by Alan Gold
Abraham knocked diffidently on the door and, within moments, a large black Nubian slave opened it. He looked with disdain at Abraham and said in a supercilious voice, bordering on insolence, “People of trade do not come to my master’s front door. Round the back with you.”
He was about to close the door when Abraham said, “That lesion on your neck. An unguent of pine tar, bark from the almond tree, and a tincture of sulfur, the yellow powder I get from the Dead Sea, will help. If you’ll let me in, I’ll give you some.”
The servant frowned and put his hand to his neck where he felt the painful sore caused by a boil that hadn’t healed. He opened the door and nodded to Abraham. “You are a doctor?”
“I’m here to cure your servant, Leah. She has a fever.” He dug into his sack, took out an ointment, and gave it to the Nubian. “Wash the lesion with water that has been boiled. That’s most important. Not water from the well. Wash it with soap and try to clean out all of the pus. Then spread this unguent liberally over the lesion and the surrounding skin. Do the same thing again the following day, and each day that follows until it’s healed.” The Nubian looked at him skeptically. “If you don’t, then the poisons from the lesion may enter your body, and you will die in agony in a month.”
Shocked, the servant led him into the house and to where the food was prepared and washing was done. In a side room where four or five of the serving girls slept on the rush mats on the floor, a young woman lay, her face burning, her bare arms wet with sweat; she was panting and gasping and lay with her body in a fetal position.
“Leah? I’m Abraham ben Zakkai. I’m a doctor. Your master, Samuel, sent for me.”
But the girl either couldn’t hear, or was in such mortal agony that she wasn’t listening.
Abraham felt her forehead. It was scorching hot. He realized immediately that her body’s humors were out of alignment. He searched his memory for what Hippocrates had written about the humors and the seasons. It was summer, and so this was supposed to match the season of yellow bile, but it was obviously her blood that was in disarray, yet that was supposed to happen in the spring.
He examined her, and from the look of the girl the black and yellow bile were in order but the blood and phlegm were out of their natural orientation. He glanced up at the people gathered to see what he was doing. He had to go beyond Hippocrates and make his own judgment.
“Her blood is too hot and it is causing problems for the phlegm, which is why she has problems breathing. Bring me cold water so that I can cool down her skin, which will cool her blood. Then take this potion of roots and barks and dilute it in the same amount of water. Get her to sip it slowly—very slowly—for the rest of the day. That will bring down the fever that is racking her body.”
They stood there staring at him. “Go!” he ordered.
When he’d ensured that her body was cooled by the water and that the cold, wet towels on her forehead, chest, stomach, and legs were changed regularly for fresh wet towels, he followed the Nubian servant into the master’s area of the house. He waited in an antechamber until the master was ready to see him. The noise from the adjoining room was loud: men laughing. Abraham watched as the door was opened and three men, Roman soldiers of elevated rank, walked out into the corridor and toward the front door, followed by a tall, swarthy man in rich merchant’s clothes. One of the soldiers peered into the antechamber and saw Abraham sitting there. He didn’t smile but merely looked away. It was obvious that Abraham’s crude clothes and hat identified him as a Jew not worth knowing.
When the three soldiers had left, Samuel the merchant walked back, and his Nubian servant whispered into his ear. Samuel nodded, looked at Abraham, and said curtly, “Come.”
Abraham followed Samuel into his sumptuous office. It was lined with pillars, scrolls, ledgers, tables, and chairs. On the wall were marble busts of Roman gods and dead Roman emperors and figurines of beautiful women in scanty clothing. So different from Abraham’s simple yet homely house.
“My servant tells me that you have not just cured Leah but that your salve has already made his lesion feel better. You’re a good doctor.”
Abraham shrugged. “I use the knowledge I’ve gained by studying in Greece and Rome. I also use local herbs and remedies, which seem to work well.”
Samuel nodded. He picked up a small cloth bag and weighed it roughly in his hand. He threw it to Abraham. “Here: it’s more than you expect, but you’ve saved the lives of two of my servants, so it’s what you deserve.”
