And now, at the very wall, she at last turns to face them. She smiles, always she smiles, and her teeth are just like milk teeth, a little space of good luck between the front two, and her gums are the color of tea roses. She lets down her backpack and sets it before her. They in their black hats and white prayer shawls ring about her, seething and cursing. Now someone grabs her, some Jew.
But from above, the Arabs are beginning to shout, too: “They are trying to take al-Aqsa! They are murdering us! They are desecrating our holy places! They are building a synagogue right under our feet!”
And you can hear the Israeli police crying, “Quiet down! Quiet down!” And the Arabs are now coming together in larger numbers, and the waqf guard is going crazy, and all of the voices I heard just a moment ago are blotted out and all there is is shouting, shouting, shouting, “The Jews are murdering us!”
And from the mount, the rocks stream down, and little Anyusha, her lips sparkling like cut diamonds, looks up to where her heaven should be—but only stones, stones flinging themselves like wolves upon ewes, meet her gaze. For the muezzin is bleating on the loudspeaker, “Muslims! Brothers! Muslims! Brothers! Defend al-Aqsa to the last drop of blood!”
Oh, little Anyusha—please, Anyusha, listen to my voice: Now you must run! Now you must run!
But the stones of the faithful rain down upon her, till shots ring out above. And then all is silence.
Chapter Twenty-eight
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES I REALIZED I was in an ambulance. The shriek of the siren was unmistakable, and beside me holding my hand, a medic.
“Moishe!”
“Shhhh, shhhh,” he said. “My name is David.”
“Am I alive?”
“That fucking Arab should have taken you to the hospital right away. These people are so stupid. You’ve been missing three days. You’re on TV and the newspapers.”
“Three days?” I said.
How I wanted him to be Moishe. I wanted to tell him, I wanted to say to him, Moishe, I see you really are an angel after all, and I get it—you saved me for a reason. You saved me so that I might realize that the truth I withheld from my darling Anyusha is the thing that will set her free, free from the prison of my past.
There was salvation in the air, in the smell of antiseptic and motor oil, and in the bright lights of the ambulance, and in music coming from the driver’s radio. And I rejoiced.
When we pulled up to the emergency entrance of Hadassah Hospital, I was surprised that so many people were waiting for me. There were cameras flashing, cordons of police and Shabak, for some reason Sepha Katsir, but no Mother, no Lonya, no Daphne, no Anyusha.
At first I was very confused. They were asking me questions to which I had no answers. Tell us in detail what you were doing in Beit Ibrahim. And what precisely was the nature of your visit to Darya Cohen? What are these blueprints we found in the back of your car? And now, what can you tell us about your daughter, Anna? Who are her associates? Please think. We’d like names.
“Why do you want to know about Anna?” I said.
It was four days before they would let me see her. Her face was bruised, but little else showed how deeply she had been injured. They’d propped her up so she could sit and watch TV, and when I came in, she tried to jump up—but the most she could do was lift her arms to embrace me. I held her for a long time, breathed in the honeyed scent of her skin and felt the breath of her rise beneath my chest—her life, so powerful, so precious, so frail. When I finally let her go, she gave me a little wink. We sat for a long time, saying nothing. I was careful not to stare at her, not to make her think I was worried. But I was watching her from the corner of my eye all the time, until at last she seemed to be ready to talk.
“Hey Pop,” she said.
“Hey.”
“Something happened to me I can’t explain.”
“You were hit with a rock.”
“No. Before.”
“Before?”
“Yeah. I was somewhere. I guess near the wall. No. On the Mughrabi Ascent. Going up to the mount. I was going up there.”
“Yes.”
“I was going to do what they wanted. It was just to put some stuff there, for others.”
“I see.”
“All of a sudden there was a kind of racket in my brain—not exactly a million voices, but a voice I hadn’t heard before.”
“Voice? You hear voices?”
“I never told you about them. Stuff just seems to talk to me. It’s not like psycho voices. It’s just—I don’t know.”
“It’s all right. I have something like that, too. I guess we’re two peas in a pod.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But this was a sad voice I could just barely make out, a kind of nagging voice, a whiney voice—and I realized it was my own voice I was hearing, and it wasn’t happy with me.”
