by Alan Gold
“He attacked me,” he replied.
Then the second guard cried, “Look!” He pointed to the homemade knife still in Ibrahim’s hand.
The guard turned to Bilal and said softly, “You know who this is, don’t you? You’re either lucky or stupid, kid.”
* * *
BILAL SPENT A WEEK in solitary confinement over the fight. And the silence of enclosed walls gave him time to think. Images of Ibrahim and the knife blended with the words of Yaniv and the memories of the skunk-haired man, his imam, and the strange rabbi Jew in the shadow. His head pounded with confusion. But as the week wound on, the reality of what had happened and what it meant became clearer to him. One of his own had tried to take his life. A prisoner he had never met wanted him dead. While Bilal wanted to scream: Why? he found himself asking only: Who? Who ordered Ibrahim to kill him? The only certainty Bilal knew was that there was no one he could trust. Neither the Jew guards nor his Palestinian brothers. He was alone.
When the week of solitary confinement was over, Bilal walked the corridors back to his cell, accompanied by a guard. He was surprised that as he passed, men who’d once looked at him in contempt now avoided his eyes. If they were afraid of him now, there was a good chance they’d leave him alone. But in that moment the thought of being forever alone terrified him more than Ibrahim with a knife.
Deep down he knew Ibrahim wouldn’t be the last. He had to speak to somebody. On request prisoners could have access to a phone to speak to family or lawyers or spiritual leaders. When Bilal asked to use the phone and was given access to a small booth, he phoned the last friend he believed he had.
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER Hassan was granted permission to visit the prison. He had lied and said he was Bilal’s cousin. Nobody questioned it, although he knew he would be searched and his conversation with Bilal would likely be monitored.
As Hassan approached the prison, all the fears instilled in him of what lay beyond those walls, the fate of so many of his brothers and cousins, gripped him. But as he steadied himself and entered the gate, he wondered if there were other forces at work that tied his stomach in knots. He had been instructed to kill: the imam had told him what he must do. The Jewish doctor must die. And yet, he was about to see his lifelong friend alive and breathing because of that same doctor. Would Bilal know what Hassan had been ordered to do? Would Bilal owe honor to the woman who saved him? More than anything Hassan knew that Bilal would see through any lie that he told, and Hassan was afraid of the truth.
He and Bilal sat opposite each other in the reception room where wives and children came to see their husbands and brothers.
“My brother, you look—” Hassan began, but the urgency on Bilal’s face stopped him talking.
Bilal whispered, “They’re trying to kill me. Hassan, I need your help.”
Hassan was shocked but Bilal didn’t wait for a response.
“One man with a knife. I broke his arm and beat the shit out of him, but they’ll come again.”
Hassan was horrified. “Who? Who would want to kill you? They know who you are. They know you’re the one who bombed the temple.”
“Hassan. Nothing is right. Nothing in here is right.” Bilal clenched his teeth and fought back tears. He would not let Hassan see him like a woman or a child.
Hassan for his part was shocked to see his friend in such a state and saying such things. He’d always looked up to Bilal for his strength of character, his courage. “What did you do?”
Bilal’s fear became anger, his words said through gritted teeth. “I did nothing. I said nothing. I told the Jews nothing. I spoke to no one. I did what I was told to do. I did everything the imam wanted . . .” The words caught in his throat. Hassan put a hand on Bilal’s arm, not knowing what to say.
“Hassan. I can’t trust anyone. Only you. You’re the only one.”
“What can I do?” Hassan asked as Bilal stared at him.
“There is someone . . .”
“Who?” asked Hassan, leaning in and lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“The doctor . . .”
The words hung in the air and Hassan’s eyes opened wide. “The Jew doctor? The one who operated . . .” he said, stunned by what Bilal had just told him. “The Jew?”
“Hassan, you must trust me and do what I ask you. She is a Jew but she helped my family; she helped me. She saved me when I would have died. And now . . .”
