Wings of Refuge (11 page)

Leah would bathe in the mikveh. But she wondered, as she had so many times before, why carefully obeying God’s Laws never made her feel any closer to Him.

As Leah had feared, Rabbi Eliezer guarded the door to the ritual bath. Worse, Reb Nahum, the ruler of the synagogue, stood beside him. Leah stared at the ground, her cheeks flaming, as Mama explained why they had come. But instead of quickly allowing them to go inside and have some privacy, Reb Nahum began to lecture Leah.

“‘A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.’ You want to be a good wife of the Torah, don’t you, Leah? Fulfilling your duties according to the Law?”

She didn’t want to be a wife at all, but she nodded mutely, biting her lip to keep from saying the words aloud. Reb Nahum hooked his thumbs in his wide embroidered belt, rocking on his heels as if lecturing in the synagogue.

“A godly wife will learn to keep a proper kitchen, to separate the clean and the unclean, to sanctify the Sabbath. These statutes were given by God and they are very important, Leah. The Law is our salvation.”

Leah bristled. Then why didn’t they teach girls to read the Law so they would know exactly what it said?

“A godly wife will make certain the meat is killed and cooked properly, and that meat dishes are never served at the same meal with dairy products. Remember, the Torah says, ‘Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.’”

Leah had heard enough. Her voice dripped with phony sweetness as she said, “We can’t afford to eat meat, Reb Nahum. And any husband who chooses a poor farmer’s daughter like me for his wife probably won’t be able to afford meat, either.”

For a long moment, the two Pharisees simply stared at Leah. Then, as Reb Nahum’s expression changed from astonishment to anger, he said, “I can see that you have a great deal to learn, Leah. But for today, one last lesson will do: ‘He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.’”

He finally allowed Leah to go inside. But as she immersed herself in the mikveh’s icy water, she couldn’t help wondering if Reb Nahum had dumped snow from Mount Hermon into it just to spite her.

CHAPTER 5

THE GOLANI HOTEL, ISRAEL—1999

O
n a clear, balmy evening near the end of the first week of the dig, Abby trudged down the flowered path to Hannah’s bungalow and knocked on her door, fighting the tears that her discovery had unleashed. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. . . .” she began tentatively.

“Not at all! I was just enjoying the view of the Sea of Galilee from my patio. I’d love it if you joined me.” Hannah led the way to her balcony, where the silvery lake shimmered in the distant twilight and city lights sparkled in the hills on the opposite shore. “Doesn’t this view remind you of the verse, ‘A city on a hill cannot be hidden’?” But when Hannah turned for Abby’s response, her smile faded. “You didn’t come for the view, did you? What’s wrong, dear?”

Abby sat in the chair Hannah offered and drew a deep breath, summoning courage. “I’ve found something that belongs to you, Hannah. I apologize for not giving it to you sooner, but I completely forgot about it.” She passed the page she had torn from her notebook to Hannah, trying not to picture the blood-spattered cover. “It’s a note to you . . . from Ben.”

“From Ben? How . . . ?”

“He wrote it while we were still on the plane from Amsterdam. Until now, I haven’t been able to . . . to go through any of the things—”

“It’s all right, Abby. I understand.” Hannah laid her canes on the floor and lowered herself into one of the patio chairs to read Ben’s note. She smiled slightly at his words even as her eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she said when she finished. “I’ll treasure this.” She gently folded the page, then wiped her eyes. “I guess I’m not the only one still grieving. This has been difficult for you, too, hasn’t it? I gather your life hasn’t been touched so closely by death before—especially a violent one.”

“No. Have they . . . um . . . caught the person who . . . ?”

“Not yet, but they will.” Hannah sighed. “Ben and I had many discussions—some would say arguments—about the risks he was taking. The Jewish and Palestinian leaders who are willing to work together and negotiate with each other are often considered traitors by their own people who don’t want to compromise with their enemies. Ben secretly worked as the middleman between the two sides. I know he was willing to give his life if he thought it would bring lasting peace, but it still doesn’t make what you witnessed any easier to forget.”

“How are his wife and family doing?”

“They’re grieving, but their faith is strong.” Hannah pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. “Ben wasn’t always a spy, you know. His first love—his true love—was agriculture. It wasn’t until much later in his life that the Agency became his mistress.”

