Bloodline (49 page)

A
S HE ENTERED THE HOUSE,
bending to avoid the low lintel, he smiled. It would soon be the Sabbath, and even though the sun was still hot and he was sweating from walking up the hill, the aromas of Sarah's cooking thrilled his senses. All day he'd been overseeing the work of his servants in the oil presses that he'd built in the olive groves near the village of Peki'in. Since arriving nearly two years earlier, he'd first become a buyer and seller of the olive oils that some of the village farmers produced,
then he'd arranged to press them under large round stones in a small workshop he'd created, and now he was selling his oils to villages and towns as far as seven days' traveling distance from where he lived. The money he'd so far earned from the ripe crops had enabled him to pay for the construction of a house at the top of the hill where the breeze cooled the summer, close to the widow Sarah and her children.

Though Peki'in wasn't Jerusalem, a blackened ruin of a city where the streets were still stained red by the blood of the martyred Jews, he had established a comfortable life in the village, and each day, after his work was done, he'd visit the widow Sarah and her children, to whom he'd become attached.

By Jewish levirate law, according to the book of Deuteronomy, Sarah should have married one of Abraham's brothers; but all of them had been murdered, victims of the Roman massacre of Jerusalem, and the law of levirate couldn't apply. So while not a blood relative of Abraham's, Samuel had stepped up to the mark as the closest man to her and was providing her with food and shelter, aid and assistance. There was even talk in the village that one day they would marry. She was still young enough to bear his children, something that he craved so that sons other than Raphael would carry on his family name, but she was still grieving for her beloved Abraham.

There were those in the village who said that she'd mourned enough. King Solomon the Wise had once said that mourners should not be encompassed by grief and should enjoy the fruits of life. In Jewish law, the prescribed time for grieving for a husband was just the length of time for the moon to wax and wane until the next time it waxed. Yet, she had been grieving for Abraham for two years, wearing the clothes of a widow, torn at the breast, as Jacob had rent his clothes for Joseph, and King David had torn his when Saul died. It was Sarah's outward expression that showed the villagers that she was incomplete without her Abraham. It was also a warning to the younger men of the village—or
the widowers from other villages looking for the comfort of a wife and housekeeper—that she was not to be theirs.

Samuel the merchant and his son, Raphael, were the only ones who seemed to be close to her, and though her neighbors had been watching closely, he arrived at her house as the sun was low on the horizon, and without fail he left her house when the moon was high in the sky. He'd never been known to stay for the length of the night, so Sarah's purity had never been questioned.

Not that she was the subject of gossip. She was a good woman, loving to her children and helpful to the elderly and the lame, always carrying their bags and foodstuffs to their doors as they wended their way home. But there was something morose about Sarah. She laughed with the women as they gathered in the center of the village where the water bubbled out of the ground in order to do their washing. But while others' laughter was full-bodied, hers was restrained, almost apologetic.

Samuel loved her for her modesty, her delicacy, and her insights. And he loved her children for their liveliness and good humor. The children had adapted to their new surroundings with ease. Though they said they missed the size and busyness and excitement of Jerusalem, they had acclimatized to life in the little village quite well and were often heard in the upper parts of the village shouting and yelling at each other, or playing in the caves near a young and healthy carob tree that was often bursting with fruit.

Samuel entered the home of Sarah and her children, and she turned as he crossed the threshold and smiled at him. She was at the fire, stirring the evening meal. The smell of freshly cooked barley bread and the aromas of mutton, grapes, garlic, and pomegranate in the stew smelled delicious.

“Welcome, Samuel. May the good grace of our Adonai Elohim be with you and make your night safe.”

“And may you remain as lovely and comforting and safe as always, dear Sarah.”

“How is Raphael today?” she asked.

Samuel smiled. “He's well. He's keeping the company of a young girl, Zipporah, who lives in the lower part of the village. Her mother works for me, and I know her. She's a lovely girl; her hips will bear him many children and already her breasts are large and they will fill with milk.”

