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

the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Sual spoke slowly and softly, almost in a whisper, and Anise saw her mother’s eyes grow dreamy. It was because of him that Anise had blonde hair and blue eyes, she explained. Mahmud’s name was on the birth certificate because she’d been afraid for her own and Anise’s lives, she said. But when Anise was born, she realized that they had to flee, because nobody would believe that her gorgeous blonde daughter had been fathered by Mahmud and both of them would have been killed. Family honor was the most important thing in the culture she grew up in. Mom again said that Anise had been too small to hear the truth. It would have been enough for Anise to say a wrong word to the wrong person for both their lives to be in danger.

All these years she’d thought her father was dead and it turned out to have been a lie. And the worst thing about it was that her real father had no idea even that he had a daughter in Israel who’d give anything to meet him and know him. No. She was never going to forgive her mother. Anise ran out the door, far from her mother, far from everything.

A few hours later, when Mor came home from school, he found Anise, exhausted, curled up in his bed. Her eyes were so swollen and red he could hardly see her pupils. He looked at the heaps of used tissues covering his bed and thought, this must be really bad.

Anise spent the next hour crying on his shoulder, not saying a word. She was soaking his shirt, but Mor was afraid to move.

Bit by bit, past the tears, Mor managed to gather sentence fragments and, more or less, piece together what had happened. Finally, Anise looked at him through swollen eyelids, saying, “I’m going to look for my father and, as far as I’m concerned, I no longer have a mother.”

“At least you have a father and he’s alive,” Mor tried to comfort her, thinking he’d give anything to meet his mother even once. Trying to be practical, he suggested they start by finding the hostel in the Old City were Sual and Michael had met. Maybe they’d kept their old guest registers; maybe they’d be able to find her father’s address, even if it wasn’t current.

For the first time in hours, Anise smiled and Mor thanked God.

Girls are so complicated, he thought, knowing that if he uttered one wrong sentence she’d burst out crying all over again. Knowing Anise and how stubborn she was and how her anger might last until hell froze over, he debated if he should say anything. Eventually, his love for Sual won out. Carefully, he suggested that maybe, just maybe, it was a tiny bit possible to understand her mom, because after all she – Sual – was just a kid herself and was probably totally freaked out and thought that she was protecting Anise. Sure, she’d made a mistake, but it was worth remembering that Sual would do anything for the two of them.

Anise’s eyes started leaking again, and Mor realized this hadn’t been the right moment to try to defend Sual. He hurried to change the topic. “Listen,” he said, “on Saturday, a new exhibition is opening at the consulate. It’ll feature works by two artists, one Israeli and one Italian. It’s something to do with the Cultural Exchange Week or something. Dad and Sual are going to be busy with guests; we just have to drop in and show our faces. It’s the perfect time to begin the search for your father. We can start with that hostel in the Old City.”

Finally, Anise smiled again and her tears dried up. Mor thought her smile was worth the wet patches on his shirt and that she could toss as many tissues on his bed as she wanted. It was fine with him.

The Third Gate

The Tunnels

Chapter 7

On Saturday, Anise woke up early feeling restless. She hurried to get dressed and go downstairs and walked through the exhibition to pass the time until Mor got up. Meanwhile, the large consulate space was slowly filling with guests.

Anise wandered around the rooms, looking at the paintings. One not particularly large piece drew her attention. It was a rather gloomy watercolor depicting a stone wall. It reminded her a little of the Old City. The wall showed a gate stopped up with rocks, and a very skinny hen was wandering around, looking for food under low, gray clouds. Although the painting as a whole projected an atmosphere of sadness and neglect, Anise was unable to walk away from it. It was as if the painting struck a chord and touched a distant memory. To the right of the gloomy piece was a pencil drawing of a little boy flying a kite on a beach. His back was tilted back a bit, both hands holding the string tightly, and his light curls were being tossed about by a strong wind that looked fierce enough to pick the kid up off his feet. The smiling child looked so joyous. Anise admired his dimpled cheeks. The boy was glancing at some object outside the frame, making Anise wonder what he was seeing. She stepped up to the drawing. The look in the boy’s eyes reminded her of something she’d forgotten long ago. She felt she knew him, even though she was sure she’d never seen him before.

“Hi, I’m Yam,” said someone behind her back.

The voice was low and clear. Anise turned around and her jaw dropped. The child in the picture was standing right there! In the drawing, he was around six or so, but the tall boy in front of her was about her own age. The long curls in the drawing had been cut shorter and were darker, but those eyes… She’d know them anywhere. He smiled at her, revealing both his