I followed at my son-in-law’s heels, intent, as he was, on making certain that my daughter and her children were kept safe. I wept as we went on, certain I’d bring a curse upon us by not preparing my husband’s body. I was meant to sit beside him all night and help him travel into the World-to-Come with lamentations and prayers. At any other time I would have remained with the husk that had once housed his spirit before the body that had contained him was left in the cave beside the bones of our people. I thought of our forefathers fleeing from Egypt, of their children who stumbled in the sand as they made their way out of bondage, of the waters that rose and then parted before them. Their agony had never been more real to me. I felt I might weep on their behalf.
I draped a white shawl over my own shoulders, already in mourning for a man who had baked my initial into every loaf of bread. I slipped on the color of the garments of the dead, as though I had passed from this world along with my husband. For a moment, I thought I should stay behind, give up my life at the hands of the Romans and allow my spirit to join with his. But I had a vision of my daughter and of her children, dearer than any treasure, and I knew what I must do. I prayed for my husband, but I left our village that evening. Like the rats, I fled what was tumbling down around us, forsaking the lives we had led that were now destroyed.
BY NIGHTFALL we were journeying toward the wilderness. It was the month of Tishri, when we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the festival marking the time the Almighty begins to write down the names of those who belong in the Book of Life and will live for another year. I had no idea that we would still be wandering during Yom Kippur, the time to atone for our sins, and that the book would be closed on that day, then sealed. The names that had not been written on its pages were those who would not live into the next year.
We were prepared for a long journey. My son-in-law had brought along the two donkeys and the cart that had pulled sacks of emmer and wheat to the bakery and turned the millstone to grind flour. I carried the last five loaves of my husband’s bread, tokens of what had brought us our good life. My daughter had packed jars of olives and oil and had brought along cheese wrapped in cloth and leather canisters of water. We ran, and the donkeys ran with us. Above us there were huge flocks of birds, all fleeing the billows of smoke issued by the many fires set in the village. We slept huddled together, in the open, unused to the cruel way of the wilderness, yearning for the scent of baking bread and the softness of our own beds. My son-in-law wore the long tunic of a scholar. He looked distraught when my daughter embraced him and told him we would be lost without him, perhaps frightened that the faith she had in him to lead us was misplaced. He was more at home with his scrolls and prayers than he was guiding us through the wilderness.
At night I dreamed of my husband. He was with me as the dead often are before they move on. They say those who have left us don’t change who they are even in the World-to-Come. My husband was kneading bread, working hard, as if he was still in our world. He seemed the same, a kind and serious man intent on his baking, just as he’d always been, but he was using ingredients I didn’t recognize. The dough was red, and the spices were ground from the petals of black flowers and from the sharp stingers of honeybees. I heard him speak then. He said, Every loaf of bread feeds you in the way you need to be fed. My husband had been a simple man and had used words only when necessary. Now, in my dreams, I felt certain he was telling me something I needed to hear. I awoke wishing he had said more.
In the morning, the flocks of birds fleeing over the hillsides were so enormous they blotted out the sun. I held my tongue, though I was certain this was a bad sign. The white cockerel who’d been murdered on the stairs of the synagogue was following us, that was what I believed, sending his messengers to pursue us. The birds passed us, their flight faster than we would ever be, and that told us something as well.
If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.
THE DAYS PASSED, and before long we had eaten nearly all we had, the bread, the olives, the cheese. We began to ration our food. My son-in-law’s plan was simple, the tactics of a logical man. We would wait out the Romans, then return to our village and start anew. I didn’t say what I knew, that there’d be nothing to return to. We would have only blood and broken bricks. I saw that my son-in-law was intimidated by the wilderness before us and our place in it. The desert loomed, a harsh landscape even for those experienced in surviving its dangers. In all his hours of study, Yoav had never built a fire from twigs with the use of a flint, never hunted with a bow, never found water or made his way over limestone boulders and rocks so harsh they set our feet to bleeding. He was an important man in the village, but here he was nothing. Before long we were lost. Each thorn tree looked the same to us, ravaged, black. Each hillock led to yet another. Only the sky changed, flushing pink at twilight, and then sifting into a dove gray light before the darkness overcame us.