An Accidental Messiah

by Dan Sofer

  They nodded and exchanged embarrassed grins, then got back to their cubicles. Avi had sparked the protest but he didn’t have the staying power for a protracted campaign. The news outlets would soon lose interest and return to their coverage of the elections. He hoped the demonstration would disperse soon. He had to leave for his cardiologist appointment in a half hour.

  Moshe patted Shmuel on the shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to experience that,” he said. “You can’t create real change without making a few enemies. We must be on the right track.” Shmuel nodded and headed for the bathroom to get cleaned up.

  Moshe got back behind his desk and returned to the draft of his speech for the campaign event Gurion’s team had arranged. Moshe was not scheduled to speak, but he should prepare for that eventuality.

  “Isaac Gurion,” he typed, “has been a friend to the helpless in their time of need.”

  He made a correction: a true friend.

  He had just started to polish the language of the speech when the blare of a megaphone broke his concentration.

  “They’ve taken our jobs,” said the booming voice, and the crowd answered with an angry murmur. “They’ve invaded our lives.”

  Moshe knew that voice. He got up and returned to the window overlooking the street. “Dear God.”

  The scattering of demonstrators had grown into a swarm that covered the sidewalk. The volunteers at the window beside him were no longer grinning.

  Avi stood on a wooden crate. “They’re not natural,” he said. “They’re zombies. Undead. They feed on the living. They call themselves the Dry Bones Society. Well, you know what we do with dry bones? We snap them!”

  The rabble cheered and punched the air with their fists. “Break the dry bones!” they chanted. “Break the dry bones!”

  Moshe turned as the doors of the Dry Bones Society burst open, and three girls stumbled inside. Red juice and mangled tomato flesh plastered their faces, hair, and clothing, making them look rather like Hollywood zombies. Irina and a few others dashed over to help them.

  “Everybody stay calm,” Moshe said, uttering the words most likely to cause panic. “I’ll call the police.” He turned to Shmuel and whispered, “Lock the doors. Delay the shuttles for now.” Shmuel nodded and got to work.

  Moshe strode to his office and closed the door. He didn’t call the police. He called Isaac Gurion.

  “Isaac,” he said, “they’re outside the building. Masses of them. They’re getting violent.”

  “I’ll call the commissioner right away.”

  “Thank you.”

  Moshe eased back in his chair and thanked God for powerful friends. He listened to the chant of the angry mob below, unable to compose his thoughts, never mind his speech. He glanced at his golden watch, then called the cardiologist’s office to defer his appointment.

  When he heard the bleat of a police foghorn, he raced back to the window. Two cruisers blared their horns and cut through the crowd. Three uniformed officers got out of a marked van and pushed toward the wooden crate. They raised their batons and gripped Avi by the legs, toppling him to the ground.

  Moshe smiled. Avi would wake up in a prison cell like Moshe had, only Avi didn’t have powerful friends like Isaac Gurion to open the door.

  “It was Avi, wasn’t it?” Galit said over dinner at home that evening.

  He had not wanted to trouble her with the details. Avi had caused her enough suffering.

  She put down her fork. “I saw him on the news. I should have warned you.”

  “Warned me?” Talya sat out of earshot on the living room couch and watched a cartoon.

  “He came by the house last week.”

  Moshe stopped chewing his spaghetti. “What did he want?” He knew the answer only too well. Avi wanted to take over his life again, the life he claimed Moshe had stolen from him, the hypocrite.

  “I didn’t want to alarm you,” she said. “He’s full of lies. Promise me you’ll stay away from him.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard. The police arrested him. He won’t be bothering anyone for some time.”

  “Promise me you won’t speak with him.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. The ordeal had shaken her harder than he had expected. Good thing he hadn’t mentioned the rabble’s promise to break the dry bones. Or had she heard that on TV as well?

  “All right,” he said. “I won’t.” That promise should be easy to keep.

