Wings of Refuge

  “No . . . Oh, God, please . . . no . . .”

  Ben lowered his head and sobbed as he had when Jake died, and she knew it was true. Rachel and her baby were dead.

  “Then let me die, too,” she wept. “Please, Ben . . . I don’t want to live.”

  * * *

  Hannah had no way of knowing how much time had passed as she wavered in and out of consciousness. The array of machinery surrounding her bed told her that she was critically ill, but she wouldn’t join the battle to keep herself alive. With Jake dead, and now Rachel and the baby, there was no reason for her to live. She was aware that the doctors were fighting hard to save her, but she floated away from them, away from the pain, toward death.

  “Come on, Hannah! Fight!” Ben shouted at her. “You’ve been stubborn all your life, for crying out loud. Don’t quit now!”

  She could tell he wanted to shake her, as he had when they were children. “Let me go, Ben,” she whispered.

  He pounded his fist against the bed rail in frustration. “No! You can’t let them win! You have to live!”

  “I’m not afraid to die.” She closed her eyes, allowing sleep to swallow her again, hoping she would awaken in paradise with her loved ones. Instead she awoke to a face in a surgical mask, telling her she needed more surgery.

  “We tried to save your foot, Mrs. Rahov, but it was badly mangled. There isn’t enough circulation, and the infection isn’t responding to antibiotics.”

  Hannah didn’t care. “Let me die,” she whispered. But she awoke in her bed again, floating in and out of sleep, still disappointingly alive.

  The door opened and a tall stranger entered her room, a honey-skinned Arab sheik with a handsome chiseled face. He sat in the chair beside her bed. Hannah knew she must be dreaming because she’d never seen the man before, but when he spoke her name it was so vivid, so real, she decided that he was the angel of death, waiting to take her.

  “I’m ready,” she said aloud.

  “Good,” he replied with a smile.

  She expected him to rise and take her by the hand, but instead he opened a book and began to read: “‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.’” His voice was resonant and deep, and he read the Hebrew words with an Arabic accent. “‘In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.’”

  Hannah didn’t understand what he was reading, but she allowed his voice to soothe her to sleep. The next time she awoke, the man stood over her. She could tell by the pale sunlight that washed past the shuttered window that it was very early in the morning. The room seemed to glow and shimmer, as if the earth trembled before the dawning sun. Again she thought he must be an angel summoning her to paradise, and she welcomed death.

  “Here,” he said. “I brought her for you to hold.” Hannah could barely take her eyes off his face, the face of an Arab prince, but when she followed his gaze, she saw that he held a newborn baby. He bent and laid the child in Hannah’s arms.

  Hannah inhaled her clean sweet smell and stroked her soft curly hair. She allowed the baby’s tiny delicate fingers to curl around her own. The baby was awake, and her dark eyes searched Hannah’s with a gaze that was so intense it was as if they knew each other. Hannah stared until the dainty face blurred behind her tears.

  She understood. The stranger was an angel sent from God. He had brought her granddaughter for her to hold so that she would know she was safe and whole. “‘I am the resurrection and the life,’” the man said softly. “‘He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’” Hannah held the child until they both fell asleep.

  When she awoke again, the baby was gone. Devorah sat in the chair in the stranger’s place. “You’re off the critical list,” she said.

  Relief and love brimmed in Devorah’s eyes, but Hannah felt no joy at the news that she would live. “Where’s Ben?” she asked. A curtain seemed to close over Devorah’s face as she looked away.

  “He was called in.”

  Hannah knew what that meant. The Agency needed him. Devorah was never told where Ben would be sent or what he did or how long he would be gone. But Hannah hoped it meant retaliation for what the terrorist had done. The Israelis would strike back at the enemy ten times as hard for every blow they received. An eye for an eye. She remembered the young Palestinian’s face, his shout of “Allah Akbar,” the deafening, heat-filled roar, and for the first time in her life she was grateful for Ben’s work. She wanted every Palestinian in Israel to die. Devorah must have recognized her hatred.

