Inside, she put an old coffee finjan on the stove, and the three sat down around the small table. Sual looked at the short, fine-boned woman moving elegantly around the kitchen. Other than a few streaks of gray in her dark hair and some tiny laugh lines at the corners of her eyes, she hadn’t changed at all.
“Where have you been all these years, my dear Sual?” asked the veteran teacher, her kind look enfolding Sual in the glow of good memories.
Sual briefly told Lena about the pregnancy, leaving out details that still pained her, and then continued with how she met Theo, who unknowingly saved her.
“So you’re Sual’s guardian angel?” Lena smiled at Theo.
“No, she’s mine,” Theo answered, causing Sual to blush.
Lena smiled at both, then changed the topic. “You know, Sual, you were a brilliant student. The day they took you out of school was a very sad one for me.”
“I started university this year,” Sual smiled proudly.
Lena embraced her warmly. “Ya binti!”
Sual then explained why she and her companions were there. “Any scrap of information could be helpful,” she added.
Lena nodded in understanding. “You remember correctly, Sual. In this neighborhood there are no secrets. If your children were here, somebody saw them. And if somebody saw them, I’ll know about it. With the cell phones down, it might take a few hours to find out, but if the children are in the Christian quarter, I’ll find them.”
Sual breathed deeply with relief. She was limp with fatigue, and her wounded arm throbbed.
Theo asked if there was any reception and was told there was a satellite dish on the roof; he was welcome to see if there was anything to see on the TV. Perhaps not the Israeli channels, but maybe some European satellite stations.
Amalia and Theo looked encouraged and hurried to the living room to turn the TV set on, while Sual stayed in the kitchen with Lena. As Lena stirred pots on the stove, Sual chopped vegetables for a salad. They worked side by side without speaking.
Finally, Sual dared break the silence. “Do you know what happened to my family?” More than a decade had passed since she last saw them; she didn’t even know if her mother was still alive.
“After you disappeared, there were a lot of bad feelings between the families,” she answered, and told her that Mahmoud had divorced her in a ceremony conducted by the sheik. To protect Sual’s good name, her mother had spread a rumor that the infant girl died and that she – Sual – had gone mad with grief. It helped because they stopped looking for her within a year.
The pain and longing suddenly flooded through Sual. “You’re bleeding!” Lena suddenly exclaimed. Sure enough, her finger was oozing blood. She must have cut herself without noticing.
“Ya binti, I’ll finish the salad. Sit down,” Lena said firmly, giving Sual a glass of water and gently taking the knife away from her.
“And mother?” Sual whispered, closing her eyes.
“Everything is fine with her, al-hamdullila!” she said with a smile. More somberly, she added, “But your father – he passed away, allah yirhamo.”
This was too much for Sual. Lena held her close. “Your mother will be so happy to see you, ya binti,” she consoled her.
A pale Theo entered the kitchen. “The news is saying there’s fighting all over Israel. Jews blew up a mosque in Jaffa and Muslims broke into the main Tel Aviv synagogue and shot the congregants. Russia is threatening to send its army in and the United States is saying that if Russia intervenes there will be an all-out war.”
Amalia came in behind Theo, in time to see Sual hurriedly wiping her tears away with a kitchen towel. The two of them have more than enough on their plate, Sual thought; they don’t need my tears too.
“Well, all that matters is that Yoav became religious,” said Amalia without trying to hide her cynicism. “‘You shall love thy neighbor’ has become ‘you shall murder thy neighbor.’” She distracted herself by nibbling on a cucumber slice.
“I stopped believing because it’s simply not possible God would want anyone to treat women so badly,” added Sual.
“Right,” Amalia agreed, “the attitude to women is the same in Judaism and Islam.”
“It’s not as if Christianity is so much better,” Lena smiled sadly. “But, for now, sit down and eat.”
The food was wonderful and they were famished. The landline phone suddenly rang and Lena hurried to answer it.
“No news, but my brother is still searching,” she said when she came back.
They were almost done with the meal when they heard a knock at the door.
Chapter 21
Anise strode alongside the train track and, after a few minutes, reached a place that reminded her of a central bus or train station in a large city. An usher in purple overalls with diagonal yellow stripes stood inside a small glass booth directing trolleys traveling at dizzying speeds on the colorful tracks.
The usher blew on a long whistle and rapidly moved his arms this way and that. The white plaza in front of him was full of angels in colorful overalls. Anise crossed the crowded plaza, ignoring the curious glances cast her way. She approached the window of the booth and knocked on it.
The usher, surprised, turned around.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for God. Could you please point me in the right direction?
The usher looked at her incredulously, dropped his arms to his side in sudden astonishment, and then burst into merry laughter. In the meantime, several trolleys collided.
“How about if you stop laughing and get back to directing traffic?” an insulted Anise suggested. But the usher, grabbing his belly with both hands, wouldn’t stop guffawing.
“If you find Him, I mean God, tell Him I’m looking for Him too,” the usher managed to gasp out between gales of mirth. “You think He’d come here? God? We’re just a small country station, a very