  There came a loud knocking at the door. Moshe and Galit locked eyes.

  “Don’t.”

  “It’s not him.”

  Moshe walked over to the door and put his eye to the peephole. He recognized the security guards and opened the door.

  “Isaac, welcome. Please, have dinner with us.”

  Talya jumped up when the first dark agent stepped inside. “Is that a real gun?” she said and pointed at the shoulder holster that protruded from his suit jacket.

  Isaac Gurion declined the dinner invitation. He wrinkled his brow and pouted his lips. “Can we speak in private?”

  Galit herded a disappointed Talya upstairs to bed and the two men settled on the living room couch.

  “Thank you for your help today.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I have some troubling news.” The politician frowned, as though loath to share the tidings. “We did some polls, as we often do. The zombie meme is spreading.”

  “We’re not zombies.”

  “I know that. But, as you can imagine, the idea arouses very unpleasant reactions in voters.”

  The walls wavered around Moshe, the same sense of vertigo he had experienced on the phone with Dr. Malkior’s secretary the morning the minster had abruptly cancelled their press conference. The ground was slipping away beneath his feet again.

  “How many voters?”

  “Enough. We need to cancel your appearance at the event tomorrow, to distance the party from the Dry Bones Society for now. Until the negative sentiments settle. This is a temporary measure, I assure you.”

  “How long?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  Was this goodbye? Moshe was developing a healthy distrust for politicians, and his tingling doublespeak feelers indicated that Gurion wasn’t telling him the full story.

  “I’m sorry, Moshe. I wish things were different. This isn’t personal,” he added. “It’s just politics.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Thursday morning, Ahmed strolled down a narrow lane of small, round cobblestones. Potted plants lined the storefronts of Mazkeret Moshe, the labyrinth of quaint alleys behind Clal Center. Leafy trees glowed in golden sunlight while birds sang songs of hope. Beauty filled the world when a pretty girl walked at your side.

  After his first meal at the Dry Bones Society on Monday, Samira had shown him the storeroom of secondhand clothes, and then his new bed—one of four simple bunks in a cramped dormitory room. He placed his box of clothes beneath his bed and enjoyed the first steaming-hot shower of his new life. Samira signed him up for carpentry classes. She checked up on him often and they shared most of their meals together. He had made his first new friend and, although their Arabic chatter drew some concerned glances in the dining hall, Ahmed finally felt comfortable in his new home.

  That morning he had summoned the courage to ask Samira to go with him for a walk. They had ducked out through the parking bay beneath Clal Center to avoid the hateful demonstrators on Jaffa Street, and strolled through the maze of old stone courtyards and enclosed gardens.

  A warm, fuzzy sensation buzzed in his chest as they walked. He no longer looked over his shoulder for Damas or the Rottweiler. He had left his suffering far behind, and allowed his worries to fade away until only he and Samira remained, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  Samira tucked a strand of brown hair into her hijab. “Shall we sit here?” She pointed to a wooden bench in a courtyard.

  Water flowed from the mouth of a fountain shaped like a jumping fish, and splashed into the basin at the center of the yard. Stone ra
bbits crouched at the edge of the flowerbeds.

  “I always wanted a rabbit,” she said. “When I was young we never had any pets.”

  “Me neither.”

  The air filled with the sounds of bubbling water and whispering trees.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s good to get out, to get away from them.” He chuckled. He shared his room with a crazy man who ranted in Old French and three sullen and bearded Jews. Ahmed kept to himself.

  “Them?”

  “You know. The Jews.”

  Her smile faltered, and his world darkened. He would do anything to bring back that sweet smile.

  “I had a baby,” she said. “In my old life. A little girl. But my husband was a jealous man. He forbade me to work or even to leave the house. He spread lies that I had… that I had sinned with another man. My father,” she said. “My father…” She turned to the heavens and wiped a tear from her eye.