“No?”
“It wasn’t only not happy, it was scared. It felt something was wrong, really wrong. And my feet stopped me right there.”
“As if your feet knew more than you did.”
“Yeah. Then—I know you’re not going to believe me—I heard Mom’s voice. Mom! I mean, I never heard her voice in real life, so how could I even know it was hers? But I did know it was hers. It was definitely Mom, and she was saying, It’s okay, it’s okay, go ahead and do it, do it. It was her voice, for sure—and she said, It’s the right thing to do, and you should always do the right thing, to stand up to all of them and be courageous and do what is right!”
“Yes, sounds like her.”
“But this other voice was kind of yelling at me, too, and it kept stopping my feet from moving. Mom was saying, Be strong! Go on! But the other voice, if it was a voice, was just sort of shaking and asking me, Are you sure? Are you sure? Because my feet just wouldn’t move!”
“Honey, sometimes our bodies—”
“So I had no choice but to just stand there and think! And I thought about Mom, and I tried to picture her, to see her, though all I could see was that photograph you have. You know the one, with the hat. But even though I really couldn’t see her, I could feel what she was saying to me, you know what I mean? And I got it, you know? How what she did when I was born—how important it was. How big it was. And it was just the same as what I was doing now—I mean, what I was about to do—it was just as big, just as important—so I could really get inside what she went through and how she made her decisions—and I just, I just, honestly—Pop—I … couldn’t understand it. I don’t get it! I don’t. Not that I ever knew exactly what she did, only that—in the end, are you supposed to hurt people? Are you supposed to hurt people to help them? Because look at us. Look at you, look at me. What good did she do us?”
“She gave us life, Anyusha.”
“That’s when I said to myself, No. No. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be like her at all. I won’t hurt other people just to be good. I’d rather be bad. I’d rather be weak. I’d rather be a great big nothing and never do anything at all.”
“No, sweetheart, don’t cry, don’t cry.”
“And then I couldn’t. I just started running, I don’t even know where. And I let everyone down.”
“No.”
“And that’s why God punished me.”
“No, no, my sweet.”
“Yes, he did. He did. He did.”
And she cried in a way I had never seen her cry before. Not as a baby, and not yet as a woman, but as a young soul who already was broken in two.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I WOULD CRY FOR MERCY, BUT THERE is none. I have not ascended, nor found peace. I seek death. He taunts me with life.
Yet Allah, Shaper of Beauty, has not rejected me. No, no. He waits for me. He waits for the hour in which I finally find a voice that can be heard amongst the living.
But do not pity me. Save that for yourselves, you who live—who still have hope!
Anyusha, Roman Guttman, farewell! Live on this land as if it were your own. But every so o
ften look up and see: it is I and not the moon that illuminates your night.
Allahu Akhbar! For the peace that never comes!
Chapter Thirty
ONLY LATER, I read the stories in the papers.
The one that sticks out most in my mind is this:
Investigators rounded up seven members of the ultra-rightist Temple Army of the Institute for Redemption who employed at least five children, none older than fifteen, to help carry out their mission to destroy the Dome of the Rock as a first step toward building the “third” Temple in Jerusalem. The incident caused a deadly riot on the mount that resulted in two Palestinians being shot, one fatally, and several Israelis wounded by thrown stones. Police eventually found their way to the Blessings of Israel Yeshiva led by Rabbi Gershom Keren. Keren, born in America, and a follower of former Jewish Defense League and Kach founder Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in 1990, said in a press conference Wednesday, “It was never my intention for any children under my care to be involved in any violent activity whatsoever. I deeply regret that these events happened. The restoration of the Temple is possible only through the coming of the Messiah, and though we must prepare for him, and be constantly vigilant, it is through God’s will and God’s will alone that this miracle will be accomplished. In the end, the dome and the mosque will surely come down, but only by God’s hand, and on that day, blessed be the Name, all people shall worship the one true God in his one true sanctuary. We all only wish for peace.” Of the children involved in the plot, four were apprehended on the mount, and one, Anna Guttman, daughter of the noted architect Roman Guttman, was severely injured when incensed Arabs began flinging stones down from the mount onto Jewish worshippers at the Wall below. Her presence there at first appeared unrelated, but later testimony indicated she had been part of the plot. Explosives found hidden within books in a backpack proved to belong to her. Accused Temple Army member Miriam Levy denies there was ever any intention to bomb the Western Wall and suggests that young Guttman had simply “stopped to pray.” Guttman’s mother was the refusenik Collette Chernoff, who died in a Soviet prison after being convicted of treason for her Jewish activities in 1983. Anna Guttman is thirteen years old. Doctors at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv are uncertain if she will ever walk again.
