Return to Me

by Lynn Austin

  Her friends and neighbors already stood laughing and gossiping around the well when she arrived. “Dinah! We’ve been waiting for you,” her cousin Shoshanna said. “We want to hear all about your plans for returning to Jerusalem. Aren’t you excited?”

  Dinah lowered the rope and bucket into the well shaft, as careful with her task as with putting her feelings into words. The other women looked up to her, respected her, but the truth was, Dinah didn’t want to leave Babylon. Every day she searched for a way to talk Iddo out of going. But she didn’t dare admit in public that she disagreed with her husband. “Iddo is doing all the planning,” she said as she drew the bucket to the surface again. “He said the journey would take at least three months. I can’t imagine such a long, exhausting trip, can you? It seems impossible.”

  “I think it’s exciting,” Shoshanna said. “Joel wasn’t sure he wanted to go at first, but I convinced him that we should.”

  “Shoshanna! Why?”

  “Because this is the most important thing we could ever do. If we don’t obey the Almighty One and rebuild our temple, we’ll be separated from Him forever.”

  Dinah stared at her cousin. They had worked side by side as midwives for twenty years. How could they feel so differently? Dinah quickly finished filling her jar as Shoshanna explained to the others how Joel and Iddo had produced their genealogies to prove their ancestry as priests. The women seemed interested, but Dinah simply wanted to hurry home before Shoshanna asked more questions.

  Iddo assumed that their entire family would leave Babylon together, but Dinah knew that her sons didn’t want to go. What would she do if the unthinkable happened and her family split in two, some staying here, others moving to Jerusalem? The uncertainty weighed on Dinah’s heart and interrupted her sleep. “I see a great tearing in your life,” the seer had told her. As each day passed, she tried to cling to everything she treasured, but it became more and more impossible, as if precious jewels were slipping through her fingers, lost forever.

  At dinner that night Iddo turned to their sons and asked, “How many carts will you need for your families? How many oxen and donkeys? The elders have asked all of the family heads to provide them with an estimate.”

  Their sons exchanged looks. Berekiah finally replied for both of them. “Abba, we’ve . . . um . . . we’ve decided to wait here in Babylon.”

  “What?” Iddo spoke the word with quiet disbelief, not anger.

  “We won’t be leaving when the first group departs next month.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Our children are too small to travel such a great distance. Maybe when they’re a little older . . .”

  “And Naomi and I have the baby to consider,” Hoshea added. “He’s too small to travel that far.”

  Iddo’s face turned as hard and white as marble as he gazed at his sons. “You can’t stay here in Babylon. The Almighty One has made a way for us to return, so we must obey Him.”

  “I understand, Abba. But this isn’t a good time. Hoshea and I have decided to come later.”

  Dinah waited for her husband’s response. He had gone very still, his face showing no emotion at all. Please, God, maybe he would see the wisdom in staying here as well. As the terrible silence lengthened, she dared to say, “Maybe we should all wait and go together, Iddo.”

  “No, no, no!” His voice grew louder with each word. “God worked a miracle for us, and you’re going to refuse it? There will always be one more reason to wait, one more excuse. The Almighty One lost patience with our forefathers, and He will lose patience with us if we ignore His command.”

  “But this is a bad time, Abba—”

  “And when will it ever be a good time? Surely there were women with babies during the first exodus. And many small children, too.”

  “It was a difficult decision to make,” Berekiah said, “but Hoshea and I both believe it’s the right one for us.”

  Iddo closed his eyes as if he could shut out the reality of what their sons had just told him. When he opened them again, he leaned toward both men as if to convey the seriousness of what he was about to say. “Come with me. Now! All of you!” He swept his arm to include the entire family, then rose to his feet and motioned toward the door.

  “All of us?” Dinah asked as she stood and went to him. “What about dinner? And . . . and the children?”

  “Dinner can wait. Bring all of the children. I want everyone to see what I’m going to show you.”