  “It’s OK,” Ahmed said. “We don’t have to talk about it.” He could guess the end of the story. Arab girls disappeared all the time. Indecent girls. Arab men as well. Collaborators, all of them. Nobody talked about the honor killings but everyone believed the rumors of their guilt. They had deserved to die. But what if, like in Samira’s case, the rumor was false?

  “When I woke up,” she continued, “I had nowhere to go. This was before the Dry Bones Society. Only Rabbi Yosef was prepared to take me in, a dirty, homeless Arab girl.” She looked Ahmed over. “And Moshe Karlin saved me from slavery, even though he didn’t have to.”

  “Slavery?” he asked.

  She glanced down and rubbed the palm of her hand. “A labor camp in Talpiot. We worked odd jobs for a few days. Our task master was a cruel Ethiopian.”

  Ahmed’s heart skipped a beat. “An Ethiopian missing two fingers?”

  Her eyed widened. “You know Damas?”

  “I was his slave too!” They laughed.

  Ahmed inhaled quickly, almost choking on fresh air. He had kept his past bottled up so tight, it felt good to open the lid and release the pressure. “After two months in that hell,” he said, “I escaped. I slept in an old tomb for a week before I came here.”

  “You escaped?”

  “Yes, like you.”

  “We didn’t escape. Moshe bought our freedom with a lot of money. Aren’t you afraid?”

  Ahmed stretched his arms over the back of the bench. “They’ve given up on me by now.”

  She nodded her head but worry still cast a shadow over her features. She cared about him, and he wished that their walk would last forever.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Me?” He gave her a questioning glance and she lowered her eyes again.

  “How did your old life end?”

  A ball of dread lodged in his throat. After all the Jews had done for her, the truth would horrify her. He could make something up—that he had saved a child from a speeding truck, or even that he had slipped on a banana peel at work—but he did not want to lie to her.

  “I can’t… I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  She nodded quickly and her eyes glistened again. “I understand,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about it.” The hint of a terrible death had awakened her sympathy for him. No, she must never find out.

  “This is a new life,” she added. “A fresh start.”

  Ahmed liked the sound of that. “Yes,” he said, that warm, fuzzy feeling returning. “A fresh start.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Moshe’s dreams shattered on the morning news. The screen mounted on the wall of the Dry Bones Society showed Isaac Gurion speaking into the microphone at the offices of his Upward party.

  “I am excited to announce a new partnership,” he intoned in his authoritative baritone. Avi Segal stood beside him in a green suit, a self-satisfied grin threatening to split his face in two. “Mr. Segal’s presence high on our list is another sign of our commitment to the hard-working middle class—the salt of the earth and the core of our society.”

  Moshe folded his arms. His cheeks cooled. He should have seen this coming. The winds of public opinion had shifted and Gurion’s “temporary distancing” from the Dry Bones Society had become—literally overnight—the new backbone of his election campaign.

  “That double-crossing bastard,” Shmuel grumbled beside Moshe.

  But there was more. The camera zoomed out to reveal a clump of ultra-Orthodox rabbis onstage, grinning and stroking their beards. Among them, Rabbi Emden stood erect in his satin suit and tidy bowler, and flashed his pearly whites at the press.

  “And,” Gurion continued, “I extend an equally warm welcome to our new friends at Torah True. Together we will guard all that our country holds dear and keep back the unnatural scourge that threatens our timeless traditions.”

  “Hypocritical creep,” Shmuel said. “Isaac Gurion in bed with the rabbis. Who would have believed it?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Moshe said. He should have seen that coming too, but the double betrayal had added insult to injury.

  He glanced at the assembled Society members around him in the call center. The chant of “Death to the Dead” drifted through the window from the street below, but softer than before. The numbers of the picketing mob had dwindled. Apparently, they had more important matters to deal with now such as campaigning for the elections.

  Phone operators groundhogged the cubicle dividers, concern imprinted on their faces.

