sat back in his seat and Yaniv could see that he was thinking deeply about something. Now, he realized, was the time to press home the advantage. His instincts as a reporter overrode anything else.
“Bilal, has anybody interviewed you about the bombing?” he asked, but Bilal remained silent, lost for the moment in the turmoil of his own mind. “I would expect that somebody from Shin Bet would have spoken to you. Perhaps in the hospital?”
Bilal shrugged.
“You see, the reason I’m asking is that under Israeli law, if the wrong person asked the wrong questions without you having a lawyer present, then that’s illegal. They’re not allowed to do that.”
Bilal snapped out of his trance and with wide eyes stared at Yaniv. “Illegal?”
“Perhaps. And that means the judge at your trial has to take that into account.”
Bilal looked incredulous but said nothing more.
“Who did you speak to?” asked Yaniv.
Bilal waited for a moment before answering. “A man. He came to the hospital.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes. He came alone.”
“What did he ask?” Yaniv was probing now.
“I told him nothing,” said Bilal, his voice containing a hint of pleading as if Yaniv was threatening him.
“It’s okay. Did he offer you anything?”
“He said he could help me,” Bilal mumbled.
“And what did he want for this help?”
“I told him nothing. I wouldn’t speak to him. And he left. But—” Bilal stopped short.
“But? But what?”
Yaniv switched tack again, sensing he was very close but aware that Bilal was fragile and at any moment could clam up once more. “I know a lot of people in Shin Bet. Would you remember his name?”
Bilal answered with a feeble shake of his head.
“I know Yitzhak Atzmon, the director general, but he wouldn’t have come to see you. He’s old and fat,” Yaniv said with a laugh, hoping to coax one out of Bilal. But to no avail.
“I know Shimon Gutnik, an analyst. He’s got asthma, and he wheezes like an old car.”
Bilal shook his head.
Yaniv prepared for the name he suspected might get a reaction.
“I know Eliahu Spitzer . . .”
Bilal’s eyes narrowed.
“His hair is gray with a white stripe down the middle of his head. He looks as if—”
“He looks like a skunk.”
Yaniv smiled and let out a small laugh. “Yes, yes, he does. Is that the man who spoke to you?”
Bilal nodded.
“And he was alone?”
Bilal nodded again.
For a moment Yaniv was lost in thought as he pondered the implications of a high-ranking Shin Bet commander personally interviewing a low-level prisoner like Bilal.
“The man asked me questions. I didn’t tell him anything but I . . . I didn’t say anything. I was going to. I was going to tell him I’d seen . . .”
“Seen what, Bilal?”
There was a sharp electronic buzz and a red light suddenly shone above the door to the interview room. The guard stood and walked over to the table.
“Time’s up. Got to get him back.”
Bilal immediately stood and turned to the guard and shuffled toward the door.
“Seen what, Bilal?” asked Yaniv, almost shouting.
Yaniv wanted to ask more questions, but with the guard present, there would be no answers. Before leaving, Bilal turned and said, “Tell the doctor”—he hesitated as if searching for the right words—“tell the doctor I said thank you.”
“I will,” Yaniv replied. And then Bilal was gone, leaving Yaniv with a thousand questions.
AS BILAL WAS WALKING BACK to his cell, accompanied by his guard, eyes were watching him. The coldest and most merciless belonged to Ibrahim, who had the knife in his pocket and was about to use it. He waited until the guard had left Bilal in his cell with the door open so that prisoners could leave the confines and walk along the corridors, speak with one another, and socialize during the day.
When the guard had left, Ibrahim cautiously walked along the north, then the east, and finally the south corridor to Bilal’s cell, which he shared with another remand prisoner now that he was no longer in isolation or on suicide watch.
Ibrahim stood there in the doorway. Bilal looked up in surprise. He’d seen the man a couple of times in the exercise yard and the dining hall, but hadn’t paid him much attention. The man was small and wiry, but there was a strength about him and a coldness about his eyes and lips that made people want to avoid him.
“Yes?” said Bilal.
His cell mate looked up from his magazine and then sat up on the bed.
“You,” he said, nodding to the man in the upper bunk. “Fuck off.”
Suddenly terrified, Bilal’s cell mate jumped down from the upper bunk, walked quickly out of the room, and made his way downstairs to where people were playing card games.
“What do you want?” Bilal asked, suddenly frightened, wondering whether to get up from the lower bunk.
“You piece of shit,” said Ibrahim. “You’ve been singing to the Jews, haven’t you?”
“No!” said Bilal. He’d learned quickly neither to explain himself nor engage in aggressive conversations. And the look in this man’s eyes was the stare of death.
“Get up from the bunk,” ordered Ibrahim. “I want to talk to you.”
“Go fuck your mother,” Bilal said with all the vocal weight he could muster, wondering how to get out of whatever was soon going to happen.
Ibrahim checked the corridors, left and right, and knowing he had about five minutes to do the deed and get away he walked menacingly into the cell.
Adrenaline was pumping through Bilal’s body. He was still hurting from the operations, but suddenly his body felt as it had when he was years younger, when he was at school. His mind flashed back to the days when he was bullied by older kids, before he’d learned to fight. He’d learned how to punch and kick in the most painful places on a boy’s body—dirty, unscripted fights, full of fury and retribution.
Now he was seeing another bully, somebody he’d seen only a couple of times, walk into his cell to intimidate him. Well, fuck him, Bilal thought. He watched Ibrahim saunter arrogantly toward him, and when he reached the bunks, Bilal suddenly lashed out with his right leg in a savage kick aimed exactly at Ibrahim’s balls. As his foot connected with the other man’s crotch, Ibrahim let out a scream of pain. Bilal instantly jumped off the bunk and stood.
It was so totally unexpected that Ibrahim rocketed backward, and as he fell, Bilal sprang forward and aimed another sharp jab of his foot into Ibrahim’s face, knocking him sideways and sending him cascading into a chair as he fell. Pumped up with surprising energy and feeling none of the pain from his operations, Bilal picked up the fallen chair and brought it smashing down on Ibrahim’s head, shoulder, and arm.
Lying on the floor, Ibrahim tried to shield himself from the blows. He screamed in agony as the chair broke apart across his body. Strength and energy were coursing through Bilal; he hadn’t felt like this since the night he slit the Jew soldier’s throat: powerful and in control. He picked up a chair leg that had detached itself from the seat and brought it down mercilessly on Ibrahim’s back, then his shoulder, then his leg, then his neck, and then the side of his face. When Ibrahim wasn’t moving, Bilal straightened up, breathing heavily, and supported himself against the wall. Suddenly the pain of his wounds flared up as some of the stitches broke. Now in agony, Bilal looked down at the unconscious and bleeding man and saw something metallic in his hand, but before he could bend down and take it from him, he heard the sound of feet running in the direction of his cell.
In seconds, guards were inside, their batons raised, and they immediately saw what was happening. One pulled Bilal roughly away from the wall and another brought his baton down brutally on the back of Bilal’s knees. They left him kneeling against the concrete wall as his arms were pulled behind his body and handcuffs were slapped on his wrists. Bilal peered around and saw another guard bend down to determine whether Ibrahim was alive or dead.
“He’s breathing. Get a gurney.” He looked at Bilal and said, “What the fuck’s going on?”
“He attacked me,” he replied.
Then the second guard cried, “Look!” He pointed to the homemade knife still in Ibrahim’s hand.
The guard turned to Bilal and said softly, “You know who this is, don’t you? You’re either lucky or stupid, kid.”
BILAL SPENT A WEEK in solitary confinement over the fight. And the silence of enclosed walls gave him time to think. Images of Ibrahim and the knife blended with the words of Yaniv and the memories of the skunk-haired man, his imam, and the strange rabbi Jew in the shadow. His head pounded with confusion. But as the week wound on, the reality of what had happened and what it meant became clearer to him. One of his own had tried to take his life. A prisoner he had never met wanted him dead. While Bilal wanted to scream: Why? he found himself asking only: Who? Who ordered Ibrahim to kill him? The only certainty Bilal knew was that there was no one he could trust. Neither the Jew guards nor his Palestinian brothers. He was alone.
When the week of solitary confinement was over, Bilal walked the corridors back to his cell, accompanied by a guard. He was surprised that as he passed, men who’d once looked at him in contempt now avoided his eyes. If they were afraid of him now, there was a good chance they’d leave him alone. But in that moment the thought of being forever alone terrified him more than Ibrahim with a knife.
Deep down he knew Ibrahim wouldn’t be the last. He had to speak to somebody. On request prisoners could have access to a phone to speak to family or lawyers or spiritual leaders. When Bilal asked to use the phone and was given access to a small booth, he phoned the last friend he believed he had.
THREE DAYS LATER Hassan was granted permission to visit the prison. He had lied and said he was Bilal’s cousin. Nobody questioned it, although he knew he would be searched and his conversation with Bilal would likely be monitored.
As Hassan approached the prison, all the fears instilled in him of what lay beyond those walls, the fate of so many of his brothers and cousins, gripped him. But as he steadied himself and entered the gate, he wondered if there were other forces at work that tied his stomach in knots. He had been instructed to kill: the imam had told him what he must do. The Jewish doctor must die. And yet, he was about to see his lifelong friend alive and breathing because of that same doctor. Would Bilal know what Hassan had been ordered to do? Would Bilal owe honor to the woman who saved him? More than anything Hassan knew that Bilal would see through any lie that he told, and Hassan was afraid of the truth.
He and Bilal sat opposite each other in the reception room where wives and children came to see their husbands and brothers.
“My brother, you look—” Hassan began, but the urgency on Bilal’s face stopped him talking.
Bilal whispered, “They’re trying to kill me. Hassan, I need your help.”
Hassan was shocked but Bilal didn’t wait for a response.
“One man with a knife. I broke his arm and beat the shit out of him, but they’ll come again.”
Hassan was horrified. “Who? Who would want to kill you? They know who you are. They know you’re the one who bombed the temple.”
“Hassan. Nothing is right. Nothing in here is right.” Bilal clenched his teeth and fought back tears. He would not let Hassan see him like a woman or a child.
Hassan for his part was shocked to see his friend in such a state and saying such things. He’d always looked up to Bilal for his strength of character, his courage. “What did you do?”
Bilal’s fear became anger, his words said through gritted teeth. “I did nothing. I said nothing. I told the Jews nothing. I spoke to no one. I did what I was told to do. I did everything the imam wanted . . .” The words caught in his throat. Hassan put a hand on Bilal’s arm, not knowing what to say.
“Hassan. I can’t trust anyone. Only you. You’re the only one.”
“What can I do?” Hassan asked as Bilal stared at him.
“There is someone . . .”
“Who?” asked Hassan, leaning in and lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“The doctor . . .”
The words hung in the air and Hassan’s eyes opened wide. “The Jew doctor? The one who operated . . .” he said, stunned by what Bilal had just told him. “The Jew?”
“Hassan, you must trust me and do what I ask you. She is a Jew but she helped my family; she helped me. She saved me when I would have died. And now . . .”
Hassan’s mind was spinning and he struggled to grasp anything firm. “But why are they trying to kill you? Who’s trying to kill you? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know. But, Hassan, you must trust nobody. I trusted everybody and I’m in here. You must trust nobody. Do you swear to me? Nobody.”
“But who?” he asked. The tension in his voice showed he shared Bilal’s concern.
Bilal leaned closer. “The imam,” he whispered.
Hassan’s eyes widened in shock. He was speechless.
Softly, conspiratorially, Bilal said, “I drove the imam to a village near Bethlehem. He ordered me to stay in the car, but there was the girl. Remember? The video I showed you?”
“I remember,” replied Hassan.
“On that night the imam was in a meeting with important people.”
“So? The imam meets with important people all the time.”
“He was talking to a man with white hair on his head. He was talking to a Jew!”
Hassan looked at Bilal, showing no comprehension of where Bilal was going with this.
“That man with the white hair. He came to me. He works for the secret police. He works for Shin Bet.”
Hassan slowly shook his head. He failed to see the relevance.
“Why was the imam talking to a Jew from Shin Bet? Why are my Palestinian brothers trying to kill me? Please, Hassan, my brother, go to the doctor. She is the only one who can help me.”
“Bilal, my brother, I came to see you because . . . your parents . . . I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can. I’m not good at this.”
JOSHUA THE PRIEST feared that the number of Jews who camped outside the walls of the city of Damascus after their long twenty-day march would be considerably fewer than those who would leave with him to travel to Jerusalem. Many who had arrived exhausted had been overwhelmed by the seductive charms of the city. Damascus was like a perfumed dancer, a sacred prostitute in a pagan temple, open, willing, full of fragrances and soft fabrics, and always ready to ensnare the unwary.
Damascus was still under the control of the Babylonians even though Babylon had recently been conquered by King Cyrus the Great of Persia. But for those Hebrews who entered the city after their exhausting weeks of walking, it was a reminder of the lifestyle they’d once enjoyed back in Babylon but now had left far behind. The hardship of the road, the constant traveling, the robbers and bandits, the freezing nights spent in tents or under the stars and the fetid heat of the day—all contributed to their misery as they trudged along, and to their joy as the huge walls of the city came into view.
When they wandered through the gates of the city, the coolness of the houses and drinking places, the life and vitality, the colors and smells of the city of Damascus, made many weep. And they wept louder when, to their distress three nights later, Joshua called a meeting of elders to announce that in the next few days they would leave to journey onward to Jerusalem.
They had left Babylon in a spirit of adventure, knowing that they would be the chosen and righteous ones in the eyes of their Lord, Adonai. But the rigors of the journey had caused many to reconsider their decision and some, Joshua knew, were thinking either of staying in Damascus or returning to Babylon.
He was so concerned that he prayed both to the Lord for guidance and to his ancestor Ahimaaz for strength of purpose. Joshua often prayed to Ahimaaz in those quiet moments when he was alone in the synagogue. To be the descendant of one of the greatest of all high priests, whose reputation as a son of Zadok had grown with each generation, was a gift from the Almighty. Among those who remained faithful to the Lord, Ahimaaz was revered for his wisdom, his knowledge, and his steadfast uprightness. The legends spoke of shouting matches between Solomon and Ahimaaz over the false idols and pagan gods that the king’s many wives and concubines had brought into the palace. Being a descendant of Ahimaaz gave Joshua an authority that no other rabbi or priest held.
But Joshua’s authority was being undermined just six streets away, in the northern part of the city of Damascus, a hilly area of rich people’s houses where cool winds blew and the stench of the marketplace was absent. Ten Hebrews had climbed the hill to reach the house where Reuven, the wealthy merchant, and his pregnant wife, Naomi, were staying.
As the men sat in the shaded alcove in his garden of spices, fruits, and flowers, they looked in expectation at Reuven, who had asked them to come to this meeting.
“Friends,” he said, although this was one of the few times that they had been allowed into his presence; none had ever been invited to his palatial home when they all lived in Babylon, “it is time, I think, to ask ourselves who we are and what we are.”
They looked at him in surprise. He’d asked them to come to his temporary home in secrecy, and none had any idea what was the purpose, so his statement was intriguing.
“We were an exiled people in Babylon, but for fifty years of our exile we gained respect in the eyes of the city and the king; now that Babylon has a new king, we are no longer slaves or servants but proper citizens of his empire. Cyrus has asked us to return to Israel, rebuild that devastated land, use our abilities and make it flourish.”
Abiel, of the tribe of Benjamin, interrupted, and asked, “Reuven, why are you telling us what we know?”
He looked at him and smiled, asking, “Then if you know this, tell me who we are. Tell me what we are, Abiel.”
