by Shlomo Kalo
Their covered wagon occupied, so it seemed, prime position in the middle of the convoy, with six Chaldean horsemen, three on either side, escorting them. It soon became clear to them that this was the royal wagon, reserved for those destined to look upon the face of the great king, the conqueror of the world, Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean, himself and in person.
Some residents of the city came out to accompany the convoy with their silent looks, while well-armed Chaldean troops kept them away from the travellers.
His eyes lingered on the faces of those looking on; sad, scared faces with bitter, veiled looks, the faces of his compatriots, the people of God who did not keep faith with Him, but strayed and led astray… and again his heart was filled with such a weight of grief that it almost stopped beating.
And then, somewhere, among the silent watchers, those remaining behind in the city that was doomed to destruction, he caught her eye. He knew it was her, and her gaze that was following him, the deep gaze of her eyes, blue tending towards violet, even before their eyes met.
Relief from an unknown source swelled his chest. His heart resumed its joyful beating, the vibrant joy that he knew so well.
Their glances locked together. This was a long moment which detached the two of them from their surroundings, erased all other faces and transported them to the limpid heights of another world, a world of their own, where no stranger could set foot.
His head was turned back, and his eyes still fixed on hers, eyes radiating comfort and confidence and peace. Could it be that the purity of the world, all that divine purity, bestowed upon man in abundance but rejected and trampled rudely underfoot, has found in these eyes its inexhaustible spring? – so he pondered, unable, and unwilling, to detach his gaze from hers.
The Chaldean horseman leaned across, trying, with a clumsy movement, to move him back into the interior of the wagon, while making every effort to avoid injuring the king’s prisoner. His instructions were to show leniency and fairness towards the youths destined to look upon the face of King Nebuchadnezzar the conqueror of the world, and to serve him. And all the while the wheels of the wagon went on turning, moving slowly on the road with its coarse, unmatched paving stones.
Nejeen had to run behind the ranks of soldiers and a number of Jews standing at the roadside, and when she realised she could not catch up with him, she stopped and stood still and waved her hand to him, a familiar, white hand, that suddenly glowed in the stifling heat of the air like a source of tender light, a blast of invigorating chill.
He waved back to her energetically, then yielded to the pressure exerted on him by the Chaldean horseman and withdrew to the depths of the wagon, his eyes sparkling and his face burning. His companions stared at him, bemused.
The wagon was long, more so than any of the other wagons, and yet still the youths sitting in it were cramped together. There were eight of them, apparently all of an age. He sat between Mishael and Azariah. Hananiah tried to peer through the seam of the stitching at the rear of the canopy and observe, for perhaps the last time in his life, the ruined northern wall of the city, the wall which the Chaldeans had taken the trouble to reduce to its foundations, setting to work those inhabitants of the city who had not been slain nor exiled to Babylon, alongside such slaves as had survived.
Azariah asked him in a whisper:
“Nejeen?”
He confirmed this with a nod of the head, and spoke the name with a blend of reverence and exaltation of spirit:
“Nejeen.”
And perhaps he will never see her again, never meet again. This thought seems to him strange and at odds with reality. He will meet her again. How and when – only God knows. Jerusalem the holy city, the land that he knows, his mother, his sisters and his baby brother – he may never see again. So his doleful heart tells him. But Nejeen… a current of warmth bearing with it a gentle beam of light, sweeps through his whole being and drives the dolour from his heart.
And what will become of Jerusalem? Will it be utterly destroyed, and never rebuilt? The Prophet of God decreed for it seventy years of desolation, after which it shall be built again. And great is the hope and bold is the dream, that the one that is to be built will never again be destroyed and it will be the city of God, the habitation of the faithful, inside and out. The city of God in which the people of God live and praise their Father who is in Heaven with psalm and anthem, with harp and viol, with cymbals, drum, lyre and pipe, extolling and glorifying Him all the days of their lives upon the earth, a people that will serve as a model to all races and principalities and nations and tongues, who will come from faraway to bow down to the one God and see His people with their own eyes, to learn from them and to be like them.
This people will beat its swords into ploughshares and its spears into pruning-hooks, and its best young men, God-fearers and God-lovers all, will no longer take up weapons, and among them there will be no commoners, no men of power and authority, no kings or nobles or dignitaries, no servants and no masters, no slaves and no free men, For all shall know me, from the least to the greatest, as God has declared through the lips of His prophet. And they will all be His children, in the words of King David: I said, you are God, and all of you are children of the Most High. There will be no more need of judges and constables and kings, and He will be their one and only unrivalled king.
The convoy was moving now at a faster pace. The big wheels of the wagon creaked beneath them, dust rose in spirals from the road, thick and cloying, hanging in clouds above their heads, in the void of the air, veiling the face of the bright sky. This dust made breathing heavy, seared the throat.
“What were you thinking about?” asked Mishael.