Over the next months, Lonya came to visit often. By this time he was already with Daphne, and I could see that even with all his concern and anguish over Anyusha, he was happy and so was she. My mother did her best, too, but her best was always so very little. Katya called from America and flew over for a few weeks. She brought her kids, but not Oleg, who, she said, was sick. She stayed with Mother. We saw them when we could, which was not often.
Anyusha went through therapy, first in Tel Aviv, then at Lowenstein in Ra’anana, and finally at home. As far as I know, she never saw her friend Yohanan again.
One day I saw her sitting in the garden watching a pair of finches feed in the birdhouse. We had been circling around each other for weeks, months—I don’t know how long. Her hair had grown long again, and she had taken to blue jeans and sweaters. She did her homework in the privacy of her room and took her meals as if eating were a kind of punishment.
“Two little siskins,” I said, “male and female. It’s nice to see the birds are back.”
“Yeah,” she said.
I plopped down beside her on the patio stoop. Her hands were gathered around her knees, probably because her legs hurt so much. Without fully realizing it, I did the same. The birds fluttered and pecked, and then flew off.
“Oh, well,” I said.
Anyusha grabbed for her crutches and began the arduous work of standing up. I remember wishing with all my heart that she would just stay with me awhile. And then, for some reason, she let go of the crutches and sat back down.
“Pop?” she said.
“Yes, honey?”
“Pop, I need to ask you—”
“What?”
“About—”
“What?”
“Mom, I guess.”
“What about Mom?”
“About Mom and me. About why she—I don’t know.”
“Why she left you?”
“Yeah.”
“She didn’t.”
“Yes, she did.”
“No, Anyusha. She loved you so much she gave up herself to give you freedom.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Wait here,” I said.
I went into my bedroom and took down the photograph of her mother that had found its place again on the wall and brought it out to the garden. There I pried open the backing from the frame and removed from it the letter I’d kept hidden there—the letter Colonel Vasin had given me that day in his office. It had grown old and yellow, the creases hardened with time; but when I unfolded it, the scent of Moscow in all its beauty and terror seemed to billow forth, and the strong, brittle handwriting of the woman I loved flew off the page and danced through the flowers and bushes of our little Israeli garden. I held the letter up to the sun and read it to my daughter, word for word, omitting nothing.
It was then, for the first time in so many, many months, that she folded herself into my chest and allowed my arms to hold her. We sat there that way for a long time, until I noticed she had fallen asleep.
And so the years have passed. We’ve gone through another intifada, dozens of peace initiatives, a war in Lebanon, withdrawal from Gaza, and then we invaded Gaza again. It doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve gone to America many times now to see my father and also Katya. Her kids are grown, and she’s grown lonely. Love, however, has also bloomed in places. Daphne and Lonya, I’ve already mentioned, and though Daphne has breast cancer, her chances of survival are good. My father remarried yet again. And just a few weeks ago, Marik’s first wife, Irina, asked me to come back to Moscow to see her. We’ve been e-mailing and talking on the phone. She has not changed at all, and when I speak with her, I feel I have not changed all that much either. I know this is a lie, but it is the kind of lie that yields results.
Sometimes I still see a head fly by my window, but it no longer seems to be weeping. Sometimes I still drive to the desert but don’t stay so long, and I take along water and food. I often visit Dasha Cohen, who is still alive, and still in a coma. She is twenty-five.
