The Covenant

by Ragen, Naomi

  He looked around and saw a room full of frightened children and old women. For a split second, he hesitated.

  That was all Bahama’s brother needed.

  The volley of gunfire in the ensuing battle shook the house, echoing deep in the olive orchards that covered the nearby hills and valleys.

  Jon threw himself on the floor, trying to cover his head. The door to his room burst open and the young boy ran in.

  “Lie down behind me, Mohammad. They won’t hurt you!” Jon beckoned the child. It was only when the boy raised his hand and pointed it at him that Jon noticed the gun. “Allah is great!” the boy screamed, pulling the trigger, as the soldiers’ gunfire tore into his young flesh, piercing his heart.

  Jon felt the bullet slam into his body, and the ooze of blood as the soldiers lifted him onto a stretcher. He turned his head to the side, looking down on the young body of the boy, which lay stretched out, faceup, his eyes staring into space, all curiosity and intelligence forever extinguished. Jon felt the darkness envelop him, spreading over his eyes even before he closed them. And then he saw it, coming toward him, a hurtling beam of light that gathered the darkness into its embrace, catching and holding it, keeping it penned.

  “Don’t . . .” he tried to say.

  The soldiers were shouting in all directions. The helicopter engine and propellers roared in his ears, swallowing his words. Suddenly, he felt human breath on his face, a mouth close to his ears. Someone was leaning over him. “What?”

  “Don’t . . .” he begged.

  “Don’t what?” the medic asked.

  “Don’t let it out.”

  And then, he was silent.

  Sitting at his desk waiting for word, General Nagar heard the ringing of his private line. He hesitated for a moment before picking it up, listened, then slammed his fist down on his desk.

  When Elise saw him and Colonel Amos standing there at the entrance to her hospital room together with Dr. Gabbay and a nurse who was holding an injection, she already knew.

  “NO!” Her screams resounded throughout the floor, where new mothers sat eating their second Sabbath meal of the day; they echoed in the nursery, where the babies lay dozing in their cribs.

  The general bent over her bed, quietly telling her the details.

  “We did everything we could, Elise. Everything,” General Nagar said wearily. “Colonel Amos was in both operations. He can give you details.”

  She looked at the tall, young colonel. His uniform was wrinkled and dusted with black ash. His eyes had aged. She put her arms around him, sobbing quietly, her tears wetting his shirt. She felt the young, strong bones, breathed in the scents of battle . . .

  How many times had she leaned on Jon like this, she thought, as he came walking up the path, home on leave after days of reserve duty, unwashed, sleep-deprived, his only thought to hurry home to her and liana the moment they let him out? How many times had she breathed in that gritty scent of gunpowder mixed with a young man’s sweat? She listened to his strong heartbeat, felt the warmth that rose from his skin. Soon his mother would hug him, his sister, his girlfriend or wife. They would have him back this time, alive . . . this tall, handsome young man they loved. She was glad for them.

  She pulled back, gaining control. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . Who else did you lose?”

  “We lost two in the safe house when it exploded, three if you count our informer Ismael . . . And in the second house the commander, Yigael Glickson, was badly wounded. He’s being operated on now.”

  “God watch over him,” Elise murmured, thinking of the other mothers, other wives in mourning. “And liana?” Elise suddenly remembered with a rising hysteria. “What happened to liana?”

  The general shrugged. He hated to say this, hated it. “We don’t know. She wasn’t there with your husband in the second house. And the safe house . . .” He hesitated, seeking courage, this general, to tell this to a mother: “The safe house was totally destroyed. It will take us days to sift through the rubble . . .”

  “NO!”

  “Please, Mrs. Margulies. Elise,” Colonel Amos said soothingly. “liana wasn’t with your husband. But chances are she wasn’t in the safe house either. We just don’t know. She’s vanished. One of Bahama’s brothers and his sister are still alive, also badly wounded. As soon as we can, we will interrogate them to find out what they know.”

  ”So, there is still a chance that my baby . . .?”

  The colonel looked down at the floor, while the general lifted his hands, spreading his palms upward in a gesture he remembered from his pious mother when she said blessings over the Sabbath candles.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “General . . .”

  “What is it? I didn’t want to be disturbed . . .”

  “General. There is a woman outside. An Arab woman who calls herself Fatima . . .” The soldier whispered into the general’s ear.

  “Let her in!” Elise cried. “I know her . . .”

  “By all means, let her in.” Nagar nodded, a strange look passing over his features as Fatima walked into the room, a large basket of grapes on her head. “I brought you something, for you and for the doctor,” she said, lowering the basket and lifting off the cover. Two legs emerged, and then the rest of the body slipped out, almost like a breech birth, Elise would tell people later. Elise watched the small back, the loose, flexible limbs as the child turned around and ran into her arms. “Ima!”