Abraham put the bag into the pocket of his tunic. “You care about your servants? I thought that friends of Rome adopted Rome’s attitude toward us.”
“I’m a friend of Rome, Doctor, but also a Jew. I treat life as sacred, whether it’s a Roman’s life or the life of a servant.”
“Yet, you sit here with Romans clasping your hands as your friends while Israel’s back is crushed under their heel. How can you do this, Samuel the merchant; you, a Jew?”
Samuel looked at him scornfully. “You continue to treat your patients, Doctor, and I assure you I won’t interfere. Let me deal with my business with the Romans, and don’t you interfere with me. You are no longer required in my house. Go!”
He sat down at his table and started to read a scroll. Abraham knew that the interview was over. He left Samuel’s house and walked down the hill to his home. But Abraham didn’t notice as he left Samuel’s compound that a man was standing in the shadows, observing him leave. The man was dressed in the clothes of an Israelite and could have been a farmer, a craftsman, or one of the growing numbers of men whose lives had been destroyed by the Romans and who now idled away their time betting on the throwing of bones or robbing merchants who came to trade in Jerusalem’s marketplaces.
The man waited until Abraham had walked beyond the walls of Samuel’s compound before he ran quickly through the shadows and entered the house. He didn’t knock, nor did he wait for servants to open the door. Nobody knew he was there. As he walked softly into the vestibule, he felt underneath his robes for the handle of his dagger, the essential uniform of the Sicarii, the group of Zealots, determined at any cost to rid Israel of the Romans. And as one of the Jews who’d been Jerusalem’s most important merchants trading with the Romans, Samuel was the man he’d come to see.
Softly, slowly, cautiously, he listened outside Samuel’s office for the sound of conversation, but there was silence. All he heard was the noise of vellum scrolls being moved around. He pushed the door open so that he could see into the room, and was relieved that Samuel was sitting at his desk reading, his back to the door.
The man crept from the doorway, as silently as a stalking lioness, until he could hear Samuel’s breathing. It was then that the merchant sensed that somebody else was in the room. He turned suddenly and stood in shock when he saw that a man had crept up behind him, an arm’s length away. His chair nearly fell onto the floor as he turned to face the man.
They clung together, embracing.
“By the Lord our God, Jonathan, you frightened me. Why creep up on me like a thief in the night?” said Samuel.
“What should I do, friend—announce myself at your door for all to hear?”
“Sit, refresh yourself,” said Samuel, pouring him a glass of wine. “How was the assault in the Galilee?”
Jonathan looked downcast. “We lost six good men and several have been wounded. But the Romans have a bloody nose. We must have killed fifty. When I left, they were sending out waves of troops into the hills to try to find where we were hiding, but we know the paths and the caves as well as we know our wives’ bodies, and they returned to their barricades empty-handed. The more wounds we inflict on them, the more weapons we steal from them, the angrier they become—and angry men don’t fight as well as men who are calm and determined.”
Samuel smiled and said, “I’m sorry some of ours died, but I had some generals here before, and they’re becoming increasingly worried by what you and the other Zealots are doing. They’ve
even given your men a name. They’ve called you after your daggers; no longer are you robbers or brigands, but you’re now officially Iscariots. How do you like being Jonathan the Iscariot?”
The Zealot smiled, and shrugged. “I’m a Zealot, and proud of it.”
They drank their wine, and Samuel said quietly, “I think I’ve found the man for you. He treated some members of my household and is skilled in the arts of healing. He’s been trained in Rome and Greece, and so he probably speaks the Roman tongue better than me. He’s what we’ve been looking for.”
Jonathan the Zealot nodded. “Will he come willingly? Is he a patriot?”
“He has no love of Rome. Whether he’ll follow you or whether he’ll need to be dragged is something you’ll have to determine.”
* * *
November 4, 2007
YAEL WAITED for Mahmud to arrive with the unconscious Bilal. She ordered the prison guard to stand outside the doors to the private room. In the corridor, the guard pulled over a chair and sat reading the afternoon newspaper.