“We’re Hebrews. We’re returning to our land and—”
“And who leads a people?” asked Reuven simply. “Do we have a king to lead us? No! Our last king died when we were exiled. So, without a king, who leads us?”
Each of the men looked at the one next to him. Nathan, of the tribe of Judah, said, “Zerubbabel leads us, and his uncle Sheshbazzar with him. They are descendants of the royal family of David through the line of King Solomon. Sheshbazzar carries with him all the things that Nebuchadnezzar stole from our temple. He will return them, and then . . .”
Nathan stopped talking because neither he nor the others gathered nor anybody among the Israelites really knew who would rule in Israel on their return. Reuven nodded and couldn’t suppress a knowing smile. “Precisely! We’re following Joshua because he is our chief rabbi and Zerubbabel because he is descended from a line of kings who lived five hundred years ago; but are these men leaders? One knows the Lord God Adonai, and the other is an old man who has to be carried from place to place on a litter.
“And when we arrive in Israel, who will direct the building? Who will marshal the farmers to begin clearing the land and planting crops so that we don’t starve in the coming months? Who will ensure we’re strong enough to defend ourselves from the Egyptians or the Phoenicians, or from being robbed by desert nomads?” asked Reuven.
The group fell into silence, not because these questions hadn’t occurred to them since leaving Babylon, but because nobody had raised them aloud.
Daniel, of the tribe of Judah, asked quietly, “Are you proposing yourself as our king, Reuven?”
The others looked at him in surprise. “No,” Reuven said immediately. “I am a merchant. I have the ear of King Cyrus, and through my relationships in distant lands, I’m known to many rulers and the rich men in their cities. But I have no wish to become a king. No, what I’m saying is this: that today and tomorrow we have no leadership. We therefore must create a leadership that the people will follow, will respect, and will venerate. Wound a camel and it will limp on; cut the head off a camel and it dies immediately. Without a head, a people will not survive in a hard and challenging world.”
“We have leaders,” said Abiel. “We have our chief rabbi, Joshua; we have Zerubbabel; we have—”
“And you would be led by men who know how the Lord thinks but who know nothing about administration, the laws of our land, how to create and run an army? Shall I go on?” asked Reuven.
“So you do want to be king!”
“No, I want all of us to be kings! I want a ruling council made up of men with different skills. Some of you will be important to the future running of the nation, and we will find others with great skills who will join us. But you are here to listen to my idea and to take it further. Do you all agree?”
“A council? Such as the king of a nation uses to advise him on what to do? But it is still the king who makes the decisions. That is the nature of our lives. If we have a council to run the affairs of the nation, then which of us will make the decisions?” asked Daniel.
“I knew that this would be uppermost in your minds,” Reuven answered. “The council will have an uneven number of members at all times. If more than half agree, then that decision will be binding on the rest. We will sign a pledge that we will abide by the rule of the majority. Is it agreed?”
They sat in silence, contemplating a form of government that none had heard of before. They looked at him in both surprise and confusion.
“What I’m proposing is that the rule of the land, now that we no longer have a king, should be determined by those of the people who are able to govern. Just as all kings have ministers and advisers, so we will be ministers and advisers, and—”
“And we won’t have a king to make the decisions,” said Daniel. “In Babylon we were governed by our chief rabbi Joshua, and by Zerubbabel, of the line of King David, with his uncle Sheshbazzar. It was always to be that when we returned to Israel and reestablished Jerusalem as our capital—that Zerubbabel would be our king. So why are we sitting here, talking about a council of governors, when we already have a king in line for the throne?”
Reuven had anticipated the question and was ready with the answer. But knowing the value of creating tension in a negotiation, he sighed, shook his head slightly, and took a sip of his pomegranate water. Softly, as though explaining something simple to a child, he said, “For five hundred years we’ve been governed by kings who have progressively weakened the Jewish people by their incompetence and avarice. For the same amount of time we’ve also been governed by rabbis who tell us that all of our problems are caused by our failings, our lack of faith, and so Adonai is punishing us. So, because of inept kings and because we weren’t faithful enough, ten of our twelve tribes have disappeared, our land has been ruined, our capital, Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble, our temple was destroyed, and our people were made slaves of the Babylonians.
“Well, I’ve had enough of kings and certainly enough of rabbis. It’s time that we, the Jewish people, took responsibility for our own government. We will gather the best men of the land, and it is we who will govern—”
Infuriated, Daniel interrupted. “We Jews are a people because our kings are from the line of David; we are one people because we have one God, Who brought us out of the land of Egypt, the land of bondage, where we were slaves. How dare you sit there and denounce our kings and our rabbis and suggest that we are more capable of being rulers? God will strike you dead for this, Reuven the merchant.”
Theatrically, Reuven stood, stretched out his arms, and shouted up to the sky, “For my blasphemy, Lord God Almighty, strike me dead. Send a bolt of lightning through my heart . . .”
Everybody looked up at him in shock. Reuven stood there for a long, long moment and slowly turned to Daniel. He shook his head. “I’m not sure that God is listening.”
THEY MET IN A SHOP selling spices in Damascus’s eastern market. They smiled at each other and kissed as sisters. Rabbi Joshua’s wife, Shoshanna, was buying leeks and onions for their evening meal. Naomi, Reuven’s wife, was searching for a gold clasp to decorate a new robe she’d bought, now that the baby was growing so big that her clothes were starting to be too tight.
“Sister,” said Shoshanna, “you look so pale. Is the pregnancy difficult for you?”
Naomi nodded. “Girls half my age seem to have no problem growing a baby in their womb. I’m suffering because of my years and because I am slight of body.”
“Come, let’s go and find an inn and drink a cup of spiced water to refresh us,” said Shoshanna, leading her by the hand to a place she’d found the previous day where the owner used fresh and not dried herbs in his water. They sat and sipped the hot liquid, and it immediately refreshed both of them.
“Soon we’ll be in Jerusalem,” Shoshanna said. “Joshua says that we’ll be leaving here in a matter of days, and then it’s only a two-month walk until we return to our homeland. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Naomi nodded. “It coincides with the time of the birth of my son. The Lord God has been kind to me. I hope it pleases Him to continue to be kind and to allow me to finish my journey in good health so that Reuven and I can enjoy many years of pleasure with our son.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Shoshanna. “Don’t you think that you’ll finish the journey?”
“Only God Almighty knows whether I’ll survive. I’ve been feeling so exhausted these last few days that I don’t know whether I can continue on to Jerusalem. Perhaps I should stay here until the birth.”
“No! No, you can’t do that. Your son must be born in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem. He will be the first of a new generation of Israelites.”
Naomi nodded. “But if my body is too weak, I may be forced to stay here, in Damascus.”
“But that means that Reuven will remain with you, should that be your decision. My husband was counting on Reuven to assist him in rebuilding the nation.”
“Joshua? Is he on the council of governors?”
“What council?”
Naomi flushed. “Oh, nothing. I must be confused.” And she hurriedly looked down at her cup of herb water.
THE FOLLOWING DAY Rabbi Joshua climbed the hill in the north of the city of Damascus with grave fears on his mind. When he was sitting in Reuven’s home, he began immediately. “I am told by Daniel, of the tribe of Judah, that you convened a meeting of some citizens and proposed a council of governors to rule Israel on our return. It is to replace me as the chief rabbi and Zerubbabel, the grandson of our last king, Jehoiachin, and a descendant of King David. Is that correct?”
Reuven had anticipated that Daniel would go immediately to Joshua and tell him of the nature of the meeting. “Yes!” he said tersely. “And no! You will always be the chief rabbi, but the days of Israel having kings is over, Joshua.”
“Then who will lead our country? What will this council do when we get to Israel?”
“Govern.”
“It is the role of kings to govern, and above them the Lord God Almighty. It is not for you or any other to decide who shall govern.”
“And who is our king? Who determined that he would be king? What say do the people have in who should lead them in the perilous times ahead?”
“The people are under the rule of God, through their king. As it was in the days of David and Solomon; as it will be again when we rebuild Jerusalem.”
“And after David and Solomon’s rule . . . let me think . . . who did we have as kings? Who did Almighty God decide would reign and protect the Israelite people? Oh, yes, we had Rehoboam, who lost us ten of our twelve tribes; then we had Abijah, who tried to reunite the kingdoms of north and south Israel, but lost; after him, we had Asa, another failure, and then Jehoshaphat . . . Need I go on, Rabbi Joshua? One more useless than the other.”
“You lie,” said Joshua. “These were good men who tried but failed to reunite our kingdoms. But they were of the line of King David, and so God decreed that—”
“God? Forgive me, Joshua, but I get as much grace and favor from worshipping the wooden and stone idols of Marduk and Ea and Apsu as I do from lifting my face to heaven and asking the clouds to come down and help me. God will not lift stone upon stone and rebuild Jerusalem. Only we can do that, with or without the help of a god or gods.
“And it was for this reason that I called the council together. Men of trade, merchants, builders, metalworkers and woodworkers, farmers and scribes. Each brings a skill to the governance of the land. Each will contribute and make decisions. And in that way—”
“Then you want to be the king of Israel!”
“Fool! I want no kings of Israel. I want no priests to rule over us. I want our land to be ruled by those best able to rule it, not men who climb onto the throne from birth because their fathers had ruled.”
“Blasphemy, Reuven. For this I could have you stoned,” Joshua said, barely able to contain his fury.
Reuven smiled. “Stoned? But there are no stones in the desert, Rabbi—only sand, and that slips through your fingers.”
THE VILLAGE was as she remembered it. Perhaps it had grown marginally on the outskirts, but she could see that little had changed in the older parts as she drove her car through the precariously narrow, steep streets until she came to the middle of the village.
She parked the car in a lane and walked into the town. She breathed in the midday air of cooking, an aroma of olive oil, hummus, t’china, and roasted meats. It was as though nothing had moved forward or developed since she’d been here last. Indeed, in these villages, little had changed in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Yael looked up toward the roofs of the houses. Apart from the occasional television aerial and electrical wires connecting homes to poles, she could have been looking at a biblical or medieval village.
Four streets away, a much older and dustier car pulled into a side street and parked. Its driver, Hassan from the Palestinian village of Bayt al Gizah, close to Jerusalem, had followed Yael from where she lived and tracked her on the long journey, often finding it hard to keep sight of her sports car as she accelerated up hills and down into valleys on her way north. But luck had been on his side, and she was unaware that anybody was tailing her.
Dressed in jeans and a frayed T-shirt, Hassan walked in the shadows of the buildings toward the center of the village. There he stood beside a wall of a house, peering at the small reservoir of water that came from the spring in the village square, the single café with its primitive awning, and the houses clustered around; and he looked carefully at the raven-haired woman who’d left her car and was walking into the village. She was the reason he was here.
Yael sat at the café and slowly sipped a freshly squeezed orange juice. She was the sole customer. Indeed, there were very few people in the center of Peki’in. Occasionally an elderly man or woman would walk out of one of the narrow lanes that led to the village square, look at her, scowl, and then walk away down one of the other lanes. One of the men wore very baggy trousers, the middle of which reached down to his knees. Hassan had never seen a Druze man wearing his distinctive clothing.
Yael, having been here before, admired the Druze, who now controlled the village. They were a peaceable and loving people despite the recent assaults against the few Jews who lived in the village. She smiled as she watched them passing in the streets. The women usually wore blue or black dresses with their heads covered by a mandil and shuffled along in red slippers. But the initiated men, the uqqal, wore baggy pants that were tied at the ankles. In their tradition, they believed that a man, not a woman, would give birth to the Messiah, and his body would drop suddenly from the body of the man. So, in order to prevent the Messiah from hitting the ground, all initiated men dressed in baggy trousers. Yael thought that the strange pants seemed perfectly in keeping with the huge mustaches with hand-waxed tips the men sported.
The owner of the café came and stood in front of her. He tilted his head and smiled. “I remember you. Many years ago. Here with the army. In uniform. Yes?”
“You have a very good memory,” Yael said somewhat incredulously, and could not escape the fact that being alone in this village with this Druze man made her uncomfortable and wary. She worried about the stories she’d been told about the Druze villagers of Peki’in driving out the few remaining Jews because of some nonsense about mobile-phone aerials. And it really was nonsense; a story had spread that the aerials that had been erected would cause cancer in the Druze population. But peace was now, apparently, restored.
The man looked Yael up and down as if appraising her in advance of what he was about to say next, then smiled. “Your friends were rude. Your army friends. I remember.”
“I don’t,” she said, trying not to sound offended.
The man shrugged. “Yes, you do. You apologized for them. Why, I remember you . . .” He tapped his temple to confirm the memory. “But no matter.” He changed the subject. “You want food? Something to eat?”
“No food, thank you. Just another orange juice.”
The man retreated from the table but then turned back to Yael, whose attention had drifted to the deserted street.
“Not all the Jews have gone, you know.”
Yael turned back to face him, uncertain of what he might mean.
“One old Jewish woman still lives here. A few others.”
“It’s a shame so many left,” said Yael. “This village was Jewish since the time of the Bible.” She finished her juice, but if the man appreciated the barb, he hid it behind his mustache.
“But many Jews love to come visit here from all over—from Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem—to see the synagogue.” The smile grew broader and his waxed mustache curled upward in a strange demonstration of pride. “Is that why you’re here?”
Yael set down her glass. “I’m looking for someone, for a family that lived here many, many years ago . . .” She told him she was looking for town records, births, deaths, and marriages. The man seemed intrigued but had nothing to offer, and directed her to the town hall and the mayor.
As Yael stood and walked in the direction the café owner had indicated, Hassan followed, keeping to the shadows. When she went into the building, he remained outside, watching.
Moments later she was standing at the counter of the records department of Peki’in, talking to the young man who listened to her request. He nodded, said very little, and disappeared into a back room. Yael looked around for computers so that she could check the records, and then her heart dropped when she realized that a place like this almost certainly wouldn’t have computerized their older records. So she’d have to look through year after year of village births, deaths, and marriages in order to find out what she wanted to know. In Jerusalem, a quick registry search by computer would find her what she needed in moments, but Peki’in was a couple of hundred miles north and centuries behind the rest of Israel.
The young man returned and ushered her into a side office, where ten large ledgers were on the table. He told her that these were the records of Peki’in dating back to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
“Don’t you have older records?” she asked.
The young man shook his head. “There were no real records kept before that.”
“So why did they start keeping records in the 1800s?” asked Yael.
The young man smiled broadly as if he had waited years for someone to show any interest. “Alexander the Great and Napoleon!” he declared with dramatic effect.
The young man took a deep breath. “You see, Napoleon always wanted to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great: conquer the world from Egypt to India, just like Alexander did. But Turkey and the Ottomans stood in his way . . .” He gestured with his hands as if tracing a map that Yael couldn’t see.
“This feels like a history lesson,” she said drily.
The young man was unperturbed and pushed on, unwilling to let the chance to indulge his passion pass by. “Napoleon fought his way from Egypt to Palestine. He got as far as Jaffa, Nazareth, and Tiberias . . .” He again pointed to invisible dots on the map he’d drawn in the air and unconsciously slipped into the present tense as if relaying the events like a sports commentator. “The Ottomans are terrified, right? And they realize that this area is the perfect place to attack the French from the south where they’re vulnerable. Not just Napoleon but the Jews and the Arabs who live here . . .”
Yael interrupted the monologue in an effort to get to the point. “What’s that got to do with the records?”
The young man seemed taken aback by the question. To him it was obvious. “They kept records so they knew who was here and if they were likely to be attacked. That’s when our records began. Napoleon and Alexander!”
