“Glass,” he muttered. “Like it was melted. By a bomb, maybe. Smooth like glass.” He pulled himself away from the edge and rose, eyes wild. “Nothing,” he cried in an awed and grief-stricken voice. “Nothing there. Everything stops but the pit! It’s smooth, it goes down.”
“How far?”
“I should know how far? Farther than your light shines!”
They went back to their vehicles. The first three cars stayed where they were while the last car in line reversed and went back the way it had come. No one among them had a cell phone, but a half mile back, they’d passed a public phone from which the frantic driver called an emergency number. His announcement was met with weary amusement.
“Sir, you’re a tourist, right? So you’ve probably taken the wrong road . . .”
“Yes, I’m a tourist,” he cried. “But the men driving the cars live here, and the man leading our caravan lives in Jerusalem! He was born here. He’s lived here all his life. Will you, for God’s sake, send someone to see what happened?”
There were murmuring and the sound of voices raised in the background.
“Where are you calling from?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Half a mile back from where the road disappeared.”
“Where were you going, sir?”
“The Wall. We were going to the Dung Gate and then to the Wall.”
“Stay where you are, sir.”
He rejoined his passengers, and they sat in terrified discomfort, waiting. A car went by with a flashing light. Another stopped. The driver got out.
“You the one who called? Right. Follow me.”
They did follow, only half a mile to the place where the first car flashed its light at the edge of the abyss, its uniformed driver and passenger standing next to the rabbi, who was rocking back and forth in rapidly muttered prayer while they stared downward into nothing.
Eventually, after lengthy radio conversations with his headquarters, the officer asked the rabbi where his group was staying and suggested they return there.
“There’s no alternate road we can take to the Wall? These people have come a long way,” the rabbi objected, eyes unfocused.
“It wouldn’t matter if there were an alternate road,” said the officer. “There’s no Wall. The Old City’s gone. All of it.”
“But . . . but my son, his family . . . they live there!”
Lived there, silently amended the officer, taking the old man by the arm.
For the police and the army, which was immediately called out, the rest of the night, what little there was of it, was spent putting up traffic barriers. Skid marks extending across the edge indicated the barriers came too late for some travelers.
Afghanistan—THURSDAY
Ben Shadouf was awakened by the call to prayer. He had overslept, not that he needed to answer to anyone for his sleeping time, merely that he had slept badly early in the night. Yesterday he had taken his concerns about Afaya to his friend, his commander, Mustapha ibn Daud, and Mustapha had told him not to take Afaya to the clinic. She would live, said Mustapha, or she would die, and in either case, that was the will of Allah.
“I feel I am killing her,” Ben Shadouf had cried. “She went to the clinic before. They helped her.”
“Only to confuse you, my friend. That is their purpose, these unbelievers. They will use anything to weaken your faith. They will use your sorrow for a wife. Your pity for a child. You must harden yourself like iron that is quenched and beaten in the fires of adversity. If our wives or children die, they die, but while they live they are pure. If we die, we die, but while we live, we are faithful!”
Ben Shadouf came home angry. He was glad Afaya was not where he would encounter her. He did not want to see her face.
He listened, but did not hear her. No cough. No footsteps. He heard the children, on the roof, playing a singing game. It would be safe to rise, to leave the house and find a meal in the town. Perhaps it would be as well not to come home for a while. He could ask his neighbor to have his wife check on Afaya from time to time. If she died or was unable to get out of bed, the children could be taken somewhere else. Luckily, they were still tiny. Nowhere near an age when they would need to be watched to be sure they did not let anyone see them.