  “liana, liana, liana,” Elise wept, holding the child in her arms, and then looking beyond into the old Arab woman’s stern, wrinkled face, which was filled with pain, and love, and pride of accomplishment.

  God did not work alone, Elise suddenly understood. He needed human goodness, human compassion to answer yes to prayers. Sometimes He found it, and sometimes He didn’t.

  “It was you! In the room with her! You who she was smiling at, when she lifted her arms to be held.”

  Fatima nodded. “I am ashamed to say this, Mrs. Doctor Jon. But Marwan Bahama is my nephew, child of my sister. When they needed a woman to care for the child, she called me. I could not say anything, because the Hamas would kill me and my children. But when I was there, Dr. Jon begged me to take the child away, to hide her. I was very afraid. He was my nephew, but he was evil, a beast. Even his own mother was afraid of him. But as a true Muslim, I could not see the death of an innocent child, or a man who has done only good. It was very late. The men were tired, they slept. They didn’t think to check my basket as I left. In the morning, I knew they would come for me. So I hid with her in a cave in the hills. I took care of her like my own. Here, look. You will see, no harm has come to her. Please, Mrs. Doctor Jon. Forgive me. Forgive my people.” Her proud, straight back and beautiful posture seemed suddenly to bend, as if under a great weight. “Have your soldiers freed Dr. Jon?”

  Elise gathered the child in her arms and carried her over to Fatima. “Dr. Jon is dead,” she whispered. She felt the child’s arms tighten around her neck, heard the great intake of breath and then the sob. She hugged her. “Your nephews have also been killed, and your sister. I’m so sorry, Fatima. So sorry.”

  The two women, their souls seared and dissolved by shock waves of grief and loss, rocked together in a desperate embrace. The Arab woman’s ululation of mourning mingled with the Jewish woman’s heartrending cries of grief.

  Arab and Jew, the tears were the same tears. The broken heart, the grief, the mourning, both the same, General Nagar suddenly thought. He wondered, for the first time, if the world would not be a better place if it was in the hands of women like these instead of men.

  “We will need to talk to her, Elise,” General Nagar said gently, motioning for his men to take Fatima into custody.

  “Don’t harm her! She saved my baby’s life!” Elise begged.

  “I swear to you. No harm will come to her. She might even get a medal . . . But for her own good, she needs to be protected now. I’ll leave you alone with your daughter . . .�
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  “General? Could you tell my grandmother and her friends what has happened?”

  “I will take care of it. I promise,” he said kindly, saluting her.

  She reached up and kissed him. “This is for the entire Israel Defense Forces. Thank you. I will pray for Lieutenant Glickson. Perhaps this time, God will say yes.”

  The general nodded and walked quickly down the corridor, his hand touching his cheek. Beside him, the young colonel kept pace, his steps measured and slow. They had lost this battle, because their humanity had gotten in their way. In fighting terrorists who hid behind women and children, it always would.

  She had no real understanding of all she had been through, she thought. The story would unfold slowly, understanding entering her soul drop by drop, over all the years of her life, she realized. She would think about Jon’s last days, his last hours, imagining what he had thought and felt. She would scrounge for every detail, from every source—the soldiers who had been with him, Fatima, Bahama’s young sisters. She would go over each passing moment of these short days again and again, searching them for some shape, some meaning. And she would never really know.

  The doctors wanted to examine liana. And Elise agreed to let them. In ten minutes, she told them, as she took the child into her bed and wrapped her arms around her, rocking her, telling her the story of her tiny brother, and how soon they would all go home and pick the figs from the trees to give to Fatima. How they would listen to music, and celebrate the coming holidays. How they would be a happy family again, one day, Elise promised liana. The kind of family your father wanted us to be. The kind of family we planned to be, your father and I, when we came to live in this land, the land that God promised to the Jewish people in His Covenant with Abraham.

  Epilogue

  ON SATURDAY NIGHT, May 11, 2002, Dr. Jonathan Margulies was buried in the Har Hamenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem. Thousands surrounded the place where his body lay on a stretcher, wrapped only in a prayer shawl, as is the custom in Jerusalem. Elise spoke movingly of her beloved husband, and of the son he would never know, who would be brought up to believe in all the same values: to love life and mankind, to do good deeds, and to love and protect his tiny country. Friends from the army described a loyal comrade. Fellow doctors described an irreplaceable colleague. And a young Arab woman, a patient, wept and said that the evil that had killed her doctor had destroyed her life as well.

  As she spoke, four elderly women surrounded a small girl, placing a hand on her tiny shoulders. They were not sure she should be there, but they acquiesced to her mother’s insistence that this would bring liana closure, and eventually comfort.

  In time, the child would bless her mother for her foresight and wisdom.

  And when the funeral was over, Elise asked the women to take care of liana, because there was something she needed to do alone.

