Hadassah Covenant, The (26 page)

“Move,” the intruder had growled in Arabic, his voice cracking with his own terror as he waved his gun toward the door.

And that’s how the Al-Jazeera team had found themselves first broadcasting the previous day’s murder and now the hostage mother’s torment through a set of wires to an unobtrusive white dish mounted on the windowsill. It was a cunning disguise, for the apartment building, like so many in the Arabic world, was studded with dozens of identical-looking satellite receivers. Even the poorest Iraqis loved their newfound freedom, with its hundred channels of television.

Only this was an uplink—broadcasting instead of receiving. Yet despite its concealment, the ruse still practically invited detection from the Americans’ formidable signal-intelligence service, the NSA. The nervous man behind the camera wondered how long it would take a Predator drone to center them in its sights. Then he wondered if the recklessness was truly a result of stupidity, or some plan to deliberately incite a bloodbath.

Regardless of the insurgents’ motives, he silently gave himself a nearly fifty-fifty chance of surviving the day. Then he began to pray.

B
ATTAWEEN
Q
UARTER
, B
AGHDAD

The end overtook the old synagogue in one great rush—a rhythmic roar, a blur of rotors chopping apart the sun, bystanders running off screaming. Then came ropes, six of them, their uncoiled portions tossed from a great height to strike the plaza’s cobblestones with a startling clatter. Finally came the men themselves from the hovering chaos overhead, zipping down the lengths of cord as swiftly as dropped stones. Their faces and uniforms were so black they seemed to be pools of absent light, fast-moving voids against the glare.

The old man saw all this happen through the last, smeared pane of intact glass on the first floor of the Battaween Synagogue, Baghdad’s oldest and only remaining Jewish house of worship. Not knowing
what lay ahead, he grasped his prayer shawl about his shoulders, straightened his yarmulke and began to pray, chanting and bobbing forward and back.

He knew the soldiers were coming for him.

Lithe bodies vaulted to the rim of the concrete wall erected just ten years before around the actual temple. The first man up produced a hand tool that made quick work of the concertina wire strewn there. The old man clasped trembling hands to his mouth, for those bright metal coils had defined his life for so long he did not know how to look at the wall without them. Less than two minutes later, three of the commandos had jumped gracefully to the inside.

A dark-featured face filled the space of his window.

“Rabbi Mehl, we’re here for you,” he said in perfect Hebrew. “I am here with the United States Army. On behalf of the State of Israel, I am here to escort you out and offer you Return. Will you please open the door?”

He stood without moving, half wishing his stillness would drive the intruders away. In one sense he hated his solitude, despised what it meant about the fate of his people. It had been years since the synagogue’s last regularly scheduled service. The once-thriving religious life of the quarter had now dwindled to one or two conversations per week with elderly, frightened people who sneaked in for a few minutes of conversation, affirmation in their faith, and grim commiseration about
the state of things in general
—then sneaked out the back through a variety of hidden exits. All public Seder services and high holiday observances had been canceled because of the all-encompassing “security concerns,” and he had long since assured the most faithful that G-d knew of their devotion and did not expect them to brave car bombings to worship Him.

And yet, despite the incredible sadness and nostalgia that permeated his solitude, he had lately come to appreciate the utter privacy of it. He had become one with his prison, at home with its intimate spaces. Perversely, the old man wished the soldiers gone.

And then again, there was that word
Return
, those syllables that detonated volcanic emotions inside him. The Right of Return was one of the things which set Israel apart from all other nations, which confirmed how remarkable in human history the Covenant truly was.
It meant, essentially, that any person of Hebrew blood could claim Israeli citizenship upon their return from wherever in the world the Diaspora—the exile sparked upon the destruction of Jerusalem millennia before—had flung them.

He cracked the door open, and with the shock of actual sunlight came a hand, then two, forcing the crack farther apart. The door flew wide and another man in civilian clothes stepped through.

It was the end, finally delivered to his doorstep.

Chapter Twenty-seven

T
he man faced him
a moment, his eyes warm and shining, and extended his hand.

“Rebbe, my name is Ari Meyer, from—well, from the government of Israel. I regret the intrusion.”

“I regret it, too,” said the rabbi.

“Sir,” the man continued without apology, “there’s another farhod under way. You’re likely old enough to remember ’forty-one? I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you’ll be killed. We’re gathering as many of your people as we can and taking them to safety. Will you please come with us? There is no other choice. As I’m sure you know, the Jews of Baghdad, both open and concealed, are being targeted. I imagine you’re aware of the hostage situation with the al-Feliz family.

“Aware of it? Mr. Meyer, only three weeks ago I traveled to Al Hillah to conduct Ariana al-Feliz’s secret Bas Mitzvah. I have known her since the night she was born. And her family for most of my life.”

“I’m very sorry, sir. My colleagues and I are fully aware that your synagogue has been the discreet hub for what remains of Iraqi Jewry. Not to mention that you are the person at the core of it all.”

“Then your apology is accepted. But don’t assume again that just because we’re isolated and endangered, we’re not a community and very aware of each other’s concerns.”

“Agreed. But, Rabbi, there is not much time. I must ask you. Are you ready to make your Return?”

“No, I am not. If I had been inclined to turn tail for Israel, I would have done so decades ago.”

