by Tommy Tenney
A Jewish family deep in hiding. Or so they had thought.
AL-SAYED IMPORT-EXPORT COMPANY, BAGHDAD—THAT EVENING
Barely an hour after the massacre of a hidden Jewish family three miles away in Mansour, the same dingy pickup pulled up in front of the unassuming storefront that housed the Mossad’s secret Iraqi headquarters.
This time there was no leisurely reconnoiter. Along the busy street outside, the truck, traveling no faster than most, braked to a sudden halt. This time six men jumped out from the cab. They did not wait for the instant stampede of bystanders, sidewalk merchants, and loiterers to scramble away from the scene before starting their rampage.
This time two missiles shrieked into the building and detonated in a single, punctuated explosion, followed two seconds later by a fireball so vicious and huge that it crossed the street and rose high into the sky, not only turning over the hapless pickup onto its assassins, but also scorching innocent traffic, passersby snarled in the ambush and everything else in its path.
Before he died, the truck’s driver praised Allah in a final strangled shout: “Praise him—we truly did strike the Zionist anthill. . . . ”
PRIME MINISTER’S RESIDENCE—REHAVIA, JERUSALEM
The following morning Hadassah began her quest in earnest. Armed with nothing more than a mug of hot Earl Grey tea, a telephone, and a pad of paper, she installed herself in the small office provided for her in a corner of the Residence complex.
She sat down in her deepest chair, took a long sip of tea, and closed her eyes to think.
“She did not perish. . . . ”
She knew to keep it simple. Start with the familiar, the logical. In what context had she most often heard the phrase’s defining word “perish,” uttered by her father during his life? And which of these contexts would be important enough to consume his final breath, his last words to her?
Perish . . . The word was almost Torahlike in its formality, its sentimentality. She thought back to her earliest Seder memories. His holding her on his knee, telling her stories from the Torah.
Hearing the Megillah read at Purim—Esther’s most courageous words, “If I perish, I perish. . . . ”
Then later, the word would punctuate stories from his own life. . . .
Perish . . . The word seemed to sink deeper into her memory. And then something burst into her mind. It was his voice, as clear and full of import as the day he had spoken the words. “My sister Rivke, my grandmother and grandfather, my uncle Likul, my own dear mother, they stayed behind when we escaped Hungary. And they perished in the camps. . . . ” She had winced, because in his solemnity he had used the same intonation he affected when he read from Esther.
Of course, she told herself. He had never failed to use that verb when he had described the horrible fate of the relatives he had heart-breakingly left behind in Hungary.
Perhaps there had been a survivor. It made no immediate sense that she would not have been told of one. But if there had been some reason, some bizarre segregation for safety’s sake, it certainly would justify his eagerness to disclose it to her as he lay dying.
She jotted down the names as best she could remember them, feeling as though she was recreating the family names upon the scroll back at the Shrine. Maybe there would be an obvious skip—a missing link. Who else could the “she” be?
She thought hard, picturing those names—Rivke Kesselman. Isaac and Deborah Kesselman, Likul Kesselman, Pavel Kesselman, she mentally recited.
She would start with the first. Rivke, his father’s youngest sister. Hadassah had been told little of her, except that she was very beautiful and possessed of an enchanting wit. Poppa had sometimes looked at his Hadassah a certain way, murmuring that she reminded him “of Rivke. . . . ”
She opened her laptop, loaded its Web browser, and marveling again at the ease of it all, typed in http://www.yadvashem.org—the address for Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. And there it was, right on the home page, over a heartrending drawing of a smiling young girl.
“The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. Click here.”
She typed the name, clicked, and to her surprise, two matches flashed onscreen. Riveka Keselman, from Ukraine, and Ryvka Keselman from Lithuania. Neither was the one. She felt a pang of sadness to think that so many women had died that even a specific name like Rivka could encompass three different women from three nations.