The young man’s pride in his explanation could not have been more apparent, but it was lost on Yael. Had she been more patient, she might have pondered how little she knew of the turbulent history of her homeland. But instead she looked at the books and turned to the beginning. The earliest records first started for Peki’in in 1802. The ink on the registry was faint but still legible.
Were she a historian, such reading would have been an indulgent pleasure. She read the names, the dates, the locations, and the comments written by the village scribe, who had recorded the ages of residents, inhabitants, visitors who stayed for more than a year, occupations, and ages; the scribe wrote the ages, sexes, defects, and perfections of those who were residents of Peki’in when the area’s history was being made. It took Yael an hour to read of the events that occurred in the village during the decades from 1800 to 1850. But there didn’t seem to be any mention of a new Arab family who had come to the area.
She was beginning to assume that Bilal’s mother’s family had been in the area long before that, in which case she might have to go back to Jerusalem and find out what national records there might be that recorded such details. But out of curiosity Yael opened the ledger that detailed the decades 1850 to 1890 and began to flick through the pages. These pages were written by a different scribe from the one who had recorded the earlier decades: the handwriting was different, and the comments about the inhabitants, visitors, and newly arrived residents became more caustic. She smiled when she read such observations as “In Samir’s house, a transient from Acre, one Mahmud the stonemason, who claims to have a truthful tongue. But Samir says he eats like a horse.”
For the decade 1850 to 1860 Yael read one, sometimes two entries in a section but noticed that the later entries for that decade were suddenly fuller. In earlier decades the population of the village had hardly changed, but as though some event had taken place in history the records showed that, from the end of the 1850s onward, more and more people had flooded into the village. Indeed, in the decade 1860 to 1870, the population of the village swelled by at least a third.
She read the names. They were all Muslim names. But when she read the comments, she was astounded. The scribe had written “Another exile from Circassia. This family, the al-Yazdani, consists of father, mother, and ten children. Where will they be housed?”
Circassia. She’d heard of it. It was somewhere in southern Russia. But why had dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Circassians suddenly left Russia and come to live with Jews and Arabs in Peki’in and probably other villages? She opened the door and asked the young man, “Can you explain something to me?”
He looked to where Yael was pointing at the register and said, “Ah, the arrival of the Circassians. Few of their relations remain. Most moved on to the south. But Peki’in was one of a number of Galilee villages they first came to when they left Russia. It was part of the Turkish Ottoman Muslim Empire, and so they felt safe here.”
“But why did they leave Circassia?”
The young man sat, and sipped his coffee. “In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russians emptied Circassia of Muslims. They drove them out. The Russians wanted the valuable farming land at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, between the Caspian and the Black Seas. Very fertile. The Circassians were sent to Anatolia and other parts of Turkey, where they hoped that they would be welcomed by their fellow Muslims, but the Turks hated them and settled them in impoverished mountainous regions and got them to do menial jobs. So many came south to Palestine in the hope of a better life. But the Galilee, and villages like Peki’in, were too small and underdeveloped for them, and so they continued their journey south to Nablus or Bethlehem or Jerusalem for work, and so they could rebuild their lives.”
Yael was surprised but didn’t want to show it. “So the family I’m searching for could have come from Circassia?”
“Sure. They may have lived in this region for thousands of years, or they could have come a hundred and fifty years ago from Russia. I have no idea.”
Thanking him, Yael left the building and returned to her car. Then she drove westward in the direction of Nahariya. What she didn’t know was that a much older and slower car, driven by a youth in jeans and a T-shirt, was following her, desperately trying to keep up.
ELIAHU SPITZER SIGNED his last piece of paper for the day. He straightened his hair and repositioned the yarmulke on the back of his head. His neck hurt, the small of his back ached, and his bottom was numb. As a man of action, as Shin Bet’s most senior field commander before his illness, he used to spend as little time as possible in the office, often less than ten minutes a month at his desk. The rest of his time was put to use in cafés and in safe houses and in Palestinian homes, talking in secret to people he was trying to win over as informants. There were two routes to Shin Bet’s success. One was money—the oil in his machine for such tasks as gaining information—but money could never buy loyalty, especially from those who had little. The second was simple blackmail: he would allow a Palestinian certain benefits, such as easy access to a jailed relative, or a well-paid job within Israel, and then, once ensnared, use the threat of exposure of the benefit to persuade the Palestinian to give him information.
Israel’s Shin Bet and the nation’s external agency, Mossad, were the most successful and feared security forces in the world. Rarely did targets know that one of their own, trusted and respected, had been turned. Yet, never taking credit in public for their successes, always vigilant against the increasing number of Islamist and Salafi breakaway organizations dedicated to the destruction of Israel, Eliahu was at the pinnacle of the nation’s security hierarchy.
Until his heart attack. It had come suddenly. He was driving away from a meeting with other security officials early one morning, after breakfasting on his favorite meal, shakshouka—brought to Israel by Tunisian Jews, a mixture of poached eggs in a sauce of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices—when a crushing pain in his chest and throat nearly stopped him from breathing. Somehow remembering Shin Bet’s safety procedures, he drove slowly, forcing himself to cough all the way to the hospital as a way of artificially massaging his heart and forcing it to continue to pump blood. But the moment he reached the doors of the ER, he collapsed. He woke two days later after that fateful six-hour quintuple bypass operation.
Now, three and a half years later, he sat at his desk in Shin Bet’s headquarters with time and space to think. This doctor, this Yael Cohen, had left Jerusalem and traveled to Peki’in. Why? Eliahu looked on a map and found the small village in the northern part of Galilee, fairly close to the Lebanese border.
Why would a city doctor go to a backward place like Peki’in? He had checked with his sources in the major hospital in Nahariya and found that her reassignment had been largely unnecessary and completely unorthodox in the way it had been handled. And why had this American reporter for ANBN, this Yaniv Grossman who used to be called Ivan in New York, visited Bilal in the prison by the shores of the Dead Sea?
His instincts told him that they knew something. But what? The imam seemed confident Bilal hadn’t talked; yet, when he’d visited in the hospital, the boy suddenly became apoplectic. The imam said that the kid had somehow spotted them when they’d met in secret with Reb Telushkin in a village near Bethlehem, which was why he was going to be killed in the prison. But where did the doctor and this American reporter fit in? What the hell was going on?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunfire somewhere beyond the walls of the Old City. Or maybe it was just some car backfiring. Either way, it wasn’t his concern. Just days ago the Palestinian kid was the only one that Eliahu and his operatives would have had to deal with. But now there were three loose ends to tie up.
JOSHUA’S DEEP INNER THOUGHTS were suddenly interrupted by his wife, Shoshanna, who was concerned that he had been sitting outside of the house where they were staying, with his head in his hands. He’d recently returned from the home of the merchant, Reuven, and had said nothing to her.
She approached him cautiously. “So, husband, thinking?”
Joshua nodded.
“You’re troubled by what Reuven said? Was it about this council his wife mentioned?”
Again Joshua nodded. Softly and in despair he said, “He and others want to destroy us. They want to cut us off from Adonai, our Lord and God. Some of our people will remain here in Damascus, others will come, but who knows what will happen when we arrive in Jerusalem?”
She said quietly, “If the people have lost their way, if their faith in the Lord is weakening, what is it that will lead them on?”
Joshua searched for an answer but could only say, “Prayer. They must pray to Adonai for strength.”
Shoshanna smiled. “You know, husband, when the men leading the camels of a caravan are tired from the journey and want to make camp before the sun sets, the leader of the caravan can demand that they continue until the light fails. That would reward him, but what would it do for the camel drivers other than make them resentful? He could warn them of the punishment they’d suffer by whipping their backsides, but that would make them surly and vengeful. Or he could offer them a reward, and then they would continue, knowing that good things will be available beyond the horizon. So when the journey is long and difficult, good leaders give their men rewards, and they trudge on despite their exhaustion, because they know that it’s in their own interests.”
Joshua shrugged. “But what can I offer thousands of my people? I’m not a rich man.”
“Who is the richest of us all? Who has more wealth than all the kings and all the empires on the face of the earth?”
Joshua stared at her.
“The Lord our God, husband. He is the richest of all.”
“But through prayers?”
“Prayers will help, but the people need more; they need another reason to leave the comforts and seductions of Damascus for Jerusalem. They need a reason not to follow Reuven and the others who have set up this council. Give them the reason. Promise them untold rewards in Israel. Swear an oath that in Jerusalem will be riches beyond their imaginations.”
“How can I promise that, woman? How can I say what will be there when I don’t know?”
“Then how do you know there won’t be immense riches in Israel? Stand before the multitudes tomorrow morning and promise them that their lives will be richer and rewarded when they get to the land promised to the Jewish people by God. Tell them that in a dream you’ve seen gold in the streets, soaring temples, ample food and drink, and everything they will find in Damascus and Babylon, but more so—much more.”
“I can’t lie, Shoshanna.”
“How do you know it’s a lie? Have you been to Jerusalem?”
“It’s a pile of stones that we have to rebuild with our own hands.”
“And beneath the stones? Do you know what lies underneath the rubble? Perhaps it’s gold and silver, onyx and alabaster. How do you know that these things aren’t to be found?”
Joshua remained silent. “But it would be a lie. I can’t lie or bear false witness. The laws of Father Moses . . .”
“Then tell them that in your prayers the Lord has promised that He will provide, and the riches of Damascus and Babylon, of Egypt and Persia, will be theirs provided they finish the journey and use their hearts and heads to rebuild the land. Inspire them, Joshua. Use your voice to raise the people up.”
And Joshua suddenly realized that, as the leader of the Jews, he could no longer be a counselor or an adviser, a healer and a comforter, a man of God distant from his congregation. Shoshanna, his wife, was right. People had followed Joshua and Zerubbabel because of the promise of returning to their ancestral homeland and becoming a free people once again. Nobody had followed Joshua because he had said that returning was the right thing, the Jewish thing, to do.
Yet, now, when doubts and hardships were pressing on his congregation, he had to become more than a rabbi, more than a counselor and healer. He had to become a leader. She was right. It had taken a wife to tell Joshua what to do and how to behave. And tomorrow he would call all of his people into the nearby valley outside the walls and tell them the story of Jerusalem. He would build such a magnificent temple through images in their minds, create such a gleaming white city on a hill, that his people would want to leave Damascus there and then.
He wouldn’t lie, as she had suggested, nor would he tell his people that the streets were paved with gold; but he would tell them of the prosperity they could enjoy, the peace and harmony and security they would feel, when the work was done. Some might want to remain behind in Damascus, and if they did, Joshua would bless them and wish them well. And he’d tell them that it was only a walk south to Jerusalem, and they, as Jews, would be welcome there at any time.
Yes! He would write magnificent words to help them envision it, create a landscape on which his people, Israel, could build their houses in the air, see and smell and feel the walls and matting, the cooking hearths and tiled roofs. He would ask them to close their eyes and imagine the streets that led from the Valley of Kidron through the walls of the city, up the hill, past the market stalls laden with food and drink, and up, always up, past the king’s palace, to the resting place of Adonai, the very Temple of Solomon itself. He would describe, as his father had described to him, what the temple had once looked like and how it would look again when the Jews rebuilt it. He would do all that tomorrow. He would stand on a plinth and speak across the heads of the multitudes. He would speak loudly so all could hear. His voice would be commanding, strong, and vibrant, and his words would be put into his mouth by the Lord God Himself.
“Husband?”
Joshua opened his eyes and saw Shoshanna looking strangely at him.
“Joshua, are you all right? You were mumbling. You seemed to be in a daze.”
Joshua smiled. “Dearest wife. I’m a rabbi, a man of God, and a healer. In His own way, and through your presence, the Lord God, Adonai, has opened my eyes and allowed me to see further than I’ve ever seen before.”
She looked closely at her husband and wondered if he was drunk.
He reached over, placed his hand on Shoshanna’s head, and blessed her. “Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’Olam . . .”
“WHEN WILL WE BE THERE?” asked Shoshanna, Rabbi Joshua’s wife. She had run forward to the head of the column of Israelites to where her husband and Zerubbabel were leading their people home on the road south. They were following the tops of the hills from Shiloh to the city of Ai, and then on to Jerusalem.
He looked at her, red-faced from running and concern in her eyes, and asked, “Why?”
“Somebody is sick and needs rest.”
“Who?” he asked urgently.
Shoshanna didn’t reply. Joshua knew immediately who it was. “Is Naomi worse this morning?”
His wife nodded. “She is much weaker, and now she is showing signs of the fever. She drinks water and vomits it up again immediately. I’m worried for her.”
Joshua nodded. He said softly, “When we reach the top of this hill, I’m told by our advance guards that the city will be in sight. Then it’s just across the valley and up the hill to our new home—our Jerusalem.”
Shoshanna sighed. Since Damascus, since Reuven and the others who had tried to convince the Israelites that they should be a ruling council, Joshua hadn’t spoken a word to the merchant. And Reuven, who had been soundly rejected by the people of Israel after Joshua’s stirring speech about the glories under God that awaited them, had lain low, rarely being seen in the company of others. Since Damascus, his wife had grown frailer and weaker, and now that she was suffering a fever in the last weeks of her pregnancy, Shoshanna was frightened that her body would be spent by the time they reached the broken walls of the ruined city.
Shoshanna walked beside her husband. “Last night we thought that the baby would be born, but the birth women told me that her body is not yet beginning to open and the pains are what must be expected because of the sins of Adam’s wife, Eve. But why should Naomi, who is a good and gentle woman, suffer because of Eve? Why should she suffer because of her husband’s blasphemy?”
Joshua looked at her but knew that this wasn’t the time for a discussion of Jewish law and customs. “God will provide all the comforts that she needs,” he said.
“Comforts? The birth women say that she still has two weeks to go before the baby will be full term. Yet, this fever is burning her body and the women fear that it will infect the child unless the baby is delivered immediately.”
“Can nothing be done?” asked Joshua.
“The women have given her herbs that should bring the birth to fulfillment. They have bathed her with cold water, which will help to bring down her body’s heat. But no matter what they do, Naomi is still burning with fever. One of the women says she won’t reach Jerusalem. Reuven told me that he’d rather the infant died than his wife leave him. Joshua, if the baby dies inside her womb, she will be inconsolable, especially after the rigors of the journey and how close we are now. Every day she prays to God to allow her to see the rocks and stones of Jerusalem. And every day we draw closer, she becomes weaker and sicker. Is God playing a game with her? Is Adonai punishing her because Reuven turned away from Him?”
“Woman, our god is a proud god, but not a vengeful one. He hears our prayers, so if ever you believed in the power of prayer to beg Adonai to help her, now is the time for you to ask Him to intercede. Pray, wife, with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.”
“Husband, I’ve been praying for her from the time we left Damascus, yet God doesn’t hear my prayers. What can I do?” she asked, her voice close to tears.
Joshua felt utterly helpless. “It’s just two days before we reach God’s city. Surely, after all this distance and time, she can travel the last part and see the golden walls of the city. Can’t she?”
Shoshanna shook her head. “I don’t know. God knows, but I don’t. I’m fearful, Joshua. If the baby dies, I think Naomi will go mad. If she dies, then I fear for Reuven’s soul.”
“Reuven’s soul is in God’s hands, and I’m afraid that he will be punished for his thoughts. So it’s even more important that you pray hard for God’s mercy toward them. Pray now, Shoshanna. Pray for God’s help for your friend.”
When her prayers were ended, Joshua decided to ride back to meet the wagon carrying Naomi and the birth women who were tending to her needs. But when he arrived at the wagon, he could see by their grave faces that things had gotten worse since his wife’s visit.
