by Alan Gold
To my dearest daughter,
I write this letter to you in the hope that . . .
Yael looked up through the windshield into the distance. There was Jerusalem, shining a blistering white in the afternoon sun, the burnished dome of the al-Aqsa Mosque burning brilliantly like a gold candle on a huge white birthday cake. Then she looked down again at the letter. How was it that over a hundred years ago, probably even a century and a half ago, a mother had written a letter to her daughter in Yiddish and the descendant was today a Palestinian woman, the mother of an imprisoned terrorist?
* * *
YAEL’S MIND was a sprawling chaos of revelations. Her world had been rocked and the daily grind of surgery and hospital corridors that had been her norm for so long seemed the life of a different person right now.
Yaniv’s claims about this Shin Bet operative; the imam being in league with the fanatical Neturei Karta; Bilal possibly being a Jew because of his matriarchal bloodline, a line passed down from mother to mother since . . . since . . . maybe from the time when the prophets were wandering the land, warning of doom and gloom . . . It was all too much.
She had checked in for the night to a tiny hotel in the center of the city. She feared going back to her apartment. If Hassan could find her in Peki’in, then they, whoever their agents were, could certainly find where she lived. Going to Bilal’s family home had been reckless but necessary; although she felt like hunted prey, she was still a doctor, a human being, and her responsibilities had dominated. So she drove straight into the city, stayed where there were the most people in the most public space, and found a random hotel—the kind of hotel that took cash and didn’t ask for names.
With blinds closed and door locked she sat at a small desk and struggled to read the letter Maryam had given her in the desperate hope it might save her son from prison. Its chances of changing anything about Bilal’s fate were virtually nonexistent, but the letter haunted her nonetheless.
She stared at the strange blend of languages and phrases trying to translate, but she was defeated by the German language. Sleeping fitfully, she waited until morning, when she switched on her cell phone. She knew it was early, but she knew that the person she was dialing was at his office at six in the morning without fail.
“Yes?” he said.
“Shalman, hi, it’s Yael.”
“Bubbeleh, darling, how are you? So what’s new? You’re calling—you hardly ever call. It’s so early. Is everything all right? Why so early? Are you okay? Of course you’re okay, because if you weren’t okay, you’d have said something. You want me. Good! What? Anything, bubbeleh. Tell Shalman.”
She knew that the first few moments of their conversation would be like this: questions, guilt; he was like a Jewish mother except that he was her Jewish grandfather. And she loved him so much for all his quirky ways.
“I have something I want to show you.”
“Oh my God! Not another artifact! One is a gift, two is showing off!”
“No, nothing like that. Well, not quite. It’s a letter. In German. I need you to help me. It’s not something that I can translate because I need to understand the nuances.”
“Translations, anybody. Nuances, come see me.” He put down the phone.
Half an hour later, she was sitting opposite him, drinking coffee and eating a doughnut while he read the letter, making careful notes. When he’d finished it, he put down his pen, and Yael said, “Well, what do—”
But he held up his hand, turned the letter over, and began from the beginning. “For a translation, I read once. For nuances, twice, sometimes three times.”
When he finished this time, he looked up at her and smiled. “From where did this come?”
“From the mother of a patient I’m looking after.”
“Some in low Yiddish, some in an attempt at high German. The person who wrote this wasn’t very clever or educated, so Goethe or Hegel she’s not; this was written by a mother to her daughter. She’s obviously trying to impress her with her use of words, yet often she uses confusing phrases and more sophisticated words in the wrong context.
“This letter was written as an explanation for a daughter, almost an apologia, by a lady named Malka; in Hebrew, of course, it means queen, but she didn’t call herself by her German name, which would have been Konigin. That would have sounded stupid. It was written to her daughter but she didn’t call the girl by name.”
“Okay, you lost me,” Yael said in protest at the incoherent explanation.
