Return to Me

by Lynn Austin

  The prayers went late into the evening, and by the time they ended, Iddo’s legs could barely carry him home. But his worry had vanished as if lifted from his shoulders to ascend with his prayers. “See, Zechariah? The worst is over now,” he said as they entered the gate to their courtyard. “But we must do as Rebbe Daniel told us and continue to pray. The Almighty has promised that if His people humble themselves and pray, then He will forgive our sin and heal our land. We will return to Jerusalem and—”

  Berekiah took Iddo’s arm, stopping him before he entered the house. “Abba. You don’t really believe that we’ll return to Jerusalem, do you?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course I do! You heard what Rebbe Daniel said. The Almighty One has promised through His prophets that we will.” Iddo looked down at his young grandson, eager to reassure him, but the boy’s father nudged him toward the door.

  “Go inside, Zechariah. Your grandfather and I will be there in a moment.” Hoshea also waited behind, and Iddo saw his sons exchange worried looks.

  “Listen, Abba. It’s crazy to believe that we’ll be allowed to return,” Hoshea said. “Slaves never go free, and exiles never return to their native lands.”

  “The slaves went free under Moses,” Iddo said. “It must have seemed just as impossible back then, too.”

  “And who will dare approach this new ‘pharaoh’ and demand that our captors set us free?” Berekiah asked.

  “Maybe the Almighty One will send Rebbe Daniel to—”

  “To do what? Can he perform miracles like Moses did? Will God send plagues and darkness to convince this army of conquerors to free us? You don’t really believe all those tales, do you?”

  Iddo couldn’t reply. What had seemed so believable as he’d prayed in the house of assembly seemed absurd as he faced his sons’ doubts.

  “Abba, you of all people should know that prayer isn’t a magic formula. The Holy One doesn’t do our bidding. If He did, we would still be living in Jerusalem and offering sacrifices at the temple, not living here in Babylon.”

  “But the Holy One must bring us home,” Iddo said. “If our people remain here, our faith will become extinct. I see it happening little by little every day. How can we survive if we stay here, surrounded by pagan people and their wicked practices? We’ll become just like them.”

  “But our faith hasn’t been extinguished, Abba, it has endured—even here.”

  “Then why don’t you practice it? You hardly ever come with me to pray or to study the Torah.”

  “There’s a difference between ritual and belief,” Berekiah said. “Just because I don’t pray three times a day with the other men doesn’t mean I don’t believe.”

  “But now that our leaders have asked us to come together and pray for our freedom, are you going to join us? Do you believe the Holy One’s promises?”

  When Berekiah didn’t reply, Hoshea answered for both of them. “We think our leaders are wrong to raise everyone’s hopes when the truth is that we’ll never be allowed to return. It won’t happen.”

  “Enough! I won’t listen to another word!” Iddo yanked his arm free and climbed the stairs to the roof alone, to pray.

  He knew it was his fault that his sons didn’t believe. When they were boys, Iddo’s own faith had been too weak to support the weight of their doubts and questions. Now they were grown men, more concerned with the world in front of their eyes than with the unseen world of faith and prayer.

  But Iddo would teach his grandson Zechariah to believe. He would do everything right from now on. Maybe then the Almighty One would hear their prayers and end His people’s exile.

  Chapter

  2

  Dinah pulled the last round of bread from the fire and set it out to cool beside the others. The crusts had baked to a dark golden brown, filling the room with their mouth-watering aroma. “What else?” she asked, glancing around. “Is everything ready? Shabbat is nearly here.” The sun dropped below the flat horizon much too soon on these short winter days and Dinah, her daughter, Rachel, and two daughters-in-law, Sarah and Naomi, needed to finish preparing all of the food before it did. “Are the lentils ready?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “And you’ll make sure everything else is prepared, Rachel? Before your father comes home from prayers?”

  “I will, Mama.”

