Keepers of the Covenant (33 page)

“I’ll build a house for you in Jerusalem. I’ll lay every stone
myself, working day and night until it’s finished. I’ll even—” He paused, suddenly alert, listening. He rose to his feet. “Someone’s coming. I have to go. Meet me at the village entrance at dawn. I’ll be waiting for you.” She saw him slink through the gate into the street, but then he seemed to vanish, disappearing as suddenly as he had appeared.

Amina hadn’t heard a sound until then, but a few moments after Reuben left, Sayfah and her family stumbled home, looking bleary and tired, carrying the smaller children and Amina’s crutch. “There you are,” Sayfah said. “Why did you run off like that? My brother-in-law said you weren’t very nice to him.”

“I tried to tell you last night, but you wouldn’t listen to me. I’m in love with a wonderful man named Reuben ben David and—”

“A Jew? Amina, how could you!”

“He loves me, too, and we hope to be married soon. I want you to come to our wedding and meet him.”

“Never. Even if my husband allowed it, which he won’t, I wouldn’t come. The Jews are our enemies, Amina. Did you forget they killed Mama and Papa and our brothers? Did you forget what they did to our village?”

“That was a lifetime ago. And Reuben wasn’t part of it. He just moved here from—”

“He’s a Jew, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but—”

“I guess we have nothing more to say to each other.”

“Can’t you be happy for me, Sayfah? I love Reuben. He doesn’t care that I’m crippled or that I’m not Jewish.”

“You shouldn’t marry a Jew. It’s wrong.”

“I am going to marry him. But please don’t be angry with me. We’re sisters.”

“You’re marrying one of my people’s enemies. That makes you my enemy.”

“I don’t feel that way about you and your family.”

“My husband won’t allow you to come back if you marry a
Jew. He hates the Jews. Don’t come back to see me again unless you’re coming back to live here for good.” Sayfah turned away, and Amina knew she wouldn’t change her mind.

The sky was quickly turning light. It was time to leave. The bonds of love joining her to Reuben were stronger than the bonds between her and Sayfah. She was about to break the final tie to her past. “I’m leaving now,” she said. “Good-bye, Sayfah.” She hugged her sister one last time, but Sayfah stood with her arms at her sides, not returning the embrace. Amina limped away, wiping her eyes, knowing she probably would never see her sister again.

Reuben stood just beyond the village entrance, waiting for her. Without a word, he took Amina’s hand, and they started across the valley to Jerusalem and their new life together.

B
ETHLEHEM

O
ne week later, Amina held tightly to the donkey she rode as Reuben led it up the long climb to the top of the Mount of Olives. Neither the bumpy, uncomfortable ride nor the dreary fall day and overcast skies could dampen her happiness. Reuben loved her and wanted to marry her. She decided to ask Hodaya’s son Jacob and his wife, Rivkah, to arrange their betrothal and wedding since they were Amina’s only family now. She and Reuben borrowed the donkey from Joshua ben Zechariah for the trip to Bethlehem. Both Joshua and his brother, Johanan, gave Amina and Reuben their blessing, as well as the donkey and a servant to accompany them on the six-mile trip. Now each swaying step of the journey brought Amina closer to her new life with Reuben.

At last they reached the top of the hill, and Amina longed to spur the donkey into a gallop as the road descended, knowing Reuben would gladly race all the way to Bethlehem with her.

“I hope Jacob is home,” Amina said as they drew closer to the village, “and not out in the desert somewhere with his flocks.” She worried that she hadn’t seen any flocks in the fields close to town.

“If he isn’t home, I’ll hike out to the desert to find him,” Reuben said. He looked so serious and determined that Amina believed he would.

“Reuben, no!” she said in alarm. “You grew up in a city! You don’t know how to find your way through those grazing lands.”

“Then we’d better pray Jacob is home.”

Thankfully, he was. Amina and Reuben arrived in Bethlehem before noon at the home where she’d lived for most of her life. Reuben wasted no time asking Jacob for her hand. “I’m Reuben ben David from the tribe of Levi,” he said, introducing himself. “Amina and I want to get married. Will you help us do everything the proper way?”

“I would be honored,” Jacob said with a broad grin. Rivkah hugged Amina tightly, tears of joy in her eyes.

“We don’t need anything fancy,” Amina said, “and I don’t want you to fuss.”

“And we don’t want to wait any longer than we have to,” Reuben added.

Amina looked up at him and smiled. “We just want to start our new life together as soon as possible.”

“Well, then,” Jacob said, clapping his hands together. “I believe I have just enough time to spread the word and gather our family and the village elders. We’ll hold your betrothal right here after evening prayers. Is that soon enough?”

