Return to Me (2 page)

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion. . . .

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

P
SALM
137:1, 5–6

I
ddo awoke from the dream, gasping. The nightmare had nearly devoured him. He heard his wife’s soothing voice, felt her hand resting on his chest as if trying to calm his pounding heart. “Shh . . . It was just a dream, Iddo. Just a dream . . .”

But it wasn’t a dream, at least not the kind that other people had when they slept, seeing visions that made no sense in the light of day. In Iddo’s dreams he relived memories, powerful memories, as real as on the day he’d lived them as a child. The images and sounds and horrors had imprinted on his soul the way a stylus presses into soft clay. The kiln of suffering had hardened them, and they could never be erased.

He drew a shaky breath, wiping his hand across his face, scrubbing tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dinah,” he whispered. “I’m sorry . . .”

“Are you all right?” she asked. “I’ll make you something warm to drink.”

He rested his hand on her arm, stopping her. “No, stay in bed. Why should we both be awake?” Iddo rose from their mat, groping in the dark for his robe. He wouldn’t be able to sleep now.

During the daytime he could control the images that circled the edges of his consciousness like jackals by looking up at the
cloud-swept sky or studying the perfection of his infant grandson’s tiny fingers. But at night, when darkness hid the Creator’s beauty, the images and sounds closed in on Iddo, scratching and clawing, refusing to be silenced. Once they pounced they would strip him of everything he had accomplished, ripping at the man he now was, reducing him to the ten-year-old child he had been when Jerusalem fell—helpless, terrified, naked, and shivering before his enemies. Forty-seven years had passed since he’d lived the real nightmare, and Iddo had spent those years here in Babylon. He had a wife, children, grandchildren—all born here. Yet the atrocities he’d seen in Jerusalem remained as vivid as the world he saw every morning. The nightmare never faded, never blurred.

He waited for his heart to slow, his breathing to ease, then shuffled to the door, opening and closing it soundlessly so he wouldn’t disturb his household. Outside in his dark courtyard, he traced the familiar silhouette of the mud brick houses in his neighborhood, the spiky date palms growing along the nearby canal. He lifted his chin to watch stars disappear, then reappear behind the playful night clouds. “‘When I consider your heavens,’” he whispered, “‘the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?’” The psalms of King David were another weapon he used to keep the jackals of fear away.

The terror that had destroyed Jerusalem was the Almighty One’s punishment. All of the prophets had said so. God no longer dwelled with His people because they’d been unfaithful to Him. His temple was destroyed, His people scattered among the nations, living among pagan gods. Iddo’s only hope, his family’s only hope, lay in studying God’s Law, filling his heart and mind with the Torah, obeying every word of it every day of his life. If he sought the God of his fathers with all his strength, maybe the Holy One would show mercy and return to His people again.

Iddo shivered in the cool fall air, waiting for the nighttime peace to still his soul. But instead of the deep silence that he craved, he heard remnants of sounds from his nightmare: a low rumble like hundreds of marching feet, faraway screams and cries—or were they only the cries of birds? Iddo had spent many nights awake, but the sounds from his dreams had never lingered this way. Was he imagining things? He climbed the outdoor steps to his flat rooftop and looked out at the city. Lights danced in the distance like summer lightning—only it couldn’t be lightning. The star-filled sky stretched from horizon to horizon in the flat landscape, the night clouds mere wisps.

A sudden movement in the street below caught his attention, and he squinted down at the shadows. His neighbor, Mattaniah, stood with his hands on his hips gazing toward the center of Babylon. Beside him stood another neighbor, Joel, who was a descendant of temple priests like Iddo. Could they hear the sounds, too?

Iddo hurried downstairs and out through the courtyard gate to the street. The two men turned at the sound of Iddo’s footsteps. “Did the noise wake you, too?” Mattaniah asked.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“We don’t know,” Joel said. “The Babylonians are holding a festival of some sort for one of their pagan gods tonight, but my son Reuben thought it sounded more like soldiers marching.”

“Yes . . . I thought so, too,” Iddo said.

“We were wondering if the armies of the Medes and Persians had attacked the city,” Mattaniah said.

