An Accidental Messiah

by Dan Sofer

  There was no orange uniform or meeting hall at the end of the long corridor, only a counter and another officer, who handed him a manila envelope that contained his keys, phone, and tissues. They were releasing him. His shoulders relaxed and he inhaled the sweet, clear scent of approaching freedom.

  Galit was waiting for him in a reception hall, clutching her handbag. She ran to him, and her embrace had never felt so good.

  “I came here as soon as I heard,” she said. “They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  Moshe glanced about the room and recognized the foyer of the Talpiot police station. He had accompanied Irina there in a failed attempt to figure out her identity. The same two receptionists with dark ponytails sat behind the reception desk, but they didn’t seem to notice him. Moshe didn’t mind—he had enjoyed enough police attention for one day.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Galit had parked her Kia Sportage on the street and she drove him home.

  “How much was bail?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  That sounded suspicious. “Aren’t they going to charge me with anything?”

  She shrugged. “They didn’t say anything. I didn’t even know you were being released.”

  Gears changed softly within the vehicle as other gears turned in Moshe’s mind. Had his lack of a valid identity card aided in his release? Had his continued incarceration required too much paperwork? Somebody likes you, the policewoman had said. What did it matter? He was free.

  “The others,” he said. “Were they arrested too?”

  “Only you, as far as I know. I saw it on TV. I saw them jump on you.”

  They had made the news. Excellent.

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “I couldn’t reach you on your phone.”

  “It’s over now,” he said. “We live in a liberal democracy. They can’t just lock people up indefinitely.” Behind bars he had felt less certain of that.

  “I thought I had lost you again.”

  “You won’t. I won’t let that happen.”

  “Promise me.”

  His arrest had distressed her harder than he had expected. He had gotten off lightly this time. Next time, he might not be so lucky. He’d have to make sure there would not be a next time. His career of civil disobedience would have to end.

  “I promise,” he said.

  Back home, Moshe hugged Talya and paid the babysitter. At least his little girl knew nothing of his short incarceration. He turned on the TV and switched channels. The news broadcasts didn’t mention the demonstration.

  “I don’t get it,” he told Shmuel on the phone. “We should have gotten more coverage.”

  Shmuel seemed frustrated too. “I asked Eran. The editors didn’t think we’re newsworthy. A load of crap, if you ask me. Larger powers are at work here and they’re burying our story.”

  “Or,” Moshe added, “maybe they’re right and people just don’t care about us.”

  “Ten thousand people cared this morning.”

  “Ten thousand?”

  “That’s Eran’s estimate. They can’t all have been Society members. And donations at the office have tripled.”

  “We’ll need more than money to change the system.”

  “What other option do we have—declare an independent state?”

  The conversation stuck with Moshe during dinner. After a mass demonstration, all they could show for their efforts were a few hours of jail time and a spike in contributions. Moshe was not about to start a civil war. Without new ideas, Moshe and his fellow resurrected would remain in social limbo for the rest of their second lives.

  “Moshe?” Galit called his name for the second time. He had spaced out at the dinner table. Talya sent him concerned glances and, ever since their reunion at the station, Galit had eyed him as though he was in danger of collapse.

  “Sorry,” he said. He forced a smile for Talya’s sake. You’ve worried them enough. “Just thinking about work.”

  “The Dry Bones?” Talya said, and giggled.

  He patted her curls. “And getting drier every day.”

  Moshe had set up a non-profit and the cash was flowing, but he couldn’t draw a salary or apply for a marriage certificate. He couldn’t lead a normal life. It’s not personal, the minister had said. It’s politics.

  The buzzer sounded.

  “Don’t answer that!” Galit said, her eyes wide.

  “It’s OK, Galit. I’m sure they won’t arrest me twice in one day.”

  Moshe wiped his mouth on a napkin and went to the door. Unless, he added to himself, Shmuel was right and larger forces were at work. Was that how the government wore down opponents, by interrupting their dinner and dragging them back to the cells?

