by Marek Halter
This long speech seemed to glide off Toviyyah, like water from a bird’s feathers. He looked at the huge crowd and smiled. ‘And just because you’re supported by Yahweh,’ he mocked, ‘you think that all you have to do is come here with a letter from the Persian king and your dreams will come true?’
Ezra said nothing.
Toviyyah’s smile grew wider. ‘You’re a young hothead. This letter you hold is worthless. I, Toviyyah the Ammonite, rule here, and I decide what’s good and what’s bad. And don’t count on the armies of the Persian to support you – they haven’t been here for many moons.’
His words were greeted with an icy silence. Pleased with this reaction, Toviyyah flung open his arms and addressed us all in his shrill voice, which was even shriller when he spoke loudly. ‘Look at you, all of you! You arrive in a country your fathers’ fathers left because they couldn’t defend it. Your God abandoned them, as He abandoned Jerusalem. Your fathers’ fathers went off to the rich fields of Babylon and forgot all about Jerusalem and their God. And now you’ve come back, singing, but knowing nothing about the land of Judaea. You’ve come back, proclaiming, “This is my home, it belongs to me, I should burn incense in the Temple!” But I say, “No!”’
The priests and zealots around Ezra muttered angrily, but my brother again ordered them to be silent.
Toviyyah’s fat cheeks shook with rage. He pointed at the men covered with ashes. ‘It’s Toviyyah who decides whether or not the walls of Jerusalem can heal. It’s Toviyyah, the great servant of Ammon, who decides what’s good and what’s bad for the Temple of Jerusalem. And it’s Toviyyah who receives taxes.’
Again, his words met with an icy silence. We were all too stunned to protest. What he had said was worse than anything we had expected. His words had clothed truth in lies and trampled on our most cherished hopes.
But Toviyyah was enjoying himself. ‘Ammon bids you all welcome,’ he said, smiling contemptuously. ‘He’ll be happy to receive his share when you start working in the fields. For the fields beneath your feet, where you’ve pitched your tents, don’t belong to you and never will. Here, the Persians are of no importance – the soldiers of Egypt and Greece chased them away long ago. The only person who can protect you is me! I have two thousand armed men for that.’
At that moment, a stone struck his thigh.
Ezra had thrown it.
The gathering was plunged into disarray. Toviyyah’s guards moved to seize Ezra, but the young zealots rushed forward, yelling, and pushed them back. The guards seemed ready to fight, but a gesture from Toviyyah stopped them in their tracks. He knew it was pointless: there were ten of them and twenty thousand of us. But he knew that he had other means with which to strike at us.
In their anger, the young zealots jostled Toviyyah, then lifted him onto his she-camel, which bellowed with fear and stood up so abruptly that he almost fell off. He clung to the saddle, waving his arms and squealing like a frightened bird, until finally he regained his balance … only to find that he was facing his camel’s hindquarters. The crowd exploded with laughter.
Imagine, Antinoes, my love, twenty thousand people laughing! The sound must have echoed as far as the Jordan.
Only when the laughter had died down did Ezra speak.
‘You’re wrong again, Toviyyah. Since the day Nebuchadnezzar entered Jerusalem, your father and your father’s father have been wrong and have passed on their error to you. Now, a man may deceive himself, but a child of Israel cannot deceive Yahweh. You think the letter that brought me here was written by Artaxerxes – but no! It was the will of Yahweh, His desire to return to His Temple, that dictated this letter. And you’re wrong if you think we fear you – all we need is the help and strength of Yahweh. But you did right in coming here today. As you see, we’ve torn our tunics and covered our hair with ashes. It is the day of purification. Today we’re preparing to wash the soil of Judaea clean of the refuse that covers it. And you are part of that refuse.’
Deathly pale now, Toviyyah, with his guards’ help, turned in his saddle. Then he looked once again over the vast crowd. All at once, he burst out laughing. He whipped the neck of the she-camel and disappeared into the city. A little later, we saw him trotting along the road to Jericho.
