When the wife of Ben Shadouf began coughing again, he looked up in anger. It was a strange anger, directed as much at himself as at her. Her cough had become more dangerous over the previous days. Vess and I believed she was dying. She held memories of the time before the war when she had gone to a clinic staffed by women doctors, but women were not allowed to work any longer. Their place was at home where their purity could be protected by their menfolk.
We sought throughout the city and found the clinic, which had set up anew in a private home. It was staffed only by women who did not go out, who received shipments of medicines from outside the country and who had husbands or brothers to shop for them. Vess put the knowledge of this place into Ben Shadouf’s head. We saw him thinking the women doctors were probably Americans, or influenced by Americans who were always trying to seduce followers of the Prophet to their evil ways. He worried whether he could risk defilement by going to the clinic with her, and he feared the satanic notions they would put into her head. Perhaps it would be better, he thought, to let her die and then find a new wife, one with a brother who could share the duty of protecting her.
And yet, he loved her. We saw tears in his eyes.
Vess and I tried to make sense of this as we watched him picking at the vegetables: lentils and onions and herbs, which had a flavorful aroma. His wife was dying, his children would be motherless, and he could not engage in any constructive action.
Abruptly he pushed the food aside and got up. Calling loudly, he said, “I am going into the town for my meal. This food is fit only for women.”
As he left, we heard her coughing again.
Intrigued by this episode, we sought similar confusions where religion warred with good sense. We found them in many parts of the world: in Afghanistan, Moslem against Moslem. In India, Moslem against Hindu against Christian. In Israel, Moslem against Moslem against Israelis who are against other Israelis. This particular observation saddened us, for all the pain that was in it, and it excited us, too, for it showed us there are ways in which we know we can help your world. While you are putting together your household, Benita, we are taking our first action, not in your country, where we had planned to do so, but in Afghanistan and Israel and India and so on. Your Moses, in your holy book, brought down plagues upon his adversaries. So Vess and I will bring down plagues upon that part of your world.
Jerusalem—THURSDAY
The first public notice of what was later called the Old City Absence came at 4:15 A.M. on Thursday, when a caravan of determined Ha-sidic Jews from New York approached the Old City of Jerusalem where they planned to enter via the Dung Gate on their way to securing an early and favorable position at the Wall. The valley through which they had been driving was filled with mist, making the world seem dreamlike and insubstantial, an effect which did nothing to make the sleepy driver more alert. It was only when the road before him seemed to vanish altogether that he screeched to a stop, the car swerving so that it blocked the road. The three other cars in the convoy also pulled to a halt, and the rabbi in charge of the group got out of the second one and walked toward driver number one, now out of his car and following his flashlight’s yellow circle along the roadway to the point at which it disappeared infinitely downward.
“What is it?” cried the rabbi, himself still half asleep. “What’s wrong?”
The driver’s eyes stayed glued in place, though he took a backward step as he heard the rabbi’s footsteps approaching.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“It’s gone,” mumbled the driver. “Everything’s gone. The walls of the Old City. I can’t see them. There should be some lights. Everything’s gone.”
The rabbi stared along the flashlight beam. Before his feet the earth stopped at a clean, knife edge, and a great chasm opened beyond it. The chasm had no farther side that they could see, nor any bottom. The rabbi dropped to his hands and knees and crept forward until his chin was over the abyss. He lay flat and stretched one arm downward, feeling along the side.