The Celestial Gate

by Avital Dicker

  Amalia couldn’t stop thinking about a pale, hurting Yam, looking at her and Yoav from the doorway before slamming it shut and taking off at a run.

  The first rays of sun were peeking over the horizon. They’ll have to seek shelter, it’s too dangerous for them to be out in the daylight, thought Sual. Nothing was hidden from the residents of the narrow streets of the Old City; rumors flew at the speed of light. To this day, remembering the women’s pitying looks her flat belly elicited, she shivered. She remembered Lena, her Christian schoolteacher who lives not far from here; Sual was her favorite student. Perhaps Lena would agree to help them. If the children have come through the Christian quarter and someone’s seen them, Lena will know how to find out, she thought.

  As none of them could think of a better option, Theo and Amalia agreed it was worth a try. Sual surprised herself by finding Lena’s house without trouble. But, then again, the city was forever imprinted on her soul. She climbed the stairs to the second floor, with Theo and Amalia right behind her.

  Sual knocked. “Lena, it’s Sual,” she whispered in Arabic close to the doorjamb. Theo and Amalia drew their guns and flattened themselves against the wall to cover her.

  The door remained closed. After hesitating a beat, Sual knocked again, this time harder. A few moments later, they heard steps inside and a key turning in the door.

  Sual breathed with relief. “She’s home,” she whispered gratefully to Theo, but when she turned back she found herself staring straight into the barrel of a gun.

  Mor gaped in amazement. A strong wind had blown up, making a dust-spout rise in the air like a tornado. Anise’s eyes stung from the sand, and she couldn’t see where Mor and Yam were. She felt her feet lose contact with the ground as the wind pulled her in, dizzying her and cradling her body in the air.

  Mor tried to hold onto a tree branch, but the wind picked him off with ease, sucking him into itself. He saw an upside-down Yam, his blond curls waving about, being dragged and swallowed in the eye of the whirlwind.

  The clamor of the sudden storm now gave way to silence. White clouds arranged themselves like an arch above Anise’s head. Weirdly, she wasn’t afraid. It fact, she felt fantastic. She looked down. The earth below had disappeared and she was surrounded by the deep blue of the sky. A deep calm settled on her. She had no idea where she was, but it didn’t matter.

  She looked at her hands, which were covered with a see-through, flexible coating. She tried touching it. The material was pleasantly warm and elastic and surrounded her whole body.

  Then she saw Yam, also suspended in the air. He, too, was covered by the strange substance. She stretched her arm inside the transparent bubble and almost managed to touch it. To her right, she saw Mor and waved, and then all three started to sink slowly back down. Anise looked at the colors around her with wonder: they were changing every few seconds in a gorgeous spectacle.

  Then Anise felt her feet slowly touching something solid. Her bubble closed in on her, adhering to her body like a jumpsuit. She spread her fingers, trying to pick the stuff off, but every time she thought she had it, the elastic material again stuck to her.

  Her mouth wide open with amazement, she looked at Yam and Mor who’d just landed. Mor gave her a big grin. “This makes no sense at all, but I love it!” he said joyfully.

  Yam, too, tried to peel his jumpsuit off, but it attached itself to him again, like a wound scabbing over without leaving a scar. “This is amazing,” he said, astonished. “Hey, where are you going?” he yelled at Mor who was moving away, as if hypnotized, into a thick fog. He and Anise hurried to catch up.

  The fog reached their hips. Yam broke off a piece and licked it; it was sweet, reminding him of chocolate, except much better. OK – this is impossible, he thought. “Taste it,” he told Anise.

  Hesitating just a moment, she gave in and scratched off a drop of the fog and cautiously licked it. “Nice!” she said, “tart.”

  “Mine is sweet,” said Yam.

  Anise thought that this was the first time in many days that Yam’s eyes hadn’t projected worry; she thought she could even see the beginning of a smile on his lips. She looked at his tall, muscular form, feeling again the familiar tingle in her body.