  “Good.” She looked around again and saw a haze of smoke from the hearth lingering in the room. They usually prepared meals outside in the courtyard, but the rainy winter day had driven them inside. Dinah propped the door open to chase the last of the smoke away. When she was satisfied that everything was ready, she fetched the extra pot of food from the warming shelf beside the hearth. “I’m taking this next door to Miriam’s family. I’ll be right back. Close the door if it gets too cold in here.”

  “Why don’t you invite them to eat here with us?” Naomi asked, shifting her infant son to her other shoulder.

  “I did invite them, but Mattaniah said no. He thinks the noise and activity is too much for Miriam.” Dinah had to admit that her household was very lively with her extended family all living and eating together. But Dinah loved every minute of her busy life. At age fifty-four, her arms were full, her heart content.

  She dashed from the house and hurried next door through the spitting rain, the pot of warm food swaddled in cloths. “I brought something for your Sabbath meal,” she said when Miriam’s daughter, Yael, opened the door. “How is your mother feeling today?”

  “The same,” Yael said with a shrug. She was ten years old and had barely known her mother to be well. But in recent months, the sharp decline in Miriam’s health worried Dinah. “Come in,” Yael said, opening the door wider. “Mama will be happy to see you.”

  “I can’t stay long. Shabbat begins soon. I’ll just set this by the fire to keep it warm until dinnertime.” But the fire on the hearth had gone out, leaving the room as cold and damp as a cave. Dinah set down the food and bent to add fuel and rekindle the embers. “Is your father home?” she asked, hearing the murmur of voices in the next room.

  “Not yet. Parthia is here to read Mama’s fortune. She promised to read mine, too. Want her to do yours?”

  “I don’t think so, Yael. I can’t stay long.”

  “But this new seer is always right. She told Abba that he would prosper, and the very next day someone hired him to build a storehouse.”

  Dinah blew on the coals until the straw caught fire, uncomfortable with Yael’s news. She knew that Miriam’s husband had paid for a string of Babylonian healers and astrologers, seeking signs and omens, desperate for a cure for his wife. But now Yael was becoming fascinated with the hocus-pocus, as well.

  When the fire was blazing, Dinah stood, wiping soot and straw from her hands on a piece of sacking. She studied Yael’s bright, eager face and saw a lovely child beneath her nearly wild exterior, a girl who was certain to grow into a beautiful woman. She needed a mother’s guiding hand to prepare her for womanhood, but Miriam was too ill for the task. Yael often roamed the neighborhood by herself and played near the canal with Dinah’s grandson, Zechariah. What would become of her if Miriam died? “Maybe I will peek in and see how your mother is doing,” Dinah said. She couldn’t resist brushing Yael’s dark, untamed hair from her eyes, but the girl squirmed away from her.

  “I have to fetch Mama some water. You go ahead. I’ll be right there.”

  Dinah parted the curtain that divided the two rooms and found Miriam propped up on her sleeping mat, her thin face as pale as the plastered wall behind her. A dark-robed Babylonian woman with soot-black hair and skin like burnished pottery perched on a stool in front of her. Layers of necklaces and amulets hung around the woman’s neck, and she wore an elaborate golden headpiece that dangled onto her forehead. Loops of shining bracelets encircled her dark wrists, jingling and tinkling as she ground spices together in a bowl on her lap. Strewn in front of her was an array of pots, filled with odd-looking leaves and roots. A plume of incen
se curled from one of the pots, making Dinah cough when it caught in her throat.

  “Dinah, come in,” Miriam said when she saw her. “This is Parthia, my new seer.” The woman glanced up at Dinah without a word before resuming her task.

  “I can only stay a moment. The sun is going to set soon. I brought some stew for your Sabbath meal.”

  “Dear Dinah. You’re always so good to us.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better. Parthia brought good news today. She said my stars are moving into a favorable position for healing.”

  Dinah couldn’t reply. She stepped aside as Yael crowded into the room juggling three cups of water in her small, nail-bitten hands. She gave one to Dinah, one to her mother, and kept the third for herself. Dinah took a dutiful sip, even though she hadn’t asked for a drink.

