Bloodline (23 page)

But it got worse, for now there was even the possibility that instead of dying as he should, he'd told this doctor about the Bayt al Gizah group. And worse, a thousand times worse, Bilal indicated that he'd somehow seen him with the Jew from Shin Bet whom he'd met with the old rabbi from Neturei Karta.

The boy had to die, for he was a captive and the Jews would no doubt torture him and extract the information. Fortunately, because of his injuries, he hadn't yet been questioned, but it would only be a matter of time.

Bilal was led, handcuffed to a guard, into a reception room. It was bare with not a touch of humanity to soften its symmetrical gray lines, its imposing steel furniture bolted to the floor, including a single heavy table.

The imam was seated as Bilal was led to the chair. “My son. How are you? Is Allah the Merciful being good to you in this place of punishment and retribution? Have you made friends with your brothers here?”

Bilal smiled at his imam but the priest knew immediately that it was a forced smile. This wasn't the Bilal who had been his willing acolyte in the mosque. “Imam, I've spoken to nobody.”

The imam smiled and nodded, trying to offer the youngster some sympathy in his expression. “My boy, you're afraid, and fear is to be expected. When you're removed from the love and wisdom of your father and those consolations that can be offered by your mother, it's natural for you to feel alone and afraid. But remember this, Bilal: in here, in this very prison with its walls and wire, you have a father . . . In here, Bilal, you have the presence of Allah, of God Himself. In here is the God of Ibrahim and his son Ismail, the very God of Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him. Put your love and faith in Allah, and nothing may harm you.”

Bilal nodded. He'd been trying to find Allah in the prison since he was sent here from the hospital, but the noises, the disruptions, the shouting, the anger, and the threats that reverberated around the walls and filled every space made Allah a distant ghost.

The imam turned around to see how far away the Israeli guard was before he spoke. The last thing he wanted was to be overheard. Fortunately, the guard was at the other end of the room, reading a newspaper.

He whispered, “Tell me, Bilal, to whom have you spoken?”

“I swear, imam, I speak to no one.”

“You must think hard. You were drugged, Bilal. Your mind affected and under the Jew doctor's knife.”

Bilal looked at the imam and didn't answer. He didn't know. The imam smiled and nodded in reassurance. “Don't worry, my son. Allah will never blame you for falling foul of the Jews' tricks.
But how can I and your brothers in Bayt al Gizah be assured of your silence?”

“I promise you, imam, by all that is holy, in the name of the last and greatest prophet, Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, that I will die before I break my oath.”

Bilal was going to say that he'd never spoken to anybody about the Jew with the white hair, and the rabbi in the room in the village near Bethlehem, but caution made him hold back.

The imam smiled again. “I know that, Bilal, my son. I know that. Now I have to leave you. There are other brothers I have to speak with.”

T
HE BONES OF
A
HIMAAZ,
the former high priest of Israel, were never found. Nor did anybody ask after him. Only his wife and children wondered whether they'd ever see him again and whether he'd found his long-lost brother Azariah.

Yet, strangely, as Ahimaaz's body decayed and dissolved into the ground after he died of thirst in a distant cave far to the south of Jerusalem, his reputation grew, and the days when Ahimaaz had been high priest of Israel became golden. As Rehoboam ruled after the death of Solomon, the children of Israel looked back on past glories and feared what would happen to their nation and to them as a people.

Through arrogance and stupidity, Rehoboam caused the land of Israel—twelve tribes bonded together into a nation by King David and King Solomon—to split into separate lands in the north and south. Judah and Israel, though not enemies, lived side by side for four hundred years as two separate nations with
separate capitals, temples, and kingly families. They even took separate names, the south becoming the Kingdom of Judah, composed of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the northern ten tribes becoming the Kingdom of Samaria.

But other nations grew in size and ferocity, and when the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III, destroyed the northern kingdom, he sent the inhabitants into exile. Two hundred years later, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Judah.

It had been four centuries from the time when Solomon the Wise laid the first two stones of his temple in Jerusalem until its devastation in the wreckage of Jerusalem left by the invading Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar emptied the land and took the Jewish people into exile to live within the boundaries of the fabulous city of Babylon, where they formed their societies along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And in those fifty years of exile, Jerusalem became overgrown with weeds and decay, and the Jews in Babylon grew lazy and indolent, removed from the harshness of their land and out of the sight of their god.

For fifty years the Jews lived by the waters of the two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, which were the lifeblood of the Empire of Mesopotamia, and which made it one of the most fertile areas of the world. Some of the Hebrews remained faithful to their religion and their god; others eased into the comforts and wealth of Babylon and began to worship stone and wooden idols.

And it was an easy life, even for the Hebrews. Apart from dates, which grew everywhere and provided the people with food, wood, and fodder for their cattle, the Jews luxuriated in plentiful supplies of wheat, barley, lentils, onions, and leeks. Wherever they walked in the land between the two rivers, there were grapes and olives and figs. Spices and fruits grew everywhere, and medicines made from the herbs became readily available to the poor as well as the rich.

It was a land of plenty, unlike the harshness of Jerusalem and much of Israel, which was dry and often barren. And so,
because they were exiles far from their land, as one generation succeeded another, the love of Jerusalem and the worship of Yahweh dimmed, generation after generation.

Few who were born in Babylon looked to the south where the land of Israel lay; fewer still had any desire to go there. Only a handful of older ones who did remember Israel yearned for the land, and they wrote psalms and songs to the distant glories of Jerusalem, but their yearnings fell on deaf ears.

