The Covenant: A Novel

Chapter One

Maaleh Sara, Judea

Monday, May 6, 2002

5; 30 A.M.

IT WAS THE sound of the birds in the morning he loved most, Dr. Jonathan Margulies thought as he lay in the cool early morning darkness. So different from the sounds of his own childhood in Detroit, where hearing a bird sing amidst the traffic, the trucks rolling down the superhighways, could not happen. He closed his eyes, listening to the sweet noises. They were gold-crests, or sylvia warblers, he thought, having once looked them up in a book.

He breathed in the tangy odor of the slightly damp fig leaves that rested on his windowsill. My own fig tree, he thought with wonder. To own such a thing. To have land in which to plant it, a tree that could grow for a hundred years, a tree that bore fruit that belonged to you. Not the stingy little bags purchased at great price in supermarkets, but bushels, more than anyone could ever eat. Fruit to share with friends and neighbors, to store, to bake, to eat carelessly, greedily. Fruit from God’s own generous, open hand.

Trees were the thing that connected a person to his space on this earth, he thought. They were like your family. Your rootedness began with theirs. They weren’t movable. They held on to the land, soaking up its goodness, turning it into nourishment whose sweetness dribbled down your chin. Once you experienced that, he thought, you were part of that place.

What a joy.

He threw off his light blanket, enjoying the cool breeze that drifted over his thin pajamas. It was only early May, but already the days were growing hot the moment the sun climbed over the horizon, its fierce, abundant light drenching the land, the people, nothing like the thin, tepid rays he remembered back in North America.

He looked over at his very pregnant wife, listened for the breathing of his young daughter, basking in the peace of his small, pretty house. My own house, my own land. My own family. And a fig tree, he thought, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the abundance and goodness of his life.

On such a morning, he thought, it was almost possible to forget the war hanging over everything he loved, everything he’d built.

He threw his legs to the floor, willing his body to follow: The throwing off of sleep is the beginning of all salvation, he whispered to himself, using the same proverb his mother had used in his high school days to pry him out of bed for early morning Talmud classes.

He was tired. He’d stayed up late the night before poring over case files and consulting with medical colleagues in Boston, New York and London. He glanced at Elise, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the tendrils of honey-colored hair that fell around her rosy face on the white pillow. She looked so young—like a child—he thought, pulling the light summer blanket tenderly over her bare shoulders. But even that feathery touch was enough to wake her.

Jon?

Shh. Go back to sleep.

She heaved her swollen body up on her elbows. We left all the supper dishes, the pots . . . Not to mention the floor, which is a swamp. She started moving her feet toward the edge of the bed. "And this afternoon liana has that ballet recital at the community center. And—oh—it’s my Bubbee Leah’s birthday next week! I’ve got to buy her a present . . ."

He sat down on the edge of the bed, blocking her. Here’s the rag. Where’s the dirt? He offered himself up.

She poked him in the stomach. What would your distinguished colleagues and admiring patients say if they knew the learned professor of oncology arrived after a morning of wringing out dirty floor rags?

They’d agree that any treatment that successfully keeps the fetus in the womb until its heart and lungs are fully developed was good medicine, Elise. Especially, his voice grew kinder and more gentle, if the mother had a history.

She studied her fingers gathering and twisting the material of her nightgown. You’re bullying me.

He smiled. Is it working?

Yes! But don’t let it go to your head. It’s all those diplomas . . . It has nothing to do with your macho pushiness, believe me. She folded her arms across her chest, sinking back into the mattress.

I believe you. So? Do I have your word? It’s only six weeks, honey. Then we’ll all be home free.

Listen, Jon, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t care if you are a doctor. I just can’t promise to lay here all day long and do nothing. It’s stressing me out.

You can, darling. And you will, he said firmly.

End of story, she thought glumly. Yes, Doctor.

Why don’t you work on your jewelry?

