Return to Me

by Lynn Austin

“Get in the cart,” Abba said.

  “Why? I promise I’ll stay close from now on and—” But her father picked her up and set her on top of their load before she could finish.

  “These traders would love to carry away a beautiful young girl like you and sell you to some rich man for his harem.”

  They had to move aside again to let three more caravans pass before the day ended. By the time they camped for the night, the sun had already set and the sky was growing dark, the air cool. No matter how hot the sun shone during the day, the desert air turned surprisingly cold at night.

  Yael helped Safta Dinah fetch water and kindle a fire to prepare their evening meal. Abba said their leaders carefully planned each day’s journey to allow them to reach a caravan stop with a source of water by nightfall. But some delays couldn’t be helped, and as time passed, the group had divided into three smaller ones, a day or two apart from each other. So far, Yael and her father were still in the leading group along with Zechariah and his grandparents. They camped with each other and ate together every night, and she had begun calling Zaki’s grandmother “Safta,” the same as he did. Dinah had seemed pleased.

  While Yael helped prepare the meal, Zechariah helped the men set up the shelters where they would sleep. Little more than a roof over their heads, the tents needed to be simple so the men could take them down quickly each morning and pack them away. The wind tried to blow out the fire as Yael and Dinah cooked, and it carried particles of dirt that blew into their food no matter how carefully they tried to shield it. They had to shake grit out of their clothes every night.

  After their meal of flatbread and lentils and dates, they all sat around the fire, weary from the long day of traveling. Their neighbors from back home, Shoshanna and Joel, had camped alongside them, and they all talked together as they watched the embers die. “Our father Abraham began with a journey like this into the unknown,” Zaki’s grandfather said, “traveling in the desert, camping beneath the stars.” He had become more talkative as they’d traveled, as if weariness and discouragement couldn’t touch him.

  “And his wife Sarah went everywhere with him,” Shoshanna added. She reached for her husband’s hand like a new bride. Safta’s jolly cousin didn’t seem to get sad or to miss home the way Safta did.

  “Zechariah, do you know why the Almighty One chooses to take us through the desert?” Iddo asked. Zaki shook his head, enthralled with his grandfather’s stories. This was exactly what Yael had meant when she’d told him he wasn’t fun anymore. “It’s because He wants to use the desert to strip us of our self-sufficiency,” Iddo continued, “so we’ll learn to trust Him and lean on Him.”

  “Is He going to feed us with manna?” Zaki asked. “Like in the Passover story?”

  “He doesn’t need to send manna this time,” Iddo replied. “He already provided everything we need through our fellow Jews, the ones who aren’t making the journey with us. The Persian king ordered them to pay our way.”

  Yael stood, feeling restless. She was tired of sitting still and didn’t want to hear stories about the God who had let her mother die. But Abba grabbed her hand to stop her before she could take two steps. “Where are you going?”

  “Just over there. I want to get away from the campfire so I can see the stars.”

  “No, Yael. You can’t leave the caravan for any reason. You could easily get turned around in this trackless waste and die of thirst.”

  “Besides,” Iddo added, “there’s nothing out there except the bones of people who wouldn’t listen.”

  Yael exhaled. “I know you think I’ll run away again, but I won’t. I promise. I’ll just be standing right over there.”

  “I’ll go with her.” Zechariah stood and walked a few yards away from the others, motioning for Yael to follow. Abba released her and she hurried away, stopping beside Zechariah a short distance from the smoke and firelight. The sky was blacker out here than on any night in Babylon, the stars more numerous, more brilliant. Shining across the middle of the sky was a milky swath, like clouds, that Parthia said was a thick band of stars, all gathered together in a luminous ring. Yael searched the sky for the constellation of the twins and smiled to herself when she found it. She wished she could peek at the sky charts that Parthia had given her, but she didn’t dare. They would have to remain hidden in her bag for now.

  “Please don’t be mad at me anymore,” Zechariah said. “Can’t we be friends again?”