“Bubbeleh, it speaks about a time and a place far in the past, when manners were more particular, behavior more austere, and honor the axis around which families revolved. From what she says, Malka’s mother had done something to disgrace her family, leaving Malka and her descendants with a permanent stain on their characters, their bloodline. We’re talking here about unmarried sex and pregnancy, the sort of thing that caused girls to be thrown out of the family home. The letter speaks of her mother, who left Circassia and came to live in the port city of Odessa and from there migrated to Germany and settled in Berlin.
“But the main thrust of the letter is to tell her about Malka’s own birth, her mother, and her situation. Malka’s mother, living in a village in Circassia, had had an affair with a man visiting the area. She’d fallen pregnant out of wedlock and disgraced the family. But she was lucky because the man didn’t abandon her. No, he was a gentleman, and when she was forced out of her home by her family, the two fled to Berlin, where they lived in the Jewish community.”
Shalman looked up and smiled at Yael. “Very sexy lady, this one, and they chose Berlin because it’s cosmopolitan and bohemian, and more likely to accept couples living together.”
“Circassia? Tell me about Circassia.”
“It’s on the shores of the Black Sea, underneath Russia. Back in those days, in the middle of the 1800s, the Muslims were slaughtered by the mamzer Russians who wanted the farmland for themselves, and the government in Moscow ordered ethnic cleansing of the nation. All this was about the time that the distant relative of the woman who gave you this letter had the affair with the man and fell pregnant.”
He continued. “The letter goes on to say that in Berlin this Malka woman grew up as a German, but anti-Semitism in Europe and wars with France forced the family to move to Palestine and build a home there. They lived in a small town in the Galilee called Peki’in because Malka’s father had a business relationship with olive oil producers in Peki’in. It’s a very detailed letter . . .”
Yael looked at him in amazement. Peki’in—it was all starting to fit together.
“And the reason that this Malka person wrote the letter to her daughter was because the young woman was about to marry, and the mother wanted her to know the truth about her family history. She begged her daughter to persuade her future husband to leave Berlin and to come to Peki’in and live . . .” He searched the letter for the precise phrase: “ ‘in peace and harmony and safety among the new immigrants in a land full of potential.’
“Malka tried to convince her daughter that it would be a wonderful new life—and that, my love, is where the letter ends. Is that helpful?”
Yael stood, walked around his massive desk, and kissed him tenderly on the cheek and the forehead. She sat on his desk just as she’d done a thousand times when she was a little girl. He looked up at her knowing that something was on her mind.
“Nu?”
She shrugged.
“You have that look.”
“Look?”
He smiled. “Bubbeleh, all your life I’ve read your mind through the expressions on your face. Tell Shalman . . .”
She picked up a photo from his desk. It was one of a very few of her grandmother Judit. She was a tiny figure in the distance, sitting in a circle with a group of other men and women dressed in 1940s flared trousers, a knit top, and a cardigan. Frustratingly, it was in black-and-white, so Yael could only guess at the colors. She hoped that they were a dark blue. She loved
dark blue and wondered whether that had been Judit’s favorite color too.
“I know more about some Palestinian’s grandmother than I do about my own bubbeh. She was always a presence in the house when I was growing up, even though she died before I was born. Yet, whenever I asked my mom or you about her, I felt that you were always dodging the issue, as though there were things you didn’t want me to know. Why was that? Why won’t you tell me about her, what she was like as a young woman, what she liked to eat, her favorite colors, what she did when she first came here from Russia, when you and she—”
“Hoo, ha—so many questions,” said Shalman. “Your grandmother, aleha ha-shalom, was a wonderful woman. A queen among women. Gentle, loving, kind. She lived a life. In those days, darling, we young people were fighting for our country, our family, ourselves. Judit gave birth to your beloved mother and those few years we had together as a family were the best of my life . . . our lives. When she came from Russia, from St. Petersburg, she was—”
“St. Petersburg? But I thought she was from Moscow,” Yael interrupted.