The Yad Vashem Web site warned that only half of the Shoah’s total victims were loaded into its database, so she did not allow herself to feel discouragement. She continued on to the other family names and found their records without effort. Seeing them onscreen like that—disembodied in their glowing pixels, yet so real, the letters of the names so precisely formed—brought a flood of tears to her eyes. She had known none of them, of course, but she had felt their presence throughout her childhood and their loss in every year of her adulthood. And reading their names on a government Web site of this sort seemed to make the injustice of their murders fresh and raw again.
“I promise you, I will never forget,” she whispered, her voice breaking as she touched the screen with a trembling finger. She felt as if she was joining the ranks of those from the past, the present, and the future as she said aloud, “And I will fight to the death to stop anything like that from happening again. . . . ”
And then her phone rang. It was Jacob, fresh from an intelligence briefing. His voice was both professional and personal, she noted in a detached manner. It seemed Ari Meyer—the man who had saved her life and been sent back to the front for his troubles—had just perished in a horrific attack upon Mossad’s Baghdad headquarters. Positive identification would not be completed for weeks, if ever, for the explosion of hidden weapons and ammunition had been so severe, it had exceeded the kilotonnage of a plane-dropped bomb.
Then barely able to say the words, he told her that Ari Meyer had been scheduled for his return briefing the very moment the missiles had struck.
Hadassah thanked her husband and hung up without her customary “I love you,” trembling too hard to press the phone’s OFF button.
She could not understand what was happening—only that whatever it was, she was beginning to feel as though she could be in the center of a giant, global bull’s-eye.
And just at that moment, the panic returned full-force. She felt a vast, malevolent force, so hate-filled that it would not rest until its victim was destroyed. It encircled her, even here in her very own little office. It seemed to be stalking her, circling her body with the cold stare of a Bengal tiger, preparing to leap the final gap and devour her whole.
She gulped air in huge breaths, telling herself in one absurd moment that passing out from hyperventilation might be the most merciful conclusion to this moment.
She stood up, unable to tolerate the constriction of a sitting position upon her diaphragm. Glancing up at the ceiling to change her view, she found no solace. So she stared down at the floor. And there it was again, waiting for her.
She reached down. Jacob had ordered a bound copy of the Esther letter discovered by Meyer—she picked it up and opened to a random page.
Concubine.
Have you ever noticed, Leah, that I never speak that word out loud? I don’t think it has left my lips for thirty years or more. I detest that word. As someone who had spent most of her adult life within the royal palace, I know better than anyone what it conjures up in people’s minds. . . .
Sexual object. Plaything. Discarded at will. Used. Unwanted. Forgotten. Taken for granted.
Forgive me if even writing these words causes you more pain. But I write them now to strip them of their power, their illusion of truth. They not only fail to describe you but actually suggest the opposite of what you truly are.
Do you know what I see in you instead of these pathetic idiocies?
I see a tall Jewish beauty with piercing green eyes, dazzling black hair, and long, lean limbs, whose loveliness
is amply matched by her wisdom and her godliness. A bright, resourceful young woman making the best of events not of her own making. Still in her prime, a woman entering some difficult times in her life—times that I understand well, for I have only begun to step away from similar trials myself.
You know, I said something like this to Jesse a while back, before I came to Jerusalem, for he too is given to such questions. I still refer to him by his Jewish name and not Hathach, as he is now known. And Mordecai too, for that matter.
Jesse and I were enjoying one of our frequent excursions to the Persepolis palace gardens—substituting them for the old familiar orchards from Susa, where we once stole away as young people so long ago—when he turned to me with a suddenly intense expression.
“Do you know that you and Mordecai are the only ones alive who remember me before I became a . . .”
Like me, he never speaks aloud the word eunuch, the word the outside world would use to describe him. Whenever the subject arises, he always allows the sentence to drift off in a tellingly deliberate way. And I always know what has remained unspoken.
“Jesse,” I answered, suddenly grasping his hand, “do you know who I see when I look into your eyes?”