We had mocked him, but as we watched him riding away, his laughter seemed more threatening than all of his poisonous words.
And not without reason.
That night, the fourth or fifth after we had arrived, the war began.
The tents furthest from the walls of Jerusalem were laid waste. Blood flowed, and screams tore the air. Men, women and children were cut down without pity. Wagons burned, lighting the darkness so that it appeared to be broad daylight and we could see clearly that the worst was yet to come.
It feels strange to be describing these events. They took place only ten months ago, but to me they already seem very distant.
Perhaps it is because I have seen so many dismembered bodies since then, so many women running through the night, clutching their dead children to their breasts or screaming in pain.
Not that I’ve become hardened – don’t think that, Antinoes, please don’t think that! But there comes a moment when you become like a grave that has been filled to the brim and cannot take any more bodies.
And I, who have only ever really learned one skill, that of helping women to give birth, must support those who open their legs so that the blood of life can flow once more, while my memory is still red with the blood of death.
I had to stop writing, because I was sent for.
Sometimes, the absurdity of what I am writing paralyses my wrist, and I cannot move my stylus across the papyrus. If only I could be like a gourd or a jar from which the contents pour out until at last it is empty. I am speaking to you, Antinoes, my husband, yet all the things I have told you remain inside me.
Perhaps that is one of the ways in which Yahweh is taking His revenge.
You try to remember, to force the words out of your mind to stop it exploding with pain. But then you suffer all over again because you remember …
But who knows? Perhaps you will read these words, my distant husband, and they will rekindle in you your love for Lilah.
That first disaster lent weight to Yahezya’s words and gave him the courage to go back to Ezra and the priests, and put forward his ideas again. Still as calm and gentle as ever, he explained that our attackers had not been Toviyyah’s men. ‘However wicked he is, and however much he may hate us, Toviyyah wouldn’t strike us. He claims he knows nothing about Yahweh, but he fears Him. Yesterday Toviyyah tried to obtain your submission in return for his protection. You refused both. So, he spread the word that your wealth was for the taking, like ripe fruit on a tree, and that he wouldn’t defend you.’
‘Who attacked us, then?’ people demanded.
‘Either the Moabites, or Gershem’s men. From the arrows and the other traces we found, I’d say it was Gershem’s men. Gershem’s kingdom adjoins the territory of Judaea along the Jordan. In the last few years, he’s attacked Jerusalem many times, just as he did during the time of Nehemiah. Not lately, though – Jerusalem was too poor and empty for him.’
‘How can we be at war with these people? We don’t even know them.’
‘You are at war,’ Yahezya assured us sadly. ‘Here you are, defenceless, unarmed, with thousands of women and children. You have wagons filled with clothes, furniture, carpets – even gold. Pardon my frankness, Ezra, but your weakness is as obvious as your wealth. A godsend for those whose only law is plunder and war.’
These words left everyone dumbfounded. I am quite sure Ezra had never thought about this. To be honest, neither had any of us, including me.
Zachariah was the first to object that no one had come to Jerusalem to make war, and that Yahweh could not have been waiting for us on the soil of Judaea merely to see it soaked with our blood.
‘That may be so,’ Yahezya replied. ‘But you don’t know how things used to be here in Jerus
alem. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls, and he never hesitated to fight. “We’re rebuilding Jerusalem,” he used to say, “with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other.”’
There were cries of protest, but Ezra agreed with Yahezya. ‘He’s right. Master Baruch, who taught me everything I know, showed me letters that Nehemiah wrote to Babylon and the King of Kings. Those were indeed his words: “With a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other”.’ And he declared that from this day on, those words would be ours too.
So began our new life in Jerusalem.
The purification of the Temple was postponed. Some set to work building permanent houses inside the city while others repaired the holes in the outer walls.