Shalman nodded, wondering if he’d inadvertently gone too far. There was so much which he couldn’t tell Yael, so much that, even after sixty years, had to stay hidden. “Yes, Moscow. I don’t know why I said St. Petersburg. But when she came to Israel, we lived a life worth living. But all these questions. So long ago. They were hard times. We fought the British and the Arabs and the United Nations. It hurts me to think about it. But now isn’t the time. I have a meeting soon, and I have to prepare. One day, bubbeleh, I’ll tell you more. Today isn’t the day.”
Shalman waved her away with grandfatherly affection and went back to his work.
Yael kissed him on the cheek and the forehead and walked out. She so badly wanted to tell him of the danger she was in—she so urgently wanted to share her fears with him—but she knew him so well, and predicted that his reaction would be one of panic, hysteria. He’d call the police, Mossad, the prime minister . . . everybody. And she had to keep an atmosphere of calm and confidentiality until she and Yaniv had sorted things through. Love him as she did, Shalman was the very last person in whom she could confide.
As she left his office, he watched her disappear, and spent long moments looking at the closed door. Suddenly overcome by emotions he thought he’d buried forty years ago, he felt himself on the verge of tears. He picked up the picture Yael had been looking at and studied the indistinct face of his wife, Judit. He bit his lip to stop himself from sobbing.
“Why?” he asked himself, suddenly realizing that he had spoken aloud into an empty room. Even after all these years, he was still overwhelmed by the fury.
“Why?”
He replaced the photograph and stared out of the window, consumed with grief and anger and disgust. “Why?” he asked himself again. They could have had such a wonderful life together. They could have been a family like other families; but something had happened to her in Russia, in St. Petersburg, that she’d never told him about. And from the moment he’d met her, when they were both working for the terrorist band Lehi, he knew that there was more to his long-dead wife . . . Something much deeper, and darker.
He sighed and looked again at the photo, shaking his head. It was all so long ago, longer than a lifetime, but it was still raw. And he was still bitter.
From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see a man staring at him through a pair of high-powered binoculars from a distant rooftop. He’d been watching Yael’s and Shalman’s every action on the explicit instructions of Eliahu Spitzer, who had ordered him to follow Yael, see what she did and to whom she spoke, and report back to him in person, keeping no written record.
* * *
YANIV GROSSMAN WAS CONSUMED by the story. The linkage between Spitzer and the imam and Rabbi Shmuel Telushkin from Neturei Karta was something he could almost taste. And the key to it was Bilal. Yaniv didn’t yet have the meat of the story but he knew it was close. Yael would lead him there, perhaps once she’d retrieved Bilal’s phone, and whatever evidence it might still contain. All she had to do was to go to the property office in the hospital, tell them that she wanted pills from Bilal’s clothing, and put the phone in her pocket.
Even as he thought the words to himself, he felt embarrassment. Yael would lead him there. He was a reporter, somebody whose job relied on contacts, often manipulating them to give him detailed and underlying facts. Sometimes—no, often—the people whom he secretly interviewed put themselves and their livelihoods in danger. The only promise he could ever make to them for the risks they took on his behalf was confidentiality and anonymity. He’d go to prison before he’d reveal the name of a source.
And now he was treating Yael as a source. In the beginning, when they’d first met at the museum and he was doing a color piece about the seal that she’d taken from Bilal’s hand, he used his charm and looks to coax her into meeting him for a feature. But from the moment he’d seen her on the podium, he’d been captivated by her beauty, her intelligence, her confidence, her poise. And he knew he’d used his position as an American television reporter to inveigle her into meeting him again—and again.
Now he was smitten. Not in love, not like some hormonal schoolboy, but he’d go to bed thinking of her and wake with a smile on his face. He’d count the hours before meeting her. She fascinated him, and he wanted her—badly. But unlike so many women who’d become easy prey for him, Yael had resisted his blandishments, and her resistance had encouraged him to push the boundaries.