  “I’m ravenous,” said Mor, shoving a huge piece of the fog into his mouth. “Hmm, peanut butter,” he said, smacking his lips with delight, just before starting in on another large piece. “Whoa – this one’s like hamburger,” he said, making it clear he had no complaints.

  Anise felt like pinching herself. This couldn’t be happening. None of what was happening made any sense. I must be dreaming, she thought.

  “In that case, we’re in the exact same dream, and I really don’t feel like waking up,” laughed Mor, swallowing more of the fog. “I wonder if food is fattening here too,” he said.

  “Dummy,” she answered, wondering how he could respond to thoughts in her mind. She hadn’t said anything out loud. Anise spread her arms to the sides, exulting. “This is so much better than darkness, hatred, and death!”

  “Yup. Like the Garden of Eden,” Yam chimed in. Anise was thrilled to see him so happy.

  “Of course it’s the Garden of Eden. Like, duh!” A chubby angel in front of them, nervously twitching his wings, interrupted them.

  Mor, quickly swallowed the last of the fog pieces. He stared disappointedly at the angel whose unbuttoned shirt showed his white belly. “This is not how I imagined angels looking,” he said. Anise shoved an elbow into his ribcage.

  The angel placed his thick hands on his hips, trying to look more authoritative. “You’d better have an excellent explanation,” he said with all the anger he could muster.

  “Explanation for what? What did we do?” asked Yam.

  “I’ve been guarding that gate for several eternities and nothing like this has ever happened to me. Nobody has ever gotten past,” he said, scratching his scalp somewhere underneath his abundant hair. “Everyone goes up in an orderly fashion. This is the first time anyone’s come through this gate.”

  “I’m sorry, but we didn’t do anything. It just happened,” Yam apologized. “But, as long as you’re here, and even though you look nothing like you’re supposed to, please tell us that it means we succeeded in finding the gate, right?”

  “You know, it’s not politically correct to speak to me that way. Not all angels are perfect the way they’re depicted in your paintings,” said the insulted angel huffily. “Besides, does it seem as if I’m kidding?” Now he was getting annoyed and his entire body was turning red. “I’m responsible for the gate. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get down from here right away, before management shows up and sends me to sort through mosquitoes for a few long eternities.”

  Anise tried mightily not to laugh. “We’d like that too, if only we could. We have no idea how we got here and definitely no idea how to go back. But now that we’re here, we have no intention of going away. So, please, go ahead, call God,” she said in a tone that left no room for refusal.

  A surprised Enochio stared at her a moment before cracking up laughing, or rather before he started to hop around in a way that looked like laughter. “Oh really? To see God… That’s what she wants? Sweetheart, God doesn’t have time to breathe these days. There’s too much to do. Personally, I haven’t seen him since… oh, I don’t know, at least several eternities.”

  Mor wasn’t following the conversation. As if in a trance, he stared past the angel’s shoulder. Among the scraps of fog, he could see trolleys in different colors going along color-coded tracks in the air. Some of the cars were full of people, others full of animals. Mor looked at a car filled with white bears. Right behind it came a car full of giraffes whose necks uncomfortably stretched through the ceiling.

  Anise noticed several people trying to jump out of the train cars, with ushers in green uniforms immediately putting them back in place.

>   Not far away from there, a group of angels in white was busy sorting through a heap of broken items. They separated kitchenware from furniture and toys, putting them on different tracks moving at tremendous speed.

  “What are they doing?” asked Mor, pointing to the group in white, while licking another piece of fog.

  “They’re in charge of the object VIP lounge. They fix things and make sure that, after a life of hard labor, they’re in perfect shape before they rest,” Enochio explained.

  Mor stopped chewing. “What? Are you serious? Objects have a soul?” he asked, surprised.

  “Of course,” the angel snorted impatiently.

  Mor thought of the way he’d treated some of his toys and suddenly felt a twinge of conscience.

  “Just wait a second… So why are we here and not in a train car?” he wanted to know.