  “You can’t keep a secret. Abba said you told him where to look.”

  “No, I didn’t! The only thing I told him was that you might be hiding in a storage basket.”

  “How did you know that’s where I’d be?”

  “I had a dream. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. I dreamt I saw Parthia hiding you in a storage basket.”

  Yael stopped gazing at the stars to look at him in surprise. “You have dreams that foretell the future?” There had always been something . . . different . . . about her friend, different from the other boys in their neighborhood. Sometimes when they played together they could almost read each other’s thoughts and know what the other would say before they spoke.

  “I have a lot of strange dreams,” he said with a shy, little shrug, “but that’s the only one that ever came true.”

  “The gods speak to people in dreams, you know.”

  “Don’t say gods, Yael. There’s only one God. You need to forget all that pagan stuff from Babylon.” She ignored him and looked up at the stars again. “So, can we be friends?” he asked again.

  She planted her hands on her hips and gave him a stern look. “Will you promise not to tell my secrets this time?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “All right. . . . In that case, I’ll tell you another one of my secrets to see if you can be trusted.”

  “I can.”

  She moved closer to him and lowered her voice. “I know how to see the future in the stars. Parthia taught me. She told me I had a true gift for it.”

  “Why do you need to know the future?”

  “Because everything in my life keeps changing—first my mother died, now my father is taking me hundreds of miles away from home. The future is like a huge, deep hole in the road up ahead, and I want to see it before it comes so I don’t fall in and get swallowed up. I want to be sure there’s a way to get across it to the other side. The stars can tell me all that.”

  “We’re supposed to trust the Almighty One, Yael.” She heard disapproval in his voice and knew he was frowning at her. “Abraham didn’t know what was ahead of him, either, but he had faith—”

  “That’s the God of your father and grandfather. My mother believed in the moon goddess. You follow your family’s beliefs, and I’ll follow mine.”

  “Yael, your father is a Levite. You worship the same God I do. The only God.”

  “No, I don’t—and that’s another secret you can’t tell.” She turned away from him to walk back to the campsite.

  “Yael, wait . . . Listen!”

  “Don’t forget,” she called over her shoulder to him. “It’s a secret.”

  Part II

  Promised Land

  When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion,

  we were like men who dreamed.

  Our mouths were filled with laughter,

  our tongues with songs of joy. . . .

  The Lord has done great things for us,

  and we are filled with joy.

  PSALM 126:1–3

  Chapter

  11

  Zechariah stood behind the loaded cart and pushed as his grandfather prodded their mule up the hill. The hard work tired him, but they were nearly there, nearly to Jerusalem. Last night their caravan had camped outside the village of Bethel, agonizingly close to their goal. Zechariah had barely slept as he’d waited to make the final climb up to the city, starting just after dawn. “I never knew the Promised Land was so mountainous,” he said, straining as he pushed. “It’s so different from Babyl
on.”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Saba asked. “I forgot just how beautiful after living in a flat, featureless land for nearly fifty years. We’re almost home . . . at last.”

  For most of their journey, the view of endless wilderness had barely changed from day to day. Pale sand and dark rock. Lifeless. Colorless. Then they’d reached the snow-capped peaks of the Mount Hermon range and the countryside had turned greener. They had traveled through Galilee, past the shimmering lake that nestled among the hills, and Zechariah thrilled to know he was following in Abraham’s footsteps, retracing the path that the patriarch had taken when he entered the Promised Land for the first time. Like Abraham, he had obeyed God and left his father and mother to make this journey.

  The cart finally reached the crest of the hill, and Saba halted by the side of the road for their first glimpse of Jerusalem. Yael and Safta stood beside them. But instead of a city, Zechariah saw a wasteland. Desolate piles of rocks and rubble, overgrown with weeds and bushes. No signs of life. “Are you sure this is the right place, Saba? Maybe Jerusalem is on the other side of that hill over there.”