  “Oh, Hannah, don’t . . . don’t . . .” Devorah covered her mouth and wept.

  * * *

  “I want to see my leg,” Hannah told the doctor a few days later.

  “When you are stronger.”

  “No, right now. If I have to live . . . and if I have to live this way, then I may as well get used to it.”

  The nurse cranked the bed and helped Hannah sit up, then carefully pulled the covers away. Hannah’s leg ended below the knee in a stump that was swathed in bandages. When Hannah nearly vomited, the nurse quickly replaced the cover.

  “Please leave me now,” Hannah said as the nurse swaddled her in blankets to control her shivering. She needed to grieve alone. The doctor administered a sedative before he left, so Hannah was only half-conscious when the dark-skinned stranger entered her room.

  “Are you real?” she asked.

  “Yes, Hannah. I’m real.” She felt the warmth of his hand as he laid it against her cheek to brush away her tears. She wanted to touch him, but the drugs had turned her body to lead. As she sank into sleep, the last thing she heard was his soothing voice.

  “Lord, you have touched blind eyes and caused them to see . . . you have healed the lame and raised the dead. Lord, I pray that you would open Hannah’s eyes, fill her with your life, raise her up to walk before you . . .”

  Against Hannah’s will, she got better. As the nurse was changing her dressing one morning, Hannah asked, “Who is the tall Arab man who sometimes comes into my room?”

  “Isn’t he your pastor?”

  “My what? I’m Jewish. I don’t have a pastor. And he certainly isn’t my rabbi.”

  The nurse shrugged. “That’s what he told the head nurse. He showed us his chaplain’s credentials. He must have come into your room by mistake.”

  But after the nurse left, Hannah remembered that he had called her by name.

  Not long after the doctor transferred Hannah to a rehabilitation hospital, Ben returned. He seemed unusually subdued as he bent beside her wheelchair to give her an awkward hug. Hannah waited, certain that he brought news, knowing he would tell her what it was when he was ready. He finally sat on the edge of the bed, facing her.

  “I thought you would want to know that we traced the bomb materials. We found the group responsible for the attack. We raided their headquarters a few days ago and made several arrests. I know that won’t bring Rachel back—or the twenty other people who died—but there will be justice, Hannah.”

  She turned her wheelchair toward the window, gazing out at the broken, wounded souls like herself who hobbled around the exercise yard.

  “Why did I live, Ben? Why couldn’t Rachel have lived? Why not my granddaughter?”

  “Why did I live instead of Jake and the others?” he said in a hoarse voice. “God alone knows the answer.”

  Hannah remembered the blurred outline of her granddaughter on the ultrasound monitor, the steady thumping of her tiny heart. Rachel’s child. Rachel’s and Ari’s.

  “Ari!” She said the name aloud, struck by a sudden thought. “Ben, where’s Ari? I just realized that I don’t remember seeing him. Did he come to visit me in the hospital? My memories of those first weeks are so foggy.” When Ben didn’t answer, Hannah wheeled her chair around to f
ace him.

  “Ben, where is Ari?”

  He hesitated for what seemed a very long time. When he finally reached out and gripped her hand, she felt a tremor of fear. “Tell me!”

  “Ari fell to pieces, Hannah. You can’t imagine—”

  “But I can imagine, all too easily! I know how deeply that boy loved Rachel! Please tell me that Ari is all right!”

  “Yes, he’s all right . . . but for a long time he wasn’t.” Ben released her hand and stood, crossing to the window to stare out as she had. “He blamed himself for what happened. He said he should have driven Rachel to the clinic himself. He insisted that she would still be alive if he hadn’t let his work come first. No one could reason with him. His grief and despair just . . . overwhelmed him, consumed him. We were afraid he would harm himself—or worse, get a gun and slaughter some innocent Palestinians like Baruch Goldstein did at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Ari had that look about him, like he needed to kill someone in revenge, and he didn’t care if he died in the process. He had nothing more to lose. When he disappeared for two days we were all worried sick. I had him tracked down. Then I convinced him to come to work for the Agency.”

