All at once it clicked into place.
Her family didn’t approve.
He felt suddenly bereft, but he understood. He himself hadn’t told his parents or brothers about his new relationship. And he recalled his own initial hesitancy about getting involved with a Jewish woman.
“Let’s sit,” he said.
Emma followed him to a row of benches situated in front of a garden walk. The scent of flowers filled the dusk air, and she reached for Habash’s hand. “This is a beautiful place,” she said wistfully.
“A garden in the desert,” he concurred.
“Like us.”
“What do you mean?” He turned toward her and placed one knee on the bench between them.
She smiled. “I mean, with all the intrigue and suspicions and danger here, this”—she pointed back and forth between the two of them—“has been a refuge.”
Habash released her hand and stretched his arm across the top of the bench, behind Emma’s shoulders. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Emma groaned. “Oh, no. You’re not going to try to back out of this again, are you?”
Habash looked at her intently. “Do you want me to?”
A blush overtook her face. “Of course not.”
“You don’t bring me to Shimshon’s anymore.”
Now the red color deepened. “You were right. He doesn’t approve. He keeps telling me stories about his great-great-grandfather Avi and his troubled romance with a local girl named Rachel.”
“I know that story. It’s in a book that’s well known in Israel. Remember that Avi and Rachel were both Jews,” Habash stated. “So what does it have to do with us?”
“Avi was an Ashkenazi Jew and Rachel was a Sephardic Jew, and her family was adamantly opposed to them being together.”
Habash’s arm dropped to her shoulder. “The history of this place, of your family, has affected you more than you expected, I think.”
Emma nodded. “It really has. Before I came here, I laughed whenever my father preached about the family history and its relevance. But now I see that a person’s history directly affects his or her present.”
Her voice was melancholy. It wasn’t an emotion Habash often heard from her. “Do you want to stop seeing me?” He asked the question quickly, and it came out more bluntly than he intended.
She looked shocked and surprised. “No! You’re my garden in the desert, even though I know that Shimshon is adamant that our relationship is doomed the way Avi and Rachel’s relationship was doomed.”
“Doomed? No way. Shimshon probably told you only the beginning of the story, because he wanted you to know about the difficulties of intercultural relationships. But there was more to the story. I know, because it involved my family as well. You need to hear how it eventually turned out.”
Now Emma was really annoyed at Shimshon. He had told her only part of the story—a half-truth. She was anxious to hear the good parts that he’d left out. “Tell me,” she said, moving a bit closer to Habash.
He held Emma’s hand as he told her how Avi had learned of the stabbing of a Jewish merchant in Jaffa by two radical Arabs. The victim was Baruch Ezratti, the man to whom Rachel was engaged. His death, a week later from his wounds, left Rachel unattached.
After he learned of the man’s death, Avi spent day and night in deep contemplation. Baruch had been killed by two Arabs in retaliation for the murder of Ali Barakit by Gershon Kahana. Everything was so closely connected in the history of this tiny but explosive part of the world, Emma thought as she listened to Habash recount the story of Avi and Rachel.
It pained Avi greatly that his first thought was not sadness over the death of Baruch, whom he had never met, but rather excitement about what Baruch’s death might portend for Rachel—and for them. Then he quickly realized there could still be no “them.” He was still an Ashkenazi “goy” to Rachel’s family. He imagined Rachel’s pain over the loss of her fiancé and then fantasized about the guilt her ambivalence over losing a man she didn’t love must have caused her. But it was not an ambivalence she could act on. Only after that realization set in could Avi begin to consider the implications of Baruch’s murder for the Jews of Palestine and for relations with their Arab neighbors.
Days later Chaim Mizrachi arrived at Rishon L’Zion looking for Avi. They had not been in communication since that fateful day when Chaim told Avi never to see Rachel again. The two men silently embraced as Avi whispered the Jewish words of condolence for a departed relative.
“I’m here on a mission,” Chaim said. “A mission on which no one sent me.”
