Stateless

by Alan Gold

  ‘Destroying airfields and railways, this I understand. But today our child was almost a victim of our own fight. How many other children were at that gate? How many innocent sons and daughters, mothers and fathers?’

  Judit looked at the face of her husband, the man she loved. Shalman had been on a dozen Lehi operations in the past six months and his mood on returning had grown increasingly dark. But this was something more.

  ‘Don’t think I’m not distressed by what happened, Shalman. Vered is my child too. But she’s alive. You’re alive. Reflecting on ifs and maybes serves no purpose.’ This was the voice of Judit’s Soviet handlers, always prompting her to see the bigger picture and eschewing personal attachment. But Shalman knew nothing of that part of Judit’s life . . .

  Shalman shook his head in bewilderment. He loved her, he’d married her, he’d had a child with her, yet in this moment he felt he hardly knew her.

  ‘There has to be a better way . . .’

  ‘No, Shalman. There is no other way. History tells us there is no other way. It’s hard for you, I know . . .’ She stepped forward and put a hand on his chest. ‘You didn’t come here on the boats. You didn’t flee horror to arrive here. You know the stories but they’re not your stories.’

  Judit kissed Shalman on the cheek and said, ‘The answers aren’t easy but they’re clear to anybody who opens their eyes.’

  Alexandria, Egypt

  184 CE (fourth year of the reign of Emperor Commodus)

  Abram the physician felt no joy as the ship approached the famed harbour of Alexandria. But he did smile when he looked at his fourteen-year-old son Jonathan, who was enraptured at the sight of the massive tower with its burning light on top of an island on the western shore of the harbour of the city.

  The boy turned to his father, and asked him what it was. Abram smiled and stroked the boy’s head. ‘It’s the lighthouse built by Alexander. The Greeks called it the Pharos. It’s said to be seventy times taller than a tall man.’

  ‘But why? What’s it for?’ he asked.

  ‘It warns ships at night that the coast is near, and they have to be careful of rocks. As the sun descends into the distant western sea, far beyond the Pillars of Hercules, men climb the many steps with wood and kindling, and set alight the pyre. To make the light more intense, when the wind is strong and in danger of blowing ships onto the rocks, they add oil to the wood and it flares so brightly they say that it can be seen half a day’s sail distant. The fire burns all night.’

  Jonathan was astounded. ‘Every night? Men climb that tower every night?’

  Abram smiled and nodded. He reached across and kissed the tall, muscular boy on his cheek. For the past two years, since the death of his beloved Ruth from the heat caused to her body when her humours were out of alignment, he’d mourned her to the exclusion of their son, Jonathan. From the very first moment he’d seen her in the woods at the base of the mountain that housed the city of Jerusalem, he’d been in love with her. His love had grown as they climbed the tunnel and replaced the precious seal that the original builder in the time of King Solomon had written. It was confirmed when he first kissed her on the riverbank, and since then, since their marriage, he’d grown to love her every hour of every day.

  She had been the most beautiful, exquisite, feisty, annoying, faithful, loving and challenging woman he’d ever known and when, after years of trying, Ruth had eventually fallen pregnant fifteen years ago and given birth to Jonathan, he knew that his life was complete.

  They’d travelled back to the village of Peki’in, where Abram had been born, and his parents had loved her as much as he. Even the elderly and nearly blind Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, still hiding from the Romans by living in a cave above the village with his son, Rabbi Eleazar, had told him how excellent she was. It was Ruth who encouraged him to study medicine, and Abram had happily become a doctor, curing people and being a friend to many.

  But even his skills as a doctor hadn’t been able to cure his beloved wife when she’d fallen ill two years earlier and died of the fevers. He’d studied the Greek physicians and knew that her illness was caused by the misaligned humours in her body. He’d cooled her body, bled her, fed her the root of the beet and honey and done everything in his power, but all to no avail. And he’d made her a final promise just before she died, thin, emaciated and exhausted from the violent coughing and the blood in her phlegm. She made him promise that he’d take Jonathan to Alexandria in Egypt so that he could be trained as an alchemist by Maria the Jewess, a woman reputed to be able to cure ills and ailments which caused great suffering. Ruth wanted her husband to be taught by Maria so that other husbands and sons didn’t suffer as Abram and Jonathan were suffering in her sight. Her words, among the last which she ever spoke, still resonated in Abram’s mind. ‘My son will be an alchemist . . .’

