The Covenant Read online

  Elise studied the child’s bright eyes, her solid, perfect little body with its protruding tummy still covered with tender baby fat. She thought of the road into Jerusalem, the long, winding road past Arab villages and dark-leafed olive trees that camouflaged roadside dangers. That’s what terror does, Elise thought. Unlike the healthy sense of mortality most people came to terms with—the idea that you would have your eighty years or so and then die—here you were being asked to accept a minute-by-minute uncertainty, so that even kissing a child good-bye and sending her off to school seemed like a tragic, final scene.

  It was unbearable. Yet, they kept bearing it.

  But what else could they do? Stay locked up in their homes and never go out? Life had to go on. At least, this is what they kept telling themselves, and each other, pretending to feel a courage and certainty they didn’t have.

  Slowly, she pried her child’s small fingers loose. She felt her vision blur. “I brought you sugar cookies for your lunch bag,” Ruth wheedled, picking liana up.

  The child’s face remained impassive. She was impossible to bribe, and she didn’t particularly like sweets. But Ruth’s sugar cookies were an exception. Slowly, she relented. “With sprinkles?”

  “With sprinkles.”

  And then the two of them were gone.

  The house filled with the lonely sound of the front door clicking shut. Elise turned off the radio, her forehead glistening. Oh, this was no good for her, she knew, no good, she thought, cradling her swollen belly. I’ll keep you safe, baby. I’ll keep you safe, she thought, rocking. Until the world becomes a sane and decent place again, until the bad guys are vanquished, the murderers imprisoned, the demagogues hung by their ankles in the town square. Until the world is safe, familiar, predictable and good again.

  She reached over and took out her box of beads. Not a bribe, she told herself. Just a sorry-I-couldn’t-be-there gift. Something sparkly and pretty with lots of pink—liana’s latest love. As she began to string the beads she thought about how wonderful it would be if the world was like a beaded necklace. When it didn’t come out right, you could just take the whole thing apart and start all over again, learning from your mistakes . . .

  Chapter Three

  Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem

  Monday, May 6, 2002

  9:00 A.M.

  DR. JONATHAN MARGULIES opened his office door. She was there, as usual, pretending to be busy dusting off something which had long since surrendered every particle to her whacking ministrations.

  “Fatima. What a surprise.”

  “As salaam aleikum, Doctor Jon,” the woman said with the greatest respect, her weathered face breaking into a huge smile of strong white teeth. “I’m just finishing. I’m in your way?”

  Jon smiled and shook his head. “Never. I’m lucky to have you.”

  He’d known her through medical school and residency. She was almost a fixture in the department. A few times a month, she even came to the house to help Elise with the cleaning. liana adored her.

  Before the Intifada forced the army to put up roadblocks, she used to travel in to work each morning from one of the little villages just outside of Hebron. Now she stayed with relatives in East Jerusalem. Weighing two hundred pounds, she had raised eleven children, and could lift up his desk with one hand. He had no idea how old she was. The shapeless traditional caftan that covered her ample frame from neck to ankle and the voluminous scarf that hid the color of her hair gave him few clues. Her face showed great character and an abundance of living. She could have been forty—or sixty—he often thought with admiration.

  Life for her had not been easy. Her husband was a construction worker who off and on had spent time working in Saudi Arabia along with several of her sons. For long stretches, he knew, she was in charge of a household that she ran single-handedly. He sat down at his desk and turned on his computer.

  She waited.

  “Is there something you need, Fatima?”

  “Doctor Jon, I don’t like to trouble you, but perhaps I could ask you a question?” she said in broken Hebrew.

  From long experience, Jonathan knew that whatever response he might make, she would ask her question, and she wouldn’t leave without an answer.

  He shut off the computer. He didn’t mind, except that giving medical advice without actually examining any of the various relatives and friends Fatima was determined to cure wasn’t particularly good medicine. “Of course. But you know, whoever it is, they really need to see a doctor and get a good examination.”