Sarah smiled, but deep down she'd hoped that Raphael, who'd grown into a delightful young lad of fourteen, would be interested in her daughter, Leah, even though she was only eleven. Apparently it wasn't to be.

As he sat at the table, she brought over a bowl of fresh water from the nearby well, a cup to enable him to pour the water over his hands so that he could say the proper blessing, and a clean towel. As he was saying his
b'rucha
she poured a cup of wine and gave it to him with a platter of olives, figs, and pistachio nuts.

But instead of returning to the fire to continue stirring the evening's stew, she sat and looked at him, picking up a fig and eating it. It was unusual, because she generally allowed him to sit alone while she continued with the cooking and the housework. Samuel looked at her questioningly.

“My friend,” she said, “you are aware, as am I and my children, that when Abraham of blessed memory was taken by the Romans two years ago as we were riding to this village, his body was never recovered. We have assumed his death, but he has no grave.”

“Of course,” said Samuel.

She swallowed nervously, as though she were unburdening herself. “Well, since we've arrived here in Peki'in, you have begun to rebuild your life as a merchant, and from what you've told me, you are doing well. Not as well as your life in Jerusalem, but the Roman invaders have taken all of that away from us.”

He nodded, wondering what was to come next. He began to wonder whether she would suggest that they marry. It was unheard-of for a woman to ask a man, but who knew what would happen in
these terrible times for the Israelite people? Samuel realized that he wasn't breathing, rapt in the moment.

“And so I was wondering, dear friend, whether you would join with me in building a memorial to my dead husband.”

He had been so wrong in his assumptions, and felt shame at thinking in that way. “But without his body . . .”

She shook her head. “No, not a grave. A memorial. Not one like the Romans with their arches or columns, but a building. A synagogue. The synagogue we have here in Peki'in is so small and unfriendly. But a town like this needs a beautiful synagogue, a
bet ha-knesset,
a meetinghouse, now that the temple in Jerusalem has been torn down. For without a beautiful synagogue, where is our Lord Adonai Elohim to reside? And the synagogue could be built on the site of the current small building, but be a beautiful building, full of light and color and drawings, with niches for our sacred vessels and our menorah to celebrate the victory of the Maccabees. And on the wall we will hang the two plaques that we've carried from the temple in Jerusalem, as a permanent memorial to what the Jewish people once were.

“What do you say, Samuel? I don't know what the cost would be, but would you do it for my Abraham? If so, if you did this wondrous thing for him, and for me and my children, then I could put him to rest and move ahead with my life.”

He sipped the wine, and looked at her deep-brown eyes. Her face was lovely, framed in a red scarf with wisps of her black hair caressing her cheeks. He had admired her when they first came to Peki'in; then he had revered her for her goodness and patience; and now he realized that he loved her, loved her with all his heart—that he wanted nothing more than to marry her and for them to have their own children, as companions for him in his old age, and for her children and his son, Raphael, when he and Sarah joined Abraham in the heavens.

Since the Zealots had murdered his wife and children before the destruction of Jerusalem, he had often thought of asking
Sarah to marry him, but two things prevented it. The first was his betrayal of his dead wife and the second was because he didn't think that Sarah had accepted Abraham's death.

So he'd eschewed his personal comforts in Peki'in for the joy of remaking his fortune as a merchant. In Jerusalem, he'd risked his wife and family living such a fraught life as a spy for the Zealots. But now he realized that he wanted nothing more than a quiet and peaceful life with Sarah, to share her bed, know her body, love and revere and worship her as he worshipped Adonai Elohim.

And if the price he'd have to pay was to build a synagogue in Peki'in to the memory of her first husband, well, so be it.

I
N THE MORNING
Yael put on a warm winter jacket when she got out of bed. The house seemed cold. Even though it often snowed in Jerusalem in the winter, her apartment was heated and air-conditioned and the ambient temperature rarely varied. To go to work, she would get into a climate-controlled car and drive to a climate-controlled hospital.