  The man in the peephole wore, not a police uniform, but a dark suit, with dark glasses and an earpiece. Moshe’s skin tingled. Had Minister Malkior sent undercover agents this time? Secret Service? Moshe’s little peaceful demonstration had opened a Pandora’s box of enemies.

  Moshe swallowed hard, stood tall, and turned the handle.

  “Moshe Karlin?” said Dark Glasses.

  “Yes.”

  Dark Glasses walked right in, followed by two of his clones. They spread out in the hallway and scanned the interior of the home. The leader spoke into his sleeve. “Clear.”

  Then a third man in an expensive suit rolled into the room like a well-preened, middle-aged penguin. A penguin with a greasy comb-over. He needed no introduction. His smug grin, familiar to Moshe from the Channel Two news and the front pages of Israel Today, belonged to the most notorious career politician in Israel.

  Isaac Gurion gave Moshe’s hand a meaty double-handed squeeze. “Moshe Karlin,” he said. “We meet at last.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Moshe and Isaac Gurion sat on his living room couch like old friends, while the Secret Service guards kept watch and Galit led Talya upstairs to bed.

  “I sympathize with your struggle,” Isaac Gurion said, his face a picture of great torment. “The difficulties you and your kind have experienced are as many as they are unbearable. This business with the Minister of the Interior is unacceptable. You deserve to live and work with honor as equal citizens.”

  Moshe wanted to rub his eyes and pinch his leg. This was exactly the kind of attention he had hoped for. But the savvy politician obviously had an agenda of his own.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “You need friends in the right places. Friends with power. The power, for instance,” and he shot Moshe a mischievous grin, “to release a friend from wrongful imprisonment.”

  So Gurion was behind Moshe’s mysterious release, and now Moshe owed him. Every favor would require payback.

  “Friends like you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what do you want in return?”

  Gurion seemed both surprised and insulted by the question. “Your friendship, of course.” He sighed and raised his hands to the heavens, a humble man set upon by insurmountable difficulties. “Elections are in a month and we’ll need all the friends we can find to ensure that our new party, Upward, can finally fix our country’s problems. Judging by your event this morning, you have a lot of friends. Fifteen thousand, by the police’s estimate.”

  Fifteen thousand! Shmuel’s count had been far off.

  “And,” Gurion continued, “according to what I hear, you make new friends every day. How many new asylum seekers arrive each week?”

  “Asylum seekers?” Had Gurion confused the Dry Bones Society with another social cause?

  Gurion’s eyes sparkled and he swiped his hand in the air as though reading words off an invisible campaign banner. “Refugees from Death. We’ll need some way to refer to your Society members. So tell me, what is your growth rate?”

  Moshe swallowed hard. Rabbi Yosef was closer than he to the numbers on the ground, but he would be wise not to understate the size of their unique demographic. “More each day,” he said. “I don’t have the exa
ct figures, but our growth is exponential.”

  “Exponential?” Gurion licked his lips. “Well, good friends should stand together. We’ll right the wrongs of society and forge a better world. Together we’ll be unstoppable.”

  “We’ll settle for identity cards,” Moshe said. “We don’t have any grand plans to change the world. We’re not politicians.”

  “And you won’t have to be. You won’t have to sit through boring Knesset meetings either if you don’t want to. We’ll each stick to what we do best. You carry on with your good work and I’ll sort out the red tape. What a great partnership. As I said, we’ll be unstoppable.”

  “Unstoppable,” Moshe repeated and laughed. After spending the day behind bars, that sounded too good to be true.

  Gurion mistook his silence for hesitation. “Think of it, Moshe. Think of all the good you could do.”

  “Right now I can’t even open a bank account.”

  “So we’ll fix that. Our first order of business will be to secure full and automatic citizenship for all asylum seekers.”

  Moshe felt as though he had just won the lottery and wanted to jump on the couch like a lunatic. Don’t appear too eager. “I’ll need to consult with my colleagues.”