Amina threw her arms around him to hug him. “Yes! Thank you so much!”

They sat down to eat the noon meal Rivkah quickly laid out, then Jacob went off to spread the news through the village, inviting everyone to Amina’s betrothal that evening. “Would you like me to show you around my village while we wait?” Amina asked. “It isn’t raining at the moment.”

“Yes, let’s go.”

She took Reuben to the market square first because of what it symbolized to her, even though today wasn’t market day and
the booths stood empty. “This is where my old life ended and my new one began,” she told him as they slowly walked between the stalls. “Hodaya used to sell her cloth right here. I was running with my sister and our friends the first time I met her, and I fell right in front of her. Hodaya helped me up and cleaned my scraped knees. No one treated me so kindly before. She told me we had something in common because we were both crippled.” Amina paused, overcome with sorrow as she remembered her precious friend. “Sayfah and I came here to hide in Hodaya’s booth after our house was robbed and our village plundered by our own people, fleeing from the Jews. Hodaya found us and took us home with her.”

“I wish I could have met her.”

“Me too. . . . The village where I came from is just a short walk down that road,” she said as they moved on. “We used to come to Bethlehem for market day every week.”

“Is it still there?”

“No, the village is gone. Jacob took Sayfah and me back after the war, but everything had burned to the ground.” Amina led him toward the narrow entrance where Mama and so many others had been trampled to death. She longed to hold Reuben’s hand for comfort, but it wasn’t proper.
Soon,
she told herself. Soon they’d never have to be apart.

She halted at the edge of the square, images of the massacre still as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. “I overheard my father and the others planning what they would do to Bethlehem’s Jews on the Thirteenth of Adar,” she said. “They had no compassion, only hatred and greed and a lust to kill. So I came to Hodaya’s booth to warn her. I told her she and the other Jews needed to run away and hide.” Amina closed her eyes for a moment, remembering Hodaya’s beautiful smile, her deep faith. “She told me her God would save them. ‘I don’t know how He’ll do it,’ she said, ‘and I know it looks hopeless right now, but they’re telling us to trust God.’ And she was right. I
knew even then I wanted to be like her, not like my parents. My father’s plans were evil, and he died because of them. Hodaya used to say whatever seed you plant in the ground, that’s what crop you’ll harvest. And he planted evil.”

“Those were terrible days for all of us,” Reuben said. “I couldn’t get past the fact my father had been killed, and God had allowed it. But you lost everything. I can’t imagine that.”

“At the time, I saw my loss as a terrible thing,” Amina said. “I didn’t know how Sayfah and I would survive. But now I look back and see how the Almighty One brought something good out of something terrible. The changes in my life seemed unbearable, but they led to better things. . . . They led to you.”

She saw Reuben check to see if anyone was watching, then he took her hand in his and squeezed it before letting go again. “I love you,” he said. The knowledge still astounded her.

“I’m sorry you lost your father,” Amina said. “He must have been a wonderful man. . . . I used to live in fear of my father.” She shivered involuntarily, remembering how he beat her and Sayfah. “He was ashamed of me because I was crippled, and I lived with that shame every day. But being crippled probably saved my life. If I had gone with Mama and the other women that night, I might have been trampled to death, too. I’ve never felt shame or rejection with the Jewish people. They believe every life is precious, every person God created is valuable.”

She turned her back on the road to her old village and began walking again. “But as wonderful as my life has been, all the images of that day are still burned into my heart and mind,” she said. “I’m not sure I can ever erase them.”

“I know what you mean,” Reuben said. “So many people died. It was the first time I experienced death, and to see it come so violently . . .”

“Yes. But when we can look back on our past, no matter how painful it was, and see God at work, it gives us hope for the future. And right now, when I think of our future to
gether, I can’t imagine anything but joy—can you, Reuben? Think of it!”

“I wish we could get married today.”

“Me too.”

Amina thought only of their future that evening as her friends and adopted family members from Bethlehem gathered in the courtyard of Jacob’s home to witness her betrothal. Reuben and Jacob signed the marriage contract the elders had drawn up for them, and she stood with Reuben beneath a canopy of branches hastily built by Jacob’s sons. Reuben’s hand was steady as he poured a cup of wine from the flask. “Amina . . . by offering you this cup, I vow I am willing to give my life for you,” he said.

Amina gazed up at him and saw his eyes glisten as she accepted the cup from him. She drank from it, accepting his proposal and promising to give her life for him, too. A shout of joy erupted before a crowd of well-wishers enveloped Amina, women she’d known for most of her life and had grown to love. One by one, they congratulated her and promised to help her prepare for the wedding. God willing, she and Reuben would have only a short time to wait.

