Forgiving Ararat (31 page)

T
he man on the bench tries to deny and conceal his wounds, as I had done when I first arrived, but I am a presenter now, and I can see them, and with them I see the last moments of his life.

The man’s name is Elon Kaluzhsky. His abdomen is torn open, and pieces of his face and forehead are missing, along with both arms and legs. Twenty minutes before he arrived at Shemaya Station, when his body was still whole, he kissed his beautiful wife and three beautiful children goodbye for the day and walked the two blocks from their apartment on a quiet street in Haifa to the bus stop. Rosh Hashanah would begin at sundown that evening, and Elon Kaluzhsky was thinking about the festive meal they would share. He loved dates, and as he walked down the street he contemplated the Rosh Hashanah prayer that must be said before eating them: “May it be your will, G-d, that our enemies be finished.”

With this thought fresh in his mind, Elon took the last available seat on the Number 35 express bus, which would bring him to the downtown offices of the profitable Israeli export business where he maintained the accounts. He was full of goodwill this morning and offered a pleasant hello to the oddly overdressed man seated next to him, wearing a long overcoat on an eighty-five degree day. The greeting was not returned, but even this did not spoil Elon’s happy mood. He smiled kindly at the elderly couple sitting across the aisle from him, and next to them a pretty, young secretary. Further down the aisle sat several businessmen reading newspapers, a group of high school students, and a young mother cradling her infant son.

The express bus gathered speed and the buildings of Haifa flashed by. In the middle of the journey, in the middle of a street, the overdressed man stood calmly, braced himself against a support pole for standing passengers, and from beneath his long coat pulled an automatic assault rifle. Without uttering a word, he opened fire on the passengers, sweeping the bus in an arc. Brass shell casings rained down, and a fine spray of blood filled the air as bodies collapsed onto the floor, including the elderly couple, the secretary, the businessmen, the high school students, and the young mother cradling her infant son. Elon Kaluzhsky, who had been thinking about dates and their meaning, was an athletic man and reacted bravely. He tackled the man with the gun and pinned him to the floor.

“You Arab bastard!” he screamed at him in Hebrew. “You son of a bitch!”

The man spit in Elon’s face and said, “
La ilaha illa ‘llah
.”

Then he detonated the suicide bomb strapped to his waist.

Luas embraces Elon, who has just recognized that his own blood is flowing through the gaping wound in his abdomen and is sobbing uncontrollably on the bench. Luas leads him away, to what Elon believes is the house outside Moscow where he was raised, to be cared for there by a tender spirit he believes is the soul of his mother, who died ten years earlier of cancer. Elon does not notice on the way out that seated on the next bench over is the Arab man who blew himself and Elon down the tracks into Shemaya Station. I can see the last moments of this man’s life too, and I recognize his face and his thoughts. Samar Mansour was not thinking about passengers or dates when he boarded the Number 35 express bus in Haifa. He did not even see the faces of those around him. He saw only Israeli soldiers firing bullets into the bodies of Palestinian children.

It had been hot the day before in Ramallah, and the customers in the café had been irritable from the heat, the humiliating Israeli checkpoints, and being penned into their neighborhoods like animals. When Samar Mansour heard the shots, he raced up the blockaded alley and into the line of fire to see if he could help. Children who had been throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers were running back down the alley toward him, but when he arrived he saw three boys lying in pools of blood on the ground. The soldiers aimed their guns into the crowd from the walls and rooftops. Samar lifted one of the boys and carried him to an arriving ambulance. The boy had a leg wound and was not hurt badly. Sam tried to comfort him.

Other men arrived at the same ambulance, carrying the other two injured boys. Samar heard a woman wailing behind them, “Hanni! Hanni!” as she tried to reach one of the boys. Samar could tell instantly the little boy was dead. Military ammunition does unspeakable violence to a child’s small body.

Something changed in Samar Mansour at that moment. He thought of his father, orphaned by the Israelis and forced to carry the bags of an American archaeologist to survive. He thought of his Holocaust documentary, which had changed nothing at all, and of his theories, which had liberated no one. He thought of the little boy, Hanni, whose life in Ramallah had been full of misery, and of Hanni’s mother, who would never forget the horrifying image of her son that day. He thought of the ranchers on the great plains of America who find the mauled carcasses of their livestock and go hunting gray wolves. And so, on the Number 35 express bus in Haifa that morning, Samar Mansour saw only Israeli soldiers and gray wolves, not human beings living their lives.

Luas returns to the train shed after leaving Elon with his mother and sits down on the bench next to Samar.

“Welcome to Shemaya,” he says. “My name is Luas.”