  “No need to worry, my friends,” Moshe said, loud enough for all to hear. “Calls are still coming in. Resurrected men and women still need our help and donors are still opening their checkbooks. Let’s get back to work.”

  Heads disappeared into cubicles and Moshe turned to his management team. “Let’s talk in my office.”

  “Are we in trouble?” Irina asked, when the door had closed.

  Moshe perched on the edge of his desk. “Time will tell.”

  “At least we have the identity cards,” Rabbi Yosef said, finding, as usual, the silver lining. “That was the main reason we joined with Gurion.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Moshe tried to hide his disappointment. Gurion had whetted his appetite for more than mere citizenship. Think of all the good you can do, he had said. You could make the world a better place.

  “Let’s not be naïve,” Shmuel said. “I don’t think this Segal character is going to live and let live once he’s in Knesset. Rights can always be revoked. We could lose everything we’ve gained with another stroke of a pen.”

  There came a knock on the door and a new volunteer leaned into the room. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. Ben wore a black T-shirt and a pale, worried expression as he glanced at the room’s occupants. “There’s a problem at the Ministry of the Interior.”

  Moshe’s heart lurched. Here we go. “Have they stopped issuing identity cards?”

  “No,” Ben said. “But they closed the special counters. ‘No more special treatment.’ Things are going to take a lot longer.”

  Moshe swallowed his sigh of relief. “Thanks, Ben. Let us know if anything else changes.”

  Ben nodded and closed the door behind him.

  “See what I mean?” Shmuel said. “This isn’t the end.”

  Rafi shook his head and scowled, but Irina clenched her jaw. “Forget Gurion,” she said. “We’ll find another partner. There must be other parties that will work with us. What about Malkior?”

  Shmuel gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Gurion promised him the vice presidency. The Ministry of the Interior is in his pocket. The rabbis too and they hated us to begin with. And with all the bad press we’ve had, no one else will touch us with a ten-foot pole. We’re stuck.”

  Once again, Shmuel was right. Their situation was hopeless.

  Savta Sarah leaned against the large window of the office, her arms folded over her chest, and stared at Moshe. A smile curled the edges of her lips, and for a change he
knew what she was thinking. Her steely nerve had rubbed off on him. Perhaps “hopeless” was not the right word.

  “We have one other option,” Moshe said.

  He had the room’s undivided attention. His suggestion was so bold, it required an introduction and a dab of drama.

  He pulled his blue identity card holder from his back pocket and turned it over. “This is nice,” he said. “It helps me open a bank account and wait in line for a doctor. But in the end, it just makes me a part of the system.” He dropped the card back onto his desk. “And the system stinks.”

  He glanced at his team. “I’ve had enough of crooked politicians who change their values like underwear and create new parties every other day. I’m sick and tired of having to pull strings just to get society to respect my basic rights. And I bet voters are sick of all that too.”

  At the back of the room, Savta Sarah’s smile widened.

  “They deserve better. We deserve better. And this is where we can make a difference. We’re not just a bunch of ex–dead people. We are the past and the present. Religious and secular. Jews and Arabs. Our lives ended and we can see them for what they were, warts and all. And from this new vantage point, we can build a better future. A future with integrity and dignity, equality and harmony.” He smiled at Rabbi Yosef, who swallowed, no stranger to the themes of the messianic era. “To fix the mistakes of the past.”

  Moshe inhaled the magical hope his words had conjured. The promise of a bright new future hung in the air and glittered in the eyes of his audience.

  “That’s a wonderful speech,” Shmuel said, breaking the spell. “But how are we going to replace the system without powerful friends—without protekzia?”

  Here it comes. Moshe straightened on the edge of the desk. “By becoming our own powerful friend.”

  Savta Sarah beamed at him from the back of the room.

  “I don’t understand,” Shmuel said. “You want us to run in the elections—independently?”

  “Why not? We have a message and a platform. We have new members joining every day.”