So being in a simple stone house on a hill in the Galilee, she was closer to nature than she'd been in years, and for a moment enjoyed the sensation of leaving the warm bed and feeling the chilly bite of the air.

She walked out of their tiny bedroom and down the short hall to where Bilal slept. In her mind she played out what else she could possibly say to him about who he was—who
she
was—now that he'd been told the truth.

The revelation she had laid before him the previous night had caused a mix of emotions. At first his reaction had been one of shock, then denial; then, when she explained about the letter and
his mother's need for absolute secrecy, Bilal began to understand the implications. He said very little but his silence belied a mind in turmoil that struggled to reconcile the life he had led, the identity that had been built up based on hate, and the reality of the world he was in right now. A life that had Yael the Jew, who had saved his life, sitting in front of him and connected to him by blood.

When he finally spoke, his question was strikingly practical. “If I'm now a Jew, will I be treated differently?”

At first Yael had not known how to respond. In her mind's eye she saw Jerusalem, a city divided. She saw his village and she thought of her own upbringing, her own home. Their worlds could not be further apart.

“Yes,” she had said. There could be no other answer.

Bilal had looked down at his very own body as though it were now foreign to him as Yael had pressed forward with the raw truth.

“Your mother believes that if you are known as a Jew, you will be freed or sent to a better prison. That you will be safe.”

“Will I?” he asked.

“Who you are, what your bloodline is . . . this doesn't change what you did, Bilal. You killed a man.”

“So my mother gave up this terrible secret for nothing.”

“She believes it will save you. And she needs to believe that. She has nothing else to hope for.”

Bilal stared hard into her eyes, boring down into her soul. “And you, Dr. Yael? Who are you?” Bilal spread open his hands. “If I have your blood, then you have mine . . .”

In that moment the night before, the labels, the divisions, between Arab and Israeli, Muslim and Jew, seemed so utterly incomprehensible to her. Artificial barricades that had wrought such destruction seemed washed away. Now, in the cold of a Galilee morning, their harsh reality lay just beyond the door. In the gunsights of two men who fanatically followed the extremism of their faiths.

W
HEN
Y
AEL KNOCKED
at Bilal's bedroom, there was no answer.

She turned the handle and found that she couldn't open the door, as if something were jamming it. She pushed and called out his name. She pushed again, harder, and it still resisted. But the timber was old, rot had taken its toll, and with a further shove the door swung inward with a creak.

The window was wide-open; two of the horizontal iron bars that had sealed the portal had been removed by deep cuts made into the wooden frame. Bilal was gone.

“Yaniv!” Yael shouted, and he came running, looking into the empty room.

“Shit!”

He dashed back to quickly put on his shirt and trousers. Yael followed. In the hallway Yaniv reached into the small table for his watch and phone. In shock, he realized the phone was missing.

“Jesus!” he said. “The little bastard's stolen my phone.”

“The one with the video on it?” asked Yael.

“No. No SIM card. His can't make calls. He's taken mine. He's phoning somebody . . . the little backstabbing bastard. He's phoned the fucking imam . . .”

B
ILAL COULD ALMOST HAVE HEARD
Yael and Yaniv starting to search for him from where he was. He was just two streets away, hiding in a corner of the courtyard outside the ancient synagogue, where he and Hassan had planned to meet. He looked at the time on Yaniv's phone and realized that the imam was probably on his way, as he'd arranged. With trembling hands he phoned Hassan's number.

“Where are you, brother?” he asked.

“Close to the village. Where are you?”

“In the synagogue.”

“Ten minutes,” said Hassan.

Bilal waited in the shade of a corner of the wall. He hadn't slept all night. If what Dr. Yael said about him being a Jew was true, then who was he? All his life he'd grown up to believe in Allah and that Mohammed was his prophet. But now, if his blood was different from that of his friends, if he wasn't the same inside as he'd always been, what did it mean? Was he still Bilal haMitzri, Bilal the Egyptian? Why was he the Egyptian? What did that make him? Was Allah still his god? Had his life been a lie?