  “I want to repay you for all of your help, Dinah,” Miriam said. “Is there something you’d like to ask the seer while she’s here?”

  Dinah took another sip of water, stalling for time. She longed to ask if Rebbe Daniel’s promise of a return to Jerusalem would really come true. Her husband had talked of nothing else since the evening after the invasion, and she feared Iddo’s heart would break if it didn’t happen. But she couldn’t imagine the catastrophic changes in her own life if it did occur. “Thank you . . . but no,” Dinah finally replied. “Iddo got angry with me when I asked your last astrologer for signs.”

  “But why? What was the harm in seeking guidance to choose Rachel’s wedding day? Doesn’t he want your daughter to begin her married life under the most favorable stars?”

  “Yes, of course, but . . . but Iddo says . . .” He had called it Babylonian nonsense and told Dinah she should pray for the Almighty One’s blessing on Rachel instead of dabbling in pagan astrology. He had forbidden her to have any more to do with their neighbors’ sorcery.

  “Iddo doesn’t need to know, does he?” Miriam asked with a smile. “Give Parthia your cup.”

  Dinah handed it to her without thinking and a moment later the seer tossed a pinch of powder from her bowl into the water. Her bracelets jingled as she swirled the contents around, muttering unintelligible words. Then the clinking stopped as she stared into the cup, studying the mixture, waiting for the water to settle.

  “I see a great tearing in your life,” the seer began. “Something very precious to you will be ripped away and—”

  “Stop!” Dinah snatched the cup from her, spilling some of the contents onto the stone floor. “I don’t want to hear any more!”

  “Why not?” Miriam asked. “Don’t you want to be prepared for the future?”

  “I know my future will hold sorrow; everyone’s does. We can never be prepared for it.” Dinah thought of the suffering her parents had endured, and what Iddo had endured as a child. If they had known what was coming, could they have prepared for it? In fact they had known the future—Israel’s prophets had warned them of the coming judgment—yet everyone had suffered just the same. “It doesn’t help to know,” Dinah finally said, “because we’ll only worry about it ahead of time. I’ll face whatever comes when it comes.”

  “Read mine next,” Yael said, holding out her cup to the seer.

  The woman glanced at Dinah with contempt in her eyes, then rose from her stool. “Not here, little one. Come. I brought the charts that I promised so you can learn how to read the stars.” She carried the water and her bowl of powder to the front room with Yael scurrying behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” Dinah said. “I didn’t mean to spoil anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Mattaniah pays her well.” Miriam sank back against the cushions again. The life that had animated her a moment ago seemed to escape from her the way a lump of bread dough sinks after being punched, releasing the air. “I can understand why you don’t need to know your future, Dinah. Your life is already so wonderful. But if you suffered from my ill health, you’d want to know what to expect.”

  “But that seer can’t possibly know for certain what will happen, can she? Why waste the good days of your life worrying about something that may never come to pass?”

  “If I’m going to die, I want to make preparations for my family.”

  Dinah crouched in front of her friend and took her hand. “Miriam, none of us knows if we’ll live to see tomorrow. Why not live each day with hope?”

  “But she does give me hope. She was right about the Persian invasion, you know. She said that Babylon would undergo a great upheaval, and she was right. She saw it in the stars.”

  Was there a difference, Dinah wondered, between this Babylonian woman with her stars and swirling water and Israel’s prophets, who also claimed to see the future? Why would Iddo listen to one and not the other?

  “Mattaniah told me what Daniel the Righteous One said,” Miriam continued. “How our people may return to Jerusalem soon. So I asked the seer about his prophecy, and she said—”

  “Wait! Don’t tell me!” Dinah stood, dropping Miriam’s hand. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Are you sure?” A thin smile brightened Miriam’s face.

  Dinah hesitated for just a moment before saying, “I’m sure. Listen, I should go. See how dark it’s getting already? Shabbat shalom, Miriam.” She bent to kiss her friend on both cheeks.