Within moments Mahmud arrived and dismissed the emergency porter with thanks. He pushed Bilal into the room, his hand resting on one arm of the youth’s prostrate body. For what seemed a long moment, once the door was closed and they were alone in the room, they looked at each other. Silently they acknowledged what they were doing, the roles they were playing, and the consequences that might come for them both.
Then Yael quickly bent over Bilal’s body. He was still involuntarily shaking and looked pallid and horribly unhealthy. Now that they were alone, she gave him an intravenous injection of the parasympathomimetic drug physostigmine to reverse the disastrous effects of the anticholinergic drug she’d given him in prison.
Within ten minutes he had stopped shaking, color was beginning to return to his cheeks, his body was beginning to warm, and when he looked at her, he remembered who she was.
His voice was raspingly dry, but he said, “I thought I was going to die.”
She put her finger to her lips and whispered into his ear, “Shush, Bilal. I don’t want people to think that you’re getting better, or they’ll take you back to prison. My friend here will take you away to safety.” She didn’t know why, but for reassurance she whispered into his ear, “My friend is a Palestinian.”
Bilal’s eyes darted to Mahmud standing on the opposite side of the bed. Mahmud smiled.
“Is the guard on the door?” Bilal whispered.
She nodded.
“Then how?”
She smiled and said, “You’ll see.”
She gave him a reassuring squeeze on the arm, but she was feeling anything but reassured herself. This would be the end of her career if it was ever found out what she’d done. Career? She smiled strangely to herself. It would be the end of her freedom. She’d be in prison for years. And she’d drag a thoroughly good man, Mahmud, into prison as well.
Suddenly she felt her iPhone tremble in silence in her pocket, delivering a message. It was a simple communication of one word: “Now.”
She bent over Bilal and whispered into his ear, “I’m sorry about this, Bilal, but I’m going to give you another injection that will put you to sleep. I swear it won’t hurt.”
He trusted her and he nodded. She pulled a small case from her pocket, unzipped it, took out a syringe, and rubbed his arm with alcohol. Then she pushed the needle into his arm.
Yael walked smartly out of the room and to the nurses’ station. “Can you prepare Theater G? I have to do an exploratory on that Palestinian kid. I think his kidneys are in meltdown. Ask the theater nurse to get a team together.”
She walked back to the guard on Bilal’s door, who was still reading the paper. “I think that he’s suffering from a secondary rupture to the angiomyolipoma that we treated him for before he went to your prison. If I’m right, he’s got a massive bleed into his abdomen. He’ll die of septicemia unless I stop the blood and the poisons bleeding into his body from the rupture. Are you okay to stay here? I can’t allow you into the theater.”
The guard nodded. “Sure. I can’t stand the sight of blood. Hospitals make me ill.”
She smiled. “This man will wheel him down to the theater.” She gestured to Mahmud.
The guard looked at him, then at Bilal’s door. “May I?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He opened the door and saw that Bilal was in bed, asleep, and looking terrible. “I’ll go to the canteen and have lunch, if that’s okay with you.”
“He’ll be at least five hours in surgery.”
The guard nodded. She smiled as he left the floor to go to the cafeteria.
When the guard was gone, Mahmud seized the trolley and pushed open the door, maneuvering Bilal out of the ward to the elevators. Within another two minutes the elevator descended to the basement of the hospital, where an ambulance was waiting for them. Mahmud pushed the gurney with Bilal lying comatose past a dozen people, who barely glanced at them. He and Yael had a story ready, which they’d rehearsed before Bilal had arrived, and which Mahmud would deliver in a heavy Arabic accent; he’d tell anybody who asked that he was taking the patient for treatment to a specialist decontamination unit in Shaare Zedek Hospital, as the doctors thought he might have been poisoned by radioactive polonium.
But nobody stopped him, and he wheeled the lad out of the rear entrance and straight into the back of a waiting private ambulance. Mahmud secured Bilal’s trolley, then dashed to the front seat and started the large gurgling engine.