“Please, Hadassah. I do not want to hear that word.”
“That word was the farthest thing from my mind.”
I winced at my boldness, and for a moment wondered if my point would prove healing or merely painful. Yet I had launched into the topic, and I needed to carry it through.
“I see a man as magnificent today as he ever was. I see the man you really are—who you still are—during all the time I’ve known you since childhood. In that noble brow of yours, in the intelligence pouring from those deep-set eyes, in your glowing skin, I still see the Jesse I knew at fifteen. The same youth with those great broad shoulders, the thick hair, that irresistible, lightning-quick laugh. The boy who first taught me about”—and I turned suddenly shy, and the last word was barely a whisper—“love.”
At that he turned and smiled at me, so bright and genuine that I vow I was pulled back to those very days. Yet I also looked deeper into his eyes and saw tears, and was poignantly reminded of what I often allowed myself to forget—that the love of so long ago had never died. Though it had ripened into a beautiful friendship, there also throbbed a vital, inner core that remained too hot to touch, to even approach without care.
“You’re still there, Jesse,” I continued as straightforward as I could manage, “the boy who led me on the most breathtaking adventure of my life. Do you remember? Running as fast as we could through the Royal Gates market and that impossible crush of hawkers and travelers and soldiers, then jumping onto the old palace’s gryphon gates. You were so fast and you had such long legs, I despaired of ever catching up with you.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked, shaking his head. “Do you honestly think my memory needs refreshing?”
“Because you said that Mordecai and I were the only ones left who might remember your younger days. And I want to reassure you that I do. I remember all of it—the kind, handsome youth you once were—and every age of your life since then. Nor do I have to work hard to remember. It’s all right there, in the man you are today.” I took both of his hands and stared into his eyes. “Every wonderful quality you ever had seems to simply pour out of the man you’ve become.”
His fingers tightened around mine, while his eyes remained fixed upon the distant columns of the Apadana. Although its only sign was a slight trembling of the shoulders, I knew Jesse well enough to realize that he was weeping.
“Nor have I forgotten my first kiss,” I said in a voice now breathy and wistful. “I’ve never forgotten the sensation, the swoon, that came over me. It seemed to just separate my head from my shoulders. The soft feeling of strength that took hold of my whole body when our lips touched. Or the sense of you, an essence far more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before . . . ” My voice drifted to a close, and I stood searching his face.
He smiled a little self-consciously. I remember because I never see that smile except at the most gentle, close moments between us.
Then I heard a sob, and the sound of panting. And I realized that it was coming from me. Emotion had just launched itself out of my lungs. My legs weakened beneath me, my knees gave way, and I found myself sitting precipitously on a patch of bare earth.
“What is it, Hadassah?” Jesse asked, lowering himself into my line of sight.
I shook my head and merely tried to breathe, partly because I knew that any attempt at speech would only result in embarrassment, and partly because I knew I could never answer him. Never.
I could never answer him because I was weeping, despite all my kind words, over all the bittersweet years life had forced between that carefree, vibrant young man of fifteen I had loved with such intensity and the man he had become. I wept because my next memory was of how the virile young Jesse of my first kiss had only survived a short while after that golden afternoon. My anguish had yanked me back to the sound of pounding in the middle of the night, of his grandmother bursting in to tell Mordecai and me that he’d been taken. That the royal patrols had snatched him and several hundred other young men, then carried them away to suffer the most cruel disfigurement possible.
I think my dear friend instinctively knew the cause of my tears, for he did not ask further. He merely encircled my shoulders with his strong arms, pulled me to my feet, and led me, one slow step at a time, back to the harem.
But, dear Leah, I weep as bitterly for you on this day as I did for Jesse on that one, for just as his manhood was torn from him, your woman’s heart has been torn apart and those beautiful emerald eyes of yours filled with a sadness which . . .
