The Light of Our Yesterdays

by Ken Hansen

  Fight in Allah’s cause against those who fight you, but do not overstep the limits. Allah does not love those who overstep the limits. Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is more serious than killing. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you there. If they do fight you, kill them—this is what such disbelievers deserve—but if they stop, then Allah is most forgiving and merciful. Fight them until there is no more persecution and worship is devoted to Allah. If they cease hostilities, there can be no further hostility, except toward aggressors. A sacred month for a sacred month: violation of sanctity calls for fair retribution. So if anyone commits aggression against you, attack him as he attacked you, but be mindful of Allah, and know that He is with those who are mindful of Him. Spend in Allah’s cause: do not contribute to your destruction with your own hands, but do good, for Allah loves those who do good.

  Attack him as he attacked you. Yes. I am mindful of Allah. Am I not doing good? Do I overstep any limits? What are those limits? They let those who killed my brethren go on to kill other innocents. They remain disbelievers. They continue to persecute my people. What more do I need? These people are not innocents. He is not innocent. I am the tip of Allah’s spear. And with my help, Pardus will change the world.

  Chapter 8

  Huxley peered over the top of his newspaper and saw Anwari strolling through the lobby’s front door, his eyes darting around the room. Huxley slowly turned the page, deliberately lowering the paper to “accidentally” see Anwari full force. Tilting his head in apparent thought for a moment, Huxley smiled, stood and walked toward Anwari with his hand extended. “Excuse me sir. How nice to see you again. You remember me from Tel Megiddo yesterday, don’t you.”

  Anwari extended his hand. “Of course. You are the man with the bible passages. I took your picture. I am sorry, but I do not recall your name.”

  “Huxley. Chris Huxley.”

  Anwari tilted his head slightly to one side and blinked.

  Huxley saw Anwari’s tell. My first name surprised him. “I believe I am now at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “Of course. My name is Anwari. Abdul Saboor Anwari. But what brings you to Nazareth?”

  “Another stop on the tourist highway, I guess.” Anwari gave him the same look. He had known who Huxley was, all right. The Israelis or whoever’s responsible had apparently failed to train him on facial control.

  Anwari replied, “Yes, likewise. If I see enough of these sites, eventually I may actually understand you Christians.”

  “Of course, though we Americans are not all Christians, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry if I have offended you, sir,” Anwari said quickly with genuine concern.

  Huxley bowed his head slightly. “No offense taken. I am more interested in the historical aspects of these sites. I would like to see if I can figure out what they tell us about modern times.” Anwari’s face betrayed little to him, but the man’s eyes had flicked just that little bit.

  Anwari quickly responded, “I agree. Even those with no belief in God can see the tremendous historical value, I would think. I am alone, Mr. Huxley, and it appears you are as well. I think it is more enjoyable to visit sites with another history lover. Would you have any interest in accompanying me?”

  “I would be delighted as long as we share a similar agenda. I’m off to breakfast and then to the Church of the Annunciation. Would you care to join me?” Huxley noted the slight smile that turned larger on Anwari’s face.

  “I am afraid I have already eaten this morning, but I would be happy to join you in the lobby, say in an hour?”

  Huxley’s breakfast repast gave him time to reconsider the situation. He liked to do that in the morning before the day’s agenda caught up with him. Sometimes he would run ideas by colleagues with a smattering of details; sometimes he would run hypotheticals by friends with so little detail that they had no idea what he was asking. His friends might not add much direct insight, but sometimes they would say something that inspired a new path for his thoughts. And sometimes his morning think tank worked pretty well even when he was alone in the tank.

  So where was he, really? He needed to get to Rome and check out the archaeology student, Dante Tocelli, at Sapienza. Kira had dug up plenty already. The kid had apparently disappeared after his flight back to Rome, never reaching the university. Maybe he had just decided archaeology was no longer for him. Or maybe he was a closet terrorist.

  Then there was the strange case of the missing soldiers. The two soldiers from Rabin Army Base had never returned after they had left for Ramat David early on the day of the incursion. In fact, his contact at Rabin had conceded unofficially that nobody had ordered them to Ramat David in the first place—computer maintenance was not due there for another two months. The Israeli army now feared both were kidnapped or dead. Aman surely knew this since they would have been involved in the investigation of the missing soldiers. Why had they not shared that with him? What do they fear?

  Finally, the strange entries in the contacts listing seemed to keep churning out new clues. Kira had run down the phrase “No? A dozen times at least.” It was a line from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Though he had taken a course on Shakespeare at Harvard, he could not quite recall the scene. She sent it to his cell, so he could study that more closely later, but it seemed unlikely the play would yield much.