  As their ship docked into the port in the failing light of the evening, Jonathan clung to his father. The young man walked onto the dockside feeling unfamiliar and insecure in the crowds of people, all of whom were wearing different styles of clothes, many of whom had different coloured skin to his and were speaking languages he’d never before heard. Abram suddenly realised with embarrassment that this was the closest he’d been to Jonathan since Ruth had been buried.

  In the two years since she’d died, he’d distanced himself from everybody, continuing to treat patients, but his zest for life, his passion for anything other than his memory of Ruth, had evaporated. When he said goodbye to her in the burial cave in the foothills of the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem, he’d placed her favourite amulet into the folds of her shroud, just above her heart. It was written in both Hebrew and Aramaic script. It said simply: ‘I am Ruth, wife of Abram the doctor. I walk in the footsteps of Yahweh.’ He’d bought the disc of the amulet from a trader in a caravan that came from Parthia, south of the Black Sea. He had employed a metal worker to carve the inscription, and he’d given it to her when Jonathan was born. She’d worn it ever since, and she would wear it as she lived the rest of her life at the right hand of God in heaven. He was going to place something else in the folds of her gown. It was the inscribed stone written by King Solomon’s tunnel builder, Matanyahu, but instead, he determined to retain it as a fond keepsake of their first days together. He remembered with warmth and aching fondness how they’d climbed the dank slippery tunnel all those years before to place the original at the top of the tunnel. So it was the amulet that would tell Yahweh who Ruth had been, and ensure that she was given pride of place in His heaven.

  ‘Father, look at that,’ Jonathan suddenly said, pointing to three men who were amusing the crowds gathered around them, eating fire. ‘How can they do that without being burnt?’ he asked in amazement, wandering closer to the semi-circle of the audience, some of whom were throwing coins onto a blanket spread out in front of the fire-eaters.

  Abram smiled, and held his son back. ‘We haven’t got time to look at such wonders, my son. There’s so much to see in Alexandria and we must find lodgings before night falls and the curfew is rung out.’

  ‘But how do they do what they’re doing without being burnt? They’re smiling, not screaming in pain.’

  Abram looked carefully, and saw that the men blew some liquid out of their mouths onto the flaming torch, which then burst into flames, making it look as though they were actually eating the fire.

  He smiled, and whispered, ‘They put something like oil or a strong drink into their mouths and then spit it out, which causes the firebrand to flare. It’s a trick, Jonathan. And a good lesson. Never accept things for what they seem, only for what they actually are. Now, my son, pick up our bags and we’ll find somewhere to sleep tonight.’

  As they walked away from the ship that had been their home for the past four nights, taking them from the port of Joppa in Syria Palaestina to Alexandria, they didn’t know that they were being observed. She was a tall woman, her head and much of her face obscured by a black scarf, her body encased in black robes. It
enabled her to become invisible in the shadows of the dock, allowing her to see who walked off the boats. Most were sailors or merchants, but some were travellers. Many were too old for her, but some were young men and they were of great interest to her.

  And the youth who’d just walked off the boat from Palestine with the older man was of particular interest. So she followed them, walking in the shadows of the darkening night, waiting to see where they went.

  Though they had been resident in the city for several days, Abram was a worried man. Day was becoming night, and he feared that his son, whom he’d sent on a mission, had become disoriented and lost.

  The doctor looked out of the window at the position of the sun, and realised that it was approaching dusk. Jonathan had left their lodgings just after the noontime meal, and had been ordered by his father to go out, buy some bread, olives, peppers, and a roasted haunch of sheep from one of the many butchers in Alexandria so that they could enjoy their dinner. He was instructed to come straight back. Since midday, he had been entertaining Maria the Jewess, the most famous alchemist in Alexandria – perhaps, even in the whole world – and they had been engrossed in discussing the myriad of things that people of science and knowledge talked about when they were together.