PRIME MINISTER’S RESIDENCE—THE NEXT MORNING
One good thing about being the Prime Minister’s wife, Hadassah reminded herself, is getting better-than-average assistance from government bureaucrats. Thanks to the Internet and the help of a few overeager researchers, she was managing to conduct a respectable investigation from the privacy of her living quarters.
At ten o’clock the doorbell rang, and Hadassah let in a young case manager from the Interior Ministry, a very nervous and too-thin young blonde, who introduced herself as Isabelle as she paused over a thin file.
“Ma’am, there is no record of any Israeli citizen, Holocaust victim or survivor, or repatriated remains bearing the name of Rivke Kesselman, sister of David. I’m very sorry.”
Hadassah sighed and sank to a chair. Perhaps the simplest interpretation of her father’s words had not been the true one after all.
“The only thing I did find, however,” the girl continued, pulling a large manila envelope out of her backpack, “I’m not sure if you’d be interested in. You see, it comes from London.”
Hadassah sat upright. London! Of course . . . that’s where the family had ended up!
“No, please go on,” Hadassah replied, “I’m very interested.”
“Well, there’s a public record of a 1950 marriage between an Iraqi citizen named Anek al-Khalid and a young Hungarian émigrée listed as R. Kesselman. There’re no relatives listed, though. It just says she was a war orphan. She died a few years later.”
Hadassah felt as though the air around her was growing thick, like a flow of cooling lava. She stared hard at the floor, transported in thought. Of course . . .
“Of course what, ma’am . . . ? May I be of some assistance?”
“I’ve been so blind! If she is living, what other kind of record would there be? I’ve been trying to prove a negative. Tell me, Isabelle. Did you find any further records of this Mr. al-Khalid?”
The young girl pursed her lips and nodded emphatically. “Actually, it seems this Mr. al-Khalid has been making quite a public spectacle of himself lately.”
Hadassah gasped. “You mean he’s the al-Khalid who’s stirred up so much trouble at the World Court?”
Isabelle nodded somberly. “One and the s
ame.”
“Oh, man,” Hadassah sighed. “Here we go . . .”
JERUSALEM
In the next few days, an odd rumor began to trickle through the intricate layers of Jerusalem’s social and political circles. It seemed the First Lady of the nation, so recently described in the press as homebound and depressed, had been sighted walking briskly through a variety of governmental offices and archives. Sometimes she had been spotted with a frustrated-looking bodyguard rushing to keep up with her, sometimes with a befuddled bureaucrat at her side, sometimes even alone.
Mindless of protocol, regulations, or accepted procedure, Mrs. ben Yuda had apparently charged into these various offices, blithely challenging their occupants to provide her with sensitive information not usually provided to anyone outside of the intelligence community.
Even more mysterious than the manner or location of these appearances, however, was Mrs. ben Yuda’s personal demeanor. She was almost universally described as radiant with purpose and energy.
What the capital gossips could never have known—not to mention the First Lady’s Shin Beth protectors—was that every one of her excursions had been relentlessly shadowed by a Palestinian man following her from an always discreet and concealed distance. The thin young man wore mirrored sunglasses and a bulky student’s backpack, but a different change of clothes on nearly every occasion—one of a dozen reasons why his constant shadowing had not been detected.
Perhaps another is that when the First Lady came closest to him (that is, within even seventy yards), he always seemed to be listening intently to someone speaking through his cell phone. In a strange side-effect of cell phone use, his lack of focus on her presence, his gaze trained instead upon the ground during such moments, had seemed to render him almost invisible.
Perhaps Hadassah’s greatest safeguard, unbeknownst to her, had been her haste. Her bristling determination to proceed quickly from one place to another had made her a veritable dervish through the various corridors and lobbies. Combined with her perimeter of red-faced bodyguards, her rapid pace had given the young terrorist the briefest reason to pause and hesitate on the four occasions when he had shifted forward on the balls of his feet and come within a split second of charging toward her, cell phone still in hand—its speed dial’s explosive recipient now strapped heavily upon his back.