  “No, son. That’s Jerusalem down there—what’s left of it.”

  “It doesn’t even look like a city,” Yael said. “Where are all the palaces and temples and big buildings like they had in Babylon?”

  As Zaki shaded his eyes to study the view in front of him, he began to see traces of crumbled walls beneath the vegetation, gates and towers and charred buildings where the city had once stood. How would they ever clear out all that growth and move all those stones? Where would they begin? The task seemed overwhelming. His grandfather wiped away tears, and Zechariah wondered if they were tears of joy or sorrow. Maybe both. Beneath all the debris lay the bones of Saba’s family and thousands of other people who had been massacred.

  “Oh, Iddo,” Safta groaned. “It will take a lifetime to rebuild all of that. How can we possibly do it with so few people?”

  Saba cleared his throat. “That rubble shows us the consequences of our disobedience. It should serve as a warning to us not to fail again.”

  “Where was the Almighty One’s temple?” Zaki asked.

  Iddo pointed to an enormous pile of toppled building stones on a distant hill above the other ruins. For a moment he seemed too moved to speak. “Up there,” he finally said. “It used to be right up there on Mount Moriah. And that’s where we’ll rebuild it.”

  The caravan had continued flowing past them all this time, and the first vehicles in their group had already reached the ruins below. The collection of carts and people and livestock that had seemed so numerous along the caravan road looked tiny and insignificant against the expanse of destruction. Zechariah wondered if Safta was right, that it would take his entire lifetime to rebuild all of this.

  Saba gave the reins a tug, and the cart began to move again, joining the others as they headed down the winding path into the city. “Where did you live, Saba?” Zechariah asked as they started downhill. “Are we going to rebuild the same house that you lived in before?”

  “My family’s home was in Anathoth, not Jerusalem—a couple of miles from here. But we took refuge inside the walls when the Babylonian army surrounded the city. See that hill, closest to us? Can you make out the circle of walls around it? That’s the Mishneh, or Second Quarter, built during the time of King Hezekiah.”

  Zechariah looked where Saba was pointing and saw the faint outline of city walls. But huge sections of them, along with the gates, had been toppled. Rubble lay strewn everywhere, swallowed up by a sea of weeds and scrub brush and tangled vines.

  “Hezekiah had to expand Jerusalem,” Saba continued, “because so many refugees fled here to escape the Assyrians. The old city couldn’t hold them all. God performed a miracle to rescue the king and his people from their enemies.”

  Zechariah looked up at him. “If the Almighty One could rescue Jerusalem in King Hezekiah’s time, why couldn’t He rescue it from the Babylonians, too?”

  “Because we no longer deserved His mercy. By then our sins were too great, in part because of the long, evil reign of King Manasseh. See that valley south of the city? That’s the Valley of Hinnom where Manasseh—”

  “Don’t say it, Iddo.” Safta interrupted. “It’s too horrible.”

  He nodded and didn’t finish. But Zechariah knew from his studies that people used to sacrifice their children to Molech in that valley.

  “The blood of those innocent children contributed to Jerusalem’s destruction and our peoples’ exile,” Saba said.

  The main road and city streets were so overgrown with vegetation and choked with rubble that it took the rest of the afternoon to reach the narrow Kidron Valley east of the City of David. “Our leaders have decided to camp here for now,” Saba told them, “beside the Kidron Brook.”

  Zechariah helped pitch their tent and make camp. At dinner, he poked at his food, weary from the effort of scrambling over debris and the hard work of pushing the cart up and down Jerusalem’s many slopes. But his disappointment outweighed the weariness he felt. Jerusalem no longer resembled the beautiful city that the psalmists had described. Restoring it would be challenging enough if Zaki were a grown man and an experienced builder, but he was neither. Why had the Almighty One commanded him to come here? What could he possibly do in the face of such overwhelming desolation?