  Had Iddo lost his mind? They left their half-eaten meal and followed him out of their house, carrying their little ones. A few minutes later, they were walking through Babylon’s darkening streets. Dinah had lived in this city all her life, but she’d never been where her husband was now leading her. She pressed close to the others in a tight little group, as if the dangers she had long been warned against lurked beyond every corner. “Where are you taking us, Iddo?” she asked. He didn’t reply.

  At last he halted and gestured to an enormous stone building in front of them. “This is a temple to one of Babylon’s idols,” he said breathlessly. “An obscene place where worshipers serve their goddess by sleeping with strangers. Young girls sit on display here like produce in the marketplace, waiting to be chosen by men they’ve never met before. They turn the sacred act intended by God for marriage into a vulgar, degrading ritual of blasphemy!”

  “Abba, don’t—” Berekiah began, but Iddo interrupted him.

  “I can’t imagine letting my daughters come to a place like this, can you? And these pagans have the nerve to call their orgies worship. When mankind stopped worshiping the one true God, this is where it led them!” Dinah looked away from where Iddo was pointing, shivering in the cool evening air.

  “Listen to me,” Iddo continued. “All of you were born in Babylon. You all grew up here where sights like these now seem like everyday things to you. But more and more young women from our community are being enticed by Babylonian men. More and more of our sons are being attracted to Babylonian women. In another generation or two, this is where our sons and daughters and grandchildren will be coming to worship. And they’ll think nothing of it!”

  Before any of them could reply, Iddo turned and strode away, leading them deeper into the city, farther from home. Dinah gripped her grandson Zechariah’s hand, heartsick with dread and sorrow at what Iddo was forcing them to see. She heard the din of murmuring voices in the distance and a few minutes later, Iddo halted again. Dozens of diseased and disabled people sat in the city square, huddled on rugs and beneath makeshift hovels. The murmuring was the sound of their voices, pleading with the passing crowds.

  “They’re calling out their symptoms,” Iddo said, “hoping that some stranger will share news of a potion or an amulet or a curse that will bring a cure. Their sorcery is evil, their superstition useless, but our own neighbors, Miriam and Mattaniah, turned to such omens and sorcery for a cure. You were all influenced by such things. Don’t tell me you weren’t impressed, Hoshea, when one of Miriam’s seers correctly predicted that your last child would be a son. And you, Dinah—didn’t you want to ask an astrologer to seek the best day for our Rachel’s wedding?”

  Dinah stared at her feet, ashamed to remember that the seer had made another prediction for her. “This is how idolatry begins,” Iddo said. “With simple curiosity. Before long, we grow accustomed to seeking signs and omens, and they no longer seem like abominations. The idols seem worthy of our worship. The pagans believe they can manipulate their false gods and bribe them to do their bidding. But the Holy One cannot be bribed. Instead we bend our wills to match His. The Torah instructs us to remain separate, to be holy.”

  He walked on—for miles, it seemed to Dinah—leading them at last to the base of the great ziggurat at the very center of Babylon. “This!” he shouted. “This is what’s at stake! Worship of the one true God will be lost forever, swallowed up by this counterfeit religion, this tower of man’s own creation, unless we obey our God! He opened a way for us to
leave all of this and to return to Jerusalem and to Him. He provided the means for us to rebuild His temple. We dare not disobey. I’ve seen the wrath of God. I’ve experienced it. And I don’t ever want to see it or experience it again!”

  A crowd of curious Babylonians gathered around as Iddo pleaded with his family. Unlike Dinah’s quiet neighborhood that grew more deserted after dark, Babylon was coming to life as night fell, like a living beast awakening from its afternoon slumber. “Please, Iddo. Let’s go home,” she begged.