  The other English entries in the contacts might prove fertile ground. The owner of the phone spoke primarily Arabic, so why were some in English? Huxley understood English might seem necessary for Huxley to recognize the entries relating to him and his mother. Did the other English entries contain more clues? Those contacts just didn’t seem real. Most of the contacts were supposedly located in the U.S., yet according to Homeland’s records, Najwa had never traveled there. Still, he or somebody else must have followed Huxley or the cell would not have followed him around the East Coast. And so many of the entries employed improper capitalization. You might think Najwa was lazy, but the iPhone would automatically capitalize most of the words. So why had Najwa taken the time to un-capitalize words as he entered them? Also, there were just too many names, words and phrases that seemed unlikely or out of place. Perhaps the Church of the Annunciation would hold the answers.

  The Boss started singing from his cell again. “Hello,” answered Huxley.

  “Mr. Huxley, this is Captain Yadin of Aman.”

  “Of course. Give me a minute.” Huxley pointed to his phone and shrugged to the waiter and then headed outside away from curious ears. “What can I do for you?”

  “You have not reported in. We have a sharing arrangement, and now I learn you have interrogated an Israeli Army officer without our presence or consent.”

  Huxley held back a laugh, imagining the red corpuscles bursting out of Yadin’s forehead. “I’m sorry, but I was just beginning to consider some of the elements here, Captain. I was very surprised to discover that you had withheld information about two missing maintenance soldiers. Is there anything else you are hiding?”

  “Well, I…I didn’t see it as significant at the time, Mr. Huxley. We only just learned about it ourselves in the past few days. We still do not believe it is connected with the incursion at Ramat David. More likely the two were targeted on the road on the way back from Ramat.”

  “Seems like too much of a coincidence, don’t you think? Have you checked your computers to see if anything was accessed by the maintenance workers that seemed unusual?”

  Yadin cleared his throat. “Of course, but it was just a bunch of personnel records for those stationed at Ramat—sick days, vacation days and other low-level info for military and consulting personnel at Ramat. Anything important would have required high-level access accounts, even for the techies. I’m not sure why they accessed it, but I’m certain they had a reason. Might have had something to do with their maintenance duties, I suppose. Or maybe they wanted to check out where a buddy was goi
ng on vacation, but it seems unlikely that it could help any terrorists much.”

  “Have you alerted personnel about possible terrorist strikes during their vacations?”

  “This is Israel. Every soldier knows he or she is always at risk anywhere he goes day or night, particularly when the soldier is not with his or her unit. And the Palestinians don’t target consultants. Not enough of a media splash, as you would put it. But we have put out a high alert for all personnel, so do not worry.”

  “I’m afraid worry is my closest confidant,” Huxley said. “Thank you for your time.”

  “You seem to be forgetting something.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “This is a reciprocal relationship,” Yadin said flatly. “What have you found?”

  “I thought you already knew. I seem to have a set of eyes on me.”

  “Not from us,” Yadin said.

  Huxley shook his head in disgust. Yep, quite a reciprocal relationship. “Okay. The clues in the contacts list seem to point to Nazareth. I’m checking that out further to see where it leads. The pick is owned by a professor from the College of William & Mary in Virginia. He is on sabbatical and doing work at Tel Megiddo. He said it was stolen.”

  “We figured that out ourselves, but the Professor didn’t have much to add.”

  “Did you forget to mention that to me?” asked Huxley.

  “We just tracked it down yesterday, so I am telling you today. But again, it led to nothing important.”

  Huxley grimaced. “Okay. I have a few other lines of inquiry that are rather vague at the moment, though nothing much real at this point.”

  “Well, let us know as soon as you do. What is going on in Nazareth?”

  “I’m planning to visit the Church of the Annunciation.”

  “Whatever for?” asked Yadin.

  “My mother recommended it.”

  Chapter 9

  Huxley took advantage of the walk to the Church of the Annunciation to pepper Anwari with questions. Anwari always seemed to have a good answer but became quite vague when Huxley asked him how he afforded all of these trips on a soldier’s meager wages.

  “They call me a hero and so certain people with influence and cash seem to find ways to repay my service. I am fortunate, but I’m sure I will eventually become nothing to them and will need to make my own way.”

  When they reached the Church of the Annunciation, Huxley was struck by how the façade of this mid-twentieth century church managed to use white and tan stone to simultaneously create the feeling of a modern, yet ancient monument. A huge cupola stood high above the upper church used by Nazarene Catholics for their Sunday masses. The cupola was placed directly over the top of the cave thought by Catholics to be the place where Mary lived over 2000 years before. Above the cupola rested the “Light of the World,” an enormous lantern representing Christ. Mosaics and paintings of Mary by artists from around the world adorned the upper hallways.

  This version of the church had been completed in 1969—the fifth time a church had been built over the shrine of the Annunciation. It replaced a church constructed in 1730 and enlarged a century and a half later. The original shrine/church was built in the middle of the fourth century. It consisted only of a small altar within the cave thought to be the childhood home of Mary. The small shrine was rebuilt into a major church during the time of Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor who nearly single-handedly changed the course of Christianity by throwing the weight of the Roman Empire behind the fledgling religion. He commissioned his mother, a devout Christian, to commemorate important events in Jesus’s life with new churches. Israel still found itself with three of these well-known churches: the Church of the Nativity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Annunciation. The Church of the Annunciation was destroyed and rebuilt after various conquests by Muslims and crusaders. Franciscan monks were allowed by Saladin, a Muslim hero, to remain after he expelled crusaders in 1187, but their church was destroyed in the 13th century when Egyptian Baybers defeated the Seventh Crusaders. The Franciscans, never ones to give up easily, hung around as best they could until the ruling Muslims allowed them to rebuild the church in 1730.

