The Second Messiah

Robert Cane put an arm around his son, hugged him close, and winked. “So promise me something? Someday when I’m gone I want you to know that even though I won’t be here in flesh, I’ll be here in spirit. You can still talk to me. Anything you want to say, anything you need to discuss, come sit by my grave and talk. Same with your mom. We’ll be listening, okay? You won’t see or touch us, but we’ll be standing next to you. Don’t ever forget that, Jack.”

Years later, Jack wondered if his father had spoken those words simply to provide his only son with a small blanket of comfort—a touchstone to lessen the pain of loss after his parents had gone. Jack never knew the answer, only that talking worked. Some people talked to their dog, or to their image in the mirror. He talked over his parents’ graves and afterward felt the better for it. So long, Dad, Mom. We’ll talk again.

And yet, despite his belief that he was being listened to in some unearthly dimension, always the questions came that were tiny seeds of doubt. Do we really meet again? Does the love we nurtured on this earth go on forever, beyond this universe, for all eternity?

When he had finished his final words to his dead, he picked up the empty water bottle, stood, and turned toward the Land Cruiser.

He heard a noise, looked up. Not a hawk this time but a sound like a metallic wasp—a distant helicopter, a speck in the sky. Shielding his eyes, Jack stared at the speck and then the noise faded and it was gone.

7

Five thousand feet in the air Hassan Malik sat in the Bell helicopter and watched the Land Cruiser depart. He nodded to the pilot and ten minutes later the chopper touched down near the graves with a flurry of sand.

The swish of the rotors died and Hassan climbed out, followed by Nidal. The scorching heat of the late afternoon ripped the air from their lungs, but they had known this desert furnace all their lives.

In the distance, Hassan saw the faint plume of Cane’s Land Cruiser disappear toward Qumran.

Hassan stood there, hearing the light murmur of the desert wind, as if he were listening for something, he wasn’t sure what. But for a moment, he could almost hear the ghostly echo of voices carry on the wind. In one of those flashes of recall, he was fifteen again, a poor Arab boy wearing cheap jeans and a pair of his father’s worn sandals, digging among the ruins of Qumran. And from that to now, so much in between.

Hassan stepped over to the gravesite. He stared down at the lilies lying on the tomb, within the neat border filled with gravel chips. His own parents were long gone, buried in the chalk earth, his father dead on the same day as Jack Cane’s.

He would never forget that day. Never.

That same night his mother had traveled to her cousin in Jerusalem and never came back. The police told Hassan that she had hung herself. Hassan knew why. His Bedu mother would rather endure death than the indignity of a barren life without a husband or an income. His brother, Nidal, and his sister, Fawzi, were inconsolable. Hassan too, but after the numbness wore off a fierce determination blazed inside him. He was not going to leave little Nidal and Fawzi to the fate of an orphanage. They were all going to stay together.

First Hassan had buried his parents, and then he had buried his dignity, begging on the streets of Jerusalem, putting barely enough food in their bellies to keep from starving.

He and Nidal and Fawzi had slept in filthy doorways, searched for scraps among garbage in rat-infested alleyways. In winter, he kept his little brother and sister warm by giving them his own filthy coat, while he himself froze from the cold.

Nidal was always a weak child. Living malnourished on the streets had not helped, and his bouts of sickness had more than once brought him close to death. But somehow Nidal had survived, as if his small body had fire in its belly.

All of it happened a long time ago, but what was it his father liked to say? We can never escape our past.

Nor can we rewrite it, Hassan thought. But we can change our future. And in changing our future, we can right the wrongs of our past.

Nidal touched his arm, taking him from his reverie. “We are late for our appointment, Hassan.”

“Right now, this is our most important appointment.”

Nidal noted his brother’s voice was very quiet, but as always infinitely dangerous, his dark eyes glittering with purpose. “Of course, Hassan. It is as you say.”

“Go back to the helicopter. I’ll join you in a moment.”

Nidal retreated without a word. Hassan watched his brother walk back toward the chopper. The sight of Nidal’s rake-thin body always brought out a protective streak in him.