Stateless (19 page)

Though she was a baby, Shalman whispered in her ears about their city, Jerusalem: its history, its peoples, its places and its stories. He rounded a corner and made his way up towards the Damascus gate, an ancient structure built and rebuilt by each of the occupiers of the ancient city. First a Roman gate under the emperor Hadrian in the second century CE and then later remade by the Christian Crusaders in the twelfth century. The gate that Shalman stood at had stones dating from 1537 and had been erected by workmen for Sulieman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Shalman looked up at the stones and the tower and told his tiny daughter stories about their history.

It was then that he heard his name. The voice was familiar and it carried across the square in urgency. It was Yitzhak Shamir, his boss from Lehi, standing at a distance across the throngs of people moving in and out of the gate. Shalman turned to wave but Shamir didn't wave back as a greeting but rather beckoned him urgently to come towards him.

Puzzled, Shalman looked intently at his friend, trying to see why he was so agitated. Yitzhak repeated the gesture and called again. Shalman looked around him to see if there was something he had missed; was there something Yitzhak wanted him to see? He looked back to the Pole and saw that Yitzhak was walking backwards away from Shalman, away from the gate, but still gesturing to him as if calling him urgently to follow.

Shalman was confused but took a few slow steps towards Yitzhak. Conscious of the tiny Vered who was almost asleep in his arms, Shalman's steps were slow and deliberate, trying to keep his movements smooth. He lifted his gaze back to the
direction he was walking and scanned again for Yitzhak. He saw that the Pole had moved further away, almost running backwards, still looking to Shalman and still drawing him urgently on with his arm-waving.

Where is he going? thought Shalman. He quickened his pace but still not enough to satisfy Yitzhak, who was now about to disappear into the shadow of a building and a street leading away. For a moment, just as he was about to vanish from view, Shalman could see Yitzhak's face clearly through a gap in the crowd. What Shalman saw was panic and a gaze that looked not at him, but past him.

Shalman stopped to turn and look back at the Damascus gate, then back again to Yitzhak ahead of him and then once more to the gate . . .

Then Shalman started to run. He was an idiot; he was distracted by thoughts of his family; in the old days when he was still fighting with Lehi, he'd have known immediately where lay the danger. Shalman gripped Vered tightly and pushed his way forward as fast as his feet could carry him, lowering his posture, hunching his body, drawing Vered close to him, almost enveloping her.

And then came the explosion. It bellowed through the gate and threw Shalman forward off his feet and onto the ground. Rather than throw his arms out to catch himself, he kept the baby wrapped tight against him and took the full force of the impact on the ground with his shoulder. Pain coursed through his arm but he didn't let go, and remained curled in a ball around his child as debris rained down over him.

He now sat opposite his wife in their small home, telling her this story as she bathed his badly bruised shoulder and strapped it with a white linen bandage.

‘If Yitzhak hadn't seen me . . . If I hadn't heard him . . .' stammered Shalman as he looked at his hands and saw them still shaking – though whether it was from fear or anger he did not know.

‘That's a lot of ifs, Shalman,' was Judit's curt reply as she pulled the bandage tight and he let out a small yelp.

‘How could they be so . . . ?' He didn't finish his thought because he wasn't really expecting an answer.

‘The bomb went off prematurely. Nobody knew you'd be there.'

Shalman spun around to face his wife. ‘Prematurely?'

‘Yes. It was planted in an Arab taxi. It went off too early.'

‘Why did it go off at all? Why there?'

Judit looked at him strangely.

‘Your child, Judit!' Shalman found himself yelling. ‘Your child was right there, in my arms, under the gate.'

‘You shouldn't have been there,' she said in a voice so calm it shocked him.

‘Did you know about this attack?' demanded Shalman.

‘No,' replied Judit matter-of-factly, before adding, ‘very few did. Shamir played it close. But we knew to stay away from the Old City. You would have known too, had you been at the operations meeting as ordered. But you were not . . .'

‘Why didn't you tell me?' Shalman shot back, but he didn't wait for a reply. ‘Because you're never here, Judit! Sometimes I barely see you for days. Or when you are here, it's only to sneak off again in the middle of the night.'

Judit didn't answer. She picked up the scissors and the remains of the bandage she had used to strap Shalman's shoulder and turned to walk away to the kitchen.

Shalman called after her. ‘I was there, Judit! It could have been me . . .'

Judit stopped but didn't turn back. ‘But you're alright, Shalman. Yitzhak warned you and you're fine. And your shoulder will be fine.'

Anger flared in Shalman's eyes. ‘That's not the point! God damn it, Judit. Who do we think we're fighting?'

Judit finally turned back, her arms crossed, and responded to Shalman with a voice so controlled it unnerved him. ‘No one will protect us, Shalman. We are alone in a sea of enemies. Europe, Arabia, we cannot live in these places anymore. So here we stand in this narrow strip of earth, surrounded by people who hate us and the British who control and manipulate us. Only when they are gone can we be free.'

‘I know this speech,' spat Shalman, though hearing his own words in his ears, he was shocked by their anger. The image of his daughter in his arms as he ran from the exploding gate was still fire in his veins.

‘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)

A
bram 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.'