  When Huxley reached the large grotto beneath the main church, he knew the answer lay here somewhere. The interior of the grotto gave the entire space a surreal feeling, as if he had stepped into an enormous cave illuminated only with artificial light and smelling of moist, stale air with a hint of incense. This one hid a much smaller cave that was surrounded by various remnants of the ancient church buildings. His mother would have loved visiting this place. He felt like saying a Hail Mary just to complete this moment of reflection, but he could not bring himself to such a personal hypocrisy merely for nostalgia’s sake. Though he had found nothing yet that suggested the terrorist Najwa had meant him to come here, the place certainly fit the religious motif Najwa had begun at Tel Megiddo; however, it had yielded no new insights.

  He walked behind the main altar at the bottom of the steps to the center of the grotto and looked beyond the black iron gate protecting the old, freestanding stone foundation that surrounded a small archway. The archway seemed to link the site to the original cave where Mary might have lived. Just beyond stood another alter, this one smaller, covered with a white cloth with delicate lace patterns caressing four white candles and a bejeweled crucifix. The altar front was engraved with a decorative pattern and contained a quote following the sentiment of John’s gospel, “Verbum Caro Hic Factum Est”—Latin for “Here The Word Was Made Flesh.” That was what the Annunciation meant to Christians, of course.

  In Christian teaching, when Gabriel came down and told Mary she was with child, it was an acknowledgment that the Word, i.e., Christ, was coming from Heaven and being made into human flesh. Although Jesus was now becoming man, he had always been part of God. He did not start as a normal man and become something more through his acts on Earth. Some had read the synoptic gospels and Paul’s letters that way, but the gospel writer referred to as “John” had clarified this view with the first chapter of his gospel account:

  In the beginning was the Word… And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

  It took several hundred years and the Council of Nicaea called by Constantine to get everyone on the same page. Well, maybe not everyone. There were a few remaining Arians after the council who still contended that the Son was not eternal and therefore the Word could not have existed from the beginning. They believed the Father came first and then the Son, for otherwise how could the Father truly have a Son? Arius and those of his followers who refused to accept the decisions of the Council of Nicaea were banished and became heretics. While the heresy remained in a weakened state and was even adopted by some of the barbarian tribes conquering Roman territory a century later, the universal church ultimately silenced their voice.

  Was this Latin inscription the clue he sought? It seemed a bit too amorphous, ambiguous, antiquitous. Wait, is “antiquitous” a word? No, it has a nice ring to it, but the right word is probably just good old “ancient.” Anyway, how could an engraving many centuries old be a clue to a 21st century terrorist plot? He kept searching.

  Several bouquets of flowers had been set out just on the other side of the iron gate—offerings from the many visitors to the shrine. Some were fresh like they had arrived this morning; others were dried out and withering, soon to be disposed of by the grotto’s Franciscan caretakers. The corner of a small white envelope with some handwritten English peered out from underneath one of the older bouquets. Huxley squatted down and reached through the grate, just able to reach the envelope. In artistic calligraphy, the cover read: “My son, my son, why have you forsaken me?”

  Huxley’s head jerked around. Anwari was still near the back of the grotto, examining other artwork hanging in the structure. Huxley pulled the envelope through the grate, walked away from the altar and sat do
wn in one of the fifty or so chairs set up for Catholic Masses. The envelope must be the clue. Mary had never said Jesus had forsaken her, nor had he. It was Jesus who had said while hanging on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Many had thought he was lamenting his own suffering and wondering why God had not brought it quickly to an end. However, the words carried a much stronger meaning.

  The words repeated the first line of what is now known as Psalm 22. At the time of Christ, the Psalms had not yet been organized by number. Instead, the common shorthand for referring to a particular Psalm was repeating its first line. According to Christians, although it was written over a millennium before Jesus’s death, Jesus had referred to Psalm 22 while on the cross precisely because it had anticipated Jesus’s end as well as its significance:

  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

  Why so far from my call for help,

  from my cries of anguish?

  …

  But I am a worm, not a man,

  scorned by men, despised by the people.

  All who see me mock me;

  they curl their lips and jeer;

  they shake their heads at me:

  “He relied on the LORD—let him deliver him;

  if he loves him, let him rescue him.”

  For you drew me forth from the womb,

  made me safe at my mother’s breasts.

  …

  Dogs surround me;

  a pack of evildoers closes in on me.

  They have pierced my hands and my feet

  I can count all my bones.

  They stare at me and gloat;

  they divide my garments among them;

  for my clothing they cast lots.

  …

  The poor will eat their fill;

  those who seek the LORD will offer praise.