Bloodline

by Alan Gold

  She walked up the pathway and saw that the door was open. Inside were dozens of people—men, women, and children—sitting cross-legged on the floor, some on mats, some on the bare wood. There was a low moan, almost a hum, coming from the crowd. The men were dressed in dark shirts and black trousers, the women in black robes. Almost all of the women, except for the young girls, were wearing either a hijab or the full niqab. Their eyes looked at her but didn’t register anything. She was invisible to them.

  She entered the house and made her way down the front hallway to the inner rooms, where Fuad was seated on a low stool surrounded by dozens of men; close to him was the imam, who glanced up momentarily but then looked down again when he saw that Yael was only a woman.

  She continued farther into the house to where the women, in another adjoining room, were sitting on the floor surrounding Maryam. Though it might be culturally insensitive, she wanted to pay her respects to both parents. They thought their Bilal was dead; she knew he wasn’t, yet she had to pretend, to try to ease their grief.

  Yael knew that she couldn’t enter the room of the men, so she entered the room of the women, and some of them looked at her and then back at Maryam. Bilal’s mother looked older, thinner, and more haggard than the sprightly woman Yael had first met only days before. Maryam’s eyes were red from crying, her cheeks rough, and she had the hollow, withdrawn look of a mother who was bereft and uncomprehending.

  Yael bent down to kiss her and pay her respects, but when their eyes met, Maryam looked shocked. Yael put her fingers to her lips and Maryam nodded. But before their embrace ended, Maryam held Yael around the neck and whispered, “Those who ordered Bilal to be taken from the hospital and killed him—they are in this house. It is they who have killed him. You know this. The imam . . . Fuad has to sit with him because we are in mourning, but my husband’s anger is so great that I fear for us. Fuad is so hurt that he’s threatened to go to the Jews and tell them. But that will mean our deaths. When the mourners leave, we will be alone. I beg you to help me.”

  Yael so desperately wanted to tell her that her beloved Bilal wasn’t dead, but she knew that to do so would be a catastrophe. She kept reminding herself of the absurdity: the only way to keep him alive was to convince people he was dead.

  “How can I help you, Maryam? What can I do?” she whispered. She looked into Maryam’s bloodshot eyes and felt a pang of distress. How much more suffering could this poor woman take?

  “We must leave here,” Maryam whispered, her voice even lower so that nobody could overhear. “We must leave Bayt al Gizah. Since this imam, he is poisoning the minds of the boys. He is dividing our village. If Fuad does what he wants to do, the imam will have him killed. I’m certain. I have now lost two of my sons because of him. Bilal is dead and my other son is in prison. I can’t lose any more children, nor Fuad. Please help me.”

  “Do you want me to help you move to another village?”

  “No. The imam is no fool. He will follow us. We must move to Haifa or Tel Aviv and begin our lives again to save our family.”

  Yael nodded. “I can help you. I can talk to people.”

  Maryam pulled Yael even closer to her, so that their cheeks were touching, the old lady’s lips almost kissing Yael’s ear. “No. We must leave this village and nobody must know where we have gone. And to be accepted by the Jews, we must show them my family’s Jewish blood. My Fuad, he’s a good Muslim, but we can be saved only if we are embraced by you Jews. Your people have to protect us?” It came as a question but Yael had no answer for their fate. Her mind was fixed only in the present.

  Maryam fought back tears. “Help us, Dr. Yael. If we are Jews, then my family can live in Israel? Please, I beg you. Please. Help us.”

  The other women were looking at the two and wondering about their long embrace. Yael straightened up and said softly, “May the blessings of our Lord Allah be upon you and this house, and may your pain and suffering be at an end.”

  She left the room and looked in at the men, who were gathered around Fuad on the floor, chanting a low invocation. The imam sitting next to Fuad glanced up again and looked at her as she passed the doorway. Stupidly, because of his indifference, this time she didn’t avert her eyes but instead stared directly at him. He didn’t seem to notice her and glanced down again. Even when she was dressed as an Arab, she was invisible, like so many women in Arabic societies.