“Why did he join?”

Hannah sighed again, looking out at the view that must have appeared blurred through her tears. “Joining the Agency was his reaction to a crisis. Life here in Israel can be very difficult. In fact, it can overwhelm you at times. When it overwhelmed Ben, he felt he needed to do something more than grow plants. For years, making the desert bloom had been his way of fighting back. But that was no longer enough for him. He had to do more. No one in our family was happy with his decision.

“There was a knock on Hannah’s door, and a moment later Ari let himself in. Abby resented his intrusion, but Hannah didn’t seem to mind.

“I followed you over here,” he told Abby. “The airline just called to say they will deliver your suitcase tomorrow.”

“Finally! I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.”

“And I have another email message for you.” He handed Abby the printout, then he and Hannah talked in Hebrew while Abby read her daughter’s letter.

Dear Mom,

I’m so glad you thought of sending each other email. It’s been great talking to you every day. Good news! The insurance company sent a check today to pay for the damage and to replace all the stolen things. Greg already bought a new CD player, but Dad says to wait and let you replace everything else
.

Mom, I know that you don’t want to talk to Dad or have anything to do with him, and I don’t blame you. What he did hurt all of us—you most of all. I didn’t want to see him either, but this robbery forced me to, and maybe that was why God allowed it to happen. Daddy and I have had time to really talk. We stayed up until two o’clock in the morning last night. He said that when he walked in the door and saw our house all trashed, and you were gone, and I was scared and alone, it was like seeing a portrayal of what he had done to all of us. He asked Greg and me to forgive him—and he cried, Mom. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Daddy cry before
. . . .

Emily had written more, but Abby needed to wait until she was alone to read the rest. The letter made her so angry she wanted to crumple it in her fist.
He hasn’t cried nearly as much as I have
, she fumed. She turned her attention back to Hannah and Ari, wanting to push Mark and her problems at home far from her thoughts. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she had traveled here—to forget?

Ari leaned against the railing with his back to the lake. His voice had gradually grown louder, his scowling face and brusque gestures betraying his anger. There was a third chair on Hannah’s balcony, but Abby was relieved when Ari bid them a curt good-night and left the bungalow. She needed some quiet conversation alone with Hannah to diffuse the anger that Emily’s letter had aroused and to soothe the grief that Ben’s letter had evoked.

“Is everything all right at home?” Hannah asked, gesturing to the letter.

“Yes, you were right—my kids are coping with the whole incident pretty well. They don’t want me to come home.” She longed to blurt out her anger and her fear that Mark was taking advantage of her absence and the break-in to worm his way back into their children’s lives, but she knew she would sound childish. Instead she asked, “Did I do something to make Ari angry just now?”

“Not at all,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry if our discussions get a bit loud. Ari always has been a very . . . intense person.”

“To tell you the truth, I can’t figure him out,” Abby said. “He can be so thoughtful one minute—offering to let me send email, loaning me his wife’s clothes—yet he’ll barely speak to me the next.”

“Please don’t take Ari’s behavior personally. Like you, he has also had his private struggles. I have known Ari for a long time. He was my first student assistant at the Institute, in fact.”

“How long have you been an archaeologist?”

“Let’s see . . . more than thirty years, I guess.”

“I can tell that you still love it, Hannah. You still get excited with each new find.”

“Yes. So does Ari. He just has a different way of showing it.”

“What made you decide to study archaeology?”

“That’s a very long story,” she said, smiling. “Are you sure you’re not too tired to hear it after a long week of digging?”

“I’m not tired at all—and we can sleep late tomorrow, right?”

“That’s true. We won’t leave for our tour of Jerusalem until nine o’clock.”

“Nine o’clock!” Abby said. “That’s going to feel like noon after waking up at four all week. Besides, I’m too unsettled to sleep. I keep thinking about Leah, wondering about her life, trying to imagine how she would have learned to write her name.”

Hannah smiled. “I do the same thing—give flesh and blood to the people whose lives I unearth. I always have, ever since I found my first artifact.”

“Were you born in Israel?”

“No, my family immigrated here in 1951 when I was ten years old. I was born in Iraq, fifty-eight years ago. . . .”