  “Yes, Doctor Jon. But this time, this time it is about myself.”

  He looked at her, surprised, concerned. She never asked about herself. “Are you sick?”

  She took a deep breath. “Doctor Jon, the water. It comes out red.”

  “Water? Do you mean urine? The water you make when you go to the bathroom?”

  “Yes. That water.”

  “And do you have any pain, or tenderness anywhere?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I know it is very bad. My sister had this. Very, very bad.”

  He thought for a moment. “How long have you had this, Fatima?”

  “Just now it started. This morning.”

  “Fatima, what did you eat last night for dinner?”

  “Humous, and cousbara salad, and beet salad . . .”

  “Beet salad! That’s it. Fatima, you are probably fine. Beets will do that, make the water red. It’s harmless.”

  He could see the relief flood her face. “You really should get used to going to your own doctor, Fatima. You need a good examination at least once or twice a year . . .”

  “No. I don’t like doctors. I mean, I don’t like to go to doctors, to take off my clothes.”

  ”Fatima . . .”

  “Thank you, Doctor, I’ll go now . . .”

  “Fatima. Don’t eat any beets for the rest of the week. If it comes back, you tell me right away, okay? And then I’ll get Dr. Rosen to examine you.”

  “Shukran.”

  “Bevakasha”, he replied. She didn’t move.

  “Doctor Jon . . .”

  “Fatima. It isn’t necessary . . .” he implored without a shred of hope. She ignored him, as usual, heaving the enormous straw basket she often carried on her head onto his desk. It was filled with fresh red grapes from her own vines. They smelled of sweetness and musky undergrowth and the hot, Mediterranean sun. She must have gone back to her village for the weekend, he thought, feeling sorry for what must have been endless waits to get through security checks, endless walks down long dusty roads to avoid roadblocks . . . He thought of his fig tree, understanding why she’d made the effort.

  “Give some to liana.” She smiled, gesturing toward the smiling, framed picture of the child he kept on his desk as she emptied the basket into a large plastic bag. “She loves my grapes.”

  “This is true.” (That had been his fatal error, years before, revealing to Fatima how much his daughter loved her grapes, thereby ensuring himself what was turning out to be a lifetime supply.) “But Fatima, why so many? You could sell them and make a nice little profit.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “I work for money. Grapes are a gift from Allah. They are for family, for friends.”

  He broke off a bunch, popping them into his mouth, letting the tangy, red juice bathe his tongue. It was delicious. “Shukran, Fatima.”

  She balanced the empty basket carefully on her head, her posture beautiful, her face acknowledging his thanks with quiet pleasure. She closed the door silently behind her.

  He put on his white coat and began his morning rounds.

  The beautiful Moroccan grandmother was reacting badly to the increase in her chemotherapy dosage. She never complained, but he could see it in the white pallor on her olive complexion, her lack of appetite, her silence. What to do? he wondered. The drug was working at this dosage, the tests showed that. Perhaps an antiemetic to help control the nausea? That too might have side effects. He would have t
o check her more often, he made a note to himself, try out some other drugs to help with the side effects. And if that didn’t work . . . Maybe a different drug?

  In contrast, his twelve-year-old hell-raiser was in fine spirits. A little too fine. He smiled, listening to the complaints of the nurses on the boy’s latest practical joke—something involving a syringe and a bedpan—he didn’t want details. “If you don’t behave, you’ll just have to get well and go home!” He shook his finger at the boy, who took off his baseball cap and grinned.

  “Want to check your face in the mirror?” the boy asked, bending his shiny bald head forward.

  Jon rubbed it with his knuckles, laughing.

  Next was the kindly eighty-year-old. Jon carefully checked the condition of the small wound on the bottom of his foot. Because of his diabetes, it had to be carefully monitored, he reminded his interns and the nurse. It was healing, he saw, relieved. A good sign.

  Before he could get to the next room, he was accosted by the hell-raiser’s anxious mother, who never seemed to sleep.