Joel shook his head. “They’ll never succeed. Babylon’s gates are heavily fortified and the city walls are twenty feet thick. They’re impregnable!” But Iddo remembered Jerusalem’s toppled walls and shuddered. “My son went to have a look,” Joel continued. “We’re waiting for him to come back.”

Iddo stood with his neighbors, listening to the distant sounds,
talking quietly as they waited for Reuben to return. By the time the young man finally jogged home, flushed and breathless, an arc of pink light brightened the eastern horizon. “You won’t believe it, Abba! I walked all the way to the plaza by the Ishtar Gate, and the streets are filled with soldiers all around the southern palace. Thousands of them!”

“Babylonian soldiers?” Iddo asked.

“No, sir. They weren’t like any Babylonian soldiers I’ve ever seen.”

“Then it is an invasion!” Mattaniah said.

“It can’t be. How would the enemy get past our walls?” Joel asked.

“I think I know how,” Reuben said. “I followed the river on the way home and the water was only this deep . . .” He gestured to the middle of his thigh. “The soldiers could have waded into the city beneath the walls, using the riverbed for a highway—like that story in the Torah when the waters parted for our people, remember?”

An invasion.
Iddo turned without a word and hurried back to his walled courtyard, closing the wooden gate behind him, leaning against it. He must be dreaming. He hadn’t awakened from his nightmare after all. Any moment now Dinah would shake him, and he would wake up. He closed his eyes as he slowly drew a breath, then opened them again. He was still in his courtyard, still aware of the distant rumble of marching feet.

If this wasn’t a dream, then for the second time in Iddo’s life enemy soldiers had invaded the city where he lived. His nightmare had become a reality once again. He took a few stumbling steps toward the house, stopped, and turned in a useless circle, like an animal trapped in a pit. He had to flee, had to escape with his wife, his family. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe they could wade out of the city and hide in the marshes beyond the walls. Maybe the Almighty One had parted the waters just for
them, so they could escape. He took two steps forward and stopped again.

The Almighty One.

Would He help them? Iddo needed to pray, to ask for His wisdom and protection before fleeing. He climbed the stairs to the rooftop—barely able to manage them on trembling legs—and fell prostrate, facing west toward Jerusalem. “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe—” He stopped. His father and grandfather had lain prostrate in the temple courtyard in Jerusalem with all the other priests, praying day and night for help and protection and salvation. Their prayers had gone unanswered.

“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God . . .” Iddo began again. Maybe something would be different this time, and the Almighty would hear His people’s pleas for mercy. Iddo and the others had obeyed everything the prophets said:
“Marry and have sons and daughters. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.”
Iddo had done that. He and the other priests had not only tried to obey every letter of the Law, but they had constructed a fence of protective laws around the Torah to make sure no one even came close to breaking one of God’s commandments. They honored the Sabbath day as best they could, even when their captors denied them a day of rest. They gathered for prayer three times a day as the three Patriarchs had done, and—

Iddo lifted his head. Why was he praying all alone? The other men must be awake by now. He would go to morning prayers, gather with the others, and decide together what to do. His household was stirring when he went downstairs to fetch his prayer shawl and phylacteries. Dinah knelt in front of the hearth with a fistful of straw, blowing on the coals to start the fire. His daughter, Rachel—lovely, vulnerable Rachel—hummed as she folded the bedding. Iddo heard murmuring in the other rooms,
as well, the rooms he had added onto his house for his sons Berekiah and Hoshea and their wives and families. His newest grandson was crying to be fed, and his helpless wail sent shivers through Iddo as he remembered the children in Jerusalem who had been too hungry to cry. Would it be the same in this invasion? The suffering, the starvation?

“I’m going to morning prayers,” he told Dinah.

She looked up at him in surprise. “So early? You never go this early.”

“I need to talk with the others. Something has happened, and I’m not sure—”

“What do you mean? What happened?” She rose to her feet, studying him with dark, worried eyes. Her long hair still hung loose and uncovered, and Iddo resisted the urge to gather the soft weight of her curls in his hands. Not a single strand of silver marred Dinah’s dark hair, while his own hair and beard had turned completely white ten years ago, when he was still in his forties. “Are you all right, Iddo?” she asked.