Hassan’s mind was spinning and he struggled to grasp anything firm. “But why are they trying to kill you? Who’s trying to kill you? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know. But, Hassan, you must trust nobody. I trusted everybody and I’m in here. You must trust nobody. Do you swear to me? Nobody.”
“But who?” he asked. The tension in his voice showed he shared Bilal’s concern.
Bilal leaned closer. “The imam,” he whispered.
Hassan’s eyes widened in shock. He was speechless.
Softly, conspiratorially, Bilal said, “I drove the imam to a village near Bethlehem. He ordered me to stay in the car, but there was the girl. Remember? The video I showed you?”
“I remember,” replied Hassan.
“On that night the imam was in a meeting with important people.”
“So? The imam meets with important people all the time.”
“He was talking to a man with white hair on his head. He was talking to a Jew!”
Hassan looked at Bilal, showing no comprehension of where Bilal was going with this.
“That man with the white hair. He came to me. He works for the secret police. He works for Shin Bet.”
Hassan slowly shook his head. He failed to see the relevance.
“Why was the imam talking to a Jew from Shin Bet? Why are my Palestinian brothers trying to kill me? Please, Hassan, my brother, go to the doctor. She is the only one who can help me.”
“Bilal, my brother, I came to see you because . . . your parents . . . I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can. I’m not good at this.”
* * *
539 BCE
JOSHUA THE PRIEST feared that the number of Jews who camped outside the walls of the city of Damascus after their long twenty-day march would be considerably fewer than those who would leave with him to travel to Jerusalem. Many who had arrived exhausted had been overwhelmed by the seductive charms of the city. Damascus was like a perfumed dancer, a sacred prostitute in a pagan temple, open, willing, full of fragrances and soft fabrics, and always ready to ensnare the unwary.
Damascus was still under the control of the Babylonians even though Babylon had recently been conquered by King Cyrus the Great of Persia. But for those Hebrews who entered the city after their exhausting weeks of walking, it was a reminder of the lifestyle they’d once enjoyed back in Babylon but now had left far behind. The hardship of the road, the constant traveling, the robbers and bandits, the freezing nights spent in tents or under the stars and the fetid heat of the day—all contributed to their misery as they trudged along, and to their joy as the huge walls of the city came into view.
When they wandered through the gates of the city, the coolness of the houses and drinking places, the life and vitality, the colors and smells of the city of Damascus, made many weep. And they wept louder when, to their distress three nights later, Joshua called a meeting of elders to announce that in the next few days they would leave to journey onward to Jerusalem.
They had left Babylon in a spirit of adventure, knowing that they would be the chosen and righteous ones in the eyes of their Lord, Adonai. But the rigors of the journey had caused many to reconsider their decision and some, Joshua knew, were thinking either of staying in Damascus or returning to Babylon.
He was so concerned that he prayed both to the Lord for guidance and to his ancestor Ahimaaz for strength of purpose. Joshua often prayed to Ahimaaz in those quiet moments when he was alone in the synagogue. To be the descendant of one of the greatest of all high priests, whose reputation as a
son of Zadok had grown with each generation, was a gift from the Almighty. Among those who remained faithful to the Lord, Ahimaaz was revered for his wisdom, his knowledge, and his steadfast uprightness. The legends spoke of shouting matches between Solomon and Ahimaaz over the false idols and pagan gods that the king’s many wives and concubines had brought into the palace. Being a descendant of Ahimaaz gave Joshua an authority that no other rabbi or priest held.
But Joshua’s authority was being undermined just six streets away, in the northern part of the city of Damascus, a hilly area of rich people’s houses where cool winds blew and the stench of the marketplace was absent. Ten Hebrews had climbed the hill to reach the house where Reuven, the wealthy merchant, and his pregnant wife, Naomi, were staying.
As the men sat in the shaded alcove in his garden of spices, fruits, and flowers, they looked in expectation at Reuven, who had asked them to come to this meeting.