  “Excuse me, but the doctor is on rounds. This will just have to wait for office hours,” the nurse told the woman curtly, trying to run interference.

  Jon saw the mother’s face fall. The boy was her youngest. Her baby.

  “It’s all right, nurse. I’ll just be a moment. Thanks.”

  The nurse shook her head and shrugged.

  Jon knew the nurses thought he was too soft, that he let everyone take advantage of him. And the truth was, he had nothing new to say to the boy’s mother. But he also knew that she wasn’t really asking a question. All she wanted was her daily dose of reassurance that her son was healing, the medicine working. She, of course, wouldn’t let him go, would want to ask the same question, again and again: When will he be well, doctor? When will he come home? And he’d put his hand on her arm in a way he hoped was comforting and say: Soon, God-willing, Mrs. Gottleib. Soon.”

  His interns and nurses had learned to wait patiently.

  Nouara’s room was near the end of the long hall. By the time he got to it, he had heard fifty stories, some of them tragic and unbearably heartbreaking, and some wonderfully uplifting. Cancer wasn’t a death sentence anymore. At least, it didn’t need to be. It was a clever adversary, though, biding its time, regrouping and waiting—sometimes for years—to break through the defenses. Often he felt as if he was playing a game of chess with the Angel of Death, where he could never achieve a checkmate, only prolong the game. But that too was important.

  Everyone is going to die, he reminded himself when the sadness of his defeats tore through him. But each battle he won meant that life could go on one more day, month, year. It was a battle worth fighting, worth winning, no matter the eventual outcome.

  What would a man give for an hour of life, ten minutes? What price?

  He could understand many things about his Palestinian neighbors: their anger and disappointment and sense of injustice. All these things were human and, seen from their point of view, perhaps justifiable. What he could not accept or even begin to fathom was their joyous connection to death. The pride of sending a child to destroy life, their own and others’. How he wished he could take them into this ward and see how people fought for the privilege of one more day of life. Death has no glory! he wanted to shout at them through the television screens when they interviewed the beaming mothers and uncles and friends as they fired off guns to celebrate the creation of one more shahid. Death has no glory.

  Shawan was sitting, as usual, by his wife’s bedside. He was a tall, thin man with a giant Saddam Hussein mustache. His thick hair was neatly combed and his shirt was a faded blue badly in need of ironing. His gray pants showed the flecks of paint and concrete that were the marks of his profession. His face was pale under the olive skin, his dark eyes sagging with fatigue. Jon could only imagine how awful it must be for him, caring for the children, spending so much time with his wife, trying to find some kind of work to keep gas in the car and food on the table.

  “Good morning, Shawan.”

  “Doctor. How is she?”

  He touched the man’s shoulder. “Let me look at her chart, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Nouara lay back on the white sheets, her face pale and drawn, her dark hair covered with a modest scarf, not unlike the ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman that was in the next room with advanced breast cancer. He drew the curtain around her bed, sat down and smiled. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Ravishing,” she said with a trace of a wicked grin. She was a lover of novels, especially the ones with the bodice-ripping titles, and they were the source of most of her English vocabulary.

  He lifted his eyebrows and nodded appreciatively. “Good word! And what else can you tell me?”

  He listened as she gave him a list of her symptoms and reactions to the drug regimen, all the while flipping through her charts to read the latest lab work. The truth was, the numbers were better. Not the best. Not perfect, but an improvement. He examined her head to toe.

  It was good, he thought. Nothing but the usual body weariness fighting the invasive chemicals that were flooding her system, fighting the cancer. She needed very, very careful supervision at this point, someone to keep track exactly of every dosage and every side effect. He made a note to change certain medications, and told the nurse that he was to be paged immediately if there was any change for the worse. He didn’t want some outsider clomping into this delicate woman’s fragile body chemistry with combat boots. He wanted, literally, to keep his finger on her pulse. This was his war, and he was determined to win it for her, for Shawan, for their children. It was personal.