Reuven looked in surprise at Joshua.
“You!” he said.
“Your wife is sick. I’ve come to offer my prayers, my help.”
Joshua anticipated a sharp rebuke, a snarl, and being told to leave, but instead Reuven nodded and said softly, “Thank you, Rabbi.”
“You look exhausted, Reuven.”
“I haven’t slept since we left Damascus, Joshua. My wife said we should remain, but after the people wanted you and Zerubbabel to lead them, and not my group of elders of the community, I knew I had to come to ensure—”
“To ensure that Jerusalem is rebuilt properly?”
Reuven nodded. He reflected for a moment and then said, “Many months ago, in Babylon, you said to me my reason for coming to Jerusalem had nothing to do with Naomi or my baby; it had everything to do with greed. Much of what you accused me of, Rabbi, was correct, but in this regard you’re wrong. I want my son to be born in Israel. Since I began this journey, I think more and more that Israel must be rebuilt, must prosper, and must be renewed to become one of the most important nations. Why shouldn’t we be as great as Babylon, as Damascus, as Pithom and Carcamesh? Isn’t Jerusalem as great as any of these?”
“Jerusalem is great, Reuven, because our temple is the home of the one true God, Adonai Elohim. All the other cities were built because of the desire of ordinary men, of kings and rulers, to show the rest of the world how powerful they were. But Jerusalem is powerful not because of its buildings or treasures but because it is the house of the Lord.
“Allow me to pray over Naomi, so that she recovers and is strong enough to see your son born and circumcised on the mountain where God tested Abraham before telling him to spare the life of Isaac, his beloved son.”
Their prayers ended, Joshua returned to his tent at the head of the column, just on the other side of a mountain from whose summit could be seen the destroyed city of Jerusalem.
The cold night passed and Naomi was able to sip some warm vegetable broth that one of the birth women made beside the campfire. Reuven was sitting beside her, watching her drink from the cup. He smiled and she spoke softly, weakly, to him. He had to lean close to her to hear what she was saying. And as his face nearly touched hers, he was shocked by the smell of death.
Naomi never woke up. She died of a raging fever during the night. As soon as the birthing women realized that she was dead, they slit open her body, burst the warm waters, and took the baby from her womb, slapped him hard on his bottom, breathed into his mouth to give air to his lungs, swaddled the boy in cloth, cleaned his mouth and nose, and ran to one of the young birth mothers, paying her to breast-feed the baby.
Bereft, Reuven joined Joshua in mourning prayers in the dawn light. They stood on top of the hill and looked over the valley to the opposite hill, where the sun was lighting up the stones that had once stood one on top of the other as the city of Jerusalem.
And when the prayers had been said, Joshua arranged for Naomi’s body to be buried in the caves on the eastern hill opposite the city. And he and Reuven carried the healthy and placid infant up the hill and through the broken archway that led the column of returning Jews into Jerusalem.
HASSAN KHOURI’S CAR BACKFIRED as it strained to climb out of the lower reaches of the village of Bayt al Gizah. He bent over the steering wheel as if to urge it forward. It was early morning, and dozens of men and women, walking the streets to go to work or to the local shops, looked around in shock at the sudden noise. Explosions, gunfire, and detonations were the terrifying currency of Israeli and Palestinian streets, and every unusual or loud noise caused a shock and people in the vicinity to take notice. Normally a nation that lived at the extremes of life—from despair to unbridled exultation—recent exchanges with the Hamas terrorists of Gaza, culminating in a series of vicious border clashes and rockets, had made all Israelis nervous.
Hassan wasn’t aware that people on the sidewalks were looking at him as his car continued to backfire as it climbed the steep hills that led out of Jerusalem. He drove toward the periphery of the city, past hospitals, museums, and television buildings, and soon arrived on the road north from the city to the Sea of Galilee.
Hassan had recently returned from Peki’in, where he’d followed the doctor, Yael, from place to place. Why was the damn woman interfering? Didn’t she know her place? Hassan had told the imam of her visits, of the times he’d seen her suspiciously talking to people. And the imam was worried by her activities. Although he didn’t discuss it with Hassan, the young man knew that it must have something to do with Bilal, with what he’d told her.
When he’d informed his imam of what the Jew doctor was doing, the decision that she must be killed was made. Prayers were said, thanks were given to Allah, and Hassan was ordered to return and continue what he had begun. The doctor knew too much.
The first time was a scouting expedition. Her image, her hair, her face, were now known so well to him. He had been given a high-velocity rifle, a handgun, and ammunition. He had been told that if the circumstances permitted it—if there was nobody else around and the escape path was clear—he should use the handgun, shooting the young woman in the chest or the head. If he couldn’t get close enough because she was surrounded by friends, he should hide behind a tree or a building while she was sitting outdoors at a table or somewhere and use the rifle to kill her. In all the screaming and confusion, Hassan would have time to dismantle the rifle, pack it into a bag, and walk away as though he were a local villager.
The imam had assured him that from the moment the girl fell dead to the floor to the time he was in his car and far away, the police would only just be arriving at the scene of her death. Hassan would be on the road to Bayt al Gizah and safety well before the police had time to set up roadblocks. The imam had told him that on his way back from the scene of the crime he should pull up in a quiet spot on the northern fringes of the Sea of Galilee and throw the gun and the rifle as far from the shore as he possibly could. Then he was to strip naked, walk into the water, and swim for a few minutes. That, the imam said, would remove all trace of the gunpowder residue so that in the unlikely event that he was stopped at a random Israeli roadblock, the police dogs wouldn’t smell anything on his hands. Hassan had packed a change of underwear and clothes so that when he emerged from the water, he could dress himself in trousers and a top that had never been in contact with guns. He would dump the clothes he’d worn to travel to Nahariya in a trash can somewhere along the way.
It was all so clinical, so matter-of-fact. As if the imam were giving him instructions to go to a supermarket and buy food for that night. Hassan gripped the wheel, his knuckles white with tension. Fear? Anger? Doubt? He didn’t know; all he knew was that he was about to kill the woman who’d saved the life of his best friend.
Whether she was a Jew or not, his culture, his upbringing—everything he understood about himself as an Arab—told him that he had to revere her for what she’d done for Bilal. As the sun was breasting the Mountains of Moab, his mind was such a maelstrom of emotions that he had to breathe deeply in order to concentrate on the road. He loved the imam, but after what Bilal had told him in prison, what should he do?
He’d never killed anybody before. He’d talked about it many times when he was inside the tightly knit cabal sitting at the feet of the imam, learning about the amorality of the Jews, of their theft of Palestinian land, of their genocide of the Palestinian people, and much more. Everything the imam said explained the misery of Hassan’s life and the way his parents and grandparents had suffered all these years. And his fury had been fed and had grown and grown until he was desperate to avenge the degradation with an act of vengeance.
Bombs, rocket attacks, grenades hurled at checkpoints, were all part of the fantasy. That was killing the enemy at a distance; it was impersonal. But a pistol in the hand, a bullet in the head of a young woman, lining her up in the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle, seeing her head blown off—these were no longer what the young Palestinian could aspire to. He’d now been told that he would be going up to a young woman and looking at the terror in her face as he raised the pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. He realized he would no longer be a freedom fighter but a murderer. Hassan felt sick as he thought of Yael’s blood and brains splattering and watching her fall to the street. Bombs, rockets, and grenades were all impersonal, but using a gun sat heavily and uneasily with Hassan.
The doctor had saved Bilal’s life. And Bilal had begged him to contact her. Yet, now, under orders from the imam, he had to murder this doctor because the imam was certain that Bilal, stupid Bilal, had told her things he shouldn’t have. Was the imam right, or was Bilal telling the truth when he assured him that he’d said nothing? Bilal had always told him the truth, even when they’d been lying to others about their little crimes, even when they were kids together. But this wasn’t kids’ stuff any longer. This was big stuff, adult stuff, matters of life and death, and Hassan felt lost.
And what of Bilal? Had he really seen things that he shouldn’t have seen? The imam swore on the Koran that Bilal had broken the most sacred rule by which the group operated. Who should he believe? His mind was so confused, spinning in all directions as he drove north, ever north, toward his moment of decision with the Jew doctor. Damn Bilal! Damn the Jew doctor! And damn the imam. Life had been hard but uncomplicated in the village. But at least there he knew who he was! Now he was confused, frightened, and alone.
The road ahead was crowded, but he knew that by the time he reached Afula the roads would be a lot less busy, and when he reached the Galilee the traffic would almost disappear. That would make driving easier, but it would also make his car more visible to the Israeli police and others who were constantly monitoring the nation. And Palestinians acting as Israeli spies were everywhere, watching every move of their fellow Palestinians and reporting their whereabouts to the authorities.
It took him four hours of cautious driving well within the speed limit to reach Nahariya. He parked his car on the outskirts of the city and caught a bus to the hospital, where he would spy on the doctor. Trying to appear inconspicuous, he studied the building directory and found the surgical wards on the third floor. He took the stairs, not the elevator, and meandered from corridor to corridor, trying to find the room where the surgeons gathered.
“Can I help you?” a nurse asked him.
“No!” he said. “No, I’m looking for . . .”
“A patient?”
“Yes, a patient. My uncle,” Hassan lied.
“You really shouldn’t be here outside of visiting hours. What’s your uncle’s name?”
Without thinking, he immediately said, “Ali.”
The nurse smiled. At any time there could be twenty Alis in the hospital. “Ali who? What’s his surname? Which ward is he in?”
Hassan looked at her blankly.
“Well, what’s he in the hospital for?” she asked.
Hassan was suddenly frightened and shrugged. Then he turned and walked away quickly. He ran down the flights of stairs and out of the front entrance of the hospital, praying that the nurse wouldn’t call security.
Sleeping in his car in the backstreets of the northern city, Hassan waited for two days before he had the courage to drive up to the hospital’s parking lot. He could see the doors where doctors and nurses, patients and relatives, walked in and out, and he sat there, hour after hour for the entire day, hoping that she’d walk out of the hospital so that he could follow her home.
On the third day he was about to phone the imam and give him the coded message that his mission had failed, when Yael Cohen emerged from the doors of the hospital accompanied by two other people. Instead of a white coat, as he expected, she was dressed in jeans and a blue top with a white scarf. He watched her walk toward her car, parked four rows from his. She was young, fresh, confident, and gorgeous. And soon she would be dead.
As she got in, he turned the key and prepared to follow her. They left the hospital grounds and she drove northeast, away from the sea and in the direction of the Lebanese border. But what surprised him was that as she drove out of the center of the city, instead of heading for residential areas, she turned east and headed toward the hills. Her car was far more modern and powerful than his, and as she gunned her machine up the steep hills, she almost left him behind. Only when he came over the crown of a hill by pure luck did he see her far in the distance, on a road to the right and heading south. If he hadn’t spotted her, he would have continued along the same road. Hassan turned in the new direction and followed as best he could. Theirs were the only cars on this road. After many miles, up hills and down into valleys, he saw a road sign. And in the distance he realized that she’d suddenly pulled over in the middle of a village. The sign told him that the village was Peki’in. It was his second time here; this time his goal was very different.
He parked in a lane, behind a badly battered and dusty forty-year-old Toyota truck. He took out the sports bag the imam had given him and hurried back to the main street that ran through the village. Hassan looked for her, hoping that she hadn’t gone into any of the buildings. But she was nowhere to be seen. So, for the second time in less than a week, Hassan walked in the shadows of buildings on the periphery of the central square where the village’s famous and constantly running spring had been dammed and flowed into the wide tiled reservoir. She could have gone in any direction, so he decided to stand in the shadows and wait for her. Though it was late in the afternoon, the heat was oppressive, and as the sun descended into the distant sea, it cast long shadows. Being a tiny village miles from nowhere, there were few cars and even fewer people.
As he waited on the periphery of the village square, he looked around for a tree or a building that would shield him from being observed. He would need such shade if he was going to point the rifle toward her. He would kill her as she emerged from a building into the empty street. He’d drop her when she was walking toward her car. He’d aim the bullet directly at her chest so that it exploded in her heart and she would die painlessly and instantly. He hoped.
It so much depended on whether or not she was alone, or in his sights, or if the setting sun wasn’t in his eyes. For any of these reasons he’d quickly pack up the rifle and kill her with his revolver the moment she arrived at the door to her car. Hassan knew this was what he must do, for if he didn’t, then the repercussions by the imam against him and possibly his family would be severe. But he silently prayed it would not come to this.
He’d squeeze the trigger carefully as he’d done in the hills above his village of Bayt al Gizah when he shot tin cans: narrow his eyes so that the target was more focused and then fire the gun. He might not even watch her die. He might just avert his eyes, squeeze the trigger, feel its recoil, then put the rifle away and escape.
He planned it in his head but couldn’t help but see Yael fall to the ground, screaming in terror, blood spurting from the wound. Could he do it? Shooting bottles and tin cans for target practice was a lot easier than shooting a woman in the heart.
Bilal’s words from the prison rang in his ears. Had his brother really told the doctor about the imam, about the group which was to bring liberty to Palestine? Because if so, then his finger had to squeeze the trigger.
As he took out the rifle, checking that nobody was looking, he realized that his hands were shaking.
YAEL EMERGED from the village’s central records repository half an hour later carrying a sheaf of papers. They’d been photocopied for her by the friendly young clerk, and now she had to determine what path of action to follow. In her hands were the records of families like that of Bilal, going back to the late 1800s.
But since she’d been in Nahariya, the urgency of finding out why her blood and Bilal’s were linked seemed to have diminished. It had become secondary to her daily routine, and this time away from Jerusalem was a pleasant break. Although she’d conducted a number of surgeries, she found herself trying to justify this time off.
The pressure of her work in the hospital in Jerusalem, the speed and incoherence of the city, all lost their urgency to a calmness that seemed to have descended on her as she traveled north toward Galilee. Perhaps it was the rugged grandeur of the hills and valleys, or the individualism of the inhabitants, or the feeling of being so far from the cosmopolitanism of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that did it. It was as though she were in a quieter, more laid-back world—a biblical world.
As she walked back to her car, the feeling of always needing to get somewhere, of always having to do something, simply wasn’t there. She didn’t have to rush back; she could take her time. She could sit in a café and have a cup of coffee. The one she’d been in the other day, the one with the awning, was close by, and so she sat down at a table and ordered a drink.
There were two other people seated beneath the awning at different tables. They were elderly men, and from their dress they were obviously senior members of the Druze community. They looked at her with indifference, quite used to Israeli tourists coming to the village and visiting the ancient synagogue.
THROUGH THE SCOPE of the rifle, Hassan could see her clearly, sitting and talking to the café owner about what she’d have to drink. He felt the wheel of the rifle’s sights and twisted it to the left in order to make the image of her as sharp as a needle. The crosshairs of the rifle’s sights blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again until his sweating fingers fixed them precisely on her head. He looked at the four quadrants through the sights: her forehead was high and she had a fringe of black hair that fell over her cheek before cascading down to caress her neck; her lips and cheeks felt so close, he could have kissed her. She was smiling at the café owner. Her neck was long and slender, and if he looked closely, he could see the delicate lines of her throat above the collar of her blouse. He put the rifle down to wipe the sweat from his eyes.
Hassan reached into the sports bag and took out the bottle of water, which he gulped down. He was thirsty, yet the cold water didn’t relieve him. About to pick up the rifle to take the shot, he was disturbed by the sound of a car driving toward him. He immediately hid the rifle with his body and waited for it to go past. He looked at the passengers, who weren’t interested in him as they drove toward the center of the village.
