Authors: Donna Lettow
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Highlander (Television Program), #Contemporary, #MacLeod; Duncan (Fictitious Character), #Science Fiction
Zealot
MACLEOD THOUGHT FAST AS
HE WATCHED THE GERMANS
PILE OUT OF THEIR TRUCKS
“Take off your coat,” MacLeod ordered the rabbi.
“What? Why?”
“Just do it. There’s no time to explain.” MacLeod helped him off with his coat and guided him by his shoulders to the basement
door.
They could hear the Germans fanning out through the neighborhood. “
Raus! Juden, Raus!
”
MacLeod lifted the hat from Rabbi Mendelsohn’s head and placed it on his own. “You can’t do this!” Rabbi Mendelsohn protested,
beginning to realize what MacLeod had in mind. “I won’t let you.”
“Quiet!” MacLeod commanded, “I’ll be back for you.” He could hear soldiers banging on the front door.
“
Jude Mendelsohn! Raus!
”
“My life is not worth losing yours,” the rabbi whispered urgently, begging. “Please!”
MacLeod gave the old man a gentle push onto the basement stairs and swiftly locked the door. “I will be back. I swear it.”
The pounding grew louder, more insistent. “Mendelsohn!”
“MacLeod!” the rabbi cried. “Do not do this! No one comes back!”
Highlander: The Element of Fire
Highlander: Scimitar
Highlander: Scotland the Brave
Highlander: Measure of a Man
Highlander: The Path
Available from
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Contents
Macleod Thought Fast as he Watched The Germans Pile out of their Trucks
To Dennis DeYong,
who said if you’ve got yourself a dream,
go for it.
To Gillian Horvath and Amy Zoll,
who befriended a lonely computer geek
on a bus late one night and showed her a
whole new world.
To David Abramowitz,
who showed me how to use his toys
and let me share his wisdom.
To Bill Panzer and Betsy Mitchell,
who had faith in me.
Blessed is he who was not born,
Or he, who having been born, has died.
But as for us who live, woe unto us.
Because we see the afflictions of Zion,
And what has befallen Jerusalem …
—Baruch
Hebron, in the territories of Judaea and Samaria (aka The Occupied West Bank): The Present
Allahu Akbar!
The tinny sound of the tape recording rang through the narrow streets of the ancient village of Hebron. The sound echoed from
the uninspired facades of government housing built by the Israelis after the occupation. It echoed from the remains of massive
granite walls built by invading Crusaders a millennium earlier. Wherever it went, it called the Muslim devout of Hebron to
their Friday midday prayers.
Allahu Akbar!
God is the Most Great!
The Akhirah Mosque just south of the Old Quarter wasn’t the best mosque in Hebron. That honor fell to the majestic al-Haram
al-Ibrahimi al-Khalil, a splendid edifice of gold and mosaics rising high above the cave where Abraham, Beloved of God, and
his wife Sarah were buried, a site sacred to all of the People of the Book—Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike.
Allahu Akbar!
It wasn’t even the second-best mosque in Hebron. Many in Hebron were larger, more elaborate, or simply more ancient than the
Akhirah Mosque, which was a fairly new and nondescript block of utilitarian concrete at one end of the open market on the
road to Jaffa. It was built near the site where a far grander mosque had stood for over five centuries before it was accidentally
destroyed during the Six Day War. Only by its dome and minaret could the new mosque be distinguished from the shops and offices
surrounding it.
Allahu Akbar!
God is Most Great resounded from the loudspeakers in the minaret. The modest Akhirah Mosque couldn’t even claim a live
muezzin
to climb the tower and issue the traditional call to prayer.
Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah
, the tape crackled. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.
