Hadassah Covenant, The (23 page)

In all, this ordinary-looking departure featured twice the security measures of its more public counterpart on the other side of the embassy. The difference: these were deliberately and cunningly concealed.

Without even a single pair of hostile or curious eyes watching it, the van turned right, away from busy Kensington High Road to Kensington Church Street, then drove the long way to Notting Hill Gate and the A40 dual carriageway to M25.

Inside the darkened van, far more comfortably appointed than its exterior might have suggested, four people huddled around a hospital bed strapped to the floor. One of them held tightly to the hand of the immobilized patient.

Another, a woman, leaned forward to catch a view of the retreating masses through the back mirrored windows. She leaned toward him and whispered, “I think it’s working.”

Ari Meyer nodded seriously without taking his eyes from his father on the hospital bed.

“I was sure it would. It’s a lot easier to fool a bunch of ticked-off crazies than a dedicated terrorist squad. We’ll be all right.”

“Call me Hadassah, by the way. After all, we’re cousins.”

“Can I wait until you’re not angry with me anymore?”

She didn’t answer but nodded. She wasn’t quite ready yet to surrender her irritation.

“When all hell broke loose, your father was in the middle of telling me the whole story of our two families,” she told him.

“You mean you don’t know it?” he exclaimed with a small, incredulous laugh.

She shook her head. “Why don’t you start by telling me what happened between your father and mine.”

“My
mother
happened, that’s what. She and my father started to see each other after meeting at the embassy.”

“Even though he’d told her and everyone he wasn’t a Jew?”

“Yes. He’d been forced to say that to protect his family still in Iraq. From what he’s told me, their attraction was an incredible, impractical affection that flamed quickly and never wavered. It wasn’t three months before everything exploded. Your father, David, struck the match, in fact.”

“It feels like we’re not talking about the same man. My father always seemed conciliatory, forgiving and open-minded.”

“People have a way of mellowing with age,” he agreed. “I know my father did. But at the time, Father fell hard and fast for Rivke Kesselman. It took only a week or two before he’d told her his secret—although he swore her to silence, including her promise never to tell the rest of her family. This of course placed her in a horrible dilemma. David Kesselman objected in the worst way to her seeing a Gentile, especially an Arab one who seemed to be passing himself off as a Jew. My dad even thinks David may have suspected him in some more sinister way—at least at first.”

“What? Of being a spy?”

“Perhaps. The town was full of them—in fact, that’s largely why the problem started in the first place. The Edict was placed on my father because of Arab spies.”

Ari swayed backward on a sudden turn and caught himself against the van’s wall, then reached out and straightened his father’s stretcher. The vehicle now sped up considerably—they apparently had reached the M25.

“When it became clear this was a serious relationship, Rivke begged her brother David to trust her choice. She as much as told
him there was a secret at the heart of it all, but he would not put any stock in her hints. He seemed to channel his grief at the destruction of their family into some newfound rigidity, an absolute unwillingness to bend the rules of their faith. He insisted that she not see him anymore, and forbade him from coming inside their house. When she would sneak out to see him, he threatened to kick her out, although he didn’t follow through.

“Then your father learned that they had become betrothed. He completely lost it. He did throw her out then, and she had no choice but to move in with Dad. She had not been able to find work, as only the brothers had succeeded in finding very strenuous construction jobs. She found the arrangement shameful, but according to the old ways, betrothal is equivalent to marriage, so they treated it that way.

“When David learned they’d made a household together, he made one last overture. He came to their house one night and asked if Anek would be converting to Judaism. Now it was my father’s turn to be caught in an unbearable dilemma. His answer was no, because of course he was already a Jew. Not an observant one, but he’d hoped to fix that also, as soon as possible. Yet he could say nothing of this to David. The only thing he thought of to say, which was halfway truthful, is what he swallowed hard and told him in a firm voice: ‘She will follow me in my faith.’ And that is what he told him. My dad was proud of himself; he had honestly answered the question without betraying the Esther Edict.

“But to David, it was the worst reply imaginable. He assumed Rivke would be converting to Islam, and he did the unthinkable. He returned home and said Shiva over Rivke, declaring that she was dead to him, to all of them. Forbade any member of the family from ever having contact with her again. Cut her out of the few pictures they’d taken with them. She had married out of the faith, and for members of his Jewish generation, that meant her ‘death.’”

The van sped on at unusual speeds toward Gatwick Airport while inside, Ari’s tale continued to deepen. . . .

Chapter Twenty-four

T
HE
M25 D
UAL
C
ARRIAGEWAY
—L
ONDON—MINUTES LATER

U
pon becoming betrothed
to Anek, Rivke Kesselman had hoped that soon her beloved’s family would be whisked from Iraq,” Ari continued as the fast-moving van swayed around corners on its way to the airport. “That evacuation could happen either through secret channels by the Mossad, or publicly through the Nehemiah Airlift. Anek’s claims of a family fortune would soon be vindicated, allowing him to not only finally explain his Jewish identity to her family, but provide for them all in a way that would make her proud.

“But after hearing that her beloved brother had declared her ‘dead,’ Rivke was totally devastated. Desperate to reverse the family’s verdict, she brought Anek to the family home late one Shabbat evening, when she knew that all the siblings and cousins would be in the apartment.