Mahmud drove out of the hospital grounds at a modest pace, mentally willing the large ambulance to be as inconspicuous as possible. He looked in the rearview mirror to survey the open chamber of the ambulance and could see Bilal’s dark features. He lay there with his eyes closed. Nothing would be the same after this and as Mahmud steered the vehicle out of Jerusalem and set course for Peki’in, he wondered what the fate of this young man he was risking so much for would be.
* * *
WHEN YAEL ARRIVED at the theater, scrubbed and ready for the operation, she pushed open the heavy overlapping polyethylene doors, entered, and looked at the operating table.
“Where is he?” she asked quizzically.
“I was hoping you could answer that,” said her anesthetist. “We’ve been waiting for him.”
“Has anybody phoned the ward?” she asked.
“Sure. They said he’d been brought down half an hour ago. We’ve been to the other theaters and he’s not in any of them,” said the nurse. “We phoned the porters and they said they’d been given no instructions to collect a patient from Surgical. What the hell’s going on, Yael? Who is this patient?”
“It’s Bilal, the kid with gunshot wounds; the kid who was brought from prison . . .” She suddenly became silent and looked concerned. “Jesus,” she said urgently.
The entire operating room suddenly became very still and quiet. All eyes were on her as she stood in the middle of the room in her operating scrubs, thinking deeply to herself, trying to work out something seemingly impossible. She looked back at everybody; she frowned; they could see that her mind was in a state of disbelief.
“Call Security,” she barked. “Jesus, the little bastard’s escaped . . .”
And she hoped that her reaction was convincing.
* * *
FUAD AND MARYAM knew that Bilal had been taken to the Jerusalem Hospital. The prison authorities had contacted them and informed them that their son was very sick. Maryam, especially, had been hysterical and demanded that they go to Jerusalem, but Fuad insisted that they wait.
So when the letter was delivered anonymously, it came as a hideous shock. And the note about Bilal’s death, delivered to his parents the previous day, had been the height of cruelty for its inhuman brevity. In fact, Yael could think of nothing more painful and punishing than to send a note to parents telling them that their son was dead. Worse still for his mother and father were the details Yaniv had typed: that Bilal had been executed by the Islamic Resis
tance in Palestine for his treachery. But in a supreme irony, right at this moment, Bilal’s death would be the only thing that would keep all three of them alive.
Fuad and Maryam were in a state of confusion. One day their son was so sick he was being rushed to the hospital; the next day they received a letter telling them that he’d been executed as a traitor by men of their faith. With Fuad and Maryam bereft and incapable of understanding, the imam took over that moment of their lives and arranged for the funeral.
Yael had never before been to an Islamic house in mourning. As the day began, she’d done her best to ensure that she wasn’t followed and went shopping in the Arab shuk, where she bought a black hijab and a long dark-blue Arabic gown. She booked a taxi to drive her to the village of Bayt al Gizah, and while waiting she put on the clothes, which instantly changed her from being a modern Israeli to an Arab woman.
Yael lowered the hijab over her brow and draped it across her face, watching in the mirror as her identity slipped away. How much her world had changed. Would anything ever be the same again? She looked at her hands, picturing the blood flowing through veins and capillaries, blood she shared with the young man the letter had pronounced dead; he was a terrorist, and yet he was a man she had broken the law to save.
Everything she thought she was, and where she had come from—everything that once was certain—was now sand shifting under her feet. She stood in front of the mirror and looked at her new self. Those people who had once seemed so foreign and so far away were now a part of her as she would be judged by anybody seeing her as a part of them. And she was afraid.
The taxi driver, not used to leaving the Jewish western part of Jerusalem, found it difficult to reach Bilal’s parents’ house but eventually got there. One glance told her that it had changed even in the few days since she’d last visited—as had the neighborhood. When she was there the first time, eyes were everywhere, watching her, following her, boring into her in suspicion, focusing their anger on her. This time there were no eyes. People on the street didn’t even look at her. As a Jewish doctor, she was an alien in this village; now, dressed as an Arab, she was no longer “the Other.”