  As Yael walked to the front door, she passed mourners sitting in the corridor on cushions, just as mourners sat in Jewish houses when somebody had died. Had it not been for the dress of the women and the language they were using, this could just as easily have been a Jewish household sitting shiva for a dead loved one.

  Outside, little children were playing catch in the garden. One wore an American Aerosmith T-shirt, another wore one sporting Bart Simpson, and a third wore one that proclaimed he was a follower of the Chicago Bulls. She walked around the corner to where her taxi was parked and instructed the driver to take her back to her apartment. As she left the village, she thought about how universal what she’d just seen was. The kids with their American T-shirts, a mother with a young baby, pulling faces and making the kid giggle, and parents grieving for the death of their son.

  * * *

  YAEL UNDRESSED, put her Arabic clothes in the closet, and was about to return to the familiarity of jeans and a knit top when there was a knock on her door. Her heart beat faster, as if there were an Angel of Death waiting for her. Yaniv had begged her to leave the country or at least move to a hotel, but she’d determined that she’d stay. She had to see this through to the end or there would never be an end. Yet, now, unprotected and alone in her apartment before she drove to Peki’in, the knock on the door presaged immediate danger.

  She did up the buttons of her top and walked to the door. Hers was a security apartment, so it was likely to be a neighbor, but she opened the door with fear in her heart. Standing there were two people in police uniforms, a man and a woman. Their uniforms and badges had enabled them to gain access to the building.

  Surprised, she said softly, “Yes?”

  “Dr. Cohen,” said the young woman, “may we come in?”

  “Sure, but let me check your IDs.”

  The two police showed her their identification. Yael nodded and let them into the living room of her apartment. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she knew she must show no signs of guilt. This had to be about Bilal and the escape. Dear God, she thought, how had they found out?

  “Would you like to sit down?” the woman asked her. “I’m afraid that we have some very bad news for you.”

  “Tell me what’s happened.”

  “Please, Doctor, sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit down,” she said tersely. “What’s happened?”

  And the young officer told her that some days ago, a car had crashed through the barrier of the road leading from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. Before rescue services could get to it, the gas tank, which was rusted and old, had ruptured and burst into flames when it hit the hot exhaust pipe. The car and the single driver had been consumed by fire, and it had taken some time to examine the few remaining recovered documents and trace the owner because he’d forgotten to register the car with the authorities. Unfortunately, the dead body belonged to her grandfather, Professor Shalman Etzion. They were terribly sorry. Could they make her a cup of coffee? Did she have any relatives or friends she could call? Was there anything they could do for her? Would she be able to come to the morgue and identify the documents, as the body was too badly burned to be identifiable?

  When they’d gone, she sat in an armchair overlooking the city of Jerusalem. There in the distance was the Knesset and beyond it the museum and her childhood. It was a place of love and sanctuary for her, an anchor in her life where there were marvelous and incredible things and staff who were overjoyed at her inquisitiveness and kept slipping candy into her pocket, all presided over by a loving, kindly, gentle, white-haired, doting grandfather. />
  Too shocked to cry, she just stared into space, wondering what was happening in her life. She picked up her cell phone and phoned Yaniv. It had been disconnected. Then she remembered that he’d bought new SIM cards for them both. She opened her purse where she’d written his new details and dialed his number. He answered immediately.

  Before she could tell him about Shalman, he burst out, “Thank God you’ve phoned. I’m in the village—have you got the phone? Bilal’s phone—”

  “My grandfather is dead, Yaniv.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “He died in a car accident.”

  The tears that she’d suppressed earlier now came to her eyes as her voice became broken and meandering. “He was a good driver. He’s never had an accident in his life. What’s happening to me, Yaniv? Is it because of me? I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  She burst into tears.

