at his mercy, pregnant, without a soul in the world.
He waited for her to remove her coat, gloves, and hat, and placed them all under his head as he lay down to sleep at the foot of the tent, gripping his gun.
Curled up under the coarse blankets, Tanya shook with tremors that travelled like waves through her body. She could smell Abraham all around her, feel his presence, his love. But the words rang in her ears. A bloody sieve.
An hour passed, maybe more. Her hand reached to his side of the tent and found a shirt he had tossed aside the previous night. She pressed it to her face, inhaling his sweet smell, and sobs swelled in her chest. But she steeled herself. There would be plenty of time to cry, but only a brief window to escape.
Elie seemed asleep, but she didn’t trust him. He was clever, devious. She listened to the pace of his breathing, the slight snoring, and waited.
It started snowing again, and soon he shifted, drawing deeper into his cocoon of tarp and blankets. Yet she waited another hour before starting the tedious work of undoing the threads that bound the head of the tent. When the opening was wide enough, she inched forward until her trembling body was out.
A wolf howled far inside the forest.
Elie grunted. His gun rattled as he turned under the covers.
She waited, holding her breath.
His snoring resumed.
Reaching into the tent, Tanya slowly pulled out a blanket, which she wrapped around herself. She listened for the sounds of the front, where fighting had not paused for the night, and headed toward it through the thick woods. Under the canopies, the snow was still deep, reaching up to her thighs. She pulled one leg after the other.
The wolf howled again, closer this time. Another one joined him. And a third.
She tried to go faster. The heat from her body melted the snow, soaking her long underpants and the blanket on her back. The boots filled with snow, which turned into freezing, muddy slush. She progressed, maddeningly slow. Her teeth clattered, her muscles twitched, and a rustle of branches nearby made her shout, “Who’s there?”
More howling. From all directions. Or was it a single wolf, circling, closing in?
She wanted to lie down, to cover herself with snow, to sleep.
“ No! ”
She pulled off her boots and swung them around as weapons. She took another step, her legs as heavy as logs. Another step.
Voices nearby. Was it Elie Weiss?
No! The words were foreign! English!
“Help me,” She yelled. “Please! Help!”
An animal ran at her, eyes like darts of light. Tanya held up her arms, and the animal rammed her. Hot, foul breath, followed by a sharp pain.
She fell backwards, crying his name, “ Abraham! ”
Twenty-one years later…
Chapter 3
Rabbi Abraham Gerster led his men up the dirt path. Behind them, West Jerusalem glowed in the reddish evening sun. At the top of the hill, he mounted a squat, massive boulder, which overlooked the Armistice border that cut Jerusalem in half. The wind suddenly lashed at him, trying to snatch away his black hat, but he held it and recited in a booming voice, “ Hear us, God! Gentiles defiled your Temple, turned Jerusalem to ruins! ”
Psalms seventy-nine, Lemmy thought as he climbed after his father onto the boulder.
“ They fed your chosen to the vultures, your faithful to the wild beasts. ” Rabbi Gerster paused as the men repeated the words.
Lemmy pressed down his hat, shading his eyes, and stepped to the edge of the boulder while chanting the next line, “ Spilled our blood like water around Jerusalem. ” He gazed at the rolls of barbed wire below, running north-south like rough stitches left by a careless surgeon. Beyond the serpentine wires, he saw the Jordanian bunkers, gun barrels sticking out of shooting slats. They occasionally fired across the border, killing or maiming a passerby on the Jewish side. But they never did it on a Friday, Islam’s holy day.
“ Pour your wrath, God, ” Rabbi Abraham Gerster continued, “ upon the Gentiles. ”
As the men repeated the words, Lemmy looked further up, beyond the border and bunkers, at the Old City. It had been in Arab hands since 1948, and he could smell the familiar mix of smoke and dust and reeking human waste. The Dome of the Rock dominated the skyline, a golden mosque built atop the ruins of the holy Temple. The Old City seemed to float in the air, on wings of holiness, as his father had once said. It was built on Mount Moriah, where God had once told the patriarch Abraham to sacrifice his only son. Lemmy imagined little Isaac following Abraham up that hill-
“ Pssst!” His father motioned him to get off the boulder.
Lemmy jumped down and rejoined the group. He bumped into Benjamin, his best friend and study companion, who was rocking devoutly, his eyes shut in devotion. Benjamin stumbled back, and they pushed each other, laughing. A young scholar nicknamed Redhead Dan turned and glared at them. Benjamin resumed murmuring Psalms, and Lemmy pretended to do the same.
Up on the boulder, Rabbi Gerster opened his arms and sang, “ Bring us back to you, God, and we shall come. ”
The men of Neturay Karta-“City Sentinels” in Aramaic-sang with him as they had done every Friday afternoon for eighteen years, “ Return us to the old days of glory! ”
The wind picked up again. It had risen from the Dead Sea, through the barren canyons of the Judean Desert, collecting dust, which lodged in their beards and spiral side locks. They swayed in prayer, fists pressed to their chests, clustered behind the boulder and their rabbi’s open arms. Behind them, the red ball of the sun descended toward the distant Mediterranean Sea.
In the back of the group, Lemmy picked up a pebble and tossed it up in the air, catching it with a fast hand. He watched his father’s arms reach wide in a symbolic embrace of the Old City, the same arms that had used to carry him onto the boulder. He had grown since, almost eighteen, almost ready for marriage and children of his own. But still, even now, his father seemed like a giant to him.
The pebble by his ear, he imagined hearing swords clinking as men in armor marched by. Were they Absalom’s rabble rousers, seizing Jerusalem from his aging father, King David? Or the crusaders, rushing to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher? In his mind he walked the narrow alleys of the Old City, smelled the bittersweet aroma of burning hashish and camel feces, heard the chimes of bells and the prayers of muezzins.
“ If I forget thee, Jerusalem, ” Rabbi Gerster led his men in a mournful chant, “ my right hand shall wither. ” They repeated the chant, and the rabbi glanced over his shoulder at his son. Lemmy joined the chant, swaying back and forth, “ My right hand shall wither. ”
Rabbi Gerster turned back to face the Old City, his voice louder than the wind. “M y tongue shall stick to my palate, if I don’t remember Jerusalem!” He raised his right hand, his fist clenched.
A shot sounded in the distance, and the black hat flew from the rabbi’s head.
Lemmy stared at his father up on the boulder, expecting him to collapse.
A second shot. Dirt blew up near the rabbi’s feet.
The men yelled and fell to the ground, cowering behind the boulder.
But Rabbi Abraham Gerster kept his fist up in defiance of the anonymous Jordanian sniper and continued the chant, “ If I don’t remember thee- ”
Another shot, the bullet shrieking above.
Peeking over the rock, Lemmy tried to locate the source of the fire, but the echoes bounced from all directions.
“ If I don’t put Jerusalem above my own happiness! ”
With the chant concluded, Rabbi Gerster bowed in the direction of Temple Mount and stepped toward the
