The Celestial Gate by Avital Dicker (red white royal blue txt) 📗

she can feel them closing rapidly on her. Suddenly she hears a child’s voice calling her name. She sees him from afar, running toward her. With the last of her strength, she increases her speed. The boy holds his hand out to her. She’s almost there. The light spilling out of the cave casts a halo around his blond curls. She tries so hard to grasp his hand. And then, like every night, she hears a roar. She stumbles and the creature’s open jaws gape above her. Anise wakes with a scream.

In the morning, Sual found both children asleep in Mor’s room again. She looked at her beautiful daughter. While Anise spoke fluent Hebrew, her Arabic was rudimentary, even though it was, literally, her mother’s tongue, causing Sual to feel a pang in her heart.

For her it was already too late, but not for Anise. Her daughter would grow up to be anyone’s equal. Nobody would be marrying Anise off at sixteen. She would love whomever she chose to love and she would attend university. Her girl would grow up free. She wouldn’t be anybody’s chattel.

The children are starting to become too big for this, she thought. She couldn’t allow them to sleep in the same bed for much longer; she had to protect her daughter. She wasn’t going to risk Anise’s future.

Just then, Theo stepped into Mor’s room, half his face covered in shaving cream. Sual felt herself blush, but Theo didn’t seem to notice. It seemed that he never noticed anything.

“Sual, I’m late for a meeting. Have you seen my blue tie?”

Mor opened his eyes and excitedly leaped out of bed. “Daddy!” He skipped toward Theo on his little legs, but Theo had already left the room.

As she looked at the pain on Mor’s face, Sual felt like giving Theo a good shake.

At first, after Claudia died, she understood him. She, too, could see the resemblance between the boy and his mother, and knew that every time Theo looked at Mor he saw Claudia and his heart broke anew. Sual thought it would pass. But the years were flying by; Mor was almost seven, and Theo was still incapable of looking at him. He’s going to have to pull himself together and fast, because soon it’ll be too late, Sual thought. Her heart went out to Mor who kept staring at the open door, hurt, afraid to approach his father. She, too, a bit like Mor, had loved Theo for years, from a distance, afraid to approach, she thought.

The Italian Consulate in Jerusalem is located in a building abutting the Old City. For seven years, she’s looked at the place where she grew up, afraid to enter. Sual longs for the scents of the spices in the alleys where she once lived. She’s just a few hundred feet from the Old City, but it’s as if an entire galaxy separates her old life from her new.

It’s been a long time since Sual was the timid woman with the downcast eyes. It was doubtful that anyone would recognize the old Sual in her, yet she still looked around anxiously every time she went out to the street.

The first thing Sual did upon arriving at the consulate was to remove her burka, the cloth that had covered her face for so many years. With her first salary, she went and got a short haircut and bought two pairs of slacks and several tops. Almost nothing was left of the intimidated young woman whose face was always veiled and whose back was always bent. Still, she couldn’t free herself of her fear.

Today, Sual looks just like those women her friend Lucy used to tell her about with such yearning. Her face is bare, her hair cut short, and her dress is Western. Nonetheless, her childhood scars are still carved into her heart.

A few days ago, Anise asked her about her father. The plate Sual was holding fell from her hands and shattered into slivers. She hugged Anise. “Your father died before you were born,” she told her, “but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

Sual hated to lie, but she had no choice. She had to protect her daughter. Sual knew the day would come when Anise would ask her tough questions and she’d have to tell her everything. She hoped, with all her heart, that Anise would be able to forgive her for the lies and understand that Sual had only done what was best for her child. But right now Anise and Mor were only seven years old and she and her daughter were safe. She would deal with the truth when the time came. She breathed deeply. “Who wants some hot chocolate?” she asked, smiling.

Yam

Mom is a lawyer now. She works in a big office with huge glass walls and buys him all the coolest toys. But he’d be happy to give up all the toys – OK, maybe not all of them, but definitely some of them – if his mom had more time to play with him.

Grandma says that Mom has to work so they’ll have a nice house to live in, but Yam doesn’t get what that matters if his mom never has time to hang out with him anymore.

Mom has a friend. His name is Gili and he tries to be nice to Yam, but it only makes Yam madder.

More than anything, Yam wants his mom and dad to make up. He’s sure that Mom loves Dad, and he has proof because she always combs her hair before Dad comes to pick him up and sometimes she even puts on lipstick.

And even when Dad knocks at the door and she opens it and makes faces and gets annoyed, Yam knows that it’s only because she’s trying to hide how much she cares about Dad. He knows because Dad is the only one who can make the corners of her mouth twitch the way they twitch when she gets mad at Yam.

Yesterday, when Dad