  He was about to say good-night to the others and try to go to sleep when he heard a single flute playing a slow, haunting melody. He listened for a moment, and the sound began to grow as other instruments joined in—more flutes, finger cymbals, drums. The tempo gradually quickened, and he heard clapping and then voices, singing a familiar song of hope and joy: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken.” His family used to sing it at Passover and weddings.

  “It’s a celebration,” Saba said. He smiled for the first time all day. “Let’s join them.” He led the way, with Safta, Zechariah, Yael, and Mattaniah following behind. Zaki’s pulse began to beat in rhythm with the joyful music as they joined in the singing. “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, both now and forevermore.”

  Before long, it seemed as though everyone in the caravan was dancing and singing in spontaneous celebration. “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’ Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.” It was true. He had sung the words of this psalm all his life, and now he was standing here, in Jerusalem. Zechariah’s weariness and discouragement vanished as he danced and celebrated with his grandfather and the others until late into the night.

  It was barely dawn when Saba shook him awake. “Get up, Zaki. Get dressed. There’s a mob of local men coming.” Zechariah tossed back the covers and scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding. While he dressed and put on his sandals, Saba roused Joel and Mattaniah. They hurried to the edge of the camp, joined by hundreds of other men from their caravan, halting near the Kidron Brook. On the other side of the narrow stream a mob of Samaritan men, several hundred strong, marched steadily toward them. Many of them carried swords. Others had bows and arrows. Some carried farm implements such as scythes and hoes and winnowing forks.

  “What do they want, Saba?” he whispered. It surprised him that his grandfather had asked him to come at all, considering the danger. Maybe his grandfather no longer saw him as a boy but as one of the men.

  “I imagine they’ve come to see what we’re doing here.”

  “Are they Jews, like us?”

  “Some of them might be. The Babylonians left the very poorest of our people behind during the exile and carried away all our leaders and craftsmen and priests. But most of those men are probably descendants of exiles from other countries who were forced to settle here the same way we were forced to go to Babylon.”

  Zechariah watched as Prince Sheshbazzar walked forward to speak with the mob’s leader—a fearsome-looking man with a sword strapped to his side. The white-beard
ed prince would be no match for him. “We’ve come in peace,” Sheshbazzar called out, holding up his hands.

  “Who are you?” the leader asked. “What are you doing on our land?”

  “I’m Sheshbazzar, a descendant of King David and of Judah’s last king, Jehoiachin. We’re all sons of Abraham, returning from exile in Babylon to reclaim our ancestral land. This is our destination—the city of Jerusalem and the land of Judah.”

  The mob began to shout and jeer in protest, and when their leader settled them down again he said, “This is our land, not yours! We’ve lived on it and tended it for three generations. You have no right to settle here. Take your caravan of intruders and move someplace else.” There were shouts of agreement from the mob and more sword-waving, but Sheshbazzar continued to speak calmly to them.

  “King Cyrus, the Persian monarch, authorized us to return and rebuild the temple of our God. I’m certain that the governor of your Trans-Euphrates Province received a copy of this proclamation from Persia. He will verify that what we’re saying is true.”

  “We’ll send envoys to him immediately, but in the meantime, take your caravan off our land and camp someplace else. This land belongs to us. If you try to occupy it or do any rebuilding, we will interpret it as an act of war.”

  Zechariah’s pulse raced as he listened. An act of war? The Holy One needed to strike this enemy dead the way He once killed the Egyptians under Moses.

  “Listen, we don’t want any trouble,” Sheshbazzar continued. “But Jerusalem has been deserted all these years, so it will make no difference to you if we settle there—and that’s what we intend to do.”

  “You have no right!”

  “When you contact the governor, you’ll see that we have every right. We’ve been commanded by God and by the king to rebuild the Holy One’s temple, and that’s our most important task. There will be many of us settling here in Jerusalem in the days to come. Others from our caravan will return to the villages where their forefathers lived, to reclaim their ancestral land. They must start plowing and planting before the fall rains begin.”