  “Shabbat shalom. And thank you again for the food.”

  Dinah hurried home to wash and change her clothes for the Sabbath. Her sons’ wives had scrubbed their children—four boys and three girls—and gotten them ready while Rachel rolled out the rug where they would eat, placing the bread and wine at the head where Iddo would sit. Dinah had just finished lighting the Sabbath lights and reciting the blessing when her sons arrived home from work and Iddo returned from prayers in the house of assembly.

  “May we soon be celebrating Shabbat in Jerusalem,” Iddo said as he kissed Dinah in greeting. She helped him out of his damp outer cloak and hung it on a peg near the hearth.

  “Do you truly believe that we’ll be returning?” she asked, thinking of Miriam’s seer.

  “Of course. We’re praying for the Almighty One to work a miracle so we can go home.”

  But she was home. This was her home, the place where she had been born. Even if the Almighty One did work a miracle to bring about a second exodus, why would her husband want to return to the place of his nightmares? Their home was here in Babylon, not the desolate, ruined city of Jerusalem filled with skeletons and ghosts, a thousand impossible miles away.

  “Is everything ready?” Iddo asked. “Call the children. Let’s wash and eat.”

  Dinah watched with contentment as the men performed the ritual hand-washing and the children scrambled into their places on the rug.

  Thirty-six years ago, two very different suitors had asked Dinah’s father for her hand. Joel had been handsome and assertive, already a community leader at a young age. He had been born in Babylon, as she had been. But Dinah had been drawn to Iddo by his gentle nature, his uncompromising adherence to his religion. When he had awakened, screaming from a nightmare on the first night they shared a bed, his vulnerability had made her love him all the more. She longed to protect him, to help chase away his demons. But even on their happiest days, sadness always hovered over Iddo. He was like a mouse cowering in the shadows, waiting for the hawk to dive down and snatch him away. She slowly had discovered that the things she loved the most about him—his gentleness, his rigid legalism—were symptoms of a deep, unbearable grief, the same haunted grief she’d witnessed in her parents and in other Jews from the generation of the exile. As the years passed, what Dinah had grown to love the most about her husband was his ability to move forward in spite of that grief.

  As Iddo blessed the bread and broke it, blessed the wine and poured it, the fierceness of her love for him gripped Dinah like a fist. She watched him pass around bowls of stew and lentils, olives and roasted grain, and saw a man who was old before his time. Would the Holy One tear Iddo away from her? Is that what Parthi
a had seen? If death was going to rip Iddo from Dinah’s arms, she didn’t want to know.

  She began to relax after her busy day of cooking as the leisurely meal unwound, enjoying the food and the traditions, laughing and eating and singing with the others. But her deepest satisfaction came not from the rituals but from her family.

  “May we soon return to Jerusalem!” Iddo said, raising his cup of wine. Dinah lifted her cup along with everyone else, but Iddo’s words had created a tension in the room that he didn’t seem to notice. “I can faintly recall celebrating Shabbat in Jerusalem when I was very young,” he continued. “But those memories were overshadowed by the years when Jerusalem was under siege.”

  The room fell quiet. Iddo never spoke of those memories, and it must have surprised everyone that he did now. “We were starving near the end. There was nothing to eat for many, many days. And now . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared down at the table.

  Dinah reached for his hand. “Now we’ve been richly blessed with abundant food,” she said.

  He looked up at her, puzzled, and pulled his hand free. “Now we will return to the Promised Land,” he corrected.

  “I hope you’re right, Abba,” Berekiah said, “but I worry that you may be disappointed. The world isn’t the same place it was when you were a boy. The nation of Judah no longer exists.”

  “They wanted to cut us off from our land and our faith and our traditions,” Iddo said, “hoping we would mingle with the pagans and disappear!”

  Dinah had never seen him this way at dinner before, his face flushed, his quiet voice raised. “Hasn’t the Holy One been with us here, Iddo?” she asked. “What difference does it make which patch of land we live on?”