Yahezya led Zachariah and his people to a place near Jericho, where the blacksmiths worked, to buy swords and spears. It was a risky undertaking: Toviyyah’s soldiers might have slaughtered them on the road before they had even acquired weapons to defend themselves. In fact, they did not encounter the slightest difficulty. Yahezya was almost certainly right: Tovviyah refused to recognize the power of Yahweh but he feared it all the same.
As soon as they returned, groups of men were formed and trained to defend us.
And so, before the great heat of summer made the work harder still, the city was repopulated, the streets cleared, the fields ploughed and sown. It was also a time when bonds of true friendship formed. The work varied a great deal from one house to another. Ezra and I were given a narrow building near the Temple. It only required about ten days of work, because the roof had not fallen in, but other houses took much longer. We all helped each other unhesitatingly, as the need arose.
Meanwhile Sogdiam had transformed a lean-to into a kitchen for all. It proved a great blessing for the many who had only the poorest of hearths. Every morning and evening old women, who had grown fond of Sogdiam, came to help him bake hundreds of loaves. He told them stories, making them weep with laughter – I had had no idea he knew so many. Day after day, they supplied food for a starving people, a people exhausted from cutting stone and wood, mixing and carrying mortar.
Those who went to the hills to fell the trees we needed or to pull blocks of stone from cliffs known to the old men of the city were accompanied by armed men. But, apart from a few fights with thieves, there were no more attacks.
In a short time, the city had come back to life. Children ran in the streets. Gardens sprang up. Workshops opened. Those who had had trades in Susa practised them again. People smiled at each other. Couples came to see the priests, and sometimes even Ezra, to ask for their marriages to be blessed. Children were born. When the building work ended, I went back to working with the midwives who had taught me the skills of childbirth. Every day, I had the great joy of welcoming one or two new lives into the world.
To everyone’s surprise, even Yahezya’s, Toviyyah did not reappear. He made no attempt to approach Jerusalem and check on the progress of the rebuilding.
Merchants came to buy and sell. They told us that the neighbouring peoples were talking about us, with respect and a degree of fear.
We concluded that our determination intimidated them. The priests sang Ezra’s praises, for Yahweh’s hand was still upon him.
Thus, for a brief time, one moon perhaps, we were carefree again, intoxicated with the joy of our mission.
Then, one morning, we awoke to the sound of lamentation. Sogdiam told me that the time had come, and that Ezra was beginning the fast for the purification of the Temple.
The priests, the Levites and all those who answered his call gathered before the ruins of the sacrificial altar. There, with much wailing, they again tore their garments and covered themselves with ashes. After another day of prayer, Ezra gave the order to clear the refuse from the Temple courtyard.
For nine days, from dawn to dusk, they lifted the soiled stones one by one – a colossal task – carried them outside the city, and dumped them in an unclean place that the old priests had designated for the purpose.
They demolished the sacrificial altar and built a new one, according to the Law, with raw stones from the hills.
Then the old men who had been there in Nehemiah’s time came to see Ezra. ‘We need the nephta fire!’
They led Ezra to a well no one had noticed, hidden beneath a heap of irreparable ruins. Once the rubble had been cleared, they lifted the undamaged lid of the well. At the bottom, instead of water, lay a stinking black substance, like pitch. The old men explained to Ezra that he had to coat the floor of the Temple with it before the rest could be rebuilt.
‘But how can I rebuild cleanly once this stuff is everywhere?’ Ezra objected.
The old men laughed. ‘Let Yahweh do His work,’ they said. ‘Let the sun do its work!’
So they spread bucketfuls of the foul-smelling pitch on what remained of the old wood and the loose marble flagstones.
The air stank for leagues around the Temple, and many of us worried that soon we would not be able to breathe it. But when the sun struck the Temple in the morning, the pitch melted, smoked a little, and finally turned as glossy as black gold. For a moment, everything shone. Then, with a deafening whoosh, a blue flame sprang up.