  He gazed at his family for a long moment, then turned and led them back the way they had come. Dinah breathed a sigh of relief when they reached their own familiar streets at last, but Iddo paused again in front of the house of assembly. “My children, listen to me, please. We’ve been studying the scroll of the prophet Jeremiah. He was right about everything—the fall of Jerusalem, the fate of our kings, our exile. And he was right about our seventy years of captivity, too. But please, please, listen to me. Jeremiah also said, ‘Flee from Babylon! Run for your lives! Do not be destroyed because of her sins. It is time for the Lord’s vengeance; he will pay her what she deserves.’ Don’t be fooled by the bloodless invasion by the Persians. God is going to punish Babylon’s wickedness, and if you live here, if you’re part of this city, you’ll be punished, too. Please don’t refuse His grace.”

  At last they reached home and went inside to finish their ruined meal. Dinah saw the deep pain in Iddo’s eyes as he pleaded with them one last time. “The only thing that matters is doing God’s work. The only thing. If you turn your back on His light, you’ll worship the darkness.”

  Chapter

  7

  Zechariah? Are you coming to afternoon prayers with me?” Saba asked.

  Zechariah shook his head, staring at the ground beside their gate. He knew that if he looked up he would see disappointment in Saba’s eyes. His grandparents were leaving for Jerusalem soon, and Zechariah was running out of time to spend with Saba, but he was too restless to sit in the house of assembly and pray. In fact, he longed to burst through the courtyard gate and keep on running and never stop.

  He was so confused. Rebbe Daniel’s prayers had been answered, the prophets’ predictions had come true—which meant that Saba had been right about the Holy One and all of His miracles, and Abba had been wrong. Yet in spite of his grandfather’s impassioned pleas, in spite of the things he had shown Zechariah and his family in the streets of Babylon that sobering night, Zaki’s father and all of his aunts and uncles had decided to stay in Babylon.

  Zechariah waited until Saba was out of sight. Then, knowing that everyone would assume he had gone with his grandfather, he slipped through the gate and ran across the lane to his friend Yael’s house. He found her kneeling alone in her cramped courtyard, stirring the lifeless coals in the hearth as if expecting flames to magically appear. She heard him come in and looked up. “I hope you came to help me start this fire because I’m not having any luck with it.”

  “I came to ask if you wanted to go down to the canal with me.”

  A spark of life returned to her eyes, and Zechariah could tell by the way she scrambled to her feet, brushing the soot from her hands, that it probably didn’t matter to her where they went. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  They walked side by side to the edge of the canal, the familiar fishy scent growing stronger, the air cooler as it fanned through the tall palm trees. Zechariah lost track of time as they explored all their usual places, poking sticks into holes, watching fishermen mend their nets, running up and down the shoreline. When they finally ran out of energy, they sank down in their usual spot to watch a crane pick its way along the opposite shore. Zechariah scooped up a handful of pebbles to toss into the water, offering some to Yael, but she shook her head. He felt sorry for her. She was still so sad, still grieving for her mother.

  “Shouldn’t you be studying or praying or something?” she asked after several minutes had passed.

  “Probably. My birthday is soon and—”

  “Your birthday is in the month of Iyyar? Then you were born under the sign of the ram.”

  He glanced at her, uneasy to hear her talking about pagan things, especially after his grandfather’s speech. “I should be getting ready for my bar mitzvah but—”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “I just don’t feel like it,” he said with a shrug. “It’s supposed to be a happy occasion, but I don’t see how it can be happy when everyone in my house is arguing with each other.”

  “What about?” She sat with her legs tented, her arms wrapped around them, her chin resting on her knees as she listened.

  “The same thing everyone else is arguing about—going back to Jerusalem. And my family is putting me in the middle of their tug-of-war. My grandfather keeps begging my father, telling him that he has to return to Jerusalem for my sake. As if the future of the entire priesthood depends on me. My father refuses, and they’ve been pulling on me, back and forth—and I’m tired of it.”

  “At least the fighting will end in a few more weeks. Once your grandfather leaves, what’s there to argue about?”

