Birthright

by Alan Gold

  Shalman took out a flask of water. There would be streams in the valley below, so he wasn’t worried about conserving it, and he swallowed deeply. He then stood and began to walk down the steep path toward the bottom of the valley, where he knew there to be a network of caves. The ancient Hebrews had often buried their dead in the caves, and in the time of Jesus, bodies had been laid in shrouds on ledges in caverns and grottoes. After the bodies had decomposed, descendants would reenter the cave and collect the bones, depositing them in boxes. These ossuaries often went untouched for thousands of years; it was an archaeologist’s dream to find one that was still sealed. That was what Shalman was hoping to do.

  It was these thoughts that filtered through his mind as he descended the steep path. As he walked faster more from the demands of the slope than his own volition, he was forced to steady his feet with his hands on the rocks. Distracted, he imagined himself holding ancient relics in his hands, sifting soil to unearth Roman ruins, dusting away centuries from the objects of antiquity.

  And then his foot slipped.

  It was a gnarled root of a long-dead tree that had caught the side of his boot, and his ankle twisted over. Pain shot up his leg but was quickly replaced by fear as he fell head over heels, tumbling down uncontrollably. He screamed in pain and terror as his arms flew out to try to catch something solid, but there was nothing except loose stones. Each time his body tumbled over and over, his side crashed down heavily, knocking the air from his lungs and filling his mouth with dirt. He put out his hand to stop himself from falling on the scree, but the weight of his body kept propelling him down the steep hill.

  Shalman twisted his body, trying to dig his boots into the ground, to force traction that would stop the fall to the valley below, but he was moving too fast.

  In an instant the earth and stones gave way beneath him and he found himself in the air, tumbling over a rock ledge. As he twisted in the void, he saw the hard ground beneath him rise up dramatically, and then everything was dark.

  • • •

  It was not just the pain but the intense light that hurt him. Shalman squinted and forced his eyes carefully open to see the ground undulating and moving past in a strange rhythmic way. It took him a few moments to understand that he was lying on his stomach across the back of a donkey walking forward over a narrow path. Each lurch made his bones hurt, and the sway of the ground made his stomach turn.

  His first words were incoherent, but they caused somebody nearby to say “Whoa” to the donkey, which obeyed and stopped. Shalman was greatly relieved, and the feeling of sickness rapidly disappeared. Then a pair of naked legs and sandaled feet appeared in his field of vision.

  “So you’re alive,” said a young man’s voice in Arabic.

  “I’m not sure,” said Shalman in Hebrew, understanding the Arabic but not yet cognizant enough to answer in the same language.

  “You are,” said the young man, in awkward but clear Hebrew.

  “I think I’ve died and this is my punishment,” said Shalman, speaking in Arabic as his brain caught up with the situation and some comprehension of his circumstances.

  The young man laughed and said, reverting to Arabic, “Another hour or so out there, you’d certainly be dead. Or blind. The vultures go first for your eyes, then your lips, then your tongue. That’s how I found you. I saw the vultures circling and thought it might be one of my goats.”

  Shalman tried to push himself off the back of the donkey, but his head was throbbing so much that he couldn’t raise the strength. So the young man grabbed him by the shoulders and eased him off the back of the animal and part carried, part maneuvered him into a sitting position. Shalman propped his back up against a large rock and faced his rescuer.

  “Mustafa,” the man said, sitting beside him and holding out his hand.

  “Shalman,” he responded, clasping it. The young man had a weak grip, or was it because he knew that Shalman wouldn’t be strong enough for a good handshake after his accident?

  Mustafa looked at him questioningly. “What kind of a name is Shalman?”

  “In your language, I’d be called Salaam. In Hebrew, it means ‘peaceable.’ ”

  Mustafa shrugged. “I thought you may be British. But you’re a Jew.”

  Shalman nodded, but a pounding roar reminded him that he had cracked his head on a rock. He put his hand up to his skull and felt a large patch of bloodied and matted hair.