Enveloped in silence again, he picked up the rifle and looked through the sights at the doctor. The view was blocked by the broad back of the café owner, who was giving her a glass of something. When he left, she was still smiling at him, engaging him in gentle conversation. Now her whole body was visible again, sitting under the awning, drinking orange juice. He pressed the rifle stock against his cheek, put his finger on the trigger, breathed deeply, said a small prayer, and slowly, cautiously, without jerking the gun, began to squeeze the trigger.
There was firm resistance on the spring of the trigger and then a tiny metallic click. For an instant Hassan found himself wondering how small the sound of a gunshot could be until, through the sight, he saw that the doctor was still sipping her orange juice. Reluctantly Hassan pulled the trigger again. The same resistance and metallic click and silence.
He leaned back from the sight, turned the gun in his hands, and pulled at the bolt to open the breech. The mechanism would not shift. He yanked at it with a strange panic rising in him. What was he afraid of? Missing the shot? That the gun might explode? The wrath of the imam? The fate of Bilal, who had also failed?
Hassan yanked again, vigorously trying to dislodge whatever had jammed the rifle, but to no avail. He looked up into the distance to see the doctor still sitting at the far table. She wasn’t leaving—not yet. He stopped pulling on the bolt lever and instead took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He looked at his hands. They were sweating and shaking. He got to his knees and briskly wiped them on his shirt to dry them. And still the doctor sat at the table.
Hassan reached into the sports bag beside him and his fingers closed around the handle of the pistol concealed inside. It was warm to the touch, the sun heating the bag and the metal of the gun’s grip. He drew it out, and stood and stared down at the distant figure of the doctor at the café, the words of Bilal screaming in his ear: “She is the only one who can help me!”
AS YAEL SAT GAZING over the empty square, with only the occasional car or pedestrian disturbing the silence, she saw a young man carrying an old sports bag walking toward the café.
He sat down three tables away and stared at the menu. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, common to young people throughout the world. But unlike the Druzim who glanced at her indifferently, this young man immediately looked away the moment her eyes met his. He looked up into the enormous carob tree, then at the pool in the middle of the square, then up at the birds perched on top of the buildings.
Yael didn’t give it another thought and slowly sipped the fresh orange juice that the owner had squeezed for her. She read some of the papers, but something drew her to look at the young man again. And the moment she did, she realized that he’d been staring at her. She smiled at him, but he immediately averted his eyes again.
Hassan’s muscles felt like coiled steel. She was right in front of him, although he looked everywhere but at her. He willed himself to be invisible. The pistol was lead in his hand as it threatened to slip from his sweaty fingers and clatter on the ground.
They were not alone. There were others at the café. When he did what must be done, he would have to run, run as far and as fast as he could. He might be caught or he might escape, inshallah. But as he looked anywhere except at the woman he must kill, he thought of Bilal and the fate of one who had failed.
But still the words of his friend would not be silent in his ears.
“She is the only one who can help me.”
Hassan rose to his feet . . .
YAEL WATCHED as the young man suddenly stood and pushed the chair back. He walked quickly out of the café and into the main square. He’d neither eaten nor drunk anything, and he hadn’t even spoken to the café owner. Odd. But Yael thought nothing of it except that as she looked at him, he suddenly stopped at the edge of the pool, as though deep in thought, as if his reflection in the water were his alter ego. Then he turned and faced her. In embarrassment, Yael glanced back at her papers until she realized, to her profound disquiet, that he was walking straight toward her table.
She could feel him coming closer and closer and something deep inside her clenched tight like a knotted rope. She didn’t look up but her peripheral vision saw his shadow, his shape, as he walked to her table. She felt that she should run, that she should have listened to the warnings of her friends not to come here. People like her weren’t welcome here. People like her . . .
The chair opposite scraped backward and the young man sat sharply down on it. Leaning forward across the table, he whispered, “I have a gun. It is in my hand under the table and I will kill you if you speak.”
Yael did not make a sound. Her eyes, too afraid to move, were locked on his, fixed like those of a coma patient.
The young man swallowed and whispered, “You are Dr. Cohen. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Yael’s voice was dry as dust.
“I . . .” Hassan halted and both of them waited what felt like an eternity for him to speak again. He reached over and drank some of her orange juice. Amazingly, this arrogance annoyed her as much as she was shocked by him saying he had a gun. His hand clenched and unclenched the handle of the pistol beneath the table.
“I was sent to kill you . . .”
She so desperately wanted to scream for help, but Yael was suddenly struck mute. And her fear was replaced by confusion when Hassan continued. “You saved my friend, Bilal, didn’t you?”
It wasn’t really a question and Yael had no conscious intention to answer. But she felt her lips move nonetheless. “Yes, I did,” she gasped. And then reason slowly subsumed fear as a strange courage welled up from nowhere. “Who are you?”
Hassan was sweating profusely despite the breeze. He gulped down more orange juice, but this time it didn’t matter to Yael. His next words sounded as though they were forced out of his body. “You must swear to me, swear on the most holy, that you will say nothing to anybody about what I’m going to tell you.”
“You have a gun. Just ask and I’ll swear to you anything.”
The young man looked as though he were sinking into despair. The muscles in his face seemed to twitch as if he might collapse. “You must swear,” he insisted through gritted teeth.
“Why? What do you want? What did I do?” The questions tumbled out of Yael’s mouth in quiet gasps.
Hassan didn’t answer but his eyes didn’t leave Yael’s.
“How do you know Bilal?” asked Yael, reaching out for something, anything.
The effect of the question on Hassan was profound. His shoulders slumped and his eyes dropped. “He is my friend. My brother. I was ordered to kill you. But . . .”
Yael hung on to the silence, hoping he’d continue.
“It’s all gone so wrong . . .” Hassan’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, which he didn’t blink away. His gaze returned to Yael, but this time it was like looking at a different man: determination had devolved almost at once into exhaustion.
“I was ordered to kill you, but Bilal . . . he told me . . . he said you were the only one I could trust. He said you were the only one who could save him . . .”
EVEN THE PRISON GOVERNOR, who had seen most things in his twelve years superintending one of the most fractious penal colonies in Israel, was surprised by the number of visitors the remand prisoner was getting.
First it was the police taking statements; then a government lawyer appointed by the courts; then his imam; then the kid’s cousin; then a journalist, and heaven only knows how he managed to get permission to interview the lad; and now it was a senior officer from Shin Bet.
But provided they had the right clearance papers, there were no grounds for him to object. The governor’s sole responsibility was to ensure the kid’s welfare and that he showed up for his day in court. After that, he would likely be some other prison commander’s problem. Although he’d carried bombs, they hadn’t gone off, and his crime was murder, so once he’d been through the courts, he’d probably go to an ordinary prison and not one for Arab terrorists or Palestinian militants, like this prison.
He knew the man from Shin Bet. They’d met in a conference in Hadera on internal security where he’d given a speech and they discussed how to process Palestinian informers in the prison system. That was four years earlier, and he was surprised at how much the Shin Bet man had aged and some of his hair had turned white.
Obviously this kid was something more than your average fanatic and the meeting didn’t sit comfortably with the governor—not at all.
ELIAHU WAITED in the interview room for Bilal to be brought to him for interrogation. Within a minute the door opened and one of the section guards walked in. He was followed by Bilal. The young man entered with a strangely hopeful air, but that quickly vanished when Bilal saw Eliahu behind the table, and he stopped dead at the door to the room and wouldn’t move.
“Inside, you,” ordered the guard.
Bilal shook his head. “No. No!”
Eliahu Spitzer stood from behind the desk. In fluent Arabic, he said gently, “Bilal, calm down. I just want to talk to you.”
“No!” Bilal shouted. “No, I’m not going in there. Not with him. Put me back in my cell. I won’t talk to this man.”
“What the hell’s got into you, boy?” demanded the guard. “Stop being so fucking stupid.” Losing patience, the guard grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him into the room. The guard was a huge Russian who’d emigrated six years before from St. Petersburg, and Bilal was no match for his brute strength. He sat him in the chair and tethered the handcuffs to one of the armrests.
“Why handcuff him?” asked Eliahu.
“Standard procedure,” said the guard, who retreated to the wall.
“I want to be alone with the prisoner,” demanded Eliahu.
“No,” said the Russian.
“I said I want to be alone. Now leave.”
The Russian looked at him coldly. “I can’t do that.”
Eliahu looked at him coldly. “It’s not a request.”
The guard didn’t know who Eliahu was, but he knew, just from his manner, just from the way he presented himself, that he was authority, and as a Russian he knew that he had to do as authority demanded. He knew better than to argue any further. But as the big Russian left the room he decided the governor should know the man was alone with the prisoner. The governor was famous for his micromanagement.
As the guard closed the door, Eliahu turned his attention solemnly to Bilal. “So, my young friend. You seem to have been in the wars,” he said so impassively that he could have been having a conversation in a café with a friend.
“What do you want? What are you going to do with me?”
Eliahu picked up his briefcase from the floor and placed it on the desk between them. “Y’know, Bilal, there comes a time when it’s better for everybody that a sacrifice is made. Your sacrifice was supposed to be on the Western Wall of the Temple . . .”
Bilal tried to get out of the chair but the handcuffs kept him tethered. He shook them in a vain attempt to free himself, but it was useless, and the chair was bolted to the concrete floor. “What are you doing here? Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”
“You’ve seen things, Bilal. Things you were never meant to see.”
Again Bilal tried to break free from his chains.
Eliahu opened his briefcase and took out a hypodermic needle. “Calm down, Bilal. This will make you into a martyr—just what you wanted.”
Bilal looked at it in unutterable fear. Here, again, was Malak al-Maut, the Angel of Death. He’d come a second time for Bilal, just as he’d come to the hospital.
Suddenly his body went limp, as though all energy and fight had gone out of him. He was about to die. He could scream but it wouldn’t help. He could fight and kick, but the man would just stand behind him. His only hope was to play for time. And pray.
“May I first say a prayer?” he asked softly.
Eliahu smiled. “No, my friend. You’ll have plenty of time to pray in heaven . . . or wherever it is you people go.”
He pulled out a vial of clear liquid and stuck the hypodermic needle into the rubber end of the bottle. He sucked a syringe full of the liquid and returned the bottle to his case. For some reason Bilal noticed that the Jew didn’t push a small amount of liquid out of the needle, as he’d seen on many American television hospital dramas.
Eliahu began to stand, when, above the general noise of the prison, footsteps could be heard in the corridor coming nearer and nearer. Suddenly the door of the room opened and Eliahu hid the needle behind the opened lid of his briefcase.
The prison governor walked into the room with a different air from their first greeting in his office.
“You might be important where you come from, Spitzer, but in this prison I make the rules, and people who come in here obey them. No prisoner can be left alone with a visitor for any reason, ever. My guard stays in this room. Is that quite clear?”
Bilal turned and screamed at the governor, “He was trying to kill me!”
The governor looked quickly at both of them and said, “Shut up, Bilal. Now listen to me, Mr. Shin Bet. You may be a big shit in Jerusalem, but you’re not even a fart in my prison.”
Eliahu tilted his head quizzically in an image of terse surprise at the interference. He wasn’t used to being either commanded or contradicted. “There’s no need to be crude, Governor. The matters I’m discussing with the prisoner are of the strictest secrecy. These are issues of national security. There is to be no one present.”
The governor’s feet were planted and he was not going to budge.
Again Bilal screamed, “He was trying to kill me! In his bag—”
Furious, the governor said, “If you don’t shut up, prisoner, I’ll have you gagged.” Then he looked coldly at Eliahu and said softly and menacingly, “If it’s about national security, I’ll need to see a court order allowing you to be alone. What do you think we’re going to do? Put it on Al Jazeera? Until I’m ordered to by the courts, the prisoner will be accompanied at all times. There’s no room to move on this.”
Bilal was near to hysteria. “He’s trying to kill me!”
“I told you to shut the fuck up!” shouted the governor. “Well?” he said, looking at Eliahu.
Eliahu stood in silence, his eyes never leaving the governor. A contest of wills. Finally he nodded, closed the briefcase, and said, “I’ll be back. This prisoner has more to tell me.”
He left the room and a shaking Bilal behind.
YAEL WAS ALONE in her hotel room. She had closed the blinds, shielding her from the glaring Mediterranean sun, and sat cross-legged on the bed. The phone was in front of her, and when she had reached out to make a call, she saw her hand was still trembling. She was petrified by the confrontation with Hassan, but there was, at the same time, a resolve inside her that refused to allow her to crumble or cry. Her fear, her panic, was replaced by deep and profound anger.
She had tried to persuade Hassan to come with her, persuade him that they could go to the police, but the suggestion had sent Hassan into a panic and he had dashed away, leaving her alone with the memory of a hit man with a loaded gun.
Yael steadied her hand, picked up the phone, and called Yaniv.
She had barely finished telling him about Hassan when he cut her off.
“Yael, be quiet. Stop talking.”
“But—”
“Shut up. Not another word. Don’t say your location or anything. You need to listen to me. Leave the area you’re in immediately . . .”
The area you’re in. The phrase was deliberately vague.
“Tell nobody where you’re going. Just get into your car; drive on back roads if you can. I’ll meet you in the place where we had our first cup of coffee—don’t say the name of the place. Take your battery out of your cell phone immediately; take the SIM card out and drive to where we first met. Just say whether or not you understand me.”
“Okay. Ok—”
“Not okay!” he shouted. “Yes or no. Do you understand me?”
“Yes!”
“Good,” said Yaniv. “Then do it now—immediately!”
He hung up on her. She was offended by his rudeness, but then she realized she was still in shock from Hassan. For nearly a whole minute Yael looked at her cell phone as though it were an unexploded bomb. She followed Yaniv’s instructions and removed the battery and the SIM card. She was so frightened that she put them into separate pockets, as though they could talk to each other otherwise.
She threw her things into a suitcase, paid at reception, got into the car, and drove first north toward the Lebanese border, then east toward Jordan and Syria, then south on minor roads until she approached the intersections that divided the country between the hills where Jerusalem was situated and the sea on the edge of which Jaffa and Tel Aviv stood.
In a few hours she parked her car in a side street away from the grounds of the Jerusalem Hospital and walked four blocks toward the back entrance. Two flights of stairs took her to the main reception area, and a minute later she was sitting in the café where she and Yaniv had met and drunk coffee the day after her television appearance at the museum. Yaniv was already seated. He didn’t smile at her as she approached the table.
“Are you okay?”
“Nothing about this is okay. What’s going on, Yaniv? What could Bilal possibly know that suddenly makes me a target? I’m only his doctor, for God’s sake.”
“I don’t know,” he said, and to Yael it felt like the first truly honest thing he had ever said to her. A flat answer without journalistic qualification or bombast.
“I don’t know what Bilal knows. He wouldn’t tell me. But—” said Yaniv, stopping himself short.
“What?” Yael asked impatiently.
“When Bilal was in the hospital, did he have visitors?” asked Yaniv, but it wasn’t really a question.
“Not many,” replied Yael. “His imam came. His parents when I arranged it.”
“And someone else. A Shin Bet commander named Eliahu Spitzer.”
“So? Bilal tried to blow up the Western Wall. Of course security people would want to speak to him.”
Yaniv shook his head. “Eliahu Spitzer is one of the most senior men in Shin Bet. Him coming down to talk to Bilal is like the minister of health doing rounds to check on your patients. It doesn’t make sense.”
“But what’s that got to do with these Arabs who want to kill me?” asked Yael.