It had started as just a hobby, stringing little colored beads when she was pregnant with liana. But encouraged by her success in selling her pieces to boutiques and by word of mouth, she’d taken a course at Bezalel in gold and silversmithing. And she’d never gone back to being a teacher of English to rambunctious fifth graders—who hated the language—again.

I can’t really use my tools laying here in bed.

But you were doing such beautiful work with the bead necklaces and earrings . . .

I’m sick and tired of stringing beads . . . I’m sick and tired of everything. I want my body back. I want my life back . . .

Elise, Elise. Be smart. Here you have a man with floor-scrubbing credentials, child care experience and a long, positive relationship with credit cards for purchasing takeout food. All this, he’s laying at your feet—a once in a lifetime opportunity! Take advantage.

Don’t think I won’t, she warned him. Just not Chinese or Hamburger Ranch. I’m sick of all that grease. If I could just make some vegetarian risotto, with some pumpkin soup . . . She sighed. "Okay, I suppose not. And don’t forget, Bubbee Leah . . ."

"In this I’ll need some advice and guidance. Presents for septuagenarians, especially incredibly fussy ones like Bubbee Leah, are out of my realm."

Why do you say that? My grandmother isn’t fussy at all!

Every single time we send her a present she complains nonstop that we shouldn’t have spent the money . . . that she doesn’t need anything . . .

"Oh, do you have a lot to learn! That doesn’t mean anything! That’s just being European. That’s what they have to say. It’s like some ritual. They have this rule book, but no one else is allowed to read it, you know? In the book, it says if you get a present, you have to make the giver feel like an idiot, like he’s wasted his money and you are angry at him for even thinking you might need a gift. But if you don’t get anything, then you should be hurt and miserable and offended for life."

Oh, is that the rule?

Absolutely. Trust me. She nodded emphatically. I was thinking, maybe a cookbook?

With her cholesterol and heart problems? Don’t you think she’d find that depressing?

Not at all. She doesn’t do much cooking. But she likes to read and talk about food. That’s what she did in Auschwitz. She’d ‘prepare’ meals, describing the ingredients, the step-by-step preparation. I don’t think she gets to bookstores very often in Boro Park.

"You know what? I’ll call you on my cell phone as I browse the shelves in Steimatzky’s, so you can browse with me. You know I love Bubbee Leah. It’s just . . . she’s just such a mystery."

I know. All women are. She reached out for him. He took her hand, kneeling down beside her, putting his other hand over the unborn child they had both prayed so hard for after two miscarriages. There are so many dangers out there we have no control over, Elise. This, at least, we can do something about.

She twined her fingers through his, their hands tent-like and sheltering over the baby. What a crazy time to bring a child into the world, she thought, a world which overnight seemed to have gone insane. The World Trade Center had been attacked for no reason anyone could figure out, collapsing in rubble, killing thousands before the eyes of an incredulous world. Palestinian terrorists killed children at bar mitzvahs and Passover seders; Indonesian terrorists killed Christians attending church services; Basque separatists blew up beach parties on the Costa Del Sol; and Pakistani Muslims opened fire on nurses in a Christian hospital. People didn’t seem outraged or even surprised anymore, just kind of weary and dumbfounded. And even journalists pretended to no longer be able to distinguish right from wrong, bending over backward to see the murderer’s point of view. Homicide seemed almost a lifestyle choice these days. Like being gay or vegetarian, it had earned a certain respect, even glamour, at least among media types who seemed eager to adopt the terrorists’ own incredibly self-serving and immoral self-image as martyrs and heroes.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

She looked around at the whitewashed walls, the geraniums spilling over the window boxes. Like every young couple, they’d dreamed of building their own little house with a red-tiled roof and a big garden full of fruit trees and herbs. And so, when they saw the ad in the paper announcing that the Israel Lands Authority was accepting bids for plots of land zoned for one-family homes in Maaleh Sara, they’d jumped at the chance.