  “At first I thought you’d been shot in the head and were dead. I’m taking you to my father’s house.”

  He helped Shalman to his feet, but his legs were still like jelly.

  “You’d better ride the donkey. It’s only a mile or so to go, but you have no strength to walk.”

  Sitting on top of the animal, Shalman looked down at the young shepherd. “You’re being very kind,” he said gratefully.

  “Yes,” said Mustafa. “I am. Allah demands it.”

  Even through his haze, Shalman thought this curious and found himself staring at Mustafa walking beside him.

  Mustafa added, “Many I know would have left you there to die if they’d known.”

  “If they’d known I was a Jew?” asked Shalman. Mustafa just shrugged. But Shalman pressed the question as the reality of his situation and his rescue dawned on him. “But not you?”

  “Not today,” Mustafa replied dryly, and Shalman could not tell if it was meant as a joke.

  Shalman put his hand to his head once more and felt for the wound with his fingertips.

  “My mother will wash the wound for you, and then you can go on your way. Better you don’t touch it,” said Mustafa. “Leave it to bleed and you won’t become infected.”

  In that strange moment, Shalman remembered his own mother washing his cuts and bruises when he was a child.

  “Where are your family? Where is your father from?” asked Mustafa, his curiosity surprising Shalman.

  “He’s dead. The British killed him.”

  Mustafa responded with a silence that spoke of shared tragedies, and then he walked ahead to lead the donkey.

  A year ago, Shalman may well have been instructed by Lehi to kill such a man; to bomb a building or street where such a man walked. He knew just as certainly that Mustafa might well have joined an Arab resistance group armed to kill Jewish settlers and attack kibbutz villages. Such groups had been rallied by the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, who was now exiled in Egypt because of his collaboration with the Nazis. But his influence was still powerful.

  Yet at this moment in the story of their peoples, an Arab was walking on an ancient rocky path trodden by countless forgotten men and women of history, while a Jew was riding the Arab’s donkey. Shalman looked at his rescuer and saw a young man of his own age who probably had much in common with him; though they lived together as neighbors, they were worlds apart.

  Alexandria, Egypt

  184 C.E. (fourth year of the reign of Emperor Commodus)

  IT WAS ALREADY the middle of the night when a tired, frustrated, and increasingly anxious Abram and his friend Maria the Jewess knocked on the door of Didia’s home.

  A slave opened the door a fraction to see who was standing there so late; robbers and murderers didn’t knock, so the slave wasn’t all that wary, especially when he saw a well-dressed middle-aged man and woman, carrying no obvious weapons.

  “We wish to see your owner, Didia,” the woman said, her voice strident and confident.

  “Come back in the morning,” the slave said. “The house has retired for the night.”

  “We will see her now,” said the woman, pushing past the slave.

  They entered the opulent home, with its marble statuary, its tiled mosaic floor, and walls painted with flying birds and naked men and women. Abram looked around in amazement; he’d seen such a house, a Roman villa in Tiberias on the shores of the lake that was shaped like a harp, but it was the only time he’d been amid such wealth until now.

  Standing in a doorway that led off the vestib
ule was a tall, thin woman wearing a gown edged with lapis lazuli and a collar glistening red with rubies scintillating in the light of the oil lamps.

  “Leave us,” she said to the slave. She motioned to Abram and Maria. “Please, enter my home and let me offer you some refreshment.”

  Maria and Abram walked uncertainly from the door into a chamber furnished with carpets and chairs made of wood and the finest animal skins. The table was of a dark brown wood, almost the color of black marble; Abram had never seen such a thing. He felt he was in the home of a king.

  A woman slave appeared, carrying a tray with drinks. As Maria and Abram sat, the drinks were placed on the table, and the slave, bowing, presented them, bowed again, and walked out of the room.