Chaim had a look of sorrow in his eyes as he described his mission. “I have spoken neither to Rachel nor to her parents, but I want you to visit Rachel and try to comfort her.”
“That will be difficult for me if I know that I still can’t be with her.”
“I cannot speak for Rachel or for her parents, but I can speak for myself, Avi,” the older man said, gently placing an arm around the younger man’s shoulder. “If Rachel will have you as her husband, your marriage will have my blessing. Baruch’s death has convinced me of two things. It was not God’s will that Rachel marry Baruch. Why else was Baruch picked to die? This is a new world in which we must work together. Your marriage to Rachel will symbolize the breaking down of old walls.”
Avi was ecstatic, but he tried to keep his feelings under control as he responded to the older man. “I don’t know about the God part, Chaim, but I do know that I love Rachel. I’m sorry that Baruch was killed. I don’t want to see Rachel unhappy.”
Chaim bent his head and instructed Avi, “Go not as a suitor, but as a friend offering solace. As far as God is concerned, He works in mysterious ways. Usually a young woman like Rachel who loses her betrothed remains unmarried, because all the men from good families have been spoken for. So now God has sent new men—good men like you and Akiba—from faraway places. God sent you for Rachel. I was His unknowing messenger sent to meet you on the ship. It is God’s will.”
“As long as it’s Rachel’s will and has your blessing, I will go to her.”
“The rest is in God’s hands.”
Avi smiled, thinking that God had already done His part of the job. The rest was now up to Avi.
“So what happened?” Emma asked anxiously.
Habash smiled as he told her about Avi’s trip to Jaffa. Rachel was at home with her mother and sisters, greeting visitors who were stopping to pay their respects to the family. After hours of listening to people’s condolences, she felt ready to scream.
Just then Avi walked in. He was dressed as she’d never seen him. Gone were his khaki shorts and linen shirts. In their place were a dark suit and a hat. His eyes were full of sadness. He didn’t approach her. Rather he stood in the doorframe and spoke softly. “I came to pay my condolences to my teacher, Rachel.”
She said nothing. A fresh set of tears streamed down her face.
“It makes me sick to see you so unhappy.” Still he stood in the doorway.
She dried her face with one of Baruch’s handkerchiefs and found her voice after a moment. “Thank you, Avi. I was hoping you might come, but I couldn’t be certain they would let you in.”
“Chaim knows I am here,” he told her soberly.
Suddenly Rachel’s grief lifted. Her quick mind figured it all out, but she was not certain enough to speak the words she felt in her heart.
Avi’s gaze never wavered. He trained his eyes on hers as if he were trying to assure her that they were going to be together. His eyes were all he could rely on; it was too soon to speak the words.
“Baruch was like a brother to me.” Rachel gestured him toward two upholstered chairs, and they sat.
“Baruch was a good man. Everybody says so,” Avi said lamely.
“He was so happy. He was looking forward to our wedding. He even learned how to dance.”
Their conversation progressed with difficulty. Rachel yearned to hear Avi express his feelings
, to repeat what he’d said those weeks before in the restaurant on the water: that he wanted to marry her. But they both knew it was too soon. She wished for time to pass quickly so that their hearts could speak. For now she turned away modestly whenever he looked into her eyes. It was her proper role. She was a mourner, not the object of a suitor’s affections. She also knew that her eyes were a window to her heart—a window she could not close as easily as she could her mouth. Avi understood. They each showed their love by discreetly concealing it. There was a place for secrets, as she had always suspected.
Avi returned to Rachel’s home every day for the next week. When the thirty days of mourning were over, Rachel stopped wearing black. There were still a few tears, but also a few smiles. On the first visit after the mourning period, Avi softly reached for her hand. It was the first time they had ever touched. Rachel pulled away, not because she resisted his touch, or even because she thought it inappropriate. It was a purely physical reaction to the electricity of the touch itself. It was a touch at once so tender and so powerful that it left nothing in doubt. Rachel threw herself at Avi, kissing him fiercely. It was her first passionate kiss, as it was his. They both felt it in their hearts as well as their loins. It was a kiss of love and passion. The kind of kiss Rachel had believed she would never experience.