From her tone, Yaniv knew that she was getting frustrated. “Spitzer was a hugely successful field operative with internal security. But then his daughter was killed in a Hamas bombing of a school bus,” he said in almost a whisper.
“I remember that bombing. Four or so years ago. Twelve young boys and girls—terrible.”
“A little while later he has a massive heart attack. After a couple of years of recuperation, he goes back to Shin Bet and a desk job. But he comes back a different man. He was always a conservative and hard-liner with the Palestinians, but suddenly, according to my sources, he starts wearing a yarmulke and going to synagogue like clockwork . . .”
“Finding religion when your child dies? Hardly anything unusual about that,” said Yael.
“There’s more to it. He alienated himself from his colleagues. I know a few of them from my work, and they told me he was a guy who used to be well liked, but when he came back from sick leave he was suddenly introverted and secretive. But that’s nothing. According to them, he was saying really bizarre things and acting strangely. Some people in Shin Bet thought he’d gone gaga since the operation and the murder of his daughter. So they began to watch him closely. They were worried about him inadvertently breaching security.”
Yael couldn’t see anything wrong with the situation. She was used to the consequences of death on people, and it all sounded normal to her. Yaniv knew she was doubting the seriousness of what he was saying, so he leaned forward like a conspirator and said softly, “When they began to examine him closely, they suffered unusual incidents. Two of his operatives died meeting informants in Gaza. These are the undercover agents who look and dress and speak like Arabs, guys who had been working in Gaza for a decade. But suddenly they’re uncovered, caught, and killed, and their bodies turn up torn to pieces in a field near Ashkelon. And Spitzer? He doesn’t even go to the funerals.”
“But that doesn’t mean anything . . .”
“Maybe, but both of these guys, according to a contact of mine, had filed confidential internal reports saying they were concerned about the behavior of Eliahu Spitzer.”
“Behavior?”
“I couldn’t get the details of what they’d written. Those files are buried if they still exist at all, which I doubt. But last year I was tipped off about Spitzer, and I interviewed the two guys’ widows. I know that their husbands were worried by the change that had come over him since his massive heart attack. When he came back to work, he threw himself into it despite being told by the head of the agency to take it easy. He was rabid about the Palestinians, demanding more and more from his staff, as though something had been triggered while he was ill. He went from calm and methodical to being an attack dog. Suddenly, he’d throw caution to the wind and send his guys out on reckless missions. So the two guys complained . . .” Yaniv leaned back in his chair and Yael couldn’t help but see the journalist’s flair for drama come out, despite the circumstances.
“So? That could be put down to the effects of the operation he must have undergone, and his recovery. Not uncommon in people who have suffered trauma and illness. I see it in cancer patients and—”
Yaniv cut her off and continued: “So a week after the funerals Spitzer is seen in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim.”
She was shocked. Yael couldn’t find a reason to explain Spitzer’s behavior. Mea Shearim was a place avoided by all but the most fervent of religious Israelis.
“Black hats and side locks everywhere, and he’s greeted like a long-lost brother. People who saw him say he was taken to the home of Rabbi Shmuel Telushkin, one of the leaders of Neturei Karta. He was the bastard who was at the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran.”
Yael looked at him in astonishment. “Neturei Karta? You’re kidding. Mea Shearim I could understand. That would explain the sudden finding of faith. But Neturei Karta, those bastards . . . ?”
Yaniv sighed. “I need to understand the connection between him and this rabbi. Something’s rotten. A top-ranking Shin Bet officer visiting the Neturei Karta, a group opposed to the Jewish state? And a top Shin Bet man visiting Bilal? It doesn’t make sense. And now Bilal is terrified someone is trying to kill him . . .”
Yaniv let the phrase hang in the air before continuing: “And then this Hassan kid shows up saying he’s meant to kill you but can’t bring himself to do it because—”
Yael didn’t let him finish. “What does Bilal know?”
“That’s the question . . . And the only person he’ll talk to is you.”
AS YAEL WAITED in the small room for Bilal to be brought in, the full weight of growing fear began to seep into her. Being fearful of Palestinians who wanted her dead was one thing, but what Yaniv had said about Eliahu Spitzer was like being caught in a vise.
She didn’t need Yaniv to explain to her how dangerous someone like him could be. But the shadow of who he was, and the power he wielded within Shin Bet, made her fearful of everyone. To her mind, anyone could be in league with him; anyone around her could be a Shin Bet agent. Like many Israelis, she had grown up with the perpetual threat of suicide bombings, which had ingrained a hard-to-shake apprehension of Palestinians. But now she was afraid of everyone, Jew and Arab alike, and trusted no one.
Getting in to see Bilal had been surprisingly easy. She didn’t need connections or strings pulled as Yaniv had been forced to do. Prisoners were entitled to medical treatment, and as Bilal’s doctor with valid hospital credentials she was entitled to check up on her patient after such a complex operation. To sweeten the story, she told the warden she intended to write a medical journal paper on the rare kidney surgery and needed to discuss this with Bilal. She was, of course, searched and had to leave all personal items except her stethoscope behind, but was admitted to the small room and now waited for Bilal to arrive.
Bilal’s eyes widened in shocked relief when he saw Yael in the room. But he said nothing until he was seated and the guard had retreated to the corner.
“Hello, Bilal,” Yael said in English, her eyes flicking over to the guard to scan for a reaction. He looked from her to Bilal and back and she took this as a sign that he likely spoke English; most Israelis did. She then switched to Arabic.
“Are you well?” Again she looked to the guard, who wrinkled his nose and lost interest, staring at his feet. Reasonably confident the guard didn’t speak Arabic and wouldn’t understand what they were saying, she pressed on. “Bilal, I’ve met your friend. Hassan.”
Bilal took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“Is he okay?”
“I think so,” said Yael. “I . . . I don’t know for sure. He ran away. He told me you’re afraid that someone was trying to hurt you.”
“Please, Doctor . . .” Bilal’s voice was firm and low but his eyes were desperate. “They are coming for me.”
“Who is?” she asked, although she knew the answer. She found herself wanting confirmation rather than an answer.
“Men in here want me dead for being a traitor. But I don’t fear them. It’s the man with the white hair . . .”
“Has he been to see you?” asked Yael.
“He tried to kill me. Right here in this room.” Bilal’s voice was flat. Calm. Almost resigned.
“Why do you think this is happening to you?”
With nothing left to hide and no doubt now that his life was close to ending, it was time to speak. In hushed tones he told Yael about the attempt on his life by the prisoner Ibrahim just after the imam had visited; about the visit from the man from Shin Bet—the skunk—and the hypodermic needle. And finally he told Yael about driving the imam to the meeting, about Spitzer and the old religious Jew.
It was this final confirmation that seemed to put the entire thing together for Yael. All the pieces had been inchoate until Bilal spoke of the rabbi. What Yaniv had told her about the Neturei Karta and Spitzer, the confrontation with Hassan, the imam in the hospital. All the pieces refused to align until this one last scrap of information. And over it all were the remarkable strands of shimmering DNA that connected her with this young man.
“I want to help you, Bilal. But I don’t know how,” said Yael. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I want to, but it doesn’t matter what I believe.”
“But that bastard Ibrahim, he tried to kill me in here. I broke his arm. The Shin Bet man tried to kill me. A miracle stopped him. They won’t just kill me, they will kill my family!” he said.
As emotion caused him to raise his voice, the guard looked up and eyed them suspiciously.
“It’s fine,” Yael said to the guard with a forced smile. “He thinks I’m trying to steal his organs.”
The guard snorted and went back to the magazine he was reading. Yael turned back to Bilal.
“I know you’re scared. And I believe you. If what you saw is true, then . . .” Yael didn’t really know what would happen if it was true. Instead she said, “But there’s no proof. There’s no way to prove what you say. He can explain meeting the imam—just part of his job; he could probably even explain away meeting him with the old rabbi—”
“I know what I saw. I was his driver. I was there. I know what I saw.”
“But we can’t just take your word for it, Bilal.”
Suddenly his face went dark, his eyes narrowed as if he were trying to focus on a faint memory. “My phone!”
“Your phone? What phone?” asked Yael.
“That night. The camera on my phone. Hassan stole it from a Jew in the market and gave it to me. I used the camera on my phone. It was new and I was playing around with it. On my phone . . .”
“Where is your phone? What happened to it?” asked Yael, an urgency rising in her throat that she quickly swallowed back in case the guard noticed.
“I don’t know. After the bomb, I woke up in the hospital. My stomach hurt. My leg hurt . . . my clothes . . . I don’t know.”
Yael’s mind raced back to that fateful day. She remembered Bilal in triage, remembered surveying his wounds, his closed hand, the fragments of rock that she had taken from his fingers. His clothes were cut from his body, soaked in blood. His cheap plastic bracelet, his shoes, his . . .
“The hospital!” said Yael suddenly. “Your phone. Your possessions and clothes. They’re always put into a secure bag in the hospital. It’s standard security. After a certain amount of time, they’ll be sent to your parents. Your phone might still be in the hospital.”
Bilal took a sharp intake of breath and Yael thought for a second he might smile.
She reached across the desk and grabbed his hand, holding it firm.
“No touching!” shouted the guard. She thought he was reading his magazine. She withdrew her hand.
“Bilal, I’m going to do whatever I can to help you.”
He nodded. Solemnly. As if he wanted to believe her.
“You stay alive, okay?”
He nodded again.
She’d felt the warmth of his body through his hand. The sweat and texture of his skin. The pulse of blood. Blood they shared.
“My parents . . .” Bilal paused as if unable to say the rest. “Please go to them . . . tell them . . . Tell them I’m sorry . . .”
YAEL WAITED UNTIL SHE was safely away from the prison and heading back to the city. Yaniv had warned her not to drive her car but to take public transportation. But she had ignored this suggestion. With one hand on the wheel and the other on a cheap phone she’d bought in a suburban phone store with a pay-as-you-use SIM card, she dialed his number.
“It’s me,” Yael said.
“Have you left?”
“Yes. I’m heading back to Jerusalem. I think I have something.”
“Did you get a new phone?”
“Yes,” she replied. So had he. “Bilal said that the night he was there when he saw the three men, he had a smartphone that had been stolen in Jerusalem. Anyway, he said he was fooling around with the phone’s camera and that he may have a video of the three men together. He can’t remember, but he was pretty excited.”
“Where’s the phone now?”
“I think it might be at the hospital.”
“I doubt it,” said Yaniv. “Shin Bet would have taken it for examination.”
“Maybe. But I can have a look. It’s on my way, regardless.”
“On your way to where?” asked Yaniv, concern rising in his voice.
“He’s terrified, Yaniv. I don’t think he’s going to last much longer in there.”
“You can’t stop that, Yael. He’s not your problem. I’ll find a way to break the story, but it won’t save him. He’s history, I’m afraid.”
“And that’s why I have to—”
“Have to what?” demanded Yaniv.
“I have to see Bilal’s parents.”
“Are you out of your mind?” he shouted in exasperation.
“I have to.”
“Yael, for God’s sake, you—”
“I owe them, Yaniv! They don’t deserve what’s happened to their son. One of their kids is already in prison; now their other son has been locked up. Bilal isn’t the source of the problem . . . I have to tell the parents.”
“But the phone . . . it’s more important than—”
Yael didn’t wait for an answer and quickly turned off the phone.
ON THE DRIVE FROM THE prison, Yael felt a sense of guilt that she wasn’t going back to the hospital to look for Bilal’s phone. But her mind was set on the image of Bilal’s grieving parents and the bloodline she knew they shared.
An hour later she was again sitting in Bilal’s family home in the village of Bayt al Gizah. Across from her were Fuad and Maryam. It was the first time Yael had seen the mother and father together for more than a few moments. Maryam’s face was streaked with tears but her composure was solemn, quiet, restrained.
“I know this is hard for you to hear. I’m so sorry to be the bearer of such awful news,” said Yael.
“You say people want to kill my son? The other prisoners want to kill my son?”
“I think they have been ordered to. I think Bilal knows something that is putting him in great danger.”
Fuad shook his head. “My son has gone mad, Doctor. He is talking crazy. He needs some pills for his mind.”
“No, Fuad. He’s not crazy. He’s scared but he’s not crazy.”
Yael couldn’t tell them about Eliahu Spitzer or the Neturei Karta rabbi, but she could ask about somebody they knew. She carefully softened her voice and said, “How well do you know your imam here in the village?”
Fuad shrugged. “He is new. He’s not been here more than a year. The young men, they flock to him. But . . .”
“But what?” she asked.
“I say nothing more. To me, I don’t like what he has to say. I don’t go no more to mosque to pray. Not in a long time. Why do you ask this?”
“A young man was sent to kill me,” said Yael, trying to sound matter-of-fact to remove the anger in her voice.
Maryam clapped her hand over her mouth in shock, and Fuad eyed Yael incredulously.
Yael told the couple about Hassan, that he had been ordered by the imam to kill her, the same man of God who also wanted Bilal dead for betraying them.
Fuad and Maryam sat in silence as Yael told her story.
Then Fuad said softly, “You must go to the police. You must have him arrested.”
“I can’t. Hassan won’t testify, and aside from him I have nothing. The imam will laugh it off, as if I’m the one who’s nuts. I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to tell you these things. I was afraid.”
“Why did you come here, Doctor? If what you say is true, why did you take such a risk?” asked Fuad.
Yael bit her lip before replying. “Bilal asked me to. He wanted me to tell you that he was sorry.” The final word broke Maryam’s composure and tears fell unabated from her eyes. Fuad drew in a long, deep breath through his nose and exhaled as if breathing out smoke from a cigarette.
“I don’t know what I can do. But we need to make sure that the imam doesn’t know that we suspect him.”
Suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, Maryam interjected. “Why?”
Fuad looked at his wife in shock. His wife never interrupted when her husband was in the room.
“Because the imam—” began Yael, but Maryam cut her off.
“No. Why are you doing this for Bilal? You are a Jew. He is a Muslim who killed a Jew. Why are you helping Bilal . . . helping us?”
The question was direct and sharp and Yael had no answer. The best she could stammer was “I’m a doctor.”
But Maryam shook her head. She became vehement. “No, Doctor. Other doctors would not have lied to keep him in the hospital so my husband and I could see him. And no Jewish doctor would have come here to try to save his life and warn us of these things. Why do you do this?”
“Enough!” said Fuad angrily. “Leave, Maryam.” He offered no explanation and Maryam asked for none. She simply stood and left the room.
Part of Yael was angered by Fuad’s dismissive rudeness and arrogance, but the rest of her was relieved that she didn’t have to answer the question. And as Fuad turned back to face her, she wondered if he, too, wanted an answer. But instead Fuad looked Yael squarely in the eyes and spoke in hushed tones.
“I lost my son. He was lost from me years ago. He wanted more than I could offer. He wanted a reason we live like this. This imam . . . he gave the reason. Now there is nothing for him here. I tried but . . .” Fuad’s words trailed off. Yael felt as if she should say something but didn’t.
“Guns. Bombs. He thinks there are answers in these things. But there is only blood—first one son, now another.” Tears welled in the old man’s eyes, and he did nothing to stop them from falling down his face.
YAEL DROVE SLOWLY along the road away from Fuad’s house. The image of the weeping father scorched her mind. She turned right to ascend the hill that led to the major road skirting the hills of Jerusalem and taking her back into the northern parts of the city. But to her surprise, as she passed a lane that ran close to the rear of Bilal’s home, a woman dressed in Arab clothes with a hijab pulled down low and hiding much of her face suddenly jumped out into the path of her car. Yael braked sharply, but before she could recover from the shock, the woman came around to the passenger’s side, opened the door, and climbed in. “Drive. Quickly,” she said.