  “Thank you for allowing us into your home, and our apologies for visiting you so late at night, but our boat leaves for Greece on the morning tide, and we wish to purchase a young lad, a slave, to take back with us. We have particular needs,” said Maria. “He must be—”

  Didia held up her hand. Smiling, her voice like that of a priestess rather than a merchant, she said, “I know and understand perfectly what are your needs. You are the Jewess Maria, the alchemist; and you are Abram, the doctor from Israel who searches for his son. I have your boy. He is perfectly safe and well.”

  Abram looked at her in astonishment. Until now, in the two slave houses he’d visited, he’d remained silent, letting Maria do all the talking. Now he was about to say something, but Didia continued. “You want the return of your son, Jonathan. Of course you do. And you shall have him.”

  She smiled and looked at their faces. Maria’s became hard and uncompromising. Abram looked stunned, as though he’d just been hit on the head. “How much?” Maria asked.

  “Nothing. No money. You can have him back without payment.”

  Maria frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Surely one favor deserves another,” said Didia softly.

  Warily, Abram said, “You stole my son. You’re a thief. You’ll give him back without any favors or conditions. If not, I’ll—”

  Maria didn’t allow him to finish, interrupting him. “What favor?”

  “I want you to steal something for me. Something that belongs to me. Something of no value to anybody except me.”

  Abram was about to speak, growing more and more furious, but Maria quickly cut in again. “What is it you want back? And who has this thing?”

  Didia sipped her drink and fixed Abram with a stare that made him feel wary. “Let me tell you about my son, Kheti. My beautiful boy. He died last year of the wasting sickness. For a year, he grew weaker and weaker, coughing blood, until he was so weak, he took to his bed. I watched him die. Every day I fed him, washed him, prayed to the gods of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome, and even of Israel. But he slipped further and further away from me, until one day he breathed no more. His four brothers and three sisters and I mourned for him for seven days and seven nights, until the priests had finished with his body and it was time for him to be entombed. And it was they who supported me through my grief, because even though I have children who will carry my name into the future, my Kheti was my youngest and most beautiful of sons.

  “I buried him in the way of our Egyptian deities, so that in the afterlife, he would be ready to be presented to Osiris. He was mummified, and as he was being wrapped by the priests and embalmed, I placed his favorite amulet of the four sons of Horus inside the linen.

  “But while I was watching him being wrapped, the Roman procurator, Gaius Lucius Septimus, happened to come along to watch the process. He was fascinated by Kheti’s amulet and ordered the priests to remove it so that he could keep it. I remonstrated with him, forbade him, and eventually begged him. But he’s an arrogant man, and he treated me as though I were some insect biting his arm. So he now has the amulet in his home on the hill, and without it, my beautiful son will be unhappy in the afterlife, and Osiris will not find pleasure with him. I have been to the procurator’s home, but he will not let me in. I am forbidden to tread on his land, and his men have orders to strike me down if I come near Gaius Lucius while he is being carried on his litter through town.”

  She looked at Abram and Maria, and her face became that of a grieving mother rather than a slave trader.

  “You want me to enter the procurator’s home and take back your son’s amulet?” said Abram.

  Didia nodded.

  “Why shouldn’t I go to the procurator, tell him that you’ve stolen my son, and have you arrested?”

  “Because, Abram, if you do that, you will never see your son again. I will die, but my death will be instantaneous. For the rest of your life, you’ll never know whether Jonathan is dead and buried in some stinking rubbish pit, or alive and toiling away his life as a slave to some Greek or Roman overlord.”

  “You would do that to a father? You! A mother who’s just lost her son? What evil thoughts must pass through your mind,” Maria said.

  Didia turned and glared at her. “Don’t think that you know what passes through my mind, you sorceress. You and Abram are Jews. I, too, was born a Jewess. My mother was a Jewess, as was her mother before her.”

  Abram was shocked. “I don’t understand. Your son was buried as an Egyptian.”

  “My family came to Egypt hundreds of years ago. When King Cyrus was overlord of Persia, during the rule of King Manasseh of Judah, my ancestors were paid to come to the island of Elephantine in the upper Nile to help the pharaoh in his battles with the Nubians. They stayed there until Alexander came to Egypt three hundred years later and founded this city. And here they’ve been ever since, remaining even after the massacre of the Jews by the emperor Trajan. That was when my grandmother changed her religion to become a worshipper of Egyptian gods. But in our hearts, we’ve always been Jews. And my family can trace its ancestry back to the Temple of King Solomon.”