  * * *

  70 CE

  TWO WEEKS LATER, Abraham ben Zakkai was returning home from a visit to the distant sea where he had treated a number of people in the village of Jaffa. Exhausted, Abraham pulled his donkey into his home, far below the shadow cast by the massive walls of the temple built by the late and detested King Herod.

  Abraham took time to stable his donkey, feed it, and ensure it had enough to drink before he walked toward his house. From the gate he could see long lines of Jews sauntering to the archway that led up a long flight of stairs to the entrance of the temple courtyards. And as was their habit, there were Roman guards standing around, watching the Jews, ensuring that no weapons were carried up to the temple. The only knives the Romans allowed into the temple forecourt were those wielded by the priests when they slaughtered sacrificial animals brought to them by the populace.

  Abraham was exhausted from the long and enervating journey, but he knew that his second responsibility, after caring for his donkey, was to visit the temple and give thanks to God the Almighty, Adonai Elohim in heaven, for his safe return and his ability to heal the sick of the land. For years, ever since he was a boy watching his father, Zakkai, tending to all Israelites, from desperately frightened pregnant women to children with hideous diseases to men injured in the fields, he had been gifted by God with the skills to ease people’s pains. He had learned his father’s and his grandfather’s skills with plants and herbs and spices. And because his father had sent him to Greece and to Rome, where the greatest doctors of the day lived, there were many in Judea now saying that Abraham ben Zakkai was the greatest of all the healers, whose family, it was said, could be traced back to the priests in the time of King David and King Solomon of Israel.

  Abraham was exhausted and desperate to see his wife and children, whom he missed fiercely, and so he walked from the nearby stables to his house, deciding to beg the Lord God’s forgiveness later in the evening for not visiting His temple immediately. The street was already dark, and the lights from the temple cast garish shadows on the walls. He kissed his fingers and blew the kiss into the air, something he’d learned from his late mother, who was always frightened of the dark and of shadows and was worried about devils and demons and especially about Satan, the fallen Angel of God. She and her generation of women thought that if they blew their kiss into the air, God would be touched by their action and protect them.

  He smiled at himself. He, a doctor, a man of learning and scientia, a man who spoke Hebrew, Latin, Koine, and Greek, and could even converse with the wandering nomads of the desert in their Arab language, blew kisses in the air. He was a man who had trained under some of the greatest doctors in Athens and Rome, in Alexandria and Ephesus; yet, for all that, for all his travels and learning, he was still his mother’s son and followed her ancient ways. For how could he do otherwise?

  As he approached his home, some of the shadows in the spaces between the street and his door began to move. He thought it was an odd effect of the fires from the temple forecourt, until one of the shadows suddenly became a man. He stepped out in front of Abraham, followed by two others, then two more. The five men, dressed in the clothes of farmers or citizens of some poor village in the hills, stood between him and his home. They were robbers. Abraham was suddenly frightened.

  “I have little money on me, brothers, but you’re welcome to what I have,” he said, trying not to sound nervous.

  “Are you Abraham ben Zakkai, doctor and healer?” asked the first man. His accent wasn’t that of a peasant. It was cultured, as though he was a Jerusalemite.

  “Yes. What do you want of me?”

  “We have some friends who are sick. They need a doctor.”

  Abraham sighed. “Brothers, I’ve just returned from the distant Great Sea and Jaffa. I’m exhausted. Aren’t there other doctors, healers, you could ask?”

  “Not with your reputation.”

  “Tomorrow, then . . . I’ll—”

  “Now!” said the leader. The other men moved a step closer.

  But Abraham wouldn’t be swayed. “No. I haven’t seen my wife and children in three weeks of traveling. I have rights. I’ve had an exhausting journey. I—”

  The leader punched him hard in the stomach. Abraham doubled over and was about to fall to his knees, when the others held him under his arms and dragged him backward up the street. To stop him from screaming, one of the men stuffed a cloth into his mouth. He began to struggle but stopped when one of the men hit him hard on the back of the neck. The last thing he remembered was an explosion of light, as though Satan had come down and entered his head.