They already had friends living there and had heard good things about the neighborhood. It was only a short ride from Hadassah Hospital. They had wonderful schools, a great number of professional, English-speaking immigrants, great climate and a warm, religious atmosphere. It was also fairly inexpensive. We can build a great three-bedroom home with a garden for the same price as some cramped two-bedroom walk-up in some crowded Jerusalem apartment building. Besides, smell the air. It’s country air, healthy for kids, Jon had argued, convincingly.

She’d needed a little convincing. While Jon had waxed dreamily about how Abraham and Isaac had passed this way on their journey from Hebron to Mount Moriah, how Ruth had kneeled to gather sheaves from Boaz’s fields and how King David had shepherded his father’s flocks through the hillsides, she’d peered nervously at the nearby Arab villages, counting how many they’d have to drive through in their daily commute.

Look, I know some of the people in these villages. They come into Hadassah all the time. Some are even my own patients, Jon said when she expressed her fears. People are people. It’ll be like moving into any other neighborhood. Some people won’t like us, and some will. We’ll do everything we can to be good neighbors.

It was so simple to think of it that way. And in many ways, it had been. Their workmen—plumbers, electricians, gardeners—all lived in nearby villages. Often they’d drive them home to get supplies, meeting their wives and kids. They’d buy cement and plumbing supplies at huge discounts from Arab stores their workmen knew about. In those early days, everyone was so young and hopeful. There were young families everywhere—Arab and Jew—and everyone seemed to be planting trees and adding on rooms to hold new babies. In the deepest sense, they really were neighbors, and sometimes even friends. Looking around at the sparsely populated area of rolling hills and trees, they’d think: there is so much land, enough for everyone to share.

A few short years later, in the eye of the storm, when people started calling their neighborhood an illegal settlement or occupied territories, they couldn’t believe how naive they’d been. It was like that Kafka story about the cockroach, Elise told Jon. You went to sleep a person, and woke up a bug. And before you could even understand what was happening, peaceful roads had turned overnight into shooting galleries, terrorists lying in wait around every bend, under cover of ancient olive trees. And innocent people—kindergarten teachers, handymen, students—people she knew—had been gunned down in cold blood. Palestinians too: gunmen from the new Palestinian regime could pick anyone they chose off the streets, accuse them of collaborating, and put them in front of a firing squad. There was no trial, no jury, no appeal. It was sickening.

How can we live this way? she often wondered. Why put ourselves through this? After each attack, they’d sit around the kitchen table fingering warm mugs of soup, talking and arguing deep into the night, bringing up every option.

Maybe we should just move, she’d suggested once.

Jon had looked at her, surprised, his face pale, the dark shock of hair hanging boyishly over his eyes as he wordlessly took her hand in his. He didn’t have to say it. She understood. When all was said and done, it wasn’t ideology that kept them here: this was their home. They’d pored over the architect’s plans, picked out the floor tiles, agonized over the style of faucets, fixed the leaks and planted the young trees. It was theirs and they loved it.

Besides, they had a mortgage. And no one was going to buy their house, not now. That was the reality. Where, exactly, were they supposed to live? Almost every place in Israel had suffered some kind of terrorist attack. And then there was the element of simple shame: how could they cut and run when neighbors and friends who had suffered tragedies—lost husbands, wives, children—bravely stayed put?

If they could only hold on, they told each other, things had to get better. This craziness couldn’t last much longer. The politicians would have to gather the arms, arrest the terrorists, get rid of the inciters . . . They’d have no choice. Right wing or left wing, that’s simply what governments and armies did: protected the lives of their citizens, no?

She told herself these things bravely each day, several times a day. But each time Jon took the car out, each time he or her daughter entered that open road, her heart ached in fear, and her body grew taut and weary waiting for their return.

She remembered the words of a Hamas terrorist at the beginning of the Intifada explaining why Hamas would win and the Jews would lose. It was because the Jews loved life more than any other people, he’d said with utter contempt.