  Zechariah stared at her for a moment, surprised to realize that it was true. But instead of constant fighting, there would be silence . . . and a hole in Zechariah’s life that no one but Saba could ever fill.

  “Do you wish you were going, Zaki?” she asked.

  He threw another stone into the water. “I wish my whole family was going.” He couldn’t shake his lingering fear that Abba was making a mistake. That they would all face the Holy One’s wrath if they remained behind. “I hear that you and your father are going,” he said. “Are you excited?”

  Yael suddenly sat up straight, folding her thin, limber legs beneath her to sit cross-legged. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone? No one else in the whole world knows about it. But you have to promise, first.”

  He had just confided in Yael, so he understood her need to share. But he wasn’t sure that he wanted the added weight of a secret on his shoulders.

  “Promise?” she asked again, poking his arm.

  “I promise,” he finally said.

  “I’m not going to Jerusalem.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m staying here.”

  “Staying? . . . Did your father change his mind? His name is on the list, and his genealogy as a Levite was approved and—”

  “Abba is going but I’m not. I’m going to live with Parthia.”

  Zechariah stared at her to see if she was joking, but he could tell by her crossed arms and jutting chin that she wasn’t. “You mean . . . that Babylonian woman? The sorceress? Why?”

  “Because if I leave here, I’ll lose all my memories of Mama. This is where she lived, where I remember her. She’s buried here. And I know you’ll hate me for saying this, but I don’t want to go where they worship your God. He let my mother die.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Besides, I heard your grandfather telling Abba that no one will be allowed to consult the stars or seek omens in Jerusalem, and my mother believed in all of those things. I want to worship the moon goddess like she did.”

  Zechariah fought the urge to grip his friend’s thin shouders and shake some sense into her. The moon goddess? Omens? All the things that Saba said would happen to them if they remained in Babylon were already happening to Yael. She was his friend, and he cared about her—and he didn’t want to lose her to idols.

  “Your father agreed to this? He’s letting you stay here?”

  “No, of course not. I’m going to run away. Parthia already said I could live with her.”

  “Yael, you can’t do that! My grandmother is going to take care of you, remember? I was there when your mother asked her to. It’s what she wanted.”

  “Mama didn’t know that your grandmother was leaving Babylon. She never would have wanted me to leave. No, I’ve made up my mind to run away and live with Parthia—but you can’t tell anyone, Zaki. You promised.”
<
br />   He felt desperate to stop her, but he didn’t know what to do or what to say to change her mind. “Yael, none of that stuff Parthia taught you is true. She can’t see the future any more than the rest of us can.”

  “Doesn’t your God have people who can tell the future? Your grandfather said one of them predicted that we’d go back to Jerusalem.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because . . . because there’s only one God, and none of the other gods are real.”

  “How do you know they aren’t real?”

  “I’ve been studying the Torah for my bar mitzvah and learning about the real God, the God of our ancestors. Our people are supposed to worship Him alone. We say it every morning when we pray—‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.’”

  “Girls don’t pray, Zaki. Besides, I don’t care about the stupid Torah.” She lifted her chin even higher.

  Her words and attitude shocked him. Zechariah’s father may not pray all the time like Saba did, but he still believed in Israel’s God. How could he convince Yael to believe? “Listen, you and your family are from the tribe of Levi and mine are priests. Our families were chosen to serve in the Almighty One’s temple—”

  “Then why is your father staying here instead of going back?”

  “I don’t know . . . but . . . but you’re my best friend, Yael, and I’ll miss you when you and your father move to Jerusalem, but that’s what I think you should do. I can’t explain it, but I get a terrible feeling inside when I think of you running away to live with that wicked woman.”

  “She’s nice to me.”

  “Isn’t my grandmother nice to you, too?” Yael gave an indifferent shrug. “Please don’t do this, Yael. If you really want to stay here in Babylon then come live with me. I’m sure my mother and father won’t mind. You can be my sister from now on. But please don’t live with that Babylonian woman.”