“Friends,” he said, although this was one of the few times that they had been allowed into his presence; none had ever been invited to his palatial home when they all lived in Babylon, “it is time, I think, to ask ourselves who we are and what we are.”
They looked at him in surprise. He’d asked them to come to his temporary home in secrecy, and none had any idea what was the purpose, so his statement was intriguing.
“We were an exiled people in Babylon, but for fifty years of our exile we gained respect in the eyes of the city and the king; now that Babylon has a new king, we are no longer slaves or servants but proper citizens of his empire. Cyrus has asked us to return to Israel, rebuild that devastated land, use our abilities and make it flourish.”
Abiel, of the tribe of Benjamin, interrupted, and asked, “Reuven, why are you telling us what we know?”
He looked at him and smiled, asking, “Then if you know this, tell me who we are. Tell me what we are, Abiel.”
“We’re Hebrews. We’re returning to our land and—”
“And who leads a people?” asked Reuven simply. “Do we have a king to lead us? No! Our last king died when we were exiled. So, without a king, who leads us?”
Each of the men looked at the one next to him. Nathan, of the tribe of Judah, said, “Zerubbabel leads us, and his uncle Sheshbazzar with him. They are descendants of the royal family of David through the line of King Solomon. Sheshbazzar carries with him all the things that Nebuchadnezzar stole from our temple. He will return them, and then . . .”
Nathan stopped talking because neither he nor the others gathered nor anybody among the Israelites really knew who would rule in Israel on their return. Reuven nodded and couldn’t suppress a knowing smile. “Precisely! We’re following Joshua because he is our chief rabbi and Zerubbabel because he is descended from a line of kings who lived five hundred years ago; but are these men leaders? One knows the Lord God Adonai, and the other is an old man who has to be carried from place to place on a litter.
“And when we arrive in Israel, who will direct the building? Who will marshal the farmers to begin clearing the land and planting crops so that we don’t starve in the coming months? Who will ensure we’re strong enough to defend ourselves from the Egyptians or the Phoenicians, or from being robbed by desert nomads?” asked Reuven.
The group fell into silence, not because these questions hadn’t occurred to them since leaving Babylon, but because nobody had raised them aloud.
Daniel, of the tribe of Judah, asked quietly, “Are you proposing yourself as our king, Reuven?”
The others looked at him in surprise. “No,” Reuven said immediately. “I am a merchant. I have the ear of King Cyrus, and through my relationships in distant lands, I’m known to many rulers and the rich men in their cities. But I have no wish to become a king. No, what I’m saying is this: that today and tomorrow we have no leadership. We therefore must create a leadership that the people will follow, will respect, and will venerate. Wound a camel and it will limp on; cut the head off a camel and it dies immediately. Without a head, a people will not survive in a hard and challenging world.”
“We have leaders,” said Abiel. “We have our chief rabbi, Joshua; we have Zerubbabel; we have—”
“And you would be led by men who know how the Lord thinks but who know nothing about administration, the laws of our land, how to create and run an army? Shall I go on?” asked Reuven.
“So you do want to be king!”
“No, I want all of us to be kings! I want a ruling council made up of men with different skills. Some of you will be important to the future running of the nation, and we will find others with great skills who will join us. But you are here to listen to my idea and to take it further. Do you all agree?”
“A council? Such as the king of a nation uses to advise him on what to do? But it is still the king who makes the decisions. That is the nature of our lives. If we have a council to run the affairs of the nation, then which of us will make the decisions?” asked Daniel.
“I knew that this would be uppermost in your minds,” Reuven answered. “The council will have an uneven number of members at all times. If more than half agree, then that decision will be binding on the rest. We will sign a pledge that we will abide by the rule of the majority. Is it agreed?”
They sat in silence, contemplating a form of government that none had heard of before. They looked at him in both surprise and confusion.