  * * *

  SAMUEL THE MERCHANT kissed his wife and children good-bye and told them that he’d be back in four weeks. His journey, he told them, would take him to Damascus, Baabek, and Tripoli, and then he would return by traveling southward to Sidon and then back again to Acco and Jaffa and then up the hill to Jerusalem and his beloved family.

  He hated lying to his wife and children, but as a close friend and associate of the Romans, and as a man who used his position of trust to assist the conquerors, his entire life was composed of lies, evasions, and excuses; but as a patriot, a citizen of Israel, and a man who, like Janus, smiled with one face and frowned with the other, Samuel was of enormous value to the Zealots, a new and fervent group who were planning a final assault to drive the Romans out of Israel. So lying to his wife and children was as much for their protection as for his own. If they were ever questioned, they could in all honesty say that Samuel, their husband and father, was in the north of the country, buying goods with which to trade and bring back to Jerusalem.

  He ordered his servants to prepare the wagon, team up the mules, and bring him the baskets of food that had been prepared in his kitchens. Then, despite the darkness of the streets and the moonless night, he whipped the flanks of the beasts and set off north out of Jerusalem. But Samuel hadn’t gone more than four streets before he checked that he wasn’t being followed, turned his mules, and headed off in a westerly direction toward the Mediterranean Sea, or Mare Nostrum—“Our Sea,” as the Romans patronizingly called it.

  He had been traveling for some time, and was already well clear of the city of Jerusalem, when in the gloom of the night he saw figures ahead on the road. Only merchants and robbers used the roads at night, and not even the Romans, with all their legions and weapons, their war machines and the strength of their troops, dared to be on these roads at night for fear of attack by fanatics, anti-Romans, and madmen.

  As he whipped the mules farther, to the point in the road where he’d agreed to rendezvous with the Zealot party, he vaguely saw five or six men. Nervous in case they were robbers, he drew nearer, his heart thumping, and held his breath. But then he recognized the shape of the leader, Jonathan ben Isaac.

  “Samuel?”

  “Of course it’s Samuel. Who do you think would be riding out on such a night? Julius Caesar? Do you have the doctor?”

  Two of the men held a figure between them. He wasn’t struggling, but it was clear, even in the dark of the Jerusalem
night, that the man was held captive. They hauled him over to the wagon and hoisted him up onto the bed. Samuel turned and saw that the doctor, who he remembered, had a cloth stuffed into his mouth and was unkempt and finding it difficult to breathe.

  “For God’s sake, take that thing out of his mouth. He’s not a Roman. He’s one of us,” ordered Samuel.

  “Not until we’re sufficiently distant from Jerusalem,” said Jonathan.

  “He could scream with all his might and he wouldn’t be heard by the Romans. Most of them would be drunk by now, and the guards on the wall would think that it’s an animal howling. Now, take that damned thing away before he suffocates.”

  One of the men looked at Jonathan, who nodded. He pulled the cloth out of Abraham’s mouth, ready to ram his hand down hard against his lips if the prisoner began to yell. But Abraham didn’t make a noise. Instead, he looked from one face to another. Then he turned to Samuel and said softly, “I know you, merchant. I treated your servants some time ago. Are you behind this?”

  “You’re required by the army of Zealots,” said Samuel.

  “The army of Zealots?”

  “The Romans have to be removed from the land of Israel by force. We have thousands who’ll join us. Already throughout the country, there are hundreds who have left their homes and families, brave Jews, Israelites who would rather die than live in a world where we’re nothing but ants trodden into the ground by the Roman heel. Soon the Romans will feel the imprint of our boots on their backsides,” said Jonathan.

  Abraham struggled to sit up. Jonathan cut the ropes tethering his arms but left his feet tied so he couldn’t run away. He sat on the bed of the wagon as Samuel whipped the mules into action.