“I hate saying good-bye to you,” she told Reuben the next morning as he prepared to leave for Jerusalem.

“I won’t be long,” he told her. “I’m going to prepare a new home for you, and when I come back, we’ll never have to be apart again.”

“I love you,” she whispered.

He grasped her hand and squeezed it. “And I love you. Always and forever.”

Reuben hefted a stone into place on the foundation of his new home, then paused to rest his aching muscles. The one-room house was tinier than the hideout where he and his friends used to meet in Babylon, the courtyard barren and rough and un
paved. If only he could build a palace for Amina, with servants to wait on her every need like the servants Rebbe Ezra had.

“A small house is much better,” Amina had assured him before they’d said good-bye in Bethlehem. “I can’t limp around a great big house with my bad leg.” He smiled at her sweet nature, remembering how she’d added, “All we need is a hearth for cooking, a place for my loom, and a bedroom for you and me.”

He lifted another stone into place, wishing he could build faster. The elders gave him this piece of property near the top of the sloping City of David, just below the temple mount, in a section of Jerusalem not rebuilt eighty years ago by the earlier settlers. Amina wouldn’t have to walk too far to worship or visit the marketplace. And several other families from Rebbe Ezra’s caravan were also building homes nearby, so they would have neighbors soon. The site already had a cistern, and once it was re-plastered, Amina would be spared the long trek to the spring for water. The home’s foundation, leftover from when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, needed only a few repairs before Reuben was able to build on it. But the winter rains would start before long, and if he didn’t finish the house and set the roof in place by then, he’d be unable to finish until spring, unable to marry the woman he loved. The thought of waiting made him desperate. He bent to lift another stone.

“Need help, Reuben?” someone called. He looked up, surprised to see his friend Eli and five other Levites, including his Uncle Hashabiah, making their way toward him. Reuben still felt wary of his uncle, but Rebbe Ezra had explained that accepting the Holy One’s forgiveness meant forgiving others, as well. Seeing help arrive now was like seeing the dawn after a long shift on night duty.

“I sure do!” He took a moment to stretch his aching back and shoulders.

“Well, we’re here to help,” Hashabiah said. “Tell us what to do.”

Reuben assigned tasks, and they all worked steadily for the next few hours, accomplishing much more than he could have alone. Hashabiah proved adept at laying paving stones and created a smooth, level outdoor courtyard where Amina could work. The men came back for a second day and then a third, and when the cooking hearth was finished and the roof nearly complete, Reuben spread the word that his wedding was about to take place.

On their last day of work, Reuben was hanging the door on its hinges with Eli’s help when he saw Rebbe Ezra’s wife coming up the street followed by her daughters and two servants, all carrying bundles. “We thought you and your wife could use some household articles,” she said, setting down her burden in his courtyard.

“Uncle Asher made these pots and bowls and jars for you,” the rebbe’s daughter said. She handed him the clay cooking pot she carried. Reuben was speechless.

“I’m so sorry we can’t make it to your wedding in Bethlehem,” Devorah said. “My husband is traveling and won’t be home in time. So we decided to bring our presents here to your new home.”

“Thank you, thank you so much! I’m . . . I’m overwhelmed!”

“Ezra and I are very fond of you, Reuben. And we wish you and your lovely wife many, many years of happiness.”

Two days later after the evening sacrifice, Reuben put on his finest robe and set off with Eli and a group of friends and fellow Levites, including his uncle, to travel to Bethlehem and claim his bride. He wished he had wings and could fly all the way there. Joshua and Johanan and their families joined his procession, along with musicians playing drums and tambourines and flutes. They all carried torches to light their way after the sun set.

Amina had been right; the Almighty One was able to bring good things out of the terrible times in his life. Reuben remembered all the dark years he’d wasted with anger and bitterness
after losing his father and the blacksmith shop, remembered breaking into homes and stealing with his friends, always searching for something and never finding it. But those wasted years seemed like nothing compared with the new beginning he’d been offered. He’d returned to the God of his ancestors and found forgiveness and a purpose. And now God gave him the wonderful gift of Amina for his wife. Could Adam have been any more overjoyed when he awoke in Eden to find Eve beside him? Reuben thought his heart would burst with happiness.

Everyone in his procession sang as they neared the outskirts of Bethlehem. Reuben heard shouts of “The bridegroom is coming! The bridegroom is coming!” Shofars trumpeted the news. Lamps and torches lit up the streets leading to Jacob’s home and courtyard, and the villagers cheered and welcomed Reuben like a victorious king. And there was Amina, sitting beneath the canopy, as radiant as a queen on her throne. She would soon be his wife—his wife!