‘Nephta!’ the old men yelled, dancing about. ‘Nephta, the cry of Yahweh!’
A moment later, the fire had gone out, leaving the flagstones dry and no hotter than if the sun alone had touched them.
It had been such a wonderful and surprising spectacle that for days children ran in the streets of the city imitating the cry of Yahweh.
Ezra and his people resumed their toil. They made new sacred objects to replace those they had not brought. The Levites put the seven-branched candlestick in the holy of holies, set up a new table on which they burned incense, and made new lamps to light the Temple. The carpenters, working under their orders, finished the doors, the porticoes, the gilded coronas and the escutcheons that decorated the front of the building. At last, one day in the month of Av, Ezra declared the Temple clean and ready to welcome our chants. For three days and three nights, we sang at the tops of our voices, tears streaming down the most hardened cheeks. The streets rang with the sound of lyres, citharas and cymbals.
There was a huge offering, like the one that had preceded our departure from Babylon. The smoke rose and covered the newly built roofs of Jerusalem.
That night the fire still glowed so brightly that, when other cries and other flames sprang up on the other side of the city, we did not immediately realize what was happening.
Outside the walls, a troop of Gershem’s men were galloping towards the city, screaming at the tops of their voices, five or six hundred of them, a snake of fire in the fields and hills. All at once, they launched a rain of burning arrows into the sky.
At first, it was strangely beautiful, as if the sky were full of shooting stars. But their orbit brought them down onto our thatched roofs.
New flames rose. New cries and screams rang out.
By the morning, more than half of the restored houses were in ashes.
Yahezya had been right. Blood, fire, tears: that, for us, was Jerusalem.
Ezra wet my tunic with his tears. He could not show them in public so he came running to me like a lost child.
I was astonished by the body I held in my arms. Ezra had become so frail, I could have lifted him. Did he think that his mind and his passionate love for Yahweh were enough to keep him alive?
Perhaps.
But he was angry too, even – although he would not have dared admit it – with Yahweh. He struck his brow with the leather case containing Moses’ scroll and asked, ‘Why is Yahweh inflicting this on us, Lilah? Where is our sin? Hasn’t the Temple been purified? Don’t we respect every Law? Why has He left us so defenceless? Lilah, what is our sin?’
How was I to answer? The whole city was weeping, as he was, but no one understood. Some put out the fires, others tended the wounded. Everywhere, the dead were mourned.
I was in no mood to look for an explanation.
&nbs
p; While everyone wondered what sin we had committed, I was beginning to fear that I had made a mistake in urging Ezra to come to Judaea. It seemed to me that, of the two of us, I was the one who had to bear the responsibility for what had happened.
But it was a terrible thought, so I dismissed it.
Like everyone there, anger made me defiant. I still hoped to find in Ezra the strength and justice we lacked, so that Yahweh might finally reward us.
All I could do now was support my brother to the best of my ability.
He was exhausted by constant fasting. His hands were scarred from pulling and carrying stones. His skin was infected, due to a combination of wood splinters and the ash with which he had covered himself during the fast. There were purulent swellings on his shoulders, and his feet were torn and bloody.
But the wounds on his body were nothing compared with the agitation in his mind: he had been under enormous pressure during the purification of the Temple. The new priests, those who had come with us, the Levites and the zealots were all trying to win him over and influence his decisions. They all had strong but divergent opinions, and could argue from dusk to dawn, tangling you in a labyrinth of words until you no longer had any idea what they were talking about.
They all considered themselves scholars, and cleverer than other people. They constantly cited the lessons of the patriarchs and prophets. Some time before the purification of the Temple, the old priests who had stayed in Jerusalem after the death of Nehemiah had reluctantly but proudly revealed a hidden cellar on the other side of the city. There, in spite of all the pillaging, they had preserved hundreds of papyrus scrolls and even a few tablets from long ago. According to them, no decision could be taken without consulting the wise men of the past … So the exhausting debates began again, more convoluted than ever.