Anyusha, unfortunately, never fully recovered from her wounds. She always had a pronounced limp. She called it her Peace Prize. I was grateful for it, because it would keep her out of the army. As a teenager she joined several Israeli-Palestinian youth groups and wrote wonderful stories about imaginary universes. Instead of the army, she volunteered for ambulance duty in the territories. She was killed in Jenin by a sniper. She was nineteen.
I try to visit her every day. It’s on my way to work. I made a little bench for myself, and I sit there and tell her I love her. I bring her my drawings, so I can show her where the gazebo is going to go.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the help given to me by many friends and colleagues. My readers, Jennifer Futernick, Sam Lavigne, Michal Evron Yaniv, and Tamar Yellin, all added immeasurably to this work. In Israel, Roni Hefiz and Tamara Mendelsohn and their children Daniel and Michal gave me guidance, especially relating to young people. Thanks also to Hagit and Yoav Zeff; Aryeh Green of MediaCentral and his family, Michal, Moriya, Yonatan, and Katie; Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch; Walid Salem of Palestine Journal; my Negev guide, Alon Shirizly; Michael Loftus for his help in Jerusalem; Amir Gutfreund for sharing his knowledge and his home; and Orly and Eitan Eldar for their friendship and wisdom. For help with the Russian portions of this book, Sasha and Masha Ortenberg were indispensable (plus they reminded me how to curse authentically); Olya, Seryoga, and Liza Rakitchenkov aided with stories and Russian language; and to all my Russian friends wherever they ended up, the Kriksonovs, the Preismans, the Khazanovs et al., my gratitude. And, finally, a big shout-out to Annie Blackman, age fourteen, for the delightful drawings that illuminate these pages.
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But most of all I would like to thank three people without whom this work would never have taken form. To my editor, the gentle poet Deborah Garrison, who said yes and never looked back. To my true friend, agent, and champion Michael Carlisle, who loved it from the first and wouldn’t give up no matter what—I owe him more than I can say. And to my beautiful and patient wife, Gayle—first reader, true inspiration, and partner in all things.
Books, publications, and Web sites used in the research for this work of fiction were many. But important among them were Gershom Greenberg’s The End of Days (Oxford), Gulag by Anne Appelbaum (Anchor), Occupied Voices by Wendy Pearlman (Nation), Drinking at the Sea of Gaza by Amira Hass (Owl), Natan Sharanksy’s seminal Fear No Evil (Public Affairs), the less-well-known but equally poignant From Leningrad to Jerusalem by Hillel Butman (Ben Mir), and Helene Celmina’s remarkable Women in Soviet Prisons, found online at vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/celmina. I am especially grateful to Paul Steinberg for allowing me to use the interviews and martyr videos he and Anne Marie Olivier transcribed in Road to Martyr’s Square (Oxford) as templates for some of my martyr dialogue. I would also like to thank the University of Colorado Soviet Jewry Archives for generously opening their uncataloged collection to me. The Akhmatova poem is taken from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer (Zephyr). The epigraph is from Now and in Other Days, 1955, translated by Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (University of California). Fushigi Yûgi is a real series of graphic novels: Fushigi Yûgi: The Mysterious Play by Yuu Watase, translated by Yuji Oniki and Kaori Kawakubo Inoue (VIZ Media). Translations of the Qur’an are by Thomas Cleary; Qur’an and other texts also translated by H. M. Shakir on the University of Michigan Web site, A. Yusuf Ali at sacred-texts.com, and Marmaduke Mohammad Picktall at USC-MSA. Hadith from various sources, including Sahih Muslim, translated by Abdul Hamid Siddiqui at iium.edu.my/deed/hadith/muslim, Hadith on Torments of the Grave, translated by Dr. Norlain Dindang Mababaya at wefound.org.; Hadith collected by Paul Halsall at fordham.edu; Shaikh Muhammad as-Saleh Al-’Uthaimin, translated by Dr. Maneh Al-Johani at al-sunnah.com; and Du’a compiled by Mutma’ina at geocities.com/mutmainaa/dua.html. Also of help were Madrassah Inaamiyyah and Muttaqun.com at the Islamic Society of North America, especially for prayers. Peace to you all.
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