“I cannot spend my entire life staring out windows. I will marry you,” Rachel said insistently. “Even if my parents don’t approve. I want to have children with you. Live with you. Die with you. Be buried next to you.”
Avi’s heart was entirely too full. “I love you, Rachel.” They kissed each other again and stopped only when Rachel’s maid entered the room. After a shriek from the maid and a quick bribe from Avi, he whispered feverishly in Rachel’s ear, “When can we be married?”
“In a year.” She pushed him away from her so that there was a decent distance between them. The maid pointedly looked the other way. “Any sooner would not be proper. You must ask my father. But I will lay the foundation first. I will speak to Chaim. He will know what to say.”
Avi kissed each of her fingers. “As far as I’m concerned, you already said it. You will marry me. That’s all I need to know. I hope your parents will approve. I want our children to know their grandparents. They will have no grandfather on my side and may never see their grandmother in Poland. They will need your parents.”
“Where will we live, Avi?” Rachel asked with joy in her voice. She couldn’t keep herself from giggling.
“That depends on where we want our children to grow up,” Avi replied.
“I want our children to work the land, to be the new kind of Jews this country can produce. I don’t want them to be merchants,” Rachel insisted.
Avi remained silent. He understood what Rachel was saying. She didn’t want her children to be like Baruch or Chaim or the rest of her family. She wanted them to be like him, a chalutz—a pioneer. Avi did not want to appear to be overanxious to agree. It would look self-serving. But it was also what he wanted for his children. It was important to Avi that Rachel was not simply trying to please him. There was no need for that. This was really what she wanted. It all made sense: her love of teaching, of meeting new people, especially new immigrants. A part of her always wanted to break away from her past and move to the future. He was her vehicle. He was also her true love. It was all too good to be true, Avi thought. “Too good to be true,” he mused aloud. “That’s the old way, the Polish way, the Yiddish way. We were always worried about giving an ayin hara—an evil eye—to any good news. Here things are different. Nothing is too good to be true.”
When Habash completed his tale, Emma couldn’t speak. It was incredible to think that such a love story was a part of her own history. “How do you know all this?” she asked.
“Avi and Rachel wrote to each other every day between the time they agreed to marry and their wedding day. After they died, their grandchildren found their letters and published them. It was a bestseller, because it told an important part of Israel’s early history.” Then, pausing, Habash continued, “It also had implications for my own family.”
“How so?”
“Remember Avi’s Muslim partner, Ali? After his murder, his wife, Leila, had had enough of her brother Mustafa and those who breathed hatred. So she moved to Nazareth, to live among the community of Christian Arabs there.”
Suddenly something connected in Emma’s mind. “No!” She smiled broadly and touched Habash on the arm. “So?”
“That’s right. Leila met and married Marcus Ein, my great-great-grandparents. My great-grandfather’s name was Ali.”
“After her murdered husband,” Emma supplied. “What happened to Mustafa?”
Habash shook his head. “He became a leader of the local Muslim Brotherhood and eventually was killed in a shootout with a Jewish defense group from a kibbutz near Jaffa, but not before he had the blood of dozens of Jews on his hands. His two sons became followers of the grand mufti and participated in the Hebron Pogroms of 1929 in which nearly one hundred Jews were murdered. The grand mufti, Hajj al-Husayni, was a great-uncle of Faisal and Rashid. Small world, no?”
“What happened to Avi and Rachel?” Emma wondered.
“They had a relatively happy life together. Shimshon didn’t want to tell you that part of the story.” Habash pulled her close to him. “Now do you think we can have a happy ending?”