He glanced at him. His contemporary, swarthy of face and bright of eye, his hair black and curly, falling on both sides of his head and behind, like a flock of goats coming down from Gilead – the line from the Song of King Solomon flashes into his mind. The face of Azariah, on the other hand, was not at all swarthy, but very pale, a face not testifying to the best of health, eyes black, soft and deep-set, his hair almost smooth and tending towards ruddiness. It was said of him he was descended from King David. His family was one of the most distinguished in Jerusalem, but he for his part had little to say, being wrapped up in himself.
On his father’s advice the former Theodoros, now known as Doroz, came to drill him with physical exercises.
Azariah detested such exercises, and was not outstanding in horsemanship either, but after their fathers had spoken together, Azariah’s father approached his son and urged him to do these exercises. Azariah complied, thus upholding the commandment to honour father and mother, and listened to Doroz, who invested a great deal of effort in him and tried to persuade him to continue with these exercises, even when the trainer was not there. The results were visible – and for a few days a light reddish tinge spread over Azariah’s cheeks, but only for a few days. Then the pallor returned and reclaimed its place.
Above all else, Azariah chose to sit in the Sanctuary, to spend as much time as he could under its high, domed roof, radiating the solemnity of holiness, his eyes staring in the shadowy void, and his lips murmuring the verses most dear to him: Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for you are with me… I trust in the Lord, I shall not fear what mankind may do to me… From the straits I called upon the Lord, He answered me in the open spaces.
Sometimes he joined Azariah in the Sanctuary, to sit beside him on one of the seats reserved for the royal household, and be as silent as he. Sometimes they sat like this, in silence, from daybreak to sunset.
The Shekhinah prevails between the high walls of the Sanctuary and they are both of them imbued with it, in their detachment from the outside, from what grieves them or gladdens them, in their loss of all awareness of time. In the end they rise from their seats and part in silent amity, each turning to go his own way.
It is not only within the Sanctuary that the Shekhinah prevails. It prevails outside it
too, in the flickering expanse above the City of David and in its winding alleyways and in the hills and the fields surrounding it all around, in the dewy meadow of a spring morning, in the greening forests, in every single place where man serves his Father in Heaven with love and tells His praises.
“What were you thinking about?” – Mishael repeated his question, his voice distant.
“About all the sins that we have committed against our Father in Heaven. We dream of what could be good and beautiful, and we do what is wicked and ugly.”
“But Daniel, we are not like that!” – Azariah turned to him, and his voice more quiet than usual, restrained to a degree, a restraint that was conscious and not natural.
In the tone of his voice there was pain and longing. Pain over what had happened in Jerusalem and what his eyes had witnessed, and this exile that had been forced on them, and the separation from parents, from brothers and sisters, and from uncles, from fields and vineyards, from enchanted mornings of spring and summer, autumn and winter… and longing to cling to God with all his might, with redoubled love, to trust in Him to the end and above all – to do His will without a moment’s thought, and if it is possible, to sanctify His name, to sacrifice everything, to the end. Are this pain and this longing not the pain and the longing of all of them, of the four of them at least?
Hananiah returns from the crack through which he had been looking at the ruined buildings of his home town. The dust has already covered them, and there is no longer anything to look at. Hananiah tries to hide the tears welling in his reddened eyes.
“This dust!” he exclaims, when he realises that his three friends have discovered his weakness.
“It scalds the eyes” Hananiah insists, studying the faces of his three friends as if saying: “Try to believe me, make it easier for me! It’s the truth that I’m telling – it scalds the eyes and damages them!”
“You have to beware of dust!” Mishael declares with dignity, and Azariah joins in, in the same tone of voice, as he explains:
“A few years ago Esther, our housemaid, was in floods of tears because she happened to be walking on a dusty road when a troop of the royal guard came riding along and kicked up clouds of dust. It took her a long time to recover. She needed cold compresses on her eyes for a whole month!”
“That’s what dust can do, and there’s no doubting it’s as dangerous to the eyes as vinegar is to the teeth,” he asserted solemnly – “and we’ll have to be careful of it, especially seeing that we have a lengthy journey ahead of us, and it’s not a matter of a day or two, or even a week or two. It’s a long way, and it’s all obstacles, dust and sand!”
“How long is it supposed to take?” asked Azariah eagerly, clearly intending to change the subject and give Hananiah the chance to attend to his tears. And Hananiah took his friend’s hint, pulling out from under his sheepskin tunic a scrap of cloth and wiping his face and his nose with great deliberation. When he turned to face them again, his eyes were dry.
“About three weeks,” he answered the one who had asked, and went on to explain: “So I have heard from those who have done the journey there and back – twenty-one days from here to there, from there to here, a little less.”
“And perhaps they were horsemen in a hurry and not a caravan like this one of ours, which is mostly people on foot and a few wagons and horses, not to mention oxen and cattle trundling along at their own pace.”
“A caravan just like this one,” he insisted. “Since the Chaldeans came, several such have gone down to Babylon, and some of those escorting them have returned, and that journey was indeed a shorter one – no caravan, just horsemen.”
“Chaldean horsemen?” asked Mishael.
“Correct,” he answered him.
“Have you been fraternising with Chaldeans?” asked Hananiah, in a tone that suggested he had not the slightest interest in hearing an answer to his question.