Nothing could be truer. Jews loved life. Their own and other peoples’. And Jewish doctors loved it best of all. Jon’s war against cancer was relentless, and he never gave up.

He still looked like the twenty-three-year-old army medic that had come knocking on her door one Saturday night, a blind date arranged by her roommate Rachel. My brother knows this great guy, Rachel had told her. He’s American like you. And smart and funny and kind . . . and very religious. And he’s studying to be a doctor!

So why don’t you go out with him yourself? she’d shot back, wary.

He’s a new immigrant, from Baltimore, who’s in the same unit with my brother. You are so lucky you grew up in America! And I’m such an idiot for not studying harder for my matriculation exam in English . . .

I bet he’s conceited. Medical students always think they are the catch of the century and any girl lucky enough to go out with them ought to kiss their feet. They walk around like God’s gift to women. And most of them are short and pushy. Little Napoleons.

At five feet two and with a young girl’s wispy frame, Elise was constantly on guard against being pushed around and treated like a child. In self-defense, she’d honed a sharp tongue that had been known to pierce many an inflated ego. Men seldom appreciated this. Even the chauvinistic group leaders of her high school youth group, B’nai Akiva, strapping young fellows charged with turning them into land tillers and pioneers, had retreated one by one, intimidated. And thus, despite her long honey-colored hair and striking blue eyes, Elise had spent many a Saturday night decorating the walls of the local Zionist clubhouse with blue and white ribbons, instead of out on dates.

Rachel hadn’t given up. "You don’t fool me, Elise. All that hostility is just masking shyness. You are going to go out with this guy. You know the saying: if you make two matches, your place in heaven is reserved for you. I’ve already fixed up my cousin. So, you are my ticket to the Afterlife. Are you going to cooperate or not?"

How could you deny someone her ticket to the Afterlife?

She’d picked out a pretty dress the color of lilacs. At the last minute, she’d pulled off the velvet tie-back, letting her hair fall loose and soft around her face. When Rachel ushered him in, Elise thought it must be some kind of mistake. This bashful, tall boy with the kind brown eyes, the dark unruly hair—studying medicine? He hardly seemed out of high school.

He’d suggested they go to the theatre. She’d suggested a stroll along the Promenade. He’d agreed immediately. They’d proceeded to battle the sharp, cold Jerusalem winds that whip up such a storm at night along that long stone walkway which is Jerusalem’s boardwalk, except that instead of the sea, there is a heartstopping view of the city. She’d waited for him to complain, to point out, rightly, that the sheltered walls of the Jerusalem Theatre would have been a much wiser choice. He never did. Their cheeks stinging, their hands frigid, they talked and walked deep into the night. And as they spoke, the wind magically disappeared, and their hands grew warm.

They had so much in common. Both had come from America to Israel as young adults, leaving their families behind. Both had lost their parents early in life, and felt independent, and free to choose. As post-Holocaust Jews, the idea haunted them that at the crucial moment, so many of their extended European families had had no place to run to, no country willing to take them in. And although both had been grateful to have been born within the sheltering arms of the greatest democracy on earth, neither felt it belonged to them the way these rocky little hillsides did: a place where when you had to go there, it had to take you in.

Of course, their families had been against it. Their friends—brought up in the same Zionist youth groups and singing the same pioneer songs in Hebrew around campfires, educated in the same yeshiva high schools where the Hebrew Bible and the books of Prophets sat side by side with texts on college-placement calculus and Shakespeare’s plays—thought they were nuts. And their parents had blamed the Hebrew day schools, which had taught them English and Hebrew simultaneously, and made them sing The Star-Spangled Banner and Hatikvah one after another at assemblies.

Their parents had paid the enormous yearly tuition for these private schools to ensure that their kids turned out faithful, traditional Jews who loved Israel, not radicals and dreamers bent on abandoning the safety of their American birthplace with its economic promise, to actually live in that little Middle Eastern plot of land surrounded by hostile Ishmaelites. They were horrified at the thought of their children in khaki IDF uniforms, learning how to shoot an Uzi. What they had wanted was for them to finish college, get married and live in a nice rent-controlled apartment in Flat-bush while they saved money for a down payment on a two-family house in a nice Jewish neighborhood in Queens, not too far from their parents and survivor grandparents—who had suffered so much.