What the Akhirah Mosque had in its favor was its location. This Friday, like any Friday in Hebron, the Jaffa Road market teemed
with Arab buyers and sellers, haggling over the price of a lamb, arguing over the quality of a crate of lemons fresh picked
from a nearby orchard. Women hurried to finish their shopping before the market closed at midday, their heads and bodies covered
despite the
hamsin
winds blowing hot off the desert, making a normally gentle spring feel like the blasting heat of summer. Old men, their dark
faces wrinkled by the sun, filled the nearby coffeehouses, content to watch the constantly changing scene, while a few young
men in crisp uniforms—members of the newly formed Palestinian police—patrolled the market as had their Israeli predecessors
not too long before. At times the din of the market could nearly drown out the call to worship.
Ash-hadu ana Muhammadur rasululla
. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah.
Those Muslims who had the leisure streamed toward the magnificent al-Haram al-Ibrahimi al-Khalil for their Friday prayers
alongside the many Muslim tourists on pilgrimage in Hebron. Those whose lives and work revolved around the Jaffa Road market
preferred to stay close by and perform their ritual worship at the more humble Akhirah.
Hayya alas salah!
Come to prayer!
By midway through the prerecorded
adhan
calling the faithful of Islam to gather, the inside of the tiny mosque was full of men ready for prayer. Most of the women
of the market had hurried home to worship in the privacy of their houses. Those men arriving at the mosque too late to be
accommodated inside simply spread their colorful woven prayer rugs on the ground, on the sidewalks, in the marketplace, wherever
there was room, always facing holy Mecca to the southeast. For the Prophet said, “Wherever the hour of prayer overtakes you,
you shall perform it.”
Hayya alal falah!
Come to salvation!
The din and clamor of the market, a place of chaos only minutes before, disappeared as if by magic, replaced by orderly rows
of the faithful silently preparing their hearts and minds for communication with God.
La ilaha illallah!
There is no God but Allah!
As the last echo of the call to prayer faded away in the
hamsin
winds, a serious young man joined the faithful in the marketplace outside the mosque. He hurriedly spread a prayer rug near
the back of the throng before the communal prayers began. His skin was smoky dark, like that of the others, and he was dressed
as any one of hundreds of Palestinian students from the nearby Islamic University, in his white dress shirt and dark slacks.
His dark hair was cropped close to his head, covered by a knitted lace prayer cap, and he had a worn leather rucksack for
his texts and research. He was a small man of slight build. With his boyish face, he looked nineteen, maybe twenty.
But as he stood at attention, his right hand over his left on his chest as prescribed by the Prophet, chanting “Glory and
praise be to You, Oh God” in Arabic with the others, the eyes he raised toward Mecca were seemingly without bottom, round
and dark. He might be seeing all the way to the spires of the holy city itself with those eyes.
“
Bismillahir rahmanir rahim
,” his prayers continued, followed by
ruku
, bowing to God in a show of love and respect. Three times the young man chanted “Glory be to my Great Lord and praise be
to Him,” and three times he bowed low in the presence of God with the other faithful.
Then the ultimate act of humility: proud men prostrate before God on the gravel of the marketplace, hands, faces, knees touching
the ground. “God is greater than all else.” As the worshipers returned to their knees for their personal prayers, no one noticed
the young student in the back of the congregation reach into his leather bag.
The eerie quiet of a hundred men’s silent petitions to Allah was suddenly shattered by the howl of an automatic weapon. Soundlessly,
a row of pious men toppled from their knees to the ground, dead before their “Amen.”
Then the screaming, the wailing, as the followers of Islam tried to struggle to their feet, to run in horror, to flee, but
the young man, dark eyes burning with centuries of hate and vengeance, was merciless, cutting them down in the same orderly
rows in which they’d prayed.
Before those inside the Akhirah Mosque even realized that their worship had been interrupted, forty-three Palestinian men
lay dead or dying, their blood drenching their prayer rugs and seeping into the gravel of the Jaffa Road marketplace.
The avenger with his finger on the trigger of the automatic stopped firing only when he saw the squad of Palestinian police
coming for him across the market, guns drawn. Whispering a sweet prayer to the God of his ancestors, the God of Moses and
of David, he turned the muzzle of the weapon toward himself and pulled the trigger once again.