  His introduction to Maria had come through a merchant he’d treated for fever when the man was passing through Jerusalem on his way to Babylon. So impressed had he been with the treatment that Abram had prescribed, and the modest cost compared to his doctors in Alexandria, that he had written to Abram, and kept in touch. It was the merchant who had suggested a meeting with Maria the Jewess and alchemist, and on the basis of the messages he’d received, Abram’s wife, Ruth, had suggested that she, Abram and their young son should travel to the Egyptian coastal city to meet with Maria and to learn from her. But then Ruth had died of fevers, and Abram had spent the past two years mourning the loss of the love of his life.

  But at the end of the previous year, he realised that he’d grown distant from Jonathan, and the lad was sensitive enough to feel the detachment. So Abram determined that as there were only two of them left, he would fulfil Ruth’s wishes, and for the past four hours, he and Maria had been engrossed in discussions concerning alchemy, the transmutation of base metals into gold, the nature and reality of the Philosopher’s Stone, and the ideas espoused by Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras. When he’d told her that in his younger days he’d become a Christian follower of a self-proclaimed messiah called Jesus who came from Nazareth in Israel, she nearly jumped out of her seat in excitement. She told him that although she was a Jewess, she was a student of the words of this very same Jesus, stories now being preached by bishops who lived and proselytised in Alexandria.

  ‘One night,’ she told him, ‘when I was asleep, this very Jesus came to me and took me to the top of a mountain. I wasn’t afraid because he held me and I felt secure. His skin was as black as pitch, like that of an Abyssinian. From the top of the mountain, I could see the entire world spread out before me. In the distance, I could see the Greek philosophers who were arguing in their academy. Then this very Jesus lay me down and his essence entered my body. I grew very frightened, but he said to me, “Why are you afraid, oh ye of little faith; if I have shown you earthly things and you did not trust me, how then will you believe the heavenly things which I will show you?” Then I returned and woke in the morning. I told this to the bishops, but they cursed me, telling me that I was spreading heresy. They forbade me from entering into their prayer rooms.’

  ‘For me, and for my son Jonathan, we are more suited to the faith of Moses and Aaron, of David and Solomon.’

  But the moment he mentioned his son’s name, for the first time all afternoon, Abram realised that he’d been so absorbed by the conversation that the sun was about to set into the western sea, and Jonathan wasn’t home. Maria noticed the look of concern on his face, and asked him why he was worried.

  ‘He is a young man. He doesn’t know Alexandria. As a port, many people pass through here, strangers and sailors, merchants and slave traders. I shouldn’t have sent him out on his own. I should have gone with him.’

  ‘He will come to no harm,’ said Maria. ‘He will return soon. He’s probably met a pretty girl in the marketplace and lost all sense of the time.’

  But Jonathan wasn’t talking to a girl; nor was he in the marketplace. Since he and his father had arrived some days earlier by boat, they had been carefully watched by a woman in a dark robe, her head perpetually covered in a cowl whenever she was outdoors.

  The woman, Didia, was a slave trader who purchased Nubian, Abyssinian, Libyan, and Berber boys and girls sold to her by their parents or merchants, trained them, and then sent them off to Greece and Rome to work as servants or prostitutes.

  But for the past two days, she’d been following the movements of the Jewish doctor Abram and his son, Jonathan. Her captivation with the lad began the moment she saw him. It was when he walked from the boat on which he and his father had arrived in Alexandria, to the time they purchased room and board in a lodging house near to the dock, to this sudden meeting with Maria the Jewess. Not that she was interested in an alchemist, nor her fame for heating things in a bath of hot water for which she had become famous, but because she was monopolising Abram the doctor. And because the alchemist and the doctor were ensconced in his room all afternoon, he had unwisely allowed his beautiful son, Jonathan, to wander Alexandria alone.