  “Ben, no! Please . . . you can’t let him do that! Not Ari!” She wanted to climb out of her wheelchair and stop him, but of course she couldn’t.

  “You have no idea how distraught he was before he disappeared or how cold and empty he was when I found him. He’s not the same man you knew, Hannah. He’s no longer a scholarly archaeologist, content to dig up the past. He’s a man who was pushed over the edge, and it changed him into someone else. He thinks he failed to protect the people he loved. He failed to keep his wife and child safe.”

  “But working for you isn’t the answer. Can’t you see that it’s a death wish? He’s still trying to kill himself, only he’s doing it through the Agency.”

  Ben turned from the window to look at her. “You’re wrong. In Ari’s case, it is the answer. I know, because I felt the same way after I watched Jake’s tank burn. I had the fleeting thought, ‘Thank God it wasn’t me,’ and I’ll have to live with the guilt of that thought for the rest of my life—along with the guilt of being alive when I should have died with everyone else. You know exactly how that feels, Hannah.”

  His stare was hard, cruel. She did know.

  “After Jake died,” Ben continued, “I went a little crazy, too, like Ari. You and I both did, remember? I joined the Agency. It was my way of doing something to fight back. It helped me. Healed me. This will help Ari, too.”

  “Help him? By teaching him to kill? He’s an archaeologist, a teacher!”

  Ben sat down on the edge of the bed again. “I swear I’ve never killed anyone, Hannah, except during wartime. My work with the Agency has prevented deaths.”

  “Please . . . you can’t let Ari do this! It’s not fair to exploit a man’s grief and rage for your purposes.”

  “You don’t understand, Hannah. In work like this, it’s dangerous to use a man who might falter at a critical moment and begin to question his motives. But a man who isn’t afraid to die will be much safer—whether you and I agree with his motives or not.”

  “So you’ll harness Ari’s hatred, like a horse to a plow?”

  Ben’s eyes bored into hers. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t hate them, Hannah?”

  She didn’t reply. What she felt was much deeper than hatred.

  “I thought so.” Ben rose and moved toward the door. “It’s done, Hannah. It’s already done. Ari began training three weeks ago. He was in a commando unit in the army, so he was halfway there. And he has a gift for languages, as you well know. He speaks flawless Arabic.”

  “I’m afraid for him, Ben.”

  “If he doesn’t do this—if he has no opportunity to fight back—then I’m afraid for him.”

  THE GOLANL HOTEL, ISRAEL—1999

  By the time Hannah reached the end of her story, Abby was numb. All the anger she had felt when she stormed into the bungalow had drained away as she slowly comprehended the enormity of Hannah’s losses. And Ari’s. She remembered the night they ate dinner with the Richmans, and the way Ari had looked at little Ivana as he talked about Palestinian terrorism. Ivana was about the same age his own daughter would have been. Abby couldn’t speak.

  “So you see, I lost Ari, too,” Hannah said. “I love him like my own son, but he became a stranger five years ago, someone I barely know. This assignment, following you, is the first time he has returned to archaeology since Rachel died. When I asked him to lecture for me that first day in Caesarea, I wasn’t even sure he would do it.”

  Abby suddenly recalled the look of surprise on Hannah’s face that morning when Abby stepped off the bus wearing the shorts and blouse Ari had loaned her. “I wore Rachel’s clothes! That must have been so hard for you, Hannah. I’m so sorry. He never told me . . . I didn’t realize.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad he loaned them to you. All these years he would never let me or anyone else touch her things, so it was a good sign. You are almost the same size as her, with the same dark hair . . . only she wore her hair long.”

  Abby looked down at the picture again and blinked away tears. “She’s so beautiful. They look so happy.”

  “For Ari to come on this dig was an answer to prayer. He was returning to the work he once loved and finding healing in that work—like I did at Gamla. I’ve watched his excitement grow each day as he dug a little deeper.”

  “I have, too,” Abby admitted. “Especially since he started excavating the Roman villa . . . and when we found the mosaic.”