Yael didn’t have time to answer before the woman took off her hijab. It was Maryam. “Please, good Doctor, drive before I’m seen in here.”
“Maryam, what’s this about?”
“Drive. I beg you. Away from eyes that look out of windows.”
So Yael drove toward the main road, but before she reached it, she turned left into a side street and parked the car.
“Is this all right?” she asked Maryam.
The Arab woman nodded but pulled the hijab over her head and around most of her face so that she would be unrecognizable.
“I don’t understand. What are you doing?” asked Yael.
“There are things I can’t say in front of my husband. Things that my mother told me and for which I’m sworn to secrecy.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
Maryam sighed long and hard. “You’re a good woman, Dr. Yael. You saved my Bilal and now, if it pleases Allah, you’ll save him again. I don’t know why you’re saving him, because he killed one of yours, but I open my heart to you and place it in your hands.”
Yael said softly, “Things your mother told you? I’m confused.”
“She told me what her mother told her, and her mother before her . . . and her mother before that. I don’t know when it was. I don’t know where it was. I’m not an educated woman. I have little schooling. I have a letter written by a woman who I think is my great-great-great-grandmother. I don’t know for sure. I don’t understand. I can’t read it. It’s a letter,” said Maryam.
“Can I see this letter? Perhaps I can get it translated for you.”
Maryam hesitated. “Dr. Yael, for a hundred years or more, the women of my family have kept this letter from all eyes. When we are given this letter, on the day of our wedding, our mothers tell us a story and swear us to secrecy.”
Yael had no idea what this was about, but the gravity in Maryam’s voice told her that it was a crucial moment in her life and if Yael were to pressure her, the woman would run from the car like a frightened fawn. So she remained silent and smiled at Maryam reassuringly, reaching over and touching her shoulder.
“My mother told me this story on the day I married Fuad. I break the vow of silence, and I tell you because my Bilal, who has been led astray and done terrible things, I will never ever see again. My Bilal . . .” She began to sob. Yael reached over, pulled Maryam gently toward her, and hugged her while she sobbed. Maryam did not pull away and the two women sat silently for a brief but eternal moment.
“I’m sorry, but when you told my Fuad about why you came to see us, I realized that, for the first time in a hundred years, our great family shame must be made known. It is the only way that I might save him.”
Yael wanted to ask a thousand questions, but her understanding of what was motivating Maryam forced her to remain silent.
“He is in that prison because he is a Palestinian, isn’t he? If he were a Jew, he would be in a better prison, wouldn’t he?”
Yael remained silent.
“If I told you that he wasn’t Palestinian, he wasn’t Arab, he would be released?”
Of course Bilal would not be released. Jewish or Muslim, he was still a murderer. But such thoughts were a thousand miles away. Maryam’s questions were rhetorical, driven by hope and ignorance. Yael continued her silence.
“My Bilal is born a Jew. I am Jew. My mother was Jew. By blood. It is my great shame, Dr. Yael. It is my great secret.”
Too stunned to say anything, Yael watched Maryam take a letter out of her pocket, thrust it at her, open the car door, and run down the hill. Watching her disappear, Yael was too stunned to move or even breathe.
When Maryam was no longer in view and had disappeared into the lanes that took her back to her house, Yael sufficiently recovered from the shock to take the ancient letter from its yellowed and creased envelope. It reminded her of taking the precious stone out of Bilal’s hand and holding it as though it were divine.
Carefully she opened the folds of the letter. The once-white pages were tinged with brown from age, but the writing in black ink, although faded, was still clearly visible.
Her heart was pounding as she looked at the lettering. It wasn’t Arabic; it was written in the Latin alphabet. And German. But it also had overtones of Yiddish. Yael read the first few lines, and tried hard to remember either the German she’d heard from her father’s mother or the Yiddish her bubbeh had spoken when she didn’t want Yael or her brother to know what she was saying. And she especially remembered her grandmother, an elegant and sophisticated Russian lady, who would never use bad language in English yet would swear like a trooper in Yiddish.
Yael read first the Germanic Yiddish:
Um meine liebste Tochter,
Ich schreibe diesen leter Ihnen in der Hoffnung dass . . .
Quickly, she translated the German into her own language of Ivrit, modern Hebrew. She would read and translate the rest of the letter when she was safely at home:
To my dearest daughter,
I write this letter to you in the hope that . . .
Yael looked up through the windshield into the distance. There was Jerusalem, shining a blistering white in the afternoon sun, the burnished dome of the al-Aqsa Mosque burning brilliantly like a gold candle on a huge white birthday cake. Then she looked down again at the letter. How was it that over a hundred years ago, probably even a century and a half ago, a mother had written a letter to her daughter in Yiddish and the descendant was today a Palestinian woman, the mother of an imprisoned terrorist?
YAEL’S MIND was a sprawling chaos of revelations. Her world had been rocked and the daily grind of surgery and hospital corridors that had been her norm for so long seemed the life of a different person right now.
Yaniv’s claims about this Shin Bet operative; the imam being in league with the fanatical Neturei Karta; Bilal possibly being a Jew because of his matriarchal bloodline, a line passed down from mother to mother since . . . since . . . maybe from the time when the prophets were wandering the land, warning of doom and gloom . . . It was all too much.
She had checked in for the night to a tiny hotel in the center of the city. She feared going back to her apartment. If Hassan could find her in Peki’in, then they, whoever their agents were, could certainly find where she lived. Going to Bilal’s family home had been reckless but necessary; although she felt like hunted prey, she was still a doctor, a human being, and her responsibilities had dominated. So she drove straight into the city, stayed where there were the most people in the most public space, and found a random hotel—the kind of hotel that took cash and didn’t ask for names.
With blinds closed and door locked she sat at a small desk and struggled to read the letter Maryam had given her in the desperate hope it might save her son from prison. Its chances of changing anything about Bilal’s fate were virtually nonexistent, but the letter haunted her nonetheless.
She stared at the strange blend of languages and phrases trying to translate, but she was defeated by the German language. Sleeping fitfully, she waited until morning, when she switched on her cell phone. She knew it was early, but she knew that the person she was dialing was at his office at six in the morning without fail.
“Yes?” he said.
“Shalman, hi, it’s Yael.”
“Bubbeleh, darling, how are you? So what’s new? You’re calling—you hardly ever call. It’s so early. Is everything all right? Why so early? Are you okay? Of course you’re okay, because if you weren’t okay, you’d have said something. You want me. Good! What? Anything, bubbeleh. Tell Shalman.”
She knew that the first few moments of their conversation would be like this: questions, guilt; he was like a Jewish mother except that he was her Jewish grandfather. And she loved him so much for all his quirky ways.
“I have something I want to show you.”
“Oh my God! Not another artifact! One is a gift, two is showing off!”
“No, nothing like that. Well, not quite. It’s a letter. In German. I need you to help me. It’s not something that I can translate because I need to understand the nuances.”
“Translations, anybody. Nuances, come see me.” He put down the phone.
Half an hour later, she was sitting opposite him, drinking coffee and eating a doughnut while he read the letter, making careful notes. When he’d finished it, he put down his pen, and Yael said, “Well, what do—”
But he held up his hand, turned the letter over, and began from the beginning. “For a translation, I read once. For nuances, twice, sometimes three times.”
When he finished this time, he looked up at her and smiled. “From where did this come?”
“From the mother of a patient I’m looking after.”
“Some in low Yiddish, some in an attempt at high German. The person who wrote this wasn’t very clever or educated, so Goethe or Hegel she’s not; this was written by a mother to her daughter. She’s obviously trying to impress her with her use of words, yet often she uses confusing phrases and more sophisticated words in the wrong context.
“This letter was written as an explanation for a daughter, almost an apologia, by a lady named Malka; in Hebrew, of course, it means queen, but she didn’t call herself by her German name, which would have been Konigin. That would have sounded stupid. It was written to her daughter but she didn’t call the girl by name.”
“Okay, you lost me,” Yael said in protest at the incoherent explanation.
“Bubbeleh, it speaks about a time and a place far in the past, when manners were more particular, behavior more austere, and honor the axis around which families revolved. From what she says, Malka’s mother had done something to disgrace her family, leaving Malka and her descendants with a permanent stain on their characters, their bloodline. We’re talking here about unmarried sex and pregnancy, the sort of thing that caused girls to be thrown out of the family home. The letter speaks of her mother, who left Circassia and came to live in the port city of Odessa and from there migrated to Germany and settled in Berlin.
“But the main thrust of the letter is to tell her about Malka’s own birth, her mother, and her situation. Malka’s mother, living in a village in Circassia, had had an affair with a man visiting the area. She’d fallen pregnant out of wedlock and disgraced the family. But she was lucky because the man didn’t abandon her. No, he was a gentleman, and when she was forced out of her home by her family, the two fled to Berlin, where they lived in the Jewish community.”
Shalman looked up and smiled at Yael. “Very sexy lady, this one, and they chose Berlin because it’s cosmopolitan and bohemian, and more likely to accept couples living together.”
“Circassia? Tell me about Circassia.”
“It’s on the shores of the Black Sea, underneath Russia. Back in those days, in the middle of the 1800s, the Muslims were slaughtered by the mamzer Russians who wanted the farmland for themselves, and the government in Moscow ordered ethnic cleansing of the nation. All this was about the time that the distant relative of the woman who gave you this letter had the affair with the man and fell pregnant.”
He continued. “The letter goes on to say that in Berlin this Malka woman grew up as a German, but anti-Semitism in Europe and wars with France forced the family to move to Palestine and build a home there. They lived in a small town in the Galilee called Peki’in because Malka’s father had a business relationship with olive oil producers in Peki’in. It’s a very detailed letter . . .”
Yael looked at him in amazement. Peki’in—it was all starting to fit together.
“And the reason that this Malka person wrote the letter to her daughter was because the young woman was about to marry, and the mother wanted her to know the truth about her family history. She begged her daughter to persuade her future husband to leave Berlin and to come to Peki’in and live . . .” He searched the letter for the precise phrase: “ ‘in peace and harmony and safety among the new immigrants in a land full of potential.’
“Malka tried to convince her daughter that it would be a wonderful new life—and that, my love, is where the letter ends. Is that helpful?”
Yael stood, walked around his massive desk, and kissed him tenderly on the cheek and the forehead. She sat on his desk just as she’d done a thousand times when she was a little girl. He looked up at her knowing that something was on her mind.
“Nu?”
She shrugged.
“You have that look.”
“Look?”
He smiled. “Bubbeleh, all your life I’ve read your mind through the expressions on your face. Tell Shalman . . .”
She picked up a photo from his desk. It was one of a very few of her grandmother Judit. She was a tiny figure in the distance, sitting in a circle with a group of other men and women dressed in 1940s flared trousers, a knit top, and a cardigan. Frustratingly, it was in black-and-white, so Yael could only guess at the colors. She hoped that they were a dark blue. She loved dark blue and wondered whether that had been Judit’s favorite color too.
“I know more about some Palestinian’s grandmother than I do about my own bubbeh. She was always a presence in the house when I was growing up, even though she died before I was born. Yet, whenever I asked my mom or you about her, I felt that you were always dodging the issue, as though there were things you didn’t want me to know. Why was that? Why won’t you tell me about her, what she was like as a young woman, what she liked to eat, her favorite colors, what she did when she first came here from Russia, when you and she—”
“Hoo, ha—so many questions,” said Shalman. “Your grandmother, aleha ha-shalom, was a wonderful woman. A queen among women. Gentle, loving, kind. She lived a life. In those days, darling, we young people were fighting for our country, our family, ourselves. Judit gave birth to your beloved mother and those few years we had together as a family were the best of my life . . . our lives. When she came from Russia, from St. Petersburg, she was—”
“St. Petersburg? But I thought she was from Moscow,” Yael interrupted.
Shalman nodded, wondering if he’d inadvertently gone too far. There was so much which he couldn’t tell Yael, so much that, even after sixty years, had to stay hidden. “Yes, Moscow. I don’t know why I said St. Petersburg. But when she came to Israel, we lived a life worth living. But all these questions. So long ago. They were hard times. We fought the British and the Arabs and the United Nations. It hurts me to think about it. But now isn’t the time. I have a meeting soon, and I have to prepare. One day, bubbeleh, I’ll tell you more. Today isn’t the day.”
Shalman waved her away with grandfatherly affection and went back to his work.
Yael kissed him on the cheek and the forehead and walked out. She so badly wanted to tell him of the danger she was in—she so urgently wanted to share her fears with him—but she knew him so well, and predicted that his reaction would be one of panic, hysteria. He’d call the police, Mossad, the prime minister . . . everybody. And she had to keep an atmosphere of calm and confidentiality until she and Yaniv had sorted things through. Love him as she did, Shalman was the very last person in whom she could confide.
As she left his office, he watched her disappear, and spent long moments looking at the closed door. Suddenly overcome by emotions he thought he’d buried forty years ago, he felt himself on the verge of tears. He picked up the picture Yael had been looking at and studied the indistinct face of his wife, Judit. He bit his lip to stop himself from sobbing.
“Why?” he asked himself, suddenly realizing that he had spoken aloud into an empty room. Even after all these years, he was still overwhelmed by the fury.
“Why?”
He replaced the photograph and stared out of the window, consumed with grief and anger and disgust. “Why?” he asked himself again. They could have had such a wonderful life together. They could have been a family like other families; but something had happened to her in Russia, in St. Petersburg, that she’d never told him about. And from the moment he’d met her, when they were both working for the terrorist band Lehi, he knew that there was more to his long-dead wife . . . Something much deeper, and darker.
He sighed and looked again at the photo, shaking his head. It was all so long ago, longer than a lifetime, but it was still raw. And he was still bitter.
From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see a man staring at him through a pair of high-powered binoculars from a distant rooftop. He’d been watching Yael’s and Shalman’s every action on the explicit instructions of Eliahu Spitzer, who had ordered him to follow Yael, see what she did and to whom she spoke, and report back to him in person, keeping no written record.
YANIV GROSSMAN WAS CONSUMED by the story. The linkage between Spitzer and the imam and Rabbi Shmuel Telushkin from Neturei Karta was something he could almost taste. And the key to it was Bilal. Yaniv didn’t yet have the meat of the story but he knew it was close. Yael would lead him there, perhaps once she’d retrieved Bilal’s phone, and whatever evidence it might still contain. All she had to do was to go to the property office in the hospital, tell them that she wanted pills from Bilal’s clothing, and put the phone in her pocket.
Even as he thought the words to himself, he felt embarrassment. Yael would lead him there. He was a reporter, somebody whose job relied on contacts, often manipulating them to give him detailed and underlying facts. Sometimes—no, often—the people whom he secretly interviewed put themselves and their livelihoods in danger. The only promise he could ever make to them for the risks they took on his behalf was confidentiality and anonymity. He’d go to prison before he’d reveal the name of a source.
And now he was treating Yael as a source. In the beginning, when they’d first met at the museum and he was doing a color piece about the seal that she’d taken from Bilal’s hand, he used his charm and looks to coax her into meeting him for a feature. But from the moment he’d seen her on the podium, he’d been captivated by her beauty, her intelligence, her confidence, her poise. And he knew he’d used his position as an American television reporter to inveigle her into meeting him again—and again.
Now he was smitten. Not in love, not like some hormonal schoolboy, but he’d go to bed thinking of her and wake with a smile on his face. He’d count the hours before meeting her. She fascinated him, and he wanted her—badly. But unlike so many women who’d become easy prey for him, Yael had resisted his blandishments, and her resistance had encouraged him to push the boundaries.