Like Elon, Samar tries to conceal and deny his wounds, but there is not much left of him to conceal actually, just a head and some torn pieces of flesh and bone plopped in a grotesque pile on the bench. But in Samar’s imagination, he is whole. Luas smiles at him, as if to say:
Yes, my son, I see. I see what you are afraid to see, but I will pretend not to have noticed
.

Across Shemaya Station, Gautama rolls his stone sphere forward, toward a muscular young man sitting all alone on a bench. I recognize this young man as Tim Shelly. He is covered with sweat and has no pants, exactly as I had last seen him in the mushroom house. The surface of the sphere changes, but I cannot look.

“The choice is yours, my daughter,” Gautama calls out to me. “You are standing before the doors, as all people who have come before you and all who will come after. Which door will you open?”

I
do not remember anymore.

Were my eyes blue like the sky or brown like fresh-tilled earth? Did my hair curl into giggles around my chin or drape over my shoulders in a frown? Was my skin light or dark? Was my body heavy or lean? Did I wear tailored silks or rough cotton and flax?

I do not remember. I remember that I was a woman, which is more than mere recollection of womb and bosom. And for a moment, I remembered all my moments in linear time, which began with womb and bosom and ended there too. But these are fading away now, discarded ballast from a ship emerged from the storm.

I remember unlocking the doors and entering the Urartu Chamber to present the soul of Otto Rabun Bowles. I was met there by Legna and denied passage to the presenter’s chair.

“This way,” she said, pointing to the great monolith itself.

I followed her, through a fissure in the sapphire wall and up the stairs, climbing several stories to the triangular aperture at the top through which light enters but does not exit. We came to a small balcony from which I could see the glistening, amber floor of the Chamber below and other similar Chambers to my right and left, thousands of them, with thousands of sapphire monoliths rising up like chimney stacks across a city skyline, extending to the horizon and beyond.

In one of the Chambers closest to mine, Mi Lau, the Vietnamese girl, stood at the presenter’s chair and, extending her arms, announced:

“I PRESENT ANTHONY BELLINI . . . HE HAS CHOSEN!”

The energy from the walls of her Chamber surged through her, washing into the Chamber a dirt tunnel beneath a village, Mi Lau’s family, my Uncle Anthony, a grenade, and a horrific explosion. Legna ended the presentation when Uncle Anthony put a gun to his own head and squeezed the trigger, but God did not pass judgment upon Anthony Bellini’s soul from the balcony of the monolith. God had not even been there to watch. The balcony was empty.

In another Chamber nearby stood Hanz Stossel declaring:

“I PRESENT AMINA RABUN . . . SHE HAS CHOSEN!”

I had seen this presentation before and knew the ending. Again the balcony was empty. No one heard Hanz Stossel’s cries for justice from his Israeli prison cell.

In yet another Chamber, young Bette Rabun raised her arms and screamed:

“I PRESENT ALEXY PETROVITCH . . . HE HAS CHOSEN!”

The Chamber turned into little Bette’s bedroom in Kamenz where Alexy held her arms down while another Russian soldier beat and raped her in the darkness. No one stood on the balcony of the monolith to witness the crime or to convict the prisoner.

In another Chamber, Elon Kaluzhsky raised his arms and cried:

“I PRESENT SAMAR MANSOUR . . . HE HAS CHOSEN!”

Into his Chamber roared the Number 35 express bus, the sounds of gunfire and the concussion of a bomb. Again, the balcony in the monolith was vacant. No one saw the last terrible moments of Elon Kaluzhsky’s life.

From a Chamber behind me came Luas’ voice:

“I PRESENT NERO CLAUDIUS CEASAR...HE HAS CHOSEN!”

I turned to see Luas being brought in chains before Nero. At the emperor’s instruction, a Roman soldier raised his sword and decapitated him. Luas’ bald and bloodied head rolled within an inch of the emperor’s foot. He kicked it away, then motioned for the mess to be cleaned. Legna ended the presentation and Luas walked back out of the Chamber. No one watched from the balcony, and no one condemned Nero to the hell he deserved.

Moments later, Luas appeared inside my Urartu Chamber, accompanied by Samar Mansour. They took their places on the observer chairs. Samar Mansour looked around the Chamber in fascination and awe, as I did on my first visit.

“Brek Cuttler will be presenting the case of Otto Bowles,” Luas whispered.

“I’m up here!” I called down to Luas, but he couldn’t hear me.

Then Haissem entered the Chamber, the young boy who had presented the soul of Toby Bowles. Luas was visibly disappointed, as he had been when Toby failed to appear to present the case of his father.

“Oh, it’s only you, Haissem,” he said, frowning. “We were expecting Ms. Cuttler.... Well, here we are anyway. Haissem, this is Samar Mansour, the newest lawyer on my staff. Samar, this is Haissem, the most senior presenter in Shemaya. I must say, Haissem, that Samar has arrived not a moment too soon. We just lost Amina Rabun and now, it seems, Ms. Cuttler.”