Why couldn’t they be like everybody else: attend a local Young Israel, buy strictly kosher food, and give generously to the UJA? Neither of them could explain the reason they had taken such drastic and life-changing steps, journeyed so far into the unknown. It wasn’t something you could really explain to someone whose heart didn’t skip a beat at the Tomb of Abraham, who didn’t choke and tear at the words of Hatikvah (Still in my heart, deep inside, afewish soul is yearning. We have not lost our hope, our hope is two thousand years old . . . ).

Alone, they had made aliyah (meaning journey upward, a term used by all Jews to designate immigration to Israel) immediately after college. It had been hard and lonely, but also exhilarating. Meeting each other and falling in love had filled in the empty spaces left by the ravages of the sudden uprooting from their birthplace, the loss of their families. Their wedding day had been the ultimate ingathering of the exiles, Jon had joked, bringing in family members from around the world. And neither had ever been lonely again.

In the way of all new immigrants making a new beginning, they had wanted a family right away. But it had taken them four years and untold fertility treatments to conceive their first child, liana, now five. There had been two difficult pregnancies that had ended badly. This pregnancy too had not gone easily. In her sixth month, Elise had begun showing signs that her cervix was beginning to thin, the marker of oncoming labor. She had been confined to bed rest ever since.

You’ve got to stay in bed, Elise. And then the heir will be born with a lusty cry, and grab the breast, and shake out the milk, he said in his finest Herr Professor manner, stroking his nonexistent beard. Then he suddenly got up and looked out the window at the gentle, rolling hills and the houses beyond.

Nouara, she said, matter-of-factly.

Nouara, he admitted, smiling at her mind reading.

He looked toward the mosque and minaret over the hill where Nouara’s husband, Shawan, was probably just finishing his morning prayers. He too would be washing floors, dressing the kids, then heading for Hadassah Hospital in that beat-up Peugeot of his. He would be there today, as he was every day, feeding his small, pale wife sweet fleshy dates brought especially from Jericho, bottles of Seven-Up and plastic containers of his mother’s matchless humous. Five times a day, he fell to his knees and prayed toward Mecca, just as three times a day his wife’s doctor prayed toward Jerusalem.

Nouara ali Abad had had leukemia off and on since she was a teenager. For the last year, she had been in Dr. Jonathan Margulies’s care. As an intern and then a resident, Jon had known Nouara long before she became his patient. He had seen her beat the illness, grow back her long dark hair, marry and bear three healthy children. And now she was back, worse than ever. She had not yet turned twenty-two. Now she was his patient.

Elise heaved herself heavily over the bed and walked up behind him, reaching up and touching his cheek. You’ll think of something, my love. You always do. May God help her . . .

Or Allah, he said, tucking her arms around his waist.

Or Allah, she acknowledged.

He turned around slowly. And may God help you if you overexert yourself. Elise, please. His dark brown eyes pleaded with the helplessness of husbands facing pregnant wives.

I give you my solemn word of honor to make you proud of me, my love, she said, stretching up as he bent down to catch her kiss in the practiced way of tall men with tiny wives. "I’m going straight from bed to bathroom and back again. Remember: liana’s ballet recital is at four at Beit Ha Am. So you have to come get her from day care no later than three-thirty . . . and please don’t forget Bubbee Leah’s cookbook," she murmured into his cheek, enjoying the warmth of his arms, wishing he would never leave.

I can’t promise I’ll get to the bookstore today . . .

Then tomorrow . . . she wheedled.

She’ll never be as good a cook as her granddaughter. He kissed her again.

"If I’m ever allowed back in the kitchen . . . I’ve forgotten what it looks like