“They were billeted on us,” he replied – “in our house on the plain. They seemed to like the place, and we refused them nothing. Secretly, my mother was hoping the house would be spared, but in the end it was destroyed, like the houses of all those who opposed the Chaldeans and fought against them, and those who were close to the king.”
“But the minister Naimel, your father, died in battle!” Hananiah pointed out.
“All the more reason,” he replied with dignity.
“Our house is still standing,” – one of the ‘strangers’ approached the group of four. “My father was killed fighting them too, but my mother convinced the Chaldeans that our house was not his but belonged to my grandfather, who had nothing at all to do with the king’s ministers or advisers, but on the contrary – was among the supporters of Jeremiah.”
“Did he really support Jeremiah?” he asked curiously.
The young man replied with a sly wink:
“My grandfather’s eyes are failing and his ears stopped hearing anything a long time ago. To this very day, he doesn’t even know that the Chaldeans are in Jerusalem.”
“So your mother broke the commandment against giving false witness,” Mishael commented.
“We had to choose between our home and this commandment…. and I don’t know anyone who obeys it to the letter!”
The four of them looked down and were silent for a long moment.
“Don’t pretend to be so righteous,” another youth interjected from the depths of the wagon. “You people haven’t been keeping this commandment either, you’re just like the rest of us! No one is capable of keeping this commandment – and all the others!” he insisted.
“It’s because of that kind of thinking that Jerusalem fell and the kingdom of David came to an end,” Hananiah commented.
“Jerusalem will yet be rebuilt and there will be no end to the kingdom of David!” – he intervened hastily, before one of the others could reply to Hananiah. “You’ll find it in the Scriptures, and it was Jeremiah’s prophecy too,” he concluded.
“What I mean to say,” – added the youth who had spoken previously – “is that it’s not in the nature of a man of flesh and blood to keep the commandments, and abiding by them is beyond his capabilities!”
“He who keeps these commandments – will be saved!” he insisted.
“Anyway, the whole world, with all its inhabitants and creatures, is surely doomed to destruction and will perish!” interposed a third youth, not one of his companions.
“The whole world will not be destroyed, nor will all creatures perish!” he answered him.
“Who are those who will be spared?” asked Hananiah curiously.
“Those who love the Lord,” he said and added: “As it is written – You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your might and with all your soul. He who loves the Lord will be saved and the world will be saved for his sake.”
One of the wheels of the wagon struck a hillock, and all eight youths were flung to one side. A cloud of hot, sticky dust drifted in, settling and drawing a chorus of hoarse coughing from the throats of the young men. The debate was suspended, as eyes were closed for a long moment. Outside, someone could be heard cursing the wagon-driver in a coarse tone of voice. One of the Chaldean riders, evidently. Another Chaldean arrived and restrained him from laying a whip on the back of the hapless Jewish wagoner.
He peered through a chink in the canopy: a long straggling line of wagons, and beside them creatures who seemed to be from another world, walking blindly with heads bowed, a grey, winding column, slow-moving, ponderous and it seemed – without purpose. Dust is still spiralling upwards and the lines are blurred. The molten gold of the horizon is dulled, and the head of the column seems to blending into it and disappearing from view.
The wheels of the wagons creak, the horses whinny, the oxen behind utter their prolonged, guttural bellows, in which there is no defiance, only despair and a plea for mercy. The cows add their voices to the chorus, but their lowing is less discordant and less submissive. The hot, dust-laden ai
r is impeding the progress of the convoy. The mounted Chaldeans shield their eyes, scanning the wide expanse. They can’t tell anyone, not even themselves, where they are. Hands droop in resignation, and the caravan moves on. The Chaldeans try to calculate their position on the basis of the time that has elapsed: some four hours since they left Jerusalem, and the way still to be travelled seems longer than ever. Their reckoning is faulty. They wish one of the exiles would ask them how far they have travelled from Jerusalem and when they will arrive in Babylon, to which they will reply in true soldierly style, that this is no concern of his, and he should be so good as to continue to walk this narrow path and not impede the journey in any way, and mind his own business. Some day, and somehow, he will reach his destination, see the towering walls of the mighty metropolis of Babylon, draw near to them and enter by the tall gates. And there work awaits him, all kinds of tasks in the service of the great king, conqueror of the world, Nebuchadnezzar his name, and woe betide him if he is idle or fails to deliver or asks too many foolish questions! In the court of the king of Babylon such things are not tolerated. And he should take great care, and heed this friendly warning: for infringing these prohibitions there is only one penalty – the sharp sword of His Majesty’s headsman.
But no one addresses a question to the soldiers of the king of Babylon, possibly because no one is in the mood for a lecture. They all know better than to ask unnecessary questions – questions with all too predictable answers. The swathed head of the Jewish exile, bowed against the hot wind, is laden with crude and corrosive particles of dust, and all his face, except a narrow slit for the eyes, is shielded with cloth against this treacherous dust, which settles everywhere and penetrates everything, only adding to the burden of gloom of the exiles.