  Abram laughed. “That was a thousand years ago. How can you?”

  Didia wasn’t amused at being disbelieved. “My family passes its heritage from father to son, mother to daughter. From the time we’re children, as one generation succeeds the next, our mothers and fathers have taught us about the great men and women of our family. When we have learned to read and write, our parents consider that we’re ready to learn the history of our family. We’re told that in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, our greatest ancestor, Gamaliel, son of Terah, was the man who constructed the house of the god Adon, stone by stone. So do not doubt me, Maria the Jewess, or you, Abram the Israelite, when I say that I, too, am a Jew.”

  “Yet,” Abram said softly, as though to himself, “you trade in children. You take young boys and girls away from their parents and sell them into slavery.”

  “Abraham of the Bible owned slaves, as did many of the ancients. I am just continuing a tradition.”

  “But Jews no longer own slaves. Yes, those of us who are wealthy have servants, but the servant can leave his master’s employment and is free to wander. Yet the children you trade . . . they have no life other than a living death of servitude.”

  Didia sighed. “It’s the parents who sell me their unwanted children. Egyptian, Nubian, those from Sudan and Punt and far south, where the natives are as black as mahogany. These unwanted children, who eat and take up living space, would be murdered or drowned; I give the parents money, take them off their hands, and for the rest of their lives the children grow into adults with a place to sleep, a good meal in their bellies, and a master and mistress to tend to them if they fall sick. If not for me and my slavery, these boys and girls would be dead.”

  She shrugged, knowing that Abraham could not refute her argument. The three fell into silence, looking at one another, until Abram said, “So for you to return my son, I have to go to the home of the procurator and steal back the amulet that once belonged to Kheti and which you want to return to his shroud.”

  Didia nodded.

  “And then you will return my son, Jonathan, to me.”

  Again s
he nodded.

  “If I steal it back for you and give it to you, how do I know that you’ll keep your word?”

  Didia looked at him and shrugged. “You don’t know that, Abram. But what choice do you have?”

  For the rest of the night, until they were too exhausted to continue, they discussed ways of Abram getting into the procurator’s home and treating him for the disease for which he was well known—the falling sickness. During his first meeting of the city elders in the week he arrived as the new Roman procurator and senatorial overlord of Egypt, he had stood from his throne, clutched his head, and called to his servant to help him leave the chamber. Before his servant could get the rod to put in his mouth, Gaius Lucius Septimus fell on the floor and looked like he was having a fit. His legs, arms, and body shook, and foam flowed out of his mouth.

  Those who understood these things said that he had the same falling sickness as the greatest of all philosophers, Socrates, and as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. For days after his malady, Gaius Lucius hadn’t been seen outside of his palace; it was unwise for anybody to mention his illness.

  “I have an idea,” said Abram. “Didia, you spread the word to all you know that a great doctor has arrived from Jerusalem who has cured men of the falling sickness. To ensure that he knows I am a friend of Rome, you must say that I am from the city of Aelia Capitolina in the country of Syria Palaestina. Only then will he feel trust in me. Perhaps the gossip will come to the ears of his servants and administrators; perhaps they will whisper my name into his ear. But even when I’m inside his palace, how will I find the amulet?”

  The two women looked at each other. Neither had the answer.

  • • •

  Even Abram, doubtful of whether the scheme would work, was surprised by the swiftness of the response. It had been two days since his meeting with Didia the slave trader. Though he was anxious about the welfare of Jonathan, his fears had receded because he knew that his son was alive and being cared for. The fears he’d suffered when Jonathan hadn’t returned to their lodgings had been replaced by his very real concerns about being able to cure the incurable disease of the falling sickness, and of finding some small amulet in a short time in the vastness of the procurator’s palace.