Emma leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’m more interested in beginnings than in endings,” she said. “I just want to respect my family’s attitudes unless we become more serious.”
Habash was thrilled. “Then let’s get more serious,” he said, just before kissing her passionately.
XLVIII
The Discovery
I TOLD YOU IT WASN’T in the football.” Denny smiled at Rendi over coffee in a Jerusalem café. Rendi had called him and asked to meet for coffee; she hadn’t seen or spoken with him since Abe had discovered the information about him and the Church of the Apocalypse. During Rashid Husseini’s trial, the Ringel family had been focused on other things. But now that their investigation of the American Colony had resumed full bore, Rendi wanted to clear Dennis’s name once and for all. She was sure that if Dennis had met with Ruggles, it had been a covert operation, not a conversion. She assumed that he’d been on a mission, though for which agency she could only guess. And the best way to get to the bottom of the Savage mystery was by direct contact.
When she saw Dennis at the restaurant, she was consumed with an overprotective feeling. Here was one of her dearest friends, and he had no idea that he was being investigated by her husband. She felt, oddly, that she was betraying Dennis’s faith in her. She thought about immediately coming clean, about telling him what Abe had uncovered, but she didn’t want to put him on the defensive or make him feel unjustly persecuted. And maybe—just maybe—Abe was onto something. So when she was done with small talk, she told Dennis that she and Abe were focusing on Iran.
He crossed his ankle over his knee casually and leaned back, his broad athlete’s build making it seem as if he were about to break his chair. He looked just as he always did—relaxed, open, and friendly. Rendi realized with a sudden shock that she was relieved. Abe had gotten her so turned around; she was half expecting Dennis to whip out a Bible or something.
“We’re focusing on the Iranians, too. They fit the profile, and I had my people analyze the explosive,” Dennis said.
“And?” Rendi asked, curious.
“It’s consistent with possible origination in Iran. We know they’re working on a small plastique nuclear trigger that would fit in their Shahab missile.”
Rendi understood the term “consistent with.” It was an intel fudge. More than guesswork, less than hard evidence. She decided not to press the issue, at least not directly. For her this was good news. If there was proof that Iran had created the plastique involved in the explosion, then the focus would move away from the Church of the Apocalypse and Denny’s relationship to it.
“We haven’t figured that out yet. There are ways. Bribery, false-flag operations. Deep moles. Good intelligence agencies can figure out ways to breach security.”
She ignored a tiny voice in the back of her mind telling her that if anyone could get past multiple security agencies, Dennis could. He was as good as they got. Instead she returned the conversation to Iran. “And the Iranians are good.”
Dennis smiled. His dimples danced on his face. “Good as any of the bad guys get. And they are all over Hamas. They could have gotten a Hamas security agent to become a suicide bomber and carry the bomb to the stage. What else did Rashid tell you?”
“Not much.” Rendi shrugged. “He was evasive.”
“Was he sure it wasn’t Palestinians of any persuasion?”
“Positive. Also not Americans, Israelis, or Christians.”
Denny looked pleased. Rendi noted that he placed his folded hands in his lap. “That’s what we think.”
“What have you come up with for motive?”
Dennis didn’t answer; he merely looked at her expectantly, so she continued, “We’re looking into the twelfth-imam business.”
This was as comfortable as she felt broaching the topic of the Church of the Apocalypse, and yet her comment landed between them like a small bomb. Dennis’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and his posture slowly straightened. “The Americans haven’t gotten that far.”
All of Rendi’s senses became instantly more alert. “So you haven’t investigated any like-minded groups? Religious sects with an apocalyptic bent?”
Dennis raised her slight smile with a full-on grin. “Not that I know of.” Rendi quickly noted his hands. They were in his lap. “Rendi, not many people know me the way you do.”
Her heart began to beat quickly, but she was careful to maintain a placid demeanor. With all sincerity she responded, “Me, too, Dennis. You’re one of the people I trust the most.”
The Trials of Zion Page 24