  “I’m happy today, Nouara. The numbers look good. Keep it up!” His hand reached into his back pocket and he took out another Harlequin. “For you. This one is called Burning Desire,” he read.

  She took it from him quickly, glancing with pleasure at the big-bosomed blonde in the arms of the dark horseman before hiding it quickly inside her pillow. She tucked a few wisps of hair underneath her scarf “Shukran, Doctor Jon.”

  “Anytime.”

  He was about to leave, when her hand caught his arm. “Doctor, can you tell my husband not to come? At least, not every day?”

  He was surprised. “Why?”

  She shook her head. “He won’t listen to me. But I know it is very hard for him. He isn’t able to find work, because he takes off so much time . . .”

  And because since the Intifada, Israelis were just too scared to hire Palestinians . . . Jon finished the thought for her.

  “He’s so tired. If something happens to me, he has to be strong. To take care of our children. This is more important. But he won’t listen . . .”

  “Nouara, if my wife told me not to come and see her every day, I wouldn’t listen to her or her doctor. I’d come. But you know what, I’ll try to find some work for Shawan. There are people building houses in Maaleh Sara who could use a hand, and their hours are flexible. He could do both.”

  Her teeth were white and pretty against her dark face. She took his hand and kissed it.

  “You make me feel like the pope, Nouara.”

  “You are holier,” she said solemnly.

  “I don’t know. My wife is pretty mad at me right now. She says I’m bullying her.”

  “How is this pregnancy going? Still so hard?”

  “No, she’s fine. But we don’t want to take any chances, and she hates lying in bed all day She’s so tired of doing her beadwork, of reading and watching TV . . .”

  “I know.” Nouara picked at the bedcovers listlessly. “Maybe you should buy her watercolors and paper. Let her draw. You wouldn’t believe how the time passes when you mix colors.” She pulled open the drawer of her night table. It was full of her artwork, fresh and delicate landscapes. What was she drawing, he wondered, glancing up at the window. But only the blank white wall of the maternity wing stared back at him. He studied the paintings: the brown rolling hills, the gnarled trunks
of olive trees, the pointy bright green pomegranate leaves. It was the same view he saw from his own window every morning, he realized, the same things he would miss if confined to this sterile white room. She’d drawn the landscape of her heart. And in a way, his own.

  “It’s so good, Nouara. So familiar. I even think I know what tree that is.

  He tried to return the picture. She pushed it back at him. “For you.”

  “Well, I’m honored. But you have to at least sign it.”

  She dimpled with pleasure, dipping her brush into a plastic cup of water and moistening the dried blue paint. “From Nouara to Doctor Jon,” she wrote in English, and then continued in flowing Arabic script.

  “What does it mean?”

  “One day, I’ll tell you,” she blushed.

  As he walked down the hall to talk to Shawan, he folded the picture carefully, putting it into his pocket.

  Chapter Four

  Downtown Jerusalem

  Monday, May 6, 2002

  4:00 P.M.

  THE RECITAL HALL in Beit Ha Am was in the center of downtown Jerusalem. It had a real theatre, a real stage. Once a year, all the community center ballet classes took the place over, filling it with doting parents and giggling little girls with flowers in their hair. The children, dressed in colorful costumes, mingled like a field of wildflowers quivering in the wind, their sweet voices a chorus of excited expectations.

  Jon ushered liana through the throng, finding her classmates and her teacher. Then he sat back in the darkened theatre, losing himself in the music and movement of little children delightedly soaking up the spotlight. First the older kids came out, trying their hand at being future stars, stretching, posing self-consciously, keeping laborious track of the music, delighting in the applause. And then came the little ones: their eyes wide, a little scared, their feet fumbling, searching the stage and the crowd for encouragement, dimpling when they found it. Like little kittens, they brushed up against each other, stepping on each others’ toes, their soft beauty almost heartbreakingly fragile under the bright lights.