And yet, despite his desire to hold her, to feel the softness of her skin and hair, he was preparing to use her to get to the heart and soul of a major story. A wave of embarrassment swept over him as he drove away from the center of Jerusalem. Could he? Would he allow his professional interests to infiltrate what could be a potentially serious romantic relationship?
Nope. He’d open himself up to her, tell her the reasons he wanted information, and ask her permission to continue. He nodded to himself and smiled.
Love: 1. Journalism: 0.
And how often was a reporter such an integral part of his own story? Woodward and Bernstein had used informants to smash Watergate and bring down an American president, but they weren’t involved in guns and car chases. He was a reporter, not a soldier. But what choice did he, or Yael, have? The circumstances were dead against them.
He was thinking through this dilemma while driving toward his apartment in Ramot Alon, his route taking him through the bustling center of the metropolis, within sight of the illuminated walls of the Old City. It was so different from New York, where he’d grown up. He loved Brooklyn—he always would—but no American city could hope to match the insane blends of antiquity and modernity, of popular and classical, of religious and secular, of Jerusalem.
No matter how long he lived in the capital of Israel, nor how familiar he was with its surroundings, he never failed to be moved when he saw the towering fortifications. But this time he barely noticed them, he was so lost in his thoughts. What was Eliahu Spitzer up to? If he was close to, or had even become, a member of the Neturei Karta, then working deep within Israeli security was a scandal of the highest order. One part of Spitzer was dedicated to the salvation of the state, the other part to its downfall.
But how to prove it? And what was the link to the imam who had sent Hassan to murder Yael? With all his digging, Yaniv found virtually no information on the imam from the village of Bayt al Gizah. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere just a few short years ago. To mastermind a nearly successful bombing attempt on the Western Wall, he must have resources and support. But there was no trace. Yaniv’s contacts in the police, Shin Bet, and the antiterrorist agencies told him that the imam wasn’t on anybody’s radar.
Even if Yaniv did go to the head of Shin Bet and lay the information about Eliahu in front of him, without the evidence of Bilal’s phone, it was all hearsay, speculation, and innuendo. And even with the photo of the three men together, Spitzer would probably be able to explain it away. Yaniv knew that he might do some temporary damage to Eliahu’s reputation, but any investigation would prove groundless; a man like Spitzer would have covered his tracks meticulously—of that, Yaniv was certain. And worse, if Eliahu realized that he was being investigated, he’d withdraw, resign from Shin Bet, or just disappear.
Yaniv drove slowly in the congested early-evening Jerusalem traffic past the King David Hotel toward the north of the city and casually glanced in the rearview mirror to check the traffic behind him. There were a dozen cars and a helmeted motorcyclist.
Ahead of him, the traffic stopped for lights and the motorcyclist drew up beside his car. Yaniv could see him out of the corner of his left eye. The man suddenly bent down as if to tie his shoelace, but his helmet must have connected with Yaniv’s back car door, because he heard a small click. He thought nothing of it, and when the lights changed, he drove on. He switched on the radio and listened to the six o’clock news, but as he left the frenetic traffic and approached the more suburban part of the city, he was able to speed up.
It was there that he saw three young men, all ultra-Orthodox Jews dressed in their eighteenth-century clothes, arguing with a young woman dressed in a miniskirt, high heels, and a top with a plunging neckline. As their numbers grew through a high birth rate and their security became more and more assured due to their ability to wield political pressure on the Israeli government, the people of the Orthodox communities were becoming increasingly militant in their dealings with secular Israelis. And for the past few months they had targeted young Jewish women who wore revealing clothes.
It was obvious that these young men were berating the young woman about her immodesty, probably calling her a whore and immoral. She looked terrified as the three were ridiculing and taunting her. They blocked her path so that she couldn’t escape them, even though they weren’t touching her.
Yaniv Grossman had spent a career as an observer, a commentator, reporting on but not being a part of world events. But he was also an American, raised in a society of freedom and excess. Seeing archaic misogynistic attitudes like this infuriated him. Yaniv pulled his car over, got out, and ran across the road.
“Hey, you!” he shouted. He knew their preferred language was Yiddish, but he didn’t speak it, so he continued in Hebrew. “Leave her alone. Get away from her.”
One of the young men, surprised by the sight of the tall, athletic man running at them, called to him, “Mind your own business. You don’t understand. God commands women to dress modestly. He said to Eve to cover up her nakedness. But this girl . . .”
It had never left him; it was buried deep in his muscle memory, still strong and potent. Yaniv moved toward them like a soldier on a mission. The boys, all of whom came from yeshivot, the religious schools where students studied morning, noon, and night, knew nothing of confrontation short of nonphysical harassment, and they immediately drew back.
“I don’t give a fuck what God commands. You live your lives and let everyone else get on with theirs,” Yaniv said, moving closer to the girl to shield her.
One of the boys, braver than the others though a head shorter than Yaniv, walked closer to him and said, “People like you call yourselves Jews, yet you have no understanding of what God has comman—”
Suddenly, a shock wave of boiling air, like an oven door opening, enveloped them; then the roar of the explosion, then a massive invisible hand pushed them toward the wall. It was a colossal blast from the other side of the road. Yaniv turned in horror to look across the street and saw his car catapulted into the air, high off the road, as though some giant had hoisted it off the ground. Then a ball of yellow flame and black smoke erupted from the panels, blowing off the hood and the front and back doors. The car flipped over onto its side, landing with a scream of metal, just clipping a taxi heading northward, the driver swerving to avoid being crushed by the falling metal. But the taxi hit another car traveling in the opposite direction head-on.
In all the chaos, when the blast wave hit the group, the boys screamed and the girl was pushed to the ground, covering her face. The explosion was too distant to hurt them because the heat and force of the blast dissipated in all directions, but the effects shocked and immobilized them. The three boys, shaken but still alert, recovered quickly and ran away for all they were worth. Yaniv looked at his car, now on its roof, with a massive hole where the driver’s door had once been, surrounded by snakes of twisted metal. The taxi and the car with which it had collided came to a halt amid broken glass and columns of steam from ruptured radiators, hoods raised, horns screeching. The girl on the pavement burst into tears and moved across to hug Yaniv’s legs for security. But all Yaniv could think about was the motorcyclist and the click he’d heard at the traffic lights minutes earlier.
PROFESSOR SHALMAN ETZION was driving out of the museum’s parking lot toward the road that led south and east to the Dead Sea. Because he was in his car with his iPod playing Wagner’s Götterdämmerung at full volume, he didn’t hear the distant explosion of Yaniv’s car from the other side of Jerusalem.
He drove quickly toward the east for his appointment with the director of antiquities at Masada, the winter palace of King Herod. But before he arrived there, he’d pop in and visit some friends at the ancient archaeological site of Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea.
Like many Israelis of German origin, he adored Wagner’s operas, even though he knew that he was an anti-Semite and a favorite of the Nazis. And like many Germans, when he listened to Wagner in the privacy of his car, he drove too fast, but he was a busy man, and there were places he had to get to.
In his haste, he didn’t see that he was being followed by a large black Mercedes four-wheel-drive. He accelerated to beat traffic lights, the Mercedes following; drove too quickly around bends, the Mercedes in his wake.
Negotiating one of the sharp twists in the road, a precipitous drop descending from the heights of Jerusalem to the lowest place on earth, the Dead Sea, Shalman glimpsed the Mercedes close beside him—too close. Why so close? Why was he driving like a meshuggeneh on a road notorious for its crashes? What? Was he a maniac?
The car behind flashed its lights; Shalman was momentarily distracted from concentrating on the road, glancing up into his rearview mirror.
Foot on the brake, Shalman tried to slow his descent before taking the long right-hand bend, but the Mercedes suddenly accelerated and overtook him, and just as he was about to correct his wheel, the four-wheel-drive swerved just enough to nudge the front of Shalman’s aging Ford. The other driver knew the pressure point of Shalman’s car. The old man yelped as the wheel was wrested from his hands from the jolt of the car beside him. He grabbed it back, correcting the steering from his right-hand turn to negotiate the bend, but the front of the car was shoved by the much more agile Mercedes on its right. It was an almost imperceptible move, unnoticed by other drivers coming up the hill, but with the wheel wrenched out of Shalman’s hands, the old man was unable to steer, and the car headed toward the barrier.
The Mercedes accelerated past the old Ford, which veered with a life of its own. Shalman tried to wrestle it back, but the steering wheel stubbornly stayed to the left. He lost his grip on the wheel a second time and struggled to retain control. But it was bucking out of his hands as the car’s front suddenly veered in a different direction, the front tires fighting against the direction of the curve.
He instinctively slammed his foot on the brake—precisely what he shouldn’t have done—and the rear wheels skidded around, turning his car full circle. The elderly man screamed “No!” as his car crashed into the barrier, turned around again, and hit the barrier once more, two wheels leaving the road and tipping it onto its roof. The old car rolled over once and then vaulted the barrier. In horror, Shalman looked into the depths of the valley three hundred feet below as his car careened downward.
He screamed a single name: “Judit!” In that second, he saw her face as his car smashed into the rocks and dirt at the bottom of the cliff.
Drivers behind him saw what was happening, and when they got out of their cars, they looked in horror at the old Ford far below, upside down on its roof, crushed, with steam and smoke rising up the rock face. There was utter silence, broken only by the music that rose up the cliff face. It was Wagner’s Brünnhilde swearing eternal vengeance. A shocked American tourist screamed as the car suddenly burst into flames. The music stopped.
Nobody noticed the big black Mercedes continuing to drive sedately toward the Dead Sea. Soon the driver would turn the car around using an exit road and climb the hill toward Jerusalem. The driver didn’t even look at the four cars that had stopped, their occupants standing on the edge of the road, looking downward, but he was gratified to see smoke billowing upward in a satisfying column. He had to drive quickly to a private garage and have the dented front fender fixed. Then he’d return to his office in Shin Bet.
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU,” she said, sitting down on the tiny bed of the dingy hotel room. Still shaken, Yaniv stood there, shocked by what had happened to him.
“He tried to kill you? You? Why? This is unbelievable. How does he know about you? This is ridiculous. Enough! You . . . we . . . have to go to the police. You have to go to Shin Bet and call this bastard to account. You have to . . .” She was too stupefied to continue for a moment. “You have to . . . do something.”
“You don’t get it, Yael. We’ve stumbled right into a shitstorm. They’ve been tracking us. They know who I am now. They know who you are.”
“I don’t believe the whole Israeli security force is in on some conspiracy!” said Yael.
“No. But we have no idea who Eliahu Spitzer is in contact with or who he controls or who reports to him. We can’t tell the police, the Shin Bet, Mossad, the army, or anybody else.”
“Bullshit! This isn’t Iran. This is Israel. Only religious madmen would be part of this. Nobody else. We have to go to the authorities. The police, surely!”
“And that’s half the problem: because if we go to the police, it’ll be in a report, and reports are seen by people. We can’t take the risk.”
“We’ll demand that it’s kept a secret until he’s arrested and put away,” she said, but her words were sounding thinner and thinner with each statement.
“And you’d risk your life on something being kept secret? In Israel? I’m a reporter, Yael. I can get to see most everything. I’m not going to take that risk. We have no idea how wide or deep this bastard’s contacts go.”
“So who can we tell? Who can we go to?” asked Yael in frustration. “Christ, Yaniv, this is Israel, not some Arab country. We’re a democracy. We’ve got separation of powers. Jesus, we’ve got a fucking ombudsman.”
“We can’t tell anyone until we have a way out” was Yaniv’s flat reply.
“Bullshit. There must be somebody we can get to help us.” In her frustration, she repeated quietly to herself: “This isn’t Syria or Iran or Egypt. Nobody’s that powerful.”
Yaniv looked at her in concern. And his silence was eloquent testament that they were indeed on their own.
“Then how can we fight him?” asked Yael.
“You’re a doctor. Not a soldier,” replied Yaniv.
“In Israel, everyone’s a soldier.”
It might have seemed a mock retort, but in a country with compulsory national service for men and women alike, and besieged on all sides by hostile armies, it was not an empty boast. Yaniv just shook his head and flopped into a chair.
Yael reached into her handbag and drew out a small black object. She held it up for Yaniv to see. It was a black smartphone with a wide reflective screen.
“I’m not sure I want to see what’s on this,” she said.
Yaniv stood from the chair and grabbed the phone from Yael’s hand. “Where was it?”
“In the secure bag with Bilal’s belongings at the hospital,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“And you were just able to go and get it?”
“He was my patient, so I told the security guy at the hospital that I was looking for some pills that Bilal had in his pockets. I said I needed them for analysis. And then I just slipped it into my pocket when the security guy wasn’t looking. He was too busy with the soccer game on TV to notice.”
Yaniv’s eyes told her that he wasn’t elated.
“Something’s not right. Why wouldn’t Shin Bet take the phone? Why wouldn’t they confiscate all his belongings as evidence?” He let the question hang in the air as he contemplated all possible answers. His gaze returned to the room and he looked at Yael. “The only reason Spitzer wasn’t bothered with it is if he didn’t need it.”
He fiddled with the phone until a tiny drawer opened in its side. “They’ve removed the SIM card; they must have thought . . .”
Yael looked at him quizzically, not following his train of thought.
“Most people think that all the information is stored on the SIM card, but it’s not. Lots of good stuff is stored on the phone, even with the memory card removed. The goons thought that by removing the SIM card, they had all the evidence it contained. They obviously think that they don’t need the evidence if they—” His eyes opened wide, and then in a sudden flurry of energy he quickly depressed the switch and brought the phone to life. Swiping fingers briskly across the touch screen, he found his way to the phone’s folder of video clips and photos.
Banal photos of feet and a steering wheel, the accidental images of a new user of a new technology. He flicked past them. A video of a pretty, young Arab girl smiling shyly at the camera. He flicked past once more to a grainy image pixelating in the near darkness of a dimly lit street. The shuffling staccato movement and rattling as the phone camera was repositioned in the hand of the user. Finally it came to rest, moving in a gentle arc to survey a street, a wall, a window . . .
As the camera changed its auto exposure, three silhouetted figures came into view. The camera jerked up and then forward before settling again. The silhouettes became more distinct, more in focus. And the light changed again, the dark image brightening as the camera adjusted.
Yaniv’s finger tapped the pause button on the screen, freezeframing the image. Yael wondered why he was smiling.
He turned the camera around so Yael could see. She leaned forward.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“That’s him. That’s the imam who came to the hospital,” said Yael. “And the guy with the white hair next to him is Spitzer.” She looked closer at the screen and nodded. “But who’s the other man? The Hasid.”
“Rabbi Shmuel Telushkin of Neturei Karta,” replied Yaniv. “I interviewed him in Tehran at that Holocaust denial conference.”
Stunned, she looked at him and said softly, “Dear God.”
Yaniv repeated his question from earlier, holding up the phone as if the answer was the phone itself. “Why didn’t Shin Bet take this phone? Why haven’t they confiscated all Bilal’s belongings as evidence? Because they didn’t need to. Because they knew everything that he was going to do—the bombs, the Wailing Wall . . .”
Yaniv pointed at the three men on the phone screen. “They set it up.”
Yael wanted to protest the absurdity of it all, but the events of the past few days made the words stick in her throat. After what she had been through, anything was now possible.
“I think I know how to stop them coming for us.”
Yael didn’t respond; she just stared at him.
“But to do it, to draw them out, we have to get Bilal out of prison.”