THE NEGEV ISRAEL—1951

Sunlight radiated off the tin walls of the shack, intensifying the desert’s suffocating heat. Perspiration mingled with Hannah’s tears as she wept in her father’s arms on the front step. “I want to go home! Please, Abba,
please
take me home!”

“We can’t go back, Hannah. We can never go back.” Sorrow thickened his voice. He patted her head uselessly, offering her no comfort. Every day for the entire two weeks she had lived in Israel, Hannah had pleaded with him to take her back to Iraq. Every day Abba’s answer remained the same. “Iraq is no longer our home. We aren’t welcome there anymore.”

“But I want to go home!”

“We are home. Israel is our home now.”

Dirt smudged Abba’s handsome face, fatigue etched it with deep furrows. His thick black hair, once glossy and clean, now wore a layer of gray dust. He had always dressed in fine clothes, hand-tailored shirts, and jackets of silk and linen, but now he didn’t even smell like Hannah’s father. Instead of that wonderful combination of Turkish coffee, expensive tobacco, and lemony cologne, he reeked of sweat, like a common servant.

“I hate it here! I hate Israel!” Hannah clenched her swollen eyes shut, remembering their clean, spacious villa in Baghdad, the servants who took such luxurious good care of them, the juicy lamb and luscious fruit that seemed to overflow from their table. Hannah had lived a pampered life in Iraq, stuffed as plump as a melon with pastries and sweets. After her mother died, she and Abba shared the villa with Uncle Mor-decai, Aunt Shoshanna, and their three sons. Now she couldn’t understand why they had left it all behind to live in squalor in a crude shack in the melting heat of the desert. And she was much too numb with her own grief to notice by the slump of Abba’s shoulders, the quiet despair in his voice, that he longed to return to their old way of life in Iraq as much as Hannah did.

“Why can’t we go home?” she sobbed.

“Enough. I give up,” Abba said suddenly. “It is useless to try to console you. You don’t hear a word I say. I have work to do.” He didn’t sound angry—Abba never spoke angrily to Hannah—simply weary of plowing the same old ground. Hannah slid from his lap as he stood. He pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it through the open door of the shack. “Benjamin,” he called to his nephew, “see if you can do something with your cousin, please.” Ben emerged from the neighboring hut and shuffled over to take Abba’s place, while Abba took over Ben’s job of helping Uncle Mordecai mix cement for a new floor.

“Whew! It’s hot, isn’t it?” Ben said, wiping his face with his shirttail. Hannah wept in reply. “Want to play a game or something, Hannah?”

She thought of the games she and Ben used to play in the shady courtyard of their villa and wailed, “I want to go home!”

“Let’s go for a walk,” Ben said, yanking her to her feet. He dragged her by the arm like a stubborn puppy on a chain, down the road in front of the long row of shacks and across an empty field. As soon as they were out of earshot of their fathers, Ben grabbed Hannah by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. “Stop bawling! We’re all sick of it! You’re not a baby!”

No one had ever treated Hannah like that before. Stunned, she wiggled out of his grasp and fled to the shade of a spindly broom tree, one of the few that managed to grow in their desolate immigrant camp. Ben followed right behind her, his face red from his anger and the heat. Afraid he would shake her again, Hannah finally took control of her tears.

“Go away and leave me alone!” she yelled. Instead, Ben flopped down beside her.

“I’m not supposed to leave you alone, Hannah. I’m supposed to teach you stuff so you can start school as soon as it’s built.”

A belated sob shuddered through her. “What . . . kind of . . . stuff?”

“The Hebrew alphabet, for one thing. I already learned it when I studied for my bar mitzvah in Iraq.”

“I don’t want to go to school.” Hannah crossed her plump arms, content to remain illiterate.

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” he said. “It’s the law here in Israel. . . . And don’t start bawling again about how much you hate it here. Everyone for miles around already knows.” They sat in silence for a moment, watching their fathers mix another bucket of cement and haul it inside. They looked as small as ants from this distance, performing a wavering dance in the heat. “They sure could use some help,” Ben muttered.

Hannah knew without asking that he was thinking of his two older brothers who had been inducted into the army shortly after arriving. “Do you miss them?” she asked.