“I understand, Rabbi. But the final hour has arrived. There’s no more time, no refuge left. This is it.”

“Then I would rather stay here and die with my people.”

Ari nodded understandingly and glanced briefly out the door, where sunshine blazed in the courtyard.

“But, Rabbi, what if you could save them?” he asked, looking directly at the rabbi. “What if you could help me find those who remain, those others who are in peril?”

“Do not patronize me, young man. The survival of my people—it is all I live for. What is your name again?”

“Actually, Meyer is only an operational surname. My true last name is al-Khalid.”

“You mean . . . of the Iraq, Baghdad, al-Khalids?”

Ari nodded solemnly.

“I always wondered what happened to your family,” said the rabbi slowly.

“Yes. I was hoping you could shed some light on that for me.”

“My son, so many have disappeared into thin air over the last thirty years. I am afraid your family was among them, although they were certainly one of the most powerful and well known. You are the son of Anek?”

“Yes, Rebbe. And I aspire to something else. Something I hope you can support.”

The rabbi waved dismissively. “I’m afraid I no longer have any authority or approval to confer on anyone.”

“You are the living heart of Iraqi Jewry. And I, G-d willing, would be its new Exilarch.”

The old man stared at him through the shadows, his face slack with amazement.

“Do you carry the bloodline?”

“Yes.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Not quite. The final evidence I was hoping you could help me find. This is one of my objectives. I am also here to protect the remnant and find out what happened to my own.”

The rabbi sighed forcefully, then gave the younger man a fierce look.

“Then I suppose we’d better get on with it.”

Ari held out his hand, and they stepped through the door, free of the Battaween Synagogue, into the harsh glare of noonday.

It all made Rabbi Mehl want to weep, for in many ways, this was the final gasp of a population that had lived in these streets and alleys for over twenty-five hundred years. He himself had witnessed only its most eventful final half century. He had survived the pogroms of the forties and fifties. Stayed behind after the heady days of the Ezra and Nehemiah Airlifts. Outlasted the long madness of Hussein’s regime, with its alternating periods of tolerance, murderous brutality, and eventual indifference. He had seen the wall go up around the synagogue’s perimeter. And then the wire on top of that.

And now, to see it all come to an end with his being escorted away without time for even a backward glance. He was striding across the small plaza as he had not done in years, being rushed through a cordon of soldiers, who shouldered their rifles out toward the surrounding buildings, sighting on the cowering citizens who had themselves made him cower for so very long. For the smallest glint of a second, he felt the bittersweet comeuppance of it all rise like a bitter surge of bile.

And then he was inside the infernal machine, the army helicopter, with a great door slamming and men shouting gruffly and a sudden lifting sensation pressed against his limbs. He looked out the glass and saw the building, whose preservation had consumed his entire life, tilt and shrink into the puzzle grid of greater Baghdad.

“How much fuel does this awful thing carry?” he asked Ari over the roar of the propellers. “There may not be much time, but if you have maps, I can help you find some documents and save some of our brothers and sisters—at one time. . . . ”

Chapter Twenty-eight

O
UTSIDE
M
AYDAN
S
ARAY
, D
IYALA
P
ROVINCE
, I
RAQ—NINETY MINUTES LATER

A
badi, the youngest son
, saw it first, coming fast and low across the valley below him.

Kicking his soccer ball out on the mountain farm’s only flat patch of ground, he stiffened, distractedly letting the ball strike his shin and bounce away down the slope. This sort of mistake on most days meant an hour-long descent to correct—but Abadi wasn’t concerned. He’d always found the ball before. After all, he was the only boy this side of Maydan Saray, and who else would risk life and limb astride a thousand-foot clifftop for an inflated piece of leather?

At that moment, the eight-year-old didn’t care about the ball, anyway. He was too preoccupied with the object flying toward him along the twenty-five-mile-long Zagros Mountain valley. The high cleft in the range separating eastern Iraq from Iran was his home—where his family eked out a meager living, yet experienced a relatively safe existence, as high-altitude sheep farmers.

It was late afternoon, Abadi’s favorite time to get outside and escape Momma’s constant vigilance. At that hour in early fall, their home site’s merciless winds usually subsided to a cool kiss upon the forehead, while the dwindling sun filled their valley with infinite hues
of burnt orange and turquoise and a thousand gradations of alpine detail.

Abadi knew the panorama well enough to realize that the growing speck with the flat glide path was no eagle. He could also tell it was not native to his part of the world.

Despite ever-present drop-offs and assorted mountain perils, living here was far less frightening than his old neighborhood far away in Baghdad. Back then, every single vehicle driving down their tiny street, every car horn’s echo, was grounds for an anxious pause or a sweeping glance out the window. He had grown up in fear of the sniper and the car bomb, learning from his youngest years to slam windows shut and stay indoors.

Living out here in the country wasn’t perfect. There was still need for some vigilance; over in the next valley, local Kurds had once exchanged small-arms fire with Hussein’s Republican Guard, back before the coming of the Americans. Today, the Sunni insurgency still persisted, and they had few friends down in the closest town of Maydan Saray. And now, since the overthrow of Saddam, there were the sonic booms, the high bomber contrails and the Predator drones cruising past on their way to Iran.