  And being a young lad, alone in a strange land, he’d left the main merchant streets and was wandering along alleyways to see what sorts of houses and public buildings were in the city. Jonathan’s curiosity enabled Didia to do what she most wanted since she’d first happened to see them leave the boat when they arrived. It was only through the intervention of the gods of Egypt that she had spotted him. Had she not been sending her latest batch of slaves off to the Roman port of Ostia, she wouldn’t have been on the dock and wouldn’t have spotted Jonathan walking alongside his father.

  At first, she couldn’t believe it. She looked, and felt her legs turn to water. But on closer scrutiny, even though she kept to the shadows, the resemblance to her own dead son was even more remarkable. His hair, the shape of his face, his broad shoulders, and even the way the young lad walked, striding in footsteps that seemed too large for his body, was identical to the way Didia’s beautiful son Kheti had once been. She barely kept up with the two men as they walked from the dock into the town. She felt as though a brilliant beam of light had descended from the heavens. Seeing Jonathan brought her beloved son, Kheti, back to life. For over the year in which he had taken to die, Didia had seen her beautiful son wither away, emaciated, coughing, weak and shrunken, an incongruously withered being compared to the glowing son she had loved with all her heart. She’d known of the wasting disease in many slaves from the poorer lands south of Egypt, but never thought that her beloved son would become a victim.

  Yet as Jonathan walked, she saw not Abram’s son but her own beautiful boy. And for the first time since he’d died a year ago, she felt her heart beat in excitement. Now he was hers. She sat in her home and looked at him closely. The resemblance was nothing short of remarkable. The colour of his hair was slightly darker, and his nose was more Roman than Egyptian, but aside from those differences, they could have been brothers. On her orders, Didia’s slave had thrown a sack over the boy as he walked into an alley, bound him with rope and brought him struggling and shouting to Didia’s home.

  ‘You’re wondering why you’re here, aren’t you, boy?’ she said.

  His mouth was full of cloth and a bandage was tied tightly around it to stop him from shouting; and he was bound hand and foot and couldn’t move. But he could nod.

  ‘You are very valuable to me, in ways that you could not even begin to understand. If you promise to remain quiet, I will remove the bindings around your mouth, and give you food and drink. Do you promise not to shout? Not that it matters, but be assured that it won’t help you, because nobody can hear,
and if they could, this is the house of slavery and so people of your age shout and scream and beg all of the while. But I don’t want you to shout. My son Kheti never used to shout. So, will you promise?’

  Jonathan looked at the woman. She’d removed her cowl, and he could see her greying hair and her face, lined with worry. She was much older than his own mother, Ruth, before she’d died, but still, there was a resemblance. The shape of her face, her arched eyebrows, the way her mouth turned up when she smiled.

  When he remembered his mother, it was her smile that had always given him such pleasure when he entered the house. A warm and loving smile, until she became ill and withered. But this woman was not his mother, and he was frightened of her. Still, he was desperate for a drink and he was hungry, so he nodded.

  Didia nodded curtly, and her slave removed the bandage around Jonathan’s mouth, and pulled out the rag. He licked his dry lips.

  ‘So, boy, what’s your name?’

  His voice was hoarse, but he tried to sound confident. ‘Jonathan.’

  She nodded. ‘From now on, you will forget what your mother and father called you. From now on, in my house, you will honour a different name. I will call you Kheti.’

  Abram and Maria the Jewess searched every street near to his lodgings. But when it was pitch black, with only a few street lights to pierce the darkness of the moonless night, they met again in the doorway of a baker’s shop.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Maria.

  Abram nodded. ‘I’ll pray to the Almighty God that he’s safe and unharmed; that he’s met with some other lads and is with them; that he’s drinking and has fallen into a sleep. I will pray because without prayer I am nothing.’

  Maria shook her head. ‘You can pray, Abram, but I have an evil feeling in my bones that prayer won’t help you. I’ve seen your boy Jonathan. He’s tall and beautiful. And in Alexandria, we have dozens of men and women who trade in the lives of slaves. Alexandria is well known as an unsafe port for boys and girls.’