“What I’m proposing is that the rule of the land, now that we no longer have a king, should be determined by those of the people who are able to govern. Just as all kings have ministers and advisers, so we will be ministers and advisers, and—”
“And we won’t have a king to make the decisions,” said Daniel. “In Babylon we were governed by our chief rabbi Joshua, and by Zerubbabel, of the line of King David, with his uncle Sheshbazzar. It was always to be that when we returned to Israel and reestablished Jerusalem as our capital—that Zerubbabel would be our king. So why are we sitting here, talking about a council of governors, when we already have a king in line for the throne?”
Reuven had anticipated the question and was ready with the answer. But knowing the value of creating tension in a negotiation, he sighed, shook his head slightly, and took a sip of his pomegranate water. Softly, as though explaining something simple to a child, he said, “For five hundred years we’ve been governed by kings who have progressively weakened the Jewish people by their incompetence and avarice. For the same amount of time we’ve also been governed by rabbis who tell us that all of our problems are caused by our failings, our lack of faith, and so Adonai is punishing us. So, because of inept kings and because we weren’t faithful enough, ten of our twelve tribes have disappeared, our land has been ruined, our capital, Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble, our temple was destroyed, and our people were made slaves of the Babylonians.
“Well, I’ve had enough of kings and certainly enough of rabbis. It’s time that we, the Jewish people, took responsibility for our own government. We will gather the best men of the land, and it is we who will govern—”
Infuriated, Daniel interrupted. “We Jews are a people because our kings are from the line of David; we are one people because we have one God, Who brought us out of the land of Egypt, the land of bondage, where we were slaves. How dare you sit there and denounce our kings and our rabbis and suggest that we are more capable of being rulers? God will strike you dead for this, Reuven the merchant.”
Theatrically, Reuven stood, stretched out his arms, and shouted up to the sky, “For my blasphemy, Lord God Almighty, strike me dead. Send a bolt of lightning through my heart . . .”
Everybody looked up at him in shock. Reuven stood there for a long, long moment and slowly turned to Daniel. He shook his head. “I’m not sure that God is listening.”
* * *
THEY MET IN A SHOP selling spices in Damascus’s eastern market. They smiled at each other and kissed as sisters. Rabbi Joshua’s wife, Shoshanna, was buying leeks and onions for their evening meal. Naomi, Reuven’s wife, was sear
ching for a gold clasp to decorate a new robe she’d bought, now that the baby was growing so big that her clothes were starting to be too tight.
“Sister,” said Shoshanna, “you look so pale. Is the pregnancy difficult for you?”
Naomi nodded. “Girls half my age seem to have no problem growing a baby in their womb. I’m suffering because of my years and because I am slight of body.”
“Come, let’s go and find an inn and drink a cup of spiced water to refresh us,” said Shoshanna, leading her by the hand to a place she’d found the previous day where the owner used fresh and not dried herbs in his water. They sat and sipped the hot liquid, and it immediately refreshed both of them.
“Soon we’ll be in Jerusalem,” Shoshanna said. “Joshua says that we’ll be leaving here in a matter of days, and then it’s only a two-month walk until we return to our homeland. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Naomi nodded. “It coincides with the time of the birth of my son. The Lord God has been kind to me. I hope it pleases Him to continue to be kind and to allow me to finish my journey in good health so that Reuven and I can enjoy many years of pleasure with our son.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Shoshanna. “Don’t you think that you’ll finish the journey?”
“Only God Almighty knows whether I’ll survive. I’ve been feeling so exhausted these last few days that I don’t know whether I can continue on to Jerusalem. Perhaps I should stay here until the birth.”
“No! No, you can’t do that. Your son must be born in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem. He will be the first of a new generation of Israelites.”
Naomi nodded. “But if my body is too weak, I may be forced to stay here, in Damascus.”
“But that means that Reuven will remain with you, should that be your decision. My husband was counting on Reuven to assist him in rebuilding the nation.”
“Joshua? Is he on the council of governors?”