  “Of course, please do. But I’ll need an answer by tomorrow evening,” Gurion said, getting up. “Elections are around the corner.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Ahmed returned to the Devil’s warehouse that evening, his mind bubbling over with doubt. Groups of sweaty workers swarmed beneath the fluorescents of the warehouse, rushing to eat and shower before lights out.

  Don’t believe their promises, Damas had said. There is no Paradise, only Hell.

  The demon taskmaster’s words would not let go. Had Hasan lied to him? Had he known that Ahmed’s mission would lead to eternal damnation, not unending bliss? No. That couldn’t be true. Hasan had assisted many others on the path to istishhad. And why would he knowingly send his cousin to a world of suffering?

  He pushed through the flap of his tarpaulin cubicle, retrieved his tin mug from beneath the cot, and joined the long line for dinner.

  The demon had lied. Ahmed deserved this fate. He had not believed with a whole heart. Even as he pressed the detonator button, he had not truly expected to wake up in Paradise. He had wanted to save his family from shame and for his father to think kindly of him. Paradise existed but it belonged to martyrs of pure mind and clean hands.

  Yet Hasan had known that his cousin was no saint. He had promised Ahmed that the mission would purge him of his sins.

  The bald cook ladled thick soup into Ahmed’s mug. The sludge smelled of lentils and too much pepper. Ahmed blew into the mug to cool the soup on the way back to his tent, then halted. Beside an open cubicle, a man knelt on a towel, his feet bare, his bearded face and stained turban pressed to the ground.

  Do my eyes deceive me?

  Ahmed drew near and waited for the righteous man to finish his prayers.

  “Sir,” Ahmed said. “How has a righteous man come to be here?”

  The man turned tired eyes to his questioner. “What do you mean, my son?”

  Ahmed drew closer and whispered, “In this Hell. I thought I was the only believer among these damned souls.”

  A bemused smile crept over the man’s lips. “This is not the Purgatory of Barzakh,” he said, and he stroked his beard. “Although our lot is not much better.” The man’s Arabic had a foreign edge, but he seemed to know what he was talking about.

  “Then where are we?”

  “Talpiot, Jerusalem.”

  “Jerusalem? We’re not dead?”

  The smile fled and patience leaked from the man’s voice. “No, we are not dead. Not yet.” He rolled up his towel and tucked it under his arm. “The lights go out soon,” he muttered and trudged off. “I have no time for fools.”

  Ahmed froze to the spot. Sweaty laborers streamed around him. The streets had seemed familiar because they were. He had died, that much was clear. He had awoken in neither Heaven nor Hell, but in the Jerusalem of his first life.

  “Lights out in ten minutes,” Damas roared from the railing at the far end of the warehouse.

  Ahmed snapped out of his trance and raced for his tent. He gulped down his soup and ran for the shower line.

  He had just crawled beneath the rough blanket of his cot bed when the large fluorescents clicked out. His heart thumped like a drum. He was not in Hell; he was home.

  Outside the flaps of his cubicle, the footfalls died down, replaced by the creak of bedsprings and then a chorus of snores. Ahmed pulled back his blanket and got out of bed, fully dressed. He padded through the gloom of the warehouse. The corrugated door of the building slid sideways on its track, the squeaking of rusty wheels piercing the silence of the black vault like a siren. He looked over his shoulder, expecting the dark taskmaster to emerge from the shadows. He listened for the heavy steps of the Rottweiler. Seeing and hearing nothing, he stepped outside.

  The stars burned overhead in the boundless canopy of heaven. A plastic bag floated in the moonlight on a gentle summer breeze. Distant cars hummed along hidden streets. Ahmed was alive and his future lay out there.

  He slid the door shut behind him and slipped into the night.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I have a confession to make,” said the young man in the black T-shirt. He had introduced himself as Ben to the circle of new members at the Absorption Center of the Dry Bones Society on Thursday morning.

  Yosef stifled a yawn. He wanted to listen with empathy. Each new member of the Society had a life story in need of sharing and a soul in need of healing, but the events of the last few days had kept him awake at night. He too felt the need for confession.