  “I’ve already told you! It’s not your time to come up to heaven. Only God knows how you got in,” grumbled the chubby angel while grabbing Yam by his shirt. “If anyone asks, I did not fall asleep while on duty, you hear? This screw-up is not my fault.” Yam, amused, nodded in agreement, and Enochio let go of him with a sigh.

  “All right. Don’t move,” he said. “Wait here. I have to check on how to return you. If the guards catch you – heaven have mercy on me and heaven have mercy on you,” he repeated his threat, and started waddling away on his chubby legs.

  A stunned Anise looked at Yam and Mor. “Listen, guys, I remember everything.”

  “Remember what?” asked Yam.

  “Everything,” she repeated, hugging him with carefree joy.

  Yam had no idea what she was talking about but decided that as long as she was hugging him, he wasn’t going to complain.

  Anise closed her eyes. Here, now, at this very moment, she knew it all. She’s been looking for God not only in this incarnation but it in many, many incarnations. And, somehow, something always gets messed up, she recalled.

  In the meantime, Mor was chasing some hammocks floating among the bits of fog. After several failed attempts, he managed to catch one of them and leap into it, luxuriating in his new spot.

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Mor asked from above, stretching his arms lazily. “Why don’t you stop your nattering? Let’s enjoy ourselves. It was pretty damned awful down there on Earth,” he added, swinging blissfully from side to side.

  Anise leaped up and overturned the hammock, spilling Mor out. “What the hell?” He was really mad, but Anise ignored him.

  “Listen, it’s all coming back to me now. You, me, and him – we’ve always been together,” she said while pointing at Yam. “We’ve had different names and lived in different places, but the three of us – we’ve always been together.”

  Mor looked confused, so Anise shook him by his shoulders. “Mor, you must remember. Each time, we get to this spot we’re immediately sent back down. There’s a lottery and, after a short, totally random look, we’re forced to choose one family out of three, and end up making mistakes and living sad incarnations. Every time, we decide to go find God and talk to Him about it, but He’s always busy so we always get sent back down, and then we forget, all over again.”

  Mor stared at her without understanding a single word. He shrugged. “Fine, whatever. But you didn’t have to throw me out of the hammock,” he said, climbing into another one.

  Anise’s frustration was plain. “Listen up! This is our chance. This time, I’m not giving up. This time, nobody’s stopping me. I’m going to find Him. And you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she added, wounded.

  Yam didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on a faraway vision of wild horses galloping freely among the train cars and a bunch of ushers trying valiantly to bring them back.

  Anise was furious. Fine, I can do without them, she thought and started moving away.

  “Hey, relax! Why do you always have to wreck all the fun?” Mor called after her, unwillingly climbing out of his new hammock.

  “Anise’s gone off to look for God,” he told Yam, shrugging again. “She always complicates things. We were told to stay here.”

  “Would you just look at that beautiful thing over there… I’m dying to ride it.” An excited Yam was pointing to a black horse whose mane dazzled with silvery stripes.

  “I wonder if it can talk!” Mor laughed, “like in the cartoons. Hey – I’d like the white one over there,” he said, pointing enthusiastically at another horse, completely forgetting about God and Anise.

  From her distance, Anise watched the two boys chasing the horses. Mor leaped onto the white horse’s back, grabbing its long mane. “My knight in shining armor… As if,” she snorted angrily to herself.

  She didn’t need them. She could do this on her own. And if anybody thought she was going to wait around for the chubby angel to return and send her back down, they had another thing coming. No, this was her chance to find God and tell Him exactly what she thought of Him and the way he runs the world, both down there and up here. Yeah. She’d manage on her own.

  Chapter 20

  Amalia aimed her gun at the head of the pale woman in the doorway armed with an ancient rifle.

  Sual motioned for her to put her gun away. “Lena, it’s me, Sual,” she said.

  Lena looked at her, and a moment later lowered her weapon. “I’m so sorry, but these days…” she cried out in remorse.

  Warmly embracing Sual, she bade the three enter, making sure to lock all three of the door’s locks.

  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.”