Certainly few remembered Ahimaaz, the man who was once high priest. The descendants of those Israelites who sat beside the languid waters of the rivers of Babylon may have known his name, as they knew the names of Moses and Aaron, Joshua and David, but to them these were figures in the history of their people, as remote and invisible as God Himself.

Neither did the exiles in Babylon remember Ahimaaz's colleague, the much lesser figure of Gamaliel, son of Terah of the tribe of Manasseh, who had collected taxes so that King Solomon could build his temple. For unlike the descendants of Ahimaaz, who handed the mantle of priest down the generations, the offspring of Gamaliel failed to make a mark on the people; and as one generation succeeded the next, they changed their occupations from tax gatherers to merchants to landlords to financiers of caravans carrying goods from place to place, and now were counselors to the rulers of Babylon.

All was well with Babylon and the Children of Israel, until the appearance beyond the horizon of Cyrus, king of Persia. In the few years since the people of Babylon first heard his name, Cyrus the Great had conquered the lands of foreign kings and was now marching toward their city. The people were gripped by panic.

And the exiles from Israel, having long experience of fighting would-be conquerors, were more afraid than most. The Israelites held Nebuchadnezzar's successors in low regard, and now that King Nabu-na'id had usurped the throne and was ruling with
his son Belshazzar, things had gone from bad to worse. Learning of the rise of Cyrus, Nabu-na'id tried to make an alliance with the pharaoh Amasis II of Egypt and had even approached King Croesus of Lydia, but they'd rebuffed him, and so, like a spoiled child, he'd amused himself with things inside the city and paid no attention to the outside world. King Nabu-na'id spent all his time building temples and improving Nebuchadnezzar's hanging gardens, waterways, and parks, and had no interest in defending the nation against the rise of the Persian Cyrus the Great, for his ministers had assured him that there was food for years within the city, and the walls were impregnable.

But the conquest of the impregnable walls of Babylon proved to be so simple, it came close to engendering respect among those captured. Not a stone from a catapult hit the wall, not a spear was thrown nor an arrow loosed. Indeed, until the Persians were inside the walls of the city, nobody in Babylon was aware of their capture by the Persians.

Arrogantly celebrating a feast day of their god Marduk, and all but a few guards watching what was happening in Cyrus's encampment outside the walls, the people of Babylon were rejoicing while Cyrus's engineers executed one of the most brilliant plans in military history. It was audacious—many thought it impossible—yet it happened, and with a minimum of deaths the city fell without a fight.

T
HE RIVER
E
UPHRATES RAN
underneath the walls of the city, but massive iron girders had been constructed at the base of the walls and deep into the river. Some youths had died trying, but it was now recognized that nobody could hold his breath long
enough to swim under the iron girders. So when he knew that the city was celebrating a religious festival, Cyrus ordered the vast river to be diverted. Huge blocks of stone were built into a wall in the river's path, and the flow diverted away from the city. The water stopped flowing through Babylon and was sidetracked into the desert, where it flooded the ancient sands. The level of the river quickly fell, and a small detachment of men was able to walk chest-high through the water until they were inside the wall, where they fought a troop of guards and opened the massive Ishtar Gate. Cyrus's troops swarmed into the city and took possession while men and women slept soundly, confident they were safe from invasion.

The following day, after his surrender, a shocked King Nabuna'id assembled with his family on the top of the ziggurat of the Temple of Etemenanki in the middle of Babylon to await the arrival of King Cyrus and the certainty of torture and execution. The entire citizenry also assembled, and all the streets leading to the capital were bursting with terrified men, women, and children wailing and praying, waiting to hear their fate. Would they be enslaved? Raped? Murdered?

Arriving on his golden chariot, King Cyrus walked up to the top of the ziggurat in the unusual silence. Even the birds of the city were quiet. The citizens as well as slaves and prisoners held their breath as he began to speak, and were astounded to hear him begin by blessing their god, Marduk. Then he blessed the people in the name of Marduk. Then he said, “Hear me, people of Babylon. Only a fool would destroy a city of this beauty, one of wealth and one producing such an abundance of food.

“I say to all the slaves gathered before me that you will be free men and women as of this day. I will allow you to remain in Babylon should you wish it, and you will live here as freedmen and -women, or you can return to your homelands. I am told that there are 150,000 Jews in exile in Babylon. You are allowed to return to Israel, where you will rebuild Jerusalem and pay me and
my heirs a tribute for my protection. There is no reason to allow Israel to remain barren and unproductive, earning me no tribute, while you Israelites are living in Babylon. Return home, rebuild your nation, and all will benefit.”

Hearing these words, words that had never previously been spoken by any conqueror in history, the people rejoiced with cheers and screams and praise.

Less than two weeks later, a column of Jews, stretching from the east to the horizon on the northwest, trudged slowly westward out of Babylon toward Damascus. They could have walked directly south toward Jerusalem, but the roads were full of bandits, and the Damascus road to the west was guarded by soldiers and was well used by merchants. It was safer to travel by the western route and then south down the coast. Once they were level with Jerusalem, it was an easy road from the sea, up the rugged hills, to the City of God.

Once they reached Damascus and replenished their supplies, the Jews had two choices. They might travel farther westward toward the coast of the Great Sea and the cities of Tyre and Sidon before heading south to follow the sweep of the land toward Israel and then up the hills to the ruined city of Jerusalem. Or they could walk the route in the hills of the King's Highway and from Damascus they could reach Hazor and then Shechem before climbing to Jerusalem. Joshua, descendant of Ahimaaz and leader of the Jewish people, told his Council of Elders that they should take the advice of travelers and merchants in the marketplaces of Damascus before deciding. Much depended both on what the weather had done to the roads and whether brigands and bandits were active in the areas.