Tatiana stuck her little finger into her ear and rotated it vigorously. She dislodged some scales of skin and a little wax but, to no avail. The loud explosion of the Grad rocket, when it hit her home had deafened her. Initially she thought she had also been blinded but, now she could make out some shapes in the dust-laden air. Surrounded by broken concrete spars and broken glass, she began to panic. She wheezed as she inhaled the polluted air.
The baby in her arms was silent. ‘Of course,’ she thought, ‘I cannot hear him cry, due to the deafness.’ She felt his face. Running her fingers up from his chin, she felt the sticky blood oozing from his mouth. She held him close. Absalom had now gone limp in her arms. She screamed and wailed. How she regretted ignoring the warning siren but, she had believed that the new Iron Dome defence would have intercepted any rocket, as it had successfully done for the previous six months.
When Mikhail and herself came to Israel from Minsk, they had settled in Beersheba, then well out of range of Gaza rockets. In recent months, the Palestinians had boasted that their new missiles had a significantly greater range. The Israeli’s had countered with their Tamir interceptor missile. Absalom’s birth had seemed like a miracle. Tatiana had four miscarriages and doctors in Minsk had been doubtful she would ever have a pregnancy that reached term. When referred to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, she had attended more in hope than expectation. A weakness in her cervix was identified and a corrective surgical procedure followed. Her joy was unconfined when she delivered Absalom, after an uncomplicated pregnancy.
Mikhail, who had three children from his first marriage, was more worldly-wise and counselled against looking too far into the future. This did not stop her thinking already of his Bar Mitzvah. Once, in a dream, she had seen him as a teen, with spots wearing a phylactery and praying at the Wailing Wall. Now, she feared her beautiful son would not survive. Even Abraham did not have to sacrifice Isaac in the end, she thought.
Despite the pain in her right arm, she managed to raise the baby’s face to hers, thinking, ‘perhaps I can do mouth-to-mouth breathing and resuscitate him.’
His long eyelashes brushed her cheek as she tried to clear his airway. She found his lips and breathed into them, in a vain effort to revive him. His little body was now limp in her arms. Six hours later, she was rescued. Mikhail was waiting in his military uniform. Tears streamed down his face. His lips trembled. He shook all over as he embraced them both. A paramedic gently prised the baby from her arms. ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth murmured,’ an onlooker.
He was buried the next day, on the Mount of Olives.