  The taxi let her off at the Promenade. She walked along, looking out at the bright lights of Jerusalem. Of her many losses, time had been another. For how could you gauge what had happened to her in measurable units? Hours, days? Like the six days of creation, when worlds came into being, and worlds were lost . . . All that had happened had taken less than a week. Lives had been lost and a life created. Irreparable loss had been followed by a miraculous redemption . . . It was impossible to take it all in. Her mind had shut down, responding only to that which was most pressing, most urgent; only enough to play the part assigned her. She had put on the brave face, been the loving mother, the patriotic Israeli; everything they wanted she had given them, she thought. But now, now, I want to be left alone. Now, she thought, I want to talk to Jon.

  She took out a picture from her purse. Leaning against a lamppost, she examined it. It was her favorite wedding photo. She stared at Jon’s smiling face. He looked like such a kid, she thought. The acne on his forehead. The unruly hair, and those widely spaced teeth that gave his grin such mischief. This is what she would have, she thought, through the years. This face, this silent, smiling face that would stare back at her through time, never growing any older. A face that would listen, but never answer.

  She hugged herself and began to walk along, alone, in the darkness, the world a mystery, the future indecipherable. She looked up at the stars in the overarching sky and thought of all the human beings since the beginning of time who had looked up at that blank space, crying out to understand its meaning, never getting any answers. Herself, Jon, Nouara, Fatima’s young nephew, everyone shaped by the answers of other men who had stared, equally confused, some of them incredibly wise, some unspeakably evil. And all around her she sensed a planet teeming with fragile life, struggling to go forward.

  If only, if only . . . I could talk to you one more time, Jon. If only I could tell you how much I loved you. If I could thank you for the years we spent together—such good years!—for the children you helped me bring into the world. The stars blinked back in silence.

  Her feet were reluctant against the hard pavement as they took her forward. She was so tired. So tired. So alone. But she had a life ahead of her, she knew, children to care for. She needed to wake up every morning. Up ahead, she saw a young couple. The man wore a skullcap on his dark hair, and the girl’s long hair fell down her back. They were holding hands.

  A soft wind touched her face, drying her tears, smoothing back her hair like gentle fingers. She would never have to look for him in yellowing photos, or a faceless sky, she realized. Whenever she saw a tall, young man, she would see him. Whenever she heard a joke, she would hear his laughter. And when she held the children, she would feel his joy. His silent footfalls would accompany hers as she walked through life. “My hand is still in yours, Jon,” she whispered. “I will never let go.”

  On Sunday, May 12, the body of Musa el Khalil was found floating facedown in the Seine.

  On Monday, May 13, Whalid Ibn Saud was found in his car on the highway outside Riyadh. Saudi newspapers reported that he had had a heart attack. His body was never autopsied, and his wife was refused entry to attend his funeral. She and her children live in California, not far from her grandmother’s home. They no longer attend Islamic services.

  On May 20, Noura lost her battle with leukemia.

  On May 21, the wife and children of Ismael Abadi began to receive payments from the Israeli government, in thanks for the services of their husband and father to Israel’s Secret Service.

  On May 29, Julia Greenberg was airlifted to a British hospital specializing in burn victims. She continues to undergo numerous operations for skin grafts to restore her face and scalp, and has made progress in using the prosthesis for her right arm, which needed to be amputated at the elbow. Her body continues to suffer from imbedded nails that cannot be removed without injuring vital organs. She left political reporting and became a reporter on science and medicine. She has become an expert in typing with one hand. Whenever Milos’s work takes him to London, he takes her out to dinner.

  On June 15, Elise Margulies was finally able to give her son his circumcision ceremony, a ritual marking the entrance of a Jewish male into the Covenant of Abraham. Esther brought in her private plane carrying Ariana, Maria, Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s children. The baby boy was named Jonathan Hayim (meaning “life”), and the following week, Elise was able to bring him home from the hospital permanently. He is a healthy, happy child, who brings much joy into his family’s life.

  Leah Helfgott moved to Maaleh Sara. Last summer, her grandson Liam came to stay with her.

  On August 15, 2002, Ariana Feyder died peacefully in her sleep. In her recently changed will, she left everything to liana and Jonathan Hayim, whom she calls “my children,” a phrase her lawyers puzzled over. The will also allowed for a generous monthly stipend for Elise.

  Fatima still works at Hadassah Hospital’s oncology unit.

  The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” T
he Geneva Convention on Human Rights calls the deliberate killing of noncombatants (including off-duty soldiers) a war crime, and a crime against humanity.

  According to an IDF spokesperson, between September 29, 2000, and January 11, 2003, Palestinian terrorists carried out 15,992 terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians (not including firebombs or rock throwing), killing 717 Israelis and injuring 5,041. The great majority of those killed and injured were noncombatants.