Return to Me Read online

  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.

  Iddo’s neighborhood and the distant city looked eerily still from the rooftop. The low rumbling of marching footsteps had finally ceased, and as he knelt on the sun-warmed tiles, he couldn’t decide if the silence was a good sign or a bad one. On an ordinary day, he and his sons would have begun work by now, Iddo laboring as a scribe, tallying business accounts for the Babylonians, handling their correspondence, keeping track of their shipments and trading ventures spread throughout the empire. His two sons had formed a trading partnership of their own that had made steady profits—until now. Who knew what would happen now? But Iddo and his sons, like their forefathers, were born to be priests of the one true God. If they lived in Jerusalem instead of in exile, they would be offering sacrifices at His temple, just as Iddo’s father and grandfather had done, all the way back to Israel’s first priest, Aaron. Iddo remembered Jerusalem’s temple, remembered watching the sacrifices as a boy, inhaling the aroma of roasting meat, listening to the Levite choirs and the trumpets. Now the holy temple was gone.

  But Iddo was still a priest. As soon as he’d reached adulthood here in Babylon, he had begun his apprenticeship with the older priests who had been exiled with him, learning the regulations, trusting that one day the temple would be rebuilt as the prophet Ezekiel had promised. “It’s a waste of time, Abba,” both of his sons had said when they’d reached the age of apprenticeship. “Why learn dead rituals for a dead religion?” Were they right? Were the faith of their father Abraham and the laws given to Moses mere relics of the past, as dead as the corpses that had filled Jerusalem’s streets?

  The city of Babylon remained quiet the entire day. None of Iddo’s fears of death and destruction had materialized—yet. “Come with me to the house of assembly to pray,” he told his sons that evening. “I want you beside me to hear whatever news there might be. Then we can decide together what to do.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait a few more days until the dust has settled before going out?” Berekiah asked. “We don’t know what our new captors will be like and—”

  “No. You should set an example of faith for your children.” Iddo gestured to Berekiah’s oldest boy, Zechariah, who was nearly twelve years old and Iddo’s favorite. He had fetched his father’s prayer shawl for him and stood with it in his hands, watching them, listening. “We need to pray. Don’t you realize how serious our situation is?” Iddo asked.

  “Of course I do. And I am thinking of my children. What if our new Persian overlords misinterpret our gathering and think we’re planning a rebellion?”

  “I’m willing to take that chance. Come on, it’s time to go.”

  “May I come, too?” Zechariah asked. Before Iddo could reply, Dinah gripped their grandson from behind and pulled him close.

  “No, Zaki. Stay here. We don’t know if it’s safe yet.”

  The knowledge that he couldn’t make his family feel safe fanned Iddo’s anger into flames. He would fight this enemy of fear, replacing it with faith. The Holy One was with them, not their enemies. He reached for Zechariah’s hand. “Yes, you may come with us. The Almighty One will keep us safe.” He hoped it was true.

  No one spoke as Iddo and his sons and grandson walked to the house of assembly. Hundreds of men had already jammed into the room and a tremor of excitement rippled through the gathering. “What’s going on?” he asked one of his fellow priests. “What did I miss?”

  “It’s Rebbe Daniel,” the priest whispered. “He’s alive! He survived the invasion and came all the way from the king’s palace to pray with us.”

  Iddo’s uneasiness melted in relief. Rebbe Daniel the Righteous One was highly revered in Babylon, not only among the Jewish community, but among the Babylonians and their leaders, as well. If the Medes and Persians had let him live, then there was hope for Iddo and his fellow Jews. Iddo had only seen this legendary man twice before, and he was overjoyed to see him now, glad that his sons and grandson would hear what he had to say. The room fell quiet as the elderly man stepped onto the bimah to speak.

  “We have nothing to fear from our new rulers,” Daniel said. “Darius the Mede has asked me to serve him as I served the Babylonians.”

  “We’re safe, then?” someone asked.

  “Yes. We’re all safe.”

  Iddo closed his eyes as the news sent murmurs of relief rippling through the hall.

  “There’s more,” Daniel continued. “I have been praying and studying the prophets’ words for some time now, and the Holy One has shown me that the years of our captivity are nearing an end. He spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, saying that we would serve the king of Babylon for seventy years, and when those seventy years were fulfilled, He would punish the Babylonians. This invasion by the Medes and Persians is the beginning of that punishment. More than three thousand of our capto
rs have been executed, including the king and his noblemen. Our exile is coming to an end. We will soon return home to Jerusalem.”

  A shout went up from the gathered men. Iddo laid his hand on Zechariah’s shoulder to steady himself. Home. To Jerusalem. He longed to shout praises along with the other men, but the news had stolen his breath. He was afraid to believe it, afraid to put his faith in something as impossible as returning to Jerusalem. And even if it did turn out to be true, could he bear to return to the ghost-filled ruins he had left behind as a child?

  “Our captivity began when King Nebuchadnezzar brought King Jehoiakim here to Babylon in bronze shackles,” Daniel continued. “I was part of that first group of exiles sixty-seven years ago. That means our seventy years of captivity are nearly over. We need to pray today and every day that the Holy One will now have mercy on us and restore us to the land He promised our father Abraham. That’s what I’ve come here to do with all of you tonight—to pray.”

  “Did our new captors say that we could return?” someone asked.

  “Not yet—but God promised that we would. We’ve endured punishment for a time, but the Holy One promised to take us back, to restore our fellowship with Him, to continue His plan to redeem all mankind through our people.”

  As Rebbe Daniel prepared to pray, Iddo turned with the other men to face the Aron Ha Kodesh, where the sacred Torah scrolls were kept. Daniel prayed aloud, lifting his hands to heaven, and the faith and conviction in the man’s voice sent shivers through Iddo.

  “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of love with all who love Him and obey His commands, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled. All this disaster has come upon us, just as it was written in the Law of Moses. But now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand, hear our prayers and in keeping with your mercy, forgive us! Look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. We don’t make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! For your sake, O my God, don’t delay because your city and your people bear your name.”