  Ben continued. “I’m not dead. I mean, I haven’t died yet. Not physically, anyway.”

  He told of a childhood of delinquency and drugs, of running away from home and life on the streets.

  “When I heard about your program—about starting anew each day—I thought I’d give it a try.”

  Yosef nodded. The confusion of his own early years was reflected in Ben’s story. Over the last few days, that confusion had returned in full force.

  Yosef had partnered with Rev. Adams and cashed his generous check while, at the Ministry of the Interior, Moshe had struggled against Rabbi Emden, Yosef’s former mentor and guiding light. The next day, Moshe had spent the morning in jail. Yosef could ignore the cognitive dissonance no longer. Was he still on the right side—the side of justice, of God?

  The meeting concluded with the singing of “HaTikva”—the national anthem—and Rabbi Nachman’s “Narrow Bridge,” and the new arrivals dispersed to the dining hall for breakfast.

  Yosef collected the song sheets and leaned against the doorjamb, staring at the empty circle of plastic chairs.

  Sitrah Achrah. The Great Council’s verdict rang louder in his ears each day. Had he succumbed to charms of the unholy Other Side?

  A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped. “Sorry, Rabbi,” Moshe said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Can you join us?”

  “Of course.”

  The Society’s informal cabinet waited in Moshe’s corner office: Moshe, Shmuel, Rafi, and Irina. Savta Sarah was busy ladling porridge and frying eggs in the dining hall.

  Moshe closed the door and leaned against his desk. “Isaac Gurion came to our house last night.”

  He told them of the politician’s offer.

  “That’s just what we wanted,” Irina said.

  “More than we wanted,” Moshe said. “If they do well in the elections, which seems very likely, we’ll get seats in Knesset.”

  Shmuel folded his arms over his chest. “How many seats?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he mention any ministerial portfolios?”

  “No, but he seemed open to negotiation. I suppose we could push for the Ministry of Interior.”

  “Ha!” Irina said. “Malkior will regret double-crossing us.�
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  “This goes beyond identity cards,” Moshe said. “We could make a real difference and not just for ourselves—for the whole country.”

  They exchanged ecstatic glances, in disbelief at their sudden good fortune. The intoxicating scent of new possibilities wafted in the air. Perhaps Yosef had been right to throw in his lot with the Dry Bones Society after all.

  “Rabbi Yosef,” Moshe said. “When I first came back, you said that the Resurrection was one of many prophecies about a future world of peace and justice.”

  All eyes in the room turned to Yosef and the blood drained from his cheeks. “The Messianic Era,” he said. “When the Messiah King, son of David, will arrive.”

  Shmuel guffawed. “Messiah King,” he said. “The days of hereditary kings are long gone.”

  “You’re right,” Moshe said. He turned back to Yosef. “But putting the monarchy aside, what else does tradition say about that time?”

  Yosef racked his memory. The midrash had made some pretty extravagant claims about the Future To Come.

  “There will come a time of plenty and wonder,” he said. “The knowledge of God will cover the earth as the water covers the sea. God will rebuild Jerusalem and pave her streets with diamonds and rubies. He will bring an end to death, and the righteous will feast together beneath a great canopy made from the skin of the Leviathan.”

  “The Leviathan?” Irina said.

  Yosef swallowed. “A giant sea creature, like the fish that swallowed Jonah.”

  A roomful of eyes glazed over in the awkward silence.

  Moshe cleared his throat. “Rabbi Yosef, are there any other opinions among the rabbis—something a bit more, ah, mundane?” Moshe had become familiar with the nature of the rabbinic thought. Few principles were free of vigorous debate.

  “There’s Maimonides,” Yosef said. “According to him, the Messianic Era will involve neither miracles nor wonders, and only one thing will change: the nations of the world will no longer subjugate the Jews, who will be free to serve God and study His Law without distraction.”

  “Sounds like the Israel Defense Forces to me,” said Irina. “And freedom of religion.”