Alice Hoffman - The Dovekeepers

We turned away and did not look down upon them. We covered our ears so that we would not hear the slaves cry out for their mothers and their wives and for their God, who appeared to have forsaken them.

ON THE DAY my son was called to duty, as all warriors were, I walked into the yard with Aziza. Some might say I was wrong to give her up so easily and allow her to fight among the men, but her fate had already been written. Perhaps I might have prevented her call to war had I not changed her name, or perhaps this was her fate no matter what she was named. She was on the path of her element. She had always chosen metal, something cold and sharp. It suited her, as it had suited her to ride in the grasslands.

Before she left, I offered her the second gold amulet of protection that I wore at my throat, but she shook her head.

“I’m protected,” she assured me. “Have no fear.”

When she lifted her scarf, I noticed the silver medallion with the image of Solomon attacking a female demon. No woman would be allowed to wear such an amulet. Her courage brought me pride, as well as a cloud of regret.

“We should have stayed where we were,” I said ruefully.

I had begun to dream about the Iron Mountain. In my dreams there were forty acacia trees, and in each tree there were forty black birds. I was beneath their branches, and I found I could not move. My feet had become entwined with the roots of a tree, my arms the limbs that were covered with yellow flowers. The bees were called to me, and they swarmed about me, and I wept, for I could not taste the sweetness of their honey, though it was all around.

I had done what I could to stop my daughters from following my fate. None of it had prevented what my mother told me had been written before they were born, before I went to Jerusalem and stood at the well and did as I pleased even though I knew where it would lead me. Love would bring about my undoing. That was the reason I had tried my best not to love my children, so I would not bring my curse upon them. In that, I had failed.

“We were meant to be here,” Aziza assured me.

Her skin was burned by the sun. I noticed the scar that was beneath her eye shone white in her darkened face. She could have been a beautiful woman, instead she was a warrior. She could have been a boy who walked through the streets of the red city of Petra, instead she was my daughter, who had followed me to this fortress, and whom I loved despite the many ways I had tried not to do so.

When she went to the barracks, I thought of my mother, who had stood in the courtyard beside the fountain to watch me leave Alexandria. Now I understood she had known she would not see me again. My heart dropped because I had viewed my own future and what was to come in the bones I had thrown on the tower floor.

I would lose everything I had.

Something was ending, but it was also beginning. I could feel the life within me move and shift. Creation had begun at the Temple mount, and perhaps it would once again if everything else disappeared. Already, there were men speaking of a third Temple, one that would arise in the future, more glorious than any other. From destruction there would be light, and the first words would again be spoken out of a holy silence, for that is always the beginning.

I walked to the wall, my cloak around me. I rested my hand upon my abdomen, and upon my daughter who was not yet born. My beloved wished for a son, as all men did, but I knew I would have another daughter. I always carried a girl child in the same way, high, under my heart. I wanted another world for her, not this mayhem below us. There were still pools of rain on the valley floor. In any other time we would have been grateful. Wild goats and deer would have come to drink. Falcons and herons would have dropped from the sky to bathe, and the ravens, who had fed Elijah in the wilderness, would have come to us with plums in their beaks.

Now there was only the lion, whose chain allowed him to roll in the water. He was covered with mud, his huge paws leaving cleft marks in the damp earth. I forced myself to look away from this great beast, for I could not bear to see him so debased and tamed. I was reminded of the trained Syrian bears one could see in the alleys of Alexandria and Jerusalem, but this was much worse, for the lion had been humiliated in his own land, dispossessed as we were, the lord of nothing but stones.

I gazed down upon the sheer cliff in my grief. As I did, I spied a black goat along the mountainside, one that had escaped from the Essenes’ cave. He was scrambling among the rocks, lost and forsaken, unable to find the rest of his flock.

It was a sign of the darkness to come.

ONE ROMAN SOLDIER noticed the goat, but one was all it took. He told his comrades, and they went after the creature hastily, first in sport, then with the relentless fervor of hunters. In doing so they stumbled upon the camp of those who wanted only peace. Yehuda came to the wall to stand beside me as the Romans began their ascent to the limestone caves beneath us. It was as though his mother, still among her people, had called out to him, as my daughter’s heart had called to me. We were helpless to do anything other than watch as the soldiers climbed the cliff. One fell and I was quick to praise God, and I wondered what had become of me that I might pray for a man’s death on the rocks, rejoicing at the sound of his cries.

Those soldiers who managed to reach a plateau in the cliff then sent down ropes to ensure those who followed would have an easier time rising up. As it is said of the angels, we could see what was to happen before it occurred, but like them we were unable to change the outcome. If this was what the angels observed when they gazed upon our world, how we might murder each other and cause one another agony, then I pitied them as I pitied no others.

Our warriors came to send down a volley of arrows, but the arrows fell upon the rocks as if they were birds falling from the sky. Aziza, too, had rushed to the wall, but she was dressed like a woman and therefore helpless, though she could not be restrained from throwing down rocks and I heard the war cry of Moab escape from her. The Roman soldiers had entered the cave, and our weapons could not reach them there. Several of our warriors held Aziza back when she scrambled onto the wall in an attempt to leap into the fray beneath us, for a warrior such as my daughter could not stand idly by and was therefore restrained in ropes.

Although the murders were hidden from our sight, they were not hidden from our ears, and we were made to listen to the sound of death, so terrible to hear, all the worse when what you see is inside yourself, the thousand cruelties set upon those you love.

Aziza and I stood together and wept, not knowing if the screams we heard were the voices of those we loved or the pitiless shrieks of hawks above us. We could hold our hands over our ears, we could turn away, but that wouldn’t end the horror. The wailing of the dead can be heard in every corner of this world and in the World-to-Come. It does not stop when the sound is finished, it is within you, an eternal part of your being.

BECAUSE she could not be buried, and her bones were left ungathered, my daughter’s soul would remain beside her body, lost, desperately trying to reenter herself and become alive once more. The jackals would find her, but her soul would remain in the cave even when they took her in their jaws; she would watch as the beasts shook her into pieces, devouring her. Each of the agonies of the flesh would be hers in spirit. There would be no taharah, the purification that readies a body for the next world, no blessed water or oils or aloe to wash away the sins of life on earth. Still the pure of heart were said to be able to see the Shechinah as they were dying, they looked upon the most radiant and compassionate face of God. This was what I could hope for. That at the moment of her death she saw God’s light and nothing more.