And yet, despite his desire to hold her, to feel the softness of her skin and hair, he was preparing to use her to get to the heart and soul of a major story. A wave of embarrassment swept over him as he drove away from the center of Jerusalem. Could he? Would he allow his professional interests to infiltrate what could be a potentially serious romantic relationship?
Nope. He’d open himself up to her, tell her the reasons he wanted information, and ask her permission to continue. He nodded to himself and smiled.
Love: 1. Journalism: 0.
And how often was a reporter such an integral part of his own story? Woodward and Bernstein had used informants to smash Watergate and bring down an American president, but they weren’t involved in guns and car chases. He was a reporter, not a soldier. But what choice did he, or Yael, have? The circumstances were dead against them.
He was thinking through this dilemma while driving toward his apartment in Ramot Alon, his route taking him through the bustling center of the metropolis, within sight of the illuminated walls of the Old City. It was so different from New York, where he’d grown up. He loved Brooklyn—he always would—but no American city could hope to match the insane blends of antiquity and modernity, of popular and classical, of religious and secular, of Jerusalem.
No matter how long he lived in the capital of Israel, nor how familiar he was with its surroundings, he never failed to be moved when he saw the towering fortifications. But this time he barely noticed them, he was so lost in his thoughts. What was Eliahu Spitzer up to? If he was close to, or had even become, a member of the Neturei Karta, then working deep within Israeli security was a scandal of the highest order. One part of Spitzer was dedicated to the salvation of the state, the other part to its downfall.
But how to prove it? And what was the link to the imam who had sent Hassan to murder Yael? With all his digging, Yaniv found virtually no information on the imam from the village of Bayt al Gizah. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere just a few short years ago. To mastermind a nearly successful bombing attempt on the Western Wall, he must have resources and support. But there was no trace. Yaniv’s contacts in the police, Shin Bet, and the antiterrorist agencies told him that the imam wasn’t on anybody’s radar.
Even if Yaniv did go to the head of Shin Bet and lay the information about Eliahu in front of him, without the evidence of Bilal’s phone, it was all hearsay, speculation, and innuendo. And even with the photo of the three men together, Spitzer would probably be able to
explain it away. Yaniv knew that he might do some temporary damage to Eliahu’s reputation, but any investigation would prove groundless; a man like Spitzer would have covered his tracks meticulously—of that, Yaniv was certain. And worse, if Eliahu realized that he was being investigated, he’d withdraw, resign from Shin Bet, or just disappear.
Yaniv drove slowly in the congested early-evening Jerusalem traffic past the King David Hotel toward the north of the city and casually glanced in the rearview mirror to check the traffic behind him. There were a dozen cars and a helmeted motorcyclist.
Ahead of him, the traffic stopped for lights and the motorcyclist drew up beside his car. Yaniv could see him out of the corner of his left eye. The man suddenly bent down as if to tie his shoelace, but his helmet must have connected with Yaniv’s back car door, because he heard a small click. He thought nothing of it, and when the lights changed, he drove on. He switched on the radio and listened to the six o’clock news, but as he left the frenetic traffic and approached the more suburban part of the city, he was able to speed up.
It was there that he saw three young men, all ultra-Orthodox Jews dressed in their eighteenth-century clothes, arguing with a young woman dressed in a miniskirt, high heels, and a top with a plunging neckline. As their numbers grew through a high birth rate and their security became more and more assured due to their ability to wield political pressure on the Israeli government, the people of the Orthodox communities were becoming increasingly militant in their dealings with secular Israelis. And for the past few months they had targeted young Jewish women who wore revealing clothes.
It was obvious that these young men were berating the young woman about her immodesty, probably calling her a whore and immoral. She looked terrified as the three were ridiculing and taunting her. They blocked her path so that she couldn’t escape them, even though they weren’t touching her.
Yaniv Grossman had spent a career as an observer, a commentator, reporting on but not being a part of world events. But he was also an American, raised in a society of freedom and excess. Seeing archaic misogynistic attitudes like this infuriated him. Yaniv pulled his car over, got out, and ran across the road.