“Welcome to the Urartu Chamber,” Haissem said, bowing politely. “I once sat here to witness my first presentation. Abel presented the difficult case of his brother Cain. That was long before your time though, Luas.”

“Quite,” Luas said.

“Little has changed since then,” Haissem said. “Luas keeps the docket moving, even though the number of cases increases. We’re fortunate to have you, Samar, and you’re fortunate to have Luas as your mentor. There’s no better presenter in all of Shemaya.”

“Present company excepted,” Luas said.

“Not at all,” said Haissem. “I handle the easy cases.”

“Few would consider Socrates and Judas easy cases,” Luas said. “I’m just a clerk.”

Haissem winked at Samar. “Don’t let him fool you,” he said. “Without Luas there would be no Shemaya.” He took Samar’s hand. “I must enter my appearance now and prepare myself. We will meet again, Samar, after your first case. You’ll do well here. I’m certain of it.”

Haissem moved to the center of the Chamber. Legna emerged from the monolith and whispered something to him, then returned. Haissem stood, raised his arms in a graceful arc, and in a voice much louder than the other presenters, almost an explosion, he said:

“I PRESENT BREK ABIGAIL CUTTLER...SHE HAS CHOSEN!”

I remember hearing the sounds of water rushing and wind blowing, of dolphins laughing and birds singing, of children talking and parents sighing, of stars and galaxies living and dying...the sounds of the earth breathing, if you could have heard it from the other side of the universe. I remember hearing God in those sounds, crying out for forgiveness from Cudi Dagh, and I remember hearing humanity in those sounds, crying out for forgiveness from Golgotha. And there, too, in the music was the ineffable joy of Noah, reaching up from the littoral to forgive his Father, and above that the ineffable joy of God, reaching down from the cross to forgive His children. And somewhere still, more faint, but it was there, I heard the cry of Otto Rabun Bowles, and with it the song of another soul, so joyous it could be heard above all these sounds, singing three words over and over:

“I AM LOVE! I AM LOVE! I AM LOVE!”

It was the song of unconditional love—the song of Eve returning home to the Garden after such a long and terrifying journey. The song grew louder as the presentation of my life continued, and in this song I heard Divine perfection, because in it I heard all of Creation: my birth into the world was in that song and my mother’s first embrace; flowers were there, and music, sun, and rain; mountains and oceans were there, and books, sculptures, and paintings; boyfriends and girlfriends were there, and brothers and sisters on porch swings, children at play in sandboxes, and a young man running to the defense of a woman; horses, sailboats, and babies were there, apple trees and cattle too, and mothers nurturing their young; bread, water, and wine were there, eyes and ears, skin and hair, lips and arms and legs; air was there, and water and blankets, sunsets, moons and stars, work and play, heroes and heroines. The generations were in that song, and generosity and selflessness too. And love was there. But fear was there too: a parent’s abusiveness and a child’s selfishness, a dishonest lawyer and her dishonest client, an adulterer and his lover, a soldier and his gun, a death chamber and an incinerator; racists, liars, drunks, rapists, and thieves. Boys who tortured crayfish were in this song, and the God who slaughtered His own children, and the children who slaughtered their own Father, but even this sounded sweet, because out of it came the Light—the Light and gift of God.

Legna joined me on the balcony and asked if I had reached a verdict or wished to see more evidence. I told her I had seen enough. She returned to the floor of the Chamber and ended the presentation. Luas and Samar Mansour left the Chamber, but Haissem stayed behind.

He entered the monolith, and I could hear him climbing the stairs, but the soul who appeared on the balcony to greet me was not Haissem, the little boy. It was Nana Bellini. And she was holding Sarah!

Through my tears, squeezing Sarah close, I could see the Chamber below filling with souls. Tobias Bowles was there, and Jared Schrieberg, and Amina Rabun, all radiant and beautiful. Behind them came Claire Bowles, and Sheila Bowles, and between them Bonnie Campbell. Henry Collins was there, and Helmut Rabun, and Amina’s mother and father, uncle, grandfather, and cousins. My Uncle Anthony was there, and behind him, Mi Lau’s family. And then the crowd parted, as if to allow someone important to pass. A young man carrying a tray made his way through the crowd.

He entered the monolith and climbed the stairs, but he hesitated at the top when he saw Sarah and me. I didn’t recognize him at first. He looked so different with all that hair and his eyes so clear and blue. Sarah smiled, and he came closer. He knelt and placed the tray before us. It was a silver tray with a silver teapot and three silver cups.

“Hot tea and bees honey,” Ott Bowles said, his eyes filling with tears, “for three we will share.”