“Upon seeing her, David immediately started to shout at them. Then he realized that even asking who had allowed them to enter had inadvertently acknowledged her existence, so he turned his back and fixed his stony gaze upon a far wall. Rivke’s sisters both burst into sobs and began begging David to reconsider.

“‘Please, David. At least talk to her! She says she has something important to say!’”

“‘David,’” Rivke added her own plea, “‘what I have to tell you will change everything. I promise.’”

“Slowly, David had turned around, his own cheeks stained with tears.

“It was Anek who spoke next.

“‘I
am
Jewish.’” He paused, allowing the words to sink in. “‘I am Jewish, and the hardest thing I’ve ever done was to let you think otherwise. But you see, I had no choice. Part of my family is in prison back in Iraq, others in hiding unable to escape, and the Israeli government is desperately trying to negotiate for their release. But until things are resolved, I am under a firm Esther Edict imposed here by the embassy staff. I am prohibited from telling anyone the truth about my heritage. I risked everything even telling Rivke, and I’m risking even more telling this to you now. Do you remember, it was that attache who told you I was Gentile, not me. Had I told you the truth in front of him, all efforts to save my family would have ceased immediately.’”

“David looked at Anek for a long moment, his face slack and his expression inscrutable.

“‘I don’t believe you,’” he said at last.

“The sisters’ sobs sounded as one around the room.

“‘Why not?’”

“‘Because when I look at you, I don’t see a Jew. All I see is a lonely young man madly in love with my sister and willing to do anything, say anything, to have her for himself. Tell me, if you’re a Jew, have you been bar mitzvah’ed?’”

“‘No, I’m afraid not. Hardly any boys have had bar mitzvah in Baghdad for the last ten years. It’s just too risky. The last two ceremonies I heard of were attacked by mobs and the whole families slaughtered.’”

“‘Do you read Hebrew? Speak it?’” David demanded. “‘No, I cannot. All yeshivas and Jewish schools of any kind have been closed for years.’”

“‘Can you even tell me a word of it?’”

“‘What? Like Shabbat? Seder? Pesach? Eretz Yisroel?’”

“‘Stop this!’” shouted Rivke’s sister Rachel at her brother David.

“Anek was now as angry as David. ‘Would you like me to remove my pants?’” he asked, lips curled.

“‘What?’” David roared.

“‘You know what I mean,’” Anek said, keeping his voice cool and level. “‘Would you like to see it?’”

“‘Shut your mouth! You have the gall, having already taken our sister from us, to come back here and insult the women of this house, on Shabbat, with this obscene proposal?’”

“‘Come now, I am a decent man, David,’” Anek now said contritely. “‘I’ve behaved toward your sister with complete honor and decency. I would never have revealed my circumcision without respectfully asking the ladies in the room to leave us for a moment.’”

“‘It doesn’t matter,’” David spat back. “‘Even Muslims sometimes circumcise. It doesn’t prove you’re a Jew. Look—even if what you say is true, you’re the most dishonorable Jew imaginable. At a time when millions of your people went to their deaths because they refused to hide, because they dared to wear the Yellow Star, you hid who you are. If some bureaucrat had told me to lie about my Judaism, I would strike him down.’”

“‘Really? Even if it doomed the lives of your whole family?’” “‘I would strike anyone who questioned or undermined my Jewishness.’”

“‘Oh, I see. Well, maybe I should, too.’”

“Anek stepped forward and shoved David hard across the chest. David reeled backward, caught his balance, and chuckled oddly toward the floor, as though ruefully conceding the validity of Anek’s rebuttal.

“Then in a split second he was upon the younger man, both of them staggering under a flurry of blows that filled the air with fists and blood and the screams of the women and the hands of two male cousins trying to insert themselves and stop the fight. Anek was restrained first, from behind, and in the instant it took to pull David away, the older man landed a hard blow on the defenseless man’s mouth, sending a spray of blood across the room to hit Rivke’s face.

“Another round of screams erupted. David was pulled back to the other side of the room. Rivke reeled backward, and while wiping her cheek, she felt something die inside of her.

“Anek violently shrugged himself loose from the cousins’ grasp, turned back, and took hold of Rivke’s hand.

“‘Now you know what kind of family you came from,’” he said to her in a tortured voice. “‘Jewish or not . . .’”

“Anek and Rivke walked out,” Ari said wistfully to Hadassah over the whine of jet engines, glancing out the Gulfstream’s oval window at the lights of London tilting away far below him. “They slammed the door behind them, and the family was ruptured forever.”

He looked over at where his father lay wrapped on a fold-down bed, the embassy doctor keeping careful watch over him from a nearby seat.

“I grew up in a home without relatives,” he continued, looking back at Hadassah. “My mother’s Jewish family was a subject of great pain and anguish. My father’s family no less so, because soon after they were married, he received word that the whole family had disappeared—bribed a guard to escape prison, but with no passport with which to leave the country they had probably assimilated into the general population, passing themselves off as Arabs. My father’s hopes—his whole reason for living all the years since arriving alone in London—were shattered. Without the written records hidden in Iraq, he could not even prove that he was born Jewish. So even immigrating to Israel would be a nightmare. And things only grew worse when my mother exchanged letters with one of her sisters and learned about the Hadassah Scrolls—that her family privately owned an ancient letter written by none other than Queen Esther herself, addressed to a young Jewish exile named Leah, who happened to be their great-grandmother several dozen times back.”