  “Yes, the mosaic! All my life I’ve dug through ruins to prove that this land belonged to our Jewish ancestors. Now these Christian symbols on the floor of a Jewish home prove that some of those ancestors believed in Yeshua the Messiah! Ari has seen it. God used the part of his work he was most passionate about—mosaic floors—to prove to him that Rachel was right, that Yeshua was Jewish. And that He was the Jewish Messiah our ancestors had been waiting for.

  “But that isn’t all,” Hannah continued. “Ari had to stick close to you, Abby, and that meant listening to the message of Christ. He knows it’s what Rachel believed. He didn’t declare himself a believer or ask to be baptized before she died, but he went to church with her.” She paused. “Oh, Abby, please forgive me for not telling you. Please believe that it was for Ari’s sake. And please pray for him.”

  Abby stood and accepted Hannah’s embrace. “Of course I forgive you, Hannah. Of course I do.”

  “Then if you’re free tomorrow night, would you join a friend and me for dinner? There is someone else I would like you to meet.”

  * * *

  Abby couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah and her daughter after she returned to her room. If anything ever happened to one of her own children, Abby knew that her grief would be unbearable. Unable to sleep, she calculated the time in Indiana, then picked up the telephone and called home.

  “Hello.”

  It was her husband, Mark.

  Abby’s heart pounded in her throat. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “Hello?” he repeated.

  “Um . . . is Emily there?” she finally managed to ask. Her voice sounded so hoarse she doubted if he would even recognize it.

  “She just ran out to pick up a pizza. Can she call you back?”

  At the sound of Mark’s voice, Abby battled to push away a horde of memories, as if fending off a swarm of bees. Some of them stung her painfully. She and Mark had attended colleges that were miles apart, and much of their courtship had taken place over the telephone. She had once loved the sound of his rich baritone voice and its power to warm and enliven her—like smooth, strong coffee on a wintry evening. She remembered sitting on her bed in the dormitory, wrapped in a blanket as she talked to him, watching the snow falling outside her window, waiting for spring when they would be married.

  “Hello . . . ?” Mark said again. “Hello, are you there?”

>   She realized she had kept him waiting a long time. “This is Abby,” she finally said. “Emily doesn’t need to call me back. I just wanted to remind her that I love her . . . in case she forgets.”

  She gently laid the receiver back in its cradle as the tears came. That was how Mark used to begin his phone calls. I just wanted to remind you that I love you . . . in case you forget. . . .

  CHAPTER 20

  EAST JERUSALEM, ISRAEL—1999

  Abby, I’d like you to meet my good friend Ahmed Saraj . . . Ahmed, this is Abby MacLeod, from America.”

  “Hello, so nice to meet you,” Abby said, shaking his hand. The moment Ahmed opened the door to greet them and Abby saw his handsome chiseled face and honey-toned skin, she guessed that he was the Arab stranger who had visited Hannah in the hospital. He was about the same age as Hannah, and he greeted her with a warm embrace. Even dressed in Western-style clothing he resembled an Arab sheik.

  “Ahmed is the pastor of the fellowship of believers I attend,” Hannah explained. “He also taught me to walk . . . in more ways than one.”

  Ahmed invited them into his house, which was very similar to Marwan’s, except that more of the clustered rooms had been completed. He shared his home with his youngest son, Ibrahim, his daughter-in-law, Safia, and his beautiful five-year-old granddaughter, Nada. The child climbed onto Hannah’s lap as soon as she sat down and barely left Hannah’s arms the entire evening. When Safia announced that dinner was ready, Nada and Hannah seemed reluctant to part. Abby suddenly realized that Nada must be the baby that Ahmed had brought to Hannah in the hospital.

  Safia had spread the meal on a cloth on the floor, and everyone sat on rugs and cushions scattered around it to eat. Abby took helpings of couscous and lamb and fresh pita bread, along with a variety of the delicious Middle-Eastern salads that she had grown so fond of while in Israel. When Ahmed said grace, it was a Christian prayer, in Jesus’ name.