He looked away. “Joel’s son came home this morning with . . . with some news. I need to talk with the others to understand what it means.”

“What news?”

He couldn’t say it out loud, couldn’t speak of an enemy invasion. “Just make sure you and the other women stay here. The children, too. Don’t let anyone leave our courtyard until I come back. Don’t go to the marketplace or the well or the ovens—”

“Iddo, you’re scaring me!”

“Don’t worry,” he told her. Useless words. If what Reuben said was true, they had every reason to worry. He turned to go, hesitating in the doorway for just a moment, wondering if he should ask his sons to come with him. But no, Berekiah and Hoshea rarely went to morning prayers—why should today be any different? “I won’t be long,” he told Dinah. He had no idea if it was true.

The
Beit Knesset
, or house of assembly, was nearly full when Iddo arrived. It didn’t take long to learn that the rumor was true: Foreign soldiers had invaded Babylon. One of Israel’s elders—a member of The Great Assembly—had traveled all the way from the other side of the city with the news. “The Persians and Medes diverted the water of the Euphrates into a canal north of the city,” he told them. “Their armies waited south of the city until the water was shallow enough to wade through and then entered beneath the walls in the middle of night.”

The room went silent for the space of a heartbeat, two heartbeats. “How could this happen?” someone finally asked. “How could Babylon’s king and his army be taken by surprise? Didn’t they post watchmen? Didn’t they see?”

“The Almighty One’s hand is in this,” the elder replied. “He promised that one day the Babylonian empire would fall, and last night it happened. The Babylonians were holding a festival to their idols and didn’t even realize that the Medes and Persians were inside their walls until it was too late. King Belshazzar is dead. Thousands of his noblemen have been executed. Darius the Mede has taken over his kingdom.”

Iddo sank onto one of the benches that lined the room’s perimeter as everyone began talking at once, flooding the room with panicked questions.

“Will these Medes and Persians slaughter and pillage like the Babylonians did?”

“How can we protect our families?”

“Should we flee the city?”

“How can this be happening to us a second time?”

They were the same questions that Iddo lacked the strength to ask. The elder held up his hands for silence. “Listen . . . please . . . We’re waiting to hear what Daniel the Righteous One and Judah’s princes have to say, but in the meantime you should all return home. The Babylonians are staying inside their
houses today, and so should we. If the city is still quiet by the time of evening prayers, we’ll gather here once again. Maybe we’ll have more news by then.”

As Iddo prepared to leave, a single question filled his thoughts: How could he protect his family? The truth was, he couldn’t. While younger men hurried home to barricade their doors, preparing to protect the people they loved with kitchen knives and clubs, men like Iddo who remembered Jerusalem knew they couldn’t save themselves.

Dinah had the morning meal ready when he returned. His sons and daughters-in-law and grandchildren had gathered in the large, central room of their house. “What’s going on, Abba?” Berekiah asked. “Mama said you looked worried—and that you told us all to stay inside.”

The room grew quiet as Iddo explained what little he knew about the invasion. Even his young grandchildren grew very still. “What will this mean for us?” his son Hoshea asked when Iddo finished.

“No one knows. But one of the elders from the Great Assembly promised to return with more news when we gather for evening prayers. We’ll find out then. In the meantime, we must all stay inside like the Babylonians are doing.” He looked at Dinah, and the fear he saw in her eyes made him reach for her hand. He was her protector, the patriarch of their family, and it grieved him to know that he couldn’t keep her from harm.

“Can’t we go to the well for water?” his daughter asked.

“No, Rachel. Nor to the market or the ovens.”

“But—what will we do?”

“We’ll stay here at home. Like we do on the Sabbath.”

“But what if we run out of water?”

“We can manage until sundown, Rachel.” His words came out sharper than he intended, but her question brought back memories of the long siege of Jerusalem, when the city had run
out of food as well as water. He remembered his mouth being as dry as sand and the unending ache in his stomach. He remembered the vermin he had eaten to try to fill it, the brackish water that hadn’t quenched his thirst. “We’ll spend the day praying for mercy,” he said, looking at his sons. “I’ll be up on the roof if you’d like to join me there.” He laid down his uneaten bread and went outside to climb the stairs.