He muttered, “I cannot believe you are alive.” He indicated her hand where Rivkah wore his ring. “Mrs. Pappel?”
She searched for her voice, panting, void of words. Malik patted the air to quell her wildness.
She said, “Jerusalem.”
Both of Malik’s hands returned to the smoking Thompson.
“Girl, you must listen to me.”
Despite his caution, Rivkah touched Malik’s arm to make him real. He nodded, a small gesture for a giant.
“You are my friend.”
“I am.”
Through the trees, he eyed the horde swarming into Kfar Etzion.
“Those are my clan. My cousins. The day has come when there is no choice for me. You understand?”
“I understand.” She showed Malik the Jewish blood on her. “It’s the same.”
“This I know. Walk.”
With the muzzle of the Thompson, he gestured to the farmyard. Rivkah turned, sickened to go back there.
Over her shoulder, Malik said, “I am going to put you into an armored car. You will be taken away to Hebron. I will come as soon as I can. Right now, you are my prisoner. Act like it, or there is nothing I can do. Where is your sister?”
“Massuot Yitzhak.”
“Good. There’s been shelling but no full attack.”
“Will they be allowed to surrender? Or another massacre?”
“Don’t be clever with me. Today was not the start. Did you hear them screaming Deir Yassin? This is what I feared. Exactly this.”
Hundreds of Arabs watched them come. Malik lapped a great hand over Rivkah’s shoulder. He steered her through the Legionnaires, parted their anger and plunder with his girth and the barrel of his gun.
In the farmyard, Arabs with pistols dispatched the wounded haverim and Haganah still alive in the piles. Behind her, Malik said, “Look away.”
Rivkah should be dead, the child with her. Hugo had said this; how powerful it was to be alive beyond your own death. She did not avert her eyes.
Chapter 121
MAY 15
KIBBUTZ SAMAKH
STATE OF ISRAEL
By Vincent Haas
Herald Tribune News Service
YESTERDAY, AT 4 P.M., the declaration for the establishment of a free Jewish nation was read aloud to the world.
The event was broadcast live from the Tel Aviv Museum. The Palestine Philharmonic played the national anthem, Hatikvah, The Hope. Hundreds of dignitaries in the hall stood to sing. Around the earth, I suspect, millions did the same.
The opening words were stirring like any good declaration of independence: The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world…
I heard nothing else.
I am not in Tel Aviv. I was there for a day, but I left. I’m in a little kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, hard by the River Jordan where it flows into the Galilee. I’m covering a unit of Haganah fighters on the front line of a war that started at 4 p.m. yesterday. Syrian tanks are coming for them. One of the soldiers in the bunker with me, trying to get some sleep, called for the broadcast of the ceremony in Tel Aviv to be cut off. “We’ll listen to the fine words another time.” And that was it.
Another time, indeed. To have such a thing would be considered a luxury in Palestine. It’s been years since this land has rested. When has there been another time for the Jews or the Arabs here, not just an always dangerous, urgent, now?
On May 8th, 1945, the war in Europe ended. The very next day began the Jews’ revolt to throw the British out of Palestine.
On November 29th, 1947, the United Nations announced the end of Britain’s Mandate and the partition of Palestine into two states. Inside hours, the first blood was spilled in a six-month civil war that claimed three thousand Arab and Jewish lives and sent hundreds of thousands of Arabs into exile.
Last night, on the first midnight in the nation of Israel, the last British warships sailed beyond the territorial waters of a place they no longer controlled. At sunup, the war machines of five Arab nations invaded to wrest away that control.
Once again, I’m a war correspondent. To be honest, I never stopped.
I left New York three years ago, first to Germany, then to this suffering land. In that time, I’ve reported on, even taken part in, the constant struggle for Palestine. I took my own bullet, fired a few. I’ve tried to see myself reflected in the flames of the struggle, tried to understand what sort of man I am. I’ve witnessed and measured myself in the fighting. But there has been no understanding for me there. I’m neither Jew nor Arab, and though I have participated, I stand nothing to lose in Palestine but my safety and life, and these are by my choice. There’s nothing for me to learn from violence; it’s just too abhorrent. The lessons are only about violence itself.
I made a friend in Germany. I came to Palestine with him on an illegal ship. I watched the war change him, then change him back. I didn’t understand.
I met a woman. The land had changed her, and as I fell in love with her I fell for the land, too. I didn’t understand.
The friend is safe. The woman is not. She stayed behind in a kibbutz bloc south of Jerusalem in Arab-controlled territory. Gush Etzion is a place you’ll hear about. In the same hours Israel was being born, Arabs massacred a hundred Jewish farmers and soldiers there, and took another three hundred prisoner. This brutality was done in reprisal for a similar act by the Jews against the Arabs, in another small place called Deir Yassin.
I don’t know the woman’s fate or that of our unborn child. She’d asked me to go to Tel Aviv to see her new nation enter the world. When I learned I wouldn’t be able to do the same for my own child, I left Tel Aviv for the front line. This is where the violence will be. And this is where I have discovered I’ve been wrong.
Loss has been the creed of the Jews and Arabs for millennia, never more so than over the last several years, in Europe, and now in the land newly called Israel. Until yesterday, before Gush Etzion, I’d lost pretty much nothing on the scale of these paired peoples. Now, I understand. Now, in that terrible way, I’m a Jew. I’m an Arab.
I will stay here. I will know what happened in Gush Etzion, to her, my child, my friends, this land. I will see you all again, another time. Reporting from Kibbutz Samakh, Israel.
Finis
Acknowledgments
The great historical novels of Wouk, Uris, and Clavell set the template for epic historical fiction. I read them as a young man; as a writer in my own fashion, I want nothing more than to have my work stand near theirs.
This book took a few years. Along the long way, several hands grabbed an oar. My friend, first editor, and frequent muse Rachel Landsee demanded this work be my best. If I think it is, it’s because Rachel said so.
My best friend Lindy Bumgarner has kept me fed and buoyant throughout, and for the decade before.
David and Shiu Mien Block provided respite, company, and a loving place to have a scotch and dumplings.
Katharine Sands, other people’s remarkable literary agent, is a dear pal and irreplaceable advisor. She thinks too highly of me.
My agent Doug Grad, beneath an easy laugh and flowing manner, is a fierce negotiator. Doug is regular people in an irregular profession.
Adam Bellow is the publisher and editor I needed. Adam understands not only what I have written but what I wanted to write. Imagine being published by the son of your all-time favorite novelist.
I want to thank the many veterans of the Mighty Pen Project for their loyalty and affection to me and the writing program. They show courage in the stories they create for our class, no less than what they displayed in uniform. The Virginia War Memorial, my partner in the Mighty Pen, has
done everything and more to support the veteran writers and me.
If you wish to read an archive of powerful Mighty Pen works, please go to scholarscompass.vcu.edu/mighty_pen.
Lastly, I want to appreciate my brother Barry’s service in Vietnam. Agent Orange caught up with him this year. Safe travels to high ground, Barry.
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